Bill Moyers

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. President Trump still will not admit he lost. He tweets and repeats the lie that the election was a fraud, the vote rigged, the election stolen. There are fewer than ten weeks before he must leave office, but he refuses to cooperate with Joe Biden in the transfer of power, denying the man who beat him by over five million votes the resources usually provided to a president-elect. Trump has flooded the courts with lawsuits contesting the results, seeking recounts, trying to stop the certification of ballots in battle ground states. Washington grows more paralyzed, the country more polarized, the rule of law in limbo. Here to assess what’s going on are two of the country’s most experienced lawyers in election litigation. Daryl Bristow is the former senior partner of the multinational law firm Baker Botts LLP, based in Houston. A graduate of the University of Oklahoma and Harvard Law School, he worked for George W. Bush’s legal team on two Florida lawsuits regarding balloting for the 2000 presidential election. David Berg founded the firm Berg & Androphy, with offices in Houston and New York City. He has recently taken Trump and others to court over their efforts to use the Postal Service to discredit and dismiss mail-in ballots. He’s written two acclaimed books — the memoir RUN BROTHER RUN, and THE TRIAL LAWYER: WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN. Here to talk with Daryl Bristow and David Berg is Bill Moyers.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. What is the shadow network behind the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court? Who selected and groomed her for this moment? Who’s financing the campaign to get her confirmed? Who’s counting on her to side with President Trump if he’s losing the election and wants the Supreme Court to declare him the winner? For the answers, Bill Moyers talks to journalist and investigator Anne Nelson about her book: SHADOW NETWORK: MEDIA, MONEY, AND THE SECRET HUB OF THE RADICAL RIGHT. In it, she exposes the powerful and little-known Council for National Policy, the organization behind the conservative movement of the past 40 years – from Ronald Reagan’s secret war in Central America to their success in turning the Supreme Court into the Trump Court. Ms. Nelson has received the Livingston Award for her journalism and a Guggenheim Fellowship for historical research.  Here to talk with her is Bill Moyers.

Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. Lisa Graves returns to discuss President Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. A trained lawyer, Ms. Graves is one of the nation's foremost experts on judicial appointments. She served as chief counsel for nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and as a career deputy to two attorneys general, one a Democrat, the other a Republican. She has spent the past ten years investigating the impact of dark money on judicial selection, public policy, and elections. She is currently Executive Director of True North Research, a nonprofit watchdog group focused on legal policy and ethics in federal and state government. Here to talk with Lisa Graves is Bill Moyers.

In this web exclusive, Bill Moyers and four historians dissect the big lie Trump rode to power: the Birther lie. Nell Painter, historian and Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University; Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School; Christopher Lebron, assistant professor of African-American studies and philosophy at Yale University; and Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Professor of Government, Hamilton College discuss the fertile ground on which the birther lie was sown: our nation’s history of white supremacy.