Jack - Brief Hallucinations

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

Hackers linked to Iran have breached FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal emails. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a Jack Smith progress memo to Congress outlining Trump's motive for illegally retaining classified documents. A top deputy to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro acknowledged in a closed-door hearing this month that the Justice Department did not have evidence of wrongdoing in its criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Legal experts are stunned after a federal judge catches DOJ lawyers using artificial intelligence to write briefs. Plus listener questions. Do you have questions for the pod?    Shop Mint Unlimited Plans at MINTMOBILE.com/UNJUST Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump Questions for the pod?https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ We would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-SW Media. Hackers linked to Iran have breached FBI director Cash Patel's personal emails. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a Jack Smith progress memo to Congress outlining Trump's motive for illegally retaining classified documents. A top deputy to U.S. attorney Janine Piro acknowledged in a closed-door hearing this month that the Justice Department did not have evidence of wrongdoing in its criminal investigation of Fed Chair to Rome Powell. And legal experts are stunned after a federal judge catches DOJ lawyers using

artificial intelligence to write briefs. This is unjustified. Andy, I could hardly keep myself from laughing when you talked about Janine Piro acknowledging in a closed-door hearing that they didn't have evidence of wrongdoing. I'm just reading that sentence and I'm like, of course. Of course they didn't. How do you even keep a straight face? Everybody welcome to episode 62 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, March 29th, 26.

I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Allison, we have so much to cover today, including multiple stories for our drum roll, please. Hit me in the head with a bat segment. Okay, it's a working title for now. But we really like it. It's kind of growing on me.

And of course, you have to go with the single word spelling of H-I-T-M-E-I-N-T-H-E-A-D-W-I-T-H-A-B-A-T. Just one word, and it's hit me in the head with the bat. So that's where we, of course, highlight the continuing implosion of the presumption of regularity by your friends at the Department of Justice. Yeah, the presumption of regularity being the long-standing deference given to the Department of Justice by the courts that is being whittled away, bit by bit, and sometimes in large giant chunks as we speak.

but we have a lot of a lot to get to before we get to hit me in the head with a bat, which is going to come right before the questions portion, the questions segment of the show. And if you have a question, we've got a link in the show notes for you. Just click on that. You fill out the form and you can submit your questions. But first up, Andy, from CBS News, breaking on Friday midday, cyber criminals linked to Iran have accessed FBI director Kosh Patel's personal email account,

according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to CBS News on Friday. The FBI said in a statement that it was, quote, aware of malicious actors targeting Patel's personal email information and said it has taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity. It also said that the information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information, which I think just sort of speaks to their inability to understand that it doesn't matter if it's historical information in nature, if it's something that can be used against this FBI director

that compromises the FBI director, that's what matters. Of course. And this is, they know that. They use the word historical here because it's basically irrelevant. They didn't want to say personal because that draws the question of like, oh my gosh, what kind of personal embarrassment might these emails hold for him. and they also are trying to make this seem like it was some sort of a hack of an FBI account. It sounds to me like it was not.

It was probably his, you know, Gmail or whatever service he uses. Yeah, it's, yeah, okay. So I'll hold my comments for a minute. The breach was first reported by Reuters, which said the hacker group, Handala Hack Team, took credit for the attack and posted images online of the FBI director and his purported Reservoir. May. Awesome. The breach comes not long after the Justice Department earlier this month seized four domains connected to the Handala Group as part of an ongoing effort to disrupt hacking

and transnational repression schemes conducted by the Islamic Republic of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Usually people just use the word M-O-I-S to refer to them. But there you go. Okay. Good to know. Now, the domain used to carry out the hack against Patel was registered the same day The Justice Department announced it had seized the four domains associated with the group. That was back on March 19th. And the FBI said in its statement that the State Department has offered a $10 million reward, your taxpayer dollars at work, for information leading to the identification of the Handala hack team. After the start of the war with Iran, the Justice Department said,

Handala was responsible for a number of cyber attacks, including the malware attack, against a U.S.-based multinational medical technologies firm. In another cyber incident, the department alleged that Handala Group had posted the names and sensitive other data from approximately 190 individuals associated with or employed by the Israeli Defense Force or the Israeli government. In an online post, Handala Group appeared to announce its successful attack against Patel's email. In the post, it referenced the seizure of its domains by the U.S. United States government and said, quote, we decided to respond to this ridiculous show in a way that

will be remembered forever. Here's a quote, Kosh Patel, the current head of the FBI, who once saw his name displayed with pride on the agency's headquarters, will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims. The so-called impenetrable systems of the FBI were brought to their knees within hours by our team, the group added. Again, I think this is a private email address, but that's their statement. The post includes photos of Patel as well as a copy of what appears to be his resume. Is he looking for a job already? No, it's probably four before, which includes his personal email account. So, I don't know. I keep thinking back to your colleague Hannah Rabinowitz's reporting from March 3rd that said just days before the U.S. launched a military

operation in Iran, FBI Director Kosh Patel fired a dozen. agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran. That's according to two sources familiar. So, yeah, we did that. Probs don't fire the Iran experts because they were part of the classified documents investigation. Yeah, I mean, this whole thing is really kind of ridiculous. Like, and I agree with you, it's probably his personal account. So it's not quite the success that this Hendala group is, is,

trumpeting. They brought the FBI security systems to their knees. Not exactly. And I will say, if you have a sophisticated hacker group, if you're just any regular person and a sophisticated hacking group goes after your personal email, there's a pretty fair chance that they're going to get in there. There's all kinds of ways through social engineering that they target folks. But Cash Patel is not any old Joe. Cash Patel is the director of the FBI. And I know from having gone through this process that even when I became deputy director, all of a sudden, this massive security apparatus starts to take over your life. And I won't go through the details of all of it because it's something that the Bureau does to protect its senior leadership. But yeah,

you get some very direct counseling on how you have to now be very careful about your personal accounts, email accounts, phones, computer use, all that kind of stuff. And they also spend a lot of time monitoring it. So I don't know what happened here. Obviously, maybe he didn't get that briefing or didn't follow it or something. But yeah, it's embarrassing. It's deeply embarrassing to the Bureau and to him. And, you know, I guess it's just the most recent embarrassment connected to him. Yeah. And, you know, look, if you don't want to keep FBI agents on at the FBI who worked on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, maybe don't steal classified documents that have to do with Iran.

You know, I just thought. I mean, that's probably why some of these experts were put on that case. There were some very highly classified documents about Iran in the documents that he took. And we'll talk in a little bit about the motive now that we have from Jack Smith, which I never thought we'd get because of the injunction placed by Judge Eileen Cannon on volume two. But I have to imagine, Andy, if you're one of those Iran counterterrorist experts at the FBI and there are classified stolen, illegally retained classified documents that have to do with Iran, then maybe that's why you're there as an analyst to work on that case and not because you want to take down Trump as part of the deep state. Yeah, no question.

Look, these are smart, experienced, highly trained people who are very good at a rare and important. specialty. And you're going to sacrifice that experience, that capability on the eve of hostilities with that country simply because you're trying to settle a political score for the president. You're so desperate to generate positive attention from the president that you're willing to ruin these people's careers and lives and fire them right when you need them the most. It's just, it's mind-numbing. There's no common sense. or logic here, but yet another bad decision. Yeah. And speaking of an act of desperation to try to discredit Trump's political enemies,

we're going to come up next here after this quick break with a story about Pam Bondi, maybe probably accidentally revealing Trump's motives for illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing the investigation into making sure they were returned. But like I said, we've got to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. I have gotten a lot less patient with wireless bills over the years. I mean, at a certain point, it started to feel just ridiculous to keep paying so much money every month for service, then watch extra charges and so-called perks push that total higher over and over and over again. My old carrier always seemed to find new ways to make the bill more annoying for me,

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slash unjust. That's mintmobile.com slash unjust. Up front payment of $45 for three-month five-gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extras, see MintMobile for details. All right, everybody, welcome back. As you know, there is a current injunction, an order from Judge Eileen Cannon that says no materials related to the classified documents case against Trump, including volume two of Jack Smith's final report, can be released outside of the Department of Justice. That is the current standing order. It's being fought by, you know, a couple of groups who are trying to, you know, rest free, volume two so we can see it. But that's as it stands right now, even though that's being

fought in Eileen Cannon's court and the 11th Circuit. And you'll recall, Andy, during Jack Smith's testimony, both of them before Congress, he refused to answer any questions about the case because of Judge Cannon's injunction and even refused to open a copy of Volume 2 that he had been sent by the Department of Justice in preparation for his deposition and testimony saying, I don't even want to look at it because of this court order that's in place. Yeah. But Pam Bondi, either on purpose or I actually think by accident in her haste to send out all the Arctic Frost January 6th Trump investigation materials has handed a Jack Smith memo discussing both cases, including the classified documents case, to Congress, which Jamie Raskin then promptly released to the press.

Yeah, so Carol Enig at MS Now reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith gathered evidence that then candidate Donald Trump took many top. secret documents that related to his worldwide business interests, and investigators considered this a likely motive for Trump concealing them at his Florida club after he left the White House, according to newly released case records. The special prosecutor also had evidence indicating that after leaving office, Trump had shown a classified map to passengers on a private plane, including his future chief of staff, Susie Wilds, and took at least one document that was so secret that only six people in the entire government

had the authority to review it, according to a memo reviewed by MS Now and cited by House Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Okay. So this is interesting. Trump's reason, by the way, for taking hundreds of pages of classified documents

when he left office in January 2021 and then concealing them when the Justice Department subpoenaed, He repented him for their return in May of 2022, has been one of the larger mysteries of the case. Andy, we talked about this so many times. We never knew the motive. FBI agents conducting an unannounced search, I would like to put a pin in that because it was very much announced. And with his lawyers before it happened.

A search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residents in August of 2022 discovered hundreds more pages of top secret records that Trump and his lawyers failed to return to the government pursuant to that subpoena. in May after claiming they had fully returns. Oh, we've completely totally complied. We've got them all. Here's the red-willed envelope with all of the documents. And they got a warrant that they believed there was more classified on the premises and went in and found a bunch. That's right.

In January, 2023, in a progress memo, and I'm going to ask you what this is, this progress memo reviewed by MS now, Smith's office discussed the possible motive after the FBI discovered that Trump held on to many documents related to his businesses. So before we continue with the story, Andy, what is a progress memo? These are generally not something that we get in the public eye. No, it's definitely not. And it's actually not something that I'm familiar with as a regular piece of a normal prosecution that you're building. And I think the reason is because if you're working on a prosecution in a U.S. Attorney's Office, like you're, you're interacting with your superiors all the time. And so they know, if they want to know what the progress

says, they come by your office or they ask you to come by and brief them something like that, that obviously can't happen with a special counsel because they're working in a separate place and they're very independent. So I think periodically, it's likely that Jack Smith prepared these memos or somebody on his staff prepared them for him. But anyway, all of that stuff is in the, in the custody and care of the Department of Justice now. So it feels to me like almost a preliminary prox memo, a prosecution memo, which is something that's an official document done on all cases. That's where pretty much the investigation is over. You're ready to indict people and really kick off the prosecution.

And typically the AUSAs will write a prosecution memo, put that in the file. And those are not shared, not with the FBI or the public or anything like that. the comment that they think that this is indicative of his motive is really interesting to me because it's not something that they would have to prove at trial, right? It's not motive is not an element of really any offense. But it is something that prosecutors feel a lot of pressure to be able to speak to at trial because jurors quite normally want to know why did this happen. So this was probably a memo.

Let me ask you about that because Caroline Levitt, said, oh, this is BS, deep state, whatever. This motive wasn't even included in the indictment. And my very first thought was, you don't put motive in an indictment. Of course. It's not even something, as you said, that's required. It might help to prove intent when you talk about retention of classified documents, but it is something that you would bring up at trial.

Of course, yeah. And something that you wouldn't necessarily. tell the defense you have until it's brought up at trial. Until you had to in discovery or something like that. No, that's absolutely right. There's no legal requirement to prove motive as an element of the offense. So you don't have to enter any evidence that goes to motive. But, you know, people want, you know, there are many crimes, pretty obvious what the

motive is. If you get, if you're being prosecuted for selling narcotics, the motive was you wanted to make money from selling narcotics. Here, it's a question that resonates through this investigation. Like, why did he have all this stuff? So it's interesting to me that they were talking about this in the context of this progress memo, which means they were thinking about it as a strategy, part of their trial strategy. We're going to need to, and we should enter this as evidence relevant to motive.

Because it makes the presentation to the jury richer and more detailed. and more convincing. Yeah, and Carol Lenig actually has some of the language from the memo. Does she not? She does. So here's a quote. Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests, establishing a motive for retaining them,

according to the memo, which tracked progress in the documents and election interference investigations. Quote, we must have those documents. Now, in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, Raskin insisted that Trump's Justice Department has sought to cover up the details of Trump's hoarding of classified government secrets and storing them in his Mar-a-Lago club's showers and closets, which put national security at risk, as well as the clues to Trump's motives for doing so. Yeah, and here's a quote from Raskin in that letter to Bondi.

He says these new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests. The glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the cover-up reveals a president of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself. End quote. Now, we all sort of, I think, had guessed. Like, I was back in, I was back in 2020 before the other. election of Joe Biden. I was like, he's going to take our secrets and sell them, isn't he? He's going to sell our secrets to pay off his debts, isn't he? And so... I mean, it's so consistent with his personality.

Right. The most transactional politician in the history of American politics, right? He's totally self-absorbed, constantly looking to make a buck. So it makes sense on that level. Yeah. And along those lines, I don't think anybody's blown away by the revelation that this was to enrich himself. Exactly. What blows me away is that this memo made it out to Congress while that injunction is in place and probably accidentally. Yeah, that's for sure. So in a statement to MS now, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended Trump, I'm sure you're shocked, and denied the allegations in Smith's progress memo. Quote, it's pathetic that Democrats with zero credibility like Jamie Raskin are still clinging to derange Jack Smith and his lies in

2026, Jackson said. Quote, President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the Biden DOJ's unprecedented lawfare campaign against him and then won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide election victory. 800 lies in that single statement.

But it's the same over and over. I mean, that's how they're trying to rewrite the history of this. Now, the story goes on to say Smith has been largely barred from discussing details of his work or evidence in the case that's not yet public. But in January, Smith declined in public testimony before Congress to describe his work other than the public filings and successful indictments he brought against Trump in the summer of 2023. He cited Trump Justice Department instructions that he could not discuss the evidence in or conclusions of volume two of his investigation, which is not yet public. Smith testified he believed Trump's Justice Department would try to use any misstep by him as a justification to investigate him or bring criminal charges against him at Trump's request. If he talked about what was in volume two with that specific instruction not to and Judge Cannon's order, Smith believed if he said anything about the classified documents case, he could be under arrest.

Well, I'm sure the same standard doesn't apply to Pam Bondi for releasing this information. No, I was just a mistake, you know, come on. Indeed, Trump took to social media on the day of Smith's scheduled testimony to urge Bondi to investigate Smith for weaponizing the investigation against him. Quote, Jack Smith is a deranged animal who shouldn't be allowed to practice law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him and far worse. Trump wrote on Truth Social. Hopefully, the Attorney General is looking at what he's done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me.

Now, there's, there's Trump veering to a little bit of the inside ball. Yeah. Like, we don't know who he's referring to there, but clearly he's thinking of someone or some group of people. Probably that one cooperator guy, remember, who was trying to get Dale Lavera to join him in the cooperation? Yeah. Maybe.

Maybe. Oh, man. I still, God, I can't wait to read volume two. All right. Last month, Judge Cannon approved Trump's request and blocked the Justice Department and Jack Smith from ever releasing volume two of his report on the classified documents case he brought in Florida and all the evidence he had gathered. After Smith's team presented evidence against Trump, a grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts of withholding classified

national security information and obstructing justice by misleading investigators. And something that's not in this article, but I want to mention, there was a superseding indictment that I think brought it up to 42 felony counts. But Smith's case collapsed. I wouldn't say. that. Judge Cannon collapsed it when she dismissed the charges in July of 2024, after her wrong conclusion that Smith had not been properly appointed. That still hasn't been resolved, by the way, whether or not he was properly appointed. Yeah, and likely never will be, not in the context of this case, but in any case, these new revelations emerged after Trump's Justice Department released a tranche of records on March 13th to the House Judiciary Committee.

Most of them deal with the FBI's Arctic Frost probe, which examined how Trump's campaign and Republican allies sought to block the certification of Joe Biden's election victory. But that tranche, Raskin said, included the January 2020-tracking memo from Smith's office following both cases, which much of the Justice Department's release focused on. Republicans in Congress have cited some specific documentation in the election interference case to claim that, that Smith and the Biden-era DOJ politically and improperly targeted Trump and Republican allies for investigation. Yeah, that's the oopsie part of this. Quote, apparently blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against special counsel Smith, despite constantly coming up empty-handed, you have quite amazingly missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about

your boss's conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Eileen Cannon. That's what Raskin wrote. And that's what I think happened here. I think in her frenzied search to discredit Jack Smith, she violated that court order and the DOJ gag order. Maybe she should have had those lawyers working on getting more of the Epstein files out. I don't know. I might have been better used to their time. DoJ spokesperson Chad Gilmartin called Rassie. Askins claims about Trump's conduct and his DOJ, quote, a cheap political stunt. This one, this one's really over the top. Quote, Jack Smith's team was desperate to prosecute Biden's top political opponent.

So it is no surprise that his files contain salacious and untrue claims about President Trump. Now, like, those two things don't even connect. Like, there's no logical connection there. Like, even if he was desperate, which he wasn't, that doesn't mean the files should necessarily contain salacious things. So, yes, it's a surprise. Sorry. Gilmart said this. Quote, the accusation, the accusations Raskin makes are baseless. Judge Cannon's protective order was not violated, and none of the documents produced by DOJ violated 6E as none of them disclosed matters occurring before a grand jury.

That's just basically like, don't believe what you hear. do not believe what you see, do not believe what you experience. Just listen to me, and I will refute it all. If releasing that memo doesn't violate Judge Cannon's order, then just release volume two, because that wouldn't either. Yeah. And why does he got to take that end? We didn't violate 6E, by the way.

Like, nobody accused you of that yet, I don't think. So maybe shut up on that count? I don't know. I have to wonder. I really do have to wonder when the Knight Institute of Columbia University, who's going after volume two right now in court. Does Pam Bondi's release of this DOJ memo pertaining to volume two or the classified documents case, does that somehow open the door for the Knight Institute to argue DOJ has lifted its own

gag order on volume two or things that pertain to the classified documents case by releasing this? So we should be able to get volume two now, like maybe to the 11th Circuit or something like that. But, you know, I imagine at least that would have to force the DOJ to say, we accidentally did it because we're dumb. You know, I don't know. I don't think it's going to get you the whole file. You go in and make the argument, it would be embarrassing to a already constantly embarrassed DOJ. And likely they would come in and say, this was an administrative error by someone other than the attorney general. And therefore the judge should.

But that they're releasing things that have to do with it. I mean, doesn't that stand to. And they were going to say it was a mistake and the judge shouldn't hold it against them. And it doesn't obviate the whole protective order. So I don't think it would go anywhere. But just because it would be harassing them in an effective way I'm supportive of it points out the yet another example of the rank incompetence basically going on. They're only deciding. They're only choosing to.

I would make the accusation that the Department of Justice is only choosing to release classified documents information that suits them for a political purpose. Of course. Yeah. And so therefore, since they're willing to release some of it, they should release all of it. That would be my argument. Again, like you said, probably wouldn't win the day, but it would be fun. I like the argument. You probably need more than one example to point to. Like, but if they had done it, if they had done it, if they there's multiple documents over a period of time where they're clearly like opportunistically cherry picking stuff from the report or from the investigative file and throwing it out there, then yeah.

Well, all we have to do is wait a little bit longer for Redding Kenyonese to let slip some documents about Mara Lago and the search on Mara Lago to somehow tie the 2017 intelligence community assessment to a grand conspiracy. That's how they're doing it in Florida. And that's how they're getting around the statute of limitations is by saying it, also is connected to the search at Mar-a-Lago. If he lets slip a bunch of stuff, we've got the DOJ releasing more stuff that has to do with the case against Donald Trump.

And then maybe you've got some more ammo for it. But I just got some sometimes with this administration, you just got to wait for them to screw it up themselves. Yeah, they're going to open up a door and you can run right through it. So let me, before we finish on this one, there were a few questions this week on the very similar to this one. So I'll just real quick run through this. Martha said, just like everyone else, I love and appreciate you guys. Now that the unclassified

documents case is back in the news, I admit, I've lost the thread. What happened to all the documents illegally stored at Marilago were they recovered or did Judge canon stop the case? And all the documents are still there. So, no, all the documents were recovered when they went and executed the infamous search

warrant. They mean, we think there's the infamous closet. No, like 40 boxes we're still missing. And the closet with the padlock that they did not go into. But the ones we know about they took. And so that would have all gone back and gone into the evidence locker, likely somewhere at the FBI, probably the Washington Field Office. It was used as a part of Jack Smith's investigation.

The question is what happens to them after she dismissed the case. likely if they had to purge all the records that they had, they would have had to give those documents back to the lawful owner. So it's either the agencies or maybe the national archives. So I think it's probably would have gone back to the archives. Now, having said that, if that happened, Trump is president again. So anything he wants, he could just say, call up the archives and tell them to give me X, Y, Z documents.

So where those things are now, I think is a fairly open question. But they weren't left at Marlago. Yeah, I mean, they made the round trip. They're back at the shower. Maybe he's keeping him in the East Wing. Oh, no, he's not because he's completely. Yeah, that's gone. All right, everybody, we've got some more stories that we want to cover this week,

but we have to take another quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, our next story comes from the post. A top deputy to U.S. Attorney Janine Piro acknowledged... Is it the U.S. Attorney Janine Piro line that throws you over the edge? No, it's just this story. It's this whole story. Sorry, please continue.

Okay, okay. A top deputy to U.S. attorney, Janine Piro, acknowledges in a closed-door hearing this month that the Justice Department did not have evidence of wrongdoing in its criminal investigation. of the Federal Reserve over the cost of its building renovations, according to a transcript of the court proceedings. The prosecutor's admission, which has not been previously reported, undercuts President Donald Trump's claim that, quote, there is criminality in the $2.5 billion overhaul of the Fed's headquarters overlooking the National Mall.

It's so fun. Like, we know Boseberg tossed these subpoenas, and we know the Trump, White House was like, it's BS and the DOJ was like, that's, this is the wrong. I think Junipero was like, it's an activist judge because we should be able to subpoena people. Our subpoenas were real. But if you go in and tell the judge that there's no actual crime that you can point to, he's not going to let you, okay.

Yeah. You're supposed to have some information about wrongdoing and criminality. when you start an investigation of wrongdoing and criminality. Yeah, so to admit that you don't have any, but you want to subpoena them anyway, and then to be mad that the judge wouldn't let you to say it seems that the subpoena's sole purpose is harassment, but you didn't give any other purpose for the subpoena?

Not a good look. Yeah, so this is filling in a lot of gaps from that initial story of Boseberg's, you know, quashing of these subpoenas. It goes on to say attorneys for the Fed, and the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. battled over the legality of two grand jury subpoenas at the center of the investigation

during a sealed hearing on March 3rd. A transcript of those proceedings was later unsealed, and that's why we have this information now. Both subpoenas were quashed this month by a federal judge who described them as an illegal effort by the Trump administration to pressure Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates or quit, right, to resign from the independent central bank.

That's right. Piro, the top federal prosecutor in D.C., and a Trump ally, opened the inquiry after Powell gave brief testimony on the renovations costs during a congressional hearing last year. The criminal investigation followed years of criticism from Trump over the Fed's handling of monetary policy and his public demands that the Justice Department target his perceived political foes. Prosecutors are weighing whether the cost overruns amount to fraud and whether Powell gave false testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. No and no. And as, you know, top deputies in Janine Piro's office admitted in court, they also don't have any evidence of any of that. But G.A. Masuko Lataf, who was recently named Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., under Janine Piro there, said at the March 3rd hearing that the Justice Department lawyers, quote, do not know at this time what evidence there is of fraud or criminal misconduct, arguing only that the project is,

a $1.2 billion over budget and it just doesn't seem right. That's their argument. Awesome. There are 1.2 billion reasons for us to look into it. That's what Masuko LaTafeft told Chief U.S. District Judge James Boseberg. Don't say that kind of dumb stuff to James Bosberg. Yeah. Or how about we quote, do not know at this time? That's just We have no idea. We have nothing. Zero. He tries that he hits the at this time. Like, that's a qualifier that would make it likely that we will have at some time other than this one. Kind of like Lindsey Halligan in front of the grand jury saying, we'll have better evidence at trial. Yeah. I don't have a billion dollars at this time.

Same. I'm never going to have a billion dollars. Like, come on. Pressed by Boseberg, Masuka Latif also said, quote, don't know what statements from Powell's congressional testimony were false, adding that, quote, there are certain areas that he addressed that caused concern, according to the transcript. Again, you can't cite certain areas and not say which areas. What is it that you allege is false? You can't investigate someone for making a false statement when you have no idea what the statement was that you say is

false. Yeah. And in a lot of cases, even if you do know the statement that you think is false, it has to meet a really high standard of falsity. Yeah. It has to be like laser clear. We talked about that ad nauseum with the Jim Comey thing and the Bronson literal truth defense and all this other stuff. It's like you can't you can't just, he sounds fishy. That guy's got an odd look. I don't like the cut of his jib. Open up the investigation. We'll find something. All right. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office said Tuesday that the purpose of a grand jury investigation is to determine whether there is probable cause that a crime was committed. Quote, that is exactly what we're doing here as we investigate the discrepancies in the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's

testimony before Congress and the billion dollar plus cost overrun. This spokesperson said, okay, yes, that is the purpose of the grand jury investigation, but you can't do it with just nothing. You got to have something to lead you to believe there might be. And also, we're going to investigate the discrepancies in his testimony, but you can't say what those discrepancies are. It's insane. I remember back in the day when we were following the Jack Smith investigation or the Mueller probe that if there was a grand jury that had been impaneled, then that must mean that there is a crime being investigated, like probable cause of a crime being invested, at least a predicate of a crime being investigated, because you are not allowed to use the grand jury

to do exactly what they were trying to do in this case. And either they know that and they're trying to get it around Jim Bozberg or they don't know that and shouldn't be working at the U.S. Attorney's Office. Anyway. Yikes. Yeah. So this goes on to say the U.S. Attorney's Office has alleged in written filings that Powell's testimony contained possible discrepancies and that the cost overruns had raised the specter of fraud. But possible specters don't get you to subpoenas because there were no details. Piro's office had said prosecutors reviewed about 600 documents that the Fed submitted to Congress

about the renovation before issuing the subpoenas as well as an audit. An audit that occurred more than four years ago by the Fed's Inspector General that actually didn't raise any concern. about criminal conduct. Do you know how clean you have to be to not raise any issues with an inspector general? You can you can just hear like Jeannie Pirore, we looked at the audit. It didn't say anything. So we didn't like it. But we're going forward anyway. This is, I think, one of the first times in history. I've heard of an inspector general's report coming back clean. And by the way, what's interesting is when they did that audit and couldn't find anything in the Fed's Inspector General report mysteriously and for probably no reason at all.

They moved Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice, Inspector General, over to the Fed Reserve. So I think that's very interesting. The favorite IG of the Trump administration. He'll do it. Him and Kufari. He'll land the plane. Yeah. He'll land that plane for us just like the first time.

Now, another audit of the construction costs by the inspector. General is underway at Powell's request. So. Yeah. That's what you do when you look at massive cost overruns that you think, man, that seems crazy. A billion dollars, too much money? You send the auditor in to look at it.

You don't open a criminal investigation on the head of the Fed. Like you don't have any information to indicate a crime has been committed. Like, do the audit first. Figure out where the money. went and then come back. And it's actually not unusual. DHS budget for construction went over $1.8 billion. The Reagan building, a billion and a half over budget.

Like it happens a lot. Very frequently. As does over budget construction issues happen in the private sector. You know, it's not, I'm not saying it's okay, but there's a proper way to respond to it. Well, you know, Andy, the ballroom was only supposed to cost $150 million, and now it's upwards of $400 million. So right there are 250 million reasons we should open a criminal investigation, according to the deputy from U.S. attorney office for Janine Piro. I see a false statement somewhere. Let's go. It sounds fishy.

Yes, Bosberg said in his ruling to quash the subpoenas that the U.S. Attorney's Office had provided, quote, essentially zero evidence. of a crime and had declined an offer to show him evidence in private without attorneys for the Fed being present. Quote, indeed, most members of the committee that Powell testified before, including a majority of each party's members, as well as the committee's chair, have said that they do not think he committed a crime, the judge wrote. Now, Piro has said the Justice Department plans to appeal Bosberg's decision on the subpoenas. The U.S. Attorney's Office also submitted a filing asking Bosberg to reconsider his ruling, I don't know.

He didn't really sound like he's on the fence in those quotes. So I don't see that going anywhere. You know, now that you mention it, he does seem fishy. Okay, you got me. Judges rarely grant such requests and I really do not see one happening in this case. No, me neither. He might pull two Trump judges on a three-judge panel at the D.C. circuit, but that'll be quickly overturned.

The Federal Reserve is retained. Get this. Jerome Powell and the Fed Reserve, they've reached. retained Robert K. Heir, former special counsel who investigated but declined to seek charges against President Joe Biden over his handling of classified documents to defend the central bank against the subpoenas. I can see the report now, Andy. Look, Jerome Powell is a feeble old man who would be sympathetic to a jury. So what? He's not done any. We have no evidence of wrongdoing, but we really don't like him. And we think he should have done a much better job

lowering the interest rates and therefore he's bad. Yeah. Now, Powell himself has hired Gerson Zwyfok. I don't know if I'm saying that properly. Former General Counsel of News Corp and 21st Century Fox is his outside counsel. Piro has Piero. And her AUSA is that she got from a Craigslist advertisement straight out of college from in Texas.

All right, Piro, who I need no shade to Texas. There's some excellent law schools there. I take that comment back. Piro, who previously was on a Fox News host, has assigned at least three prosecutors to this case. The Trump administration has signaled it has no intention of backing off, even as some of the president's allies have questioned whether he should find an off ramp in this confrontation with Powell to just clear the way for a swift confirmation of Kevin Warsh, who's the president's nominee to become the next Fed chair, May is when Jerome Powell. time as Fed Chair ends. But if this is still in litigation and Trump is pushing back, it could postpone his replacement as Fed Chair. He's scheduled to go from Fed Chair to just Fed Board Member. Yeah, because the confirmation process has stalled because Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who holds a pivotal vote on the Senate Banking Committee, he's pledged to block Warsh's nomination until the Powell matter is closed. Powell, in turn, has pledged to keep serving as Fed chair on an acting basis until a new chair is

confirmed. So there you go. Jean-Pierro has backed Donald Trump right into having Jerome Powell as the Fed chair for longer than his term. Well done. Yeah, but also his illegal war of choice in Iran driving oil prices up has also really complicated the ability of the Fed Reserve to lower interest rates anytime soon. So. as we expect inflation to go back up to 4%. And I should just add to like this, the fact that she's got three counts of prosecutors on the case, that is simply the more cowbell strategy of prosecution.

You don't, additional prosecutors doesn't actually create evidence of illegal. No. No, it doesn't. Okay. No, it doesn't work that way. My six lawyer defense team might have words for you, but I'm kidding. I don't have one of those. But we have one other quick story before we get to hit me in the head with a bat.

What do we got from NBC? All right. This one is from NBC. A career prosecutor is set to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey. Yay, Jersey. After successful consultations between federal judges and the Trump administration that were preceded by months of legal fights and significant turnover. So Robert Frazier, who has served in the New Jersey U.S. Attorney's Office for more than two decades

and was most recently at Senior Trial Council, he's going to become the top federal prosecutor in the state. The chief judge for the district signed a one-sentence order on Monday appointing Frazier. The same day, a letter signed by an assistant U.S. attorney in the office said Frazier's appointment, quote, followed consultations between the district court and the Department of Justice's senior leadership. Spokesperson for the DOJ welcomed Frazier's appointment. Look at that.

Everybody's all on Team Team T's. together. So I guess the previous four or five U.S. attorneys that have been appointed by the courts that were immediately turned around and fired by Blanche, maybe that caused this particular office to work with Department of Justice and the judges to say, if we put this person in, are you going to fire him immediately? And maybe they went through a few names until they found somebody that the Justice Department was fired with. I heard some reporting on that, on that count. So they found someone that DOJ could tolerate and then they just they just did it

because it's like honestly you can't have all these cases being attacked in court and thrown out after the fact and lost convictions of violent criminal. It's ridiculous. But here we are. Here we are. All right everybody, we'll be right back with Hit Me in the Head with a Bat. Stick around.

All right, everybody. Welcome back. Time for Hit Me in the Head with a Bat. That's the working title for this particular segment. I was going to write a jingle, Andy, but nothing rhymes with presumption of regularity. That's a challenge right there. All you listeners heard that. I've thrown down the gauntlet.

But this is the segment where we give more examples of the complete and total destruction of the presumption of regularity that the Department of Justice has long enjoyed. First up, even during the first Trump administration, right? There were still some presumption of regularity. For sure. Every once in a while it'd get weird. like when the census question, the citizenship question on the census case was closed and Trump ordered it, go back and try it again. And the DOJ found themselves in the courtroom with the judge and they're both looking at each other like, I didn't do you know? I don't know what's going on. We're sorry. This is not, we didn't mean to do this. We're super sorry. And then immediately after the Mueller investigation was closed, there were hearings on the docket. Like it seems to have taken some of the members. of Mueller's team off guard that the investigation was over and they showed up in court like,

sorry, Your Honor, we had this April 3rd thing set. We meant to be here. We didn't know. It seemed like it got closed in kind of a hurry and maybe we'll learn more about that as time goes on. But anyway, time for hit me in the head with a bat. First up from Raw story, attorneys and legal observers were left in disbelief after a federal judge in Minnesota tore into the legal team for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday for submitting a brief, quote, riddled with misreadings and misquotations, and said she questioned defense counsel at the hearing and received unsatisfactory responses. That's a very nice language for what happened here. U.S. District Judge Nancy Bracel, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly. Please let us know if I'm not.

Issued a scathing 69-page preliminary injunction against ICE's detention practices at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minnesota, ordering the agency to restore detainees access to attorneys, phone calls, and legal materials. The ruling delivered a sharp rebuke to the government's lawyers. In contesting the injunction, ICE's legal team twice cited Planned Parenthood v. Rounds for the propositions that mandatory injunctions are, quote, particularly disfavored and that plaintiffs must meet a, quote, heavy and compelling weight of evidence standard. Now, aside, if you think that sounds like an odd legal standard, hold that thought in your head for just a minute, because neither, quote, appears in that case, nor in any Eighth Circuit

case the judge could find. Quote, neither of these quotes appear in Planned Parenthood nor in any Eighth Circuit case the court has found that addresses injunctions, Brazel wrote flatly. Quote, even under the most charitable of readings. Planned Parenthood cannot possibly stand for such a proposition. The case discusses the heightened burden that applies to enjoining state statutes and does not involve mandatory injunctions at all. Oops. Quote, the Eighth Circuit does not apply and has specifically rejected a heightened standard for mandatory injunctions. Oh, that one hurt. Yeah. Ouch. So not only did you miss quote, you got it completely backwards. Yeah. The non-existent citations came a case where the judge had already found ICE's sole witness not credible, calling the witness's

testimony inconsistent at best and incredible at worst. To boot, the agency was found to have violated detainee's Fifth Amendment rights by blocking access to attorneys during Operation Metro Surge. So, ouch. Yeah, that's not good. Full disclosure, the AUSA who submitted that is named Brett Shumate. He's also the Department of Justice lawyer on a couple of my four years. cases that are in federal court right now. Oh, wow. Look at that. So guess who's going to be keeping an eye out for fake citations and future filings? You're going to take a really close look at those filings for sure. All right. Next up from Politico, in a growing number of cases, the Trump administration has recently begun admitting to judges. It is unable to defend some of its decisions

to detain immigrants. Huh. In dozens of cases over the past several weeks, Justice Department lawyers have declined to push back on detainees' claims that they're owed a chance to make a case for their release. In those cases, the administration has simply agreed to provide a bond hearing or even outright release, telling judges that officials, quote, do not have an opposition argument to present, or saying that they couldn't cobble together enough information to mount a defense.

Quote, undersigned counsel was unable to obtain documentation sufficient to provide factual support for a response. That is the lawyerly way of phrasing, Your Honor, we got nothing. A Justice Department attorney wrote in March 13 response to a detainees lawsuit in Arizona. Quote, accordingly, administration officials do not oppose the court ordering petitioner

to receive a bond hearing at this time. This is huge because those bond hearings are basically like the judge says, okay, here's what I want for bond. You're allowed to go. I've never seen the Justice Department saying, we don't have anything for you. We don't have an argument to present by like, wow. All right. Finally, from ABC, the Department of Justice notified a federal judge that it has been erroneously relying on an ICE memo to justify arrests in courthouses. That's according to a new court filing. The filing is part of an ongoing federal case in New York brought by civil rights groups challenging a policy of arresting people in immigration courts. Court. Federal prosecutor said Tuesday, they had repeatedly cited a memo called 2025 ICE guidance to defend this policy of arresting people in courtrooms. And that led to courthouse arrests

nationwide. Quote, we write respectfully and regrettably to correct a material mistaken statement of fact that the government made to the court and the plaintiffs. That's Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, admitting, yeah. That memo doesn't say what we said it said about arresting people in courtrooms. Specifically, I think this case, 26 federal plaza. Anyway, wow. All right. So that's our hit me on the head with a bat today.

All kinds of errors and mistakes and admissions of wrongdoing, which we rarely see from this administration as well. Yeah. And I wonder in the vaunted history of the Southern District of New York is Jay Clayton, maybe the only U.S. attorney that's ever had to send a letter like that there. I don't know. Might be. Might be.

All right. It looks like we have time for, we had a listener question that we kind of plugged in earlier in the show. And I think we have time for one more. All right. This one comes to us from Grumpy Grams. And Grumpy Graham says, how was Donald Trump able to vote in the recent special election in Florida

when convicted felons are not allowed to vote in Florida? And Grams, you are, according to your own assertion, grumpy, but you're not alone because a lot of other people wrote in a very similar question on this issue. And it's really kind of a unique thing because, as we know, Florida is like particularly harsh on people convicted of crimes in Florida. First, their criminals had their voting rights restored a few years back. And then when the Republicans took over the statehouse, they passed a whole slew of requirements. you're going to pay all your fines before you get them back. So done everything they could to kind of delay this. But one thing that Florida law does specify is that if a voter has an out-of-state conviction,

then Florida will defer to that state's laws for how a felon can regain his or her voting rights. So this is interesting because Trump, of course, was convicted in New York, which means that Trump benefits from a 2021 New York law that allows people with felony convictions to vote as long as they're not serving a term of incarceration at the time of the election. So in New York under, right, in New York under New York law, you lose the right to vote not just when you're convicted, but when you're convicted and sent to prison. And when you get out of prison, you get your right to vote back. And since Trump has never been sentenced to time in jail or prison, that he's not currently in jail.

I know. That's, he's never lost his right to vote and therefore he doesn't lose it in Florida. So Trump can vote because of Democrats expanding voting rights. Exactly. Okay. He also voted by mail

in the last special election. He did. He did. Melania and so did Barron. And his endorsed candidate lost to a Democrat So now a Democrat represents the district in the state legislature where Moralago is. I think I love that. I love that for them.

It's awesome. He said this week that he voted by mail because, you know, he's the president. And he couldn't be there because he has an important work to do somewhere other than Florida, you know, notably in D.C. And therefore, because of that, he, it's okay for him to vote by mail, which is interesting to me. But a reporter. said, but you've been in Palm Beach this whole time. Every weekend. Yeah. During the, during the early voting period, he was there multiple times. Okay, put that minor fact aside. His excuse for himself, to me, sounds a lot like the same thing that,

oh, I don't know, any working person in the state of Florida might say who's busy during the day when the polls are open for early or regular voting. And it's just more convenient for them because they're busy, I don't know, trying to, you know, put food on the table and keep your kids on a straight line and whatever else it is they're doing down there. Yeah, but you're not the president. I have many important, tremendous things. People crying, calling me, saying, sir, they have tears of their eyes. It's incredible and very busy, a very busy shaking hands. That's why it's bruised. He's a very special man. He's not like you and me. He's different. He doesn't have to go to jail for crimes and he gets to vote by mail. The rest of us should have to crawl to the pole, right?

It's a very special man. Yes, he is. And Melania Trump wasn't born here, but she can vote, right? Okay. No problem with that either because, you know, No problem with that. All right. She's Melania Trump, I guess.

That's her reason. So there you go. All right. So got it. Yeah, but for all of us who are not the president, specifically President Trump. Yeah. For all the rest of us, please get out and vote.

mail in person, early, on the day, whatever, whatever you can pull together, please, please go exercise your right to vote. Let's just see Andy's eyes right now. Please. Yeah. Yeah. Vote early. Vote early.

And like I'm in California, right? We have 100% mail in voting now. But I actually walked my prop 50 ballot to a drop box. And in the midterms, I might walk my ballot to the registrars. office. Like I've not taken any chances with the mail, but I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to disparage mail in voting. I'm just, I'm, there's going to be so many shenanigans. It's lawful. It's totally secure. People should be allowed to do it. Tons of, of particularly older people who, it's hard for them to get out and move around and get to the polls, wherever they might be. So,

military folks overseas. It's absurd. But anyway, keep voting everyone. Well, thank you so much for your questions, everybody. We got to a couple today. Send them into us. There's a link in the show notes where you can submit your questions. And we'll see you next week. Who knows what's going to happen between now and then. And again, we're still taking suggestions for the segment. Hit me in the head with a bat. I'm using that one because it just makes me laugh, particularly when it's just all one word like that. But we're still open to suggestions. So send them into us. Again, that link is in the show notes. Any final thoughts? Before we're we get out of here this week. Just that I'm looking forward to next week. And once again, you get to hit me in the head with a bat. I really liked that way that you spoke that. Maybe we'll take that and just like make a remix with it. It'd be the head with a bat.

Just you doing that over and over again. That's free. That's free. You do whatever you want with it. Meet me at the cottage. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. For all you heated rivalry fans. All right. That's a banger song.

All right, everybody. We'll talk soon. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawkey with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios.

The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds. And the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcast dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com. Thank you.