The United States of America has changed dramatically over the last eight weeks. Former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh joins Nestor to discuss democracy, laws, checks and balances and why America doesn’t have a King. A refresher course and re-education on what we were all taught in middle school Social Studies class about The Constitution and the law of the land.
Nestor Aparicio interviews former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh about the state of American democracy. Frosh expresses concern over Trump’s actions, which he views as a threat to democracy, and praises the efforts of Democratic attorneys general in challenging Trump’s executive orders. Frosh highlights the danger of Trump’s refusal to follow court orders and his attempts to undermine dissent, including threats to cut federal funding for universities and revoking security clearances. Frosh also discusses the historical context of checks and balances and the importance of the rule of law. Nestor and Frosh also touch on the broader implications of Trump’s actions on American society and the role of lawyers in defending democracy.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Democracy, checks and balances, Trump, executive orders, Democratic attorneys general, rule of law, insurrection, Citizens United, foreign influence, Russian money, civil rights, media rights, legal process, federal government, dissent.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Brian Frosh
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We call the show Baltimore positive. Is it a podcast? Is it a radio show? Our next guest has enjoyed both parts of that. All of it brought to you by friends at the Mary Lou lottery. We will have magic eight ball scratch offs to give away on Friday at Pizza John’s. We’re in Toronto, Canada. I’m hoping I have my US passport. The next guest is going to speak to me about the power of citizenship, and I hope to get back into the country so I can do the show and appear at fade Lee’s on the second of April for the second Oriole game. Red Sox will be in town. At that point, we’ll see how the Orioles are doing. This guy joined me at Fayette Lee’s at one time as the Attorney General for the great free state of Maryland. He is now a practicing attorney somewhere south of the border of Baltimore, down there in the Washington, excuse me, suburb communities of Bethesda and beyond. Brian frost joins us as our defending champion here of all things democracy. I mean, I run into you in Baltimore, but it turns out you’re not here as much as you used to be when you were sort of running things around here.
Brian Frosh 01:07
I was there every day. Nestor, I miss it, but it’s, you know, it’s a serious commute. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 01:15
invited you to faith. Lee’s over like, and you know you when I invite you, know you want to faith these crab cake right now, but I invited you down. You’re like, No, I’m down here. And I said, Great, come on via zoom, because I think every minute of every day we’re losing some something here. And I’m not sure what it is from Schumer last week. And if people hear this on the other end, I’m just a guy from Dundalk who knows lawyers, and you happen to be one of the most powerful ones I’ve ever known at the state level. We ran into each other a couple months ago. We were trying to put this thing together. I think Trump wasn’t the President when I ran into you, because it was like in December, it’s been like 90 days since I saw you. Where are you on all this? Because you’re smarter and know the law better than anyone. I Is this getting ahead of us, or are we get is this really getting out of hand, as you see it.
Brian Frosh 02:03
Well, I think it’s extremely dangerous. I think the stuff that Trump is doing is puts our democracy in great danger. And it’s intentional. It’s planned. You know, the there’s good news and bad news here. The I think the Democratic Attorneys General, who are the last line of defense at the moment, until we retake the House of Representatives, they’ve been doing a very good job. They’ve been, you know, Trump issued his birthright citizenship executive order right after he was sworn in, the Democratic attorneys general were in court V next day, challenging it, and a day or two later, the court enjoined it. So you know, the bad news is they have this elaborate plan, the project 2025, stuff, and they’re executing on that. They’re doing it in rapid fire succession. I think they want to overwhelm us, and we can get into that a little more later. The good news is, because they had a roadmap, the Democratic attorneys general, I think, have been preparing for all the challenge challenges that come with it, and they’ve done a very good job so far. But you know every every day that one of these terrible executive orders or list of firings goes on, it, it reduces the resistance a little more. It’s one hammer blow after another. And yes, I think democracy is in in peril.
Nestor Aparicio 03:46
I think you went a little further in civics class and in law school than I did at the University of Baltimore. But checks and balances. I mean, I go back to school, House Rock and I go back to seventh grade social studies with Mr. Schlie, Miss Simpkins, my great teachers, Mr. Zens, checks and balances. What? What do regular people need to know about that? Whether that’s really accurate in a time where I don’t know that our forefathers thought someone this compromised, that this kind of system where a guy could donate two, $70 million to a campaign and then walk into the Oval Office with his kids sassing the president United States. I mean, this is all going on six weeks. Brian,
Brian Frosh 04:28
yeah, no, it’s amazing. It’s only been a short time we got we got many, many years to tolerate this. But yeah, they are checks and balances are all contingent upon the rule of law. You know, in Marbury versus Madison back in the you know, beginnings of our nation after the Constitution was first signed, Supreme Court held that it had the power to run. View the constitutionality of acts by Congress or the president, and if they were, you know, not compliant with the Constitution, they were null and void. Couldn’t be enforced and every president up to now, there have been minor exceptions. Andrew Jackson mouthed off about, you know something way back in the early 19th century, but, but all the other presidents United States have said, okay, you know, if the courts tell me I can’t do it, I’m I’m not doing it, or if the court enjoins me from X or Y, or tells me I’ve got to do something to protect the people. I’ll do it. I’m going to follow, I’m going to follow the rule of law. Well, what Trump has done, and you can see him pushing it right up to and perhaps over the edge already, is, yeah, you know, judges don’t have the authority to stop the president, and there is going to come a time where the court issues an order, Trump clearly, openly and defiantly refuses to follow it. And then what happens? He controls the military. He controls the Congress at the moment. And the question is, what happens when he makes the commits the ultimate and original sin in a democracy of saying, Yeah, I’m not paying any attention to what anybody else said. We’re doing it my way.
Nestor Aparicio 06:38
I thought the insurrection was that? Brian,
Brian Frosh 06:42
yeah, well, I mean, it was. He tried to claim. He claimed that he really had nothing to do with it. It was just peaceful protesters, despite all the footage that you’ve seen on TV and that he didn’t tell him to commit violence, but he certainly encouraged them to the point where they understood, and I think most of the rest of the folks in the United States understood that he was encouraging them, and he got what he asked for. I mean, we ought to talk about,
Nestor Aparicio 07:21
well, what the legal does the legal process in this country move too slow? I mean, in four, four years later, somehow he became president United States again, and he should be under a prison, I mean, really, for a crime committed in full view of the American people, in front of every congressman, in front of every senator, in front of the entire world, in real life time. I am concerned that he didn’t go to prison for that, and that sort of the original sin. Part of that was it feels like everything moved really slow afterward, and it feels like the Democrats and it feels like Biden and everything there, but like they didn’t push that where it needed to go, and we’re all going to pay the price for that. Ukraine’s paying the price. Lots of people, federal employees, are. I mean, the cost of that right now is it’s been very expensive for our country to not put that man in prison.
Brian Frosh 08:14
Yeah. I mean, this has been Trump’s modus operandi since he was a kid or a young adult. I mean, when he and his father ran their real estate empire, they got in all kinds of trouble. They contractors would work for him, and they’d stiff them, make the contractor come in and Sue, and usually get them to settle for less. They, you know, let working people, people working for them operate in dangerous conditions. And Trump has been very successful at being a bully and getting getting people to back down. He was, he was all. All of his enterprises were in bankruptcy in the mid 1990s and he somehow persuaded the banks that he owed money to, and it was hundreds of millions, he persuaded him that you’re better off if you don’t change the name of the the operations, because people want to go to The Trump casino, etc. And so they actually didn’t force him to liquidate all of his assets, and they paid him something to let them continue to use his name. It’s really kind of amazing, but he’s been very successful at just being obstinate and a bully. And this is, I think this has taken it to the ultimate point here. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 09:43
it’s never not worked right? It’s never not worked for him, rapes, felonies, crime. It’s never not worked for him. It’s always worked for him. Yeah, I’m discouraged, and I’m I’m stunned that the. The people of this country want to take that direction, and I’m going to learn, when I pull my passport out, I’ll put the Peace Bridge, aptly named in Buffalo driving over to Toronto. Um, the Orioles are going to learn next Thursday, the fans are. I mean, that this might be a joke to some, someone who voted for him in Middle River, but this isn’t, this isn’t funny around the world. I mean, it isn’t at all. Yeah, the seriousness of this, it feels like it’s slow moving, but now it feels fast, and it feels like the only thing we have are lawyers and maybe honest people, but they’re certainly not in his cabinet. I don’t look at Linda McMahon as an educator. Oh, come
Brian Frosh 10:38
on. Yeah. I mean, it’s a joke. I mean, the other thing that he’s doing that’s extremely dangerous is he’s trying to he’s trying to crush dissent. You know, he’s afraid of the the so called elite universities. He’s trying to shut him up. He says to Columbia, I’m going to cut $400 million out of federal grants and loans to you, he’s threatening the University of Pennsylvania, and he knows, he knows who’s against him and who’s for him, and he’s punishing the people who are against him. And he that, you know what he did with the Perkins COVID, the law firm that represented Biden and the Democratic Party and others, is he said, Okay, I’m revoking all of your security clearances and all in you’re not allowed on federal property. Well, you know, if you’re a lawyer and your business is related to the government, that’s a killer. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t take clients. You can’t represent them adequately, and so he’s trying to shut them up. And unfortunately, I think it’s you haven’t heard from a lot of the big law firms standing up in support of Perkins COVID, even though you know Trump’s conduct is baseless, pretextual.
Nestor Aparicio 12:04
We have a lot of problems sticking together here as a society, states, governors, red states, blue states. This is right out of the Russian divide and conquer, right? Like, I mean, this is there is a civil war happening in this country, every day I take it out onto the streets, every day, there are pickup trucks with Trump signs on them, and then there’s the rest of us. And there’s really a bullying part of all of this, with federal employees, with federal government, with privatization, and really behind all of it is just a lot of really dirty money, and really not dirty American money, Dirty South African money, dirty Saudi money, dirty Chinese money, and certainly whatever the Russia thing is from Trump going over to Moscow years ago, and whatever hold Putin has on him, I am Brian. I am astonished. I mean, I had Brian frosh is our guest. He’s the former attorney. Do I have to call you attorney? What’s your attorney? Like me? Are you a governor forever or No, you’re the former.
Brian Frosh 13:09
I mean, you can assume the title forever if you wish. You should call me Brian. I’m going to call
Nestor Aparicio 13:16
you Brian, and I appreciate that Brian frosh is here. He’s our former Attorney General. We’re talking all things democracy and but the Russian part of this, I had a look. We’ve all lost friends, right, or clients. I mean, all of it, right, family members down the line. But the thing with Zelensky a couple of weeks ago, not that, all of it, and that the first time, and if you forgot it, the fact that they flew a man whose people have been murdered across the world, and put him in the Oval Office to to mean him in life, tell in lifetime to really the kind of stuff that would create world wars back in the day, right back in 19 in the early 1900s you know the Ferdinands that this is How you don’t, you don’t do that, and you don’t call the premiere of Canada governor, yeah. I mean, you like but it all started with little Marco, who now works for him, and lion Ted and his wife and shooting cat like it’s unbelievable, the boot lickers that are available in this country who the stick together. Part to say I saw it, but it didn’t happen. Yeah.
Brian Frosh 14:24
I mean, it really is astonishing. Pipsqueak. JD Vance lecturing the democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation about he should be grateful for what Donald Trump is doing. Donald Trump is stabbing him in the back. It’s really obvious he, I don’t know why Trump is so beholden to Vladimir Putin. It’s a scary situation, but he is, and he’s, you know, Vladimir Putin story is, oh, Ukraine provoked, the war provoked. And you. Uh, an attack on the sovereignty of Ukraine by Russia was there. Ukraine wasn’t engaged any hostile activity, but Russia was, and they started it much bigger nation, much more resources in in JD Vance’s lecturing of the President of Ukraine about how he should act and what he should say
Nestor Aparicio 15:23
if Trump brought Kamala Harrison, poisoned her, imprisoned her and murdered her, that would be on par with what Vladimir Putin did to Navalny. I tried to explain that to a dry cleaner here last week, who runs franchises here that that that’s unacceptable to me, and I don’t want to represent businesses that think that that’s acceptable, and I don’t have any problem doing that, but I own an FCC license. I’m a public figure. I’m a journalist Brian. I’m, uh, I’m a Venezuelan descent, and I’m not a gang member nor my family members, uh, who reside around the country. I just all of this is it’s beyond the pale of what I thought I would ever be discussing with you when I met you 10 years ago,
Brian Frosh 16:10
right? I mean, it did not seem to me 10 years ago that racism was going to be acceptable in any form, and few instances in which it was open and flagrant were either punished or denounced. But right now, you’ve got an administration that’s determined to wipe out any recognition that we have of folks who’ve been mistreated, maltreated, can continue to suffer from racism.
Nestor Aparicio 16:47
I mean, war heroes. Jackie Robinson, if I talked to you earlier this week, it was Jackie Robinson, yeah, yeah. Like, we didn’t do enough to Jackie Robinson when he was alive to demean him, right? Like, literally, right? He didn’t that. That story hasn’t been told for 100 years to all of us, right? Every time we watch a baseball game,
Brian Frosh 17:08
you’re absolutely right. Brian frost, you see
Nestor Aparicio 17:11
here, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt to keep going. We we’re going to go on, but I’m trying to figure out what the remedies are, from a guy who ran the state for law here, to why we shouldn’t be trusting the Russians, why I’m trying to explain this to American citizens that this, this isn’t anything that any of us should be supporting.
Brian Frosh 17:29
Well, I certainly don’t think it is. I mean, Trump, it now seems almost quaint, but in his first term, he made clear very early that he was going to accept money from people, and, you know, there just was, coincidentally, an impact on the way he handled issues that related to him. Well, the
Nestor Aparicio 17:53
Trump Hotel was basically that front the first time. Mark Levitch going to join me in two weeks. He wrote a great book about that. Yeah,
Brian Frosh 17:59
it’s we the Attorney General the District of Columbia, Carl was seen, and I filed suit to stop him from doing that. President of the United States is allowed to get money from foreign countries, whether it’s laundered through a hotel or what a golf course or whatever. It’s also not allowed to receive anything from the United States government in the way of compensation other than his salary. And yet, you know, Secret Service agents were having to pay for exorbitant rent at his resorts when he would go there so that they could follow him around in golf carts that they had to rent to watch him cheat at golf. It? It, that was just, I’m not sure you could make a direct connection in terms of bribery, but it violated the United States Constitution, the emoluments clauses of the United States Constitution, or original anti corruption law. That was where it started from. It’s gone much, much further than that now, and you know, 270 million bucks in campaign support by one person, made possible by Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and in other Republican appointments in the Citizens United case, which says, okay, corporations or people, they have a free speech, right, as long as they’re, you know, writing their own ads. Well, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 19:28
my wife and I had a conversation about that the other day with city, you obviously understand it and studied it. What citizens need to know about Citizens United and knowing that that might have been, you know, the apple in the Garden of Eden, right? Like that’s probably at the heart of all this. That’s how Trump got elected. Look, I saw it on my timeline in 2016 when my father in law, who served in Vietnam, who loves this country, was openly sharing Russian propaganda. You could tell by the AI that was writing at the early AI that was right. Being the way the words like literally, and I saw it, and it was just conservative times conservative, you know, all the Cambridge Analytica, everything that went into 2016 it was a really dirty election, because it was a social media election at a time when Zuckerberg nobody knew how to combat it. And really Elon Musk’s combating of it was the buy it and wreck it. I was a journalist. Brian, you’ll appreciate this. The first word on my personal Twitter in the Twitter era was journalist. I was eliminated from Twitter within seven days of when Elon, Elon Musk bought it. And when you know, and then you write and you say, I, I was eliminated from Twitter within seven days of Elon Musk because journalists was the first word in my algorithm. And I’ve never been back on, um, they would never. They destroyed all my pick. I mean, everything was just gone within a week, you’ve been you’ve been exited. I mean, literally, not too different than what the ravens and the Orioles have done to me as a journal. Journalist, to say you’re not really a journalist anymore. Same as your federal lawyers. We’re not going to let you do your job anymore. We’re not going to give you access to do what you are licensed to do. And when that happens, you know what I do, I turn to I turn to attorneys. Brian and I had no recourse at all as a journalist, even though the Orioles and the Ravens plants publicly funded stadia, even though they’re allowing my Caucasian employee access, and I’m Venezuela like all of that, every attorney laughed me out. And I’m thinking like now that the shit is it, the fan for the country I know all we’ve got Are you or or maybe rogue military people. And that’s where we’re really getting to a strange place when we’re starting to talk about that. But all we, all we have, are attorneys. That’s that, that that is the last line of and I guess that the will of the people, but that would be bloodshed in most cultures. You know, across centuries. I don’t know where this will be if the courts aren’t strong enough, because I know this, and you know this, and everyone his integrity will, you know, he’s a morally bankrupt human. There will be no end to this unless it is stopped, and it has to be stopped by lawyers, that’s
Brian Frosh 22:12
absolutely right. And Nestor is, as you say, you know that process moves pretty slowly, and Trump is taking full advantage of that. I mean the idea that he’s tearing apart the US government firing, mass firings of government employees, that are, you know, baseless, that are he fired everybody who was a provisional employee on the pretext that they hadn’t done a good job. And yes, these folks are on probation for two years after they’re appointed. But that doesn’t mean you can fire them and say, Well, you all 10s, 10s of 1000s of you all did bad jobs who were getting rid of you. And the point is, he’s trying to hollow out federal government from the top to the bottom, he wants people in there who, whenever he wants something done, will say, Yes, Mr. Trump, that’s it. You know, nobody is going to stand up to him the way they did during his first term, where he had people who actually had experience in the paper called an
Nestor Aparicio 23:19
election judge and tried to roll an Election Judge like, I think to myself, if Johnny o did that, he’s in prison. If larry hogan did that, he’s in prison. If Wes Moore did that, he’s if anyone Barbara Bucha, if anyone in the history of Maryland, you know Spiro Agnew, you go to prison for doing that stuff like I I’m just blown away at the lawlessness and the support for it, that that that there really is a ground level of white power support in this country that will look the other way on any and all of this. And that’s the frightening part. That’s the part that doesn’t add up for a 56 year old citizen, yeah,
Brian Frosh 24:01
well, I mean, Nestor, I think you, you’re giving a little too much credit. He’s got a solid core of 30, 35% of people who you know, will kiss his feet no matter what he does. You know he, as he said, I could murder somebody in on Fifth Avenue and wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be a problem. That’s why he’s lived his life.
Nestor Aparicio 24:24
But, well, he ordered generals to take down Americans in the square A couple years ago when he held the Bible upside down, right? That’s on the record too, right? He he wanted military action against his citizens.
Brian Frosh 24:34
He just wanted, come on Nestor. He just wanted to shoot him in the legs. You
Nestor Aparicio 24:39
know, that’s all, yeah, well, is that okay? Is that I should ask you, is that okay? Well, he’s
Brian Frosh 24:44
looking for a general who will say it is. He’s fired. The ones who we know will say that it isn’t okay. And and that’s his, that’s his goal. He wants a bunch of yes men and yes women in in office. And when he wants something done, he. They won’t question it, they’ll just do it, and it means that the rest of us are in a lot of trouble. I mean, you speak out, you’re going to get if you’re not prosecuted, they’ll do something to try to hurt your business, or they’ll do something to try to hurt your family. I don’t think he’s above that in the least. You know, revoke your security security clearance. He’ll revoke government contract, even though you know the contract is enforceable in court, but he’ll say, Well, you know, you’ve done a lousy job. We’re not paying, and then you’re like the contractors that did the real estate work for him. You’ve got to hire a lawyer, you’ve got to go to court. You got to fight and spend 10s of 1000s of bucks in attorneys fees to recover. You know, whatever it is that he that he owes you, he’s he’s going to make his opponents suffer. That’s his it seems to be, you know, that what he’s all about is being vindictive, getting back at the people he thinks done him wrong,
Nestor Aparicio 26:10
retaliatory government. Uh, Brian frosh didn’t act in that manner as the Attorney General here in the great state of Maryland for a number of years. He’s now in in practice. What are you doing? Before I let you go? Because I know your time sure, we got a window. Please come out. Please come have a crab cake with me when you’re on Baltimore. What? What are you practicing, trying to keep people safe
Brian Frosh 26:27
so I’m technically not, not practicing law, per se. I’m giving advice to folks. I’m acting as a consultant. I do a lot of work with Maryland’s the state bars access Justice Commission. They do some work for Bloomberg Philanthropies on climate issues. And I try to keep myself busy trying to promote things, things like civil rights and what about media
Nestor Aparicio 26:54
rights? Let me know if you can get my media pass back with the Orioles and the Ravens while democracy falls apart, because that’s where I want to be standing when the, you know, when it all falls apart at home plate at Camden Yards in the publicly funded stadium, uh, Brian broshes, here, He is the former attorney general of Maryland. I gotta let you run. Please come have a crab cake. And I, I hope we’re, you know, the next time we talk, we’re finding better things to talk about where, quite frankly, because there’s a lot of great things going on, you know, we got a bridge read, but we got a lot of things going on that are local, but it’s really hard to think locally when this is going on down the road in DC,
Brian Frosh 27:25
it sure is. And thank you for what you’re doing, Nestor, I appreciate the opportunity to join you and really appreciate what you have to say. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 27:32
I’d cheapen the thing by not getting you a crab cake, so I owe you two next time out. Brian frosh is here, former Attorney General of the State of Maryland, still doing the good work. You can find him out on the interwebs. He is still tweeting and exiting and social meeting. All are brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. We will be back on the beat at Faith lease on the second of April. We hope to see you there. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
