Jack - A Mueller Christmas

Episode Date: December 26, 2017

For our Christmas episode, we’re joined again by a fan favorite, Jesse Egan! As always, we recap Trump/Russia news from the past week & discuss a few new revelations!

Hey, it's Kimberly Host of The Start Me Up Podcast. If you like your politics with some loose talk and salty language, you're going to love my show. I interview the coolest people like Mary Trump, Kathy Griffin, and DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. The Start Me Up Podcast has an easygoing, casual style and a strong emphasis on left-leaning politics. We also have Frank discussions about sex and more than a few spirited rants. Just visit patreon.com slash start me up or wherever you get your podcast and start listening today.

So to be clear Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time, a two, in that campaign, and I didn't have,

and I have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin? I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find

the 30,000 emails that are missing. So, it is political. You're a communist! No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession, I'm a capitalist. APPLAUSE Hey, thanks for joining us. This is Mueller, she wrote. I'm A.G.

I work for the federal government, so I go by a pseudonym, because if I didn't, I could be in violation of the Hatch Act. Meanwhile, our president has removed the words E. Pluribus Unum from the Presidential Challenge coin and replaced it with Make America Great Again and sells them online like a draft dodging asshole that doesn't understand what a challenge coin is or how it works. With me, as always, is Jordan Coburn. Hello, how's it going everyone? Awesome and joining us today again, the incomparable Jesse Egan. Hey, thanks having me back. Hey you are a favorite man we've got we got the most hits when you were on so we're having you on again we're using your ass. All right cool. All right so uh Jolise is out this week but she'll likely be back next week

and uh let's roll right into it with just the facts. Yeah. I was doing my just trying to do Jolise. Oh, good. Thank you very much. Yeah. Jolise. It's a little Jolise. All right. So Sunday, let's start with Sunday. Mueller's team responded to the accusations that he obtained the GSA emails illegally. If you remember last week, Mueller had got all the GSA emails from the transition team. They were using government computers on a government server. The GSA is a general, what is it? The administration. What are they called again? The government services administration. That's correct. And so, yeah, he got all the government services administration emails from the entire transition

and he obtained them legally. Now, Mueller and his crew never usually released statements. They're pretty quiet. And I'm sure that's by design, but they actually released a statement on this pretty immediately, been pretty short order. And he said, quote, when we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process. Drop the word criminal in there twice. I like that. I like that. Now.

It was a smooth criminal. Now, I work for the government, and I can assure you that at every endpoint, when you're logging in to any app or any program that you're using, and even when you log into Windows itself, when you log into the computer, there is a warning saying, don't expect any privacy. This is a government computer. GSA also has that. I remember Trump was trying to, Trump's lawyers were trying to claim executive privilege, but he wasn't the president yet, so,

haha, nice try. And then attorney client privilege, whatever. So he's got all their emails, all their emails from the transition team. So did it appear, I didn't, and correctly, if my memory's wrong, I thought, all I was saying, well, we asked for these a while back, they gave it to us, that's that you're just finding out about it, and that's kind of the issue.

Yes. The Trump team was like, wait, wait, they got these? Well, some stories broke that were backed up by some of the emails that were gathered. And so, including, you know, Flynn telling some top campaign officials that he was going to meet with Russia Carter Page, stuff like that. So some of those stories broke, and then everyone's like, oh, how do you get those emails? And yeah, the Mueller team just simply

wrote a letter of request to the GSA, and they handed him over. I think it was back in June. It was a while ago. Yeah. But yeah, so we talked about this a little bit last week, but it was this week that Mueller responded and I just wanted to cover that. Also, Trump said he would not fire Mueller amid rumors that he would do so on the 22nd of December and we made it through that day and there were no firings.

So, few. Yeah. But I, again, I can't remember if this is correct or not. I thought I remember you saying he can't really fire Mueller. He can replace the attorney general that can then replace Mueller. That is correct. He by-law cannot fire special counsel. And the reason why, and Jordan Parker actually looked into this for me, is there was a case in 1988, I think, Macmillan versus Olsen.

I'd have to check my notes again. But basically, the Supreme Court of the United States looked at a case like this and they determined that special counsel They did this in 1999 they did or 1988 they determined special counsel is called an inferior officer and an article two of the Constitution the thing that that I all the The Republicans are claiming gives him the he can fire whoever he wants because he's the law, you know It says an article two that he can appoint cabinet heads, and the cabinet heads are responsible for, but not he can't dismiss or appoint inferior officers. And the Supreme Court determined that special counsel

is an inferior officer, and therefore is only dismissable or appointable by cabinet heads that are appointed by the president. So it's like a no micromanaging kind of rule? Yeah, it's only dismissible or appointable by cabinet heads that are appointed by the president. So it's like a no-micro-managing kind of rule? Yeah, it's kind of, you can appoint the guys who hire and fire these guys, but you can't hire and fire those guys. Just like I work for the government, Trump can't fire me. Right, that has to go through my boss.

Right. It's kind of, I'm an inferior officer. So it's that way. Yeah, I'm less than six degrees from Trump. Isn't that gross? That's weird. That's a terrible movie game. Yeah.

So, if you've been in any movies with Kevin Bacon, I'm sure. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I'm sure it's somewhere. Maybe. I could probably connect him. I mean, he was in Sex and the City with what's her name? Carrie Bradshaw. Okay.

Horseface, what's she called? Oh, well, well. I'm sure she's been in some sort of movie that we can connect Kevin Bacon He was all Trump was yeah, he wasn't home alone too We'll figure it out. We'll think about it Tweet at us at Mueller. She wrote let us know give us give us six degrees to Kevin Bacon from Trump. Yeah, take a break connecting him with Russian officials Bacon But yeah, that's something I also wanted to bring up guys follow us on Twitter. I'm out there

I'm you know, we're out there tweeting and but we only have like a hundred and ten followers So we just totally look totally illegitimate She's already four times the amount of followers I have. I know. I think that follow Ed Jordan's confused. Just one of our tweets got like a thousand retweets and I'm like with 110 followers. That's insane. That is amazing.

Thank you. So yeah, he was, he was, they were like, are you gonna fire a Mueller? He said no, he actually technically, he can if he wants to, but that would create a constitutional crisis. And Jordan's gonna talk about constitutional crises later, what that means. Crisis is kind of a strong word, it just means question. It creates a constitutional question, but it is, it's pretty fucking crisis filled, if you ask me. So he didn't, nothing happened.

And I will talk a little bit about what Adam Schiff said about it. He thinks that more perniciously, he says that Trump could fire Rosenstein, install somebody, that would then privately tell Mueller to stop investigating things outside of the purview of the probe, including his, you know, Russian money laundering. So then also, Ivanka and Jared Kushner are being sued for a failure to disclose finances.

Politico reported but did not say who the plaintiffs were. So that's fun. The whole family is being sued by a million people, right? Pretty much. Yeah. Um, um, Can you tell so you're speaking to like the side of that? Tilted like that. The side. I see how she's speaking like into that. There you go. And then, yeah, yeah. Okay.

I think I told my head like, do you want to talk like that? Talk like that. Uh, okay. Let's, let's continue with just the facts on Monday. The House Intelligence Committee interviewed Goldstone. That's the big fat guy, the Russian guy who set up the June meeting in Trump Tower. Okay. I'll set that up. So that went down. Sounds like a Bond villain.

He kind of is. Goldstone. He sets up the Russianosh and me takes with Gell Stoan. Sorry. We're going to have to write a Bond song now for sure. Maybe we get a Dallas thing. I like watching Robert Timothy trying to work the knobs when I do stupid stuff. Can you turn your head and not do that?

Can you leave the room now? Spiking the hot. Spiking the hot. Spiking the hot. Spiking the hot. Yeah, he was gonna say. Yeah, that was wrong. Also on Monday, NBC reported that Trump was warned by FBI in July of 2016. A month after that meeting took place, the big, you know, the Kushner Goldstone.

Goldstone. It's meeting. It is, it's catchy. He was warned by the FBI that the Russians were trying to infiltrate and to please let us know, if you hear anything. He was a little headzapsky. And what's really interesting is at that time,

by the time the FBI was warning him, Trump, the Trump campaign was already under investigation by the FBI, and Carter Page even had a phiza warrant out for him. So that's like super funny. And like nine people had already met with Russians, and I'm sure Trump was like, oh yeah, we'll let you know, bro. And let you know, haven't heard anything.

No, no, no, what's going on? Also that day, Mueller believes he stated that Mueller team investigation says that they'll be investigating the Trump Russia probe probably throughout the entire year of 2018. So then wanting to wrap it up before Christmas. Bye. You know, no, sorry. I have a quick question about just the facts going back to the first fact.

So is it, if they're actually going, are they going to bring any sort of, not charges really, but are they going to have to further investigate in any sort of formal process that the emails were obtained legally? I'm assuming they already did. And that's generally something that the IG would look into, the Office of the Inspector General, just like they looked into. They're the ones who exposed Struck and his texts about Trump, that's kind of who investigates the investigation.

And if there's any kind of indication of any criminal wrongdoing, another special counsel could be appointed. But you really have to have criminal wrongdoing. You rose and stand testified in an open door session. We all watched. I went over it, that if he's going to appoint a special prosecutor, there has to be some sort of indication of criminal activity. He's legally not allowed to appoint a special prosecutor just because the Republicans want to.

On Tuesday, McCabe, he's the Deputy Director of the FBI, testified before the House Intelligence Committee, behind closed doors. Chuck Grassley called for McCabe to be fired. He was testified two days for 17 hours. And I think this is part of the effort to discredit the FBI. Yeah. McCabe's getting tired too, huh? He's worn out.

And it didn't work because the only couple of things that we're going to, you know, if the Republicans had gotten anything on him, they'd leaked it. But the only things that came out of that meeting that we've heard so far is that he corroborated Komi's story that he told him about Trump's loyalty ask after it happened because Komi told five or six senior officials at the FBI because Komi is not an idiot, Komi is my homie. And that the dossier, the steel dossier, was a legitimate item to be used to open in investigation. So the only two things that came out of that whole 17-hour charade to try to discredit the

FBI are two things that hurt the White House. So, FU. Donald Trump Jr. gave a conspiracy theory type speech, politicizing the FBI, saying they're out for his dad, he's claiming the FBI paid for the steel dossier, which is like the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, undercomy, the super liberal FBI? Yeah, it's weird how they're trying to paint the FBI as like some sort of weird like the KGB or something. I don't know exactly what they're doing.

Democrat, Hillary, and the pockets of Hillary, you know, like you can't even smoke weed and work for the FBI. Like I've had really good legitimate friends trying to get jobs at the FBI and they just can't because they can't pass that background investigation. The FBI is known for being right-leaning and nobody cares because they can do their job. Investigating isn't something that really can be the rules that are in place at the FBI and the Department of Justice exist so that bias can't inform the investigations.

And it's, goes through OPM on merit-based promotions so you can't even take anyone's political leanings into account when you hire or dismiss people so it's the reason they're doing this is to try to discredit the FBI because they know when it hits the fan the only thing they're going to be able to say is fake news That's their only defense They've been laying background work. They have. When they pivoted from, he didn't collude and he didn't conspire and he didn't break the law, he didn't obstruct. When they pivoted from that to, so what if he did, he's allowed to, he's the president,

and collusions is not a crime. I think the Occupone was president kind of. Yeah, well he's got a lot of mob ties. That's for sure. Trump has a poster of him in the Oval Office just saying that one all. Right, there's Andrew Jackson, where he parades Native Americans underneath. I'm optized. That's for sure. Trump has a poster of them in the oval office just saying that well, right? I can say Andrew Jackson, where he points.

The rates Native Americans underneath. Is that old like syphilisly picture of a cone? He calls him an Italian. Like that's his buddy now. James Clapper this week, former director of National Intelligence, referred to Trump as a Russian asset. I thought that was fantastic. On Wednesday, he said, yeah, Putin knows how to use an asset.

Totally. Woo. That's strong words from a former Director of National Intelligence. On Wednesday, Senator Warner spoke on the Senate floor, basically saying that any attempt to remove Mueller would be seen as a gross abuse of power. Basically warning, the Republicans, you've got to stop coming after the FBI, you've got to stop coming after the DOJ. It's almost criminal what you're doing. And we really need to, you know, any, and if you try to do anything, if you try anything, man, that's, we're going to call that gross abuse power.

So, Warner, sounding the alarm bells. Also, a subset, this is fascinating. A subset of the Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee. These are the guys who keep stonewalling everything and stacking up the interviews and making it really difficult. They want to wrap everything up by the end of the year. They're the guys who like had the interviews with Gawr,, Graf and Alex Saider in New York after the holiday is during the tax vote so that only staffers could go. The actual House members couldn't be there. So there's a subset of the Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee, led

by Devon Nunez, that asshole, they've been working on the down low in parallel to the House investigation into Russia, even using some of the top secret evidence that's gathered by the House Intel Committee for the investigation on the Russia probe, in an attempt to discredit the FBI's use of the steel dossier. They're even trying to look for criminal activity

in the FBI, they're basically getting together and having little powwow as they've probably consulted with the White House. That's not a fact, that's my theory on it. And that's just amazing to me that that's allowed to happen. They did not inform the Democrats. And that may have been what prompted Senator Warner to make that speech on the Senate floor. Resistance marches were even planned ahead of time had tried to remove Mueller or Rosenstein by move on.org and Hash Hague March for Truth saying that if they were fired before 2 p.m., the rallies

and marches would begin at 5 p.m. the same day. And if it was after 2 p.m. it would be at noon the next day, that's still a standing thing. I mean, it wasn't just for if it happened on Friday the 22nd. That's going forward. If this happens, there's going to be a lot of marches. We've got several here in San Diego that are ready to go. All right, on Thursday, documents obtained by the Mueller investigation confirm that McGand, on McGand, the White House lawyer, not Trump's lawyer, but the White House lawyer communicated with Trump that Flynn had lied to the FBI and possibly violated the Logan Act.

I'm going to go into depth a little bit on that one later if you've got any questions. Do you have a chronology of that or when that happens? I kind of do, yeah. I'm going to talk about that. I'm thinking some of those documents were in the transition team emails So we'll see Trump's attorney is met with Mueller's team hoping to get a letter of exoneration basically It's that funny right like you guys

We're it's like wait, but have you just tried asking yeah We're sick of say is no, it's like, wait, but have you just tried asking? Yeah. Where's the, you can say is no, and it's obstruction. Of course, it could happen is obstruction of justice. I just picture Trump walking and like, she'll wear my apology. Yeah. I'm here for my apology. I want a big tremendous apology. I want my letter of exoneration.

Exoneration. I don't know what exoneration means. And he said he didn't get that, huh? No, hell no. In fact, we don't know what happened at that meeting, but two sources say, and this is not, I can't call this a fact, because these are my sources. Two sources say that the lawyers, after the meeting,

had a shouting match in the parking garage, my guess is they were in reality, and she'll be like, no, you fucking tell him. I'm not telling him. No, you should don't. I'm not going back. Should we write a fake letter up and just give it to them and pat them on the head and let them go to golfing like Trump's lawyers had a shouting match afterwards. Is that right? Yeah. No that's not that could not report it anywhere other than sources on Twitter. So but but that's hilarious to me. He did not say exoneration.

Correct, right. Who didn't say no? He didn't say you're not. Where's my apology letter? They write him like a little apology letter with a drawn CEO. Well, I was just seeing the meeting ended in an uproarious laughter when he mentioned being

Connery they were probably just like yeah, we're here man I'm supposed to ask if we can do the letter like sorry How embarrassing how embarrassing McCabe testified that Komi told him about the Trump loyalty ask we know that that. The Trump loyalty ask was when, you know, after that whole thing happened with Flynn shortly after the firing, he asked, Trump, do I have your loyalty? Do I have you? Or you almost said, yes, I'm twice. And Komi is no dummy.

He documented the show on that. And he told high-level FBI officials, five or six of them. I think his answer to it was like, I'll give you honest loyalty. Right? Yeah. I'll be honestly loyal. It's something like that. I'll give you loyal honesty or something like that.

Like, I won't ever lie to you, bro. Elijah Cummings also sounded his own alarm bells to protect Mueller and defend the FBI and the DOJ, calling them the cornerstones of our democracy. So I thought that was a nice little speech. Before they went into the testimony from a cave, they got some answers out and questioned him a little bit. Wyden also spoke on the Senate floor, saying he would indefinitely hold the nomination of the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Intel until the Treasury complies with

his request to get unclassified material, unclassified material, from the treasury, and any effort to obstruct would be considered a criminal act. So he also sounded some alarm bells. We got Warner Cummings, Schiff, Schiff is the guy who talked about he could fire a Rosenstein and replace him with a guy who will on the down low tell him to stop investigating money laundering and Wyden, all sounding off this week you know to protect Mueller hashtag protect Mueller. Now this all goes back to how mad Trump was at sections right he's mad that sessions recused himself.

Cused himself and then Rosenstein appointed so it's he kind of He would love to get rid of Rosenstein, right, but he sort of It puts him in a bad spot make some look really bad to do that it it opens up a Saturday night massacre situation with Nixon and and So he's so I honestly I'm kind of on the side where I don't think he'll do any of that. I think they'll just continue this discrediting campaign of Mueller, the FBI, and the Department of Justice, which is so sad and such a shame. And it's also a danger to national security. Yeah, it's really scary. And I mean, this is the path a dictator takes.

They shut down the press. They shut down anybody who could have any oversight over them. They got rid of the ethics guy. we don't need ethics guy and that's he's on the path you know and he said his three favorite people are Xi Jinping Putin and Erdogan who are just gross dudes. I'm throwing a little little trail of tears he Jackson in there. Oh God. Oh my God. I got to have little trail of tears, he jacks in and there. Oh God. Oh my God. Got to have some trail of tears. Oh, he's got a lot of heroes.

Gross dudes, that's my political, educated PhD evaluation. Gross dudes. They're gross dudes. Friday, New York Times reports that federal court in Brooklyn will subpoena Deutsche Bank for Kushner's financial records. I think these parallel New York state investigations going on at the same time as the federal investigations are just Mueller's insurance policy that if any pardons happen, you can't pardon a state crime.

So, haha. It's interesting how much I've learned about politics since this has happened. I didn't know that before all this. Oh yeah. Didn't know a lot of this stuff, but that's interesting that you can't pardon state crimes. Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the big reasons I wanted to do this podcast is I think there's a lot of you know regular people like you and me walking around out there who are like it's kind of on the radar but I mean this is all such significant stuff

and learning about how it all kind of works and fits together I think is crucial to, if we're going to rise up and resist any of this, it's best to be armed with knowledge, you know? The President is not the only one that can pardon people, though, right? I mean, governors, you know, when they give the calls from the governor for when you're on death row, could he put pressure on a governor to pardon a state crime? The governor in New York?

I don't know. I'm just sort of thinking about that same route of, I can't fire this guy. So I'll get someone to fire him. I can't pardon this person when we get someone else to pardon. That's a good question, and they might be able to, but the governor in New York is never going to do that. The current governor. Right.

Any current or future governor in New York would never do that. That's a blue solid blue state. Right. So if he's got any crimes in red states, he's probably good to go. Right. I don't think I don't think the Alabama courts are going to be filing any charges against Kushner anytime soon. Although they might just hate him because he's Jewish. Also, did you know this is an interesting fact? A Chris Christie is the prosecutor who put Kushner's dad in jail. I have read that. That's so interesting. That's why they hate you. I talked about that on one of our really old episodes when we were talking about it. Meeting when Chris he got asked to leave. We really have eight. We like switched the yeah. One of our earlier, one of our really old

years ago. I think you're right and And I just, some reason that came up into my attention again. And I was like, huh, it's great. It's a great little detail. Saturday, Lewandowski and Bannon were called to testify in the House Intelligence Committee, but they haven't responded. Lewandowski was the other campaign manager that got fired to allow Manafort to come in because of his great work in the Ukraine for Putin and his you know locker-up chant that he stole from his Ukrainian. I think you had him on a indyman fantasy league once. I did. He's still on my indyman pitch. Yeah, well it was heading that way.

It looks just a top pick. He is. He's gonna win me some cash. And that's legal. So that's it. That's just the facts. You guys, we made it through it. We made it through this week's facts. A lot of facts. It was a relatively sleepy week. We were all kind of worried about Friday. I was just sitting there on the edge of my seat on Friday.

Like, what is he going to do? What is he going to do? But we made it. You mentioned McKay. I read today he said he was going to resupply down after next year. Absolutely. And I'm going to talk aly down after next year. Absolutely.

I'm going to talk a little bit about that. First of all, there was an interesting thread on Twitter about the GSA emails. And what I find interesting, and no one reported on this, this is again, we're going into theory now. We've left the facts in the past and we're going into theory, theory land. And what had happened was Trump actually installed a lawyer named Beckler who used to work for Giuliani's law firm at the GSA. He was working at the GSA and he had supposedly given Trump the wink, wink, I got all your emails, I'll keep them private. Well, that guy died. Oh, God.

So when... Oh, and that's how... So when Buller's... Sent a letter. Nobody was... He wasn't there. And the GSA is like, yeah, man, here you go. Their inside guy had died.

And they forgot to replace him. But that's what Trump has forgotten, sort sort of a point where replaced people all throughout got the government right. Yeah, well, you know what you're making those cuts? It's really hard to keep all his affairs in order. I know. Yeah, usually you have intelligent people to help you do that.

Yeah, you must be so pissed at that guy for dying. I know. Right? He's going to find him. I will fire your whole family. We're going to get a Ouija board. Yeah, and I'm gonna sing. Bring you back and fire you again.

He's gonna be so pretty. You fired. What does he sing? He's Ouija boarding him that you're fired. You say. Oh my god. So, that thread was interesting. And then also I spoke to Jordan a little bit about, remember how I talked about how Contreras,

the judge overseeing Flynn's case, recused himself? And we thought for sure the Republicans were going to grab onto that and say, oh, he recused himself. Oh, violence in here at the system of being repressed. Sorry, I don't know where that holy grail moment came from. But what Jordan said was that, and I found this interesting, and this might be why the Republicans have never glombed onto this, he was a FISA court judge. He used to issue FISA warrants.

He may have been the guy who issued the Carter Page FISA warrant, or any of the FISA warrants attached to this Russian probe back in 2016 when the FBI was investigating this and because he has knowledge of that he might have had to rejuice himself for conflict of interest. So that's it the end. The FISA by the way is Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act oversees requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies in the United States. That's the kind of shit we're dealing with with this administration. Also I wanted to talk about the list of high-level FBI employees that Comey entrusted with

his, the things that had the Trump conversations, basically. They courted him in the room, asked for his loyalty, told him to lay off Lynn, all that shit that he recorded. in the room asked for his loyalty told him to lay off Lynn all that shit that he recorded He told like five guys and what you were talking about is McCabe Who had to testify for 17 hours behind closed doors now has said he's going to resign, okay? There's one gone another guy Baker. He was a general counsel for the FBI. He got fired. He's gone. Two gun.

They're just going down this list of Komi's corroborators and picking them off. The other three guys that he told are named Jim Rabicki, David Bodich and Carl Gattis. So look for their names to come up in the news. I'm going to go ahead and make a pretty bold prediction that they're going to come up and try to be discredited at some point because they can also corroborate

Komi's story. Ha ha. Interesting. Their testimony is still though, or just as legitimate right, even if they don't still hold that position? Correct, but that now they have, they just have a talking point.

Like, well, he quit, he got fired, he retired in a quarter public, whatever. Quarter public opinion. Right, so if enough Republicans come out He quit, he got fired, he retired, he quit. Court of Public, whatever. Court of Public opinion. Right, so if enough Republicans come out and sort of discredit these, I guess that is a win for them, or their base follows that, and then the Congress goes along with it as well. Or Congress has now a reason, a quote-unquote reason, to not impeach.

Yeah. Which, sorry. Sorry. I wasn't disagreeing with you. So now, it basically gives Congress the Republicans and Congress a reason to say, no, we're not going to go for impeachment, even though all this stuff came out, because the FBI is discredited and shameful, and the DOJ is discredited and shameful, and all these people who testify in robbery,

Komi's story, or shameful. So no, we're not going to because we're not. And that's basically what they're going for. And that's why these secret group of Republicans are trying to get a report together on the FBI to discredit the dossier and to basically throw the entire FBI and Department of Justice under the bus. Maybe they'll bring in a private intelligence,

that just happen to have like Russian accent. Cold Stone. Cold Stone. Cold Stone. Cold Stone. Bring in the private, they're called Spectre. And then I want to talk a little bit about McGann and our little pre-bist. But first, I wanted to, pre-biss. But first I wanted to pre-biss the pre-biss. I

wanted to hand the torch over here to Jordan because I wanted you to talk about, we keep hearing this, a constitutional crisis, while the constitutional crisis. If Trump fires Rosenstein, we have a Saturday Night Mass Courts constitutional crisis. So take it away. Yes. So this has actually been brought up about a year ago when Trump was being investigated for his money laundering things.

And it seems to be a term that people just throw around sort of, maybe slightly haphazardly just in terms of legal jargon. I was watching a panel on Rachel Maddo, show, sorry, for John Spurlock or Ultra Conservative. You guys gonna love. Oh what a great source. Fuck you in the heart. That was one of your comments. Was it was that a Twitter comment or what was that? Yeah that was on our on our Facebook page. One of the fans. Yeah it's just

logistically not even possible That's marquee to saw level shit. That's what I'm talking about you And I said you have to have a super tiny dick to fuck me in the heart valves Really gets you around the holidays Cockles that's why they're called cockles that way the cockles of the heart. I don't know chestnuts I don't know. Chestnuts. I don't know. I like that. Anyway, so on MSNBC there's this panel

and it was a bunch of legal analysts just talking about the specifics of the term constitutional crisis. So technically a constitutional crisis is defined as a crisis of government administration and that is literally it. So I'm very vague. That is not a little definite.

To be fair, that was Wikipedia. But what these people were talking about was what's more likely is it's just a question of, it's a constitutional question that's arising. Not yet at a constitutional crisis level, but ultimately, I mean, I think crisis is just a hyperbolic word that maybe people are latching on to a little bit because this feels like a crisis. It feels pretty crisis. It does. Yeah, it is pretty terrifying. But really, I think what people mean when they say that is, these are issues that are

bringing up things that are unprecedented and there have not been precedents that have been set for them and tried and true in any regard. So it kind of brings up a, we don't know what's going to happen really when all of this begins to materialize further. Like Al's AG talked about, Senator Mark Warren of Virginia, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Warren fell senators Wednesday that it would be a quote unquote constitutional crisis should President Trump fire special counsel Robert Mueller. So when he's saying this, I guess the interpretation of it is if he fires that, that creates just

basically an issue where technically he can do it, but it's not in the best interest of the government or the country and how he really proceed. And we now have a legal question that has to be litigated. But as I said, the courts, the scotus, has held up on several occasions that he can't. So it's like he commits a crime, but yet we can't prosecute him for it because he's the top dog of the law and that sort of thing. Well, constitutionally he violated something,

but there's not much we can do, and that's the crisis, part of it. Well crisis. Well, the question or the crisis is, is the court has to decide if he's allowed to do that. That's the question. That's the crux of what a constitutional crisis is. Basically, somebody's done something that's usually it's never been litigated before and there isn't an answer and we don't know. Like I think that there would be a constitutional crisis if Mueller were to indict a sitting president. We've I think that there would be a constitutional crisis. If Mueller were to indict a sitting president,

we've never seen that happen. And it's never been litigated in the Supreme Court as to whether or not that can actually happen because he's the head of the department. He's the top top top. So there's no rule law set up for this yet because it's never come up? Well, it's in the Constitution, but it's never been argued in court. So it's covered by the Constitution, but the Constitution, as we know, is pretty vague. So, for example, when Roe v. Wade happened, and they sued, and they said, well, our interpretation

of the Constitution is, is that women have a right to choose, and the court decided, yes, that's the case. And since then, they've upheld that decision. Every time somebody else sues, or if somebody tries to come up with a law that you can't have an abortion or they're going to shut down abortion clinics or make you have a real hospital environment or something that the court will decide that they'll get sued. They'll go up to the Supreme Court and if the Supreme Court decides to hear it sometimes they don't sometimes it's settled in lower courts. They'll say no we're going to uphold this again. That's unconstitutional. Okay so, forgive my confusion, Jordan, would this be an example like when he says transgenders can't be in the military or something via tweet and then the courts come back and say that's not cool or travel ban gets overthrown. Would that be a constitutional crisis where he's doing something unprecedented like that

and then they have to litigate it? No, I don't think so Jordan what what what would you say? Yeah I do think that to that question a lot of the times these issues arise is over overreaching executive you know actions that he's taking so him saying that I can do this and then in the Constitution maybe it's it's vague or it's not laid out exactly what he can do and that's why it goes to Supreme courts for them them to get in and try to. But I think what you're asking is why are they put in the tag constitutional crisis specifically on firing special counsel and not on these other asshole names. Yeah, I think ultimately if it's going to lead up to his impeachment where the

constitutional crisis piece really comes in or constitutional question is if the house moves to impeach him after Let's say all of this you know goes well Relatively and and he get and then they moved to impeach him and then he just says no Also, that's it. That's another thing that could happen too, which has never happened before either It's rejects that too like yeah sitting on this throne There's there's multiple there's's multiple times I think that people are predicting a constitutional question is going to arise throughout this and there isn't a set precedent of how to proceed legally and how to really litigate something like that because it's just that we've done the work.

Also I guess the crisis would be if they present this evidence to Congress and then they decide to just ignore it or not impeach him based on maybe there's overwhelming evidence. I would think that would qualify as a crisis. I think that feeling where everyone has this idea that we have three branches of government that are all supposed to be checking themselves equally and that's how the wheel keeps going around in a way that we're all comfortable. When something happens and it's your gut feeling is oh clearly this is wrong wrong this should be wrong but then there's all these you know oh technically there's no real technical answers for it and

then you get this outcome that's very scary to a lot of people and seems blatantly wrong and then the other side is saying oh no it's totally fine yeah that's I think a constitutional question and then as far as just the national people goes it seems like a crisis at that point is scary you know and the other thing that I think that a lot of Republicans don't and then as far as just the national people goes, it seems like a crisis at that point. It's scary. And the other thing that I think that a lot of Republicans don't realize is if he fires Mueller, the special counsel has to be replaced

in the investigation as to continue. So, firing Mueller doesn't get rid of all of his problems. In fact, I think it just adds to it. So that's why I think that he's not gonna do it. They would continue the investigation along the same lines, or do you think they would revise it and say, okay, we can't look into one of your real estate. You can't revise what the original scope was,

but you can basically what happens is if Mueller wants to investigate money laundering, for example, it's within his purview to do so, but he does have to bring all these things he wants to investigate to the deputy attorney general, who then says yes, yes, no, no, no, no. And he hasn't said no to him on anything yet, as he testified to. I'm not just making that up. So what could conceivably happen as Adam Schiff was suggesting is that somebody could

be replaced, you could replace Rosenstein with somebody who would tell him, no, no, no, no, no. Right. But the original Russia probe, interfering with the elections cannot be stopped. It's how it was written, that was the scope, and it was because he fired Komi. Yeah. So this podcast may change its name,

but it will continue. You may not be molotov, but it'll be somebody. It'll be weird because it doesn't make sense anymore. No, no. It was a murder. She wrote, last three brands, trope, and I have to have a new logo made. It was like I had when I had two turtles named Le Verne and Shirley and Le Verne died. And I just had a turtle named Shirley and like, what is that?

Thanks for doing it. Oh do you have more? Oh yeah sorry really quick. So then on the other side of the coin there are people that I've been reading and this is a Democrat actually that said this and it's Alan Dershowitz. Do you know him? Yep. Okay. My first time learning about this guy but he went on Fox News. Also was brought on as a liberal which really pisses me off. Do you sure it's such? Yeah, is he such a, I try to do as much research as I can on this guy just to try to justify I guess how he's being brought on as I get, I don't know, he's just very pro, whatever I digress, I'm sorry, I was going to go to Israel Palestine but that's either here nor

there right now. Stay in the scope, Yeah, sorry, I'm sorry. But he went on Fox News and he was making the case that if Trump does get charged, it would be a constitutional crisis because he so strongly believes that Trump does have the ability to direct what Komi is supposed to investigate and what he's not supposed to investigate. And he's making this case.

He feels so strongly about maintaining the fabric of our constitution that he cannot be charged with obstruction of justice because there's nothing so far that has been technically illegal that he's done. And I mean how do you keep your eyes closed to so much so much stuff? It's called money Jesse. Yeah, it's called money Honestly, here's a little theory. I've got I think Donald Trump is blackmailing The members of the House Intelligence Committee and some of the other Republicans because he's got dirt on him Do you remember WikiLeaks didn't rush it didn't only hack the DNC, they and hacked the RNC. I think Trump has that juice from Julian Assange, via

Putin, and he's holding that over their heads. Do you hear him lay on the compliments during that tax bill Rose Garden thing? We are the best, you Trump, you're the best brightest man the world has ever seen and I love you and I want to lick your butthole. they had that one whereas his cabinet was at the table and they have to go around and compliment him Yeah, one nice thing Why they're so happy that they're part of the team. He's got he's got dirt on these motherfuckers That's why he got the tax bill through that's why Quarker flipped that's why they're all trying to discredit the DOJ and the FBI I think he's got dirt on these guys.

Another interesting thing that happened was that I wanted to talk a little bit about who Alex Seder is. He's one of the guys that they just kind of crammed the interview with and put it off to New York with some staffers because it wasn't important. Seder's like an ex-Mafia guy. He was arrested a while back for a huge like $40 million stock scheme or something. And he would have gone to jail for a really long time, but he cut a deal with the FBI and became a witness for them, and they helped, and he was infiltrating the mob on their behalf. And he was also doing land deals with Donald Trump this whole time. So this is a big, and a lot of these land deals went through or were kind of eased off on by the mafia.

There were definitely some pay-all going on there, probably with Russian money, funneled through Deutsche Bank, which is why we need his tax returns and why they were subpoenaed in the first place. So all this is happening, and this is an important dude, and they're just sending House Intelligence Committee staffers on, they interviewed him the day that they had to be there to vote on the tax bill. So that the actual, you know, staffers, the actual representatives from the House Intelligence Committee couldn't ask this guy questions. And then Rona Graf has been the gatekeeper for Trump since, you know, up to when Hope Hicks took over, and I think she's still there. She's the person who would send and receive emails on behalf of Donald Trump, and all of his land deals and real estate deals for the last three decades.

And she got shoved off onto a Friday after Congress had left. We aren't sure if some of the Democrats showed up to that interview anyway. All we know is that it was, because the session ended on Thursday and so they're on vacation. I'm hoping some of the Democrats went to New York to be there, but I don't know why they did this in New York. I'm hoping it's maybe because the the attorneys general in New York want to be there so that they can bring state charges. But I don't know other than just to make it really difficult. So that, I thought, was really interesting. And then also, a little thread I found on Twitter

was talking about McGann. Now, McGann, again, he, McGann, again, McGann, he is the senior White House attorney. He is not Trump's lawyer. He's, that's an important distinction. Because basically, the White House has been refusing to answer the question about when Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI and broke the law. That's the big ask. What did you know? When did he know it? The whole Nixon echoes. When did Trump

know? Right? And we've heard McGann say he told him and all this other stuff. And the reason that they don't want to nail down the date is because it would provide evidence of corrupt intent to obstruct justice. And that's the hard part to approve, to prove when you're doing an obstruction of justice case. Rachel Maddo did a great breakdown. She's like, let's say you backed your van out of a driveway. You saw a guy run down the street and then you saw two guys run after him. And you backed your van out of the driveway to stop those two guys from chasing that guy. But then later you found out that those two guys were cops and that guy just robbed a bank. You don't have any culpability because you didn't know. But if that's your friend running down the street and you know he robbed a bank and you

back the car into the cops, you are now criminally liable. That shows corrupt intent and that is the part that they're trying to nail down on Trump. And I'm sure Trump is just trying to save his friend from too big mean guys. Thank you. So I thought that was a really well done analogy that Rachel put out there. I love you, Rachel.

My husband has a crush on you. And I have a crush on Anderson Cooper, so we're not getting anywhere. Ah! Um. Well, yeah, so we just watch our unrequited crushes every day on television. So yeah, that's why the White House doesn't want to say.

And that why it was so dumb when he tweeted that I fired, I fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI because you just admitted to have, you just proved obstruction of justice corrupt intent. You knew when you fired Comey that he was investigating Flynn for actual crimes. So according to a report released this week, and this is only coming out from one new source. It hasn't been corroborated by any other new sources, and I wanna make that clear.

But according to a report that came out this week, McGann researched whether Flynn lied or violated the Logan Act after he met with Sally Yates. He researched. So that means he knew and that he also told Trump, the report came out that he told Trump in an email in writing that he knew Flynn is possibly lied to the FBI and could have been guilty of violating the Logan Act because Sally Yates told me, oh, and then Sally Yates ended up being fired.

Interesting. Well, the White House blamed McGahn for not warning when they finally did 18 days later when they did fire Flynn. They when they were like, why did you wait so long? They said that McGahn told them everything was fine. They blamed McGahn for not warning Trump about Flynn, which probably, if I were McGahn, pissed him off. Oh, yeah. So McGahn put this all in writing and turned it over to Mueller. Now what's interesting is is at the same time, Ryan's previs, I think he's also on my fantasy indictment, my fantasy indictment team. Previs blamed McGann saying in February on Meet the Press that McGahn told them Flynn had

done nothing wrong. Not just didn't warn them, but said Flynn didn't do anything wrong. So Pribez already met with Mueller. Was that White House lawyer the same White House lawyer for Obama? No, I don't think so. No, Trump appointed. Trump appointed. So Trump appoints that lawyer.

Yeah. So regardless of whether it's the White House lawyer a lot, it's a Trump's a it's a Trump point. Yeah, because you can't imagine an Obama lawyer would. No. No. So Pribus had already met with Mueller by then. So did Pribus lie to Mueller about McGahn? Did Pribus also say what he said to meet the press? Did he say McGahn told us everything was fine? If he did lie and he said McGahn told them Flynn did nothing wrong, he'd be calling McGahn a liar, right? It was a liar. Come again. Yeah. Come again.

What's interesting is McGahn and Prebus have the same lawyer. Okay? Yes, the White House lawyer has a lawyer. I know what you're thinking. So, what that means is that if Pribus and McGahn have conflicting stories, that attorney can't represent both of them because it's a conflict of interest. That means they're singing they're singing from the same sheet of music, which means Pribus flipped on

Donnie. Pribus told Muller. He had to tell him the same thing McGahn told him. So Previs told Mueller, uh, yeah, no, actually, uh, McGahn did tell us that he, he lied to the FBI and maybe violated the Logan Act. That is just bolstering. Wow. So now not only do you have McGahn, you have Prebus saying he knew and you have Comey, his testimony and all of his corroborators. So now you're actually looking at I think enough evidence of corruptible intent, corrupt intent, excuse me, of obstruction of justice. And they have the physical documented evidence of this that McGann researched the Logan Act and he looked to see whether Flin had lied to the FBI and the communications that he

did in fact tell Trump, pre-biss, Pence. Somebody's got all those GSA emails. So, haha. So, that, again, there's only one thing, one place reporting that. So I thought that was fantastic. That is. So that's conjecture right now. We're not sure.

That was one report that came out. Yeah. Potential reliable sources. Kind of like how that, just today, I think there's news that in a meeting, Trump called Haitians said all Haitians have AIDS. And that- Today he said that? Yeah.

And that Nigerians, if they ever got here, they would just never want to go back to their huts in Africa. And- I don't know. He's talking about their all princes. There were two. There were two. And Michael Castleberry is all-

He- Nigerian, yeah, he just pronounced it wrong. And I, I would say the only, I'm not surprised that he said any of this. The only thing I'm surprised about is that he knew Nigeria was in Africa. That's the only thing that surprises me. He didn't really say. Yeah. There were two sources in the meeting that said that. That's all Haitians have AIDS.

Yeah. There was like 20,000 Haitians came over and his response was, oh, they all have AIDS I mean it sounds very familiar sounds very Make America great again taking E pluribus unum off of the challenge coin that E pluribus unum are Mata one from from many one Latin meaning we stand tall on our diversity we are a nation of many are they gonna change the line in Wizard of Oz now which one we make America great Wizard of Oz let me say he plebiscope like the inventor guy I want to change

it in everything I don't want to go back. I don't want any diversity. And with Dorothy, we're going to make America great again. We're going to make it light again. The little dog too. The diversity doesn't actually have a bromance with North Korea. That will be expected. Yeah, yeah. Maybe they're just too so long. You know, that guy's actually all right.

Well, if you're friends with North Korea, you don't have a reason to play with your dick rockets. True. So you can't do that. You have to have... I would never call him small and tiny and dumb and... This fat and old and dumb. I wanted to be good friends, but I guess that won't happen. I wouldn't do that. Also, today, interestingly enough, Donnie tweeted...

Oh, Africans have got a rear. African. People from Egypt have malaria. He's just, he's just distributing also actually transmitted diseases to different population. Malaria is not, I don't know why I came over. Here's some tweets from an hour ago. Remember the Republicans are 5 and 0 in congressional races this year.

In the Senate, I said Roy Moore would lose in Alabama. Why are you bringing up? And I supported Luther Strange and Roy lost. They both lost. He supported Roy Moore, like with his mouth. That's gross. I just met with his mouth. That's gross. I just met with his words.

Virginia candidate was not a trumper, and he lost. Good Republican candidates win big. His staffers right now are telling him, please don't campaign for Republicans in 2018 because you are a political poison, and he probably threw a fucking fit. And that's why he's tweeting this.

And then he also tweeted, this is pretty messed up. This one's pretty messed up. How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge along with Lee-Kin-James Comey of the- Lee-Kin-James Comey. He's got gonorrhea. Lee-Kin. Oh no.

Leakin' James Comey of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation, including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails. You need the one that helped you in the election. How can McCabe be given $700,000 for his wife's campaign by Clinton puppets during an investigation? And then he said, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits.

90 days to go, question mark, is he going to fire the Deputy Director of the FBI because when he fired the director, that went so well for him. Wow, FBI lawyer James Baker was reassigned according to Fox News. He tweeted that today. Was that all one tweet? Did they double the number of characters just for Trump by the way? No, that was three tweets. Yeah, I just still let him.

We really need to own an 80 characters for this winback. Yeah, we need longer rope for the president to hang himself with. Is that what they did? I don't know. He could say more against himself if he just. But today, FBI lawyer James Baker reassigned, we knew that days ago, and he knew that,

probably because he orchestrated it. He's a line sack of fat shit, like he's guts. But there's no bias on this show. And I just wanted to thank everybody for tuning in. Polly is following us on Twitter. We need to look a little more legitimate than we do. I might even put in our little biolike we're brand new. Like in training, you know how people were in training. I've worn mine for like two years. Next week, it's going to be a quiet week. It's the week between Christmas and the New Year's. Donnie, I'll be tweeting, I'm sure. So that might have some interesting effects.

I'm sure the hits will keep coming. What's your going to tweet for Christmas? Merry Christmas to everybody except the Muslims and the Jews and the Mexicans and all the Haitians with AIDS. Yeah, they don't celebrate Christmas, they celebrate AIDS. It's such a horrible, horrible man. But if there's any news next week and I'm sure there will be, like I said, the hits keep coming. This doesn't slow down you guys and it should be because it's the holidays, but we'll see, and we'll talk to you next week. So, I've been Jordan Coburn.

I've been Jesse, he and. I'm Angie, thank you so much for joining us again, Jesse, you're awesome. Thank you for having me. Everyone have a happy holidays, Mary Christmas. Mary Christmas. We can say it again. We can say it now because we couldn't say it.

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