Deadline: White House 6/4/26 | 🅼🆂🅽🅱️🅲 Breaking News Today June 4, 2026

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[00:00:04]Hi there everyone. It's 4 o'clock in New York. If there is one value Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear he treasures above all others, it is blind, unswerving, slobbering loyalty. He values it over competency and principles, over his own political party affiliation, over the rule of law. and acting attorney general Todd Blanch's tenure at top the Justice Department has been defined by exactly that. So now Donald Trump is rewarding him for it.

[00:00:36]Here's Trump yesterday.

[00:00:39]>> Tomorrow I'm instructing Dan and everybody else that's involved in that very complicated process which is going to go I think very quickly that we are going to make him permanent attorney general.

[00:00:52]>> Permanent attorney general.

[00:00:55]If you're wondering how Todd Blanch, a man who actually surprisingly now faces an uphill Senate confirmation battle secured Trump's vote to be nominated for the top job permanently, look no further than Todd Blanch's dogged pursuit of Donald Trump's agenda of retribution and the complete politization of the Department of Justice. For Todd Blanch, that comes seemingly without any limits.

[00:01:22]and he's done it in the barely two months since Pam Bondi was fired and Blanch was appointed acting AG. Almost as soon as Blanch assumed that role, he hired Trump ally Joe De Geneva. Joe De Geneva was hired to breathe new life into an investigation into former CIA director John Brennan. Donald Trump, of course, blames John Brennan for the intelligence community's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Todd Blanch led the effort to indict former director of the FBI Jim Comey, a frequent target of Donald Trump's political attacks, for posting a photo of seashells. Todd Blanch approved an investigation into former Trump aid Cassidy Hutchinson.

[00:02:14]Hutchinson testified before the January 6 select committee about Donald Trump's role in stoking the events of January 6.

[00:02:21]Todd Blanch also worked to vacate the sedicious conspiracy convictions of members of the militia groups, the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys for the crimes committed during the January 6 attack on the United States capital.

[00:02:36]What a record, right? But there's more.

[00:02:38]Todd Blanch also oversaw the criminal prosecution of the civil rights organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Todd Blanch fought tooth and nail to defend to actually sell to Congress. Donald Trump's pet $1.8 billion slush fund even as members of Trump's own party boed at the potential of buckets of cash going to people who assaulted police officers and were convicted for doing so.

[00:03:03]Even today, Todd Blanch is giving Donald Trump one of his most highly desired prizes in his insatiable quest for revenge.

[00:03:13]Our colleagues Kendallian and Carol Lenig report that former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information.

[00:03:25]John Bolton could face up to 5 years in prison and a $2.25 million fine. John Bolton had been facing potentially more years than that. And while it remains to be seen whether Todd Blanch can make it through the Senate confirmation process and be the full-fledged AG, something that just 14 months ago was a guarantee for any Trump nominee because of the willingness of Republicans to greenlight everything. Now it's at least a question. But no matter what happens next, the stain that Blanch's blind loyalty to Donald Trump has left on the Department of Justice will live forever.

[00:04:08]Todd Blanch not only undermines the Department of Justice in which he once served and now leads, but takes aim at federal judges as well.

[00:04:19]these activist judges that that they have a robe on, but they are more political or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or DA. And you can't forget that. You can't forget that um a judge um doesn't get a special place simply because a robe is put on them. my guys that the men and women that work at the department stay up all night get an appeal in stayed go back to the discord judge judge still wants to just do whatever he or she wants to do we need you because because it is a war and it is something that we will not win unless we keep on fighting >> it's a war >> against those judges and you should win Why? Cuz you stay up all night.

[00:05:15]Unsurprisingly, earlier this week, federal judges publicly warned that attacks by people like that and elected officials have eroded Americans confidence in our judicial system.

[00:05:26]Donald Trump's continued attempts to dismantle the Department of Justice as we know it, brick by brick, is where we begin today with former federal judge Michael Ludig. Also joining us, New York Times investigative reporter Mike Schmidt, plus former DHS chief of staff during Donald Trump's first term, Miles Taylor, is here. Um, let me deal with the the one of the big stories of the day with you first, Mike. The um news that the New York Times is reporting that John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to one count of retaining classified information. What do we know about how that came to be?

[00:06:02]Look, the government had an enormous amount of leverage over Bolton in the sense that even if he went to trial. He and he lost, he could have faced decades in prison. And putting aside the merit of the case and whether it was bored as part of, you know, retribution and such, from Bolton's perspective, that was an incredibly risky thing to be confronting of decades in prison. But by taking a plea deal, he will be essentially narrowing the amount of time he could potentially go to prison. Um, look, I the the Bolton case has always sort of stood out in the retribution bucket.

[00:06:42]It's clear that Donald Trump wanted John Bolton prosecuted. It's clear that he wanted the the, you know, all of this to happen. The issue in Bolton's case is that the case had been brought by career prosecutors which had been different than some of the Comey and James cases which had been brought uh by more politically appointed prosecutors. And on top of that, the indictment against Bolton, if you read it, had a fair amount of his own uh you know, texts and messages and such that showed his, you know, exchanging of classified information. And look, we, you know, the one of the biggest issues that Donald Trump has had in terms of retribution is that he was told during his first term that you should not talk about the government going after your enemies because if the government eventually does do that, the public will not trust what the Justice Department is doing because they'll believe that the Justice Department is doing it at your behest.

[00:07:39]Obviously, Donald Trump had completely ignored that. But it leaves uh us in a position today of saying, okay, did John Bolton accept this plea agreement uh because indeed, you know, uh the government had a legitimate case against him or did he accept this plea agreement because the Justice Department went after him and this was the best, you know, you know, outcome that he could have for himself.

[00:08:05]>> Miles, um you argue that this had very little to do with the law. Explain.

[00:08:13]Well, look, I mean, as far as classified information cases go, Nicole, we are talking about a candle flicker versus a wildfire. And by a candle flicker, I mean John Bolton is alleged to have kept private diaries. He is not alleged to have taken documents home with classified markings. Compare that, a man who kept private diaries to write a book. He's not alleged to have put a single piece of that classified information in his book. Compared to Donald Trump, who took hundreds of pages of classified documents intentionally out of the United States government, kept them for what prosecutors were apparently prepared to alleged was for personal self-interested reasons, refused to hand them back over to the United States government, was charged with it, and had the case dropped. The Trump case is vastly bigger, and he wanted to come back into government and find similar cases against his enemies.

[00:09:09]That's why I say this is not a plea deal. This was a shakeddown. Now, the reporting indicates that some of this began during the Biden administration, but by all appearances, the Biden administration pretty much let this one go. Then the Trump administration comes in, his top officials get briefed that there was an open case into John Bolton, and they apparently get very excited about it from the CIA to the FBI. So, look, what I would say is this. doesn't appear that this is actually about the law or professional judgment. At the end of the day, this is about revenge. And John Bolton said something when he first got charged. He referenced a quote, Nicole, that you've used on this program before of the head of Joseph Stalin's secret police in Russia, which was, "You show me the man, I'll show you the crime." Do any of us really think it's a coincidence that a dozen people who have written books critical of Donald Trump have been threatened by him or put under investigation? It is no coincidence.

[00:10:08]They showed the man to the Department of Justice. They went and found the crime.

[00:10:13]And I think this is a much much bigger story about the threats to democracy because Trump's revenge tour because of this success is going to enter its next phase. Well, Judge Ludig, I guess the the next phase begins officially with Todd Blanch. I mean, Todd Blanch has overseen the attempts the the unsuccessful attempts to indict Jim Comey and the then successful one to indict him over the seashells. He's overseen and defended the attempt to um settle with himself with the IRS is what a judge seemed to surmise. He went to Capitol Hill and had the um I think the legal term is hoodba to try to sell a slush fund for insurrectionists to Republicans who have a political boot on their throats because of Donald Trump's war with Iran and the ailing economy. Um I mean Blanch is the attorney general that Donald Trump has been looking for since early 2017 when he was first reported by Mike and his colleagues in the New York Times to want Comey indicted.

[00:11:17]Nicole, every word that uh Todd Blanch spoke on that replay at the beginning of your show was um despicable and and reprehensible.

[00:11:30]Uh, prior to the Trump administration, there's not a public official in the land who had ever said anything like what the president himself has said and Todd Blanch just said about the federal courts and even the individual judges on the federal courts.

[00:11:52]That said, obviously Todd Blanch was there and in many other instances has simply been pariting the the the words of the president of the United States.

[00:12:06]Uh Todd Blanch is a classic puppet uh of of uh the man in the highest office in the land. So, Donald Trump, he began his first day in office in January 2025 in uh uh starting a war against the federal judiciary, the Constitution, and the rule of law in America. He knew what he was doing. He knew that his entire presidency that was to come was dependent and based upon essentially a a pyramid scheme of unconstitutional and illegal programs, initiatives, acts, actions, and executive orders.

[00:13:01]In that sense, under our constitution, this presidency was doomed from day one.

[00:13:10]The only way that this presidency could have ever, ever succeeded was if Donald Trump was successful in his war against the federal courts and the federal judges.

[00:13:24]And he has waged that war with a vengeance like we have never seen in America. in 250 years for the past 18 months. Well, up until about two or three months ago, he got away with it.

[00:13:42]>> And I was saying all the while that the jury was out as to who would win that war between the president of the United States and the federal courts.

[00:13:54]Today for the first time in 18 months, yeah, I am prepared to say that Donald Trump has miserably humiliatingly lost that war against the nation's federal courts and the rule of law.

[00:14:15]judge it. The judges themselves um and former judges like yourself have given voice to the extraordinary pressure that this fight that you described perfectly has put them under. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:14:33]Yes, I I would been proud to uh as as you know uh approximately two to 300 retired federal and state judges have come together over the past year and a half, each one of whom wants to s to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law in America.

[00:15:01]each one of whom believes that the Constitution and the rule of law is in grave peril because of the the the actions and the conduct of this president of the United States carried out by his loyal lieutenants at the Department of Justice.

[00:15:24]And these judges want to say no.

[00:15:31]They understand, of course, that their colleagues who are still active and sitting on the benches, both federal and state, they cannot defend themselves from u from the president's attacks. And the Supreme Court has has made quite clear that it does not intend to defend the federal courts from the president's attacks. So, it's been left to the judges of the United States of America, active and retired, uh to stand alone against this president uh in favor of democracy, the constitution, and the rule of law. They are honoring their oaths to the letter every day since January 20th, 2025.

[00:16:22]It puts them in a small category. I want to talk more and I want to show you what one current federal judge said in her own words. I have to sneak in a break before I do that. Everyone sticks around. Also ahead for all of us, one of the members of the old guard at 60.

[00:16:37]We're back with Judge Ludig, Mike Schmidt, and Miles Taylor. Miles, that was Donald Trump just now talking about Bill Py. He's the housing guy um turned acting director of national intelligence. That's Donald Trump moving the goalpost. Um essentially Trump for I know he's so laughable. I wouldn't make him permanent. Even I wouldn't do that, but he quote may be effective for a short period of time. He may find some thing about rigged elections. Um, we are way past the saying the quiet part out loud phase and we are just broadcasting the attempts to use the nation's intelligence agencies to sew conspiracy theories.

[00:17:18]>> Yeah, worse than that. I I honestly think Donald Trump would have been better off if he just said in that conversation, "Hi everyone, Bill Py is preparing to break the law over at the office of the director of national intelligence." And let me tell you why I think that. Because Donald Trump since 2020 has been obsessively fixated on this executive order I helped write for him. It's called EO13848.

[00:17:45]It's an executive order that gave the president, any president, the ability to sanction a foreign government that meddles in our elections. But some flunky lawyer told him in 2020 that if you read it in a different way, that executive order might give your office of the director of national intelligence the authority to go seize voting machines and meddle in the elections themselves. It does not. It does not. It does not. That order doesn't allow the president to do anything like that. but he's been so fixated on it since then that in January he said his biggest regret was that in 2020 he didn't send the National Guard to go seize those ballots and then weeks later Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence goes into Georgia and as part of the seizure of ballots and now we've got Donald Trump again signaling something like that must might happen of the new acting director looking at those previous election results or potentially meddling in this one. I'll say it now. I said it before, that would be illegal.

[00:18:46]And the executive order he had on his desk years ago does not make it legal.

[00:18:52]>> Mike Schmidt, you and your colleagues have reported for years on what Donald Trump sought to do after he lost the 2020 election and the various tenuous frail things, I guess guardrails is what we used to call them, that kept him from doing them. Um, Py is like um the bad sequel, right? like like the storm gathers strength out at sea, it comes roaring back and they put PY in charge of all those unrealized ambitions from uh late 2020.

[00:19:23]>> The interesting thing about the second term has been that those that have fallen out of favor with Trump are those that he thinks haven't gone far enough, but to most people they've gone more than far. It's the same a issue that he had with Pam Bondi that Pam Bondi wasn't moving uh quickly or efficiently or effectively enough to follow through on his retribution campaign. Um it seems that he had similar uh concerns about Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence. So it's even in the the second term the issues are that they are not moving fast enough on the issues that he wants and that's why you see someone like Bill Py in a position like that and it's just sort of remarkable given how much the goalposts have moved in the second term compared to the first because in the second term even someone like you know Bondi and Gabbard you know were doing a lot of what Trump wanted. Gabber did go all the way down to Atlanta um when those ballots were seized, but but in his eyes, it still wasn't enough. So, you have to wonder what does that look like going forward? Like, what is it that he wants that we have not seen and how could that manifest itself?

[00:20:35]>> Judge Ludig, when you testified under oath, um I was on set. We were at 30 Rock and you described Donald Trump as a quote clear and present danger. And I still remember when you said that, you could hear a pin drop both because it elicits such a visceral response to think of a a an outgoing president and candidate to be president again as a clear and present danger to our country.

[00:21:00]And second, because of who it was coming from, a lifelong conservative. Um, describe the threat and the danger now.

[00:21:11]Well, the the the threat and the dangers are both existential both for American democracy and for the rule of law in America.

[00:21:24]But Nicole, what I want to say today is that the the tectonic plates of American politics have shifted overnight.

[00:21:37]And the, as we lawyers say, the butt for cause for for that tectonic shift was this corrupt slush fund that uh Donald Trump attempted.

[00:21:54]uh for some reason and we we can explain it but we don't need to today that was the first thing that this president's done during this presidency that every American understood they understood that it was corrupt self aggrandisement of himself his family and his friends and allies and in particular his friends and allies who have supported him in the 2020 presidential election and his insurrection against the Constitution of the United States.

[00:22:38]It all came full circle with this slush fund and the American people saw for the first time at long last what this man and what his presidency is about. And it is for that reason that I believe that the uh the beginning of the end of this presidency will be remembered in history as this week.

[00:23:14]>> What does it say that in the same week and I I I don't know if it's the beginning of the end. It's definitely the end of the beginning. Um, Todd Blanch rises to be attorney general.

[00:23:26]>> That's really my point, Nicole. Uh, I I didn't get an opportunity to say it, but the point really is that the slush fund has now become the symbol of this presidency.

[00:23:44]>> Yeah. And there's not an American alive who will accept that presidency.

[00:23:53]And it begins with the Congress of the United States. So the Congress of the United States, we now know, will never approve this slush bond. Mhm.

[00:24:05]>> And we now know that for the same reasons since Todd Blanch is now the symbol of that slush bond >> that the Senate of the United States will never confirm Todd Blanch as attorney general of the United States.

[00:24:22]Donald Trump knows that, but this has always been his Achilles heel, his political Achilles heel. He understands politics. He knows to a certainty that Todd Blanch will never be confirmed, but he cannot resist himself.

[00:24:41]And it will end up in another and another and another humiliating defeat, one right after the other until this presidency comes to a humiliating end.

[00:24:55]It's uh it's as plain as day to everyone.

[00:25:00]Uh it but it's kind of a great tragedy in that sense. Everyone understands it except Donald Trump, the president of the United States.

[00:25:12]>> And that's the surreal moment we all have to cover. Um uh Judge Ludig, thank you so much for coming back and for starting us off. Mike Schmidt, thank you for your reporting. Miles Taylor, thank you for your insights and uh your as yet to be published analysis on all this.

[00:25:27]When we come back, after the very public war of words between a veteran journalist and his new Trump aligned management, there was some very real anxiety and justified anxiety in this country about the status and the future of the First Amendment. We'll get to that next by uh his staff and by the chairman of the FCC that they don't like the way CBS has been operated. uh they don't like the fact that it's on the air. They would like to see it taken off the air.

[00:26:01]They've said that a number of times.

[00:26:02]They like to see people fired and that's what's happened. I think that this is journalistic interference. It makes no business sense whatsoever. The show is still doing very well. It's the highest rated news program on television and it has been that way for more than 50 years.

[00:26:21]>> That was retired 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft issuing a stark warning. publicly about the destruction of independent journalism by Donald Trump's allies over at CBS. That warning comes after the firing of veteran correspondent Scott P this week and a number of other correspondents and key senior staff members. Today, there's brand new reporting that the fallout also extends to the only three correspondents now left at 60 Minutes.

[00:26:48]on that status reports this today.

[00:26:50]Quote, "According to people familiar with the matter, Bill Whitaker, Leslie Stall, and John Wartheim were met Wednesday to discuss their futures at the venerable news magazine." Deadline is also reporting on this story about anxious CBS News staffers wondering what and who could be next. From that report, quote, "I have been in this business a long time and I have never seen anything this bad." A CBS News insider told Deadline, quote, "How are we going to even be able to put on a show next season?" A longtime staffer said today of 60 Minutes, quote, "We are running out of time and people here and we need both." I want to bring in the executive editor of deadline.com, Dominic Patton, who's by on that reporting. Also joining us, Scott McFarland. He is the chief Washington correspondent and host for Midas Touch. But before that, he was a justice correspondent for CBS News. Um, let me start with you, Scott. Does anything that's been alleged by Scott P or Sharon Alonsi or Cecilia Vega ring true in terms of your experience as a correspondent for CBS News?

[00:27:58]>> Nobody ever put a heavy hand on any of my reporting. And Nicole, in my final days at CBS in March, I was saying on the CBS Evening News, "Trump's lying about the 2020 election and Trump is lying about January 6th." and they invited me back the next day and the next day and the next day. But let me tell you some something about Dominic's reporting. I'm not sure how many sources he has on that, but let me add a whole bunch more. That's exactly what's going on inside CBS News. There is a concern about getting through the day and through the week and through the month because yes, they're losing a lot of people, but yes, they're also risking their brand through these changes. You know, the way a brand succeeds is through consistency over the years.

[00:28:40]consistency, familiar faces, familiar product through the years. They're making wholesale changes to the cash cow inside CBS News. It might work. The changes could improve things, but we've seen this with Coke in the 1980s. We've seen this with other things in media where they make a change to the cast and people don't come back to watch or buy again. This is some highstakes, highwire stuff.

[00:29:07]>> How could they make it better?

[00:29:10]One of the things you could do is try to introduce it on other platforms if you want to be more digital and not just on broadcast. You want to have a more 360°ree presence 7 days a week, more kinetic. That's an ambitious goal and it's a worthy goal. But how do you succeed, Nicole, if you don't have your tentpole talent, the things that made the brand attractive in the first place?

[00:29:32]Can you be attractive in the digital space on Mondays through Saturdays, Nicole, if you don't have Scott P and Cecilia Vega and Sharon Alonsi? It all gets harder.

[00:29:42]>> Uh, Dominic, take us through what you're reporting.

[00:29:46]>> Well, for one thing, I'd like to thank Thank you, Scott, for the compliment.

[00:29:49]Much appreciated. And your work is always much appreciated. Look, it's chaos theory in action over there. I mean, that's what it is. It's people who are there's another quote from our piece from an insider who said, "It's closed door toxic environment over there." I mean, nobody's really talking out in public. We talked about, you know, Status talked about the meeting of the three remaining senior correspondents.

[00:30:09]They're trying to figure out their future. We've heard they're all taking a breath and kind of figuring out where things are going to land. But, you know, there's a lot of breaths to be taken.

[00:30:18]Let's put it very very bluntly there. I think also too when Scott's talking about brand, I really think that's interesting because I think that the the goal here is to destroy the brand because that's what's happened. It's already happened now because you have not only 60 Minutes basically gutted like a like a dead tree from the inside.

[00:30:34]But you also have this tremendous anxiety over CBS News which before the 60 Minutes purge was the big problem over there for Barry Weiss and her team because they had completely changed that around and we're watching a ratings cratering happening. Whether or not it's an issue of trust, whether or not it is, as you know, people talk about was there political interference, was there not?

[00:30:53]Was there kind of a leaning towards things? Was there not, the result simply is is it is a husk of what it used to be? And maybe maybe change is good.

[00:31:02]People talked about that when they spoke to Ted Johnson and I for our piece of yesterday. But the reality is is if you're going to make change, why are you breaking something that's not broken?

[00:31:12]You talked about it. CBS is extremely successful on linear television. one of the few things that still are. It also has been very successful in its digital platform endeavors as well. So, it's not like it left that out and they're trying to fill in the gap there. If you're leaning towards the future, linear televisions doesn't look that great. 60 Minutes at least has well well stepped into the future and was bounding along until Barry Weiss came along.

[00:31:37]>> Yeah. I mean, let me cut through the the pretense, I guess, that there maybe there was room to improve. Like that that's a fine respectfully analysis of the morning show and the evening news, which are perpetually in last place, but 60 Minutes is the the white whale that every other news organization in the world has been looking for forever. And what Scott P alleges is that they quote made him insert things that weren't true. This isn't about wanting to do self-improvement and P wasn't on board for doing more like face to camera clips for IG. This is not that. This is an allegation from the one-time anchor of the Evening News, now the tent pole, to use your word, of of 60 Minutes, who said they they forced him to put things into stories. You also I mean we we gloss over Sharon Alfonsi which if she was the only one that left that would have been a scandal in its own right.

[00:32:34]Her SECOT reporting was held ostensibly for more calls to be made to the Trump White House. And it's not even clear to me why Cecilia Vega was fired. I mean what Dominique happens as a consequence for gutting a news program for telling the truth.

[00:32:52]>> Well at this point Nicole I would say nothing. I mean, the fact of the matter is is Barry Weiss was put in place by David Ellison soon after his company Sky Dance bought Paramount. Now they're on the verge of buying Warner Brothers Discovery. And we all know very clearly, as Steve Croft talked about in the in the the clip before we came on. Look, the Trump White House are no fans of CBS. To be honest, conservatives have not been fans of CBS for decades going back to Richard Nixon through the Reagan era and etc, etc. But this has become much more intense. There has been, of course, a payout that occurred over what was basically a weak, lame lawsuit about supposed editing at CBS at 60 Minutes over a Kla Harris interview just before the election in 2024. There has been a distinct attempt to pander to the White House. Now, you can say whether or not that's transactional corporate America in action. Fair enough. You want to say that, but this is going a little bit further because this is transactional for a $ 111 billion deal of taking over Warner Brothers Discovery. Clearly that is their end goal and in the process of doing that you're simply leaving you're you're destroying yourself you know and this is this is something that they are going to have to have consequences for are those consequences going to come from people pounding tables and stamping their feet. Well, I don't think they the Ellison's really care about that to be honest. I think they have, as somebody once said, a high threshold for pain and that threshold is obviously very high at this point, but I do think you're going to see repercussions happening down the line because America is in a politically fluid time if our if the recent primaries have shown us anything. And certainly, we are going to see a change. Certainly, we've already seen some Republicans are starting to break ranks with the MAGA loyalist. So there might be The Reckoning, which is always the third sequel in any any franchise, might be coming soon.

[00:34:35]>> Yeah. U if I were writing fiction, The Reckoning would include all of the conservatives who used to care about the First Amendment joining with the pro-democracy side. But there's a reason I don't write fiction. Um all right, no one's going anywhere. There's so much more to show you on this story. Stay with us.