EPISODE 208: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Special Counsel Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald Trump’s stolen classified documents conspiracy in which Trump ignored a subpoena to return every classified document, committed Obstruction of Justice and violated the Espionage Act by hiding them from his own attorney’s search in order to retain them, and then somehow utilized them in post-presidency business deals with one of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia.

AND as evidence: Jack Smith has nothing less than the real time hand-written notes from Trump’s own attorney. The real-time record (one analyst describes it as “Special Counsel Smith strikes gold”) could be enough to put Trump in prison for ten years PER COUNT for not just willfully retaining classified documents, but deliberately HIDING THEM to keep his own lawyer from finding them and giving them back to the authorities – a brazen violation of a key part of the Espionage Act.

And from a separate sourced story and even more astonishingly, it’s clear the Special Counsel is ALSO pursuing evidence that Trump may have given, or traded, or SOLD classified documents to China, France, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and/or the United Arab Emitates. Whether the evidence can be obtained – whether it even exists – isn’t clear. On the other hand, Jack Smith didn’t pick the names of seven countries out of a hat.

B-Block (19:23) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Congratulations, Anderson Cooper, you've escaped 4th Place! Chris Wallace? Not so much. SOMETHING good came from that network-ending Trump Town Hall: E. Jean Carroll IS suing Trump again. And the real nightmare of the fake AI of the "explosions" that never happened at the Pentagon and White House? The AI will only get more convincing (22:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend claims Brittney Griner is a "man;" the GOP wants a NATIONAL stand-your-ground right to murder law; and what does it profit a man to run for president if he loses his face?

C-Block (27:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My God, it's 23 years since I quit SportsCenter to go try my hand at news at NBC. The story's been told a dozen times in a dozen ways, none of them accurately. Especially the part of how an unexpected development after I quit - the arrival of a letter from the father of an autistic boy - caused me to go back to my bosses and say I was willing to stay, at least for one show a week.

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