The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Georgia raid seen as start of Trump's effort to corrupt elections ahead of midterms
30 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What recent actions has Trump taken regarding election integrity?
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Today was a hell of a news day. I mean, so much news going on today. We got more news today than we normally get in a week. And thanks to our show's amazing booking producers, and they are amazing, we somehow ended up with literally the perfect people to talk about all of it with, each part of it with.
As Donald Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, kinda sorta talked the talk at a press conference today about reducing tensions in Minneapolis. That guy is really dark and kinda evil, but he kinda sorta talked the talk today. Donald Trump just said tonight that he is not pulling back, not at all. Trump said that, so there's that, there's that.
And Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is gonna join me with his reaction to those new comments and for an update on what he is actually seeing on the ground in Minnesota. We're also getting our first reports on the condition of Liam Ramos, the five-year-old child that ICE detained in Minneapolis and shipped 1,300 miles south to a detention center in Dilley, Texas.
Congressman Joaquin Castro was one of the only members of Congress who was able to meet with Liam and his father. And he's going to join me to tell us how Liam is doing and what he saw while he was there. Meanwhile, tonight, it looks like there could be a deal.
It looks like there is a deal, it seems, to avoid a government shutdown that includes two weeks to negotiate major reforms to how immigration agents operate, which would be a very big win for Democrats. Not everything they want, but certainly a big win. They're not in control of the Senate, remember.
And Senator Chris Van Hollen has been one of the most outspoken critics of Trump's immigration policies. He was among the first senators to say he will not vote to fund ISIS lawlessness. And he's going to be my guest here later this hour as well. And Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, is going to be here at the table with me.
And in a moment, you're going to understand why I absolutely had to talk to Senator Mark Warner tonight. But first, I want to go through a couple of other things happening. Because as national outrage against this administration continues to grow, the current occupant of the Oval Office is coping in, well, increasingly unhinged ways is really the only way to put it.
Because last night, the increasingly unpopular and increasingly cranky grandpa president holed himself up and went on a social media rage posting spree, posting more than 50 times to his social media account in the span of just a few hours. He reposted attacks on everyone from Governor Tim Walz, of course, to Gavin Newsom, to Joe Biden and Barack Obama, to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
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Chapter 2: How is Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison addressing ICE's actions?
Mr. President, I will be the first to brief you once we have that information collected. But you're right. We are finding documents literally tucked away in the back of safes and random offices in these bags and in other areas, which again speaks to the intent of those who are trying to hide the truth from the American people.
Yeah, that was the director of national intelligence assuring the president that she was hunting down information to support his widely debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The proof was in the safes and random offices in bags. Who knows? Again, that was over the summer. And we really we haven't seen that much of her since then, aside from the sun salutations, I suppose.
That is until yesterday when she was seen literally creeping in the shadows of the Trump administration's latest abuse of power. That's Gabbard last night at the edge of a loading bay at the elections office of Fulton County, Georgia, while the facility was being raided by the FBI.
It is giving Homeland the show meets the Bourne identity, maybe some other things right down to the lurking behind a pillar and a hat. That's what it's giving to me. Now, this facility is where the FBI hauled away pallets of boxes containing ballots from the 2020 election.
And we now know that in conducting that raid, those FBI agents were executing a search warrant sought by a Trump appointed U.S. attorney whose district is 500 miles away in St. Louis, Missouri. A guy by the name of Thomas Albus. So why is a U.S. attorney in St. Louis seizing ballots from Fulton County, Georgia?
Well, two people familiar with the matter tell Bloomberg that this Trump-appointed U.S. attorney has been empowered by Attorney General Pam Bondi to conduct nationwide investigations into Trump's false claims of election fraud. And Albus isn't he's not just a typical MAGA loyalist.
He was once the right hand man of former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt, one of the chief pushers of the big lie. And not only did Schmidt sign an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results back in 2020, he was a notorious pusher of election disinformation.
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Chapter 3: What did Rep. Joaquin Castro observe during his visit to ICE detention?
And now his little or big protege is in charge of the nationwide investigations into so-called election fraud. So, yeah, that is as insane as it sounds. And it is a space to definitely watch. And then there's the role of the director of national intelligence, who is also somehow involved in all of this. Here she is in a different spy thriller get-up today.
That job is supposed to be about collecting intelligence from around the world and analyzing it for potential threats to U.S. national security. And that should be more than a full-time job. And yes, those can include legitimate threats to election security, especially from foreign interference. But let's be real. That is not what we are talking about here.
So why the hell was Tulsi Gabbard in Georgia? Well, Excellent reporting on this one, too. According to The Wall Street Journal, Tulsi Gabbard is now leading an administration wide effort to hunt for proof of tampering in the election that Trump lost more than five years ago.
And while that is itself equal parts embarrassing for him that he's still so obsessed with this and so insecure and very alarming, what's really concerning is what she's going to do with the information.
Because as the Wall Street Journal also reports, Gabbard is expected to prepare a report on her work, and the administration has discussed executive orders on voting ahead of the midterm elections, two of the officials who spoke to the journal said. Now, in other words, this is not just a backwards-looking investigation to vindicate a very insecure president's false election claims.
This is about finding excuses to interfere with voting in the next election. And White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said something that made that crystal clear when she spoke to The Wall Street Journal. She gave them a comment, I guess. She said President Trump and his entire team are committed to ensuring a U.S.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Senate negotiations on ICE funding?
election can never, ever be rigged again. Director Gabbard is playing a key lead role in this important effort. And tonight, at the premiere of his wife's multi-million dollar flop of a movie, as in it costs that much for them to buy, Trump said this.
Mr. President, what was Tulsi Gabbard doing at an election center in Georgia today? She's working very hard on trying to keep the election safe. And she's done a very good job. And they, as you know, they got into the votes. She got to sign the judge's order in Georgia. And you're going to see some interesting things happening.
Okay, so just to put a fine point on this, the White House is telling us that they are going to use this raid in Georgia and any other information they gather, because who knows what else they are planning, we don't currently know, as the basis of a report the director of intelligence
of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who promised last August she would dig into and look into the 2020 election results, that a report she will file that will then serve as a justification for potentially putting in place, through executive order, according to the Wall Street Journal, more restrictive measures in advance of the next election.
That's what they seem to be very clearly telegraphing here. That's what I am hearing and reading from all of this. Now, we have long known that Trump's stolen election conspiracies are completely baseless.
And the people who promoted those theories and tried to help him overturn the election results have all filed lawsuits, criminal charges, and they faced criminal charges and disbarment for their role in that scheme. They were completely discredited. But now the Trump administration appears to want to bring those complete kooks back into the spotlight.
I mean, this morning, Trump's pardon attorney, Ed Martin, posted a photo from his official DOJ account of himself with election conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell. Remember her with the caption? Good morning, America. How are you? I mean, that's not weird and freaky. I don't know what is. And remember that late night rage posting I was telling you about?
Well, one of the posts was about a debunked conspiracy about Chinese and Italian satellites somehow being responsible for the 2020 election results. Trump is bringing all of his wildest election conspiracies back.
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Chapter 5: How is Tulsi Gabbard involved in Trump's election-related initiatives?
He's trying to promote all of the cuckoo birds that surrounded him in it, not just to gripe about the last election, but to use them as some sort of bogus justification to limit voting in the next one. And it's clear that interfering in that election has been his goal for some time now. We all know this.
I mean, everything he does always seems to lead back to finding a way to control how people vote, whether it's scaring them or making it harder. It's why he's told Minnesota that the only way he'll remove ICE agents from their state is if they turn over their voter rolls. And it's why leading Democratic governors have warned us repeatedly that this was coming.
We know that there will be efforts to compromise the election or to dissuade people from showing up, to scare people away, to threaten people.
They do not believe in fair and free elections.
Our republic, our democracy is on the line. We all need to wake up. It's not a leap to say that he's doing this because he wants to affect the 2026 elections in favor of MAGA Republicans.
There's no great mystery about what's going on here. Donald Trump is weaker than he's ever been. The American people are angrier at him than they've ever been. And so Donald Trump is taking his most drastic step yet to inject chaos into our next election. My first guest tonight is already demanding an investigation and demanding answers.
Joining me now is Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Warner, I just want to start. You have followed election integrity. You have led investigations for so many years. I just tried to give my best assessment there. It feels like a five alarm fire here. But I just and I outlined I tried to outline Tulsi Gabbard's new assignment.
But what do you what do you think is going on here? What should people watching understand?
Well, Jen, unfortunately, you may have actually understated the threat. So as somebody who led the bipartisan investigation into the Russia intervention in our 2016 election, I've been on this topic for years. And let me surprise your viewers on my first comment. The first Trump administration actually did a pretty damn good job in making the 2020 election safe.
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Chapter 6: What concerns are raised about the legality of the Georgia raid?
And it's just it's really hard to watch. And I can't imagine what your visit was like yesterday. But there are so many of these other kids, 3,800 of them, who are detained around the country. And you met with literally hundreds of people yesterday, family members, their kids. Tell us about what you heard from them.
And I raise this in part because the lawyer who's handling Liam and his father's case has asserted that the two entered the country legally and followed instructions. every immigration procedure by the book. How many stories like that did you hear? And what were the conditions of these other kids and family members that you saw yesterday?
You know, immigration and the border are always some of the thorniest issues in American politics. But one thing you would hear over and over again is many Americans saying, we want people to do it the right way. And if they do it the right way, if they come in legally, then we can respect that and accept that. Well, that's exactly what Liam and his family did.
They used the CBP1 app, which was an app that the Biden administration used so that people wouldn't rush the border and you wouldn't have chaos at the border. And so they used that app and they were allowed permission to come into the country and wait for their asylum case to be heard.
And so there are many, we asked at one point how many people use the CBP app, and there were a lot of people that raised their hands. And so these were people that did it the right way. The other thing is there isn't a single criminal at the Dilley Detention Center. And I know that because ICE told me that. You can't have a criminal conviction to get sent there.
So it's 1,100 people, scores of children, if not hundreds of children, who were there, whose parents committed no crime. These kids obviously committed no crime.
There's a two-month-old baby who's been there for several days, a little girl who kept coming up to me and hugging my leg and asking us to help her get out of there, a nine-year-old boy who was picked up on New Year's Eve and spent the new year getting processed, taken in to the Dilley Detention Center. And you asked about the conditions.
People complained about not receiving proper and prompt medical attention, about contaminated food and water. And so these facilities are like prisons. There's cameras all around. Your movement is controlled. where you can go is controlled, who you can be around is controlled.
So it's no place for a two-month-old baby or a five-year-old child, or certainly for people who are not quote-unquote criminal illegal aliens, as Donald Trump has said. These were people in our community who don't deserve to be in that prison.
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