Jack - Dubious Distinction

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

Pam Bondi has been fired and Todd Blanche becomes the Acting Attorney General as the President weighs a replacement. Federal District Judge Amit Mehta has allowed a consolidated civil suit against Trump for his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol to advance. Trump’s Justice Department quietly dropped 23,000 criminal investigations in its shift to immigration cases. The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel has penned a memo declaring that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. Plus listener questions. Do you have  questions for the pod? Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump Questions for the pod?https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ We would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-S-W Media. Pam Bondi has been fired, and Todd Blanche becomes the acting attorney general as the president weighs a replacement. Federal District Judge Amit Mehta has allowed a consolidated civil suit against Donald Trump for his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol to advance. Trump's Justice Department quietly dropped 23,000 criminal investigations in its shift to immigration cases. And the Department of Defense Department of Justice Department of Justice.

Justice, Office of Legal Counsel has penned a memo declaring that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 63 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, April 5th, 2026. Easter Sunday. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And Pam Bondi is out. Out. Out, out, I say. Out, damn spot. She's out as Attorney General and, wow, let's just dive right in. Carol Lenig at MS Now had this report. She says, it did not take long for the pictures to come off the wall.

Within hours of the news that President Donald Trump had fired Pam Bondi as Attorney General, images began circulating of her framed portrait, unceremoniously removed from its place of honor near the president and the vice president on the walls of the Justice Department offices. One photo obtained by MS now showed Bondi's portrait in a trash bin. Aw. Yeah, I posted that photo and half of the comments are they should have saved the frame. Anyway, current and former DOJ officials say that this is a reflection of how deeply unpopular

Bondi was with career officials and agents, thousands of whom left the department rather than follow her orders, dozens more were forced out, as we know. But apparently, some people are still left and decided to hurl her photo in the trash. Many of those officials remain angry about an episode at the beginning of her term when Bondi entered a secure area of the DOJ offices of the National Security Division and saw that President Joe Biden's portrait was still on the wall, along with former Attorney General Merrick Garland. Bondi demoted a respected career veteran over the picture still hanging in the office. after Trump's inauguration. She demoted them. She did, and in interviews, Bondi recounted how she took the photos down herself.

She cited the episode as evidence that career DOJ employees were more loyal to Democrats than Republicans. That sounds like a typical Pam Bondi leap in logic. Quote, I went up on the seventh floor, which is the National Security Division. The entire floor is a skiff, so no one can get in there. Actually, hold here for a second. Yeah, all the people that work there can get in there. And also can, so can the Attorney General, but clearly that was not known to you. No, nobody can get in there, Andy.

It's just like a black box that no one can go in? I mean, very secure, I guess, but nothing would happen. Anyway, Bondi said that on Fox News. She continued, so I was able to get the code, amazing, open the door and look. on the wall and see President Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland's painting still hanging. I personally took all three photos down, she added. I put them in front of someone who said to me, oh, well, maintenance is really slow here. I said, well, it took me about 30 seconds to get them off the wall. Great. Well, maybe you should have been doing maintenance. We'll continue to pay you

$280,000 a year to do the maintenance stuff. So were they paintings? I took the paintings. down? I mean, no, definitely not there. I've seen those things a million times. Same. My own offices and DOJ offices. Yeah, no. And they do take forever to change. I remember when after Biden won at the VA, Trump's photo was still up for about eight months. And then again, after 2024, Biden's photos were up at the VA for like another eight to 12 months. It's just, it's the government. It takes a minute. It's the government. And also like, I don't know, the National Security Division, they do have. other things to do that worry about the decor.

Yeah, for real. No one can get into the offices. So they have plenty of time to take. This person who she refers to only as someone said me like far from her to like get someone's name. Someone said maintenance is slow. Well, we just, you know, maintenance doesn't have the code because it's a skip.

That's a really good point. That's a good point. What Bondi did not discuss publicly was the respected veteran she demoted over the incident, Devin DeBacker, had been the acting chief of the National Security Division. Quote, they better take her picture down, one former National Security Division official, who's among several still disturbed by Bondi's removal of debacker, told MS now. Nearly all of the senior career officials in the Biden DOJ served loyally and ably during Trump's first term without incident.

Now it's Bondi who's been shown the door, and many DOJ veterans are quietly celebrating. Bondi could not be reached for comment. No kidding. Now, check this out. This is from the Times. Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered. Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, and too many to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Trump's unyielding unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies.

She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president. ear. Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Trump's willingness to fire Christy Noem from her post as Homeland Security Secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too. But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her, to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation. On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Miss Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a a slum cross-down drive to the Supreme Court,

where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department. Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job, or at the very least, buy a little more time until the summer, to give herself a graceful exit. She ended up with neither and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues

after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official and fired her via social media post. Did she watch anything in the first Trump administration? Did she think, I don't understand why she's surprised here. Ms. Bondi's precipitous fall laid bare a cornerstone truth of Trump's second term. Loyalty, flattery, and obeisance are prerequisites for power, but they don't provide any durable protection from a president intent on carrying out his maximalist personal and political goals.

Ms. Bondi, even her allies acknowledged, was largely responsible for putting herself in the vulnerable position. Her turbulent 14 months were characterized by a series of missteps and messaging misfires that had increasingly alienated Republicans on Capitol Hill. Mr. Trump has been particularly angry about the Justice Department's failure to win cases involving his political opponents, including against former FBI director James B. Comey and the New York Attorney General Letitia James. One of Ms. Bondi's major critics in the view of her allies and White House officials was the federal housing official Bill Pulte.

They believed he had long pushed for her firing, blaming department leadership for slow walking and bungling the James and Comey cases, among other things, according to people familiar with the situation. Those cases, It wouldn't have mattered who, they were legally, they messed them up. Like, I don't, I can't with this.

But, you know, you have a feeling that Pam Bondi's out here doing her best with Janine Piro trying to bring all these indictments against his political enemies and continuing to fail. And therefore, it's Bondi's fault, not the fact that the cases are dogs to begin with. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Now, people close to Bondi and some administration officials also said Boris Epstein, the longtime Trump legal advisor and personal attorney, was a key detractor of Ms. Bondi and a significant factor in Trump's decision to make the move.

In recent weeks, Ms. Bondi tried to shore up her position by moving more aggressively against investigative targets singled out by Mr. Trump, including the former Obama official John O. Brennan. He's the ex-CIA chief and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whom the president has accused of lying about his actions on January 6th, according to officials briefed on the effort. So they're trying to go after her too. I don't know for giving secondhand testimony. She told the truth.

That's just, it's bizarre. Since when does telling the truth get you out of trouble with Donald Trump? I mean, he wants everyone. He wants everyone in the Greece. There's no, there's no, you know, oh, not that person. No, everyone. Right. And the Times says it's not entirely.

clear if any specific action or event finally tip the scales for Trump, who'd been reluctant to fire senior officials to avoid reprising the chaotic turnstile personnel turnover of his first administration. Yeah. After Mr. Trump announced Ms. Bondi's firing on Truth Social on Thursday, saying, quote, she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector. Yeah. Needed by her because she just lost the job she had. Maintenance. Maybe she's going to go for a working maintenance. Maybe. Picture hanging or unhanging, painting

unhanging. Much needed. I mean, who needs her to have a private sector job? He's so crazy. All right. She's, sorry, I'm getting totally lost here.

Much needed an important new job in the private sector. She said, serving the president had been, quote, the honor of a lifetime. Wow. The president said, Ms. Bondi's deputy, Todd Blanche, will replace her on an acting basis, but he has also floated the idea of putting Lee Zeldon, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the job.

Well, I mean... Oh, for sure. I thought maybe it was going to be like Eastman or Jeffrey Clark or something, but... No, nope. It's going to be... You know both of those guys were hoping it was them. I know, right? They were like, what?

It's not me. I can't believe. it. You mean he's not loyal? No, yeah. A lot of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are reiterating that this firing does not get Pam Bondi out of her subpoena to appear before that committee for a deposition, not a regular hearing where they do the five minutes each, but a deposition where the staff lawyers ask her questions. And that's supposed to take place April 14th. Although, she did appear for a briefing with Todd Blanche a couple of weeks ago to Congress. That was the chaotic thing where the Democrats left the room, walked out on it because Jim Comer called Summer Lee bitchy. And they walked out of that hearing. And Pam Bondi has been asserting that her appearance in that briefing satisfies the subpoena.

It doesn't. But also some hardline. Republicans who signed that subpoena are thinking of taking their name off of it. So basically, I think the long and short of it is the only way to quash this subpoena is for it to be withdrawn. Yeah, I'd heard some comments this week that they weren't even sure it was possible to do that. They weren't sure about the legality of trying to now get rid of the thing. But I guess they would have to take another vote to withdraw it, right? It seems like that with which they could do.

And then they, and that would give those Republicans an opportunity to go on record, no longer supporting it. There are still some who will, like Nancy Mace has been saying she's still behind it, although, you know, it's early. That could fade. So we'll have to see. I don't. Against it. Yeah. I don't know how that's going to go.

It's just an amazing development. The thing that I cannot get over is. Look, terrible. Terrible Attorney General for this country. I don't care what political affiliation you have. She presided, she gutted the department, fired tons of lawyers, and created conditions under which hundreds more could not continue to serve because I thought it was unethical and likely illegal. And so they quit. So she presided over this massive exodus of expertise and capability. And now, as we'll get to later in the show, had to dump thousands of cases because they just couldn't handle the volume.

Having trouble recruiting people. She presided over the department during a period in which it basically is losing or has lost the presumption of regularity. Judges no longer believe what U.S. attorneys tell them because there's been such a rash of attorneys for the government misrepresenting facts in court. I mean, these are all distinctions that any other. you know, would likely have caused any other attorney general to resign over. They're so awful. But yet, despite all this failure, her terrible appearances in front of the Senate, which were

not just defensive and disrespectful, but attacking. She had a three-ring binder full of pre-drafted, you know, burn lines and insults. I mean, just preposterous things. We've never seen from any other attorney general. And despite all that, she wasn't fired for any of that. It was none of that failure was how we got here to her leaving that office. She got fired for not being more awful. She got fired for failing to put former government servants in jail, people who the president doesn't like for whatever reason dreamed up or actual, who the hell knows. And that's why, she got fired. She got fired because she didn't adequately protect and shield the president's involvement in the Epstein files. I mean, she couldn't, right? There was a law pass that they had

to be put out. I'm sure what he's mad about, he's still mad about the Epstein files, and I'm sure what he's mad about is she didn't effectively remove him from everything that was revealed to the public. So, yeah, it's like she did all these terrible things and got fired for failing to do more terrible things. Well, the problem that Pam Bondi faced is that Gailane Maxwell has a lot of these files. Yeah. In fact, most of the FBI 302s that have recently come out were in discovery in Gailene Maxwell's case. And, you know, now that we have Todd Blanche as our interim attorney general, the person

who probably went down to have an interview with Gilling Maxwell, make sure she wasn't going to release any of those things, I feel like maybe their hands were forced on that because she had them and she's angling for a pardon and she did get moved to a very low security facility and had her sex offender status waived and got her out custody status. And, you know, meanwhile, these things are coming out little by little and it's negatively impacting the president and he's going to blame Pam Bondi even though I don't know if he knows that these might have been forced by Galane Maxwell? I have no idea. But, you know, there's also something else to happen last week, kind of flew under the radar, but we talked about it.

She accidentally released that Jack Smith Progress memo. Yeah, that couldn't have helped. That revealed his motives for hoarding classified documents. And now that Bondi's out, all of a sudden, he's got a new Office of Legal Counsel memo saying that everything he did in the documents case, was legal? I mean, the timing is very auspicious. But she does have the dubious distinction of being the first attorney general fired by a convicted felon. Well, there you go. That's fame. So there's that. There's that. Yeah. So I want to talk more about this office legal counsel memo, and we're going to do that. But first, I want to talk about these lawsuits advancing for his behavior leading up to, and his role in January 6th, attack on the Capitol. That also happened this week. And it's a pretty big deal because there's

kind of a buried lead. And we'll talk about it right after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. So Donald Trump could still be on the hook for his actions on January 6th. Although we know the criminal case brought by Jack Smith is dormant, the consolidated civil cases against him brought by lawmakers and police officers that were there that day have been given new life again this week. The Post reports that U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Tuesday that Trump's remarks at his Stop the Steel rally held on the ellipse near the White House shortly before the siege began, plausibly were inciting words that are not protected by the First Amendment right to free speech. The Republican president is not shielded from liability for much of his January 6th conduct,

including that speech and many of his social media posts that day, according to the judge. But Mehta said Trump cannot be held liable. for his official acts that day, including his Rose Garden remarks during the riot and his interactions with Justice Department officials. Quote, President Trump has not shown that the speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his presidential duties made a road. The content of the ellipse speech confirms that it is not covered by official acts immunity. The decision is not the court's first ruling that Trump can be held liable for the violence at the

capital, and it is unlikely to be the last given the near certainty of an appeal. But the 79-page ruling sets the stage for a possible civil trial in the same courthouse where Trump was charged with crimes for his January 6th conduct before his 2024 election ended the prosecution. Now, Judge Meta previously refused to dismiss the claims against Trump in a February 2022 ruling. That's how long this has been going on. My God.

Yeah, a ruling that Trump was not entitled to presidential immunity from the claims brought by Democratic members of Congress and law enforcement officers who guarded the Capitol on January 6th. In that decision, META also concluded that Trump's words during his rally speech plausibly amounted to incitement and were not protected by the First Amendment, same as here. The case returned to META after an appeals court ruling upheld that 2022 decision. He said Tuesday's ruling on immunity falls under a more rigorously. legal standard at this later stage in the litigation. But there's a buried lead here. Trump had asked the Department of Justice to step in under the Westfall Act, and the DOJ backed his argument.

Now, Judge Mehta writes, And the Department of Justice has joined the fray. More than four years after the first of these suits was brought, the department filed a Westfall Act certification, signed by the Attorney General's designee. The certification asserts that the acts by President Trump, alleged in the various complaints fell within the scope of his employment as president of the United States. Under the Westfall Act, the Attorney General's Act of Certification requires that the United States be substituted as the defendant for tort claims brought against a federal employee.

The consequence of substitution in this case would be twofold. It would immunize President Trump from tort liability because he could no longer be held personally responsible. And it would required dismissal of the tort claims altogether as no plaintiff filed pre-suit notice as required under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Plaintiffs have moved to strike the certification. If granted, the United States would not be substituted as the defendant and the tort claims against President Trump would remain intact. Yeah, and this is interesting because I remember way back in 2021, Roy Moore, who spoke at the ellipse, had filed. under the Westfall Act.

And he was denied in a pretty scathing ruling from the Department of Justice at the time saying, basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, overthrowing the government can't be part of your job in the government. Yeah. These aren't official acts. And further, the DOJ said, if this court decides that these are somehow,

you know, they fall within his job, it still can't be. part of his job because this was a campaign event and campaigning doesn't fall under it. And so they said, sorry, Charlie, you can't be, these kinds of acts cannot be certified by the Department of Justice under the Westfall Act. You can't be represented by the Department of Justice. We can't sub out, nor can any other federal employee. And I thought that was a big blinking red flag to Donald Trump at the time. And gosh, it only took five years. But, but, you know, it was a big blinking red flag to Donald Trump at the time. and gosh, it only took five years, but it's come back around full circle.

Yeah, it also seems, I don't know, I would like to say unlikely, maybe just totally unfair, to let the certification move forward and let them invoke the Westfall Act now, when it was denied by DOJ, okay, under a different administration, but that doesn't make any difference. and that denial many years ago likely influenced the plaintiff's failure to file a federal tort claims act notice. So you can't hold it against the plaintiffs now for something they didn't do years ago because the government then refused, you know, never invoked it. Do you know what I mean? It seems kind of like after fact.

But anyway. Yeah. But yeah. And all things being equal, it just simply doesn't fall under the Westfall. Act. These are non-official acts. And here's, so he said, if we grant, because the plaintiffs filed to strike the certification, and the judge said, if granted, the U.S. would not be substituted, and this case would remain intact. And he concludes, quote, campaigning to attain that office, thus is not an official function of the office. And importantly, an incumbent president's interest

in winning reelection have the same purely private character. as those of his 74 challengers. If conduct in pursuit of retaining office is not an official function and is of a purely private character, then such conduct likewise is neither the kind of act an incumbent president is employed to perform nor a one that bears any relationship or nexus with his responsibilities. Put more simply, winning re-election is not a function or outgrowth of the job of an incumbent officeholder. Therefore, acts in furtherance of that end. will fall outside the scope of employment under District of Columbia law.

So he's not going with the, you know, you can't overthrowing the government can't be part of your job in the government. He's not going with that, the old DOJ Roy Moore decision. He's going with the, this is a campaign speech. And sorry, that's not official acts. Yeah. He says, therefore, Trump's motion for summary judgment is denied. He also denied Trump's motion to reconsider on First Amendment grounds. the plaintiff's motion to strike the government's Westfall Act certification is granted.

So Trump can't be subbed out by the DOJ. And Trump had asked to prevent the admission of the select committee's final report. And Judge Meta denied that as well. So very big ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in this case. Very much so. And that language about being outside the scope of your responsibilities, campaigning, really echoes in my mind with the Jack Smith indictment, right? The superseding indictment, which addressed that head on about the First Amendment question

saying that the indictment was not based on First Amendment speech for the same reason. It was based on, you know, it's not the fraud aspect. Right. The fraud aspect for sure, yeah. Yeah, but you're right. He said multiple times and multiple filings that we covered on the Jack podcast. He was like, look, you know, you're a candidate for president in this situation. Right.

And the way that he went about proving that was that in that lawsuit where Texas and other Republican attorneys generals sued to overturn the election in blue states, Trump intervened. And he intervened as a private citizen as a candidate for office. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And Jack Smith was like, you can't have it both ways, bro. Yeah. again, I'm paraphrasing. Anyway, we're going to keep an eye on these lawsuits because, boy, it's been five and a half years since they were filed.

It's gone up and down because Trump filed an interlocutory appeal on immunity grounds, as he has the right to do. And that ate like a year off the case, but now it's back in full swing and it's able to go forward. It will get appealed again, right? But this is the post-interlocutory appeal. And there's many huge hurdles. Even if we get past the appeals of this, there's still a huge hurdle. So the whole idea of a president having to sit for deposition and having to defend himself in a civil suit while he's present, something the courts kind of don't look favorably upon.

But gosh, at this pace, he could be gone by the time that stuff happens if it ever happens. So who knows? There's a lot more to come with this. Yeah, man. These cases take years. They really, really take years. and years. So we'll keep an eye on it. All right. Remember when I talked about the Presidential Records Act and how Trump's handpicked 37-year-old Office of Legal Counsel has written a memo saying that it's

totally unconstitutional? That's up next. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, this next story is wild. Anna Bauer of Lawfare, she captions it by saying, Trump used the Presidential Records Act to defend himself against charges alleging that he stole classified documents. Now, his Justice Department, which is currently being run by his former criminal defense lawyer, says the PRA is unconstitutional. Yep, from the Post, the Justice Department has concluded that a federal law requiring the preservation of presidential records is unconstitutional, which could effectively permit White House lawyers to try to set their own voluntary presidential record-keeping policy and potentially upend decades-old legal precedent,

established in response to Richard Nixon's effort to keep control of records upon his resignation from the Oval Office. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which is tasked with serving as a legal advisor to the U.S. Attorney General and the executive branch, the same Office of Legal Counsel that penned the memo that says you can't indict a sitting president, issued an opinion this week that the law, known as the PRA, Presidential Records Act of 1978, exceeds, quote, Congress's enumerated and implied powers, and it aggrandizes the legislative branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the executive, unquote.

Quote, the PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress's Article 1 authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the president guaranteed by Article 2, states the memorandum opinion, which was signed by T. Eliot, a Trump appointee. The act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the presidency, untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose, the opinion continues. For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the president need not further comply with its dictates. Wow, you can just decide from your office in DOJ.

You don't have to obey this law, Mr. President, ye who is charged in the, the Constitution with making sure all of the laws are faithfully executed, this one is no longer a law. We've decided it's not law. Wow. Yeah. And let's be real. If this, if the PRA was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court would have said so in one of the many interlocutory appeals in the documents case that Donald Trump sent up or the special master case, which was completely shot down. I mean, this is just absolutely ridiculous. This slip opinion from the OLC, which is overseen by Geiser, could allow the White House to set its own guidance on presidential record collection outside the parameters of the PRA.

However, the opinion does not necessarily carry legal weight. Really? No. To change the law, the Justice Department would either have to file a lawsuit or compel Congress to change it. Oh, so he's depriving Congress of its constitutional authority. So he's aggrandizing the presidential, the president. the executive branch at the detriment of the Article 1 Constitution, congressional branch?

Yeah, basically. It's unclear so far whether the Trump administration plans to pursue either option, but Trump is no stranger to the Nixon-era law when he faced an indictment over allegedly mishandling classified materials. Trump tried citing the law as part of his defense. The PRA was passed in 1978 amid a struggle between Congress and former President Nixon over his effort to keep control over millions of documents and White House tapes that expose the Watergate scandal. The law requires presidents to preserve official records during their time in office. It says that records from a presidency are public property and do not belong to the president or the White House team.

Violating the Records Act would be a civil, not a criminal offense. Yeah. And the judge overseeing the classified documents case, as we know, Eileen Cannon initially rejected Trump's request to dismiss the charges based on the claim of personal privilege. She noted the case did not charge Trump with violating the PRA. Remember, it was never in there. But with illegally retaining national defense information under provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs access to classified material. There's a reason Jack Smith didn't charge him under the Presidential Records Act because it's civil and not criminal. Still, Cannon later requested that attorneys on both sides of the case. Do you remember this when she asked for this insane briefing saying, let's just say the PRA is real here in this case? File me a couple of briefs in that argument sphere. I remember covering this on the Jack podcast. I mean, that's like asking me if I remember Root Canal. Yeah, I remember it, but not in a good way.

So she requested attorneys on podcast. both sides submit jury instructions that referenced the rights of the president under the Records Act, drawing a sharp rebuke from then special counsel Jack Smith, who argued that her order assumed there was some merit to Trump's claims. Like, it's just so bizarre. Like, write me a brief if murder were legal. Write me a brief if murder were legal. It's just bizarre. I remember that so well. Yeah, she's bizarre. And this thing is crazy. But again, you know, they'll create this will be a whole fight when he leaves. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, it's just paving the way for him to play all kinds of mischief with everything he wants from the White House and then fight it, fight about it in court for a decade before the country gets what's rightfully theirs back. I would assume, too, if this, if this OLC opinion holds water, I guess that, I guess that, obviates the requirement to preserve records across the entirety of the executive branch. Like, it's not just the president that has to comply with these restrictions as, you know, every senior officer, and when you're in a particular level in your agency and above, you all have all these same requirements where everything has to be preserved for the archives, your notes from telephone calls and meetings. and it's the nation's way of preserving the actual records of its own history.

Yeah, and they belong to the people. Of course. The records belong to the people because the office of the president belongs to the people, not the person who occupies it. Yeah. So this is going to be fun and interesting. I'm assuming if we elect a much better person in 2028 that the new attorney general, who, again, I'm hoping it's Jack Smith,

throws this in the trash with Pam Bondi's picture because it's, attorneys general can do that. They can have their new Office of Legal Counsel withdraw a previous or update or supplement a previous Office of Legal Counsel opinion. The one that doesn't allow you to indict a sitting president was updated, I think, twice or three times. I mean, the infamous torture memos from the Bush administration

were all ultimately revoked and replaced with memos that argued the opposite. Yeah, it can happen. Yeah. So we'll keep an eye on this as well. I think this is hopefully, if we vote right and are allowed to vote right, this will be put into the dustbin of history, the literal dustbin of history. All right.

All right. Up next, hit me in the head with a bat. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Time for 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. Hit me in the head with a bat. I think this segment is a work in progress. This segment is where we cover the destruction of the presumption of regularity in the Department of Justice, which is the courts no longer taking at face value what the Department of Justice is putting down. And today's entry has a bit of a twist. While all these cases that we discussed where federal judges take Department of Justice lawyers to the woodshed, take them to the cleaners, rake them over the coals for making false claims to the courts,

court, lying to the court, failing to follow court orders, like dozens and dozens of court orders have been ignored for using artificial intelligence to write briefs, all of this stuff. A lot of the loss of presumption of regularity comes from the courts being overwhelmed by immigration cases. You'll remember the instance where the lawyer was like, just hold me in contempt so I can get some sleep. They had been assigned 180 habeas cases that month, you know, those kinds of things. And this massive increase in deportation cases, coupled with the massive loss of employees at the Department of Justice, is causing another sinister side effect. And Andy, you and I have brought this up on several occasions, wondering how many crimes are slipping through the cracks as the DOJ focuses

all of its energy on immigration cases while getting rid of 5,000 frontline attorneys. That's absolutely right, because these are finite resources, right? The Department of justice, FBI agents, time and attention, whatever. And I can tell you as somebody who used to be responsible for allocating those resources, when a big new thing comes on, your first question is, like, how am I going to cover this? What am I going to start doing less of? You know, and so what we've been talking about, like there is this assumption that there must be a lot of work that they're not doing, that they used to do and they're not doing anymore. Or we're getting some. When after like post-9-11, a lot of white-collar criminal investigation had to kind of go by the wayside because we were taken over by counterterrorism cases.

Yeah, we saw in the office I was working in the New York office, I mean, entire drug squads, massive teams of agents who work drug cases, just got redesignated. Your terrorism now. Forget about those other cases. So that kind of stuff does happen as priorities have to change. So we're getting some insight on that now from ProPublica. They say, in the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed Attorney General last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump's administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs, and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue. immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.

Yeah, they abandon all sorts of put in $50,000 in a Kava bag cases. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, in February of 2025 alone, a year ago, February, which included the first weeks of Bondi's tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019 during Trump's first administration. The shift comes as the Department of Justice has undergone an extraordinary overhaul,

that's one nice way of putting it under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes, and thousands of lawyers quitting or in some cases being forced out of the agency. The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration, and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime, from drug offenses to corruption,

than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009. Federal prosecutor Joseph Gerbasi had spent years in the department's narcotics and dangerous drug section, helping build cases against major suppliers of fentanyl ingredients in India and China. After Bondi came in, he was left beware. bewildered when his team was ordered to abandon its work. Quote, all of the building blocks of what would become successful prosecutions were pulled out, said Gurbaci, who retired as the section's acting deputy chief for policy in March 2025, after 28 years with the department. The move had a, quote, overwhelming, deflating effect on morale, he said. Yeah, I bet it.

Yeah, I bet it. these people, all these line prosecutors working on 23,000 criminal cases, just let it go, drop it. Yeah. And think about how many times this administration trots out the fentanyl crisis as an excuse for taking some other action. Tariff Canada, right? Yeah, tariffs on Canada and Mexico, nuking speedboats in the Caribbean. They actually have like a calculation, like, well, that boat would have been responsible for X number of deaths by fentanyl, which is just nonsense because it has all these variables that you can't possibly know built into it, but whatever. Meanwhile, you're shutting down actual fentanyl cases. You destroyed the unit that was working the fentanyl stuff.

I mean, it's crazy. Absolutely nuts. Yeah, one of a million things that just makes absolutely zero sense and is detrimental to the safety. of the United States. Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right, that was Hit Me in the Head with a Bat. Now it's time for listener questions.

If you have a question, you can send it into us by clicking on the link in the show notes and submitting your question. Andy, what do we have today? I think we have time for a couple. We have. I have one question for you. But before I get to that,

I want to give you a little update on all the excitement over, Hit Me in the Head with a Bat, because you will recall last week as we were discussing, hit me in the head with the bat. You mentioned the challenges of writing a jingle for the segment because, and I'm not quoting you exactly here, but you said something along the lines of like, I can't find

anything that rhymes with presumption of regularity. Okay, well, that sent a very clear message to our listeners, and many of whom sent in their suggestions about what rhymes with presumption of regularity. Okay. Amazing. So this is next level. several of them hit on almost the exact same line. Okay.

So Robert wrote in, his suggestion was, transforms into hilarity. So it would be presumption of regularity, transforms into hilarity, which is pretty good. I mean, I like that, Robert. You're there. Kate wrote in with gumption with some hilarity.

So again, presumption of regularity, gumption with some hilarity. I'm not sure what the connection. It totally is there. But I say she's really kind of zoning it in there. She's getting into the right area code or something. But along comes the big gun, the master. Okay.

Chris Barron. He said it was okay. I could use his name on. Chris. I got to play some live music with him on like an Instagram thing during COVID. He's such a cool dude. He is. And for those not in the know,

Chris is the lead singer for spin doctors. He wrote in a great note, which said as follows. Hello, my Uber attractive super genius muchochos. It's your old pal Chris Barron, lead singer of spin doctors here. I'm a regular listener, and thank you so much for doing what you do. I'm a big fan of both of you. I don't have a question, but I just wanted to suggest something. I was just listening to today's episode,

and Allison was saying that she wanted to write a jingle for, hit me on the head with a bat, but nothing rhymes with presumption of regularity. And it occurred to me that, quote, the gumption of said hilarity does. So he's right in there with Kate on the very same words. He says, I'd love to hear a jingle for that segment. Definitely let me know if I can help out. Love you guys. Thanks for what you do. Your furry pal, CB. Thank you, Chris. If we can get the spin doctors, Chris Barron, to write our presumption of regularity, hit me on the head. with a bat segment. Yes.

I think that's legend status for this podcast. I totally think so. And, you know, that's a valuable commodity. Of course, we have no, you know, budget for anything like that. But we could like, I would be willing to pay in some article of interest off the bookshelf behind me, which here to four only appears on television. So, you know, I don't know. I think we could come up with some sort of like, of artifact for song, for jingle lyrics sort of thing.

But I'm happy to engage in that conversation with him if he's interested. That's amazing. So we've got, they might be giants doing the theme for the Daily Beans. We've got Ben Folds doing our intro here. Yep. And now Chris Barron possibly writing our hit me on the head with a bat. We're killing it. We're killing, absolutely killing it, with all these great friends that we have.

and all the wonderful, less known listeners, but loyal, creative, people sending in names and potential rhymes. It's like awesome reading that thing. Every week is terrific. All right. I was pretty impressed with our producers. I'm coming to the cottage remix.

That was pretty great. For real. Anyway. That's so cool. Thank you. And all of our listeners coming up with the hilarity and this is just so cool. I really spent some time on it. I should say Kate actually like sent it in and then sent in another one saying that she had woken up in the middle of the night and realized that she didn't have enough syllables in the lines she edited a little bit. Syllabically, it's right on point. Yeah, she's she really spent some time on that. So

awesome. Big, big up to Kate and Robert as well. All right. So should we move on to our question for the week? Yeah, let's see. What do we got? All right. So this comes to us from someone known as avid listener. Hello, AG, and Andy longtime listener, first time query here. My question concerns the records DOJ provided to Congress on the classified documents case. I believe you mentioned, while it may have been a violation of Judge Cannon's order, more examples would probably be needed to make the argument that volume 2 no longer needs to be blocked. Would DOJ employee cash Patel's reveal of the existence of his and Susie Wiles subpoena to Reuters in late February be considered another example.

Additionally, why I don't believe he posted the actual records by generally describing their contents, did he violate 6E sincerely avid listener? That's a really interesting question. You would think he probably did because it's certainly the kind of thing he would do. And he might have done it many times with respect to the cases that he overest. overseas, that's all possible. I don't have any evidence of that. But in this case, since he was the recipient of the subpoena, he is the only person who is not bound by confidentiality of 6E. It's a weird thing. So like if you get subpoenaed to the grand jury, the grand jurors can't talk about what you

said in your testimony. The prosecutor can't speak publicly about it. They're all bound by 6E. Of course, your attorney can't speak about it because they are bound by attorney-client privilege, but you, the witness, could walk out of the room, stand in front of TV cameras, and tell the world exactly what questions you were asked, because the witness is not bound by 6E, which I'm just going to say, without any further clarification here, that's a really interesting strategy for someone who gets reluctantly subpoenaed in front of a grand jury in an illegitimate investigation and would have to go in. and testify or take the Fifth Amendment or whatever,

maybe that person would then just come out of the testimony and tell the world exactly what happened in there. I don't know. Stay tuned. Let's say hypothetically, a former deputy director of the FBI were subpoenaed in a criminal investigation. So that person is allowed to tell,

let's just say for hypothetical sake, a podcast network owner. that they were subpoenaed because it's their story to tell. Is that what you're saying? That's a pretty crazy hypothetical that you've come up with there. But I mean, I mean hypothetically, not in the real world, but strictly hypothetically, basically, yeah, that's what I'm suggesting that that could happen. You never know. It's a crazy world. Who would have thought all these crazy things would have happened? That one might be next or somewhere in the future. You never know.

Yeah, it's, yeah. Well, you know, if you hear anything like, like that. Let me know. I'll keep my ears open. I will. I mean, it's such a weird scenario that it's just so far out and left field. I can't imagine it, right? I don't see it ever happening. You can't imagine. We'd do such a thing. Well, you never know. And scene. That's our episode of Masterpiece Theater here at the end. It hit me in the head with a bat.

Thank you so much. And thank you for your questions. So very thoughtful. always, always thoughtful and meaningful. We always get, I get a, I get a, like a jolt, like a lift. I'm heartened when I read these questions that are sent into us. Again, that link is in the show notes for you to click and submit. And as we're building up more and more questions, we might be moving closer and closer to an entire questions episode coming soon. So I'll keep you posted on that.

And that's the show. Do you have any final thoughts as we get out of here on the last day of Pam Bondi's? Actually, she's going to be there for another month, but they're already thrown. Which is crazy. Why you stay? Girl, you got fired. Go on back to Florida. Have the spring down at home.

I mean, like, really? Oh, my God. But it does raise the question of, like, not who replaces her because I'm less interested in that but who gets fired next because he broke the seal with christie gnome and now it's like game on there there are some rumors out there and some reporting that de remer could be next or letnik and gabberd interesting no petel yet how patel's not the constant embarrassments with the travel and the expenses and whatever else he's got going to. I thought Patel was going to be next.

I thought Patel was going to be next. But then I saw a story from The Guardian saying Tulsi Gabbard, and I saw other stories talking about Derrimer and Lutnik. Remind me who DeRamer is. I'm missing that one right now. Commerce? Oh, that's the one where her husband has been barred from the president, barred from being present in the building.

Yeah, something like that. Something like that. Something like that. Yeah. They're sort of cocaine-fueled something or other. There's so many. I just, I can't keep them all in my head. But Andy, I wanted to leave everybody with this fact.

Jonathan, who is a 100-something-year-old tortoise in St. Helena, has posted, St. Helena has posted, saying not only is Jonathan alive and well on St. Helena, but during this time on his planet, he's now seen off 76 U.S. Attorneys General. Wow. From the 11th Attorney General Roger Brooke Taney in 1832 to outgoing 87th Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2026. Jonathan is the great survivor. And despite online rumors, he is alive and well and eating bananas on St. Helena today. Mad props to Jonathan. I can't believe. I worked for six of them, and I didn't count the actings.

Just six actually, you know, fully confirmed ones. and I'm telling you, it took a lot out of me. So Jonathan, being there for all those 87, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. Pretty good. All right, everybody, we will see you next week. Thank you for listening to 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 podcast dedicated to news, politics, and justice.

For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.