If the Hellfire Club hits a screen, who do you see playing the lead character?

You know, it's funny.

There's this blog called POTUS Geeks, and they cast the whole movie.

And they did a pretty good job.

I mean, the problem with Charlie, with the challenge of casting Charlie, is he has to be somebody that is believable as both a World War II hero and as somebody who's kind of naive.

He also has to be, you know, in his 30s, because Charlie's 33 when this book takes place.

So POTUS Geek suggested Jake Gyllenhaal, which I think is a pretty good suggestion.

century,

in Washington, but at the same time, that's a ver- really honest assessment of the costs.

Yeah.

I, I mean, I think that, you know, as he approaches the end of his life, uh, he is realizing even more than he already did, and this was a guy who always had seemed to have pretty good priorities in terms of family and faith first, community and politics all, you know, down to, like, 15 or something.

I mean, he always says, "One cheer for politics." But, uh, as he, you know, comes to the end, he thinks about how much he's going to miss his family, although his faith remark- You know, he's very...

His faith is admirable, and he's very confident he will see his family again and that he's going to a better place.

But I, I think the regret he has is something that we all experience, uh, when it comes to not spending as much time with our kids as we wish we did.

Your, your baby, uh, is only, uh, five, and you have another one on the way, but, like, when I...

Yeah

Hi, Jake.

Hello.

But between the lead and State of the Union on Sunday will be the arena Saturday at noon and four.

For people just to remember.

Have a great weekend, Casey.

We'll see you back in the arena next week.

Happy Friday.

Happy Friday to you.

I have a new show name idea for your Saturday show.

Casey and the Sunshine Panel.

Think about it.

We'll run it up the flagpole.

We'll look for more next week in The Arena and tomorrow.

Wow.

Yeah, a couple days after you.

And, and, uh, I wanted to do something special, and I thought, oh, I could buy him a book or I could buy him this and that.

Last time when you turned 60, I bought you some sort of hobbit, some old hobbit.

[laughs]

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

And then I said, "That's a great idea, but you know what? He's been on the air for 11 years now.

Let me check with Evie, his wife."

Yes.

... which was a delight 'cause it was fun to read, and everybody should go buy it.

Um, look, niche is not the right word, but it is a rarified audience that listens to The Lonely Island: Seth Meyers podcast as religiously as Mike and I do, and also, fans of The Lonely Island and fans of the pod, obviously, and fans of Seth Meyers.

It's merely a reflection of how much we revere the things that are Criteria.

And if I could just say, we have a lake house and when we go out on the boat at the beginning of any weekend, I'm immediately blasting "I'm On a Boat." And one of my proudest moments as a father was when my son learned all the lyrics to Finest Girl.

Got it, got it.

Um, so I'm having this paintball party, it's October 2022 and because it's so far away, I had, like, refreshments and pizza for the grownups as well as the kids.

So, the grownups could just come, drop their kid off, hang out for a couple of hours, then leave, instead of having to drive all the way back and forth, back and forth.

And one of the dads comes up to me and he starts talking to me, and he says, "Hey, I know so-and-so from The Outpost." And I said, "Oh, great," and I said, like, you know, "That, but that book was really tough to write because the Pentagon keeps such shitty records and they're so reluctant to share anything." And he said, "Tell me about it." And then he starts telling me this incredible story.

He's an assistant US attorney in Brooklyn.

He gets a phone call.

It's 2011, it's during the Arab Spring, and on one of these refugee boats, uh, full of Tunisians and Libyans is this guy who walks up to an Italian who is in charge of the boat and asks for water.

And it's just kind of, like, not discussed.

Did your head explode trying to retrace this stuff?

It, I mean, it's such an interesting story.

When I heard this story for the first time and all the details about the sleuthing, uh, that the Americans, the assistant US attorneys, uh, and the FBI agents, and the others, en- uh, endeavor to prove a case in 2011, 2012, 2013, uh, to prove that this Al-Qaeda operative killed Americans, like you say, almost a decade before, in 2003.

And the meticulous detail and the investigating, in- investigative prowess they demonstrate, it's really remarkable.

Uh, and they knew they had to draw an inside straight, and they did, and they were able to build this case.

I don't know how much it's rep- replicatable for every terrorist that kills, uh, Americans abroad.

And this is the first and only, as of right now, the first and only foreign terrorist tried in a US criminal court for killing US service members in a battle zone, in a war zone.

The amount of time that goes into, to nailing Spingoli for this murder, wha- what do you imagine it is, just in terms of hours spent by this American team?

Are any of the characters still at the DOJ, DOJ or FBI?

A few of 'em.

Uh, one of them, I have to say, and this is really just disappointing news, although very timely, um, George Toskus, who was this- who would not cooperate with my book, would not talk to me, would not return emails, but I know all about him because he was legendary and his colleagues would talk about him.

He was basically the last hurdle before a case would be brought to the Attorney General for approval.

And like, to extradite Spingule in 2011, 2012, that's a big ask, because at this time, the entire political system on Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans were protesting the idea of bringing terrorists to the, to the US for criminal prosecution.

They acted as though, um, you know, that they were like Thanos.

You bring him into the United States and they're gonna kill everybody and burst outta prison, and there was this real fear.

Yeah, go ahead.

Talk a little bit about the dangers of firing experienced career prosecutors like him, both to the Department of Justice and overall to U.S. national security.

So what Ben-Ari wrote in that letter that he put on his door was not only that his abrupt dismissal, based on a rumor, by the way.

I mean, she doesn't even say that it's true.

She says one can only assume that he opposed the Comey indictment.

Evan Perez, our Justice Department correspondent, said it's not even true that he opposed it.

But in any case, he said, Michael Ben-Ari, that dismissing him hurts the case.

against Jafar hurts it.

And it was just by happenchance that they even caught Spengul, right? I mean, it's such a remarkable story, and you came across it in a pretty remarkable way, too.

Right.

Now, I mean, that obviously now includes Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

But, I mean, that's, that's a lot of states, and that's a lot of potential Trump voters.

And as, as we know, Trump won the white vote, and, uh, that includes the white working class vote.

And, you know, that's a lot of people.

That's a lot of people.

And it is interesting, the push and pull on this.

Well, actually, why don't you explain what the premise of the book is and who the characters are, and then we'll get into the news.

Um, so Jake, first of all, can you just talk a little bit about the dangers of firing some of these experienced career prosecutors, both at DOJ and to, to, to national security?

I, I mean, I, I think, uh, that Michael Benary, uh, said it best in his Martin Luther-like, uh, statement that he put on his, on his door which is, "It makes the country less safe." I mean, he said that Justice Department leaders are more focused on going after the president's potential or perceived enemies than they are with the preserving the national security of the United States.

And it's...

When you look at what they are doing, uh, the Trump leadership, uh, of the DOJ and FBI in terms of who they are purging and why, uh, it makes the count- it does make the country less safe.

I know from covering the first case, as you note, of Spin Ghul, this, uh, terrorist from Saudi Arabia that was prosecuted in a criminal court for killing servicemembers abroad, it's incredibly difficult.

It's a very challenging case, uh, and it requires, uh, experienced prosecutors who ha- know where the pitfalls are.

Why was his trial so controversial back then?

Well, in 2011, 2012, people were still terrified, uh, by the notion of bringing a terrorist from abroad, he had been captured in Italy by the Italians, just by happenstance, bringing him to the United States, uh, for criminal prosecution.

What's unique and g- and controversial about this?

At the time, 2011, 2012, the idea of bringing foreign terrorists to a criminal court instead of a military commission at GITMO was incredibly controversial for any number of reasons.

First of all, I think the country was still very terrified and terrorized because of 9/11, and there was this fear that, uh, these foreign terrorists, i- it was as if they had like a Thanos-esque super villain powers.

If you brought them to Manhattan, they'd escape and, and kill people.

But beyond that, there was a trial in 2010, uh, of a guy named Gilani, uh, for the 1998, uh, embassy bombings, and he was acquitted of 284 of 285 charges.

So, there was a real fear, uh, that these people would get off, they would be somehow able to escape justice.

But the case of Spin Ghul was fascinating because the prosecutors and the FBI did so much work, so much sleuthing, so much investigations in terms of finding evidence against him to prove that he was part of an Al-Qaeda ambush in Afghanistan in 2003, where two American service members were killed, to prove that he was part of a conspiracy to blow up the US Embassy in Nigeria, uh, that the case was just, first of all, just an incredibly fascinating sleuthing story, but also ultimately a, a huge success.

Um, what does that tell you about the sort of trajectory of the war on terror or, you know, th- that Donald Trump is now doing pretty much the same thing that Obama did?

[laughs]

Okay.

So we had, we had, uh, so we had a paintball party.

It was a period when my son was really into paintball.

And it's like, you know, I live in DC, it's like an hour outside of DC, so when I do the invitation, I'm like, "Parents, stick around.

I have pizza, I have drinks," like, so they don't have to make four one-hour trips, right? It's just, you know, just stick around for a couple hours, hang out with the grown-ups.

So one of the dads comes over to me and he says, "Oh yeah, you know Dave Roller from The Outpost.

I love it.

So this is what he says.

The storyline of, of this book and of the dominant media about their role in the, the attempt to keep the American people from, uh, uh, acting on what everybody was seeing, the loss of acuity decline, was that until that debate in 2024 where Biden collapsed on stage with Donald Trump, that the public didn't know anything about Joe Biden's decline, that this was a revelatory evening.

And that what's happened now, according, this is the storyline of the book and of the narrative and of their press tour, is that Tapper and Thompson uncovered the truth.

And that their truth was that starting in 2023 and the end of 2023, that a few hundred Democrats in private settings saw Biden's decline, but they didn't say anything about it.

And so that, they're guilty of having witnessed something no one else saw.

This is the storyline.

No one else saw and they didn't say anything about it.

Right, he's no longer with CNN.

So the simple explanation on a timing, from a timing standpoint seems to be you were only told these things after the election was over and therefore you couldn't possibly have reported on them before you knew them.

Correct.

Yeah.

I mean, uh, yeah, entirely.

I did not know, like for instance, there's a, the- this- this story that we, was excerpted in The New Yorker that got a lot of attention, um, about Joe Biden, President Biden not recognizing George Clooney.I didn't know that story until after the election.

Um, I mean, it was shocking to me.

I would have loved to have broken that story in June 2024, or any of the stories that we have in the book.

And the press conference was not good.

The echo chamber that Ben Rhodes was so proud of building to get the JCPOA across the finish line, is it still there? Is, i- can it be reformed or is it impermeable to bad news for Democrats?

I think that there are, uh, lots of different silos.

And you and I have talked about media bias before, and, and I, I, I don't disagree with your perceptions of there being, uh, biases in the media.

Um, I think that there are lots of different ones.

I think that the, um, I think that Trump, uh, is, is an added factor.

Like, you can talk about media bias against Mitt Romney in 2012 versus Barack Obama, and that, you know, again, I'm not gonna disagree with you.

But I think, I think the Trumpness of it all adds a, a, a, an additional motivation.

Am I right? I mean, they intended to send a message.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, uh, but, but, I, I think that you can't take away his agency here, and Jill Biden's agency here, and Hunter Biden's agency here, 'cause they really were the most important players.

There was no process for Joe Biden deciding he was gonna run for re-election.

The decision was just made by him.

There's this story about him talking to his grandkids, but, you know, that's not real.

Um, he, he made the decision he was gonna run, um, and everybody just got in line.

Uh, and Bernal was basically Jill's enforcer, and Donilon and this other guy, Steve Ricchetti, were basically the President's enforcers and, uh, all the decisions flowed from there.

(laughs)

This was when some top Democrats entered an angry phase, I became disillusioned with the entire apparatus, because what I was seeing on this video in 2020, that means people working for him every day see this." Did anyone else tell you that they had concerns as far back as 2020?

A small handful of people who had known him for a long time.

Um, one said that the first time that they noticed any sort of deterioration came after his son Beau's tragic death of brain cancer in May 2015.

And this person, this top aide said, "It was like watching water poured on sand, what happened to Biden's psyche." Uh, and then there were people that popped in on him in 2017, 2018, before he ran, who said it seemed as though he'd aged 10 years, uh, in, in one or two.

Um, and then in the Hur report, when Robert Hur does his special counsel report on Biden's mishandling of classified information, one of the things that, one of the reasons they conclude that they can't prosecute Biden successfully, even though they conclude he did break the law, um, with the, with the classified information, was not just the interview they did with Biden in October 2023, uh, that, the, the audio of which was released a few weeks ago.

But because of the audio, the tapes that they had of Biden talking to his ghostwriter in 2017, 2018, where it sounds like debate Biden, or for wanting of a, want of a better term, non-functioning Biden.

Where he is not clear on dates, where he's not clear on situations, uh, and he loses his train of thought in a, in a major way.

It was, like, a great laugh line on the stump.

But Black or Brown people? Nope, not allowed.

The, the way that the US, uh, has treated the Afghan allies, not just now but also af, right after the collapse of, uh, of Kabul in August 2021, it's, it's not just a disgrace and it o, and it's not just a violation of a promise that was made to these people, it's also bad thinking because we will be less likely as a country next time we have one of these, uh, forays into foreign policy, uh, abroad, we'll be less likely to have people who will help us in whatever country it is because they will know that we didn't honor our promises last time.

(laughs)

Not, not to talk about my book again, but one of the things we discovered when we did this book, Original Sin, me and Alex Thompson, is there, there's a senator, uh, Senator Bennet from Colorado who went to an event in June 2024 where Biden seemed non-functioning and he left that event, and this is in the book, thinking this is why our, our border policy, our immigration policy's such a mess.

This guy can't manage the portfolio.

There are competing groups within the administration and he's not engaged for whatever reason, and that's why this policy is such a mess.

And I know that the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, uh, Mayorkas, he thought there was gonna be an order early on in the Biden years, uh, shutting down the border, or at least providing more security, and the order never came.

So, people talk about what are the repercussions of, of, of Biden not being what we expect a president to be, just in terms of functioning 100% of the time.

How do you respond?

Uh, there, it's a, it's a tough and fair question.

Uh, I would say that Alex and I after Election Day, um, interviewed more than 200 people, 200, uh, mostly Democratic insiders, and all these interviews were, almost all of these interviews were after the election.

And they justified to themselves what they had done in terms of misrepresenting how the president was not just, uh, to me and Alex and other reporters, but also just to each other and to the world and to Democrats and to the Cabinet, et cetera, by, by saying that there was this existential threat of Donald Trump and only Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump, and that justified everything in their minds.After that existential threat was over, 'cause the election was over and Donald Trump won, they were, we found, Alex and myself, um, remarkably willing to talk to us, uh, either off the record or on background or in some cases on the record about what they saw.

One of the things that emerged was that, uh, there were two Bidens.

One was the fine Biden, uh, serviceable, adequate, and the other one was a, is a nonfunctioning Biden.

And that's the one we saw the night of the debate.

... a lot and it s- eh, it sug- you suggest, Jake, i- it was very tough to find anybody with a nice word to say about this guy who was Jill Biden's top person.

Where's he gonna land?

I mean, I can't speak to, uh, how history will ultimately judge him.

Obviously, his presidency had- had accomplishments and, uh, incidents that people criticized, too.

Um, what my co-author Alex Thompson and I, uh, came to discover after the election when we decided, okay, now we can get Democrats to talk to us who wouldn't talk to us before, because if you- if they said anything, there was this threat of, "Oh, you're gonna help Trump get elected." Suddenly, more than 200 of them were willing to talk to us.

And the question we had was, we all saw what we saw on debate night in June 2024.

How often did that happen before debate night? And what we found out was quite a bit.

It happened quite a bit.

Yes.

And, and, and then we wrote, uh, 115,000.

Yeah.

Okay.

So this is what happened.

So, so, um, appreciate the fact check as always.

Um, so but, but, but this is, this just gets into production stuff.

And like, there were publishers that said, "We can do June," and we'd say, "Sorry, no." Uh, and, um, anyway, we just wanted to be in May.

And so I think, you know, it, they're in the middle of deciding whether or not to reckon with it or try to just memory hole it, and I don't think we know yet.

Tell me about the word choice, and then tell me about those people who were really calling the shots around the president.

So, the politburo, not a term we came up with, it's a term from within the Biden administration, uh, as the name would suggest, uh, is a-... tightly held group of senior advisors, Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti foremost among them.

Uh, you also have individuals floating in and out, Ron Klain who's chief of staff for the first couple years of the, of the president's term, um, Anita Dunn, some, uh, senior, uh, individuals on the staff of Jill Biden.

Um, the, the First Lady, uh, Anthony Bernal, the chief of staff, perhaps the most pop, uh, powerful First Lady chief of staff ever.

Uh, and then another woman named Annie Tommasini.

And so I, we would assess that it's basically the Bidens, uh, Joe, Jill, and Hunter, and this tight group of aides, and they weren't like a star chamber, they weren't like all friends or allies, they all just had their different portfolios and did what they did.

And these were the individuals that helped steer the government.

It flew.

I mean, you covering politics the way that you have for so many years, what was it about this book that really alarmed you specifically, that really came out in the book that people didn't realize?

I think one of the things...

So first of all, we started writing the book before we even had a publisher.

Um, before we even had a proposal, we started reporting it.

And Alex and I were both very surprised to find out that so many people who had not been willing to talk candidly about Joe Biden after the election suddenly were.

And we interviewed more than 200 people, almost all of them Democratic insiders.

Almost all of the interviews were after the election.

Okay.