>> Trump has created an expansive national security watchlist that actually includes
Americans, US citizens, who have absolutely no connection to terrorism whatsoever. They
have not done anything wrong. There's absolutely no cause to investigate them. But nonetheless,
Trump has taken policy that was supported by previous administrations, including the
Obama Administration, and has expanded it to the point where he is not only abusing
his power, but violating our civil liberties.
So Newsweek broke this story. It's an excellent investigative report. And here's what they
found. The new watchlist, authorized through a classified Attorney General order that launched
in 2017, is expected to grow to well over one million names. It also allows the government
to track and monitor Americans without a warrant, even when there's no evidence they're breaking
the law.
The authority circumvents criminal justice requirements for due process, equal protection
under the law, and freedom of association under the Constitution. So the Trump Administration
broke the law, by the way, by not even announcing the watchlist or the changes that they've
made to previous policy to allow them to expand this watchlist.
The two laws, the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002, require the
federal government to notify the public of new and altered systems of records containing
personal information on Americans and to assess its potential impact on civil liberties. Government
officials familiar with the new watchlist say it will eventually include tens of thousands
of Americans reaching into more than a hundred cities across the United States.
I'm gonna give you the origins of this watchlist in just a moment. But understand that if you
have the misfortune of being included on this list, your bank transactions will be monitored,
your travel could be hindered, and it could be a giant mess. So if you're, let's say,
trying to travel outside of the country just to go on a trip for whatever reason, you are
going to be pulled aside for extra screenings, extra investigation, and you won't even know
why.
You won't know why, you won't know that you're on this watchlist. But the government will
be tracking you and they will be basically watching your every move.
>> So it's important to tell the whole story here. And so a huge part of the blame in this
story goes to Barack Obama.
And let me explain how the evolution of this thing happened, so that you'll understand
the full context. Police are always going to want more power. Why? Most of the time
for legitimate reasons. So they say look, there's a guy hanging out with these MS13
gang in LA and we don't have anything on him, but he looks to be connected.
In fact, they're taking things to him as if they're taking orders from him. So can we
start to investigate him? But you don't have any real evidence that he's involved in a
crime. But the cops have a sense, in this example, that he's up to no good. So they
wanna be able to track him more.
So if you let them, the cops, the authorities, the FBI, et cetera, would want as much ability
to investigate as possible. And some of that would actually lead to legitimate investigations
and stop real crime. The problem is if you do that, it allows for invasion of privacy
of everyone.
So once you open the door, you do solve some problem, but you create a much larger problem.
That's why the United States Constitution is so careful not to allow for that kind of
invasion of privacy. That's why you need warrants, and they know that it makes law enforcement
a little harder, but that's the trade off that they're doing.
So under Obama, the Justice Department, the FBI, go to and go, hey, look, we're tracking
terrorists in this way. Already we're doing warrantless searches, but are there are foreign
citizens etc. But look isn't MS13 and these gangs, and the drug cartels just as dangerous
as the terrorists, maybe more dangerous?
And Obama, because he always wants to appease and it's, I think honestly in his nature and
same with Eric Holder, who was his Attorney General, they willingly open the door. And
then once they opened the door and said yes, you can begin to do warrantless searches of
those people that are US citizens that might or might not be connected to foreign criminal
organizations.
Then Trump comes in and just breaks the door. And says, okay, now, if you're talking to
anyone in a foreign country, like El Salvador, then you might be a person of interest, even
though we have no evidence against you. Boom, we're tracking you, we don't need a warrant.
Then if you know the guy who is talking to his family member in El Salvador, now we're
gonna track you. Well, that's it, we just opened it up to almost all US citizens through
that expansion. So the door that Obama opened, Trump ran through and right now, Trump who
claims he's so concerned about government overreach and witch hunts, and hoaxes and
all these things.
In reality and in secret, is doing the worst kind of spying on regular American citizens
because of this. >> Exactly, and and this is why we need to
hold all administration's accountable for abusing their power, whether they're Democrats
or Republicans. Because if you trust a Democratic administration, you should keep in mind that
it's not always gonna be a Democrat in office, right?
So you could have someone like Donald Trump come in right after and expand this policy
to something that's far more invasive, and of course, violates your civil liberties and
your freedoms. And look, one of the things that Trump did, I'm gonna go to the second
to last graphic, because this is the exact wording that we should be concerned about.
It's this whole guilt by association issue. In May of 2019, Trump further signed into
an additional Executive Order that broaden the definition of a transnational criminal
from a foreign person to a group of persons that includes one or more foreigners, or one
or more foreign persons. And so I say that because let's say that you are an American
citizen, but you have family in El Salvador.
Just by the nature of you having family in El Salvador, the Trump Administration will
argue, well, El Salvador, MS13, we had reason to monitor this person, right, or to spy on
them. But there's absolutely no evidence or any indication that the person they're spying
on, the US citizen they're spying on, is involved in any type of crime or has anything to do
with MS13.
And when you consider who Donald Trump is fundamentally as a person, someone who loves
to retaliate against anyone for any tiny slight, you should be concerned, okay? If you're a
journalist who just wants to do your job fairly and you might cover Trump in a negative light
because he's a negative person who does negative things, he can totally retaliate against you
by spying on you without talking to a judge, without obtaining any type of warrant.
>> Yeah. >> This is terrible.
>> So, but they will not do great investigations of this. And soon this will peter out, this
story. And I'm gonna explain why in a second. But first, I just wanna be clear, we mentioned
El Salvador but it could be any country.
And it could be someone, you could be ensnared in a way that you have no idea. There are
criminal gangs that run out of Ireland for example, right? So it could be that one of
your relatives or someone that's in a group with you is talking to somebody in Ireland,
and they might not even be in a criminal gang but that's how they got into the list.
But since you're in a group with that person, even though you don't even know who that guy
he's talking to in Ireland, all of a sudden they can investigate you without your knowledge
at all, without a court order, without a warrant. And boom, they can get all your information.
And if Trump wins a second term, goodnight Irene, he's gonna use this against any and
all political parties. The second explanation that they did, by the way, was not just this
web that we just explained, but different categories. They say, well, there's cyber
crime and there's stock market manipulation.
So now wait a minute, based on a random stock market trade, you're a person of suspicion
or you connected to a person of suspicion, etc. Somebody did a so called cyber crime,
whatever the hell that is, somewhere legitimate, somewhere things that the government just
doesn't like, and the people that are connected to that, that's it we're spying on all of
them.
So I, yeah go ahead. >> One final thing about how this could really
destroy your life. If let's say you're on this watchlist and you apply for a job that
requires an extensive background check, it will come up in the background check and you
can't do anything about it.
You will not get that job. You will not know why you're on the watchlist. You won't get
any answers about it. And it's the administration basically messing with your livelihood. This
has far ranging ramifications and it could really destroy people's lives, and just at
the root of this is a giant civil liberties violation.
>> Yeah, and so why did I say that you likely won't hear much more about this? If you did
it based on what the voters care about, this would be a giant story because the right-wing
hates the government overreach. That's certainly what they say, they certainly say it in defending
Donald Trump, the voters themselves.
Democrats don't want warrantless wiretapping. We hate that when Bush did it, etc. But the
Republican Party, and Fox News ain't never going to talk about it cuz this is Trump violating
your privacy. And the Democratic Party ain't gonna talk about it cuz Barack Obama started
it. Now he didn't do it expansively as Trump did, but he opened the door.
So and probably a lot of them, okayed that especially, the democratic leadership. So
they're gonna, even though it's a huge violation of our privacy and something they could use
against Trump, they'll be like, nope, nope, nope, don't talk about it, cuz then we'll
have blowback on us. And our careers, of course, are the most important.
And honestly, the mainstream media, they're pretty much controlled by Democratic leaders.
So if Nancy Pelosi doesn't make a big issue out of it, nobody on cable news is gonna make
a big issue out of it. And so, and if you're in cable news and you cry over that, my god
that sounds conspiratorial.
Nancy Pelosi doesn't write memos. We know she doesn't write memos to you. But when Democrats
don't make it a big issue, then you say it's not big news, right? Right, that's how it
works. So that's why stuff like this since both parties agree to totally screw us, gets
dropped in the news cycle.
And so you'll hear about it on this show and a couple of others, but mainstream media will
bury
the story.