Birthright citizenship victory wasn't the end as legal expert warns what's coming next

A grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted former U.S. Olympic canoeist David “Davey” Hearn on a felony charge for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 19. He is facing a possible maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted. Hearn, who denies the accusations, says he had noticed a partly detached piece of the Reflecting Pool’s blue liner and reached into the water to see what it felt like, when he was quickly arrested and subsequently held in jail for five hours. He is one of at least six people who have been arrested for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, which has turned green due to algae blooms despite being painted “American-flag blue” at the behest of President Trump.

“We do think that Davey is being scapegoated for the failures of the White House with respect to the Reflecting Pool, that the blame is being shifted,” says Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. “He’s innocent, and we intend to vigorously defend the matter.”

Eisen speaks about some of the other 300 cases Democracy Defenders Fund is involved in, including legal fights against the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger and the Trump administration’s executive order that attempted to end birthright citizenship. He also comments on President Trump having made $2.2 billion last year, mostly fueled by cryptocurrency profits. “It’s corruption on a scale we’ve never seen in American history, and, frankly, seldom in world history,” says Eisen.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: A grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted the former U.S. Olympian canoeist Davey Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. On June 19th, Davey Hearn stopped by the pool while on a 64-mile bike ride. He says he touched the pool to see what it felt like, and was then arrested, handcuffed and held for five hours by U.S. Park Police. He’s now facing a possible sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted. He is one of the at least six people who have been arrested for allegedly vandalizing the pool.

Following the incident, Trump posted on social media, quote, “The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail!” Trump wrote.

[U.S.] Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro said Hearn willfully and violently damaged a two-square-foot piece of sealant of the pool.

JEANINE PIRRO: I thought it was important to call this press conference because one of the most offensive images that I hold in my mind are the images of national monuments that are being defaced, roped, torn down, graffitied and damaged by individuals. … Today is about accountability for damaging a national resource, a national treasure, and that is the Reflecting Pool.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro.

The Reflecting Pool underwent a nearly $16 million renovation. President Trump wanted to paint the bottom of the pool “American flag blue.” The work was completed under a no-bid contract, but then the pool turned green as algae blooms flourished, and the bottom of the pool began to peel. Late-night comics started to say that the pool was “Mexican flag green.”

For more, we’re joined by Norm Eisen. He’s co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, one of Davey Hearn’s attorneys, was formerly White House special counsel for ethics and government reform under President Obama and was co-founder and board chair of CREW — that’s Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Norm Eisen, thanks so much for joining us. Can you talk about what Davey Hearn exactly was charged with?

NORM EISEN: Well, Mr. Hearn has been charged with vandalism. He’s innocent. The charges are outrageous. And, Amy, it should be concerning to every American when on this kind of a basis a felony charge can issue. So, we’re preparing to vigorously defend the case in court.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain what we understand. You can’t help but think, I mean, this has been — here is President Trump, who is a developer. This is a no-bid contract. I don’t know if you can talk about who this went to. And the humiliation of President Trump himself — I won’t even say the White House — for what’s happened to the pool. Do you think this is about trying to deflect attention for the failure of this Reflecting Pool?

NORM EISEN: Amy, we do think that Davey is being scapegoated for the failures of the White House with respect to the Reflecting Pool, that the blame is being shifted. He’s innocent, and we intend to vigorously defend the matter.

AMY GOODMAN: Norm Eisen, you are involved with a number of cases. I’d like to ask you first about the merger, the proposed merger, that the U.S. Department of Justice is pushing forward, has just approved, between Paramount Skydance, which has already merged in something like an $8 billion deal, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger would be something like $110 billion, with the Trump ally billionaires Larry and his son David Ellison in charge. Can you talk about the significance of what’s happening here?

NORM EISEN: Of course, Amy. At Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action, we have over 300 legal cases and matters, entirely separate from Mr. Hearn’s case. Another one of those very important democracy cases is the effort to mash together two of the largest entertainment and news entities, Paramount and Warner Bros.

And the concern here is, under the Ellisons’ tutelage — David Ellison, his father Larry Ellison, cronies of President Trump’s — the CBS network, storied “the Tiffany network,” we’ve seen its news operations demolished by Bari Weiss. Now they’re going to put CNN under that same umbrella, together, by the way, with TikTok, where they also have that social media outfit under their wing. If you like what they did to CBS, the destruction of 60 Minutes, for example, you’ll love what they’re going to do to CNN. And that’s just the news side of things. We can have — you know, somebody is watching Fox News. They say, “Oh, I can’t take this anymore. I’m going to turn the channel.” And you go to CNN, it’s the same thing. You go to CBS, it’s the same thing. Then, on top of that, you have an even louder megaphone for influencing society, the entertainment industry, film and TV, documentary films, all of that also under the Ellisons’ sway.

Reportedly, career professionals at the Department of Justice were not ready to let this merger go through. They had serious questions about whether it was illegal under antitrust law, with the excessive concentration of power in the hands of the Ellisons. They were overruled. There’s the most profound questions about whether there was inappropriate political decision-making to jam through this merger, two of President Trump’s cronies, the Ellisons. And fortunately, the state AGs, the U.K. government, the EU are still asking those hard questions. We anticipate that the state AGs will go to court and get an injunction, just like they did, Amy, with the Live Nation merger, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, just like they have done with other cases, Nexstar-Tegna, another big media merger. The AGs were successful in getting court relief. We anticipate they’ll do the same thing here.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance of the British government, as you just mentioned, suggesting that it may challenge Paramount Skydance’s blockbuster $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros.? And you talk about CBS then would be under the same roof as CNN and HBO, among other media properties. Lisa Nandy, the British culture and media secretary, expressed concern about concentrating control of media assets in the hands of fewer corporate owners. She said, “Following engagement with the parties and independent research, my department has today written to the current and proposed owners of Warner Bros Discovery on my behalf to inform them that I am minded to intervene,” she said. What would it mean if Britain intervened?

NORM EISEN: It would be a substantial hurdle to completing this misbegotten merger mashup. The combined entity has substantial assets that are in the U.K. market or impact the U.K. market. It would be one of the strikes against the merger. The most devastating, because the largest concentration is in the United States, would be the state AGs. But the U.K. and the EU matter. And, Amy, very proud that at Democracy Defenders, we filed a complaint with the U.K. that will be part of the basis for action, if they move. So, we are on the case in the U.S. and wherever necessary to stop these kinds of assaults on our democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to another issue: birthright citizenship. This is House Speaker Mike Johnson speaking about the Supreme Court decision on Fox News over the weekend.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I really enjoyed Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent. It’s — everybody should read that, must read. And he explained that the 14th Amendment, the original intent was to enhance and really value citizenship, and it’s been devalued because of birthright tourism, which is what we have now. It’s a threat to the rule of law and national security. We do need to address it. We’re looking at all angles. If there’s some legislative fix, we’ll advance that immediately. If it’s a constitutional amendment, as you know, it takes a little more time. But we’ve got to address this. It really is a serious, serious issue.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Norm Eisen, if you can talk about this approach that Congress would pass a law, and this whole framing of birthright citizenship as “birthright tourism,” suggesting there would be pregnancy tests for anyone coming into the United States that’s not an American citizen?

NORM EISEN: Amy, it’s so wrong. We at Democracy Defenders Fund represented, together with LULAC and our other wonderful partners in the case, including the ACLU, those brave moms who were willing to stand up and fight the Trump administration’s unconstitutional claim that Donald Trump gets to choose which babies born in this country are citizens and not. That is false. It is the law, under the 14th Amendment, that all babies born here are citizens. And by a 5-4 majority, we secured, with co-counsel, the ruling that what Mike Johnson said is false. I talked to some of those moms that morning when we got the win. I was at the Supreme Court. Wow! They were so excited for themselves, but for all the babies and for the rule of law.

Now, you’re seeing a lot of sour grapes. This should not have been a 5-4 decision. It’s very alarming that there were four votes for this open-and-shut issue at the Supreme Court. And now you’re seeing statements like Mike Johnson. We forced even Mike Johnson, Amy, to admit that a constitutional amendment might be necessary because Congress doesn’t have the power to do this. That doesn’t stop people like him, like the president, like the White House, from fearmongering and making these absurd statements about what is a clear constitutional rule. Birthright citizenship is protected.

Will they try other acts to harass, frighten, intimidate? Certainly. Our legal team is ready. And if you don’t believe me, we have over 300 legal cases and matters to prove it, including some of the most high-profile landmark wins shutting down Donald Trump’s corruption, like the Lisa Cook case — he was wrongly trying to fire and prosecute her — like the $1.8 billion slush fund case, the Kennedy Center case. We are going to go to bat for our moms who are being harassed, even though the case was won. And we’re going to keep fighting for the Constitution.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned corruption. New filings show that President Trump made more than $2.2 billion last year, most of it fueled by cryptocurrency profits, but with a significant rise in profits across his real estate business and other family investments, his legal settlements with media giants ABC News, Paramount, Meta, CBS. The mandatory financial disclosure report released Tuesday shows Trump made at least $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures, including $635 million for Trump-branded cryptocurrency meme coins and $590 million from the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto business. He defended how he’s profited from the presidency while speaking to reporters last week.

REPORTER: To critics who say you’re profiting off the presidency, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market is going up. Everybody’s profiting. If you have a — you have a 401(k)? How has your 401(k) done? It’s about up 85%. Thank you, President Trump.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was President Trump speaking to reporters before boarding the new Air Force One, a Boeing 747 jet donated by the royal family of Qatar reportedly at a cost of $400 million, paid for by the U.S. taxpayers, but Trump plans to keep the jet after leaving office, saying he’ll donate it to his presidential library. Can you respond to all of this, and, of course, on the issue of cryptocurrency, the amount of money that those who invested in it lost as the Trump family gained?

NORM EISEN: The behavior of the president, his family and his cronies, inside and outside of the federal government, Amy, is like nothing we’ve ever seen in American history. It makes the worst scandals of the presidency over the past 250 years, like Watergate or the Teapot Dome, look like weak tea. The profit taking of over $2 billion by President Trump alone in one year, exploiting the office of the presidency to do that, is outrageous and shocking. You have to look beyond American history to dictatorial regimes like Putin’s Russia or North Korea for similar examples. And even there, it’s an extreme, startling example here in the United States.

Take the crypto, where at Democracy Defenders, we’ve been at the forefront of exposing this. You have Donald Trump raking in over $600 million, while the — on his meme coin, his Trump meme coin, while the value of the thing has gone down by 95%, well in excess of a billion dollars in losses for people. That’s ordinary Americans losing hundreds and thousands, or even more. When Donald Trump profits, he reaches into the pockets of all of us to take that money. You also see that not just in the domestic arena, but internationally, where a company associated with the Trumps’ crypto company, World Liberty Financial, took in an over $500 million investment from a UAE Emirati state fund. The Emirates have the most profound connection, for example, to our Iran war debacle. And the notion that they’re pumping money into Trump coffers is also a profound conflict of interest. So is Donald Trump regulating, or, as the case may be, failing to regulate the crypto industry, while he profits from a lack of regulation, but the American people are hurt. It’s corruption on a scale we’ve never seen in American history, and, frankly, seldom in world history.

AMY GOODMAN: Norm Eisen, we have to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, one of Davey Hearn’s attorneys. He was White House special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration.