Two hours. One subject. Every documented corruption and abuse of power question about the Trump administration, in order, with the receipts attached and the counterargument stated out loud every single time.

John Yoo wrote the torture memos. He is, by a wide margin, the most expansive thinker on presidential power in modern American life. And he looked at a US military strike that killed two unarmed men clinging to wreckage and wrote that it was, quote, simply murder. That is where this episode starts.

Here is the thread running through all of it, and it is not the one you are expecting: most of what I cover here is legal. The president is exempt from the conflict of interest law that binds nearly every other federal employee. Blind trusts are a tradition, not a requirement. The pardon power has almost no limits. So the question is not only did he break the law. It is whether any president should be able to do this at all.

Enrichment and entrenchment. Using the office to make money, and using it to remove the things that could stop you. Both count. I keep them separate.

This is a special edition, and it is only the tip of the iceberg.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open
04:40 John Yoo wrote the torture memos
06:05 Why this episode, and what corruption actually means here
11:15 The 927 page disclosure and the 2.2 billion dollar year
13:31 World Liberty Financial and 187 million dollars from Abu Dhabi
17:16 The memecoin, and who lost money on it
19:32 Justin Sun and the SEC case that disappeared
21:45 Nvidia, AMD, and the 15 percent chip fee
23:16 The 400 million dollar ballroom and its anonymous donors
27:01 The enforcement that quietly went away
29:16 Suing the IRS for 10 billion dollars
33:00 The judge who threw the whole thing out
34:32 Blanche confirmed 50 to 49
36:01 The 230 million dollars he asked taxpayers to pay him
37:32 Firing Pam Bondi
39:02 Comey, Letitia James, and a prosecutor who had never tried a case
47:16 1,800 pardons
48:00 January 6th clemency
51:01 Pardoning the 2020 election lawyers
52:32 Binance, crypto, and a very convenient pardon
54:03 The 2 billion dollars owed to victims that vanished
57:01 The honest comparison to Clinton, Biden and Obama
1:00:00 Seventeen inspectors general fired in one night
1:03:46 Closing every channel a whistleblower could use
1:05:17 Firing the person who reports the jobs numbers
1:08:15 The law firms: he lost four for four and it worked anyway
1:12:46 Columbia, Brown, and Harvard
1:15:00 Paramount, CBS, and the merger approval
1:17:18 Subpoenas served on reporters and their families
1:22:30 Trump v. Slaughter and the Election Assistance Commission
1:24:01 Dismantling election security
1:26:16 The mail ballot order now at the Supreme Court
1:28:31 Georgia said no, and why that belongs here
1:30:45 The boat strikes
1:33:01 Venezuela, Greenland, Iran
1:37:31 The steel man: the best case against everything I just said
1:45:46 What I left out, and why that matters
1:49:30 Closing

LINKS

Podcast website: https://www.purplepoliticalbreakdown.com
ALIVE Podcast Network: https://alivepodcastnetwork.com/
Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/purplepoliticalbreakdown
All links: https://linktr.ee/purplepoliticalbreakdown
Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ptPAsZtHC9

THIS WEEK'S RESOURCES

Equal Vote Coalition and STAR Voting: voting methods that make every vote count equally, with no wasted votes and no strategic voting.
https://www.equal.vote/star

Future is Now Coalition: a grassroots movement working to restore democracy through transparency, accountability and technology.
https://futureis.org/

Independent Center: resources for independent political thinking and civic engagement.
https://www.independentcenter.org/

r/policysolutions: a community for political solutions rather than political noise.
https://www.reddit.com/r/policysolutions/

Political Solutions Without Political Bias.