Hawk Podcasts

The government's own dismissal filing tells the story. According to the motion, it was only after the indictment that the Department of the Interior provided additional documents showing the damage to the reflecting pool stemmed from a flawed installation by a contractor rushing to finish before the America 250 celebrations, not from vandalism. The sealant had reportedly begun peeling almost immediately after the renovation. Hawk notes the filing tries to shift blame to the Interior Department, which he argues only underscores that felony charges were brought against an American without an independent investigation.

Hawk sets the dismissal against...

That reversal drew a sharp response. Senator Thom Tillis posted that despite Trump saying the fund was dead, he clearly intends to resurrect what Tillis called the payout pot, and that Blanche, whom Tillis considers qualified, likely will not be confirmed because of it. The Judiciary Committee vote is set for Tuesday, the same day as the Michigan Senate primary.

Hawk makes his recurring point: Trump could have pardoned the January 6th defendants in his final two weeks in 2021 but did not, and now wants to compensate them. He also connects the dismissal of the reflecting pool...

Hawk walks through the post line by line, noting that Trump could have pardoned those defendants during his final two weeks in office in 2021 but did not, and disputing Trump's characterization of the Mar-a-Lago search, which recovered classified documents under a lawful warrant. He argues this is why Cornyn and Thom Tillis want the fund and the related IRS provision killed in writing.

The second half turns to the Michigan Senate primary. With Dr. Abdul El-Sayed leading Representative Haley Stevens by double digits days before Tuesday's vote, and a Detroit debate poll putting El-Sayed at 95 percent, Stevens...

The details are remarkable. Comey's attorneys report that the Secret Service tracked his phone location without a warrant as he drove home from North Carolina, that roughly 209,000 items reading 8647, 8646, or 8645 have been sold on Amazon, and that figures who made far more explicit statements were never charged. The indictment was signed by a prosecutor who had been an assistant US attorney for two days, and the government's key witness reportedly showed clear bias and thought 86 was a restaurant term.

The centerpiece is the mob argument. To claim 86 is Mafia slang for murder, the government reportedly turned to...

Flanagan called AIPAC Craig's biggest career funder and pledged to refuse its money, saying the group labeled her a threat after she backed Bernie Sanders' resolution to block offensive arms sales to Israel. She noted meeting with AIPAC, J Street, and being endorsed by Bend the Arc. Craig countered that Flanagan was being disingenuous, citing Star Tribune reporting that Flanagan had met with AIPAC and submitted a position paper, and argued for a two-state solution while calling for a dramatic rebuild of Gaza with a rethink of US policy toward Netanyahu's government.

Hawk sets this against the...

On the campaign trail, Hawk covers the Michigan Democratic Senate primary debate, where a Detroit Fox affiliate's instant poll had 95 percent of viewers saying Dr. Abdul El-Sayed beat Representative Haley Stevens, who was pressed repeatedly on the roughly 46 million dollars in AIPAC-affiliated spending backing her.

He also digs into the growing questions about Mitch McConnell, unseen publicly for about six weeks, whose office has released two photos but no video or audio. Hawk lays out the August 4th Kentucky special-election deadline and argues a still image is not proof of a senator's capacity to serve. Rounding out...

The dismissal follows a Texas judge tossing Patel's case against former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi, whose on-air remarks the court called protected hyperbole. Patel has also sued the Atlantic and reporter over an article about his tenure, a suit Hawk expects to be dismissed as well, and he plans a separate video on that motion.

Hawk's larger point is about why these suits get filed at all. He compares them to Donald Trump's defamation claims against ABC and CBS, which produced large settlements despite what Hawk argues were weak legal footings, and suggests Patel is following that...

Hawk makes a factual point often lost in the coverage: as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci had no authority to order anyone to do anything. The office advises the president and offers recommendations to states, and during the first year of the pandemic Fauci served under Donald Trump.

The heart of the video is the mortality data. Hawk walks through peer-reviewed research, including a University of California Irvine study finding that heavily Republican counties saw roughly 73 more deaths per 100,000 than Democratic-leaning ones, and a JAMA Internal Medicine study finding excess death...

Hawk pushes back on how that gap is being framed. The headline 510 million Republican figure folds in the roughly 400 million sitting in Donald Trump's personal super PAC, money Hawk notes Trump has not spent to help a single Republican candidate this cycle. Set that aside, he argues, and the comparison looks very different. He also explains why so many Democratic donors abandoned the DNC after 2016, when hacked emails revealed the committee favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, and why small-dollar donors now give directly to candidates instead.

From there Hawk covers a New York Times report describing...

The case has been marked by unusual developments. Hawk recounts the reporting that those on the trip deactivated their social media in the immediate aftermath, that the family retained attorney Benjamin Crump and arranged a second independent autopsy that was complicated by missing tissue, and that questions have been raised about the local investigation. He is careful to note that what happened is not known and that these are open questions, not conclusions.

The new development is an analysis of the officially released 911 audio by an audio engineer, Janetta Brantley, whose breakdown is circulating widely on TikTok...

The heart of the video is the math. Passing anything through the filibuster takes 60 votes, and Hawk argues the SAVE Act, which would end mail-in voting nationwide, cannot get there. Several Republican senators oppose it, in part because millions of Republican voters use mail-in ballots. And Thune does not even have 51 Republican votes to nuke the filibuster, especially with a caucus that has cooled on Trump.

Hawk lays out why the relationship has soured. Trump backed primary challengers against Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn and pushed Thom Tillis toward the exit, while Susan Collins faces a tough...

The accountability trail is the story. The FBI investigation that would normally follow a fatal shooting by federal officers was reportedly halted. The federal government withheld its evidence for seven months, turning it over to Hennepin County only in the days before Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing. Roughly 75 percent of the Minneapolis US Attorney's office resigned during this period, and more than half the prosecutions brought against protesters have since collapsed.

Hawk offers his own reading of the Pretti footage, noting Pretti was legally carrying, and argues the sequence suggests an accidental discharge during the disarm. He stresses...

Hawk, who lived in Mill Valley and still keeps a place in Marin, gives a tour of the county along the way, from Sausalito and Mount Tam to Tiburon and Point Reyes, and explains why one of the wealthiest places in America was always likely to turn up in those documents. The student's slideshow, published by the award-winning Redwood Bark, catalogued mentions of Larkspur, Corte Madera, Tiburon, Mill Valley, Novato, Kentfield, and more, with documents backing each claim.

Then came the legal threat. A woman named in one slide demanded the post be taken down or she...

The geography tells the story. South Carolina saw more than a thousand cases centered on an insular religious community in Spartanburg County. Utah is now the epicenter with 441 cases across 22 of its 29 counties, tied partly to an FLDS community, though state officials point to statewide erosion of coverage rather than any single enclave. National kindergarten MMR coverage has fallen from 95.2 percent in 2020 to 92.5 percent in 2025, below the herd immunity threshold, and religious exemptions have risen roughly fivefold since 2010.

The heart of the video is Amy Maxmen's Wired piece, in which six Utah pediatricians describe treating these children...

The middle of the episode turns inward. Reflecting on the Texas and Maine primaries, Hawk revisits his own habit of reducing elections to seat math, and admits that focusing purely on numbers led him to dismiss voices and communities he should have listened to. He is still working through what that means.

From there he covers James Lankford's comments, James Clyburn's remarks about a photo from an Abdul El-Sayed rally in Michigan and the 30 million in AIPAC-backed spending behind Haley Stevens, the frustration with politicians serving into their eighties and nineties, and Trump's claim at a Georgia...

The conversation widens to the global picture: why Iran and Ukraine have shown that larger militaries can be fought to a standstill, what that means for China and Taiwan, and how Gulf allies feel exposed. They connect the war's cost, officially put at 37.5 billion but estimated far higher, to defense and oil interests, and to a Congress they argue has stopped representing constituents.

The back half turns to elections. Both stress that the president has no power over elections run by states, walk through the window between Election Day and January that concerns them most, and cite...

The polling is the throughline. A new American Research Group poll puts Trump's approval at 30 percent against 67 percent disapproval, below the mark where George W. Bush left office, while the Iran war itself draws just 29 percent approval. Hawk pairs that with a rising US service member death toll, now four killed at a base in Jordan, and Jason Crow's blunt assessment that Americans are done with endless Middle East conflict.

From there Hawk moves fast through the day's stories: a measles case count surging past 2,295, the highest in 35 years, Trump's super PAC reportedly hoarding 400 million while not...

The speech matters less for its facts than for its signal. Hawk reads it as telegraphing that this administration will not accept the results of the midterms, and he puts it alongside the rest of the week: Jay Clayton declining to say who won in 2020, Todd Blanche testifying the president may direct prosecutions of his enemies, and Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller announcing an expansion of groups designated as domestic terrorists under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.

His practical warning is about conspiracy charges, using a Texas ICE protest case where one participant reportedly received 30 years, and how...

North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis is now threatening to block the nomination unless Blanche meets personally with survivors within a day or two. The committee splits 11 Republicans to 10 Democrats, so a single Republican no vote stops it from reaching the floor, and Tillis says the earliest vote is roughly two weeks out. John Cornyn has separately voiced concerns over the settlement fund. Hawk is skeptical either will follow through.

Bensky's testimony covers the January release of Epstein files in which, despite assurances about protecting identities, hundreds of victims were reportedly named and some addresses left unredacted. Hawk...

Then come the numbers. A Center for Strategic and International Studies report covering 1994 through 2020 found that right-wing extremists carried out the large majority of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the United States, roughly two-thirds in 2019 and over 90 percent in early 2020, and were responsible for 335 of 357 domestic terror deaths across that period, about 93 percent. None of that appears in Miller's speech.

Hawk's argument is that "political terrorist" here functions as a label for anyone who disagrees with Donald Trump, not a description of violence. He points to Republicans controlling the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court...

Jay Clayton, questioned by Jon Ossoff and then Mark Warner, gets as close as any Trump nominee has to acknowledging 2020, allowing that Biden won the Electoral College and that Congress certified it, while still avoiding the popular vote. Hawk notes the pattern across every nominee for a year and a half.

The real news is John Cornyn. Pressed on the roughly $1.8 billion settlement fund, Blanche did not reassure him, and Cornyn told CNN's Manu Raju he is truly undecided, with Thom Tillis wanting the fund fully dead. On an 11-10 Judiciary Committee, one Republican no vote ends...

The defendants include the Heritage Foundation and its employees Victoria Coates and Robert Greenway, Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Markwayne Mullin, Todd Blanche, Kristi Noem, plus Betar and Canary Mission. Khalil's theory traces a line from the Heritage plan known as Project Esther, written after October 7th, to the targeting of activists by those groups, to his own arrest and months in detention during which he missed the birth of his first child. He is a green card holder married to a US citizen.

Hawk walks through the evidence the complaint cites, largely the defendants' own public posts...

Hawk focuses on Springfield, Ohio, where he grew up nearby, using two newsletters by Jim Swift at the Bulwark. Haitians came to Springfield at the request of the Republican governor and mayor to fill unfilled manufacturing jobs and reverse decades of population decline. They filled factories, opened businesses, started churches, and stabilized the city, until Donald Trump and JD Vance spread the fabricated story about immigrants eating pets, after which Pastor Carl Ruby says business relocation inquiries stopped entirely.

The numbers and the human cost both land hard. Ohio's Haitian population produces an estimated $160 million in annual...

The emails center on Ed Martin Jr., the right-wing lawyer pushed out as acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. and then parked at DOJ headquarters to run the weaponization working group. Blanche wrote "I am frustrated" within a month, set up weekly check-ins, and reassigned investigative lanes to his own deputies. Hawk covers Martin's role in the Letitia James mortgage case, the January 6th review, and the Biden auto pen probe, complete with a look at what an auto pen actually is.

Along the way Hawk plays Andrew Weissmann on the one question he would ask...

Hawk connects the killings to the legal warning from his previous video, that murder and assault are state charges a president cannot pardon, and to a Fourth Amendment argument about race-based stops, referencing an MSNBC segment and New York Times writer Mara Gay. He also previews Trump's Thursday prime time speech on the 2020 election, noting the lapsed federal statutes of limitations, and Dan Abrams on the SAVE Act.

He then covers the Michigan Senate primary, where AIPAC-backed Haley Stevens faces Abdul El-Sayed for Gary Peters' open seat and is being mocked over a viral clip, before closing...

Using a Nicolle Wallace MSNBC segment and his copy of Jack Smith's indictment, Hawk revisits the record. Trump was indicted on more than 40 felony counts across two jurisdictions for trying to overturn 2020, lost some 60 lawsuits, and his attorneys and fake electors were later charged. He also notes the reported White House task force preparing to release documents, and figures like Tulsi Gabbard and Bill Pulte tied to the declassification push.

Hawk walks through Ari Melber's timeline of the 2020 effort, from Rudy Giuliani's suits and the fake elector slates to the pressure on Brad Raffensperger and Mike Pence...

At the center is a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against the IRS and the Treasury Department after a contractor leaked his tax information. As Hawk lays out, the suit appears to have been time-barred by a two-year statute of limitations, sought far more than the roughly $10,000 the statute allowed, and pitted Trump against agencies he controls, meaning there was no genuine adversity between the parties. The judge, joined by a brief from 35 former federal judges, described it as a fraud on the court.

The collusive settlement reportedly created a large compensation fund and an addendum, signed by...

Hawk walks through the legal reasoning. A presidential pardon reaches only federal offenses, so a future pardon would leave state prosecutions untouched. He points to how murder is charged at the state level, citing the Tyler Robinson case and the prosecution of the man accused of killing Minnesota's House Speaker, and notes that murder carries no statute of limitations.

Looking ahead, Hawk argues that if Democrats take the House this fall, oversight committees will spend two years documenting the conduct of federal immigration agents and could hand that evidence to state attorneys general and county district attorneys...

The Trump arc is the spine of the video. Hawk revisits Graham's 2016 warning that nominating Trump would destroy the party, his endorsement of Jeb Bush, and Trump giving out Graham's cell phone number, then the turn: endorsing Trump, working to overturn the 2020 election Joe Biden won, condemning Trump after January 6th, and getting back on board weeks later.

Hawk also traces Graham's close friendship with Joe Biden, recalling the loss of Beau Biden and the Biden family's history, and how that warmth curdled into calls for impeachment over Afghanistan. He closes on Graham's fealty to Benjamin Netanyahu...

Hawk builds his assessment around three moments he calls flashes of moral clarity: Graham's early 2016 warning that nominating Donald Trump would destroy the Republican Party, his Senate floor speech denouncing Trump after the January 6th insurrection, and his past defense of Joe Biden as a fundamentally good and decent man. In each case, Hawk argues, Graham soon reversed course and returned as one of Trump's most loyal foot soldiers.

The throughline, in Hawk's telling, is a man who had a moral core and principles but proved willing to jettison them entirely for power. He contends Graham will...

Hawk, a former criminal defense attorney, walks through the evidence now in the record, including the Discord group chat first reported by journalist Ken Klippenstein and additional text messages reported by the New York Times. He explains why this far exceeds the probable cause standard, why Twiggs received state and federal immunity, and why he expects Robinson to be held over for trial and, absent something dramatic, convicted.

Along the way Hawk reacts to Fox News commentary from John Yoo on how the judge is running the courtroom, credits Megyn Kelly's legally sound take, and addresses the...

Much of the argument centers on the recorded testimony of Lance Twiggs, Robinson's roommate and romantic partner, who has been granted state and federal immunity in exchange for testimony. Hawk walks through why spousal privilege does not apply, how hearsay and the statement-against-interest exception work, and why the prosecution wants to frame the interview as Robinson's confession.

Along the way Hawk covers time-coded transcripts and redactions, why a televised hearing could complicate jury selection, the judge holding a prosecutor in contempt, Erica Kirk's presence in the gallery, and the paved-over crime scene the defense is questioning. His...

Marjorie Taylor Greene brings her McConnell and AIPAC claims to The View, which gives Hawk an opening on a subject close to him: the roughly $60 million AIPAC has poured into congressional races this cycle, Miriam Adelson's spending against Thomas Massie over the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and where that leaves both parties.

George Conway flatly calls Donald Trump an adjudicated rapist, pointing to the E. Jean Carroll verdict, while CNN's Harry Enton lays out a Democratic primary turnout edge heading toward the midterms and the fight for the House and Senate. Hawk closes on a construction skyscraper...

The rest of the video turns to Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, credibly accused by Jenny Racicot of a violent 2021 sexual assault in reporting Hawk finds credible and Platner denies as categorically false. Hawk points out that Platner's two-minute response video spent only about fifteen seconds on the allegation before thanking voters, and walks through Racicot's CNN interview with Jake Tapper.

A Wedgewood poll cited by Mediaite found 75% of Maine voters believe Platner should exit the race if another scandal broke. Hawk criticizes commenters on the left who dismiss Racicot, compares the response to how E. Jean...

Hawk, a former trial attorney, walks through the reporting, the accuser's account as told to Politico across three interviews, and the corroborating material the outlet says it reviewed. He notes the Maine statute of limitations leaves fifteen years in which criminal charges could still be brought, though no charges have been filed and the claims remain unproven.

The heart of the video is a question about the Democratic Party. Hawk argues the left should be a party that takes credible allegations from women seriously rather than one that excuses the behavior, contrasting it with Republican support for...

Hawk argues it is an affordability problem. Zohran Mamdani's winning mayoral platform was built on housing costs, rent control, free transit, daycare, and taxing the rich. Those policies poll extremely well. The word socialism polls badly. Paul Krugman's Substack draws the distinction clearly: what most Americans actually support is social democracy, a market system with progressive taxation, safety nets, and regulation to limit inequality. DSA co-chair Megan Romer put it plainly after the Colorado result, telling the Democratic establishment they had been warned. Ro Khanna weighed in immediately after the race.

Half of Americans cannot meet their...

Trump's 2025 financial disclosure showing $2.2 billion in personal income, much of it from crypto, is drawing backlash even from Republican voters in Florida. CNN aired a supercut of Trump on the 2016 campaign trail ripping politicians who enrich themselves in office, nearly ten years to the day before his own disclosure dropped.

John Fetterman appeared on Fox News to say the only thing that would make him leave the Democratic Party is if it turns on Israel, a position held by 80 to 90 percent of the Democratic voting base. Joe Manchin publicly encouraged Fetterman to go independent. Hawk closes with...

The headline finding: fourteen of twenty-one study participants, two thirds, had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy. Hawk reads quotes from participants by name throughout the study, including a Wyoming homeschooling mother who says she does not like the word democracy, a Michigan retiree who says if they had a democracy it would be a problem, a Wyoming delivery driver who says every small town would be outvoted by cities, and a South Carolina woman who calls democracy two wolves and one sheep deciding who is for dinner.

Hawk also addresses JVL's core thesis, that...

Hugh Hewitt praises the ruling while pivoting quickly to celebrating Kavanaugh's concurrence encouraging Congress to pass a law restricting birthright citizenship. Hawk responds by noting that Congress cannot even get all Republican votes for the Save Act, let alone pass a constitutional amendment. Lisa Rubin analyzes Kavanaugh's partial dissent in detail, with Hawk describing Kavanaugh as the kid in class who always needs to be different for attention. Mike Johnson responds to the ruling live on air, with Hawk pointing out that the plain language of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause leaves no wiggle room for the executive order...

The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett. Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment while dissenting in part. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Neil Gorsuch. The court grounded its decision in the historical context of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, tracing the language back to English common law, the Dred Scott decision and its widespread condemnation, Attorney General Edward Bates' wartime opinion on citizenship, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the court's prior precedent in United States v. Wong...