Jack - Doing Less with Less

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

A Magistrate Judge limited Justice Department access to Representative Ilhan Omar’s records in a sprawling immigration fraud probe.Former FBI employees who worked on Trump investigations are suing Kash Patel saying he lied to Congress about their firings.The judge in the Broadview Six case is testing claims made by US Attorney Andrew Boutros and others. The White House recently released selected records from Jack Smith’s classified documents inquiry and omitted key context to fabricate political ammunition. Plus listener questions.Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT?   Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AGMueller, She Wrote SubstackMueller She Wrote on Blueskyhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodMore from Andrew McCabeThe Real McCabe on [e-mail] on BlueskyThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump This Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you Subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-SW Media. A magistrate judge limited Justice Department access to Representative Ilhan Omar's records in a sprawling immigration fraud probe. Former FBI employees who worked on Trump investigations are suing Kosh Patel saying he lied to Congress about their firings. The judge in the Broadview Six case is testing claims made by U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros and others. And a recent White House release of selected records from Jack Smith. classified documents inquiry omitted key context in order to fabricate political ammunition. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 91 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, October 18th, 2026. Oh my gosh,

we're more than halfway through October 26. I'm Alison Gill. Hey, Allison. I am Andy McCabe. As you know, and happy to be back. Um, holy cow, we got so much more to talk about them. We've even covered in the headlines, uh, including the fact that the FBI is contracting the UFC to train agents. Why wouldn't yet? And of course, uh, uh, cash Patel's fudging of arrest data. But first, let's discuss the investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, which kind of blew up, uh, early this week onto, uh, all of our TV screens. Now, CNN reports that the Trump administration pushed for an unusually aggressive search of Representative Ilhan Omar's house in recent days in an immigration fraud probe that targets the Congresswoman, possible false statements made on government documents, and a potential conspiracy, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation. Prosecutors, however, first had to contend with a federal magistrate judge in a prolonged back and forth that hadn't been previously reported.

Judge Matthew Sharbaugh of the D.C. District Court ultimately limited how the Justice Department could access Omar's documents in Monday's search before he would approve the warrant because of a role as a member of Congress and the constitutional protections that affords. Multiple people familiar with the investigation told CNN. Oh, yeah. The D.C. Circuit's got this precedent now. Thanks, Scott Perry. when we went through a 13-month episode trying to get into his phone with Merrick Garland who seized his phone member and he did it with the post office cops

because the FBI refused to execute his search warrants. Now, the investigators' inquiries that prompted the search include whether Omar or her now deceased father lied about her age when she obtained citizenship in 2000, claiming she was a minor when she was of adult age. Now, Omar emigrated to the child.

the United States as a Somalian refugee around age of 12 and became a citizen in the year 2000, and that's according to people familiar with Omar's situation. One source told CNN that the government could try to expand the investigation into a wider conspiracy case and try to investigate if this was deception and the purposeful falsification of information over years by a larger group of individuals. And in fact, Marquine Mullen, we call him Marquane, was on newsmax today or something, saying that they're looking to try to build a RICO case that involves Ilhan Omar. Wow, good luck with that. Okay. CNN also reported that Omar has been under criminal investigations for years, including before

Trump took office last year. But the Trump administration has pushed further with the belief that she has repeated false statements when filling out government documents, such as a passport application in recent years. That is what led to the search on Monday, the sources say. The search for her home in D.C. was highly unusual for its timing less than a month before Election Day voting ends, including while Omar is running for re-election as a Democrat in Minnesota. The federal push this month has also been unusual for its attempt to access a member of Congress's records, the type of a criminal investigative work that Republicans this year have made into a political firestorm for past administrations. Yeah. I recall Todd Blanche when he was Trump's

personal attorney, winging and whining and wringing his hands about the fact that they were trying to interfere in the 2024 election when Jack Smith was investigating. Now, as part of this renewed probe, at least a dozen subpoenas were issued, Andy, beginning last Friday, to witnesses, most of them, relatives of Omar. That's according to people, familiar. Now, government records and archives in Somalia are notoriously unreliable and very hard to access due to years of conflict and disconnected government entities. In recent weeks, the Justice Department argued for broad access to records that Omar kept at her home in D.C. The Justice Department has argued that with Omar, there was little need for sequestering the records taken from

her home on Monday. But the judge who ultimately approved the search told the Justice Department that wasn't possible under the law, the sources said. Sharbaugh of the D.C. district court told prosecutors from D.C. they would need to set up a process for screening the records to protect Omar's legislative work from investigators. In D.C., the courts have upheld expansive protections around records of legislative work for members of Congress under the Constitution's speech or debate clause. The multi-day back and forth between the judge and the Justice Department in recent days hasn't been previously reported. Now I got to insert here, Allison, the idea that DOJ would try to execute

a search warrant on a member of Congress's home and not have previously set up at what we call a taint team, like two separate entire batches of lawyers to review everything that's being seized to make sure that it's not protected by that privilege the speech and debate clause provides is unconscionable to me. This is one of the most sensitive. This is one of the most sensitive type of search warrant you could possibly pursue, and it absolutely would require the use of a taint team, many lawyers and agents to make sure that you're not overstepping that balance. So if they went into this back and forth without having set that up ahead of time, that was incredibly bad legal work by DOJ. Yeah. And I mean, it's much like how you need to set up a taint team when you

raid a lawyer's home. Exactly. You can't just start looking at that stuff, which is why I think DOJ got itself in a little bit of hot water when it just went through and searched Comey's materials with Daniel Richmond without getting an additional warrant and without setting up a taint team. And we will never know what became of that because the case was dismissed for other reasons. It disqualified U.S. attorney, one named Lindsay Halligan. However, I assume all that's going to come up again and will be coming up again in the Seychelles case. Yeah, for sure. It will.

Yeah. All right. Investigators are looking into an unsubstantiated claim around whether her now ex-husband, Ahmed Norse said, al-me, was her brother in order to get him citizenship. A claim that has been repeated by Trump in which Omar has called bigoted lies.

And I have to agree here because siblings can immigrate. You wouldn't need to marry a spouse or a sibling. You wouldn't need to marry a sibling. Yeah. But even if that is substantiated for some reason, the statute of limitations has a long run out over any crime. And it's unclear what role that would play in the inquiry. Now, no charges were brought by the Biden-era investigators because some Republican tipped the DOJ or the FBI when Biden was in office. And they looked into it and said there's no fraud here.

But it hasn't, that never progressed as far as the current Trump era investigators have taken it. Now, this case was reopened last year and is now being. led by prosecutors in the Deputy Attorney General's Office and in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis. The U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. is also involved, our good friend, Jeanine Piro. Yeah, so let's not forget, Alison, with some really important context here, that Republicans have been furious with the Justice Department under President Joe Biden for seeking Congress members' communications in past criminal investigations, like the ones pursued by Jack Smith. Republicans on Capitol Hill and Trump have been particularly critical of former special counsel, Jack Smith, obtaining secrecy orders when Smith's office subpoenaed phone companies for call logs of members around the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack conspiracy investigation.

Now, generally, the Justice Department avoids overt investigative activity that could affect an election within 60 days of election day. So be interesting. Comey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. I mean, this is like the classic overt public investigative activity that you don't do within the 60 days of an election according to this DOJ policy. It's not law, but it's the policy was written. Of course.

Of course. Yeah. For something that allegedly took place, at least originally, what, 26 years ago, 20 years? I mean, I don't know what they're pinning to the beginning of this alleged crime. But, I mean, I feel like you got a tall, a big task ahead of you to explain how there was some exigency that required violating the 60-day rule to collect evidence about a crime that allegedly occurred several decades ago.

Yeah. I mean, do they have a guy who helps people lie? on their refugee application statuses that is still doing it today and specifically worked on this one? Like, what are you, what is the RICO? What is the conspiracy? Yeah.

Well, obviously this was just done for, in my view, this was just done for election interference purposes. It's entirely possible. Desperation will make people do crazy things. But the thing is, is she's in a deep blue district. I mean, it's not like she's in a close race. Yeah. Anyway, it's, we know why they do this. It's, it's, they don't think that it's not about winning a case or getting a conviction. It's about making someone's life miserable. That's all. Yeah. For sure. For sure. And it, I don't know. Do you know anybody that has had that happen to them?

You know, I could think of a few, one person I know really well, and then other people who I, I also know really. well. So, yeah. I know a few, but I'll, no comment. Yeah, you got to get real close and do the no comment for everybody. Yeah. For sure. All right, everybody, we're going to shift gears and talk about good old Kosh Patel and the FBI part of the Justice Department. But we're going to take a quick break before we do that. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, Joy of joys, it's time to talk about Kash Patel and the FBI. We have a few stories today for you. First, from the New York Times, nine FBI employees who were fired earlier this year for having worked on an investigation of Donald J. Trump are suing the administration. They filed their lawsuit Thursday saying Kash Patel, the director,

praised some of them privately before firing them publicly. Most of the employees, who include agents, analysts, and operations staff members, had significant experience in counterintelligence work related to Iran. Some played major roles in the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. One agent signed the affidavit for the search of the estate, another conducted interviews with witnesses in that case. Then if I recall correctly, from a previous filing with Judge Eileen Cannon, one of them actually had to read through the entire volume two to fact check it. That's right. The lawsuit suggests, while the president and his aides have always been eager to fire agents who worked on investigations of Trump, a motivating factor for their dismissals in February, was the scrutiny that Patel was under.

after going to Milan to watch the U.S. men's hockey team at the Olympics. As we know, video circulated widely showing Patel chugging a beer in the men's locker room after the team won gold, a behavior that the lawsuit calls a display of wild immaturity and lack of personal control. The lawsuit also accuses Mr. Patel of providing false answers to Congress about the employee's dismissals when he claimed that they were the result of internal investigations. Patel testified in March, quote, when these terminations occur, there are internal investigations

conducted by the careers at the FBI that highlight unethical or inappropriate conduct, and it's up to me to make that decision. There's so much wrong in that quote. I'm going to have to get back to it in a minute, but the lawsuit asserts that that answer was false. The nine plaintiffs were unlawfully terminated, not for any cause or any.

legitimate reason, but only to satisfy the president's personal vendetta, says. The firings did not follow any internal investigation or disciplinary process within the FBI. And boy, does that sound familiar. Me too. Hi. Right. Litigation pending, no comment. That's a pattern or practice of behavior, I think. In a written statement, lawyers for the fired employees said the employees had worked on a host of important cases,

including the Boston Marathon bombing, the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and Iranian weapons trafficking. Would have been nice to have those folks around now that we've gone to war with Iran. Well, not unless you got Kimberly Gilfoyle out there skirting Iranian sanctions for you. I mean, then...

Yeah, there you go. Well, talk about that sentence. Yeah, so... When these terminations occur, there are internal investigations conducted by the careers at the FBI, meaning career professionals, that highlight unethical or inappropriate conduct and then it's up to him to make the decision.

Yeah, it's actually not up to him to make the decision. Every FBI director delegates the final decision-making authority on these things to the deputy director, for good reason. The director doesn't, typically a smart director, and we've had many of them, current company excluded, doesn't want their fingerprints on these personnel decisions

because that's how you keep the allegation of politics and favoritism, things like that, out of it. But in truth, they're investigated by the inspection division and the Office of Professional Responsibility. And at the end of that, and it's a long process in which the employees have all kinds of rights, they have right to counsel, they have a right to like a hearing, they have the right to see all the evidence,

they have the right to submit their own answers to the evidence, all these things. And then ultimately, OPR makes a recommendation. They can recommend termination or some sort of suspension or whatever. And that's the way it happens. The employee can then appeal it to the internal board of higher-level executives that don't include the director. And that board makes the final termination. They can accept what OPR has said will be the way it goes or they can reverse OPR. And under very rare circumstances, if someone loses at that board, they can make a direct appeal to the deputy director.

And one out of a hundred, maybe the deputy director will weigh in and change the result. The deputy director. No, it never goes above the deputy director. How can you be so sure, Andrew? How do you know so much about what a deputy director at the FBI does? Well, that's because I was the deputy director. And then I didn't get any of these processes when I got fired. So I knew that it was wrong.

So that helped in the lawsuit. But anyway. Now, here's something extra funny. And I sent this to the lawyers of this case, or at least the lawyers that filed that, you know, motion of inquiry with Judge Cannon about whether these guys could be subpoenaed to testify in the grand conspiracy case, right? And in my lawsuit to get a hold of the training videos that the FBI and Department of Justice made when they locked everybody, a thousand plus agents from IMD and Rids in the building 24, 48 hour shifts to review the 300,000 pages of Epstein investigative files they just snatched from the Southern District of New York.

That's March 2025. And there were training videos because there were many people outside of Rids and in the Washington Field Office that were helping redact. to these files that needed to be trained on how to redact files. And in my freedom of information act requests for these videos, they have denied me the videos in their entirety. And one of the reasons being is because the identities, they say that the faces and voices of FBI agents in the training videos are personally identifiable information and that we risk the privacy of the agents if we get them.

They would risk that. And what's interesting is in their argument, they say, FBI agents don't get to choose which cases they're assigned to. They're actually making that argument in my FOIA request. And so I- The same argument that we all said in response to their firing people who worked on cases like Donald Trump's cases and things like that. So I sent that argument just so that they would have it. to the folks who filed this lawsuit in case they were, you know, needing to point out that even the DOJ knows.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good heads up. That you can't fire folks for stuff like that. Or you can't not fire, but that, you know, people don't choose. FBI agents don't choose what cases they're assigned to. These FBI agents didn't choose to be put on the Mar-a-Lago case, for example. 100%. All right.

Next up, this is fun from MS now. with fewer agents in a strained budget, the FBI under Kosh Patel has brought thousands fewer criminal cases than previous administrations. That's after a review of Justice Department data. These findings rebut Kosh Patel's repeated claims that he has let a crackdown on violent crime. Patel has boasted the FBI's arrested 54,000 violent criminals, which he describes as a 90% increase in arrests from the same period in the Biden administration. What he's counting is the two to 3,000 detentions per day that ICE is making because a third of the FBI is working with ICE right now. And also what he doesn't mention is that his count is inflated, oh, by including arrests that

state and local police forces are making. And like I said, other federal agencies when an FBI employee is present. Many of those arrests are not FBI cases. And the FBI acknowledges that. In reality, the FBI has referred 15% fewer criminal cases. Let me say that again, 15% fewer criminal cases for federal prosecution during the second Trump administration than during the same period in the Biden administration. And while the FBI does not break down its criminal referrals into types of cases, the data also shows that the Department of Justice prosecuted 15% fewer. fewer cases of violent crimes during the first 16 months of the Trump administration,

then during the same period of the Biden administration. So we're prosecuting and convicting 15% fewer crimes. That's correct. Wow. That's correct. And this is based on real data. Like this is based on court filings that you have to make to have a case go to court, right? So it's not like fuzzy math here.

There were nearly 3,800 fewer people charged federally with, violent crimes during the first part of the second Trump administration than during the comparable Biden period, the opposite of what Patel says. That figure includes cases referred from all federal agencies, not just the FBI, but of course the FBI provides the lion's share of criminal cases to federal prosecutors. This is amazing. It's really concerning, and it's also so reasonable. Like, we should have foreseen this. When you take programs that typically create lots of cases like, oh, I don't know, public corruption, civil rights, domestic terrorism, and you eliminate them, you lose all those cases.

You lose that volume. When you take the agents who were working in those programs and either, well, the ones they get fired, well, that's workflow that you lost right there, but the ones who even get reassigned to things like walking a footbeat in Washington, D.C., you're not getting any cases out of that. Prosecutors are not getting requests from agents to file federal cases out of that stuff. So those things go away. And all the money and support and everything that it takes to keep those agents working, you now have them working in a less productive way, which ultimately makes us all less safe. Well, with all the firings and resignations and retirements, a coupled

with the fact that a third of the remaining force was put on ice duty, I'm actually surprised it's only dropped 15%. Yeah. I would have expected to see it drop 30, 35, maybe 40%. Yeah. So who's the people left, I guess, are, you know, really going after the Seychelles cases and whatnot. They're doing everything they can. But again, like, you know, you reassign a big chunk of agents, 100 or so agents,

to look at voting ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, you're not getting any cases out of them. You sign a bunch of agents to Rids to go out there and read Epstein files for however long. You're not getting anything out of that work. When you keep assigning people to shit that's not actually a threat, you don't get prosecutions out of it.

When you take them away from work that is a legitimate threat of criminal activity, that's just crimes that don't get prosecuted. That stuff doesn't stop happening. Yeah, we're less safe. Yeah. We're less safe. And the numbers show that.

All right, our final little bit about the FBI. They're planning to offer UFC an exclusive one-year contract to train special agents in hand-to-hand combat. That's according to a document released by the agency in September. This is so unsurious. Yeah. The UFC, according to the ultimate fighting championship, according to the Bureau, is the sole qualified. vendor capable of providing tactical training that meets FBI standards. So the FBI doesn't have, isn't qualified to train the FBI agents? They've only been doing it for 108 years or more than that,

100 and I can't even do the math at this point. A lot of years. A lot of years. You got hundreds of people working at Quantico who their job is to figure out the training programs and to make it effective and safe for the agents and safe for the people to interact with, it's not hand-to-hand combat. It's law enforcement operations. You're supposed to be able to, yeah, sometimes you have to put hands on someone. You have to take them into physical control in order to detain them, but the idea is to do it without knocking them out. And my bet is that people who are in the FBI have a better knowledge and understanding of FBI use of force policy. Of course.

And the law. I mean, you would actually need to send UFC to Quantico for training in order for that. That's exactly right. That's what I'm trying to say. are UFC people the sole qualified vendor to teach you how to be a cage fighter? Yeah, possibly. But that's not what FBI agents do. You don't enter the octagon when you're going out to execute a search warrant.

So no big contract to the sole qualified vendor. Justification for the contract cited the expertise that the multi-billion dollar global media business has in mixed martial arts, striking techniques, scrappling and takedowns. I would be willing to bet about 96% of UFC moves are not lawful. That's exactly right. I mean, we used to spend so much time debating these little esoteric changes to what the training would be. Like, when I came in in 96, the Bureau had just said no more chokeholds because people were dying being, you know, subjected to police officers and agents in different places using what we call now carotid restraints inaccurately. And you can, you can hurt them or kill them. So like, you have lawyers involved in this, figuring out the

legality of it. What do we know? It's so complicated and so carefully done, the idea that they're throwing out all that wisdom and institutional expertise because, like, we all like Dana White. It's just... It's because Patel is a frat boy. It's a fan boy. Yeah. That's it. The Bureau said that market research determined that no other vendor can provide comprehensive

training encompassing all required skills at the necessary expertise level within the required time frame. Uh-huh. Oh, my God. I want to see what that market research was. Bring me the market research. UFC chief executive Dana White has long been an ally of the Trump administration and FBI director Cash Patel is a UFC fan. The FBI in March announced a partnership with UFC in which a group of current and former mixed martial arts fighters affiliated with the company conducted a two-day training seminar for students of the FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia. I wonder what the agents feel about that.

I can't even imagine how bizarre that was. You got a bunch of people who don't even know the organization. They're brand new. They've tried for years probably to get to Quantico. Now they're there. They want to do well. They want to stay in their class and not get like kicked out or recycled or fail anything. They'd also like to think they have a fairly serious job.

Yeah. Yeah. They don't even have the perspective. They don't have the time on to put this into a perspective to say like, okay, this is weird. It's dumb. It's an anomaly. This is going to go away. Let me just hold my breath. They're brand new. They're just trying to get through it all. It's really unfortunate for them. Yeah, agreed. All right, we have a story coming up that you might not have heard about because it really only exploded on right wing media. And it's fascinating. It's somebody

had to bring it to my attention, basically. Somebody's like, hey, AG, do you see, what John Solomon's talking about over here? And I was like, no, what? And I was like, oh, my God. Well, Charlie Savage wrote about it for the New York Times, and we're going to go over it as soon as we take a break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, our next story comes from Charlie Savage at the Times. And it's about a story that many folks may have missed because it was really only covered, as AG said, as second ago, in right-wing media circles. So on the afternoon of Friday, October 2nd, The White House invited a mix of mainstream and right-wing reporters to an online briefing about weaponization.

Because, you know, weeks before the midterms, in the middle of a war, a couple of wars were trying to solve, economy sinking. This is what the White House is focused on on a Friday afternoon. But anyway, a briefer previewed records, the White House planned to release from the investigation of Donald J. Trump's retention of classified documents while out of office and his obstruction of their retrieval. The files reflected scattered topics, among them an internal debate over probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago, plans to execute any search warrant while Mr. Trump and his family were away,

and also the collection of phone logs of Mr. Trump's top aide, Susie Wiles. Okay, now, if the White House is releasing classified documents documents, are they in violation of Judge Cannon's order? I mean, sounds like that was the first thing I thought about looking at this stuff. How is that not supposed to be released outside the Department of Justice? Nothing pertaining to volume two in the classified documents case is supposed to leave the Department of Justice. So even, so if any of these documents are included in volume two, I say they're, they're outside the order. They're out of order. Or referenced in volume two, which I'm certain they are.

There's no way they're not. There's no way they're not. We'll talk about him here. Now the episode, this whole thing, shows how the Trump administration and the Trump allies selectively disclosed government files omitting context to discredit investigations that led to Trump's federal indictment. and that angered his supporters. As the midterm elections approach, it also shows how a grievance narrative can just be manufactured out a whole cloth and inserted into a national political discourse. The whole thing was kicked off by our good friend John Solomon.

Former mainstream journalist now employed by the White House as a so-called special government employee. He's been active for years in presenting pro-Trump narratives, including during the 2019 events related to Ukraine that led to Trump's first impeachment. In 2020, Trump named him his representative to the National Archive so he could gain access to records related to the 2016 Russia investigation. Solomon highlighted a paragraph from an FBI Washington field office email from July 2020, saying that the office, unlike the Justice Department counter-espionage prosecutors, quote, does not believe the available evidence establishes probable cause that Mr. Trump was still illegally keeping more classified. documents at Marlago. At issue was whether there was sufficient evidence to justify a search warrant. Now, that paragraph was not a revelation.

It has been public since last December when the FBI gave Senator Chuck E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, files containing it verbatim. And not just a paragraph, I might add, Grassley got the whole email. Mr. Solomon's presentation also omitted key context. The field office's legal doubts came before Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage emerged that showed a Trump aide moving boxes from the storage area. Oh, my God. The eventual search recovered more than one, more than two, more than a hundred classified documents that Mr. Trump had not turned over when purporting to comply with the subpoena. That means he lied.

So you go back into any FBI email chain. before they have the evidence and said, we don't have enough evidence. You could basically discredit any investigation. Yeah, because the important thing is like, then the evidence arrives and then you go forward. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Is time linear?

Here's another insider tip that no one will tell you, so keep this one hush, hush. Okay. Sometimes, not all the time, but almost all the time, the FBI agents on a case disagree with the Department of Justice about something. But at the end of the day, we all go, we get enough together that we go forward with something we all agree on, which is what happened here.

Yeah, and this was when Dan Twono was still there, who didn't want to have anything to do with anything and was blocking everything that Garland was trying to do. And even he was like, okay, you got video of the guy who's box. Oh, shit. All right, we'll go down. But we're not going into any lock. closets and we aren't wearing our windbreakers and we've got to make sure that the family knows ahead of time.

And I don't have to like it. Okay. You don't have to like it. Now, a more complicated example involves Susie Wiles' phone logs. She ran Trump's political action committee when he was out of office. Then his 2024 campaign. And she's now, as we know, the White House Chief of Staff, for now, I think she might be on her way out.

Now, Jack Smith logged Ms. Wiles calls using a device known as a pen register. talked about this a lot in the Mueller investigation. A pen register creates a record of who called whom and when but doesn't collect content of the conversations. Well, hold on one second. This is important here. It collects the numbers, just the number. Like if you have a pen register on your phone and you dial, it collects the number you dialed.

And the same way coming in, right? Okay, so go ahead. So not even the names, just the number. Not even the names. The FBI can get a. a court order to use a pen register if a judge agrees that the very, very low standard, mere relevance to an investigation is met. Very low standard. The collection of her call logs was also already known. This isn't news, John. And if you had listened to the Jack podcast, maybe you would

have known this, unless you probably already do know this and you're just pretending that it's fresh. Possible. Court filings in 2024 showed that her phone record since January 2020. had been subpoenaed from a phone company. Okay. Her cause. Because subpoena for toll records is different than a pen register. That's right, because you have the data on the pen register, but it's all numbers. So now you actually have to take all the numbers off and then send them off to the phone company with a subpoena for actual subscriber data.

That's how you build from one step to the next. By the way, also, her call logs totally relevant. She was a witness. If you'll remember, according to the indictment, Trump showed her a classified map, waved it around. We heard audio tape of it. Evidence that he knew he possessed such records. Oh, you probably get, look, it's classified. I can't classify.

I can't. I'm not even president anymore. You know, that whole thing. And more broadly, she oversaw his political action committee and hired and paid some of the lawyers provided to people like Walt Nata and Carlos de Oliva and other witnesses. She spoke on the phone to Stanley Woodward and confirmed that his clients would, quote, remain loyal to Donald Trump, very relevant to the classified documents case. And the fact that she was relevant,

that's how you clear the very low standard of relevance. Oh, yeah, I know. That's it. You're in. Mere relevance. Mere relevance. And she certainly was relevant. So there you go. Yeah.

obstruction? Because in my mind, volume two, the classified documents case is going to come in like maybe two parts, which is going to be the crime of retaining the documents, and then the whole cover-up, the obstruction of justice part of it. And that's a, she's a big part of that. Okay? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So now other things, we would like to sometimes thank John Solomon for inadvertently releasing things that proves our point. He inadvertently released proof. that Jack Smith was not leaking anything to the public, as, you know, Todd Blanche and Donald Trump were constantly blaming Jack Smith of leaks

and all this other stuff. It was Susie Wiles. Solomon tried to use that bit of info to say Smith was spying on journalists, including him, because there were journalists' phones that were scooped up in Susie Wilde's pen register. Oh, my God.

And that's because she was leaking to the press. That's inconvenient. when you're your high-ranking subordinate, who you rely on for everything, A, has a pen register on them because they're relevant to a criminal case, and B, gets caught on their own pen-register to leaking stuff to journalists.

Yeah. And, of course, Solomon is framing it as, look, he's spying on journalists and me. Now, Solomon has took this to Steve Bannon's podcast, Benny Johnson's podcast. Fox News picked it up and has written several articles about it. The New York Post reported that, quote, Biden was stocking Melania and Barron and tapped Susie

Wiles' phone and spied on journalists. And the thing about the Melania and Barron thing, the FBI was trying to coordinate when they were going to be at Mar-a-Lago so that they wouldn't disturb them. Yeah. And so they called that they're stalking the family of Donald Trump. And then the National News Desk of Sinclair, which is a conservative owner of many local news stations distributed a similar segment. Stephen Miller calls it seditious conspiracy. Randy Fine says it's a thousand times worse than Watergate. Like it blew up on right way media.

Wow. Yet it's just all out of context. And in fact, all it does is prove that the White House may have violated Judge Cannon's order. And if I'm the Knight Institute of Columbia, I'm saying, hey, the White House is releasing volume two stuff. So it's free game, right? Let's go. it? But of course, those arguments have been postponed again. They were moved from January to November 2nd. And now they have been canceled, decaltered, and there's no date for those arguments now. Classic canon jurisprudence. Mm-hmm. Classic. But this is just, it's so ridiculous. But he always shoots himself in the foot. So like I said, all we got out of that was that maybe the White House violated that order. And that it wasn't Jack Smith that was leaking. It was Susie Wiles. Yeah.

from John Solomon, the same guy who, after the big emergency primetime press conference from the president talking about how they were going to go after everyone for election security, who was pinned down in the White House afterwards, Solomon was asked. So what is there, John? What do you have? What came up? What changed? And he said, yeah, nothing really. He's like, well, we didn't have any evidence that the many votes were flipped or anything like that, you know, whatever.

They're like, come on, time for you to go. That's time, time to go. If Solomon says there's nothing, there is really nothing. Because this dude can make something out of nothing without even trying. Even that one was beneath him. He was like, no, no, sorry, I got nothing. So now if you see those kind of random posts or you hear somebody that you know talking about it, you can very calmly and politely say, first of all,

we already knew all of this a couple years ago. It's not new. And second of all, Susie Wiles was a witness in the obstruction case and was in charge of paying Trump's lawyers, Trump's co-defendant's lawyers to keep them loyal. Yeah. And also Jack Smith wasn't the leaker. But, you know, cool. All right.

After all that, we always get to end the show with our favorite segment. Hit Me in the Head with a Bat. We'll be right back with it. Stick around. Okay, everybody. Welcome back. It's time to Hit Me in the Head with a Bat. Hit me in the head with a bat.

Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Today, John Seidel at the Chicago Sun Times, who's doing incredible work on reporting with Broadview Six. He writes that ever since the Broadview Six scandal broke last spring. God, has it been that long. I can't believe it. Much of the attention has been on alleged wrongdoing by veteran federal prosecutors who secured, the one veteran federal prosecutor who secured the controversial indictment, right?

The woman, what was her name again? Is that sort of the name? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think. She's the one who secured the indictment nearly a year ago against these six Operation Midway Blitz protesters, peaceful protesters. U.S. District Judge April Perry is going in a different direction, though the judge presiding over the wreckage of the case appears focused instead on assurances given to her later in the case by U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros and others. That's the takeaway from a request that she made of prosecutors last Friday for more evidence as she considers whether to hand. down sanctions, or find Boutros and his team in criminal contempt.

Perry also warned the Fed's testimony from witnesses may be requested at a later time. Yeah. Yeah. The judge asked for all communications Boutros' team had with anyone other than local FBI investigators about investigatory or charging decisions in the case up until March 30th. That's the day the feds told her that no such communications. communications exist. Perry also said she wants to see Butros's October 14 email in which he received a transcript that documented some of his staff's apparent misconduct. Now, Boutros has said that he learned

of that alleged wrongdoing in April and does not remember reading the transcript last fall. He ordered the transcript. I mean. So she wants that email. And by the way, I mean, they're only given them a couple weeks, right? Yeah, yeah. They have until October 30th to turn everything over. She is drilling down on the heart of this thing. I want to see everything up until, what was it, March 30th. She's mad.

Good for her. And it all lines up, Seidel says, with Perry's insistence last week, that her sole focus is on lack of candor, concealment of material facts, or other misconduct that occurred before me. That's a quote. She likely made the comment to head off any separation of powers concerns

with the executive branch, right? Right. It's not the only inquiry underway, though. The Fed set off a firestorm of speculation Friday when they filed a partially redacted document that shielded the name of a Justice Department attorney from public view. Have they not learned their lesson about giving Judge Perry redacted stuff?

What happened? when they gave her a redacted thing. Now, Perry very quickly ordered the unredacted version be made public. And it turned out to be Justice Department. Deputy Counsel Suzanne Druette, who's based in Washington. She works for the OPR. That's the Office of Professional Responsibility, as source said. They're the ones who investigate alleged misconduct by federal prosecutors.

It all came one week after a lawyer for Brutrosse's office refused to rule out the idea that members of the Butros team could wind up invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It also came one year after a grand jury initially refused to hand up an indictment in the case. Now, the judge told the feds, quote, trust has been broken. The judge concluded last week that further under oath fact-finding was necessary in the case. Her new request for evidence suggests she is focused on two specific claims made by the feds this spring. The first came on March 30th. That's when Skeba and Assistant U.S. Attorney's William Hogan and Andres Almondares assured her in a court filing that, quote,

there are no communications of any nature from to or with anyone outside the U.S. Attorney's Office, other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case regarding any investigatory or charging decisions. Quote, to be crystal clear, this specifically includes anyone in the White House and all components and offices of Maine Justice. Really? Which means it definitely includes the White House

and some components of Maine justice. Probably Ankhash Singh. You know who I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. The guy who's got his hands in everything, is deputy, like close deputy of Todd Blanche's? Yeah, might also include Suzanne Druette, whose name was recently redacted from a court file.

Assistant U.S. attorney Nathaniel Whalen indicated during a hearing last week that such communications, oh, guess what, might exist after all. But they might have occurred after a decision was made to file charges. Perry struggled during the hearing to pin down exactly when that decision was made, though, given that it took multiple tries for prosecutors to convince grand jurors, to indict. Yeah, three times.

Perry's also focused on Boutros' acknowledgement that he received a grand jury transcript last fall, in which Mecklenburg, that's her name, right, appeared to use her personal credibility to support an indictment. That's a forbidden practice, by the way, among prosecutors known as vouching. Not only did Perry ask to see that email, she asked for any replies or forefirm. words and copies of all email chains to which it was connected. She also asked for metadata, including read receipts, delivery status, and message tracking logs.

She's not messing around. She is not. I think she's seen some evidence in her time as a judge. Finally, she told the Fed she wanted details about any oral communications that might relate to her request, including the people present, the date, time, and length of the conversation and a certification that there was no recording or transcription made of that communication. Under penalty of perjury, Andy, that is pretty wild because it is a kind of a known thing in the government that if you don't want to put something down on paper, you pick up the phone and you

call somebody. You have a conference about it. You had chat about it. Now, there have been known instances in previous hit me in the head with a bat installments where people have been called out for not putting anything in writing in the Department of Justice, and instructing people to not put anything in writing in this administration in the Department of Justice. So the fact that she's like, I want you to write down under penalty of perjury anytime you had a conversation

and whether or not that conversation was recorded. Wow. I've never seen anything like that. That's the kind of requirement in this kind of evidence-gathering mode that could actually persuade some Justice Department employees to say, I'm coming clean with this whole thing. Because that's, you know, she's clearly looking to hang a couple of heads on a belt from this inquiry. And you don't want to be that. Well, I think that's where Mecklenberg's testimony may come in handy.

Because Mecklenburg said, I can't do this anymore. You threw me under the bus. Yeah. I'm out. And now she's working with the former defendants in the Broadview Six case, right? Yeah. Yeah, really interesting. That thing just continues to burn. Okay, in a different case, a federal prosecutor has been sanctioned

in order to undertake at least two hours of legal training, maybe go for four, I don't know, after a district court judge concluded that he made a baseless accusation founded on, quote, no evidence against the lawyer of an Iranian man fighting deportation to his home country. Now, the ruling was made by Judge Diane, is it Humatawa? I don't know that right. Humatawa, made by Judge Diane Humatawa in the U.S. District Court for Arizona against assistant U.S. attorney Brooks Chup.

It demonstrates how President Trump's immigration crackdown has led to legal conflict over the rights of migrants and the arguments that their attorneys can make against deportation. Yep, yep. The controversy revolves around an Iranian man who entered the United States in January of 2025 and attempted to claim asylum on the grounds of being gay. which he said would put him in grave danger if he returned to Iran. The man who goes unnamed in the ruling says immigration and customs enforcement agents made two attempts to deport him to Iran in November and December of 2025. Describing the first incident, he said, I refused to cooperate with the ICE officers.

I cried, I begged. I told them I cannot go back because they will arrest me for being gay and they will execute me. I told them I am not safe and I can't go back. In December of 2025, Chup, this is the assistant U.S. attorney, said the Iranian's lawyer, who is also not named in the ruling, had attempted to obstruct his deportation by incorrectly arguing that he had a pending immigration appeal that prevented deportation, knowingly making false statements to a federal agency is against the law. That turned out to be false. Yeah, no evidence to indicate that whatsoever. So this guy just went into court and just fired it off, just took a broadside at the opposing counsel.

And yeah, now is being sanctioned for it. So good for him. Two hours of classes. Two hours of classes. Yeah. It's fascinating. Anyone who makes a blunder like that needs probably more than two hours of class, I'm just saying.

Yeah, I would concur. I would concur. All right, that is hit me on the head with a bat, which means it's time for listener questions. If you have a question, we have a link in the show notes. You can click on. I think we have time for one or two. What do we have this week, Andy?

All right. So the first one is really representative of a couple of questions that we got from different people about this very same topic. Comes to us from William. William takes kind of a different tact on it. So I selected this one. William starts off really well by staying Oh, best of the political pundit podcasters

I'm such a sucker for this Grace in the wheels, grace in the wheels That's right I enjoy each episode while cycling through the park On my morning ride before teaching high school classes You had me at oh best of the political pundit podcasters But like adding in the cycling thing And the teaching high school kids, I mean I'm in

I'm on team William Okay, my question, when members of the DOJ or the FBI are demoted, as was mentioned in your October 4th and other shows, do they receive a reduction in pay as well? Or is it just about sidelining experienced agents and lawyers who refuse to bend the knee to the agents of Orange Julius? Well, I can tell you how it is supposed to happen. Okay. I don't know that that's necessarily what is happening in the... this administration. But generally, if you get demoted, like, let's say you're a GS-14 and your GS-14 job disappears and the only available jobs are GS-13 jobs, you actually keep your pay, but take the lower

GS level. They don't generally take pay away from you. They just lower your, change your job title and change your rank, your civilian federal service rank. Is that your experience as well, my friend? Yeah, I mean, that's like a, that's like an non-adversarial demotion, right? Like you said, maybe your job goes away and they have to give you another one, but there's not one in your area is something they give you one that's lower. The other way you can get demoted is only after, as we talked about earlier in the show, an investigation by OPR to determine if you engage in some sort of misconduct. And if they determine you have, you can be demoted to a lower rank.

And that's really the only way. you can lose rank other than voluntarily, like in the way that you described. But does your pay go down when you're demoted punitively? I don't think it does. I've never seen that happen. I've seen some punitive demotions and I've seen some, oops, we can't have, do anything else demotions. Yeah.

And in both cases, which I've seen multiple, the pay stays the same. You get the new rank, the lower rank, but they leave the pay where it is. Same rank and step, because each rank, in government service has 10 steps associated with it based on how many years you've been in service. So when I got surreptitiously removed from my job, I was a GS-14-step-4. Okay. And so because I had been in the 14 for quite a while. And actually, they counted my 13 service toward my 14 step.

That was one of the incentives that I got for taking the job and moving. to San Diego from Los Angeles. So I've never seen anybody get their pay docked though, even if it's punitive. That doesn't mean they're not doing it here. Right, right. And also, you know, there's a lot of other penalties to being demoted.

It's a loss of status. It's a loss of kind of position that translates into hiring opportunities when you leave or retire or whatever. So there's on your record, yeah. Right. It's on your record. You'll always be trying to.

explain that to people who figure out that it's there. It should just be a new records like system where all the records that happened during the Trump administration are highlighted in green or something. Like, don't worry about anything that happened between here and here. It's like the Major League Baseball home run records for the steroid period.

Just asterisk, like, hey, these are the numbers, but are they really? We don't know. Anyway, thanks, William, for that. And thanks for your service as a teacher. and for riding your bike to work. I love it. Yes. All right. So I didn't load this up properly. I love that question. I'm glad we carried it. The next one is the one that we actually got hit up on from a lot of different people. This one comes to us from Mel from Sherman Oaks.

And Mel says, Trump evidently has immunity for almost anything he does. People who carry out his orders don't. The judge ordered that no trees be cut down to make the new golf course unless prior approval was given. Can the company and or the people who cut the trees down face charges? Now, this, of course, refers to the whatever he's doing to modify, destroy, pick your word, the golf course in D.C. That started as kind of like an off, kind of like an under-the-counter project that had no, nobody knew what was going on over there. They were moving all these thousands of tons of dirt around and everything else.

else and all these modifications of the golf course finally got wrapped up in a lawsuit and the administration was ordered not to take any trees down unless they had approval. And then what happened after that, EG? Yeah, they took trees down 400 plus. They were, I mean, this judge had already issued a temporary restraining order to say, you have to notice the court. You have to give us a 48 hour warning if you're going to do anything to the municipal golf course. And that's when he just cut down 400 trees without giving the court any notice. Yeah. Seemingly arguing with cutting down of trees doesn't count toward whatever it was you told me not to do.

So then it was time to already have, because, you know, a temporary restraining order only lasts 14 days. It can last up to 28 if you extend it while you're considering what's a more, what's called a preliminary injunction. permanent injunction, right? Yeah. So a more permanent stoppage than a restraining order. And so they had that hearing and she was really, really excoriating the Department of Justice and the Trump administration and issued a preliminary injunction and said, again, you can't even do 10 seconds of work on this without giving us notice at the court.

And now it's not just giving us notice. It has to be approved. by this court. Yeah. But he's already violated the temporary restraining order, but I don't know. You know, I think maybe she mentioned she will look into that. Yeah. And so here we are.

But this straight up violating court orders. And I have to say, you know, I came to D.C. a little bit ago. And it's awful what he's done to the city. There's black riot fencing up all over the place. Lafayette Park is closed. the reflecting pool is empty. Yeah. Everything is shitty and broken.

There's national guardsmen everywhere, standing around doing nothing. Now he's, the Kennedy Center has a big old tarp over it, that he's cutting down trees, he cut down cherry blossoms. Yeah. Cut down the willows by the Kennedy Center.

It's just like, it's kind of a shithole country now, D.C. Yeah, it definitely is not, you know, You can sense the anger and the misery. Those are the physical manifestations of it. You see it on the faces that people walk around. I forgot to demolish the east room. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. It's horrible. I think he's just wrecking stuff with no intention of fixing it, honestly. No. They don't care. He really doesn't care. I do, you know, I do think, though, that some of this nonsense is starting to blow back on him in terms of what we're seeing and polling data leading up to the midterms.

I think people are like, are you kidding me? You're putting up like big gold statues and arches and crap like that and where inflation's up to what, 3.3.7 or 3.6 in the last month. Gas prices have been over $4 a gallon for more days in this year than any other presidency. I think those things are all negative, but in contrast to this stupid bullshit that he's focused on while people are suffering is just doubly galling. In regards to Mel's question, I don't know how,

I don't know many prosecutors that would feel righteous going after the guys who fired up the chainsaws to take the trees down. But those people who work for the government, who approve the orders to do that, who sent the communications to tell the companies, go do this, go do that, they do not have presidential immunity.

And theoretically, you could go after, if you were a DOJ that was willing to enforce the law and help enforce judicial court orders, you could go after those people. You could go after them in a non-criminal way. You could fire them for violating a court order in the course of their work. Or, you know, there's, you could, there are other potential remedies there, but I don't think any of that's going to happen with this crowd. No, no. And, you know, also something else to think about with the company. it's reasonable to assume that the government has been told about a court order. I don't think it's reasonable to assume a private company would know about that or that the administration would tell them about that.

That's right. So I think you'd be hard pressed to make a case against the private company that did work. Of course. Of course. Yeah. But yeah. This seems like something like an OPR situation, which is gutted and doesn't. function anymore, but... Or an IG. Yeah, or an inspector general, which is in the same condition. Yeah. Yeah, ridiculous. All right. Thank you so much for the questions, everybody. There's a link in the show notes you can click on to submit them. We really appreciate it. And thanks to our sustaining members, this show kind of works like our network, sort of works like NPR, where all of our content is free

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you'll get pre-sale tickets too, and you join us on our monthly Zoom, happy hour calls where you can interact directly with us. It's a pretty cool membership. And it really helps us make sure that we can continue to bring these shows to you. So thank you to our patrons. Just head to patreon.com slash the Daily Beans. It covers this show and the Daily Beans. appreciate it. Full on. It is great for all those reasons. It's also just a huge shot in the arm to me and you and all the people at MSW who it takes to put these things together to know that like you care enough about what we're doing and how we're doing it that you want to just like get actively involved in supporting it. So keeps us going, keeps us focused. We are,

I was trying to figure out today between Jack and Unjustified. We are almost 200 shows in, I think, which is really hell of an accomplishment way further than I ever thought we'd be. I thought Jack would wrap up. He'd be in prison. We'd be done. Right. It seems simple enough. Maybe some mop-up cases, right? But no. Yeah, but anyway, thank you. Thank you so much. The subscribers, we really appreciate what you do for us. Yeah, for sure. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. We will see you next week on Unjustified. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe.

Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.