well joining us now paul is the
presidenting associate editor of the
washington post bob woodward he is
co-author with robert costa of the book
peril and he and costa broke this story
about the text messages and
wow i'm not sure where to begin i guess
i'll ask you to choose among two of what
i think are the biggest takeaways from
it i mean is this a story about jenny
thomas or is it about a supreme court
justice potentially being compromised in
a decision that he made that he gave
absolutely no reason for and none of the
other justices went that way well we're
going to find out i mean this this is a
story that is starting but what struck
robert costa and myself is we got access
to
these text messages
when i walked in here with you you had a
look of wonder
that i've frankly over the years never
seen on your face but you can't you
can't write these text messages and
believe in the constitution so there's
just this massive conflict and what has
happened to this
i think a fairly well-known republican
member of the republican party jenny
thomas yes well she's an activist and
she's she's entitled to that she has the
first amendment rights but here she is
playing the role
of campaign manager and political
consultant for the white house coming in
and talking about things that
i mean there is a self-righteous tone
we're on the moral high road i mean
meadows himself says this is a fight of
good versus evil he's raising
the name of jesus you know king of kings
you know to
to help in this this um i guess you have
to call it a crusade that they were on
um
so tell me about the about meadows in
this exchange um
how do you read his text are they is he
all in with um jenny thomas who's
clearly all in on you know let's just
overturn this election is he all in on
that is he humoring her at times what is
he well
i think sometimes i mean the
white house chief of staff i've written
about
15 of them over the years there's a lot
of incoming and
but it's that one where he says
good versus evil and and this is
the problem we have in our politics and
people who believe as you point out mika
in the constitution constitution's very
clear we'll have the election then once
we have the election
the constitution and the electoral count
act make it
crystal clear it now goes
to the congress to certify the winner
and in this process
it i mean it's it's sacrosanct it's
clear it was vice president pence who
resisted all of this pressure but here
we have
jenny thomas not just
being part of the pressure campaign
but herself saying
release the kraken
i know a mythological release of kraken
you know sydney powell the the um and i
mean i'm going to climb the trump lawyer
i'm going to call her a wingnut because
she she was the most extreme most
unhinged by this time
donald trump has decided that cindy
powell is off the rails yet jenny thomas
is still with him
yes jenny thomas say oh make her the
face in the lead of this effort willie
yeah bob she's actually reaches out to
meadows to say she does not like the
disparagement that she's seen from white
house officials of sydney powell she's
got a thing for sydney powell who knows
what it is i mean there's so much to
point to there i would also add that
when she watched jenny thomas the
infamous rnc press conference with
sydney powell and rudy giuliani yes the
one where he was sweating hair dye down
his cheek she wrote to mark meadows that
she was brought to tears by what rudy
was doing in a good way she was so moved
by his attempt to overturn the election
the key question though as you point out
is whether or not justice thomas uh
shares any of these feelings whether he
knew about it whether it affect his his
decisions to recuse himself or to
dissent on the national archives
question did you find anything in your
reporting bob that showed he shares the
views of jenny thomas
we don't know that and
at the same time the january 6th
committee
as demonstrated by these texts is very
aggressive and going after
the full story i think there's going to
be a question
do they want to subpoena jenny thomas
and
that is about is delicate
i mean you can almost hear the
air vibrate when you raise that
possibility
on that point though she does there is a
text in which she refers to a
conversation she had with my best friend
right um how did you read that did you
read that as a cover
he has called publicly called her
his best friend and
so there's an implication there but uh
it seems like she's intonating toward
him but we don't know jonathan and as
reporters we want to stick
to that let's get the story and let's
find out here but there there's an
audacity
in
these messages there is a kind of
at the end she says america is going to
be lost
if biden wins she attacks biden
and says he's par the biden crime family
and so forth i mean this is what
over the years we've all seen lots of
true believers on
the republican party democratic party
left and right
but these are the people who stay
behind the scenes and run campaigns they
are not
in a sense
negotiating
with the white house chief of staff of
this is the messaging the
staffing directions this is the strategy
and she happens to be married to a
supreme court justice jonathan lemire
has the next question
hey bob good to see you again
jaw-dropping uh reporting nicely done i
want to get you to weigh in on something
we were talking about a little earlier
we talk about justice thomas but also
the bind this now puts chief justice
roberts in as he has been so mindful of
trying to protect the reputation of the
court trying to keep it above and out of
politics and yet politics
has now landed on his doorstep
yes well i mean that this is a
difficulty not just for roberts but for
the whole court
what what is going on here what is the
obligation and the
the obligation happily is in the
constitution in the laws and
in one of these text messages believe it
or not she says well we should talk to
former nixon aide monica crowley and she
knows how to deal with things like this
we know what happened to nixon
and
have we forgotten the lessons of
watergate what were the lessons of
watergate
don't tamper with and metal
with our election system we have a
system that has held its ground
beautifully over the years and to have
this to see the the passion the the
sense of you can only look at this one
way
you know what what are
are what has happened i mean gene you've
written about this almost every week
yeah our uh the the division in our
politics is so great
and it's not just on the right it's on
the left as we know and so who's going
to find a
way to turn down the temperature
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