February 21 - Why Won't the Intelligence Community Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance?; The Ultimate Coup by the Koch Brothers; The Kochs Already Have 28 Out of the 34 States Needed to Rewrite the US Constitution

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the looming showdown between White House Chief of Staff Kelly and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who is resisting giving up his access to the nation’s top secrets which, although he does not have a permanent security clearance, Kushner is the biggest consumer of in terms of top secret information, much of which could be highly profitable to private business interests. Jeff Stein, who covers spy agencies and foreign policy for Newsweek and wrote the Spy Talk column for the Congressional Quarterly, joins us to discuss how vulnerable the Trump White House is to foreign spies with 130 staffers with access to top secrets unable to get security clearances. We also speculate why the intelligence community does not want to give Kushner a security clearance and why he is getting his hands on as much vital intelligence as possible, even though he has not qualified for a permanent security clearance.

Part 2

Then we investigate what could be the most amazing power play and greatest coup by the Koch Brothers who are poised to rewrite the entire U.S. Constitution according to their policy preferences and ideological whims and wishes. Joining us is Lisa Graves, the co-director of Documented, a new investigative website at documentedinvestigations.org who served in all three branches of the federal government – as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief for the U.S. Courts. We discuss how the entire U.S. Constitution could be up for grabs if the Koch-funded effort to bring about a Constitution Convention via the ratification of 34 states is successful.

Part 3

Then finally we explore further the possibility that the laws of the land and the very foundation of American democracy are about to be rewritten by the Koch Brothers who already have 28 of the 34 states needed to convene a Constitutional Convention in their pocket, so it would seem that the billionaire right wing donors are well on their way to pulling off the ultimate coup. Alex Kotch, an investigative journalist focusing on money in politics who was until recently part of the Political Capital investigative unit at the International Business Times, joins us to discuss his article at the Center for Media and Democracy, “Kochs Bankroll Move to Rewrite the Constitution”.