Jack - Ed Martin Charged (feat. Liz Oyer)

Episode Date: March 15, 2026

Justice Department Pardon Attorney and former Weaponization Czar and associate deputy attorney general Ed Martin is under investigation by the Bar Association in the District of Columbia. Former Pardon Attorney, Liz Oyer, joins us to discuss. The Justice Department has proposed a new rule that would allow Attorney General Pam Bondi to suspend bar association investigations into DOJ lawyers. (Voice your objection here.) A federal grand jury has subpoenaed Arizona 2020 voting records as the Trump Administration pushes to consolidate election power. An Assistant US Attorney in North Carolina quit in the courtroom over AI-generated quotes and erroneous citations in an AI-produced court brief. Plus listener questions. Do you have questions for the pod?  More from our guest Liz Oyer Lawyer Oyer on SubstackLiz Oyer (@lawyer_oyer) • Instagram Liz Oyer (@lawyer.oyer) | TikTok Follow this link and click on the comment button to oppose this proposed rule!Review of State Bar Complaints and Allegations Against Department of Justice Attorneys   Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump Questions for the pod?https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ We would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-SW Media. Justice Department, pardon attorney and former weaponization czar, and Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Martin, is under investigation by the Bar Association in the District of Columbia. The Justice Department has proposed a new rule that would allow Attorney General Pam Bondi to suspend state bar association investigations into Department of Justice lawyers. A federal grand jury has subpoenaed Arizona 2020 voting records

as the Trump administration pushes to consolidate election power. And an assistant U.S. attorney in North Carolina quit in the courtroom over AI-generated quotes and erroneous citations in an AI-produced court brief. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 60 of Unjustified. It is Sunday, March 15th, 2026. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Alison, welcome back for The Big 60. Look at us. 60 episodes into this thing. Unbelievable. I would rather be 180 episodes into the Jack podcast, if I'm being honest.

Okay. Good point. Very good point. But here we are. But actually, lucky day for us because we have a terrific guest to start off the show. So joining us today to discuss what's going on with pardon attorney and unjustified, maybe favorite subject. I don't know. Ed Martin, and also Pam Bondi's new rule to stop state bar association investigations into DOJ attorneys, we have former pardon attorney for the Justice Department, Liz Oyer. Liz, thank you so much for joining today. It's a pleasure to have you here on the pod. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, there's so much going on over there at DOJ. It's hard to keep up with all of it, but we always spend a fair amount of time talking about Mr. Martin and the many adventures he's

had since, I guess, January of last year when he had, when he started over at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office. But let's start here with you. So if I have this right, Liz, Georgetown, Harvard Law School, clerked for the 11th Circuit. You were at Mayor Brown, I think, first as you started out your legal career after the clerkship. Then you were a federal public defender for 10 years. And I read somewhere that you were the first former defender to serve as DOJ pardon attorneys. Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. That's amazing. What an incredible career. So no one better than you to tell us, you know, just in a few words, remind the audience, like, why is it important that DOJ has a process to advise presidents on pardons and a pardon attorney, a person who's in charge of that process? Like, let's like level set as to like, what was this like before now? Yeah.

One of the misunderstood things about the role of pardon attorney is that historically, it has never been a political appointment. It's always been a career nonpartisan official who is put in this role of advising the president about how to use his clemency power in a way that's not political, in a way that's even handed, in a way that's free from bias and that's fair and equitable. So I served in that role for three years, starting under Biden and then continuing into the Trump administration. And I was very abruptly fired from my position early in the administration. administration and then replaced by Ed Martin, who you mentioned. And the pardon process really fundamentally changed at that point. The way it's supposed to work is the career professionals in the

office of the pardon attorney review and vet and investigate applications for executive clemency and make recommendations to the president that are based on merit to be considered for a pardon in ordinary times. You really have to demonstrate that you are deserving of a second chance through clemency. It's a really extraordinary form of relief that is granted to very few people. And there is a rigorous investigation process that ordinarily applies. The Justice Department has a document called the Justice Manual, essentially, you know, like the Bible for Department of Justice employees that addresses pardons and has a rigorous set of standards that we as, as pardon attorney employees, would apply in making recommendations to the president to ensure consistency and to ensure that

everybody could be considered fairly. And all of that has really fallen out the window since Donald Trump returns to office. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because, you know, now that we've got that baseline set, Trump is far from the first president who has made questionable pardons. But is this just sort of the evolution of the power or as you are indicating, it's just completely off the rails now? Yeah, you're absolutely right that there have been controversial partons and misguided pardons issued by a number of presidents throughout history, but those have really been the small minority. They've been kind of the exception to the rule. Most pardons have been granted consistent with the standards in the justice manual to people who have earned those second chances.

Donald Trump has really fundamentally changed the way that pardons are used and does not appear to be relying on the standards that have traditionally applied at all. There are very few people going through this process successfully that don't seem to have some sort of political connection or financial connection or some sort of back door or front door even in some cases access to the White House that is helping them to get pardons. The Office of the Pardon Attorney really has been sidelined from the clemency review process and the career professionals are not being asked to do the same type of vetting for pardon candidates that for many, many years has always been done. So that brings us to our interest in Mr. Martin. So he is now just the pardon attorney, I guess, for some period in the last year. He was the interim U.S. attorney for D.C. He was the weaponization czar. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Allison. He was overseeing that great committee of esteemed rivals that are doing, Lord knows what, on their great investigation of weaponization.

How to weaponize the Justice Department, I think. That would be more appropriate. So now he's been relieved of that duty as well as his former U.S. attorney role, and he is just the pardon attorney. So is he really doing anything? Is he playing a role in this process that seems to include, you know, pardon lobbyists and, you know, donations to political organizations and things like that? It seems like where Ed Martin has played a rule is in influencing some of these mega-connected

pardons. He has tweeted a couple of times. As you know, he's a prolific user of X. He posts multiple times a day. And his mantra when it comes to pardons is no MAGA left behind. He has made clear his view that pardons should be used to reward people who have been loyal to MAGA and to the president and who have gotten in trouble as a result of their overzealous efforts. So he appears to have played a role in what was sort of just a sham pardon that was granted to about 77 people who were involved in efforts to overthrow the outcome of the 2020 election. Those people had not actually been prosecuted under federal law. So there's not really any crime for which the president could pardon them. But Donald Trump granted a blanket pardon to those people. And then went on to

pardon Tina Peters, who is a sort of mega martyr who is in prison for crimes related to the last presidential election. And Martin seems to be influencing those pardons as sort of a symbolic way of messaging to the MAGA community that he's got their backs. There were actually a couple of other pardons that I suspect he was involved in earlier in the administration that were some of the worst ones I have ever seen. There was an elected sheriff in Virginia named Scott Jenkins who was selling badges for cash to people who wanted to use them to carry firearms that they wouldn't be licensed to carry otherwise or to get out of traffic tickets. He was just, you know, selling the badges. He was prosecuted for public corruption, essentially, for taking bribes. He was sentenced to 10

years in prison, and he was very loyal to Donald Trump, and he got a full pardon before he served a day of his sentence. There was then a woman around the same time in Nevada, an elected official named Michelle Fiore, who was embezzling money from a police memorial fund, funds that were or being raised to build a memorial to police officers killed in the line of duty. She took money from that fund. She spent it on plastic surgery. And Donald Trump inexplicably gave her a full pardon, which wiped out her obligation to pay back the money and made sure that she didn't have to spend a day in jail. And it's really impossible to understand these pardons except for the fact that these are people who are vocal supporters of the president and linked with the MAGA movement.

And Martin seems to have had a hand in those clemencies. Yeah, there's no way these people would have ever gotten through that process, the vetting, the investigation by pardon attorneys in DOJ, and really any prior administration. Correct. Yeah, there is no prior administration that would have granted pardons under those circumstances to people who were public officials. I mean, that's one of the most serious crimes on the book is the abuse of public trust by an elected official, which both of those folks were. They had not served any of their times or repaid any of their deaths. and so those pardons were completely inconsistent with historical norms. Roger that. Well, now it seems that Ed Martin is under investigation by the D.C. Bar Association.

And it has something to do with, maybe you can talk a little bit about this, about his letter to Georgetown University about DEI policies. But then he actually violated more ethics issues by continuing to write to the judge. about it, which brought more charges, kind of stepped on his own rake there. Can you talk a little bit about this kind of ethics investigation, especially into somebody entrusted with the job of a pardon attorney, the pardon attorney at the Justice Department? Yeah, yeah. So this investigation dates back to when Ed Martin was the acting U.S. attorney for D.C. He was not able to continue on in that role because even the Republicans in the Senate made it clear that they were not going to confirm him.

So that's when he was kicked over to the partner attorney role and the other positions. But while he was U.S. attorney for D.C., he would just fire off these letters, fire off letters to people telling them that he's investigating them and he wants something from them. And one of these letters went to Georgetown University Law School. And he essentially told them that he was going to stop hiring Georgetown law grads until they changed their curriculum to eliminate any DEI. And he didn't say what DEI meant to him or what evidence he had that they were teaching impermissible DEI. He just said, end your DEI. And when I sign off on your curriculum, I will start hiring Georgetown grads again. And he asked for a whole bunch of information to be produced to him as part of some sort of investigation. It does not appear that he actually had any

legal authority to conduct any investigation or to ask for any information from Georgetown. And rightly, Georgetown pushed back on this. And the upshot was that a bar complaint was filed against Ed Martin based on his misuse of this investigative power. And when Martin was served with the complaint, he sort of doubled down and made it a whole lot worse by refusing to engage in the discipline process. Members of a bar are required to respond. to inquiries from the disciplinary counsel for the bar. If you receive one, you cannot ignore it. You're required to respond to it. He refused to do that. And instead, he tried to go through a side channel and have an ex parte conversation with the judges on the court of appeals to try to talk them into

removing the bar counsel from his position. He actually asked for the bar counsel to be suspended and for the investigation against him, Martin, to be ended. And that resulted in an additional disciplinary charge being brought against him by the Bar Council. So we've heard a lot about complaints being filed against administration officials. But this is beyond a complaint. A complaint was filed. It was investigated by the disciplinary council for the DC Bar. And it was found to be substantial enough that they have actually filed charges against him,

which the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will ultimately adjudicate. But that is a very serious step toward him being sanctioned. The process generally plays out very slowly. So it is likely to be several years before the matter is fully resolved. But it's certainly a sign that he has some trouble on the horizon. Yeah, we sort of followed that with how long it took for Rudy Giuliani, for example, to be disbarred or John Eastman. And now, as you've put out a viral video on social media, talking about a new rule proposed by Attorney General Pam Bondi where she wants to slide in, suspend Bar Association investigations, and says that, you know, you can trust the Department of Justice that will investigate our attorneys all by ourselves. And I want to talk to you about that.

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and start selling today at Shopify. com slash unjust. That's Shopify.com slash unjust. Go to Shopify.com slash unjust. Welcome back. Okay, we're here again with former DOJ, pardon attorney Liz Oyer. And Liz's AG was referring to as we went into the last break. So recently Pam Bondi proposed this new rule that would essentially render DOJ attorneys immune from state bar association investigations. Is that right? Like, why would she do? this? And where do you think this is going? Yeah. Historically, DOJ lawyers, like all other lawyers, have been accountable to the rules of ethics that are enforced by the jurisdiction where they're barred and as well as where they're practicing. And that's never really been an issue.

It's always been pretty uncontroversial that Justice Department lawyers should be subject to the same rules of ethics as everybody else. They're straightforward rules like you can't lie to a judge, for example. You can't present false evidence. You just have to abide by basic rules of conduct. And Pam Bondi has essentially proposed a new rule that will eliminate the authority of state bar investigations to investigate DOJ lawyers and allow her instead to intervene and take over these investigations at her discretion. It appears that the purpose is to protect high-ranking DOJ officials who have been subject to a number of complaints that have been lodged with different state bar associations, including Pam Bondi, actually. There have been

and quite a few bar complaints filed against her with the state bar in Florida. That state bar association has already said that they will not investigate the sitting attorney general and that they won't consider those complaints until after she no longer holds that position. But there are others who've also been the subject of bar complaints, including Ed Martin, including Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, as well as Amel Boewe, the former acting deputy attorney general who is now a federal appeals court judge. he's been the subject of a number of bar complaints. And interestingly, this rule Bondi has proposed actually applies to former DOJ lawyers as well. Of course it does. Yes.

Yeah. You know, and so why didn't she just spell it out that it applies to Emil Bovie specifically? Like all DOJ attorneys plus Emil. The reason that is so sort of jarring is she's saying, you know, we can handle this internally. We can investigate internally. But DOJ has no. authority to discipline a former employee. So the idea that they're going to take care of investigating and imposing discipline on a former DOJ lawyer, it's simply not possible. It seems like this is very transparently a move to try to protect all of these high-level current and former officials from any type of oversight of their conduct. Unbelievable. So what can we do about this? Like we've got so many loyal listeners in this podcast that are constantly sending us questions. Like, what can we do?

We want to get involved. Here's one. Like, how do we have an effect on this? Yeah, this is a great one to get involved in because there's actually a process that the Justice Department has to go through to finalize that regulation, which gives the public the right to submit comments. And there is a site called Regulation.gov that has the regulation posted as well. as just a button, you can push to leave a comment. And I have been encouraging members of the public to submit comments opposing this rule, asking for DOJ lawyers to be held to the same standards of ethics and integrity as all other lawyers must follow. So anyone who is concerned

about this can go to that website and leave a comment. I would especially encourage folks who have worked at the Justice Department before to submit those comments and really just talk about the reality of the situation, which is that it doesn't impede the work of Justice Department lawyers if they're subject to bar rules. That's what Bondi's trying to say. Like this somehow interferes with our ability to do our important work. That's not true. It's never been true. And I think former DOJ lawyers are in a very good position to say it is not burdensome to be subject to basic rules of ethics. And in fact, it's good for the institution because it makes us more credible when we are subject to the same rules as everybody else.

Of course. It impedes on their ability to tell the courts to F off as we've heard in a couple of whistleblower reports. But we've seen this kind of comment period and public comment actually make a difference. I remember just recently when Doug Collins, Secretary of VA, wanted to take away VA disability if your medication helped you. And the public comment section on the regulation website that you're talking about was so fierce and so there was so much of it that he, very shortly after that, walked that back and said, well, never mind, we're not going to do that. and it included members of the public and like veterans organizations and veterans groups. But so these public comment periods work.

But I want to ask you if we take it a step further and Pam, Pamela Joe ignores these comments. Or I know she has to read them. I know she has to go through them. And I highly recommend everybody do it. If she goes forward with this anyway, what then is the recourse? Could there be lawsuits? Who would have standing to sue in this particular venue? Maybe a regular lawyer that's subject to the bar, but DOJ lawyers are suddenly not and they have to go up against DOJ lawyers in court.

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think this is almost certainly going to be challenged in court if it takes effect. And there are a number of different constituencies that could do that. One would be the state bar associations themselves. I mean, traditionally, Republicans are big on federalism and the idea of state rights. And this is a real intrusion on the rights of states to maintain their own standards and their own, the jurisdiction of their own bar associations, which for many, many, many years have played this independent role. So the state bar associations could sue. It's also possible that an individual who is going through the disciplinary process could sue.

It might be the case that the state bar decides that they will not comply and shut down an investigation. and an administration official then has to file a lawsuit to try to get that bar association to shut down their lawsuit. So there are different ways that it could arise and it seems almost certain that it will be subject to challenge. And the legality of it is dubious. There is a federal statute that says that DOJ lawyers specifically are required to abide by the state bar rules. Congress has already said that they believe that's a good thing and passed a law to require it. So I'm not sure that this will hold up. But the mere fact that they are trying to remove any independent oversight of DOJ lawyers is very concerning. And it's especially so when you add it on top of a couple of other

things that have happened over this past year, Bondi has essentially rooted out all of the lawyers who provide sort of guardrails or oversight of things like ethics and professional responsibility. She removed the ethics director, who's a career official, who advises on compliance with federal ethics laws and has not replaced him. She removed and has not replaced the head of the office of professional responsibility, which can also investigate misconduct by DOJ employees. She has removed the supervisor of those two employees and essentially not replaced any of them. So there is no longer any infrastructure within DOJ to police itself, which makes the suggestion that there should be no independent oversight, especially alarming.

So let's look at that in the slightly bigger lens. So you have these kind of bulwarks of standards and ethics and the kind of the watchdog, as it were, over the attorneys actually practicing in DOJ, gone. These jobs are empty. You've got legions of people who've been fired simply for political reasons, for having been associated with cases that are now disfavored. You've got many other people in U.S. Attorney's offices in DOJ, Maine, who are quick. because they find the job to be untenable, right? Pushing them beyond places they can morally or ethically defend. On top of all that, you see DOJ losing the presumption of regularity in court, getting one no true bill after another in cases from D.C. to Los Angeles, getting castigated by federal judges for blatantly ignoring court orders.

you know, infamously, so many of the cases involving the immigration activity resulting in judicial directives that DHS is just ignoring by the hundreds, like walking away from. So as a former DOJ person, one former DOJ person to another, like, what do you, where do you see this going? Like, how do we get back from this? Like, is there a future with a future with a a normal, quote unquote, normal historical DOJ where standards and processes are returned? Or is this a storm that will forever change the face of the department as we know it? Well, there are a couple layers to it, I think, Andy. And one of the most concerning features, perhaps the most concerning feature is sort of the decimation of expertise within the department in really key areas, particularly national security, cyber security.

areas where there are many active threats and DOJ no longer has the experienced personnel to preemptively try to prevent those threats and we may not know when we're going to sort of reap what has been sown in that area it may take a real large-scale national crisis for our country to realize the full extent of the harm that has been done inside the Justice Department by really just rooting out and removing experts in crucial areas. That expertise can be rebuilt, but it will take a long time to rebuild it and it will take some intentional efforts, hopefully, which can start sooner rather than later. I do think that there is an opportunity to build back a stronger and better Justice Department. I came into DOJ having litigated against

the Justice Department for 10 years as a public. defender. And, you know, I certainly had some notes about things that could be done differently and better. And I think that the Justice Department does have some blind spots. One of them was in communicating with the public. It has been very easy for this administration to push a false narrative about what the Justice Department did under Biden because the public doesn't necessarily understand how it's supposed to work, how the legal system is supposed to work. How the legal system is supposed to work. And I think that the failure to communicate with the public about that is a problem and something that needs to be changed going forward. In the Biden administration, the DOJ had about 25 employees in

the Office of Public Affairs communicating about all of the important work the Justice Department is doing around the country. Many more people are needed to be able to reach communities and make people in communities around the country understand the important role the Justice Department plays and how it serves them and their local community. So I think there are things that could be strengthened and make the department more durable in the future so that something like this does not happen again and certainly so that it cannot happen so quickly. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with that. I love the fact that you're ending on a hopeful note. Right. Yeah, you're right. I mean, there are, I get the same question about the FBI very often. And I try to tell people, I have no, I've no doubt we will get through this period. But the question is how diminished we will be in that moment and how long does it take to recover that sort of expertise, the trust, the integrity that's necessary to do this work. But let me, one more question before we let you go.

I have to touch on this because if I don't, I'll get all kinds of, I'll get all kinds of hell here at home. I'll be perfectly honest with you. You have an amazing following on social media, TikTok, Instagram, you get the substack going. And I know all this because I've seen it myself, but also because my 22-year-old daughter and all of her friends are huge fans of yours. That's awesome. Yeah, for real. The lawyer-oir-explanar videos are like, you know, circulating among, she's a senior in college. She and her friends listen to and watch your videos constantly.

So it's always fascinating to me as someone who's kind of doing the same thing in this very different career now after a career in government. Like, how do you see your activity on social media? Like what is it you're trying to accomplish with going out there and having the, you know, the courage to put yourself and your opinions and your views on things out there? I view it as a continuation of my public service. I really didn't expect the social media to take off in the way that it has. But people have expressed so much gratitude that someone who has personal knowledge and expertise of how this system is supposed to work is taking the time to break it down in a way that's digestible and understandable to people who aren't steeped in the day to day of Washington, D.C.

So I view it as educational, not political, and I view it as a way that I can continue to serve my fellow citizens. Most of my career has been devoted to public service. And I really felt a hole when I was fired from the Justice Department. I certainly knew that I was not going to be able to go back there anytime soon. And I wanted to find a way to continue serving my fellow citizens. And this has turned out to be a really good way to do that. Well, you're great at it. And we're deeply grateful for the time that you spend doing it because it's, I think you're doing, you're accomplishing exactly that. I think it's, it's super important for people to hear from people with expertise and without a political agenda, just to kind of make things a little more clear.

Thank you. Would you go back if asked maybe in a next administration? I've been asked this because I worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs for over a decade until the Trump administration removed me after investigating my podcast. And I was asked under the Biden administration if there was anything I wanted to do to go back to. And I actually said no. But I'm wondering if you would be interested in going back. Yeah, I would like to be a part of the rebuilding. Actually, I have a lot of ideas about. how it could be rebuilt to make it better, more durable, stronger. And I would love to be a part of that and hope to have the opportunity to do that. Excellent. I hope you do as well. Yeah. For sure.

For sure. Especially the communications part. And it's not just more people communicating, but what they're communicating, right? Because if you have 200 people saying no comment, you know, what's different about that than 25 people saying no comment? But thank you so much. Everybody, we're going to have a link. in our show notes to where you can leave a comment for the open comment period about this new Pam Bondi rule, this Justice Department rule, that would allow her to intervene and suspend state bar association investigations into Department of Justice attorneys.

And you brought up such an important point about how, you know, the fact that she has gutted, like when I make my comment, it's going to be about how are you going to do any oversight when you've gutted every single bit of oversight that would exist, OPR, et cetera, within that in the organization. So thank you so very much for joining us today and explaining all of this to us. And we encourage everybody to follow lawyer or wherever you get your socials. Thank you so much. Thanks, Liz. Have a great day.

Thank you guys. All right, everybody. We've got more to talk about, including more election malfeasance over the 2020 election with this administration. But we have to take another quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back.

Okay. Our next story this week comes from political. The Trump administration has subpoenaed records related to the 2020 election in Arizona's largest county, the state Senate president said on Monday, the latest in a series of steps taken by the president to relitigate an election he lost and bolster the federal government's authority over elections. Arizona Senate President Warren Peterson, a Republican, wrote in a Monday afternoon social media post that last week he, quote, received and complied with a federal grand jury. subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate's 2020 audit of Maricopa County,

adding that the FBI has the records. Call me crazy, but I think that the Senate found there wasn't any problems with the 2020 election. Yeah. And even, maybe I'm jumping with the gun here, but okay, and even if they did the audit poorly and got the wrong result, how's there a crime? Right. What's the FBI investigating?

I don't know, but let's continue. Because let's keep in mind that Peterson was responding to a post from Trump on true social calling the development great. And Jason Barry, a spokesperson for Maricopa County itself, said in a statement that the county had not yet received a subpoena, but would cooperate if it did. So it sounds like the subpoenas are just to the Republicans in the Senate for the Senate's audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County. but that the county itself has not gotten any subpoenas. Now, the move comes just six weeks after the FBI raided an elections office outside Atlanta in Fulton County, seizing records related to the 2020 presidential election as Trump continues to spread debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud in that election.

And, you know, also wondering if it's just Trump's election or anybody else on the ballot who is going to be overturned if they, you know, like what? You mean, are you asking if Trump is. thinking of other people? I know. Sorry. Sorry about that. Come on. Arizona's Maricopa County, like Georgia's Fulton County, has long been a centerpiece of those conspiracy theories, with Republicans alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election, of course, without evidence. Trump and his allies pushed Republicans in the Arizona State Senate to audit the election in Maricopa County, which former President Joe Biden narrowly carried in 2020. But the review

like many others found no proof of substantial fraud. Okay, so I was right. Good, good to know. Because I thought, but you know, there were 800 investigations into ballots in Maricopa County. Remember the Crazy Times Carnival? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cyber Ninjas?

Isn't that a Cyber Ninja deployment? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was like, well, I'm pretty sure every single one of those investigations bore no fruit. and that turns out is the same is true for the Senate investigation, the Senate audit. Now, the Justice Department noted in a 2021 memo that such audits are exceedingly rare and warned that it was concerned that some jurisdictions conducting them could violate federal law. Quote, Maricopa County runs elections in accordance with the law.

That's what Barry said in a Monday statement. The president first seemingly publicly confirmed the expansion of the voting investigation earlier last Monday when he reposted the article by the right-wing website, just the news, which reported, quote, FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic data from Maricopa County. But I think they meant the Senate. Not the county.

Yeah. So, Barry is a spokesperson for the county board of supervisors. And the county board splits some election responsibilities with county recorder Justin Heap. Judy Keene, who's a spokesperson for Heap, said that his office had also not received a subpoena as of Monday afternoon. So this great investigation seems to be solely focused on Senate Republicans in Arizona. Is that that's what we have? Sounds about right.

Yeah. Callie Jones, a spokesperson for Arizona Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, deferred to Maricopa County elections, an office that consult. some of the county's operations, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jones said in a statement, at this time, our office is also attempting to track down accurate information and remains committed to providing whatever support necessary to our counties to ensure they can stay focused and provide a secure and reliable 2026 election to voters, despite antiquated systems and historic underfunding. Oh, that sounds portentious.

Heep a Republican sued Maricopa's board of supervisors last month as part of a protracted dispute over election authorities in the county. Heep won election in 2024 after successfully challenging then recorder Stephen Richard. Remember him? In a primary fueled in part by Richard's vocal opposition to the president's conspiracy theories about the election in the county and the post-2020 state Senate review. Now, Arizona Attorney General Chris May is a Democrat accused Peterson of, quote, using his placards, platform as a Senate president to legitimize conspiracy theories that Arizona's own courts and law enforcement have thoroughly debunked. That's what she said in a statement Monday and went on to say, what the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry.

It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies. So pretty strong statement from the attorney general. Strong statement, but one that characterizes a lot of what's going on. So well done there. Mays indicted 18 Trump allies in relation to the attempt to overturn the state's 2020 election results two years ago. And while grand jurors ultimately opted against charging Trump, the indictment labeled him an unindicted co-conspirator and mastermind behind the alleged plot. Trump has repeatedly threatened to, quote, nationalize elections ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in recent months, despite the fact that the Constitution explicitly delegates election administration duties to the states, sparking concern from Democrats and bipartisan state election officials.

One source of worry is how the Trump administration is using the U.S. spy community to support his claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Trump has directed the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. spy agencies to share sensitive intelligence on the 2020 election with his former campaign. campaign lawyer, Kurt Olson, who's using the material to hunt for fraud in that year's vote. Oh, good Lord. I do want to make a quick correction to Politico here. They said that grand jurors opted against charging Trump. The grand jurors actually wanted to charge Trump. It was attorney general, the prosecutors. I don't know if it was Chris Mays herself, but it was the prosecutors who opted

not to. Wouldn't propose it. Yeah, bring those charges. So a little bit of a correction there as we go along. The story goes on to say it's unclear whether Kurt Olson, who Trump made a special government employee in the White House, has completed his work. DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, participated in the raid in Fulton County and the next day facilitated a phone call between Trump and the FBI agents at the local field office. Her role in the Georgia raid raised alarms from Democrats and election experts, and Allison Gill, who noted that is highly unusual for the ODNI to participate in domestic law enforcement activities. Officials working for Gabbard also obtained voting machines from Puerto Rico to study their susceptibility to hacks.

And I'll just add, she seized those Puerto Rico voting machines in an investigation into whether Maduro and Venezuela had interfered in our elections. And in 2020, Donald Trump used the pretext of foreign election interference to try to seize voting machines using the Pentagon. So there's a whole big backstory there that we have talked about. out pretty extensively here on a podcast. Yeah, and I mean, just as a reminder, this is not something that any CIA or DNI would ever have engaged in prior to this. The CIA cannot investigate anything in the United States. The DNI can't investigate anything anywhere ever.

They're not, they don't have an operational capacity. And the intelligence community specifically cannot, cannot obtain, cannot store, cannot use, cannot analyze U.S. person information, which obviously all the voting stuff is U.S. person information. So this is like absolutely completely off the rails unlawful. So even if you thought that there might be some evidence of foreign involvement in a voting machine in Puerto Rico, you would have to get the FBI to open an investigation, take that seize that machine or work in cooperation with Puerto Rican authorities to get a look at that machine to see if it had a problem. Yeah, and you can't just seize the machine because you have a feeling there might be something wrong.

You actually have to have probable cause of a crime. Of course, of course. Okay, so they go on to say, Gabbard has said neither she nor Trump applied any pressure on the FBI agents during the call and asserted her office has broad authority to secure U.S. elections against foreign hacking threats. Well, that's a new one to me and everybody else. Top Democrats have shot back that the raid in Fulton County was based on a tip from Olson, President's attorney, that did not mention any foreign intelligence. One administration official granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing legal matter said

Gabbard was, quote, not on the ground in Maricopa, but is still working with interagency partners on election integrity issues. The Justice Department has also sued more than two dozen states for access to their voter rolls, insisting that redacted files, which omit voters' private data like driver's license numbers and the last four digits of a social security number, are not sufficient. Now, they've lost a few of those cases so far. Many are still pending. I don't think there's any that they have won in order to get that voter data. No, I don't, they're going to have a tough road in front of them there. But honestly, one of the biggest concerns I have about that effort,

the demand to all 50 states to turn this stuff over. And to be clear, some states did turn it over. Red states have, yeah. It's not, nowhere in the demand do they make clear why they want it or why they need it. Other than these ridiculously vague statements about we are our responsibility to secure the elections, which it's not exactly, but nevertheless, I don't think anyone, even, Even the most people who are most concerned about this, I don't think anyone knows completely what exactly the administration plans to do with that information. No. And that's kind of par for the course with all of sorts of subpoenas that they issue.

They don't even list any crimes that they're investigating in any of these subpoenas. I don't know whether or not maybe somebody I'm talking to right now has experienced that particular issue. But we won't. We won't get into the details because of an open. an ongoing investigation. Here we are again. But yeah, I have a pretty strong sense that what you're saying about that is right there.

Yeah, I could be not going to confirm, not going to deny. Maybe. There you go. Maybe. Now, we have a couple more quick stories, including a lawyer that just quit right in the courtroom. when confronted by a judge and also some breaking news as we record this on Friday, Janine Piro is having a really bad Friday the 13th and she lost it at the podium during a press conference. We're going to talk about both of those things and then maybe take a listener question or two right after this break.

Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Like I said, a couple more quick stories before we get to listener questions. This one comes from Bloomberg Law. An assistant U.S. attorney in North Carolina said he's quitting over eight. I artificial intelligence created fabricated quotes and erroneous citations in one of his court briefs that he produced with the AI. This is assistant U.S. Attorney Rudy Renfer. Is he just quitting because he's mad at the AI? Because I don't feel like that's very productive.

I'm not sure. But he said he's made a personal decision to separate from the office of the U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of North Carolina during a Tuesday afternoon show cause hearing. Magistrate Judge Robert Numbers chastised Renfer's disappointment conduct, including for a lack of candor in accounting for the errors when they were discovered. Now Renfer said he accidentally overwrote and lost a prior version of a filing. He felt panicked and had AI rewrite it for him and then filed it thinking he'd already reviewed it, but he didn't. And then he took full responsibility for the, quote, unacceptable filing stating he'd been working on

multiple filings and put too much on myself at the same time. Wow. Okay. Numbers said the case was especially disappointing given the particular, quote, power and responsibility of the U.S. Attorney's Office. He also repeatedly suggested that Renfer's explanations, quote, strained credulity. That's judge speak for, I don't believe you. including as to why his filed explanation didn't mention AI.

Now, U.S. Attorney W. Ellis Boyle said his office acted quickly upon learning of the problematic brief before the judge scheduled his show cause hearing. It sent office-wide communications warning about the use of AI and the case had been referred to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. Boyle also said the hearing was the first he'd heard confirmed that Renfer used AI, though he had. had suspicions. Yeah. And when Boyle asked Judge numbers if he had additional questions near the end of the roughly hour long hearing, the judge said, I certainly have more questions, but I don't know that they'll be answered to my satisfaction.

Something that Bloomberg Law is kind of leaving out here. Boyle, that guy from the U.S. Attorney's Office, totally threw Renfer under the bus because Renfer was like, no, I told my bosses about it and they approved my briefing before it was sent. And Boyle got up and said, we did no such thing. We wouldn't have approved this. And I think that might have been the thing that led to Ren for being like, well, peace out then. Now, the U.S. Attorney's Office is representing the Defense Department in an underlying lawsuit by a North Carolina pro se litigant called Derent.

His name is Derrence Five House. He's a retired Air Force Colonel and an attorney himself. So that explains maybe the pro se. And he's challenging a policy limiting availability of GLP1 weight loss medications for tricure for life patients. That's the underlying lawsuit here. The plaintiff asserted that a response brief to a motion to supplement the administrative record signed by Renfer included fabricated quotes and misstated the holdings of several cases. In a reply, Renfer said he, quote, inadvertently included incorrect citations to case law from this circuit and attributed the errors to inadvertent filing of unfinalized draft document. Totally didn't mention AI at all until he was in court.

this is the strangest story we've ever put out there. I mean, like, first of all, you're in front of judge numbers. I mean, holy cow. And a pro se litigant so outdules the U.S. attorney that he quits the job. This is almost better than the, I am not a cat, Your Honor. There's a filter on my computer. Wink, wink, look, look.

I'm not a cat. or the dude who dialed into his drunk driving hearing while driving drunk or something's like, what? How does this happen in American courtrooms? Oh, wow. I'm just, I'm amazed by this. Okay. Okay, so no. Sorry.

Sorry. All right. I got to get this together. All right. Here we go. Numbers ordered Tuesday's hearing because he still had serious concerns about the accuracy of certain quotes and representations in Renfer's filings, as well as his explanation of them. Now, Renfer has worked at the U.S. Attorney's Office since 2009. Oh my God, he's not a rookie.

After stints as a local prosecutor, an assistant attorney general, and solo practitioner, according to his LinkedIn profile in the state bar member directory. Renfer told numbers he, quote, gained nothing with fabricated citations to mundane, uncontroversial, administrative law, noting the only thing I do is run the risk of losing my job. Apparently, that's what it's going to cost you. It also cost him his reputation with colleagues along with the court, he said. Yeah, but Judge Number said that Renfer taking shortcuts on basic work made it all the more outrageous. He added that filings by Renfer, he reviewed, beyond the AI brief and the explanation, added grave concerns over what was at best sloppiness. Quote, I don't think it's helpful. It's hurtful to your cause, the judge said. He also pushed back on Renfer's characterization that his error was not intentional, saying, it sounds like you intentionally used AI and then intentionally filed it to the court.

I mean, okay. Wait a second. Wait a second. I didn't intend to file an AI draft to the court, he said. That's not, dude, you're an assistant U.S. attorney. Half of your job is proving intent in prosecutions. And this so clearly reaches the threshold of intent. It's willful. I mean, like, come on. Holy cow.

Okay, numbers also said, as Renfer explained the mechanics of how the erroneous filing was made, that the challenge is that Renfer's lack of candor calls into question any other statements he made to the court. I don't know what to say. Renfer said, I can only tell you what I know or what got made up. I don't know. Right. So it's not just him filing an AI brief.

It's him saying I didn't mean to and saying, you know, I lost the brief and then used AI to try to bring it back and then I thought I reviewed it and then I did it. And then in his reply in the briefing to say, you know, he used erroneous quotes and failing to mention that he used AI at all. That lack of candor right there is really, really serious. I mean, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but that's the kind of thing that you can lose your license over. You know, when you fail to explain because this was a show cause hearing. And these were show cause filings. Like, you have to tell us why you did this.

And in his response, he didn't mention artificial intelligence at all. So when the U.S. attorney. It's a lie of omission. It's a lie of omission. If he says, how did this happen? And you give one-tenth of the reason of how it happened, you know. Maybe he can use Bronston's literal truth defense saying it's your job to ask me more specific questions. Oh, geez.

Hey, hey, I'm here all week, everybody. Tip your waitresses. Whenever I can make a Bronston literal truth defense joke, you know I have reached the pinnacle of my career. That's right. That's right. All right. We have some breaking news as we record this on Friday. Janine Piro has lost again in court. Judge Bozberg threw out a pair of subpoenas that the Justice Department issued to the Federal Reserve, right, Jerome Powell, handing a victory to the Fed and dealing a very heavy blow to U.S. Attorney Janine Piro's criminal investigation into Jerome Powell. Bozberg wrote, there is abundant evidence that the subpoena's dominant, if not sole purpose, is to harass and pressure Powell

to either yield to the president by lowing interest rates or to resign and make way for a Fed chair who will. Now, at a press briefing, she lost it. Somebody was like, well, you know, why do you keep, you know, what about the six lawmakers? What about these no true bill? And she's like, look, you, hey, you listen to me. I'm here to prosecute crimes. and if these activist judges want to stop me from doing that, I should be able to, if I feel like it, go looking to make sure something's not a crime. That's not true.

And so I'm willing to take the no true bill. I'm willing to get the not guilty verdict. Basically, I'm willing to bring shitty cases and lose. I'm willing to fail and fail and fail again. And my failure is a mark of how dedicated I am. Is it really? I feel like it's a marker of how incompetent you are and how terrible your judgment is as a U.S. attorney.

And she was gathering up her papers and hitting the microphone and it was just, it was chaos. And, man, I'm going to talk about that a little bit later today, Sunday at noon Pacific on the Midas Touch Network with Katie Fang, a good friend who also has a great show over on the Midas Network. We're going to be talking specifically about this Bozberg ruling some of the quotes from it, which are really, I mean, it's a, it's a stinging rebuke of these subpoenas to Jerome Powell

and the Federal Reserve. And then we're going to play clips of Janine's meltdown in the press room because it is pretty epic, Andy. That's prime time viewing right there. All right, what do we have for listener questions this week? I think we've got time for probably one or two. Okay, so first, just an update on our quest for a name for the new segment. I have to tell you, I'm really, first of all, super impressed with the entries so much so that I'm tempted to just let this keep going and maybe wait until the well dries and we start getting unfunny ones and then we'll pick because I don't want to lose out on the opportunity. We can always call it something different each time.

Yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. So here's some of the highlights from this week. I'll start out with all quack and no bill. All right. I like that. All quack, no bill. It took me like a couple seconds to figure it out, but then I had a good chuckle. Followed by flaw in order, which is just nice. The DOJ did report. It's a little bit long, but I like it. I like the intent.

Many people wrote in with the Homer Simpson variant of DoJ. Very good. Very good impersonation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you. and of course just ice. Oh, instead of justice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, well, we'll keep collecting these, and I like all quack no bill. That's pretty good, or maybe all honk no bill. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. It's a gas, so people, please keep them coming. You know, really push yourselves, okay? This is the moment of inspiration.

It's like the halftime speech to the team. You know, you got to get out there, you got to stay in the game. You've got to reach beyond your expectations and give us the smarmiest, most sarcastic things you can think of. Okay. First question today comes from Sam, from North Carolina. Sam says, don't you think that Patel's firing of experts on Iran will facilitate a 9-11 style retaliation by Iran that Trump will use to boost his popularity and declare martial law? Well, Sam, I do agree with your.

your suggestion that Patel's firing of experts on Iran, what, a couple of nights before we went to war with Iran, a really bad idea, terrible idea for the Bureau and worse for the country at large, because as this week is closing up, we're seeing exactly what the effects of that have been. The threat picture that we're looking at has absolutely been altered by and increased by what's happening overseas. Now, whether or not that loss of expertise, the kind of increase in grievance and anger and a desire to seek out expressions of violence

by extremists in the community, whether that will manifest itself as a 9-11 style retaliation that's hard to say. Will any of or all of that violence cumulatively lead to Donald Trump trying to use that, to bootstrap that into declaring martial law or postponing elections or any of the many things that I think a lot of people are worried about. That's a much harder thing to say. I really feel like the instances of violence that we are going to see that may be tangentially related to the U.S. intervention in Iran, the war in Iran, I think people are more likely to be

angry about what's happening overseas rather than looking at this as like, oh yeah, Trump was right all along. He was right to start this war and he's right to take away our elections and impose martial law. I don't think that it's going to have the same effect as 9-11 did, right? 9-11, we got hit here.

3,000 of our fellow citizens were killed. There was a all-of-country desire to do something to write that offense. And this is a very different situation. Right. Yeah, to retroactively, you know, use it to justify what's already been done. The thing that scares me personally, Andy, is the fact that there's a non-zero chance the government wants a terror-like attack on this country. Yeah.

Just to have this conversation. Right. Yeah. That's what, you know, keeps me up at night. The fact, like, not saying that they are, I don't know that there's, I don't have any evidence that that that's the goal, but the fact that there's a non-zero chance it is, is what really. Yeah, or that reasonable, some reasonable people think that that that's a possibility. Right.

You know, not, not me like you. I'm saying like, I'm not convinced of that. But the fact that it's even discussed. I'm convinced there's a non-zero chance, but that. Yeah, but you can say that about a lot of things. Yes. I mean, the fact that reasonable, sensible, informed people are sitting around talking this as a possibility, maybe an unlikely one, but a possibility. It's just a terrible sign of where we are and the level of, you know, distrust that we have in this government.

But that's where we are. Yeah. Ooh, can I do this next one? Because I have some personal experience. Oh, wait. So did it. Yeah. Yeah.

Go there. Debbie says, can the fired FBI agent? Sue Kosh Patel for being fired without reasonable cause. Probably not because of Bivens, not Kosh Patel in his, you know, individual capacity. But the FBI, yes, as long as you go through the administrative process first. When I was, what I believe wrongfully terminated from the Department of Veterans Affairs, I had to go through the Merit Systems Protection Board first and be denied and appeal and be denied in order to get a 90-day permission window to file. a federal lawsuit in court.

I had Donald Trump initially on there, as well as the secretary of the VA at the time. Donald Trump was removed in his personal capacity because I didn't have a, because of something called Bivens, and you can maybe expand on that a little bit if you want, but my lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs remains. So what, what say you, Andy? Yeah, I think, I think that's right. That's the typical course. You have to exhaust all available remedies before you can get to the point of filing the federal lawsuit.

And those remedies are the ones that you just laid out. Ultimately, your lawsuit is, let's put aside Bevins and like personal liability for a minute. The lawsuit is going to have. Right, because my lawsuit's against McDonough and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Now it's against Doug Collins and the Department of Veterans Affairs. So it's the office of the secretary of the VA. That's right. Yeah.

So I assume you can sue the office of the director of the FBI. And by the time somebody's suit against Kosh Patel gets to court, it might be somebody else's name at the top of the lawsuit, right? Yeah, that's right. And the suit is it's for more complicated claim than just being fired without reasonable cause. That's part of it. But essentially what you're arguing is it was a violation of your rights under the Civil Service Act. It's a, you were maybe denied the process that you are guaranteed based on all those regulations and laws that are in place protecting federal employees.

That was basically my biggest claim was they made it up. The last minute, there was no process. It was all just a sham to justify a preordained conclusion. So that would be the claim. And then finally, yeah, you can't, Bivens basically protects government officers from liability. for things that they did that were in the scope of their authority. The only way you can get beyond the Bivens limitation and kind of try to file a suit against someone personally,

in their personal capacity, say, is by proving some sort of constitutional deprivation of a constitutional right. I am not a civil lawyer, so the civil lawyers out there in the audience if you have wisdom on this and wish to drop it into the... Or something they did out. outside of their official duties. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

You acted in a way that was not consistent or beyond the scope of your authority. If what you did was within the scope of your authority, you're basically protected from civil liability. The organization is not. The organization, that's why you end up suing the head of the organization and the organization itself. And if there's a judgment, that's who has to pay.

Yeah, and there's a mountain of case. law that everyone up to and including the president can be sued for stuff they did that was outside of their official capacity and a personal capacity. Right. Mountains of it. We still have a couple of ongoing lawsuits open against President Donald Trump from the first administration over January 6th. We have Blasengame and the Capitol Police officers who are suing for things that he did

outside his official capacity, things that you do while you're campaigning are considered outside your official capacity. But that's right. That wouldn't apply to. somebody being wrongfully terminated by Kosh Patel, because terminating people is an official duty and would not, you wouldn't be able to sue them in their personal capacity. All right, great questions.

As always, everybody will have a link in the show notes, so you can click on that and send your questions along. And maybe we'll get to have time to get to them on the air. I'm sure we'll be doing another all questions episode pretty soon to catch up on the ones. the ones that we've missed. And we also, like I said earlier, have a link in the show notes for you to leave a comment in the open comment period about Pounde's rule, suspending state bar association investigations into Department of Justice lawyers, thereby essentially giving immunity to DOJ lawyers to just completely violate legal and ethical rules as they do their work. So you can look for those two links. We will be back in your ear. years next week. Don't forget to check out me and Katie today on the Midas Touch Network at noon Pacific. That's Sunday, March 15th, the aides. The aides of March are upon us.

There you go. Any final thoughts, my friend, before we head out for the week? No, just, you know, who knows what we'll be sitting here talking about and laughing about next week? I feel like the laughter part of it is like essential now because we're surrounded by so much really concerning thing. Tough day yesterday, the shooting in Virginia at Old Dominion University and the attack at the synagogue

in outside Detroit. Yeah, times are tough. And it's super important even though it's tough to stay plugged in and to keep, you know, stay informed about what's happening

in your world and your community. Hopefully we can help you do that. But give yourself a break now and then too. Have a couple of yucks and take a break from from everything that's going on. Yeah, we don't laugh, we'll cry. Or both. I've been known to do both in a short period of time. It just happens. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to Unjustified. We'll see you next week. 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

hockey 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.