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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, September 18th. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day, the show celebrating yet another moment of free speech greatness under the Trump administration. In this example, here’s FCC chair Brendan Carr telling right wing podcaster Benny Johnson that he could pressure television networks to stop showing the ABC late night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, because it made President Donald Trump mad. 

[clip of Brendan Carr] It’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt, we’re not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC. 

Jane Coaston: And just as we were set to record the show around 4 p.m. Pacific Wednesday, ABC announced that it had pulled Jimmy Kimmel live, quote, “indefinitely.” The move comes after comments Kimmel made during his opening monologe Monday about Trump’s reaction to the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk went viral. Interesting timing. We’ll be revisiting this. [music break] On today’s show, Trump meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after a lavish visit with King Charles III, and the Federal Reserve finally cuts its key interest rate. But let’s start with the FBI. The investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk has raised a lot of questions. Not just about the alleged shooter, but about the investigation into Kirk’s death. And especially about the person at the head of the Bureau tasked with helping to find and capture suspects in acts of violence, not just in the Kirk case, but across the country. FBI Director Kash Patel. As I mentioned on the show yesterday, Kash Patel was clearly not nominated to the position of FBI Director because of his deep grasp on the many issues facing federal law enforcement. For example, here he is speaking Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee about a horrifying act of violence that shocked America in 2015, when Patel was working as a federal prosecutor within the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. 

[clip of Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove] So Dylann Roof uh who followed white supremacist propaganda, murdered nine Black parishioners in Charleston in 2015. Do you deny this? 

[clip of Kash Patel] I’m sorry, um Dylan Ruth?

[clip of Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove] Roof. 

[clip of Kash Patel] Roof, can you give me some more information? 

[clip of Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove] Uh. You’re head of the FBI, you probably know this. If you don’t know, that’s fine. I can, okay. 

[clip of Kash Patel] You can give me a reminder, I’ve got a lot in front of me. 

Jane Coaston: Bullshit. But that’s what we’ve come to expect from FBI Director Patel, a man tasked with running a law enforcement agency that employs nearly 40,000 people. One of the most powerful such agencies on earth. And that’s terrifying. Because it’s not just about the Kirk investigation, though Patel has gotten a ton of criticism, even from the MAGA Right, for his actions in that case. But Patel has had a real and to me very bad impact on the day-to-day operations of the FBI. For example, NBC News reported Tuesday that according to data from the Cato Institute, the FBI under Patel has redirected roughly 20% of its agents to focus on immigration enforcement. That percentage represents a larger shift in priorities and manpower than what took place after the September 11th attacks. And many of those agents had been tasked with stopping domestic terrorism, including from nihilistic violent extremists, like we talked about on the show yesterday. So to talk more about the FBI, Cash Patel, and how the Bureau is supposed to work and isn’t, I spoke to former FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe. Andrew McCabe, welcome back to What a Day. 

Andrew McCabe: Thank you, it’s so nice to be here. 

Jane Coaston: You helped investigate the Boston Marathon bombings. What’s your take on how things have been going so far in the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk? 

Andrew McCabe: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s and as you would expect, it’s bit more complicated than it looks. I mean, provisionally, like a top line, they did a fine job because they found the guy that did it. In a fairly small period of time. So good result. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters. But it was a little bumpy getting there. Um. I think you know, the things that I would point out that were probably less than ideal are really don’t have anything to do with the men and women working the case on the ground. It was leadership uh issues that were not great. As far as the tactics of the investigation, um I think if there’s one thing, if I were still at the FBI and I was kind of looking at this after the fact and trying to figure out what could we do a little bit better next time, I think they could have leaned a little further into releasing actually good photographs early. We now know that they had the photographs that they released on the second day. They had those pretty early on and had they put those out very quickly, they might’ve actually even had him identified faster. But the idea of crowdsourcing the identification of a subject in a manhunt is really something that we kind of stumbled into in the Boston Marathon investigation, as you probably know. And, um so to hear the leadership and particularly the director talk now about having made this monumental decision by himself to release these photographs, which no one else has ever done before, um that’s just, you know, not true. A gross exaggeration and really kind of uh, I think, unfairly putting himself in the spotlight and taking all the credit for a victory that was really, of course, as always won by the people on the ground in partnership with their with their colleagues in state and local law enforcement. 

Jane Coaston: What is the relationship between an FBI investigation into a crime and the ultimate prosecution of a suspect? Like, does the FBI have a role in figuring out a motive, even though I don’t think that that’s essential in terms of prosecution, or why a crime is committed in the first place? Or is it just basically like, here’s the evidence we have, here’s a suspect, go nuts? 

Andrew McCabe: Yes, kind of like that. So we’re there to help them do all these things. And in the course of that work, you start to develop a sense of what happened. So very clearly we have a state murder case here, right? Everybody knows that from the beginning. And it turns out now that it’s not only a murder case, it’s a capital murder case. We go into it with the ability to preserve evidence for that state case, just to help them out. But while we’re there, we’re also looking to see if there’s a federal violation. I’m sure that federal prosecutors are reviewing all the evidence we collect in the Charlie Kirk um uh assassination case. And they are reviewing to see whether or not they should also bring federal charges. And this is something a lot of people don’t understand. You can be charged for the same activity at the state level and at the federal level because they are considered to be separate sovereigns. That is not an instance of double jeopardy. So you could get convicted of murder at the state level and you could get convicted of some sort of corollary federal offense for essentially the same activity and you would be sentenced to, you could be sentenced to prison time in both systems either concurrently or consecutively. 

Jane Coaston: I do want to talk about FBI Director Kash Patel. 

Andrew McCabe: Yes. 

Jane Coaston: He has made a lot of people very mad. Um. And it’s been interesting also because something that he’s been doing throughout this investigation is tweeting nonstop. And that included the night that Kirk was assassinated, he tweeted that a subject was in custody. Now, most people would read that and take that as implying that the person who committed this act is in custody, but that’s not what subject means. And then about an hour and a half later, he’s like, you know, that person has been released and you know after interrogation. Now Patel has defended basically live tweeting this investigation saying that he just wants to keep the public informed and that he’s all about transparency. What’s your take on that argument? 

Andrew McCabe: I mean, I think it you know he’s rationalizing what he wants to do. He’s a guy who tweets and posts things on social media all the time. I would guess that he considers that important to his brand, his personal, you know, that’s what he was. Before he became the FBI director, he was some sort of a kind of a social media personality, I guess. Um. And he has brought that habit, that custom into the office. That is dangerous and not productive. And here’s why, FBI directors are typically, no matter who which president appointed them or what party they came from or whatever, have always been very reticent to go out and start talking about ongoing investigations. There is a policy in the Justice Department, you don’t talk about an ongoing investigation. Of course, you would never talk about classified information, but even in a criminal investigation like this, where nothing is classified, it’s ongoing, it is sensitive. With a lot of the material that you have. You may have collected, for instance, with the help of a grand jury subpoena. So that information is all protected by grand jury secrecy. You just don’t do it. For broader reasons, you don’t wanna do it because what if you’re wrong? Case in point, Kash Patel. You’ve now misled the public. You’ve elevated people’s expectations. Uh, you know that tweet that he put out, he may be you know slicing it semantically now, but the fact is, the way it was read, reasonably by most people who saw it, was it was a bit of a chest-pounding, look-how-great-we-are moment. And–

Jane Coaston: Like we did this, and also like–

Andrew McCabe: That’s right. 

Jane Coaston: I just kept thinking about, you know I used to live in Utah, the community where this happened is quite small. 

Andrew McCabe: That’s right. 

Jane Coaston: And I can imagine people seeing that and thinking, oh my gosh, I feel so much safer. 

Andrew McCabe: Yes. 

Jane Coaston: I can go to the store, I can go outside because they’ve caught this guy. 

Andrew McCabe: Right. 

Jane Coaston: And then 90 minutes later, nope. It’s uh he’s been interrogated and it’s not him. 

Andrew McCabe: Bad idea, bad idea for all those reasons. And then, you know, also you don’t push, constantly push sensitive case information out into the public during an investigation, especially one like this, where somebody is going to be prosecuted because you now run the risk of prejudicing the jury pool. You run the risk of negatively impacting if you’re going to charge someone that person’s constitutional rights, you are creating issues for that person’s defense team to attack the indictment or the charge. It’s just bad business. And I can’t think of a single FBI director other than Mr. Patel, who would have engaged in that sort of behavior. 

Jane Coaston: To your point, Patel was on Capitol Hill for the second day in a row clashing with Democrats who seemed to just mock him to his face. There’s one example from Congressman Jamie Raskin. 

[clip of Jamie Raskin] While most other new FBI directors drew on their experience as FBI agents, you didn’t have that. But you did write a picture book trilogy for children ages five and up based on your experience clashing with President Trump’s political enemies. 

Jane Coaston: Now, you were mentioning um that, you know, FBI directors, regardless of party, we’ve never had a democratic or democratic registered FBI director. And yet, this I’ve never seen anything like the interactions between FBI Director Patel and Democrats. It’s been it’s extraordinarily partisan in a way that I feel as if previous FBI directors have not been. Do these interactions to you raise questions about his ability to lead, that he is very easily baited by members of Congress? 

Andrew McCabe: Yeah, yes, short answer, yes. There’s a lot to unpack there. He is an intensely partisan person. We know this, this is not debatable. We know this from his what he you know his what he was doing before he became the FBI director. And he’s brought that partisanship into his role as director, which I think is very bad for the FBI and bad for the American public’s perception of the FBI. That partisan nature, I think, what you saw on display yesterday during his testimony. Now I will say, no FBI director that I’ve ever known, and I’ve known quite a few, likes having to go to Congress and testify about anything. It’s a tough experience. You spend a lot of time preparing. You try to be as laser accurate as you can. You try not to like compromise cases and classified material in your testimony. It’s very, very hard. And some members will really kind of get in your face about the issues that are important to them. That said, I’ve never, ever seen anyone be as aggressive, as disrespectful, as impertinent as Kash Patel as when he appears on the Hill. Its I think it’s a disgrace. And when your job is to run the organization, part of that is complying with oversight. That’s your job when you’re up there, not to get into screaming matches with Cory Booker or anything else. People are given the respect that they earn up there. And um I think that’s what you saw yesterday. He hasn’t ever presented himself in a clearly articulated, respectful, accurate way on the Hill, in my view, in my opinion. And so this is what they expect when he comes up and they give it right back to him. And it really devolves into a display that’s not helpful for anyone. 

Jane Coaston: In my view, Patel was not nominated to run the FBI effectively. He was nominated because he shares the same grievances against, uh, federal law enforcement, against the department of justice, against the FBI that Donald Trump has. But the FBI remains an essential law enforcement organization tasked with doing real work. And we’ve talked about this before. Given what’s been taking place over the last week or so. What are your concerns more broadly about how the agency is being run? Because I want to highlight you’ve been mentioning, um you know, the men and women who are working as agents in this case in Utah or on the cases that Patel did mention yesterday talking about the thousands of domestic terrorism investigations, the looking into nihilistic violent extremism. Like, there’s a lot to be done. And I’m just curious as to your thoughts about you know, the work that Patel has been doing and just kind of the direction of the bureau thus far, given that there’s, there seems to be this big divide between the person running the organization and the people doing the work. 

Andrew McCabe: I think there is, and I think you’re you’re really onto something there in the way that you perceive why he was put in the job. We know that part of what he’s done since he’s been in the job has been basically executing on what you can imagine was a very clear order given to him by someone in the administration to rid the FBI of anyone who had anything to do with any cases affecting Donald Trump. And that is a blatantly political strategy. And it is one that he’s engaged in. There’s a million examples. He fired all the EADs in his first week. He got rid of the two guys that he had brought in to run the organization while his confirmation was pending. Two of them have now, three of them have now turned around and sued him over their unlawful termination. He has submitted FBI leaders to loyalty tests and polygraph examinations in support of those loyalty tests. These are all things that have never happened in the FBI before, they’re not necessary now, they’ve never been necessary, and they negatively affect the Bureau’s ability to protect the country. Those decisions will drop an ax into the center of this organization and will carve a gulf in the FBI between the people who are hired under those new rules and everyone else. It is the sort of corrosive, divisive thing that an organization will take decades to recover from. 

Jane Coaston: Andrew McCabe, thank you so much for joining me again. 

Andrew McCabe: It’s always a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with former FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. Headlines. 

[clip of Jerome Powell] In support of our goals, and in light of the shift in the balance of risks, today the [?] Federal Open Market Committee decided to lower our policy interest rate by a quarter percentage point. We also decided to continue to reduce our securities holdings. 

Jane Coaston: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced some changes Wednesday in response to employment and inflation numbers that are pretty bleak. This is the first time the Fed has cut its benchmark interest rate in nine months. Since the last cut, progress on inflation has slowed as the labor market has cooled, meaning that Americans are dealing with both high prices and a challenging job market. Not a great combo. It’s a difficult position for the Fed to be in, according to economists. The rate shift could affect what people pay for credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other financial products. But if you’re a prospective homebuyer, don’t get too excited, because the cuts right now are unlikely to make a noticeable difference for most consumers, according to a financial analyst who spoke to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, Black unemployment is surging at the fastest rate since 2020. It’s shot up by 1.5 percentage points over the last three months, which, according to Bloomberg is rare outside of recessions. The unemployment rate for Black people is currently twice the rate that it is for white people. Why? Experts say a slowdown in the broader labor market is hurting Black workers, who tend to be the first ones to lose their jobs. And Black workers are actually overrepresented in the federal workforce, which Trump has been slashing since he returned to the Oval Office. 

[clip of Susan Monarez] He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. 

Jane Coaston: That’s Dr. Susan Monarez, who was Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, until her boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired her after just 29 days on the job. She testified before a Senate panel on Wednesday, explaining how she was told to resign if she did not sign off on new vaccine recommendations, which are expected to be announced this week by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. Fun fact! In June, Kennedy fired everyone on that committee and replaced them with his own people, including a bunch of anti-vaxxers. Wednesday’s testimony was the first time Monarez gave a detailed account of the events that led to her firing, and she dropped a few other bombshells. 

[clip of Susan Monarez] I believe preventable diseases will return. And I believe that we will have our children harmed for things that we know they do not need to be harmed by. Polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough. 

Jane Coaston: Monarez went on to say that she worries about the effect this will have not only on children and their families, but also on the school systems and medical institutions that will have to care for them. Not a great vision for our future. Another stunner came during questioning from Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, when Monarez confirmed that Secretary Kennedy had asked her not to speak directly to senators. Understandably, Senator Kaine found that pretty damning. 

[clip of Senator Tim Kaine] Is my memory right? Doesn’t Secretary Kennedy say he’s about radical transparency? 

[clip of Susan Monarez] That is one of the areas he has prioritized. 

[clip of Senator Tim Kaine] Yeah, well, putting a gag order on a CDC director and directing her not to speak to those who have confirmed her and to whom she is responsible for oversight is a very serious matter. 

Jane Coaston: For his part, Secretary Kennedy has denied Monarez’s accusation that he asked her to pre-approve vaccine requirements. Staying with our nation’s health, several West Coast states are now trying to get ahead of the health emergency Monarez was warning about. On Wednesday, the West Coast Health Alliance, which includes California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, issued its own recommendations for who should get three common seasonal vaccines. It’s a direct response to the anti-vax agenda that Health Secretary R.F.K. Jr. is apparently, as we just heard, trying to implement at a national level. Among its recommendations, the four-state alliance advises that everyone six months and older get the flu vaccine. And that high-risk groups like pregnant women and children between six months and two years old get the updated COVID-19 vaccine. The guidance mirrors clinical recommendations from groups like the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American academy of pediatrics. In other words, actual doctors. But it’s in contrast with the CDC guidance, which under Kennedy no longer recommends the COVID vaccine for healthy pregnant women and says children should not get it without a doctor’s consent. This all comes as the federal ACIP is set to review and possibly change several vaccine recommendations later this week, including those for hepatitis B, COVID, and measles. And as we mentioned just moments ago, that committee now includes a bunch of well-known anti-vaxxers, whereas the health officials making decisions in these western states are all again, actual doctors. Because now we live in a world where having doctors and medical experts make decisions about health care is an act of resistance. Great.

[clip of President Donald Trump] Together we must defend the exceptional heritage that makes us who we are and we must continue to stand for the values and the people of the English speaking world and we do indeed stand for that. On behalf of all Americans I offer a toast to one of the great friendships, to two great countries and to His Majesty King Charles III a very, very special man and also a very, very special queen. 

Jane Coaston: What? In case you missed it. The President and First Lady Melania Trump are in the United Kingdom for a lavish state visit full of wide-brimmed hats and tiaras. Windsor Castle must have been prepping for quite a while for all the pomp and circumstance. I think it’s obvious by now how to get on Trump’s good side. And don’t worry, there were also plenty of Brits protesting his visit. On Wednesday, Trump reveled in hours of pageantry with the monarch while still making time for a quiet tribute at Queen Elizabeth II’s tomb. The grandeur-loving president soaked it all up. From the largest guard of honor in living memory, to carriage rides, to an air show, to a Windsor Castle dinner. And during that dinner, Trump said things. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] A fifth of all of humanity speaks, writes, thinks, and prays in the language born on these isles and perfected in the pages of Shakespeare and Dickens and Tolkien, Lewis, Orwell, and Kipling. Incredible people. Unbelievable people like we have rarely seen before, probably won’t see again. 

Jane Coaston: I must know if Trump has read the Fellowship of the Ring. Did he also get stuck in all the elf song? And King Charles also said things. 

[clip of King Charles III] I have cherished the close ties between the British and American people. In fact, had the media succeeded in the 1970s in their own attempt to deepening the special relationship, I myself might have been married off within the Nixon family. 

Jane Coaston: I’ve watched multiple seasons of The Crown, and I have many questions. But it can’t be all play and no work. Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are set to meet today. I’m sure Trump is so pumped for that. And that’s the news. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate a man who allegedly stole nearly $20,000 from a Disney World restaurant and escaped by scuba diving away, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how the suspect walked into Paddlefish, a restaurant on Disney World property, took the money, and is believed to have changed into scuba gear to get away via a man-made lake nearby, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and am I alone in saying that’s just too much work for crime? [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Megan Larsen, Gina Pollack, and Jonah Eatman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 

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