TPM’s David Kurtz has been covering, in person, a hearing in Nashville in which the Trump administration sought to prove it did not pursue a vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man it erroneously imprisoned in El Salvador last year. Immediately upon leaving the courtroom, David sat down with me to record a Substack Live on what happened. Watch that here:

Kate and Josh discuss Trump’s extremely lengthy State of the Union, new information about an allegation against him in the Epstein files, and the dark scandal engulfing Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX).

The Post has an article today, an exclusive they say, about a draft executive order purportedly being circulated between the White House and various conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists in its broader circle. The proposed order claims that China has been found to be interfering in U.S. elections — specifically rigged the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor — and that as a result of that the president, as commander-in-chief, can and must directly take control of U.S. elections for the midterms and the 2028 presidential elections.

Two points merit saying on this. The first is that these are the rehashed, insane theories that were literally and figuratively laughed out of court in 2020. These are all absurd. Everybody knows they are absurd and false. The legal theory is what demands our attention. The authors of the order believe that if something is an emergency the president can invoke a kind of hidden dictator clause in the Constitution which allows him to assert powers which the Constitution explicitly forbids to him. This is not so. They secondarily believe in what we might call a “because” or “therefore” logic or clause. So because we have found that Threat X exists, the president can do whatever he wants to combat that threat. And as commander-in-chief, he can do anything he wants. This is also not so.

I wanted to alert you of something we’re on today. Among other things, it’s the kind of off-the-beaten-path reporting your membership dollars pay for. We sent David Kurtz to Nashville today for a hearing in the Abrego Garcia case. Since we’re a number of ICE murders and false imprisonments down the line at this point, remember that the Justice Department conceded that Abrego Garcia had been erroneously included among those sent last spring to the bespoke dungeon facility in El Salvador. He was brought back to the U.S. only after he was hit with a new indictment. His lawyers have argued to the judge in the case that the charges should be dismissed because this is a case of vindictive prosecution. Normally this is an extremely high bar for the defense to clear. But in this case, the judge replied by saying that he’s inclined to think that the defense is right. Today’s hearing was scheduled to give the government the opportunity to prove that the defense and (mostly) the judge are wrong.

You’ve probably seen some hints of it. But I wanted to focus your attention on a genuine piece of news out of the Epstein Files, even weeks after their original release. In 2019, a woman came forward and spoke to the FBI claiming that Donald Trump had assaulted her in the early 1980s. In her allegations, Jeffrey Epstein essentially provided her to Trump. Other files in the Epstein trove say that the FBI conducted four interviews with the woman. But only one of them was released in the larger trove — one that detailed her accusations against Epstein. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he went to view the unredacted version of the files that members of Congress can access and the missing interviews aren’t there either.

There have been other accusations against Trump in the files. But this one appears to be more specific and detailed. And there are various signs and reasons that the FBI took the allegations seriously: those reasons and details about the accusations are discussed in this NPR article once you get past the first few paragraphs. The accuser, according to one FBI note contained in the files, eventually refused to cooperate with the investigation.