Jack - Damp Dollar Bills On A Clothesline

Episode Date: September 23, 2019

 This week on Mueller, She Wrote we discuss the latest Trump whistleblower news, plus an interview with former US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General who now hosts the Talking Feds pod, Mr. Harry Litman. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/muellershewrote!

I'm Greg Oliar. Four years ago, I stopped writing novels to report on the crimes of Donald Trump and his associates. In 2018, I wrote a best-selling book about it, Dirty Rubels. In 2019, I launched Proveil, a bi-weekly column about Trump and Putin, spies and mobsters, and so many traders! Trump may be gone, but the damage he wrought will take years to fully understand. Join me and a revolving crew of contributors and guests as we try to make sense of it all. This is Preveil. Thanks to the OutCald neighbors by Ring for supporting Mullershi Road. So if you want to see what's going on in your neighborhood, text AG Pod to the number 55588 to download the neighbors app today.

That's AG Pod to 55588. And thanks to Everlane for supporting MullershiRoute. Would you buy a shirt for $50 that you knew only cost $7 to make? We wouldn't either. And with Everlane, you never overpay for quality clothes. And right now, you can check out their personalized collection at Everlane.com slash AG, and you'll

get free shipping on your first order. And thanks to FIGS for supporting MullershiRoute. FIGS is an amazing company that makes stylish and functional scrubs for people who deserve it the most. Figs is offering you 15% off your first purchase by using our code AG at where Figs.com. This is Greg Olyar, the author of Dirty Rubles, and you're listening to Mueller, she wrote. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what the opposition is.

I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have, not have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have 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 hairing. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist.

Hello and welcome to Muller She Wrote. I'm your host A.G. and with me today, Archie Lisa Johnson. Hello. And Jordan Coburn. Hello. Thank you to Seattle again for the warm hospitality and for sharing your amazing city with us. We had such a good time when we were there. Yeah, that was awesome.

I love that city. I'm gonna live there one day. I definitely do wanna move there someday. It didn't work out this time, but I think at some point in my life, I definitely wanna live there. It's so neat there. And everyone's just playing good music all the time.

Yes, it's crazy. It's a really good music town. And they're like hipsters, but they're not annoying about it there. Right. They're just. It's a really good music town. And they're like hipsters, but they're not annoying about it there. Right. They're just like, this is how we live. You know, everybody's good looking, but not in like an LA way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know just good looking people. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, thanks Seattle. We do have another podcast, a daily morning news show called The Daily Beans. So please subscribe to that. We'll be pulling it out of the muller sheet wrote feed soon and we don't want

you to think we disappeared. We also have a special series unpack pulling it out of the muller sheet road feed soon and we don't want you to think we disappeared We also have a special series unpacking the redacted muller report page by page that comes out Thursdays So check that out as well and if you follow daily beans on Twitter at daily beans pod You'll be automatically entered to win dinner with myself and our network CEO for you and a friend and we will fly to your city Anywhere in the lower 48 and we'll be picking a winner once we hit 20,000 followers. So follow us at Daily BeansPod. You will be glad you did. So this is a heavy news week. We have a packed show including an interview with former US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General who now host the Talking Feds pod, Mr. Harry Littman. He'll be joining us and we have a lot to cover. But first first my favorite segment, Corrections.

So Jonathan Edmund says in response to an episode of Daily Beans this week, in today's Beans, AG expressed frustration with Apple over refusing to unlock iPhones. This is, I think, in reference to the San Bernardino terrorist incident. The FBI wanted to help unlocking the device and Apple refused. The reporting on this case was never fair. Apple will always respond to a warrant and share iCloud backups, but they won't share tools for cracking iPhones. So if the FBI had brought the phone to an Apple store,

it would have backed up to iCloud and Apple would have provided the data. So you get that FBI? Just go to the Apple store. Or is that easy? Interesting. Apple store. They don't call it the iStore, do they?

I don't think so, but they should. Yeah. Why don't they? What's the fat? Wow. Like the Apple watch? Yeah, they like to mix it up every now and then. Yeah, that's true.

It's not called the eye watch. Yeah, that's creepy. Yeah, eye watch. I mean, they might have actually just mixed it. Yeah, they were like, that's not gonna work. The mixture. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah.

It's just a piece of fruit that has eyes. I can't remember the comedian, but he's like, I wonder if they will make the apple eye patch. I don't know, that was pretty funny. Just a patch shaped like an apple for pirates. Apple iPad. I know that was pretty fun. Just a patch shaped like an Apple for pirates, Apple pirates. Brenno the Seppo says Trump stakes were sold exclusively at the sharper image and QVC home shopping networks. So weird. Yeah, you couldn't get them. It wasn't really a correction just a hey, didn't you know? There you go. I don't even know they sold food. No, and that's weird, right?

Yeah, I'm just massage chairs. They shouldn't sell food. I think that's the point, right? It's like, that can't be good. Next to the, yeah, what are they? They had things that you just had to get, but never would have thought about getting it until you went into the sharper image. Right, and they're also like $9 million? Yeah, right, right, right next to that. If I had to think of the least innovative food in the world,

it would be steak. Which thing doesn't belong, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's what they're selling. It's the least sharp image. Maybe beyond burgers or something, that would make sense. Impossible me, whatever. You can meet, you grow in your stink.

Or a burger alarm clock that also has a bank somehow. Exactly. Yeah, that you can only use in one of their patented massage chairs. Yes, and if it gets wet, game over. Annie Riley says, Arab versus Arabic. In Chapstick, insecure, A.G. mentions the Arabic polling stations in Israel. Arabic should only be used in referring to the Arabic language.

Arabic should be used basically anywhere else. Arab food, Arab people, Arab neighbors, et cetera. So I didn't know that. So good. Thank you for telling me. And nobody sent the memo to Rudy Giuliani about the Ukraine. No, he did not, I heard that. I was like, oh, oh, oh, I know.

I caught it too, I was wondering. I was wondering too. Yeah, if our listeners hadn't told us, I wouldn't have known. So I imagine a lot of other people probably don't think about it, but I was like, oh, okay Rudy. Go Rudy. No, we said the Ukraine, right?

He did, yeah. Okay, so don't go. Don't do that. Yeah, don't go Rudy. Go Rudy. I said the Ukraine, right? He did. Okay. So don't, don't do that. Yeah, don't go Rudy. She also says, I will note that most Arabs identify more with their nationality or tribe than their race. So it may be better to say Palestinian polling stations. It also, it's also important to remember that Arabs in the West Bank can't vote only those in Israel can. Wow. Just like that. Yep, so close. Leonard Grossman says,

if a Supreme Court justice is impeached, that would end his life tenure. I say he, because I can't imagine either of the women on the court ever being impeached. I think there's three. Justice's can and do sit from time to time on lower courts. I believe even some retired justices have done so. Their pay continues after they retire for scotists, by the way.

But if impeached, their pay stops. This is true for both scotist justices have done so. Their pay continues after they retire for scotists, by the way. But if impeach, their pay stops. This is true for both scotist justices and judges on the lower federal courts. So thank you. Dianity and Jeff Tolen say, I've heard you say twice that there's only four in emoluments in the Constitution, but there's a domestic emoluments clause as well.

We corrected this during daily beans, but I wanted to bring it up in this show too. In your last beans podcast, you discussed the issues of US Air Force stays at the Trump Turnberry Hotel. You briefly mentioned the emoluments clause, then dismiss it because the clause you thought only applied to foreign governments, but there is a second emoluments clause, Article 2, Section 1, clause 7, which limits the president's salary and says the president cannot receive any other emoluments from the United States. So the issue remains alive.

AW also pointed this out saying the crew case that we discussed is a domestic emoluments case. That's so cool. I think our fans are just the smartest people ever because like they're so detailed with their sources that sometimes I think Mueller is secretly correcting us or something. You know, like, it's yeah, article a section. I'm like, you are. Sometimes I think they're the source.

They're the mullers. Like, they just knew. They just knew. Yeah, very intelligent. I'm all for it. Hey, school me. Yeah, they blow me away. And those are this week's corrections.

If you have any corrections, head to the mullershearope.com. Click on contact and select corrections. Let us know if you want to remain anonymous. Otherwise, I'll shout yeah, and we'll get it right eventually. Nice. That was one of the are more relevant correction segments. Yes. There was a legal correction in there. Yeah. Usually it's about like colors and pronunciations. Yes. Those are fun to.

GIF or GIF. That's still ongoing. It's funny when it comes up on Twitter too, because people will die on that. All right. Let's jump into the news time for just the facts so the whistleblower scandal has been unfolding all week and i will go over that in hot notes uh... so stick around for that and we also have hairy lippen who's going to talk about legal remedies uh... for for the whistleblower

complaint to come to light or to get to Congress. So definitely stick around for that. Last week we learned that the Manhattan District Attorney's side vans had subpoenaed eight years of tax returns from Trump and his accounting firm, Mazarz, not from Trump directly, but from his accounting firm, Mazarz. This is in relation to the hush money payments because the DA is investigating whether the Trump organization or its executives broke New York state law when they falsified their business records to show they paid Cohen for legal work as opposed to reimbursing him for making hush money payments to Trump's

campaign. Well, it's the mistresses which helped Trump's campaign. It's what Cohen's in jail for right now. But this week, as expected, Trump is suing to block that discovery and the court put a temporary restraining order on Mazar's to prevent them from handing over the information until the matter is resolved in court. Trump's argument is that because the president can't be indicted, he can't be subject to the criminal process to include subpoenas. And they're basing this argument on the federal office of legal counsel memo

that disallows the indictment of a sitting president. This is exactly what Mueller argued in his report saying that federally he could not draw a traditional prosecute, torreled conclusion about obstruction of justice because given that Trump can't be indicted, it is unfair to accuse him of a crime because, one, he doesn't have the traditional criminal process to defend himself through, and two, because doing so could taint future prosecutions that he would otherwise be subject to, meaning when he leaves office. So Trump is using Mueller's argument to protect himself, and I feel dirty about it.

But this is a state case, and it's not subject to the federal office legal counsel memo. I'm certain the court will order the taxes or the documents be handed over from Mazar's. But in his filing, Trump also said that his crimes can't be investigated because he's the president. Um, you're what? You're what? Yes. Crimes.

Crimes. That's a very interesting observation there, Aegean. You're what can't be investigated? Who would say that? A criminal? A criminal would say that. That's who it said. You can't investigate my murders because that isn't murder.

See, look, this is not how I would come out even by accident. I know. At least not in most cases. Trump, wow. Yeah. Fantastic, because in most cases. Yeah. You know, I would think they would have gone with some other arguments first.

Maybe just not to jump to the thing who only has any legitimacy in the realm of this one memo. Otherwise, you're going down. That's basically the two options there. It's so, that's just, you can't investigate my crimes. You're what? Unbelievable. An interesting note.

In a letter to the judge from the DA, it appears to be signed by Christopher Conroy, the chief of major economic crimes bureau, which investigates complex crimes committed in the financial sector, including securities and investment fraud, money laundering, and terrorism financing. This isn't just siphance going after Trump. This is the Major Economic Crime Bureau, economic crimes bureau going after the Trump organization. This might not be just about the hush money payments. As we know, investigations start and as they uncover things, they investigate more things. You don't start an investigation

unless you're special counsel with a limited scope and an end. Yeah, like maybe tax evasion for decades and decades and decades. Yep. Or um, terrorism financing and through your hotel at Azerbaijan. Yeah, all the above. Yeah. So, and money laundering, I think 84% of Trump properties purchased are flagged for money laundering potential. It's the only laundering. And that's himself. It's just different.

Yeah. It's just so close as he tried to force that pun. He's so privileged he hired a maid to laundress money. Right. He bit separate from the whitey tie. Yeah. So he just damped all our bills the clothes light in the shower afterwards. It was like, it was like making rain.

It's how my money feels. Every time I walk outside for more than 10 minutes and it's in my back pocket. That's great. You want some gummy bears? They're real warm and soft. Yeah, that's really disgusting. I think my pocket. So anyway, put some beans on that.

I think this could go elsewhere. I don't think it's just limited to the hush money payments. And Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, the Transportation Secretary, is under congressional investigation for using her position in the government to enrich herself and her family, specifically her father. So we'll keep an eye on that investigation for you. Gosh, what do you got? 48?

Which committee is investigating her? I think it's the oversight committee. Nice. The anybody, Tiddy, I'm sorry. You need to do a committee. I'll double check. But I think it's the oversight committee. I'm sorry. I'll double check. I think it's the oversight committee. I'm the president of that committee, by the way, not the oversight.

The other one. The first thing I did after you said that was looking your boots. Look away. I was like, I haven't looked at a while. Does she belong to that? They're barely there, but a picture with last time. My eyes are up here. You guys still know word on the McCabe case. The last thing we heard is the grand jury was recalled.

The Department of Justice refused to drop the case. McCabe followed an appeal to have the charges dropped, and they said no. And indicated that he would be indicted. But then the grand jury did not return in indictment that day, which is normal in these cases. We know that two line prosecutors left the case and quit the department of justice because they disagreed with the way the case was being handled, and we're watching the story closely,

we'll keep you updated as it happens, either on this podcaster on the Daily Beans, because you can't wait until next Sunday to find out what happens during the week. There's that other podcast for you. And Steve is back in the news, and he has a link to Epstein, vis-a-vis Epstein's creepy modeling scout, Jean-Luc Brunel, co-founder of the Next Management Corporation. Minuchin, Steve, was listed as the company's New York

Department of State Point of Contact, meaning he would have handled the company's registration of papers and answered any lawsuits. Steve says he has no idea he He was the point of contact. It's like your emergency contact. I think all of a sudden, I don't know, Jesse Egan gets called, you gotta come to the hospital,

A.G.'s in the hospital. She put you down as the emergency contact. Well, I don't why, I don't remember that. Right. I know where that's serious. I'm Jesse Egan. What's happening? He'd be there, he's a sweetheart.

Oh, he would totally go. Yeah, a very good point. But he would have been surprised. That is true. Yes, he would have been. And now I'm gonna change my emergency contact The people can't know oh No, I'm just gonna have to be somebody else now damn it He's a greatest yeah, and and so that's what's going on

He's he everyone is linked somehow to Epstein. It's gross Yeah, it is very gross. And we talked about this in the daily beans, I think, but the fact that he didn't know that he was listed as the emergency contact is, in my opinion, a testament to how close they actually were. Because only if you're super, super tight with someone, would you just put them on there? In the hypothetical world where he's telling the truth. Totally right.

You're totally right. Yeah, it's like, who do I put as my point of contact from, you know, New York State Department, who's gonna handle and answer all lawsuits for my modeling agency, because I'm sure there's never any lawsuits come out of modeling agencies. Right.

How about my estranged friend who, if asked, that I'm looking for them, we'll say, who's that? It's like obviously that's not what's happening. Yeah. And it is true, Steve did say that he is good friends with faith something or other one of the co-founders I can't remember her name faith keep her

Fathem to I believe it different to monosyllabic names and one of them is faithy So we also have this week former KGB chief collugin also have this week former KGB chief, Collusion has told reporters that he has seen an extensive compromise dossier on Trump as the Cremlin, or at the Cremlin, and Demetri Simes, who made his stunning debut in the Mueller investigation when he wrote part of Trump's Mayflower speech,

had arranged for models to engage in sex acts, sex acts with Trump during his visits to Russia, and he even alleges that Trump met both of his wives this way. Right. Wrong, no collusion. No collusion. Totally down rate. This is crazy that he has to fight every single rumor, and I say rumor loosely, we know

most of it is true, but he's fighting everyone from every angle here. Yeah, and the steel dossier has it in there, and nothing in steel dossier has been yet disproven. And then, you know, we've got, and we know Russia does this with rich, particularly Americans, they have a history of it. They're not really his friends. It's well known. True, but also does he think they have his back?

Like, I used to think he was gonna flee to Moscow if he had to. I don't know if they'll welcome him. I don't know, he's not. He's not in there, but I don't think they like Trump as much as he likes to. Nobody does. know if they'll welcome him. I don't know. He's not in there, but I don't think they like Trump as much as he likes him. Nobody does. Yeah, no, I do think that there was like a sort of sense that they were besties, right?

And in some senses, they obviously were and still are. But I do think that it's much more complicated relationship. Like a fall and out perhaps? Yeah, well, yeah, we're just more so like, they're both just people that are going to do whatever they have to do to get whatever they want Yeah, yeah, I imagine it like like my junior high crush on Ian Fallon like We're gonna be together one day and we're gonna get married and have babies and like I would write my name like

With his name on the notebook. I just picture that a trump doing that. Remember when he texted before the Miss Universe pageant, maybe I'll meet Putin, maybe he'll be my best friend. I remember, yeah. It reminds you of that story I was telling you all about once. It's like a game where you're on a jungle gym and you have to push everyone off until they're the last person standing. I mean, my boyfriend at the time we're playing the game and we're like teaming up, right?

And we're just kicking ass, just fucking boom, boom, just knocking people down. And then immediately my boyfriend knocks off the third to last person and without even missing a beat, pushes in the same lunch, pivots, and pushes me off. Like, immediately, he didn't believe the same barat. I was like, oh, you learned a lot of the lesson that day, didn't you? Right.

And I think that that's what Trump and Putin are. Yeah. Eating. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you know, Alesson that day didn't you right and I think that that's what Trump and Putin are yeah Yeah, and then and then all of a sudden You know mbz jumps up on the jungle gym shakes hands and high five Yeah, he gets a points and laughs at you. Yeah exactly what do you call it one of those saws and just takes the whole thing right? Yeah, I'm a lot of people I changed the rules already That's too too soon. I like it, Amazon. Yeah, thank you. I mean, yes, of the joking to cope,

not the unfortunate murder of it. Of course, internalists, I know you just wanted to put that out. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, of course. Yeah, I don't think we need to qualify that, but good statement anyway. Totally, totally. The State Department's top official,

this is not the New York State Department, where Steve was the point of contact for next management. Next, this is not the New York State Department where Steve was the point of contact for next management. Next, what is it? I don't know, management company. Next management company. Next management company. That's hard core because they're probably just like,

next. Next. Oh my God. That's a good answer name. Oh God. Like you go on a go-see and you walk halfway and they're like, next. Yup.

Next. Yup. Way to go, dude. Wig. Next. That's go, dude. Wig. Next. That's why it's called next management. That's incredible. We manage what's next.

Yeah. When you were told next. Wow. They broke off made another company called Fat Manage Reign Company. I was gonna say, they had something stupid, like two thin, two big like all these next. Fat.

Fat. Hahaha. Oh, Hollywood. Hahaha. Hahaha. Oh, God. What if he met his wives that way? I'm just like, he's central. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Sorry, that was a weird segue. The state of tangent, not segue.

Yes, tangent. Yes, tangent. Is there some weird writable motorized vehicle called a tangent? Mmm, there should be. There should be. Because the segue is lame. Yeah. We need a tangent.

This is the quiz very lame. Yeah, wait, what's the bike? Jump by a tangent. No, tandem bikes. Yeah, that's what Putin Trump would be on to. Oh, a candle bike. Yeah, that's what Pood and Trump would be on to. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. They would.

And they would sing that song together too. And writing off the edge of the earth. Yeah. I imagine they have flatter thersher supporters. Yeah. Who knows? Cats would have knocked everything off the edge of the earth. And then just stare at you like what?

Yeah. And then the glasses would come down and you hear, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do Thompson. This isn't the first time you've heard her name on our show. She's had 25 years of military experience and she joined the State Department in June 2018. The prior to that, she was Pence's national security advisor, but over the summer, she came under fire after Washington Post reported her ties to Paul Erickson. That's, you know, one of Maria Bhutna's boyfriends. Do you remember that? It was during a daily beans update for patrons before the daily beans show came out, um, and Erickson officiated at her wedding. Do you remember that story?

I don't remember this term. This is the lady she's going. She's leaving. She oversaw the US withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or INF with Russia signed by Reagan and Gorbachev. So she go bye bye. All right. Pooh.

Uh, and I, yeah, that, it's, it's interesting when, when devil's mermaid Bye-bye. All right, poof. Pfft. And, yeah, it's interesting when Devilsmer made pops up out of nowhere. Mm-hmm. Like, oh, yeah, it's been everywhere. It's majestic. It's like, oh, we got a sighting. Yeah. What is she?

How do you think she is now? How do you think she's doing? Mentally. She's still in jail. Yeah. Yeah, probably not the best. I'm surprised she's not talking to the media more. Yeah, I wonder what she gets out.

Right. I don't, yeah, I don't remember what her ascendancy was. Surprise. A super gag order. I thought that she was going to get time served. They, yeah, but they gave her 18 full months. Yeah. And yeah, so she had to serve a few more months.

She might be done by now. Yeah. Yeah. But I feel like we would have heard of that. That would have been a headline. Like Marie-A-Left. And then there would be video in Russia of her getting off the plane and something terrible happening. Yeah. Like when Nasty Ribca got back in the Taijale. Yes. And we're like, oh god. But then she got out

and she went to Spooky Belarus, I think. There's Spooky. Yeah. So many Maria parodies I want to do about her. I keep thinking of Carlos Santana's. You could do the Maria or Bhutina, the same on Assyllables. If you're singing in your head, it works. I'm thinking it's sound of music. Oh, okay. What do you do with a Russian like Maria? Yeah, absolutely. Or there's one from I want to live in America. Yeah, yeah. West Side Story. West Side Story. Yes, absolutely. Yes, I love anyone. If you have Maria references, you think, just a title of an idea, just throw it out there. Yeah. Yeah. I love that stuff Just don't touch the Ave Maria. Yeah, okay. That is sacred

I love it. It's just singing in my head. Yeah, and it's in Latin. So it wouldn't make any sense I did a cover. I'm I'm so impressed that she was really Pulled off in front of it. You said Latin or what was the French or Latin Latin? Yes, she's singing in the original language Yeah, wow. Yeah, wow, gotta take that out. Mm-hmm, good song. All right, hey, we'll be right back after these messages. Hey, it's A.G. You've heard about neighborhood watch groups, right?

Neighbors looking out for each other, keeping their community safe. I remember meeting in our garage once a week when I was a kid, a dad would make sandwiches. Well, get this, the neighborhood watch is now an app on your phone. So how does it work? The app is called Neighbors, and it's by ring.

That's the company behind those video doorbells and security cameras you see. And with the neighbors app by ring, you get real-time updates on safety and shenanigans from your neighborhood, which means you'll be informed about what's going on in your defined little part of town. And it's totally free. You don't even have to own a ring device. I downloaded the app for free. I set up my home base and used the easy map to draw out the area

I want alerts from and I immediately started getting alerts from my neighbors We recently had a wave of bikes being stolen which is like the worst thing I hate bike thieves so much and we keep our bikes out front because you know That's just what we do and if we hadn't known about it our ours could have been taken But we were able to secure them in our shed and so now everything's fine We still have our bikes. And best of all, the comments and posts are anonymous. And the Neighbors app is making it easier for you and your neighbors to work together to stay safe.

There's millions of people using it. It's like a modern neighborhood watch powered by the people. So if you want to see what's going on in your own neighborhood, text AG Pod to the number 555-888 to download the Neighbors app today. That's AG Pod to 55588. Make your neighborhood safer today with the neighbor's app by ring. All right, welcome back. So impeachment hearings began this week with Lewandowski

and that was an interesting time. Did you watch the impeachment hearing? I did, yeah. Yeah, I was exercising, so it was nice. It was a good hate field workout. Yeah. I'm trying to like, you're running away from the trees and an obstruction.

Yeah, I couldn't stand his face. Yeah, no, he was just so smug. So smug and it's just awful. And it all kind of got better when Burke started questioning. And that wasn't until like eight hours later, hour, five and a half or something like that they took a two-hour lunch or some shit and and then I Know I noticed that's like Nadler and Nancy sort of swapped places for a minute because after she was

Live it and she said to like to behind like behind closed doors to a little meeting of dumb leaders like I would have held him in contempt right then and there. And that would have meant that the staff would have had to draft a contempt order on the fly, hey, for future reference, Nancy and Jerry, excuse me, I should call them Mr. Nadler and Ms. Pelosi, but I'm angry with them right now. What to do?

Go ahead and draft those contempt resolutions now for future. That's a great call. For future testimony. Do you think they really didn't have them already drafted? I would wish, I would like to think they did, because they both have really great lawyers. Uh-huh.

But if you don't, get that shit together. And they knew that he was gonna try to go with the whole executive privilege thing and not answer anything. Yeah, he was already defiant. And then he just plugged his Senate race three times in his book a bunch. Like that should be a domestic emoluments violation, but you have to be the president. Yeah. Yeah, no. And also he's like Yeah, no, and also he's like kind of a weak person too because he goes in and he tries to be all rude as shit and disrespectful in rereading that letter

that was said to him from White House Council, right? That's why I was over. Yeah, it was White House Council, right? Yeah, over and over and over again. But only for like the first, you know, eventually he broke, right? And then like he said, when that amazing lawyer comes in and is questioning him, he's at that point just answering the stuff that he's asking him more or less. Yeah, and when he wouldn't answer, he would slow it down and repeat it. Right. Like, are you dumb?

Right. What I asked was, and he didn't say, are you dumb? But that was the kind of the psychology of the it. Right. Like, are you dumb? Right. What I asked was, and he didn't say are you dumb, but that was kind of the psychology of the questioning. Right. Just treating him like a five-year-old who didn't understand the question. Which made him break. Yeah. I think that's what it was, is being condescended to like that.

Yeah, that's what he responds to. Like, yeah, fire with fire, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's an interesting debate tactic for a debating Trump as well It is It is It's not something anything else, but I know it's only right. It's called Donald and yeah Who said this about Putin, but they said he's like a pit bull and you have to kind of smack him on the nose before he

Respects you which is weird because I don't think that he and Trump have a real relationship because Trump doesn't actually do it I think whatever Trump thinks they have either he knows that it's not equal or he thinks it's equal when Putin knows that he doesn't respect him. We got a punch him in the face. And Putin is a master spy. So he's going to, I wouldn't want to ever talk to him or punch him in the face. I would just not want to be anywhere near. I'm like metaphorically. Because I would, I know. But like I, I, he would have everything out of me in 10 seconds. And I would be like would be like oh no then I'd cry and run away. Yeah He is a spy and and that's where he can hold them more so different. Yeah

Looks like I'm good. Yeah, I used to think he was cute. I remember those days season one That was like season one. Yes This is the iceberg. I was like. Oh, yeah, so put in dictator and that sucks But like there's a shirtless pick and then I just learn more details about his dictator behavior instead of just generally knowing the dictator and that made a huge difference because I think that's kind of the problem with being just like, you know, a regular citizen is that I get that we're busy, but if we don't know exactly what's happening, it's so easy to write it off as, yeah, we're all killers.

We're all, yeah, trust me, my position attracted to the tyrant. That too. Oh, sex sale. If you don't pay attention, it blinds me. You know, but I don't think it's cute anymore. No, that's fair, that's fair. That's good. And so then, there's also when we had this, what I was kind of dreaming of when Lewandowski was being all smart, me was a call for inherent contempt.

And if you don't know what that is, stick around, we're going to discuss it with Harry Lippman because I, this was my call, this is what I really want in the whistleblower case as well when the DNI comes in and testifies on September 26th, but Harry Lippman because I, this was my call, this is what I really want in the whistleblower case as well when the DNI comes in and testifies on September 26th, but Harry Lippen's got some other ideas. So let's take her on for that interview. Also this week, Judge Sullivan dismissed Occup mentions libel case against Bill Browder. This is the second libel case filed against Browder

regarding his work on the Magnitsky Act that's been dismissed. So good on you, Judge Sullivan. He's also the Sullivan. He's also the Sullivan And he's a judge for Flynn's case. Yep. So I think he's just about had enough of this bullshit. Yeah He's had the most Yeah, it's not a lot him and Jackson and and barrel howl or like Top three the most shit collectors definitely have the most high profile stuff. Yeah, yeah

three the most true collectors. Definitely have the most high profile stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And it appears that neither Netanyahu or his blue and white party rival Benny Gantz earned enough votes to secure the 61 seats in the 120 seat Israeli parliament needed to win. BB was indicted with three charges over the summer or you know, three threatened with three charges over the summer including bribery and was hoping that if he won the majority he could pass legislation making it illegal to indict a prime minister, but he failed.

And so, a BB then called for a unity government, and Gant says, I'm down, but I'm not going to serve under you as prime minister. And at this point, even if BB can cobble together enough seats to lead, there will not be enough support and parliament to pass legislation to immunize him from his indictments, he was indicted, I think in July. And the attorney general has said he will announce how they're going to move forward with this by the end of the year. So we'll keep you posted on that. That's interesting.

So interesting. Such a crazy tumultuous time for that government right now. Yeah. So that parliamentary government up in the air, the UK parliamentary government, or, you know, not UK, yeah, UK, yeah, parliamentary government up in the air. And coming soon, we've got the Canadian election, and that's a parliamentary system, and that could be up in the air.

I, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's scary. It's a lot of parliamentary governments, so it's super close. It's very scary because I think sometimes as the United States has in many ways been continuing their, let's just say, alt-right tendencies and really been vamping it up, I've had some sort of solace and at least thinking that the world's stage will not

tolerate that, but with increasing severity, that's not the case anymore. Its government after government is falling privy to all of these alt-rate, alt-right leaders. Yeah, we're getting our number, it seems. It's so scary. At least with dignity. Biotrining minority. Exactly. All you need are the person in charge to be the bad guy.

And if you cheat, to get it, you can control everyone. And people are like, well, how can a bad guy be in charge of good people? And that happens all the time. All the time. Read a book. Yes. And speaking of Sullivan and Michael Flynn, Flynn was doing court for a status update on October 31st for a hearing and potential ruling on his lawyers filing for Brady material. So what that was about is, you know, his crazy nut job lawyer, Sidney Powell, creeps down a mission lady, anti-molar, like conspiracy theorist. He's been shouting for Flinder with Dr. Guilty Plean. And anyway, she filed this thing, a list of 40 things that she wants.

And she needs a classified clearance to get it. And it's basically all of the underlying evidence from the Mueller report and the grand jury materials. And that relates to Flynn. Yes, as it relates to Flynn. And actually, she was asking for stuff that didn't relate to Flynn. So she wants to clearly be the one

to get all this information, give it to Trump and they can work together and to spin this before it gets out for real. So there are still things that Trump probably hasn't seen yet, because why else would she not know if she's clearly working with Trump's team? Well, I know that he's seen the full Mueller report unreacted, but he has not seen the grand jury material

as far as I know. They would have to request that like she's doing. Yeah, okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I don't think though that her angle is to get all this stuff to then go directly bring it to Trump or anything It's like I think it's like you said a couple episodes ago to be that person that Successfully quote unquote crafts this entire narrative in a court of law that all of this was orchestrated Yeah, I know to take down the deep state

Yeah, it's what she wants to be she wants to write a book about it And I was wondering myself if she had talked Flynn into this, if this is not and this is certainly not in Flynn's best interest. But so anyway, Flynn's case or that hearing, and I don't know if it's going to be behind closed doors or not, I would assume it would be and then maybe partially released with redacted in case there's any class fighter grand jury material that we can't know about. But Sullivan wanted to release the Kisley Act conversations and was halted by the government like, no, no, and so on and so forth. So that hearing with Sydney Powell and, well, everybody was supposed to be October 31st,

but it's been postponed to November 5th. And I can't, everyone was like, ooh, I wonder why. What is it about October? I don't know. Pressure of Halloween. You never know what to go as. So I don't know, it could be because of the pressures of Halloween. But the minute order does say that the six day delay is because of court scheduling conflict. So November 5th it is. Also November 5th happens to be the first day of Roger Stone's trial. Oh, big day.

Big day. Big day. Big a day. Big a week, we will be in Boston that week. And speaking of Roger Stone, a decision was filed under seal in his case that presumably contains Judge Jackson's determination as to whether she will allow Stone

to suppress some evidence in the case, along with the decision about whether she will release some materials that he requested. The order says the ruling will be unsealed September 23rd, 24. The plan, huh? So if either party has an objection, they'll need to file it by then. My beans are on partial grant, partial denial.

I think he'll get some and he won't get others, but I think that his motion to suppress evidence will be totally denied. Nice. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Seems reasonable. That's not only a couple days. Yes, September 23rd. Yeah, actually, when this episode, yeah,

that'll be... Oh, the next day. Yeah, it'll be tomorrow. It'll be, yeah. Woohoo. We know, 22, 23rd. Yeah, it'll be... When this episode comes out tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, crazy. Neat, so look for that. I'm excited. In an epic troll this week, Mariam Webscher tweeted the word of the day, which was misprision. This was no subtle jab at the administration's involvement and the whistleblower scandal,

because misprision means the concealment of treason or a felony, and there's a great number of folks wrapped up in this that could be guilty of misprision. In the demo, they were talking about disseminating the emails Russia, anonymously disseminating the emails. And that would be, and if Trump knew about that, that's aiding and abetting. That would be criminal conspiracy.

And covering it up would be something called misprision. That's the deliberate concealment of one's knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony. I like that word. Give me two. Can you say it again? Misprision. Nice.

Misprision. Sounds like a bird you say it again? Misprision. Nice. Misprision. Sounds like a bird. Or a teacher. Misprision. If you want to know, it's misprision. So nice work, the dictionary. They also low-key tweet a lot about beans.

Makes me wonder if they're listening. It's speaking of misprision, then ultimately all of this was uploading stuff boils down to a fair violation or like what charge would it be? Oh, well they're not going to be able to criminally go after them. I'm saying if they could. Oh, if they could. It depends on what was involved in the phone call.

Yeah. It could be bribery. If he was, it could be extortion. Right. It could be an in-kind campaign contribution. It could be conspiracy against the United States. It could be, which is that, you know, what we thought they were going to charge, you know, for the June 9th, 2016 meeting.

So, you know, those are what I guess would be the charges. And when they do drop articles of impeachment, they'll be listed in there. Nothing with Farah, you don't think? Failing to register as a foreign agent. No, I don't think so. Do we jewelry on here, anything? Oh, against jewelry, I thought you just met Trump.

Yeah, I guess I just thinking in general, what are the, what's the scope of charges that in our, you know, fantasy world? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that it would be fair because I don't think he's lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

I think he's trying to get a foreign government to give opposition dirt. Yeah. So I don't think that that falls under fairer, but it was definitely would be conspiracy against United States. Yeah. It depends on what the promise is, I guess.

There's so much we don't know, because we just don't have. The only thing we're missing now is the promise is I guess. There's so much we don't know because we just don't have the only thing We're missing now is the meat of that complaint and it it they we do have reporting from I think three sources that It's not just about this one promise to one leader. There are multiple issues that were flagged in this urgent Report. Yeah, I be just talking about conspiracy against the United States. I'm thinking would ultimately taking down someone like Joe Biden be considered a national security threat or something in a similar way that that meeting was, that the June meeting was.

Yeah, and then you're in the counterintelligence territory. And they don't have specific charges. All they do is determine if somebody's an asset. Right. So it's all weird. And you're probably going to get more into it do is determine if somebody's an asset right yeah It's all weird and you're probably gonna get more into it in the hot node. I imagine right? Yes Cool, no, no, I think it's great discussion I'm just really curious to hear like your whole theory because I this is huge right? This is like got to be the biggest thing that's probably happened since the report itself dropped right? Oh, yeah

Yeah, this is big doked. Mm-hmm And we'll see where in the impeachment the like if this moves the needle on impeachment for you know with the Americans want it And we'll see if it moves the needle in in the house, too I don't know if it's gonna move the needle in the Senate Because I think a lot of them are also compromised, but that's super space beans makes lot of sense Also Giuliani is back out on his lubed the truth tour after a bit of a hiatus and Jordan's gonna cover that in hotnotes And also this week we have a proposal from Trump's Department of Education that basically amounts to state-sponsored Islamophobia.

The Department of Education and the Trump administration is pressuring the University of North Carolina and Duke University to revise their Joint Middle East Studies program or they could lose federal funding under the threat of loss of federal funding. And a letter dated August 29th, a Department of Education led by Eric Prince's sister Betsy DeVos, sent a letter to the Duke UNC Consortium for Middle East studies that accuses a program of portraying only the positive aspects of Islam. And they don't amend, if they don't amend their program by September 22nd, they will lose federal funding that they've been receiving for almost a decade.

And that's, it's, it's really interesting too, because, well, first of all, this is coming on the heels of, now as we know, the Canadian Prime Minister appearing in brown face at a costume party dressed as a Latin, which we, he, he, he not only has now acknowledged, but over the weekend, video has come out. And when asked how many times he's appeared in black or brown face, he said he didn't know, which is like, how do you not know? But regarding the Duke UNC program, the Trump administration is apparently complaining that the program focuses too heavily on the positive aspects of Islam and not enough on the positive

aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East. In response to criticism, the department says their review of the program has nothing to do with Islamic bias. Adding, and this is my favorite, pro-Islamic programming is not our concern. It's the lack of diversity. Okay. So, is not a nice little... What if the country you're living in is entirely founded on and entrenched in those religions

that you're saying? I'm sorry Jordan, these are middle east studies. Representation. So we need to have Christianity and Judaism and everybody equally represented. Now if that were really their argument, then why do I hear the same argument about diversity being this bad or a necessary thing in every other case? I'm so confused. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty confused. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure man, it was cough a little. Poppacracy, yeah. Yeah. And also, okay, in my college, personally, sorry, this is in the states, right?

Yeah. Yeah, this is Duke and University of North Carolina. Okay, cool. They have a joint consortium for Middle East Studies that they've been funded for a decade so that they could teach about Middle East Studies. Yeah, They've been funded for a decade so that they could teach about Middle East studies. Yeah, sorry.

I thought for some reason you threw in Canada somewhere. I know you're talking about just in Trudio, but okay. Oh, it was like a sidebar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know how to do thing. But so, yes, it's like, when I went to school, we had, it was only through the activism of students that it was even required we take an ethics studies class

that would even teach things about Islam in like an unbiased way and your school was very unique otherwise Yeah, well it's because the activists that came before our fucking bad ass is a lot of it came from students of Justice and Palestine Because for Justice and Palestine because there was like a lot of fucked up stuff There was something called the Compton Cookout that happened at UCSD. I remember. That was awful. So black students on campus mobilized, got the School of Black Student Union, got them an equity, diversity, and inclusion,

chance, with vice chancellor. And was it UCSD? Yeah, that's what I thought. Got the black student union. Like, it was like a crazy thing. But did you not hear about the Compton Cookout? No, never. Yeah, it's really bad.

But my point is that it took all of that to even get one requirement for one class that talks about Islam in a way that is you know Educational absolutely and and it's like I that's the uphill battle with my required classes That were required that everyone had to take we did learn about Christianity and those those like texts and everything It's like the only role of law that truly matters. And I'm not saying in terms of what should matter, but in American history, what truly seems to transcend is the law of old white sister. And I don't say that to say that all those guys are bad.

It's just the fact that whatever they decide is the standard has kind of been accepted. So when it comes to these things, it's like, well, why is that? And it always pulls down to the fact that it's very concentrated on a particular group or spectrum of group based on color. It's other, it's other, it's other. It's other. Because it could be in all kinds of ways with religion and, and worth our genders and all kinds of things. But yeah, it does generally blow down a Christianity,

which has been so, I want to say white watch, but it really depends on where you stand on that. It's just the idea of it being really based on white America. Yeah, and this is basically Betsy DeVos's version of, where's your white student union? That's basically what she's saying. That's supposed to be the default. Vanilla's any fault flavor, and white is the default race. That's what America is. And if you have any question about their real motives here, we know it's not about being diverse.

If you have any questions about their real motives, just that statement that they made saying, quote, pro-Islamic programming is not our concern. It's the lack of diversity. Just to throw that in there, like, no, you can go ahead and call for Sharia law and program people to like Islamic people or whatever their death thing they're saying. That's where their true motive lies. That was a poorly worded statement.

It was dog whistling. I think it was very intentional, but it is poor wording. It morally speaking, it's wholly agreeable. But in a diversity argument? Well, they, I think they know what they're doing. They might know what they're doing. I have a feeling. Yeah, but these are, these are, this is Duke and UNC.

This isn't. I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Anyway, it's so dumb. Also, Mitch McConnell appears to have flipped on election security, saying he will fund the $250 million for an election security bill.

But there's an inherent problem with his seeming good will. And Jalisa will have that for us later in the hot notes. Because wolf and sheep's clothing. Totally. who's seeming good will and Jalisa will have that for us later in hot notes. Because wolf and sheep's clothing? Totally. I definitely have a lot of thoughts about that. Awesome. We'll be right back with hot notes.

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reporter, Jalisa, has a story about how Moscow Mitch is a bitch. Yes, no, I just I didn't write that guys. I'll do better. After blocking additional security or election security funding for over a year, Mitch McConnell is now backing in a moment that gives an additional $250 million to just that election security. He says, quote, I'm proud to have co-sponsored and help develop a bipartisan committee amendment that will provide another $250 million to help states and minister and secure our elections.

So obviously on the surface, this seems like great news, but let's not forget who we're dealing with. Basically Mitch, he's just jumping the bandwagon. And the fact that Democrats never stopped advocating for election security, and he's just now getting on board, it makes them naturally suspicious, particularly of the fact that the $250 million in funding does not provide strict rules on what politicians can use it for. On top of that, while most election security bills require things like paper ballots, this one does not. So lawyer and election security advocate Jennifer Cohen is

politely calling bullshit. On Twitter, she said, quote, McConnell's funding bill will make things worse because it has no strings and enables corrupt officials to buy whatever hackable, unauditable voting machines they want. So basically, McConnell is trying to trick everyone by calling it election security funding and Jennifer breaks it all down in her Twitter thread. So if you guys are already following her, please do. It's at Jenny Cohn one. Yeah, whoever took Jenny Cohn,

hey, give it back. No, it's cool. They're cool too. But she's amazing and she really goes into great detail. This is just a hot note, but she's got like, I don't know, fire? What would that be? Hot fire.

She's got fire thread, guys. Yeah, for the kids. that be? Huff fire, she's got fire through red, guys. Yeah, for the kids. Fire now, too. I noticed you guys really connected. I love her. During the Seattle show, and she was mentioned by Hillary Clinton recently. Wow, wait a go, Jenny.

That's crazy. So just within the last week and a half, we've got, she did our show, then Hillary Clinton mentioned her, and I'm wondering, maybe she heard, maybe Hillary heard, Maran, our show. She wasn't in Seattle, I would have seen her. And now, of course, immediately this, you know, McConnell flips.

And, you know, this is a lot about the hand-marked paper ballots. Like, you know, you're right. Mitch McConnell has taken a lot of donations from vendors who make voting machines, electronic voting machines, that don't create hand-marked paper ballots, but can be hacked. Yeah, like you were saying, that wolf and sheepskin, those voting machines that don't create hand-marked paper ballots, but can be hacked. Yeah, yeah, like you were saying, that wolf and sheepskin, those voting machines

are supposed to look like they're doing what we want. But come on, think about like our iPhones and everything, everything's updated like every week. And we're not updating our voting machines. Get out of here, no, no, no. Millennials know this, but yeah, I feel like. Or they're updating them to be hackable. Exactly, yeah, it's tricky.

And I think some people, I don't know. Hopefully everyone's kind of onto this because it's Mitch, but some people might be like, isn't this what you want? Why are you arguing if this would be asking for? It's like, it's not that simple. It's definitely a little more complicated. Are we at a point now where we want something,

we want something, we want something, and now if A.G. Bar or Mitch McConnell or Trump give it to us, we're like, oh no, we don't trust you. Right, that's's what they want to because they're like oh well you're just complaining because you just want to be complainers no you guys are just it's how do you put this gaslighting? Is that the best word for it? It's like they tell you what they they claim is happening but in reality and then they call you crazy. Yeah that's what this is. Yeah. Yeah. That's that. Shout out to gaslighting. Yeah.

And they call you crazy. Yeah, that's what this is. Yep. Yeah. Shout out to Gaston. Gaston. Androgylupa. Sarah Kanzier. So thank you for that.

Thank you. Well done. Jordan, tell us about Calludi Rudy. His latest show date was this Thursday night on Chris Cuomo, where he hapt on and defended the president's speculated conversations with Ukrainian president Zelensky, allegedly persuading him to investigate Joe Biden's son. And he was also there to defend his own efforts to do basically the same thing, but he was doing such an awful job in changing his position on things throughout the interview to such

large degrees. You're going to tell if he was playing defense or offense at times. He is Trump's worst defensive lineman. It is so bad. If he was in football, he would start to blitz the quarterback, only the changes might pick up said quarterback, put him on a shoulder, and then run him into the end zone. And the sad thing is that Trump's fans are so stupid, they would just erupt in celebration upon all this.

That is the sad part. The biggest example of this debauchery was when Giuliani initially said no to the question of if he had pressed Ukraine to look into Biden's and only to moments later say about the say about the same topic of course I did the erratic sentiment really came out I think with this direct quotes Giuliani says you want to cover some ridiculous charge that I urge the Ukrainian government

to investigate corruption well I did and I'm proud of it of course I did crazy and and something something he was very direct on however was his response to when Cuomo asked him if Trump had told Zelensky what and how they should investigate Biden's son and Paul Manafort. Uh, Giuliani says, I don't know if he did. And I wouldn't care if he did.

He had every right to do it as the president of the United States. He had every right to say to the Ukrainian president that we have two outstanding allegations of massive corruption and you should investigate." Wow. What a way to leave out the fact that you're using it as like a hostage situation. It's like, hey, we have every right as president to be like, you should look into this dot, dot, if you don't, we're going to take away your funding that you need because the guy that I'm working with is attacking you and it's extortion.

Yeah, it's classic extortion, but they love to just paint it like it's this pretty picture. And I wonder who's following for it, but that's Trump supporters. Yeah. Well, this is straight out of Nixon's mouth, basically, by the way, this whole blanket immunity for the president idea. And then that's terrifying. Um, and then Giuliani goes on to loop the truth even further when he says, if the president of the United States said to the president of Ukraine,

investigate the corruption in your country that has a bearing on our 2016 election, isn't that what he's supposed to do? So in that quote, he just blatantly said, yes, not only is it okay for the president to tell a country what they should investigate, but that it is necessary when it would have an outcome in the election. This is one of his lubious moments.. Yes, and it treason. Yes. Yes. And yes, I'm cool with it. Yeah, right. That's insane. But what's so twisted is that Giuliani's going to try to masquerade this around as some sort of election protection measure instead of

what it really is, which is an attempted coordinated effort with foreign governments to manufacture controversy about Trump's most likely opponent in 2020 for the sole purpose of securing his reelection. And I have another question too. If this is so noble of an act, right, he's just doing this to protect art elections in the US. If you're doing this to do that, then why are you doing everything in your power to block Congress from seeing all of your heroism? Yeah. It's because you're liars and you're career criminals. Yeah.

And they must know it so they're really betting that people are dumb enough to let this go or they're hoping they can create enough destruction in the near future to distract from the current destruction. And by that time things will be so crazy that it'll bring the country together because maybe what they'll do is stage another terrorist attack or something. I don't know what they're capable of, but I'm afraid of it. Well, it's akin to defending the, or using the voting rights act to defend racist gerrymandering, to say that not only is asking him, asking Zelensky to investigate Biden that interferes in our elections,

not only is that not wrong, it's necessary. That's kind of, I mean, that is the, you know, like saying, did you kill that guy? No, but of course I did, and not only is it not wrong, it was necessary. Yep, yeah, so you nailed it. It was a crazy jump to make within a small interview. He was off the rail. I thought he was gonna have a cardiac event.

Yeah. And that's a very good point, that he's been like this for so long that for this to be actually a moment where we were shocked at his response. With Rudy, you'd be like, oh, that's just Rudy being Rudy. But no, this was a special moment. Yeah, well every time you show up, you got to bring more Lou. Right. Yeah. And it's also to live by. It's also, it's also been a while. And since he's done this, this was like a thing that he was doing almost on a weekly basis for a while and I kind of stopped for a little bit and this is his first like comeback tour. I'm afraid of what's next. Yeah, it's just gonna get so ridiculous. Yeah. All right, so the big story this week has to do with the Loub the Truth Tour. It's been unfolding

since last Friday when we were live in Seattle and the icy whistleblower scandal popped. It started with a letter that dropped last week, about 10 minutes before we went live at the triple door. The Adam Schiff wrote to the acting director of National Intelligence, Joshua McGuire, that he'd received, Schiff says in this letter, he'd received notice from the intelligence community inspector general or the ICIG,

alerting him to an urgent whistleblower disclosure, involving a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or executive order, that the ICIG had reviewed and deemed as urgent and credible. And now according to the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, or ICWA, the ICIG is supposed to forward that credible and urgent complaint onto the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and then the DNI by law has seven days to give it to Congress with additional notes if he wants or she wants.

The law is clear that the DNI shall furnish the complaint within seven days, and the intelligence community inspector general determination cannot be overridden by anyone. It is final. He has the final say. It is a he in this case, so I'm going to use that pronoun. But according to Schiff's letter to the DNI, he did not receive the complaint within seven days, and then demanded it. So then we learned, as the week went on, that not only did the DNI fail to hand over the complaint, but he went to the Department of Justice for advice on what to do.

And that was ultimately the White House, and the official, or sorry, the Office of Legal Council at the Department of Justice that directed the DNI not to give the complaint to Congress, citing executive privilege. So the DNI went to the Office of Legal Counsel, that's those are the guys who did the memo that said you can and died as sitting president, but not the specific guys they did a long time ago.

Yeah. And so they directed, they probably talked to the White House and I don't know exactly what happened behind the scene, but we do know the White House was involved in the decision to block it and we know that the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel was involved. And they just directed the DNI not to give the complaint to Congress and to cite executive privilege and argue that the person in question Trump did not fall under the jurisdiction of the ICIG or the DNI because the person was above them.

The law, however, says that the complaint only has to relate to the intelligence or to intelligence to qualify. And this is the first time anything Trump has had related to intelligence, that's, it's amazing. Yeah, it's interesting all this time. And Thursday, the ICIG testified to the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors and told the members that the complaint does fall under the jurisdiction of the DNI. I can't tell you what's in it, but it falls under the DNI jurisdiction and that he finds it to be credible

and urgent. He repeated that. We also learned from the Washington Post that the complaint was not just about one incident. We mentioned this earlier, but multiple instances of urgent behavior and that one of the issues at hand, just one, involved a phone call between Trump and a foreign leader, and eventually we learned it was regarding Ukraine. We don't know which foreign leader. Although, have they reported now that it is specifically the phone call with him in Zelensky? Okay, so it is him in Zelensky,

but this is just one of the issues. So if you've been listening to Muller She wrote, or the Daily Beans, you'd know that when Trump diverted 3.6 billion in funds from the Department of Defense construction projects to pay for his wall, 770 million of that was coming out of the European Defense Initiative and the European reassurance initiative. Both of those were Obama era initiatives to help NATO and European allies defend against Russian aggression after the annexation of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014.

And if you've been listening, you'll also remember that Trump had put a hold on $250 million in military aid for Ukraine using the excuse that he and the Senate Republicans were reviewing the program. Money desperately needed by Ukraine to defend their eastern peninsula against Russian aggression. And we learned this week that Trump has now released that 250 million to Ukraine and tacked on an additional 140 million dollars to boot. What is that for? No one has seen the justification for the additional appropriation, no one has seen the documents. And you would also know, if you've been following the story of Calouti

Rudy, conspiring with corrupt Ukraine separatists in broad daylight to get dirt on a political opponent Joe Biden We as we've just learned a minute ago. This is especially frustrating because for the past three years We've had to hear about crooked Hillary paying for opposition research on Trump which led to the phony dossier Which is yet to be refuted only to find out Giuliani is fine doing the same thing for him on behalf for himself on behalf and likely incahutes with Donald Trump And so at you know as you were saying Jordan, that's just not only did he say that he did it. He said it was necessary So I don't see how this is different from Hillary's campaign paying for the dossier except that it's not coming directly from a foreign country right so except that it's not coming directly from a foreign country. Right. So, yeah, I was going to say what Hillary did that still was okay to do.

Oh, yeah, totally illegal because she had a law firm and the law firm hired an American company and the American company hired a MI6 operative who is an ally and that MI6 operative got the information from his contacts, not the government of Russia. And then that information was passed back. Yeah. And we're talking about a direct phone call from the president to the other president. Yeah. This would be Hillary calling Putin and asking for dirt on Trump.

It makes me laugh. It's so insane, isn't it? Which they accuse her of doing, by the way. Which is no longer allowed to do. So tight. Yeah. You can't do that anymore. I guess not. which they accuse her of doing, by the way. Which is a good rule out to do. It's so tight. You can't do that anymore. I guess not.

Hillary colluded with the Russians. Oh, I guess that's okay now, though, since you're colluding with the Ukraine. Yeah, that was their first Ukraine, right? That didn't work so well. None of their arguments fall apart when... They have a lot, I'm so surprised. How creative.

When when Cluey really looms the truth. So yeah, that's everything Jordan went over and the looped the truth interview. Thank you for that, by the way. With Chris Cuomo, if you watch it, like take a whatever chill pill you take, whether you smoke, we take a zaili, because it's like, it's anxiety-inducing conversation

to watch, isn't it? They're also just yelling at each other a lot of the time, was really annoying to it was Yeah, but you're watching what was that? But Rudy would shut up. No, no, I was not shut up But Quoma was trying to just be like a you know, yeah, I don't say that. What are you doing? I didn't say that Proof me wrong, bro. It's like those ghost hunters. Where you at ghost? Come on, bro Come at me. Who does on the journalist that are sticking to their guns for sure, because I was hoping for

more of this in the beginning, obviously, but now it seems like most of them are unafraid at this point. And that's great. Yeah. So, Schiff Sopinad, the DNI, who is refusing to hand over the complaint, the ICIG testified Thursday to the committee as best he could without setting one foot outside the four corners of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act because of eminent threats, apparently, of prosecution and prison time from the White House and the Department of Justice. And therefore, it could not reveal

the nature of the complaint. Shiff also subpoenaed the DNI, but he said he couldn't make it on such short notice and delayed until September 26th, but has clearly been advised by the White House that the communications fall under executive privilege and by the Justice Department that their complaint isn't even in the DNI's jurisdiction. So he's not going to answer any questions, he will be a combative witness. But then we get even more reporting this week as we learn Thursday night that the whistleblower hired an attorney, likely because he or she is under prosecutorial pressure from the Department of Justice if they stray one inch outside of the law. But in this case, the law was followed to the letter.

And yet the system let this whistle blow her down. And it's not working because the White House and Department of Justice have blocked the complaint from reaching its intended destination under the law. Yeah. Well, the argument for the other side will just be that that's what the law stands to do. Is sometimes you give the complaint and then the DOJ decides to not do anything with it and tough luck, that's a shout-out. Yeah, and they don't have the authority to override the ICIG's determination on that. It's just against the law. So, here's a little timeline of events.

July 25th, Trump speaks by phone with the new president of Ukraine, Zelensky, the comedian, who won by a landslide. It was reported Friday by the Wall Street Journal that Trump asked Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky eight times for him to investigate Joe Biden in one conversation. It's like Art Kelly mentioning the girl's age in the 17th, like 20 times. I don't know if you guys tell this ship hell, especially at which I know a lot of you guys might have

opinions. No, I haven't seen it yet, but does he just watch it? Does he mention like that she's 18, like 19 times? He mentions how often our Kelly says her age And just how dumb it is Oh, it's also dumb to be I don't know I guess I can't say dumb to be a pedophile and all that cuz that's nobody got it wrong

No, he mentions her real age in the tape. Oh, yeah, he went to her real age and Dave should post like he should a lie And so this is the best 34 year old pussy ever Yeah, it's a good special It took me like literally the first few minutes triggering, but then I rewatched it with a different perspective and I was like, all right, gotta put on my comedian hat for this one and it worked. Yeah, yeah.

You gotta put on a different hat. Gotta try. Let's see. So that would July 25th, the phone call, eight times, asked him, hey, are you gonna investigate Joe Biden? Hey, I mean, how long does a call have to be? Like, think about eight times. In August, Giuliani met with Zelensky with a Zelensky

representative. On August 12th, the whistleblower filed their complaint. August 15th, Dan Coates resigned as the DNI and took Sue Gordon with him. August 28th, Bolton met with Zelensky and Kiev. At the end of August, Trump blocked military aid to Ukraine. September 1st, VP Pence met with Zelensky and Warsaw. September 9th, three House committees launched an investigation into Kalluri Rudy and the Trump Zelensky phone call. And then September 12th, the hold on Ukraine military aid money was lifted. So that's like the timeline there. And we're also now hearing that Ukrainian troop withdrawal is happening from Donbass. As Russian officials appear, they are ready to negotiate a cease-fire

after a prisoner swap took place earlier in September between Ukraine and Russia in preparation for a Russian gas transit contract. But Russia led 13 enemy attacks on Donbass on September 19, using 82 millimeter mortars which are banned under the Minsk agreements. So they're breaking all sorts of rules. And you know, so here they are like, yeah, no, you pull back, we'll pull back. Let's just make our pipeline. Okay, cool. And then Ukraine pulls back and then Russia attacks. Exactly.

So we do not know what is in the whistleblower complaint, but it appears to involve Trump possibly extorting Ukraine to move troops for Russia and or to investigate Joe Biden as a squid pro crow for their military aid money. And we know there are multiple instances of egregious acts on top of this by the president that have been deemed credible by the ICIG, who is a Trump appointee by the way. So Trump may have promised Putin a Ukraine troop withdrawal, so Russia can pump Ukraine oil through the pipeline. I still think Trump got the half percent commission from the sale of Ross NAFT around

280 million or so, stashed in some shell corp, and don't forget that sale was brokered by Qatar, who the president also spoke with by phone during the time period in question Trump may have extorted Zalansky by withholding military aid in exchange for dirt on a political opponent but whatever these issues are Trump's own ICIG thinks they're an urgent matter of national security and the White House and Department of Justice are blocking the legal process under the whistleblower Protection Act. Trump probably accidentally tweeted out about the whistleblower that he...

I think this was an accident. Did you see this tweet where he said that the whistleblower was partisan? Yeah, highly partisan individual. Yeah, while also maintaining that he doesn't know who it is. So... And he hasn't read the complaint. I was gonna say, I didn't know if it was something he read or what, but he's clearly just trying to put this out to his base, because

his base doesn't care about facts. Like he's not talking, I think, to rational people, because he must know he can't win them over. Likely, he's just saying that because it's somebody who's complaining against him. That's it. That's all it takes, but his base will take that as we got you, because it just comes with that, you know, stand culture and a whole idea of like, this is our guy we rock with you as an individual, we trust your word. That's how they feel about him. And many are asking now what the legal recourse is and we'll discuss those options with Harry Littman in the interview a little bit later in the show.

So stick around for that. I'm cautiously optimistic though and I think you'll be too. Already, you guys ready for sabotage? Yes! George Nader has a hearing tomorrow at 10am. He's already been indicted for possession of child pornography when the Mueller team found 12 videos on his phone after being apprehended for questioning in the Russian investigation Then he faced super seating indictments for transporting a child to his home for sex

And then we heard it should be rape, but it says sex in the complaint I just want to let you know why that that word is being used and last we heard he was being investigated further for the same behavior in 2009 so the first child he transported was, and apparently he did this again in 2009, but there's no charges in that case yet. So let's keep that in mind. As we head to our next segment, the fantasy indictment league. I'm gonna be a candidate!

No way, this is gonna be okay. I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! A candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! Hold it, they can't, it's gonna be okay. Just calm down. I can't calm down, I'm gonna be a candidate!

All right, so today Jordan, you get to go first. Then me then Jalisa. So, let's see here, are you taking notes? All right, man, don't talk. Tom Burke. Oh! Coming out swinging. Sock coming, sock coming.

I'm gonna go ahead and go with Nader. Ooh, I'm living life in the Jizz lane. Sorry. Life in the Jizz lane. I have to sing it every time Trump inaugural noise Trump organization Don junior, please good, sorry on oh Nice I think that's S-O-R-I-A-N-O. I got Weiselberg. Oh yeah.

Pecker for me. You've selected Pecker. It's my new Twitter bio, Pecker for me. You're going with AMI? That's really good. AMI, then I'm gonna go with Kalamari. The trifecta. Oh, I will do.

Are we on, what is that for? That is for, right? Cool, I will take Jolo from the block. They all have nicknames. He's still just Jolo from the block. Kushner. The Kush. The Kush. Is that one more for me? Yes. Okay, so we're on five. We're on round five now. It's with round.

me. Yes. Okay, so we're on five. We're on round five now. It's just round. Anybody said Dylan Howard? Nope. All yours. Actually, no, I'm going to go with Kajawa. Oh, Kauaja. I was like, how do you even spell that? That's a broady guy. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know the spelling? You can just do it phonetically. Kauwai. No, you know what? Kauwai. Just go with broady. Yeah. Just go with broady. It's going to be my habit of spell it. But no, broady, the choice. Oh, no, no, no, nody is gonna be mad how to spell it. But no, Brody's gonna be a choice. You want a crush? Oh no, no, no, no, Brody was gonna be mine, but I'll take that random Egor.

All right, I appreciate leaving that open for me. Random Egor. Random. Egor, random. Egor, yeah, yeah. All right, that is how we play the fantasy indictment leg. We will be right back with the legal remedies for Adam Schiff and House Dems

and the IC whistleblower scandal with Harry Litmanman so stick around. Hey, it's A.G. and not all heroes wear capes. My heroes wear scrubs, and I'm willing to bet if you're not a health care professional, you either know someone who is or you can think of a time when a medical professional made a difference in your life or the life of someone you love. These folks have dedicated their lives to be of service of others, and we think they deserve scrubs that not only look good and feel good but have the tools they need to get the job done.

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assistant attorney general under Obama. He's also the host of the amazing Talking Feds podcast. Harry Littman, how are you today? I'm doing pretty well, A.G. yourself. I'm doing... I mean, it's a beautiful day and I feel good and I've had good coffee, but I'm a little outraged, a new and kind of steaming at the news. But personally, I feel pretty good. So you're seething, but it's a nice day. Exactly. Hannah had a swim, and yeah. All right, well that's good. We, you know, treat yourself.

So, earlier in this show, we went over the whistleblower scandal in its entirety, with all the, you know, from back to the beginning, all the way up to where it is now. But we stopped short of the possible legal remedies. And I wanted to have you on the show to discuss those, because some of them are relevant, some of them are from the days of your. Right. And I wanted to start with the intelligence community Whistleblower's Protection Act itself and ask you, why does it seem to me the entire thing seems to hinge on the hopes

that we have a law abiding director of national intelligence? Well, it does in terms of getting quick action. If we don't, that's what the law is for. And given that you probably went over this already, but the law is crystal clear. And it gives what really matters in the law from O. Marbury versus Madison, a straightforward, non-discretionary duty to the DNI. And it just forward this. So if you had a law-biting DNI or just any DNI, you've never, ever had this problem before, the DNI, it's in black and white, just forwards it.

And the DNI, by the way, is in out McGuire. He's A acting, which, you know, your listeners probably already know, means he's more in a precarious spot. He is between the ultimate rock and a hard place, the hard place being the law, the Congress and the public, the rock being Donald Trump and Bill Barr who don't want this bad information out. So he's paralyzed. Why doesn't matter?

And matters because he's the guy, the only guy under the statute to actually forward this whistleblower complaint to the chair of the Intelligence Committee on Chiff. And if he doesn't do it, then he has to be ordered to in one fashion or another by the law. And as we know in other contexts, that takes time. But that's the only reason that this will happen. All right. So it's kind of like the Mezars case with, no, excuse me, tax houseways in me is case. It's like both.

They'll fold their hands and say, oh no, and proffers some really far-fetched, if not completely ridiculous argument, then you look to the courts, a little bit of a wild card with the DC circuit, which could possibly more likely than other courts to go trumps away, but it all seems so black and white. The only thing is the wheels of justice grind kind of slowly.

It's pretty open in shape, but I don't think we're going to see anything in at least those cases until the fall. Yeah, I just make one which is it's derelict. Other administrations wouldn't do this. They would look, find in good faith where their obligations lie and comply with them. So that's why you wouldn't be in this pickle. And the other thing about it is, so much of this is playing out in kind of real time on politics and media scale and the law, even when it moves quickly, is much, much slower.

So in a column last week in the post starting, remember Don McGahn. And there was tongue in cheek, but by the time that plays out, maybe next summer, spring, will the administration have won by losing? Will they have succeeded in making it politically irrelevant? Right. So given all this obstruction, and it's been happening since the investigation started, and I'm talking all the investigations out of Congress, especially, and given this particular obstruction, which I think could qualify qualify you'd have to, of course, prove intent and access to a proceeding and all that stuff.

But that aside, there are questions in the media and on social media and I've been asked several times about judicial preclusion, meaning people have been trying to say, I think Lauren Sodonal said that shift won't be allowed to sue to get this document handed over. And that seems to be not consistent with the laws, you understand it, correct? Yeah, that's correct.

I think they're pointing to a provision in the overall scheme that says nothing that the Inspector General does is subject to judicial review. That's a fairly standard kind of caveat for inspectors general. It just means you can't sue the from the outside to make the inspector general do a report, change findings, etc. But the statutory responsibility here lies with McGuire, with the Director of National Intelligence. It is straightforward and in the words of the law ministerial. And yeah, there are definitely legal remedies that SHIFT has to the flagrant non-compliance, that nonjudicial review provision is sort of beside the point here.

Okay, so then it seems that because I think what I had read was that the something about DNI action cannot be, is precluded from judicial review, actually DNI action, but I think that that's... That's just wrong. Just wrong, okay. The provision says Inspector General Act. Inspector General, okay.

And then so apparently the whistleblower has hired a lawyer and... That's a hired a lawyer and yes and the ICIG which is what I call the intelligence community inspector general is acting like he's for getting this information out but he's feel it feels like he's being threatened with prosecution or some sort of punishment because he's being very careful not to step outside of the four corners of this law. Knowing that, and then also with the whistleblower, also being very careful about this, what ramifications does this action of the White House and the DNI have on future whistleblowers? Yeah, I mean, completely.

There is, I'm a whistleblower lawyer. I still do some private practice with Constantine Cannon. My partner, Eric Aveyon wrote about exactly this. It's currently in the post. Look, all that the whistleblower statute here provides is protection against reprisal. Other ones provide a financial reward and the like. And you have to think that a future whistleblower will be sitting there

doing the cost benefit calculation. And it's changed quite a bit. The protection seems rock solid. But now you have, you know, you already have today, the president of the United States tweeting to the effect that this is some deep state thing by a partisan Democrat, you know, if he even knows about the whistleblower, so you can anticipate that ask in this whistleblower some kind of, you know, make a treatment which

was career ending. So I think it would, if this is let stand, and it won't, but it would totally change the calculus, and even that it will be reversed eventually, the complaint will out, I think the whistle bar will be protected. Nevertheless, the next person has to think, gee, do I want to buy this incredible trouble? And maybe I just better keep my head down.

Which by the way, is a shame for everybody except Donald Trump. Yeah, and it's interesting you bring up his tweet about the whistleblower being partisan because he said, I didn't read it, but a lot of people have read it, everybody's read it, they're all laughing at it. But to say that the whistleblower's partisan indicates either he knows the whistleblower is

and that they're partisan or he's lying about knowing the whistleblower. Both are bad. Right. Isn't it classic? It's sort of, I mean, if it weren't so infuriating, it would be rich and cinematic and there will be a movie on this. But first of all, here's this great Trump technique that was almost always false.

The notion of, oh, it's not me, everybody is saying this and you can believe it. This comes back to like the firing of Comey when he asserted 100% falsely that the FBI rank and file was rejoicing. He, you know, this is a sort of technique that goes back decades with him, the false assertion of public opinion.

Yeah. And back to your other point too, as far as retaliation or reprisal against the whistleblower, a lot of folks are like, well, just start to go find me and they'll be okay. But it's not just about losing your job. I mean, reality winners in prison right now, you can go to prison. So first, that's right. If you're not shielded from, there would be the possibility without the whistleblower complaint here

of espionage act liability, which is very broad. Now, there's a provision that says, if shift subpoenas or otherwise, you know, forces the whistleblower to testify, he can provide immunity. The Justice Department can't stop it. They can comment on it, but they can't stop it. But there's a special provision in the law that says that insulates him from any criminal liability. So that much with his, as you say, you know, adept lawyer should be okay. But that's, you know, so what? He'll simply lose his job and have his career ended for blowing the whistle

on truly alarming behavior that, you know, potentially constitutes an impeachable offense. That's not a very satisfactory outcome as public policy goes. But I think he is probably safe. Of course, I might have said this about Andy McCabe, but I think he's probably safe from criminal process. Yeah. And I just keep thinking of when I saw the post, the movie, The Post, and that guy from the Rand Corporation

who is sitting there surrounded by boxes with the Pentagon papers, and the guy's like, you could go to prison, and he's like, isn't it worth it? And I'm not saying that there's whistleblower. I mean, what does the question, my gosh, this is a guy who's going, you know, for to all appearances or woman,

who just, you know, sees something alarming, and from everything we learn it is alarming. Just wants it to be known to the proper channels and this is the proper channels. We're just talking about congressional oversight by the chair of the Intelligence Committee. We're not talking about everybody in the country's knowing. knowing and imagine, you know, the pressure that is now on him or her and the huge sort of public battle or, or, you know, cleag lights kind of handling that he's bought for himself, which was the last thing he wanted clearly. Yeah, so it's just a mess. I can imagine.

And the act itself by Trump is just perfect, right? It's got everything. Yeah. And why not thinking that it does have, that the Mueller stuff didn't. Everything that came out in the Mueller report had been prefigured by good reporting in drips and drabs. This is happening for, you know, American, you know,

followers in real time. And it's got all the shock of something happening in real time. And even the extra shock of knowing, my God, on top of everything else, how can he be so brazen having, you know, just dance through the raindrops on a charge of colluding with Russia and having them involved in the election to just turn around and completely brazenly. I mean, he's now saying, as is Giuliani, who seemed to be like wiggling out on TV the other day, oh, no problem here, move along.

And, you know, there's nobody I think who would concur with that sunny assessment. Yeah, you're right. It's coming out all at once. It's not shielded by a very tight-lipped organization like the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller's office. And that's why we're doing the hearings about the Mueller report now is because that didn't come out when it happened. So if people ask you, like, what are these hearings just to do over?

It's not. And it's especially not since when the findings of the Mueller report came out, they were precluded by, not precluded, they were preempted and spun by a corrupt attorney general. So that's kind of where we're at now. So people have said some remedies for this, appoint a special counsel.

Never going to happen. Has to be appointed by the attorney general. Plus, it will take so long. Yeah, and do you want to wait? I don't want to wait. No, this belongs in Congress. Another thing you can do is criminal contempt, but again, that's a referral department of justice. They aren't gonna do that, I don't think. Anything that goes, has to go up through Bill Barr's dead end.

And you know, is the DNI acting criminally, you know, that's okay. Yeah, true. That would be hard to prove. Especially since he got information and direction from the DOJ and the White House to not report, so he was under direction. I'm not sure how he can square following an unlawful order, but he may be. You know, he's got direction. And it would make a criminal case very hard. Then we have inherent contempt.

And this is an old thing. And somebody put a big threat out about it. Like when he comes in the DNI on September 26th, they should demand the thing. Here's the secretive demand of the thing. If he doesn't give over the thing, say, do you refuse to give over the thing? If he says, I refuse't give over the thing say do you refuse to give over the thing if he says I refuse to give over the thing and now the sergeant arms detain him and and incarcerate him until he agrees to give over the thing and apparently that's something called inherent contempt that the congress has uh... how um... likely is that zero um... but i mean so it is interesting that it exists. So the idea would be they would, you know,

frog walk him to the, there is this quaint little jail cell. It's like out of Andy of May Barrier or something, but in the actual pit of the of the Congress and Congress has it, but it hasn't been used in over a hundred years. You know, it's not, it's one of these things that have fallen prey to diswayitude, with fancy legal term for just misuse. But for that very reason, it itself would be prey to so many legal challenges and the like. Basically, it's considered a deadletter

and a quaint footnote of history. Forget that one. Yeah, I think the argument for people who want it though is that, oh really, so it's not used that often, or it's not in the norm, or it's not, you know, common. What about the nine million things that Trump has done that are not common, not in the norm, and haven't been used?

Ever, for example, like... I see the temptation and the 30 second fun of having the DNI marched into this little jail, but tap his corpus, immediately. You don't have to march him into that little jail, right? I mean, you can detain him in any press, right? What this means when you talk about inherent content is literally Congress's power to kind of act

as an executive at once. And yet that means they jail them. And in their little, at least that's what it has always meant. How else are they going to detain them, hold them by gunpoint in the well of them? Wasn't somebody at a hotel? Wasn't somebody detained at a hotel for a while? Detention. And I mean, anytime somebody is prevented from leaving, they are technically detained,

but if you're actually using inherent contempt, you are incarcerating that person. And by the way, that's exactly what habeas corpus is for. And they would go to the judge, bring me the body, and McGuire would be out by nighttime. Damn it. That one just sounded so good. Then there's something called mandamus.

Let me go to the third first, if I might, because there's always three ways of going with contempt. The first one. Oh, the judicial review? Yeah, but that is, I mean, it's been for a while that the executive has said, even though the statute seems to say when you were furtussed, we have to respond. They've said, we don't, you can't constrain our discretion that way.

It's been for over a hundred years, and inherent contempt is a dead letter. when you refer to us, we have to respond. They've said, we don't. You can't constrain our discretion that way. It's been for over 100 years and inherent contempt is a dead letter. So the way these always go is, you hold someone in contempt. This is what happened to Harriet Myers. This is what happened to Eric Holder and Fast and Furious.

You hold someone in contempt based on that finding of contempt, you bring an action in the district court. That is not only viable, but the only viable, but the much exercised option and the sort of moral likely one. Okay, so this is a criminal contempt. Right, you go there, you say this guy's in contempt unless he does XYZ. Here's the order of Congress that he is refusing and the district court says, yep, it looks like he's in contempt, which is a little bit elevated. It's a little bit he knows that he's done it on purpose, et cetera.

Yep, he's in contempt. You have to do this. And there aren't criminal penalties. It's true, but the courts order the release or not the release. Again, it's so important here. Order the transmission to the Intelligence Committee chair of the complaint. Now, is this separate from shift filing a lawsuit

to force the DNI to hand it over? Is this the same? It's short answer is it's the same. Now, you just mentioned M word, and so we can see different forms that the lawsuit could take, but when people say file a lawsuit, that's what they mean. And of course in that lawsuit, the executive branch can assert its privilege or whatever article two defenses and can actually come forward with not in the abstract, but actually what why this complaint presents classified information or whatever.

It would be reviewed in camera by a court. But yes, the short answer is when people say why doesn't we'll shift sue, this is the kind of suit that's been brought in the Ways and Means Committee and the dust up and the like. But is there another option for the lawsuit? And you've mentioned mandamus. There's been chatter about that on Twitter. It seems right. Again, it sounds really cool, doesn't it?

I like I want to get a mandamus wrapped in an inherent contempt. Totally. And then put it in a burrito and eat it. And listeners of Mallorcee Road, who already have the equivalent of at least a year of law school may already know. That's the action that was in Marbury versus Madison and order to, you know,

this is non-discretionary. You have to do it. You have to give Marbury his commission. We want a rid of Mandamus, which is basically an order that says, you know, just do this. And the famous ruling in Marbury versus Madison was, yeah, it seems like a good case for mandamus, but we Supreme Court can't bring it because the statute doesn't, the statute purports to give us a pellet jurisdiction that conflicts with the Constitution, Constitution rules. Constitution, Constitution rules, ha ha judicial review is instituted even as the the other side wins That's a that's a quick detour, but back here Mandamus it sounds good non-disgressionary. It seems like what it's for

It's really funky. It's very rarely used and it has to you have to show all kinds of ways in which other paths can't be taken under the so-called All Ritz Act. And I can just tell you that it is not straightforward. It would be tied up in a lot of arcane constitutional challenges. Not about whether it lies, man, Damace, but whether it's the proper vehicle here. And that might wind up taking more time than everything else. So for my money, if I'm shift counsel, and by the way, he's got a great one, Doug Leiter, who came over from the Department of Justice, my advice would be do the, the, what is now the plain vanilla

contempt route in the district court. Yeah, the lawsuit contempt the lawsuit. Exactly. If I can attempt because on that suit, because then you can just get quick to a court order to turn it over a PL appeal appeal, back down, back down court order, you have to hand over the stuff. Yes, I'll know what you said. You can get quick. I think that's right.

But then a quicker quicker than mandamus. Well, it depends whether mandamus would be tied up in different kinds of arguments. But I just want to say, you said it exactly right. Quick order, but then you said quick order or peel a peel appeal and then you get it. And I think it's really quick order appeal. It's like a slot in the Zootopia appeal. And I'm sure they, I'm sure they would file

to hit the schedule faster based on the urgency or whatever. Addition for Sird and everything and maybe it is assert worthy issue. So we really are again talking about, I think it's as fast as we go, but we are again talking about months. Yeah. In the meantime, however, we'll get it all by Thursday. Well, though, the day in, day out, the information is coming. And there's the possibility of being

presented in another way and actually forming a true impeachment. I mean, there's a scenario here where the House Judiciary Committee boom uses this to vote out articles of an Evan Peachment and either neutral occurs because the, you know, you know, or at least a formal impeachment resolution does the big thing we've been waiting for forever and the sons of bitches in the Senate, excuse me, I don't do this on my own podcast. Don't do the Senate Republicans have to our forced to take some position, our force to defend this instead of being silent. That I think is becoming a political imperative.

I think this episode has shifted me as it were over to the Nadler shift side and away from the Pelosi side. It's time and politically sound, given this for an impeachment resolution. And you're saying to go boom articles of impeachment or boom resolution to open a formal impeachment inquiry first? Basically saying the, well, I mean, you got to go methodically,

but I'm saying, yeah, but I mean, I think it is impeachable. You wrote it out maybe with other things. And again, tribe has this interesting position of that doesn't mean you have to have a trial. But I don't know. I think a trial here is now salutary because I want Senate Republicans, and I think both political, you know, small people, politically, but also for the body politic, it's really useful and important to

make them respond. It's just ridiculous. You know, it's like December 8th, 1941, and half of the Senate is staying silent. What the hell is their answer to this presidential conduct? Yeah, and I think, and to either get that information to vote on the articles of impeachment more quickly than all these other remedies. That's right. We'll either get it from journalists, or maybe shift might subpoena him and provide immunity. That could be a way to get it pretty fast. Probably, if he'll cooperate, but let them try to challenge whether the facts happened. I don't think that's a very good argument for them.

All right, I agree. Well, thank you so much. Everybody check out the Talking Feds pod with our good friend here, former US Attorney, former deputy assistant, Attorney General Harry Litman. Harry, thanks for coming on. Thank you very much, and thanks for being a supporter

of the podcast. It's really manchive you. It's a great, great podcast. You guys really showed us, it's got all my favorite former US attorneys on it. All right, thanks a lot. All right, thank you so much, Harry Litman. What a great guy and that is our show.

Yeah. Any final thoughts, anything going on? I like this episode. I'll just plug my side projects, get the racial battle show and the Jolissa Johnson Show coming up. That'll be next month. Yeah, when does racial medical about? That'll be tomorrow,

because I'm starting to do interviews now. So it's like expanding. So Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Yeah, yeah, really whenever I get around to it for that one. But the whole seat, but you only need the edge. Exactly. Yes, yes. Cool. I got nothing. What but you only need the edge. Exactly. Yes. Cool.

I got nothing. What were you going to say to each of you? Oh, just that it will be more on a schedule. That's like a whole like polished project. And the really racial matter show is like my playground. Nice. Yeah, just tune into both. If you can.

Thank you. Cool. That's awesome. Sorry, I couldn't even cut you off. No, you're fine. You got tons of stuff. No, you're just not at the moment and thinking of anything in particular.

Yeah, I mean, I mostly just like focus on stand-up stuff outside of this, but I am developing my own podcast. Very nice. October 23rd, we're gonna be at Venice Underground Comedy. Yes. That's a ways away, but. I figured it out.

But yeah, dude, I'm excited to hear your philosophical projects coming up. Thank you. Jordan's not so confused, guys. I know I need to change my toad or handle, but Jordan Cobra has taken so just like Ginny come What's up guys? We got a guy with these original people together and just buy out there. Yeah, they're cool. I'm sure Yeah, things they need their handles. I asked for mine

I found that somebody had mine and hadn't been using it for a long time So I used their email address that was listed and I contacted them and I asked if I could have it That's exactly what I'm thinking if If they're not using it, do. But I like Jordyn's confused too, because it's cute. I do too. Yeah, yeah. I do too. But then you can just do a whole bit about it, how you're not confused anymore.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I'm excited. Jordyn's woke. Jordyn's woke. A woken. You can be woken confused. That is also true.

The more woke, the more confused you get, really. So many things do remember. It's like, yeah, racism, what? I'm confused. All right, well, thanks so much. Excellent reporting from everybody. Thanks to Amanda Reader. And please, take care of yourselves.

Take care of each other. I've been AG. I've been Jolissa Johnson. I've been Jordan Cover. And this is Muller She wrote. MUSIC Muller She wrote is produced and engineered by AG with editing and logo design by Jolissa Johnson. Our marketing consultant and social media manager is Sarah Lee Steiner and our subscriber and communications director is Jordan Coburn.

Fact checking in research by AG and research assistants by Jolissa Johnson and Jordan Coburn. Our merchandising managers are Sarah Lee Steiner and Sarah Hershberger Valencia. Our web design and branding are by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios and our website is mullershoewrote.com. Hi, I'm Harry Lickman, host of Talking Feds. Around table, it brings together prominent figures from government law and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day. Each Monday, I'm joined by a slate of Feds favorites and new voices to break down the headlines and give the insiders view of what's going on in Washington and beyond. Plus, Sidebar is explaining important legal concepts read by your favorite celebrities.

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