Mary B. McCord

Uh, okay, a few different media stories I wanna hit with you.

We, we need to get Mary McCord here to, like, keep us on, you know.

Some- We're gonna need a grownup.

We're gonna need, like-

It is Tuesday morning, October 13th.

I'm Andrew Weissmann, and I am here with Mary McCord.

Happy Tuesday, Mary.

Good morning.

Happy Tuesday.

Although I don't know that it's happy for a lot of people.

[laughs]

Yeah, so this is one where, w- are we ever gonna stop saying this? Um, which is, you know, we plan out our shows over the weekend, Mary and I, yeah, like text and back and forth, and we've been doing this for, like, three and a half years.

The search took place just twenty-two days before the November third midterms.

Mary McCord, a former senior DOJ official, told Morning Report that the move is a departure from long-standing internal guidance that prohibits prosecutors from taking actions that could even be perceived to have the purpose of affecting an election or giving an advantage or disadvantage to a candidate or party.

"Although special circumstances could provide an exception to that general rule, I see no indication based on the current reporting that would warrant an exception," McCord said.

Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade said there's much unknown about the case, but what is known is that a magistrate judge found probable cause to believe evidence of a crime would be found at Omar's home, the legal standard for obtaining a search warrant.

They wanted me for ratings and they wanted me for other reasons, but not for love.

With press freedom on the line, I want to bring in New York Times chief White House correspondent and MSNOW contributor Peter Baker, former principal deputy assistant attorney general and MSNOW legal analyst Mary McCord, Media Matters president Angela Carstone and status founder Oliver Darcy.

Peter, we just heard it's hardly the first time the president has targeted the free press.

Your paper calls it a profound escalation.

There's so many examples day after day.

And then you throw this in there where he's using taxpayer dollars what are clearly political purposes, I think it feeds into a larger narrative that's not helpful to the president, but obviously he doesn't see it that way.

All right, Mary McCord, thank you so much, as always, for talking us through this.

And be sure to listen to Mary and our friend Andrew Weissman's podcast, Maine Justice, by scanning the QR code on your screen right now.

And new reporting that the DOJ is now investigating whether the major television networks violated the law when they suspended their coverage of Trump after he barred journalists from White House coverage.

We'll analyze this legal argument from the administration with our solid legal panel, Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord.

But we begin this hour 23 days until the midterm elections, and President Trump causing frustration among voters and dragging down his Republican Party.

Economic pain is fueling voter dissatisfaction with the president and is expanding, expanding the electoral m- uh, map of competitive races into areas that seemed seemingly safe for Republicans just a couple months ago.

Nice to see ya.

ya.And coming up, new reporting that the DOJ is investigating whether the major television networks violated federal laws when they paused some coverage of Trump after being barred access to the White House grounds.

Our legal experts, Mary McCord and Andrew Weissmann, the smartest two there are, will break it down for us.

You're watching The Weekend.

But I digress.

Joining us now is MSNOW legal analyst Mary McCord.

She's a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department, and she's co-host of MSNOW's award-winning Maine Justice podcast.

Mary, let's go dive right into Simone's point, because I think it's an animating idea around all of this, that this is a president who wants to control the Fed.

hell of an investigative reporter.

She's like, I've got to work with the name, too.

Mary McCord, thank you very, very much for being here, as always.

After the break, folks, an internal watchdog finds Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency... actually cost the federal government billions of dollars.