Jack - Donald Proves Russian Collusion

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

Donald Trump floated recycled false 2020 election claims during a national address Thursday night. Kash Patel fired two FBI intelligence analysts that refused to join the investigation into Georgia elections. The Justice Department finally shared evidence with Minnesota law enforcement 6 months after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Todd Blanche sat for his confirmation hearing before the senate judiciary committee and testified that his justice department does not target political enemies. 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-S-W Media. Donald Trump floated recycled false 2020 election claims during a national address on Thursday night. Kosh Patel fired two FBI intelligence analysts that refused to join the investigation into Georgia elections. The Justice Department finally shared evidence with Minnesota law enforcement six months after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretty. And Todd Blanche sat. for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and testified that his Justice Department does not target political enemies. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 78 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, July 19th.

2026, I'm Allison Gil. And I'm Andy McCabe. And Allison, speaking of Mr. Blanche, it's been a couple of days since his fascinating, horrifying, kind of boring. whatever, confirmation hearing. What were your thoughts? I'm sure you were dialed in. Okay, so I just, I was disappointed. And I can see why Jack Smith is out

talking to the media about the weaponization of the Trump Justice Department and the fact that no one seems to be standing up for the career prosecutors and career agents at the FBI and analysts and people who were doing their jobs, right? That's like one of his main things. things when he goes out on his and does interviews, whether it's with Nicole Wallace or

John Stewart, is that he's out there standing up for all of these amazing people who do all this hard and difficult work. Republicans in Blanche went after Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department and hardly anyone stood up for either. They just sort of let it hang out there like a permanent premise to all of their questions. You know, like, oh, well, Biden weaponized the Justice Department and no one was like, no, that didn't happen. Jack Smith weaponized, no, we're talking about you now, but also no, that didn't happen. They just sort of let that go. And that was really disappointing. And so I really felt why Jack Smith is out there trying to defend, not just his work, but the work of all of the people, you know, in the Justice Department and the FBI, for example.

Yeah, I share your complete disappointment. And particularly with the justice department, you know, with the Democrats on the panel, I felt like they gave him an absolute pass. There are so many things that you could really go after Todd Blanche about that. You could question him about things that have happened in the last year and a half under his, on his watch, either as Deputy Attorney General or Acting Attorney General. I mean, we literally do a one-hour podcast about it every week. Every week. I mean, seriously, right? Everything we talk about is something that you could have brought up each case, each personnel move, every example of the loss of the presumption of regularity. I mean, there's a really substantive issues that you and I know, our audience, all of our listeners

know, and like none of that stuff came up. None of it. He lost a vindictive prosecution challenge from Abrago Garcia. That wasn't mentioned at all. How about Broadview Six? That complete disaster. What are you doing, Mr. Deputy. Attorney General, to get to the bottom of the prosecutorial malfeasance in that case that led to a

dismissal, terrible rulings by a federal court judge, you know, I just, I just don't get it. He's been referred to the bar for disciplinary action. Yeah. And they, you know, even these self-styled great, courageous because they're now leaving Congress people like Tillis from North Carolina, nothing. And, you know, it tells you something about how easy the Democrats went on Blanche when the most quoted, the most repeated soundbite came from a Republican, John Kennedy from Louisiana. Or John Cornyn from Texas. Yeah, who just two Republicans.

Kennedy, like, stumbled into asking him if he was friends with the president. And then, of course, Blanche said the quiet part out loud by saying, I'm his lawyer, I'm his defense lawyer or whatever he said. I mean, like, oh, dude, you can't walk that back. That's out there now forever. There were some pretty good moments. Senator White House had some pretty good moments. Senator Horono, Senator Booker, Senator Schiff. But when you have enough information to go all killer, no filler,

bam, bam, bam, bam, with each individual Democratic senator for the entirety of the three-hour tour, I don't understand why it wasn't, I don't know. It just felt like I could have been more hard hitting. I mean, Cornyn opened the questioning, just straight, straight going after the weaponization slush fund and why he wouldn't rescind it and why he wouldn't put it. I don't need to, blah, blah, blah.

Like, it was, I felt like they could have had him way back on his heels quite a bit better than they did. And like I said, there were some standout moments that I was happy to see. But there was so much. You know, I was talking to Adam Klausfeld over at molarsherbought.com about this. Like there were so many things. that if you didn't know who Todd Blanche was before this hearing, you would not have gotten a sense of all of his botched, weaponized,

you know, going after enemies, political enemies of Donald Trump, you would have no sense of that he's, you know, of all the terrible, awful, horrible things that he's done, which, you know, which is why he is under disciplinary review by the Bar Association. Not that you need to have a law license in good standing to be the Attorney General. I guess we nobody ever expected that we would have that situation happened. So it's not in law anywhere. I think we should codify that as soon as we can as soon as we're able to.

But, you know, another thing is that Tom Tillis was like disgusted by all this stuff with the Epstein files and the January 6th assault on cops, but said, I'll vote for you if you meet with the Epstein survivors. And at noon today, I'm actually going to be talking to one of the Epstein survivors that was in that meeting with Todd Blanche and how it was just a box to check. Yeah. How his hand was forced and it was just, he was only there in order to satisfy Tom Tillis's one caveat to get voted out of committee into the, you know, to the full, to the full Senate for approval. Just blew my mind a little bit. I was, you know, I like you. I share your disappointment as well. I mean, that's what I expect from Todd Blanche, right, to just to just like do the

absolute bare minimum to get that check in the box. But Tom, tell us, man, you actually had some leverage. You had an opportunity to take a principal stance and you gave it away for some performative moment that, of course, Blanche took you up on in the most minimal way possible. I don't know. I just think there's so much they could have asked. I've never understood why, like, for instance, in this case, the Democrats would have all gotten together and allocated out the topics. Okay, you do this, you hit on this, you hit on that. but they never do it never comes off as that sort of an organized thing. That's word for word, what I said on Friday's Daily Bean's podcast.

Like, why wouldn't you do that? You do a Brigo Garcia. You grill him on the Broadway 6 and grand jury malfeasance. You grill him on his referral, multiple referrals to the bar for disciplinary action. You grill him on Miami fraud on the court, colluding with IRS and da-da-da. You grill him on the $1.776 billion slush fund and why he won't rescind it. Don't let up. You do this.

You all do that. I'll take this a bit and then have some follow-up questions because you know what he's going to say. 100% in response at, well, the Biden Justice Department, you know, and then come back at that. You know, hey, get in touch with Heafie and Jack Smith. They got to shingle out and ask them for some ammunition about how to stand up for the men and women who did their jobs under the Biden Justice Department. Something, anything. I don't know. It just felt like I wanted it to be more like the January 6th.

hearings. Organized. Look, you're not that they actually practice law. Your lawyers, put it together like a case, like hit every point in the, you know, like, it's just so easy. But I think they have this antiquated idea that like, oh, they're all senators. You can't tell them what to do. They're going to do their own thing. So they all just read the questions written for them by their staff.

And they all, they all just hit on the same theme. They all go back to the same one little soundbite. And then they lay out the little speech. about it in their question, like it's some sort of novel thing that we haven't heard 15 times in that actual hearing. Like, it's so mind-numbing to watch those things. But I have a letter from the FBI admitting that training videos exist on how to redact the Epstein files and they didn't release them under the Transparency Act. Nobody brought that up. Katie Fang has an order from a judge that Todd Blanche failed to follow when he asked him to hand over specific things that had been

redacted that shouldn't have been. That never came up. Like, I don't know. It's crazy. Mm-mm-mm. It's nuts. We could do it better. We should run our own Senate, and that's how it'll be. That's what, yes. Yes.

Nobody listens to Allie and Andy. They should. No, not at all. All right, let's talk about this just absolutely own goal, by the way, by Donald Trump on Thursday night, because Sam Stein went through all these documents that he declassified to show that there's foreign election interference. And in those documents, Andy, are.

the fact that he that Trump and Russia colluded in 2020 we're not talking crossfire hurricane but you know when he sent Rudy Giuliani and everyone over to Firtash and to get the Burisma stuff and and that Russia was working and Kalimnik was working with high level officials in the Republican Party to to interfere in the election that he he released all that as well as a bunch of stuff we already knew from a 2021 SISA FBI DOJ right DHS combined report. Look, this is what, yeah, this is what you get when you have your whole, like, team of attack dogs, none of whom knows anything about intelligence, reading intelligence,

and then deciding what to leak out or declassify. They don't know what they're reading. John Solomon, John Solomon, the failed journalist John Solomon is actually, like, on the staff of the White House now. He's like the declassification guy. He's a guy who took a binder of. crossfire hurricane material out of the White House that Meadows had to scramble to get back minutes before Joe Biden was inaugurated. You remember that? This guy couldn't even hold down a job at the

hill. Like, I mean, he's your guy. He's your guy you're going to put in charge of like reviewing classified intelligence and deciding what to what should come out. And according to New York Times this morning, he told a group of journalists last night, yes, or I should say, no, there's no information in any of these documents that shows that any votes could have been altered in the last three elections. Like, I'm still researching. Why are we doing? Why are we here?

What's the point of this big, this big announcement? It's like phase one of the Epstein Files binder. Yes. Yes. I was like, I posed about it, like, which was more hilarious? That or this election BS? I thought about that last night as I was watching. I thought Pam Bondi is laughing her ass off right now.

She's like, look at that. Uh-huh. Don't go to the binders. Do not go to the binders. Oh, my God. Really? Yeah, so a couple of things he brought up. In 2020, China carried out a compromise of election data resulting in acquisition of voter files.

I think we knew that. He blamed the deep state for suppressing that info about China's meddling and covering it up. But I'm sorry, and I'm speaking to you now as the captain of the deep state, Andy. You all put out. It wasn't even there. Come on. You'll put up multiple reports on this. There was nothing hidden.

The China paid journalists, large sums of money to publish negative stories about Trump. What about Russia and Tenet? And Tim Poole's $100,000 per episode, Escapade. That's like not doing your homework and then going to class the next day and blaming your teacher for not giving you the homework answers. It's like, dude, you were supposed to do the homework. You're supposed to read the intelligence yourself. It's all sitting right there. And then he also said he had raw intelligence.

from the FBI in 2020 that got buried saying China attempted to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden. Okay. I remember that story coming out in 2019, I think, or 20, maybe it was 2020. And it was like no one believed it. Like Trump's own people didn't believe it. Like, Ratcliffe didn't even believe it. And now he's like, oh, the deep staters hit it from me. Who's the deep stater now?

Who was the deep state in 2020? I don't even know. They weren't on my deep state team because, of course, I was gone three years before that. But yeah, whatever. Yeah, I think the deep state team took a big hit when you were when you were fired. What about the Obama burn bags? Oh, for God's sakes, the burn bags. I brought this up with, you know, over on the beans talk, because I've talked to you multiple times about burn bags and how mostly it's duplicate stuff that's in computer systems that you need to incinerate because you don't want it to go. But what were your thoughts about the burn bag thing? Yeah. I mean, could somebody just explain to these people what a burn bag is? I know they love the name

because it sounds like insidious or somehow conspiratorial. Of course, you know, like sunshine sounds insidious and conspiratorial to them. But like just tell them what this is what goes in a burn bag. It's things that you print it out from the system because you needed to work with it, show it to someone else. It's hard to carry your computer around to show people a document. So you just print it out. And then you can't just leave that stuff sitting around anywhere. It's top secret or whatever it is. You go shit down the toilet, Andy. You eat it. You put it in Mark Meadows fireplace. That's how you're supposed to properly dispose of classified printed information. The rest of us don't have fireplaces and massive

of gold toilets that can consume reams of paper. So we use a burn bag because, again, you can't shred any of this stuff. There's only a certain type of shredder that's certified to destroy confidential material. And they're about as big as an old-fashioned washing machine. Yeah, we have a room with it in there because it turns it to dust. Yes, there's a massive tank of oil that hangs from the ceiling with a tube that goes into the thing. It's like some kind of monster in the hospital or something. And you feed things in there and it obliterates it.

So nobody wants to do that all day long. So you accumulate a whole bunch of stuff in a burn bag. You put it in this special bag. It has these weird red and white stripes on the outside of it. So everybody knows what's in it. And you just put your stuff in there. And then every couple of days, someone will either take it to a burn room, which is a place where you store the burn bag.

so a contractor comes in and then takes them all out like every once a week or two weeks. Or your secretary or staffer takes it to one of these massive shredders that I was describing. Yeah, that's it. There's nothing creepy or weird about it. It's just a part of how the intelligence community has to function. But how would they know that when it's like Bill Pulte, John Solomon, these are your bright stars that are. They're navigating your world of intelligence and figuring out how to make decisions to protect the country from all of our foreign adversaries. I can see Bill Boltey now.

Like, I've been in the mortgage industry for decades and we never have burn bags. Okay. Burn bag. That must be bad. Right. Not really. Well, now Trump has asked the DNI, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA to investigate you guys, the deep state, why the info was hidden on China and has asked them to file criminal charges if appropriate. That discovery should be fun.

But then, of course, he brought up voting machine security, which we knew he was going to, giving pretext to voting machines come this midterm in 2028. He repeats his reports prove the government has long known machines are vulnerable. Yeah, those reports have all come out. They're all public, sir. Those are all public. No kidding. The U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China, Iran, have the capability to compromise election infrastructure. The capability, there's no evidence that they have. as, you know, we've heard from John Sullivan last night talking to reporters. But this is his excuse for trying to see his voting machines in future elections, I believe. Yeah. Again, you know, there's a massive gulf. So the insanity of this whole thing last night was all his focus on the possibility of foreign interference in our elections. And yet he completely ignored Russia.

never brought Russia once, who actually interfered in the 2016 election, tried to do it in 2020, put more into it than anyone else, was ultimately unsuccessful because we were better at securing things in 2020. But yeah, that's not a convenient topic for him, so he keeps that away. If he's now just opened his eyes to this idea of the vulnerabilities of some of our election infrastructure, well, maybe you shouldn't have gotten rid of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force. Maybe you shouldn't have fired all those people who worked for the DNI that focused on our adversary's efforts to undermine democracy through the electoral process. Maybe you shouldn't have fired all the commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission last week. Like literally last week he fired all those people.

that commission does nothing but help states make more secure elections through money technology. That's because he wants to do it nationally. He wants to do it federally. That's why. I think he doesn't actually want it done. I think he's perfectly happy with the vulnerabilities. He's hoping one of them will actually, you know, come to fruition. So he can point at it when he obliterates the election results in 2028. So I don't know. It's absurd. When you look at what he's saying, said, and then his big windup was, this is why we need to pass the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act's not doing anything for any of these things. There's nothing in the SAVE Act about election.

Foreign interference. No, no. I mean, such a, this nonsensical theater. I think your description was right from the top. It's an own goal. I mean, I think he really, he hyped this thing up crazily and it just fell flat. Well, ABC refused to air it. NBC wouldn't carry it.

CNN does it. decided not to carry it. I had to go hunt for it to watch it because I have to because this, you know, it's my job. It sucks to be me. But we go watch it so you don't have to. And then he complained about that and said the media is involved in this as well. And I was thinking back to something that we learned in the Mueller days. It was a, I'm going to bring it up. It was a text message or a Facebook private message sent to Don Jr. from Julian Assange. And it says, hi, this is 2016. Hi, Don. If your father loses, and that's in quotes, we think it's much more interesting and entertaining that he does not concede and spends time challenging the media

and other types of rigging that occurred, as he has implied that he might do. He is also much more likely to keep his base alive and energized this way if he's going to start a new media network. Showing how corrupt the old ones are is helpful. This discussion about the rigging can be transformative as it exposes media corruption, primary corruption, PAC corruption, etc. So this has been the plan from day one. 100%. 100%.

I mean, it's the same, it's the same themes. It's the same focus. is rigged, that's rigged, anything that's bad is rigged or fake. And then of course, anything that's good is it's the best anybody's ever seen. People, everybody's saying they've never seen anything like this. It's all

the same nonsensical drama. The question is what he does when we get to Fisher Cut Bate moments. Like we will be there this November and again, of course, in 2028. So we don't have the luxury of ignoring this and laughing at it and just dismissing it. We have to stay focused on it.

Well, I did laugh at it, but also. so I understand what he's trying to do. I laughed at it because he inadvertently released a bunch of stuff that showed he colluded with Russia, which just, I don't know, it made my day, if I'm being fully honest. And he also kind of painted himself in a corner. He said, we're going to fix these problems before the midterm elections.

So I guess if he claims something goes wrong in the midterm elections, that he failed to fix whatever it was that, you know, because this goes back to the whole. So Democrats in the deep state failed to rig 2016. We successfully rigged 2020 when he was in charge, but then we failed again in 2024. And now that he's in charge again, we're going to rig it again. It's just, yeah.

I mean, broadly, the elections are rigged against me. It's a really hard theme to land when you've won two of them. Like, why are you complaining? When he was questioning Todd Blanche and talking about election fraud, I'm like, there's Senator Mike Lee talking about voter. fraud while sitting in a seat that he was voted into. Exactly. Like what?

You control the Senate, you control the House, for all intents and purposes, control the Supreme Court and the White House. Right. My biggest concern, now listen, having spent a career in the intelligence community, I know what intelligence reports can look like, and they're all over the map, right? Especially if you're looking at raw intelligence, that's just straight up unanalyzed. This is what the source said. This is what we overheard.

Exactly. And that stuff is all over the map. And people who are in the business understand you don't read that and take it for truth. You read that and say, okay, this is the beginning. I need to look into this and vet it or not whatever, or the source is not reliable, that sort of thing. And I was concerned that like he's going to come up with some crazy ass off the wall piece of raw intelligence that was never vetted, never confirmed and maybe dismissed by the community. but he'll show it completely out of context. And that might be enough to get these senators

who don't have any idea, most of them, what they're looking at when they look at intelligence, to finally put their money behind the Save Act. But honestly, last night seemed like such a flop. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't know that it got him any closer to passing the Save Act. No, I don't think so. And I actually think it'll backfire on him.

I mean, unless he really wants John Ossoff to be president in 2028. Yeah. And it's not, I mean, I don't want the Save Act to be passed because I think it fundamentally undermines many people's ability to vote. And I'm saying that for Republicans or Democrats. I think it's fundamentally anti-democratic, right? Small D Democratic.

But from a political analysis, I'm not sure that it even helps him. I bet you there's tons of conservatives, particularly women. who live under their married names and never went out and perfected the documents behind that that could get turned away at the polls completely unfairly. But if that, you know,

and that could cost him a lot of support. So like, I don't even think, you know, bottom line is his political, his legislative political skill is very low. Well, I called it the Longshanks problem back when he was trying to tank mail-in voting because, you know,

aren't you going to hurt Republicans too, but he was banking on it hurting more Democrats than Republicans. And I called the Longshanks thing because in the Braveheart movie, when he calls the archers out, he's like, but won't we hit our own men? He's like, yes, but we'll hit theirs as well. And the Irish are free, you know. So it's, I think he's just banking on it hurting Democrats more than Republicans. And there, I think there are more Democrats that, are unable to get an ID, for example, a government ID than Republicans. But it does hurt both.

Yeah, I think very well could hurt Democrats' worth. I don't know. I don't profess to be an expert on that. But he just locks in on what he wants. And oftentimes what he wants is not necessarily the smoothest path to where he wants to go. And I feel like the Save Act is another one of those examples. Yeah, I agree. All right, everybody.

Wow, look, we're already half hour into this show. We have three more blocks to get to. We're going to talk about some issues Kosh Patel is having after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. All right, let's turn to Kosh Patel, the FBI director.

Kosh Patel abruptly canceled a planned flight Friday to see his girlfriend in Chicago this weekend after top administration officials frustrated with Patel summoned him. him to the White House. The precise reason that Patel's political bosses demanded he cancel his trip and report to the West Wing are unclear. And I'm going to put a pin in that because there's another story that came out that cleared it up for us and we'll get to that in a minute. But several people said top Trump deputies were disturbed by a range of actions by Kash Patel. Some found it confounding that the FBI director was leaving town amid the recent revival of the war with Iran and alleged threats against the president's life, according to a person familiar with the efforts to help Patel rebuild

trust with the White House. Apparently there's someone assigned to help Patel rebuild trust. There are efforts to do that, I guess. Wow. For this article, people spoke on the condition of anonymity. Others cited two unforced errors by Patel that created bad optics for the Trump administration, the first being his early morning tweet bashing MS now for its coverage of his high-flying lifestyle. They said in which Patel boasted, quote, my jet-skirts. is gold-plated, dumbass. I think he's the first FBI director to say that. That is the first FBI director on Twitter.

Yeah. The second misstep the people said was that extensive reports by MS Now and other news outlets about taxpayers footing the bill for Patel's globe-trotting, ultimately spurred formal questions from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a critical ally of President Trump's. Yeah, Grassley is doing this. but Grassley said that the Democrats are now riding his coattails about spending in the government. On Thursday, MS now reported exclusively that Grassley had first asked Patel in May in a letter about his use of the FBI jet and his decision to purchase luxury armored BMWs.

We talked about that here on this show last week. And in a separate letter, Congressional Democrats said they had received information that Patel was demanding the FBI staff arranged special perks on his official trips, a jet ski excursion, a helicopter tour, etc. The FBI has disputed that and said Patel complied with federal rules pertaining to his travel. Several FBI agents complained internally, several, that this office visit was belatedly added cover to justify Patel flying the director's jet, which is estimated to cost tens of thousands of dollars for each domestic trip to enjoy a weekend in Chicago with his girlfriend. Quote, Patel was coming to Chicago today for a fake office visit for his girlfriend's country concert this weekend.

one of the sources briefed on the trip said. The source noted Patel, quote, canceled the trip while on the tarmac at Andrews and was summoned to the White House immediately, adding that it was apparent panic and believed to be in response to his morning tweet today. I guess that's referring to the MS Now tweet. A source familiar with the efforts to help Patel repair his standing in the White House told MS Now that there have been multiple interventions by people who like Patel and have been trying to help him in his position as director. quote, with everything going on in the war, how are you not outside the Oval Office ready to go into the situation room, the source said? All right, but here's what he really,

here's why he really went back to D.C. It wasn't to get yelled at for the MS Now tweet, although that may have happened. But as it turns out, according to CNN, Patel, who'd been preparing to travel to Chicago, was diverted to the White House on Friday to take a hands-on role in running a leak investigation war room with Susie Wiles.

Chief staff, Susie Wiles and Kosh Patel help personally orchestrate a sprawling investigation last week at the White House aimed at determining who in the government leaked information about the security deficiencies of the cuttery gifted airplane I call bribe force one with with some officials being asked to turn over their phones to them on White House grounds. Now, the probe became public early the next morning when the New York Times reported Justice Department issued subpoenas to four of its journalists who reported on the security concerns. They actually came knocking on their doors. So, A.G., I got asked on TV this week whether or not you can do that.

Like, can Patel and Wiles just ask people to turn over their phones? And, you know, the answer is yes, they can ask, but people can say no. That is, if they don't care about getting fired. I think people did in this instance. In the CNN story, they were asked, but not everyone handed them over. Yeah. And some, and there was reporting that some agency said, if you're asked, do not hand it over. instead, you know, talk to agency counsel first.

So, yeah, really, you know, the fact, the leak investigations are hard. The fact that this one is being done by Susie Wiles and Cash Patel from inside the White House tells me that the leaker has nothing to worry about. I mean, really. Well, bring out the polygraph. Buckle in, because this one's going to take a while. So in a different story that jumped out at us this week, MS now. is reporting that two Atlanta-based FBI intelligence analysts were fired last week

after refusing to participate in the Trump administration's investigation of Georgia's 2020 presidential election. Three people familiar with the matter told MS now. The analysts, a husband and wife, told colleagues they did not believe the investigation was justified under FBI and Justice Department policies, the people said, adding that the couple was escorted out of the office. the FBI neither confirmed nor denied that the two analysts were fired. Yeah, now this reminds me if you and I have had the conversation about when do you resign from this administration. And you keep your head down, you do your job until somebody asks you to do something that you can't do or won't do. And that's when you leave. But apparently they were fired and marched out of the building.

And again, this is what Jack Smith goes around in the media talking about, about this retaliation against people who are simply doing. doing their jobs or sticking to the Department of Justice or Rules of Federal Criminal Procedure guidelines in what is correct or, you know, FBI. You know, you and I've talked, going back to your book, The Threat, about the proper predicate to open an investigation. So that's, I, like, those were the thoughts that were firing off in my head when I read this. Yeah, truly. You know, look, they're in for a long road, and I know what that feels like, but I got to say, I don't know who these people are. I don't have any idea. But God bless you and for standing up and doing the right thing. And I hope, and I'm confident that your example of courage and standards means a lot to

your colleagues and hopefully is inspirational in many ways. Yeah. And you and I have talked about this investigation. They had until July 17th, they had to go through 600 boxes of ballots. They sent 260 agents to Atlanta to do this in a surge. And like I said, they had to last Friday to do this. But apparently one like FBI field office was given 175,000 names and dates of birth. And they had to run those names through a database to check whether those individuals were alive. And so that was kind of each one had to look at 708 records among the 260 people. that was part of this.

And these two people were like, we're not taking part in this. And they were fired as a result. So I'm with you. And I do think that their resignation or their firing will go a long way to show their integrity to, you know, their former colleagues. Yeah, 100%. Even to do just records checks like it's been described here, you still need a proper purpose. And if you believe that that case is not properly predicated, you don't have that purpose. And so, yeah, I mad respect for those two people and for everybody else who finds themselves in that tight spot.

Right, because it says here in the article that the FBI may only conduct an investigation if agents can point to a set of facts reasonably indicating that an actual or potential federal crime or national security threat exists. And as we know, multiple investigations have found zero evidence to suggest fraud in the 2020 Georgia election at a level that could have changed the result or even at a level that would be. have made a difference of a vote or two. I mean, there was no vote manipulation. And so to say, I'm not even going to participate in a records check in something that we know to be untrue. Very, very thoughtful, very admirable. Yeah, 100%. There's no, you know, you can't, when you're trying to make that determination of like how much investigating can we do here,

how much culling through the private records of Americans, American citizens, is authorized and proper. here. Well, when you're trying to answer that question, you can't ignore the fact that all this other investigative activity has already been conducted on this same topic and it's all come back negative. Like, that has to be a major factor in determining, like, it's not proper for me to go on, to continue doing this forever and ever over and over until I find some sort of preferred answer. Especially when the person guilty of trying to steal the Georgia election is Donald Trump. That doesn't help. That doesn't add to your predication in any good way. It certainly doesn't. All right, we have some more news. We're going to go a big Justice Department, talk about how they're finally sharing evidence on the murders of Alex Pready and Renee Good. But we have to take a quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. Okay, we have some updates on the Justice Department. First, from the Minnesota Star Tribune. months of effort between Minnesota's state and federal law enforcement agencies led the Justice Department to turn over a substantial amount of evidence from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy during Operation Metro Surge. The evidence, which was exchanged with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is referred to as the BCA, over the last two weeks without public acknowledgement by the federal government or Minnesota law enforcement officials, includes the SUV that Good was. driving when she was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jonathan Ross. It also includes hard drives of federal evidence like body camera footage and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings. Yep. And at a news conference, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the new information will allow state investigators to be more thorough in determining whether or not to charge

federal agents with crimes in connection with the killings. Hours after the news conference announcing the evidence exchange, there were indications the federal government did not share Moriarty's viewpoint. Steve Schleiker, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, but that's the attorney representing the Preti family, said U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Daniel Rosen, that's the DOJ guy, quote, refused to confirm any cooperation agreement between state and federal agencies. And this is Preti's lawyer. This isn't just some rando person calling up and asking. This is someone who is entitled to that information. Yeah.

And I mean, like, the state had to sue to get this stuff. It's not just like a kumbaya moment where everybody decided to play nice in the sandbox. They had to go to court and sue the federal government to get this stuff. A spokesperson for Schleiker confirmed the meeting lasted an hour, and Rosen refused to answer even basic questions about the status of the evidence in Preddy's case. Quote, no family should be required to beg federal authorities to do their job, Schleiker said. Without a public commitment by federal authorities to cooperate with the state, it is difficult, if not impossible, to pursue justice that holds the individuals accountable for Alex's death. It's unclear what role, if any, the Trump administration played in the decision to share the evidence.

Yeah, but you know what? The Department of Justice is the Trump administration. Sorry, but... We've established that now. There's no independence. there. Exactly. Now, Moriarty declined to say when her office might make a charging decision, or if the hard drives contained identification by the federal government of the agents who killed good and pretty, it should be said that the federal government hasn't identified any of the ICE

agents who have shot anybody. None of them. It's all been through, you know, journalism and local authorities. Although the Minnesota Star Tribune independently identified Ross, none of the agents involved in the killings have been named by the government, as I said. Moriarty said the state will follow normal protocols and any official identification would come from the BCA, not the DA's office. Right. Now, Renee Goods' SUV was transferred to state investigators more than a week ago, according to Moriarty.

The SUV had been in federal custody since Good was killed on January 7th and South Minneapolis. The BCA has made requests for additional evidence from federal agencies and expects to receive it. I'm really worried about the chain of custody for this evidence. Yeah. Moriarty said the return to working norms and a complete independent investigation into the deadly use of force was essential for the Twin Cities community and the families of good and pretty. But she emphasized that local and federal officials, including the BCA, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota, the Minneapolis FBI Field Office, the Minnesota Attorney General's office and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office had wanted that all along. Moriarty said the

evidence sharing would go both ways, and the BCA has turned over to the federal government its case files for the good and pretty shootings, as well as files on the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Sellis in North Minneapolis. Yeah, and the Trump administration's previous unwillingness to share evidence led the state of Minnesota, as you say, to file a lawsuit unprecedented. You'd accused Trump's top law enforcement officials of withholding evidence from the killings of Good and Preti. And last month, Rosen, the DOJ guide, denied official demands made by Moriarty for the federal evidence from the killings of Good and Prady, banned the shooting of Sosos-Ellis. Rosen wrote that the files were controlled by the Justice Department, and while his office was permitted

to give appropriate disclosures to state and local law enforcement, doing so in these cases, quote, would improperly reveal investigatory records and or interfere with federal law enforcement investigations. What? Moriarty said her office does not intend to immediately dismiss that lawsuit, though the evidence sharing opens the door to a potential resolution. Don't dismiss your lawsuit, Minnesota. Keep the lawsuit alive. Yeah, my slush fund lawsuit is still alive. My Epstein FOIA is still alive. All right, federal officials are once again facing questions over use of deadly force, because we know on Monday, the Associated Press reported ICE killed a man in Maine. Last week, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Rojo, a 52-year-old immigrant during a traffic stop in Houston.

And those shootings come a month after Trump signed a $70 billion bill funding immigration enforcement that Susan Collins voted for, just throwing out of him. Enforcement agencies through the end of his second term in office. By the way, if ICE and CBP are funded at five times their operating costs, through the end of his Trump term. There was no need for the additional $70 billion, but they did it anyway. But Tom Holman said nobody has body cameras because the Democrats wouldn't approve any of the funding

and they just couldn't afford it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What? Let me give you a Best Buy gift card, Tom. Didn't they get $100 billion? Didn't they get $100 billion out of the Big Beautiful Bill? Yeah.

They got $100 billion out of the Big Beautiful Bill. They got an additional $70 billion on budget reconciliation. They were funded before budget reconciliation. at two times they're operating costs through the end of Trump's term. Now it's five times. For decades, federal state law enforcement

have worked together, as we know, but this is uncharted territory now. So, you know, I've covered this quite a bit over the last six months of them not being able to get this evidence. Yeah. So Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, celebrated the gathering of the federal evidence

but said he is deeply troubled that the federal government spent more than half a year attempting to conceal this evidence from state investigators. The decision by federal officials to share evidence comes after the Hennepin County Attorney's Office recently charged two ICE agents with assault for their alleged actions during the surge. Christian Castro faces four counts of second-degree assault and one charge of falsely reporting a crime for allegedly shooting Sosa-Sellis in North Minneapolis and lying about it. Gregory Morgan Jr. faces two counts of second-degree assault for allegedly pointing his gun at two motorists who blocked him as he drove wrong. on the shoulder of Highway 62 near Portland Avenue.

Castro has been held in the Cameron County Jail in Texas since he was arrested in May. Morgan has a hearing later this month to determine if his case will be heard in federal or state court. So I got a couple of problems here. The first one is Tom Holman is out there using Christian Castro in that case as an example of how they are holding holding rogue ICE agents accountable.

He pulls up this, he refers to this case every time ice kills another person on the streets for no reason. Well, we do hold people accountable. Look at the Sosa Seles case. That was not ICE holding anyone accountable. They tried to prosecute Sosa Seles and his cousin on some bullshit story that Castro told them about getting hit with a broom. And what actually happened was Castro chased these two guys.

into their house and then shot them through the front door, was never assaulted in any way. The only way we figured this out is because the investigation revealed, mostly done by journalists, that Castro was lying the whole time. There was no evidence of the assault that he claimed. And so the U.S. Attorney's Office had to drop the case against Sosa Seles and his cousin and then turned around and indicted Castro.

That is not DHS holding their own people accountable. I'm sorry. You tried to put the other guy in jail and the case collapsed because your guy was a liar. It's outrageous to me. It's frustrating. And this whole idea of them not, you know, oh, cooperating and sharing evidence after six months. I just wrote a whole piece on my substack two days ago about what's going on with the FBI in these cases. Why are they not out there sharing evidence and doing standard color of law investigation?

So I think the whole thing is, I think it's reprehensible. It's kind of disgusting as a law enforcement agent and, of course, former FBI. You see what's happening in these cases and it just makes me so mad. Yeah. Yeah, I don't blame you, my friend. All right, we have one more quick story. You know how there's a lot of U.S. attorneys that aren't authorized to be U.S. attorneys. And so courts have had to appoint them.

and then those appointees immediately get fired. It's happened again. The Associated Press reports Trump fired the new top prosecutor in Seattle Wednesday, less than a half hour after his attorney was unanimously appointed by federal judges, unanimously appointed by federal judges in the district. His name is Roger Rogoff, former judge and veteran state and federal prosecutor, sworn in as attorney general before 8 a.m. at the U.S. courthouse in downtown Seattle. In a phone interview, he said that he then went to the U.S. attorney's office,

and asked to meet with Charles Floyd, whose 120-day interim term, had ended in February. Like, read me in. And as he waited in the lobby, he got an email from the Trump administration saying he'd been fired. And he's consulting with the lawyers

about suing over this firing, by the way. Trump named Floyd, who previously served as an immigration judge, interim U.S. attorney last October, but never forwarded his nomination to the Senate. When Floyd's time as interim U.S. attorney expired, Trump simply shifted his title. a tactic the administration has also tried in other federal judicial districts.

It named him the first assistant U.S. attorney while leaving the top post empty. On Wednesday morning, the court, comprising 17 active and senior judges appointed by five different presidents, issued its unanimous order naming Rogoff, the U.S. attorney for Western Washington. But then he was fired while he was waiting in the lobby to get his job. You know Floyd must have called back to DOJ. He's here. He's in the lobby. He's outside my door. He's taking away job. Please fire him. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now, Rogoff spent 20 years as a state prosecutor, six as a federal prosecutor, before becoming a judge in the state. And he knew the administration might fire him immediately. He knew that. But he said he had no qualms about the potential conflict he was walking into. Being U.S. attorney is, quote, the best job there is for a prosecutor, he said. Maybe not so much anymore. Quote, I'm really proud of my career, he said. The fact that the judges of this district. strict, most of whom I've spent my career appearing in front of or trying cases against or working

with, the fact that they believed unanimously that I was the right person to do this work is just really humbling and amazing. I love this guy. Yeah, I'm sorry, Rokoff. Maybe 2029. Don't give up. It's still the best job. He's right about that, except for now, right now, it's a very short job if you do it right. Correct. Yeah, that's very true. All right, everybody, it's time. It's that again. It's time to hit me in the head with a bat. We're going to take one last quick break and we'll be right back with it. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. It's time for this week's installment of 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. Where we talk about the absolute destruction, I think Grover Norquist shrunk the presumption of regularity down to a reasonable size so he could drown it in a bathtub. because that's what's happened to it. This week, Trump appointed Judge Jarboe called out the Department of Justice,

the United States Department of Justice, for using an AI-generated citation in an ICE detainee case. No, no, no, no. We've seen it from... Come on, guys. Let's get you read a book, for God's sakes. The DOJ. Now, we've seen this a lot from, like, people filing, you know, outside that aren't.

aren't DOJ like private. Rando lawyers, whatever. This is the DOJ now. It's seeped in there. The judge writes, and this is a Trump appointee. Quote, this cited case, Taylor V. Hot, is not located at the identified page of the federal appendix. Indeed, page 387 is contained within a different opinion, Atkins versus CGI Tex and Souls,

which is about commercial arbitration, not immigration bond determinations. In its research, the court was unable to identify. a Sixth Circuit case with the caption Taylor v. Hot. So this wasn't even a citation to a lower court decision. It was the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals they were citing. And there's no Taylor v. Hot, and the judge goes on, or any federal case containing the quoted language. Thus, it seems this citation was likely produced by generative artificial intelligence.

Quote, it should be obvious that any attorney who uses AI must scrupulously review its work product to ensure that cited cases exist and that the citations accurately and fairly represent the underlying case law. The duty of candor toward this tribunal demands no less. Although the court will not presently impose sanctions for this conduct, it goes without saying that the government must ensure its future filings with this court do not include non-existent case law. Does it go without saying? Because you just said it and you said it because you have to.

This isn't just a bad site. Wrong volume, wrong page number. They made up a case. I'm sorry, the AI made up a case. They put it in a brief and never, ever even checked it. Didn't anyone who read the brief think, what is this? No. Taylor versus Hot.

I've never heard of that one. No, there's only seven lawyers working at the Department of Justice right now. They don't have time to read these cases. That is so friggin' sad. I know. Well, can't say I'm surprised. No. All right.

Anyway, that's hit me in the head with a bat today. I hope you enjoyed it. It's time for listeners. It's always a question. All right. So this week we have this week. We've got one question and then another kind of comment that I thought was really interesting. So I'll just read that second.

but the question comes from Ed from South Florida. Ed says, greetings. Please explain how it's possible for January 6 people who invaded the Capitol with firearms to not be charged since it's illegal to bring firearms into the Capitol. You too dispense knowledge that I can understand and I respect your opinion. Thanks. Well, Ed, far be it for me to be the apologist for people who carried guns into the Capitol and did not get charged.

But it's a little bit more complicated than that. So you have to, you know, it's like any January 6 case, you've got to be able to identify these people, figure out where they are, stand up an investigation, and then you've got to collect evidence of the fact that they had the gun. That might not be apparent from just some video capture or something like this. And then you've got to have a prosecutor who's willing to bring that case, which we know that doesn't even exist anymore. If you started bringing cases against January 6 people in this in today's DOJ, you're out there. door before the case gets filed. Back then, yeah, could have. And I do think a lot of people were charged for doing things like that. But there are probably some, maybe like for instance, if somebody's like bragging about having been in there and done it and didn't get charged, there's probably

more to the story than just some decision not to charge them. It was probably based on a lack of evidence that was necessary to substantiate the charge. Now, in D.C. are those gun charges usually tacked onto something else or do they have standalone you can't possess a gun charges in DC? No, the gun charges can go by themselves. Like typically the strongest ones are felon in possession. So if you, if you even just stop and frisk someone and they have a gun and then you, you know, they get arrested, you identify them and it turns out they have a prior felony conviction. They go on the gun charge. That can result in serious jail time just for possessing a gun in D.C. And possession works anywhere, though.

It's not specific. But what if it's me maw with no criminal record? I mean, it could. You're probably going to get prosecuted. Are you going to go to jail for it? If you're someone who's never had any kind of criminal interaction before, maybe not. You see this sometimes with the people who mistakenly bring a gun to the airport and they get snagged going through security when they have a gun in their carry on or something. And it's because they have a Madison and Cawthorn like three times?

At least twice. Like, dude, come on, check the carry on. Yeah, so it happens more than you would expect or hope. And I think most of those people will end up pleading down to some sort of a misdemeanor or something like that. If it was obviously a mistake and they don't have a prior criminal record. So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways that that could work out. Roger. All right.

So this next one comes from, I'm not even going to use her name. Somebody from Washington, not D.C., the state. And it's interesting to me because this person is a former law enforcement now retired and also went through the FBI National Academy. So the National Academy is run at Quantico where the FBI Agent Academy is also located. And it's for like senior law enforcement officers. So if you're like an up-and-coming like captain or lieutenant in your police agency and you've got this a great record and they're accomplished and smart and everything, you may get an opportunity, an invitation to go attend the National Academy. It's very prestigious.

It's something that law enforcement leaders all want to do. You go for like 12 weeks, they become incredibly close friends, and they go through all these experiences together, learn all this stuff about cutting edge kind of law enforcement, you know, technology and things like that. And then afterwards, they have these retrains, which are basically conferences every couple of year that you can attend. So she is retired now,

and she attends a bunch of these conferences. And she told the story about that I thought was interesting. She says, anyway, at last year's conference in northern Macedonia, the Netherlands, okay, so representatives from the Netherlands, who were supposed to host this year's conference in September 2026, withdrew their offer. They do not support the current leadership of the FBI, and they don't want to host them there.

The issue is how Cash Patel is one who doesn't believe that Russia interfered in our 2016 election. As you know, the Netherlands provided some very good intelligence on how the Russians did, in fact, interfere. So now the September conference will be someplace else. I thought this was such an incredibly interesting comment and also so sad. Our intelligence relationship with the Dutch, the Netherlands, has always been incredibly close. and they were incredible partners during that very challenging investigation. And it doesn't surprise me that they're horrified. By the way, the leader of the FBI has spoken publicly in such a negative and offensive,

conspiratorial manner about that investigation, which they know, they know as well as I do and everyone else who worked at knows, was a legitimate and very serious action. And it's something they helped us do. So, yeah, I'm sorry that. that they feel that way, but I don't blame them at all. And I can only hope that someday we get leadership in the FBI that can restore those relationships. Yeah.

Wow. Thank you for that comment. That's fascinating. That's really fascinating. And like you said, sad. Yeah. Because you're right. I mean, I remember reporting so much on Five Eyes, but also the Dutch specifically.

Yeah. And the intelligence they shared with us about what was going on in Crossfire Hurricane, which we can call it now. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally fine. know. Thank you for that. And thanks everybody for your questions. There's a link in the show notes, by the way, if you have questions for us, you can click on that and submit them. And we go through

all of them and pick a few. And then eventually we end up with so many good ones that we have to put out a whole show of just questions. We'll probably do that pretty soon. So thank you so much for submitting them. We love getting them. Any final thoughts before we get out of here today, my friend? No, I mean, it's been a crazy week with all the super political side of the things that we cover, like the confirmation hearings. And we also had that, what's his name, Jay Clayton's confirmation hearing was his last couple days, which I had to suffer watching that in the same way that you do with Planch. So he went in like with probably getting some Democratic votes and he came out of that with probably none of them. Flamed out. man, he missed some very easy opportunities to stand up for himself and gain support.

And he swung and missed on all of them. It was pretty awful. But anyway, I'm hoping that, yeah, I'm sure by next week we'll be back deep on the cases and we'll have another great episode of Unjustified. Yeah, everybody, thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week. If you get an opportunity today at noon on Midas Touch, check out my interview with Epstein Survivor, Annie Farmer. She was in the meeting with Todd Blanche.

I'm going to ask her how that went, what her thoughts were. And it'll also, if you can't catch it live at noon on Midas Touch, noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern, I'm going to have it up afterwards so you can watch it after the fact at mulishyrop.com, which has no paywalls ever. All right, everybody. We'll see you next week. Thank you so much. I'm Alison Gill.

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