Jack - Episode 102 | The Disposition

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

Judge Chutkan grants Jack Smith’s motion to vacate the entire pre-trial schedule in the January 6th.Rod Rosenstein, former United States Deputy Attorney General and special counsel stunt pilot, weighs in on a future Trump DoJ.   We also go over plans for the podcast and listener questions.A Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution | United States Department of JusticeQuestions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ AMICI CURIAE to the District Court of DC https://democracy21.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Attachment-Brief-of-Amici-Curiae-in-Support-of-Governments-Proposed-Trial-Date.pdfGood to knowRule 403bhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_40318 U.S. Code § 1512https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 Prior RestraintPrior Restraint | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information InstituteBrady MaterialBrady Rule | US Law |Cornell Law School | Legal Information Institutehttps://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brady_rule#:~:text=Brady%20material%2C%20or%20the%20evidence,infer%20against%20the%20defendant's%20guiltJenksJencks Material | Thomson Reuters Practical Law Glossaryhttps://content.next.westlaw.com/Glossary/PracticalLaw/I87bcf994d05a11e598dc8b09b4f043e0?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)Gigliohttps://definitions.uslegal.com/g/giglio-information/Statutes:18 U.S.C. § 241 | Conspiracy Against Rights18 U.S.C. § 371 | Conspiracy to Defraud the United States | JM | Department of Justice18 U.S.C.  § 1512 | Tampering With Victims, Witnesses, Or Informants Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AGFollow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew 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 TrumpWe 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

MSW Media I signed an order appointing Jack Smith. And those who say Jack is a fanatic. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, what law have I broken? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is?

Send me to jail! Welcome to episode 102 of Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. For as long as it lasts, it's Sunday, November 10th, 2024. I'm Alison Gill. And I am Andy McCabe. Today the elephant in the room. Jack Smith has asked Judge Chutkin to vacate the entire pretrial schedule in the January 6th case. And she has already granted that motion.

So we're going to talk about the disposition of both federal cases against Donald Trump in the wake of the election. Yep. We're also going to go over what's happening with some other January 6th cases in light of Fisher and the election. And your pal, Rod Rosenstein is weighing in on the fate of the justice department under his second Trump term. I'm curious to get your take on that a bit, Andy. Oh, I bet you are. I'm curious to get your take on that a bit, Andy. Oh, I bet you are. Yeah.

But first, as if we even need to bother, it's time for another installment of Good Week, Bad Week. Andy, I could probably guess what you're going to say. Well, the guy that I've been dealing bad weeks to for like the last year or more, pretty consistently, that dude had a pretty good week. He had the ultimate good week. I've been dealing bad weeks too for like the last year or more, pretty consistently. That dude had a pretty good week. He had the ultimate good week. Yeah.

Yeah, he really did. I mean, like just a remarkable victory for him on Tuesday night and one that I think people will be kind of digesting and trying to understand the implications of for a long time. But yeah, I just, he came away, he is stronger now, he's a stronger candidate now than he has ever been at any point in his career, which after two federal cases, two state cases, the collapse of his charity as a fraud, civil judgment for hundreds of millions of dollars, essentially having found to have committed sexual abuse against women. Those things have only made him stronger in the eyes of the electorate. Yeah.

Yeah. It was a devastatingly awful depressing good week for Donald Trump and a bad week for everybody else. Bad week for NATO, bad week for immigrants, Ukraine, Gaza, justice, democracy, marginalized communities, LGBTQ plus communities. Bad week for women. I mean, it's just colossalal the implications of what happened on Tuesday. Yes. Yeah. I think it's going to, um, I think you really got to let this thing sink in a

bit and think it through. Like any kind of a challenge that you're faced with at work or at home or whatever that might be, you know, quick judgments are usually not the best. And so what we need to do now is stay clear-eyed and really think about what are those things that we're concerned about might happen and what are the indicators, the markers that will give us a heads up as to whether or not those things are happening. And we need to stay as engaged and informed about the process and about the institutions and how they'll be, how they'll be, I was about to say infected, then I meant affected, but maybe infected is the right word. You know, we got to just kind of rally, stay dialed in and protect this amazing country that we have.

Yeah, and in that vein, Andy, you and I have had discussions offline and right off the top, want to assure everybody that you and I are not going anywhere. We will be continuing on. It probably won't be called the Jack podcast because and I got to say it, the depth of depression that I feel with all the work that we've done, um, all the work Jack Smith has done, the justice department has done before Jack Smith got there, the courts, judges, all of the

jurors, grand jurors, get multiple grand juries, right? All that work to just be swept away in an instant, well, over the course of several horrible hours is pretty devastating, especially for people who believe in and pursue justice. But you know, you and I will be here in some form documenting for historical purposes and for posterity what's going to be happening in this second Trump administration. And so I just wanted to reassure everybody because Andy, I know a lot of people had concerns about our safety, for example. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I much appreciate everyone's good thoughts about that. You know, I'm fine.

I don't want to speak for you, but you seem fine as well. We are both surrounded by, you know, family and friends that support us, and we're going to be, we're just going to march on and continue kind of moving forward. But I feel like we knew on some level that this was a possible result. We've been talking about this for literally two years, that if Trump got re-elected these cases would go away. I definitely hoped that that's not the way... I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting it either. I hoped it wouldn't go that way, and now it has. But that doesn't eliminate our interest in the rule of law and justice and how the institutions

treat people fairly while holding them accountable. And so I think that's kind of how I think of the path forward, not just for the podcast, but for all of us who are interested in and committed to these ideals. And so that's kind of, you know, you've got to find something productive out of even, you know, unfortunate circumstance. So I think that's kind of the way I'm thinking about it. As for safety and all that stuff, I think, you know, I don't, I'm trying, I've been asked a lot about that by reporters on TV and other stuff. I think there's great reason to be concerned. I think people should really keep an eye out for certain things.

We can talk about this more in more detail later. But it also, it's not 2016 again. We know what to expect. For me personally, I'm in a very different place now than I was then. I don't work for the government anymore. I'm an independent civilian and I've managed to recreate a whole life doing cool stuff that I find satisfying and fulfilling and I intend to keep doing all those things. So yeah, stay the course. Me too, my friend. Virtual high five. I know we still aren't bound by our oaths, but you know, I am in my heart and in my head. Of course we are, because that's who we are, right?

Right. All right. Can I throw in one super positive good week? Yeah, let's do some good weeks. Good week for the Pennsylvania State House. Good week for some of the wins we got across the board. Good week for abortion rights access in seven of the 10 states that had it on the ballot. I mean, we did have some bright spots. We covered some of them over on the

Daily Beans as well. Yeah. I'm going to give you another one I know you haven't covered yet. This was a really good week for my family, for Kim, who you know, and some of my Utah crew. I'm going to give a little shout out here. My nephew, and his wife Nan had a baby on election night. A little forest. That's his name, Forest. And Forest had a really rough time in his first day and a half. And things were looking pretty bleak. And he has managed to pull through it with flying colors. So Forest is on his own two feet now and seems to be breathing all right and it's doing well. And we are so happy about that. It's been a real positive

development through a bunch of negative days. So, I just want to give a shout out to that. But a little allegory for all of us, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know what? If I have to take an America with Trump in return for getting to keep Forrest here, I'll do that deal anytime. So super happy for them. Congratulations. And yeah, there we go. All right. Well, thank you for that bright spot. Bit of good news. You're right. We didn't cover that on the beans because that's the first I've heard of it. So congratulations. All right. Let's get into it everybody. On Thursday, Paula Reed at CNN reported that special counsel Jack Smith quote is inactive talks with the Justice Department leadership

about how to end his federal prosecutions of President Trump. According to a justice official familiar with the discussions, DOJ officials are looking at options for how to wind down Trump's two criminal cases over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents, while also complying with a 2020 memo from the Department's Office of Legal Counsel about indictments or prosecutions of sitting presidents. And this Friday, and we'll talk about that memo in a second, because it's not just created out of thin air, out of whole cloth, it's based on constitutional principles. But Friday, Jack Smith filed his motion with Judge Chuckin

and it reads like this. As a result of the election held on November 5th, 2024, the defendant is expected to be certified as president-elect on January 6th, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20th, 2025. The government respectfully requests that the court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance

and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy. By December 2nd, 2024, the government will file a status report or otherwise inform the court of the result of its deliberations. The government has consulted with defense counsel, who does not object to this request. Obviously, I thought maybe they would. I thought maybe like, no, dismiss it now. So I wanted to, that's what the whole thing says, sign Jack Smith. And so I wanted to talk about this because a lot of people are saying Merrick Garland has dismissed the cases or Jack Smith

has dismissed the cases. And this isn't a motion to dismiss. This is a motion to say, don't make us do any other work because right now we need to focus on how we're going to handle the rest of this, given the fact that he's going to be sworn in on January 20th. Right? That's right. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine he's got a lot of lawyers and, and investigators and other folks that are, you know, hotly involved in pretrial preparation right now, responding to getting ready for various different things that are on deadline and getting ready for the next big round, which would be the

arbitration, I guess you want to call it, of the what's immune, what's not process. And so what he wants is basically to call a timeout. Okay, I want to have my people stop working on that stuff, but I don't want to lose any time on the schedule because we have to figure out what's the next step for us. He's implicitly acknowledging that they could come back and say, we want to dismiss the case or seek leave of court to dismiss the case, but they're just not sure yet. They have some serious legal research and conversations and discussions to have, likely to have some of those with DOJ or particular folks at DOJ like OLC to get recommendations or opinions as to where they stand. And that all takes time. So they

want to focus on that right now because that, how they get over that hurdle will determine whether or not they get back to work at all. So this is simply a request to kind of stop the clock and let us figure this out. And just so you know, we're going to continue the Jack podcast to cover this wind down. So we will be going for at least another month here so we can cover what that status report says on December 2nd. But also I want to announce to y'all that either next week, probably next week, we want to do an entire episode of your questions. And so I want you to, as we go through this episode and you listen, think of any questions that you might

have about any of this or anything that we don't talk about or anything that, you know, if you have questions that aren't even related to Jack Smith, send them in to us. There's a link in the show notes. And so I wanted to kind of say that upfront to give everybody the frame of mind to be thinking of your questions as we go through this podcast.

So I wanted to talk about special counsel regs really quick, because, you know because along the lines of folks saying, well, is Garland shutting this down? Is Jack Smith shutting this down? Is anybody shutting this down? Right now they're pausing to decide what they're going to do. But I just want to reiterate here, it's Jack Smith that's calling the shots. He reports to Merrick Garland, but he is independent of Merrick Garland.

There's a big argument of that, why the whole Florida case was dismissed. Okay. That's right. He reports to Merrick Garland, but he is independent of Merrick Garland. There's a big argument of that why the whole Florida case was dismissed. But he's independent of Merrick Garland. But if Jack Smith comes to Merrick Garland and says, for example, I want to indict everybody else. And Garland says, no, I overrule you because he can do that. If he does that, by the regulations, he has to report that to Congress.

That's right. We will know. Congress can't keep a secret for, you know, Jack, you know what. So keep that in mind. Jack Smith is calling the shots on this. And I just wanted to sort of spell that out to look to remind everybody who is in charge of these prosecutions because it's special counsel and he is acting independently, makes all the decisions and calls all the shots. And so far Garland has not overruled him. That's right. He and people get confused about this,

because when it comes time to, when the special counsel decides to charge someone, as you mentioned, he does go to the attorney general and say, this is what I intend to do. And so the attorney general has an opportunity to weigh in there and countermand it, tell him no. But then that provokes the reporting. That doesn't mean that he's not independent.

He still does his investigation. He comes to those conclusions. He comes over to the strategy. He figures out who he wants to prosecute. Those are all his decisions. And they are in all cases so far in this special counsel investigation, we've seen those decisions have been respected by and supported by the attorney general. And the last time he went and told Merrick Garland what he was going to do, he came back with a whole brand new shiny indictment from a whole brand new shiny grand jury. Yeah. Yeah.

This is no different than any other special counsel, right? How about Rob Herr? Rob Herr did his investigation of Biden's handling of classified documents. It took a forever, right? For what it was, it took forever. I know, because DOJ was doing a parallel one on Pence and it took them like a few weeks and they're like, they're like, no, no prosecution. And then Her goes on for months and months and months.

I know people who were involved in that and who were like, this guy is just interviewing every human being who was close to a human being who was standing on the side of the road, who got passed by a car that used to have a person in it who had something to do with the dog. He's interviewing Commander Biden. Yeah. About what happened in the Corvette. I mean, he went everywhere with this.

He went everywhere. And he had his own reasons for that. But that was his schedule. That's his way. Merrick Garland or no one else came in and said, hey, you got to wrap this up. You got to be quicker. You got to be whatever. He did it his own way.

So that's what Jack Smith is doing now. He's trying to figure out how does this development, the election of my subject as president, impact what I can and can't do going forward. He is obligated to follow Justice Department policies and guidelines. He's not so independent that he makes up his own rules. He still has to do things the way DOJ does things. And so that's what he's trying to figure out now. Specifically that policy, that DOJ policy, it dates back to like 2000, I think, in which OLC determined that the department cannot prosecute a sitting president.

And so that's what he's trying to wrestle his way through. And that memo is based on the constitution that says you can't do anything to a sitting president that will impede his ability to execute his duties as the executive. That's kind of where that stems from. It's not just a, we've just decided you can't indict a sitting president. It's based on, that's what the OLC does is they look at the existing laws and give you an opinion about what you can and can't do based on things that already exist. That's right. It's not a courtesy.

It's not something they grant to the president because he's their boss. It is, as you said, founded on constitutional principles. They believe that- Love it or hate it. I mean, you can hate that part of the constitution if you want. Right. When a plurality of Americans stands up and elects someone president of the United States, it wouldn't be right to those people, to any American, whether you voted for him or not, to distract

the president and take him away from his job and his abilities to focus exclusively on what he's doing for the country. And you would do that if you put that person on trial for their liberty. And so that's, you know, agree or disagree, those are their reasons, they're based on the Constitution, it's applied the same to Republican and Democratic presidents. Right, because the Department of Justice doesn't write the laws and they don't uphold the laws,

they execute the laws. That's right. Those memos are based on existing policy and precedent and legal things and statutes and constitutional concerns. So just wanted to put that out there. But I think that, you know, this past July, Andy, you and I reported, we covered it here, that this came out from the Washington Post, that Jack Smith said he was going to run through the tape right up until January 20th with this case. And so because of the

wording of his motion here to ask for more time and to clear the calendar for himself, I think he's respecting, I mean, I don't think he's going against that yet. Do you know what I'm saying? We don't know what it's going to look like yet. We don't know whether or not he's going to run through the tape until Inauguration Day. But he did say prior, just this past summer, day, the election is of no consequence to me. He's not president until January 20th. That's right. So we have to kind of keep that in the back of our heads, right? Yeah.

Although the world is very different now than it was when they said that in July. I think in July, there was still some realistic possibility that they could begin and maybe even complete a trial before January 20th. Right? a trial before January 20th, right? No, I think that because the immunity decision had come out by then. Yeah, but I think they were still kind of clinging on, even if it was only a 1.1% chance as a matter of just kind of stay the course. Yeah, you got to stay the course and see how things develop. And we're not going to back off on this guy just because, you know, we're not going to

get up every morning and look at the polls and decide whether or not to be aggressive with the next motion. Now there's no chance that this case gets resolved before January 20th. Impossible as a result of all the motion filings, the delays, the immunity ruling, most of all. So realistically, if they're going to continue this case, it would be continuing the case against him once he's the sitting president. And that they believe I think probably rightly is contrary to the OLC opinion. Yeah. And we'll see. We'll know more on December 2nd. All right. We have to take a quick break,

but we're going to be right back with the implications of this. We're going to have more discussion and we're going to talk about what Jack Smith's potential options are, what we could see him say on December 2nd. So stick around. We'll be right back. Okay. So now let's talk a bit about what Jack Smith's options are that he will presumably reveal to us on December 2nd. That's the deadline that he's told the court he would get back to them with what their plan is going forward. Right. And keep in mind, this is a non-exhaustive list because he could do something that we didn't think about.

He has that ability. Yes, he does. I didn't think he was going to come back with a whole new indictment. That would come to me by surprise too. So he's smart and cagey and knows what he's doing. But in our kind of sitting in the peanut gallery approach, we've come up with a couple of things that he, you know, there's some of these options are stronger or weaker than other ones, but I think they're all somewhere in the realm of possibility.

And they're the ones people are bringing up on social media, people are messaging me about is this possible? Is that possible? So let's start with the possibility that he could indict everybody else. Remember, months and months ago, we're like, well, if Trump wins the election, he could just indict everybody else, get all the information out there before January 20th, because he'll be fired. So indicting everyone else.

And when I say everybody else, I mean the remaining co-conspirators, maybe other people he was investigating that weren't listed as co-conspirators, members of Congress, you know, anybody, literally anybody else who was involved in the fraudulent electoral scheme, in the coup and the plotting and all of it, the Pence pressure campaign. What are your thoughts about him coming out and indicting everybody else? I think it's the story out. Yeah, sure. I think it's a low likelihood of possibility. A couple of things jump out to me right off the bat. First of all, if he indicts all those people or any of them before

inauguration day, you can pretty much guarantee that anyone who gets indicted will be pardoned after the inauguration. So there is a little bit of a futility involved there. And the mere indictment of these other people doesn't actually get us that much more information than what we already know. Now having seen this case indicted twice in long, detailed speaking indictments with the, what is it, six co-conspirators, unidentified, unindicted co-conspirators who were pretty easy to figure out who they were, we already have a pretty good idea of what the cases

would be against those people. We obviously haven't seen all the evidence, but we have a good idea what the allegations would be. So you don't really accomplish that much in terms of getting information out. You probably, it's a Pyrrhic victory because everyone gets pardoned as soon as Jack gets fired. And finally, if you have continuing cases on the same subject matter, it actually makes it harder to write and release a report. That was going to be my question, because don't you have to close your case before you file your report?

Yeah, you're never going to write a report that includes sensitive investigative information while there is the possibility of a pending prosecution. So I've always thought that if he's focused on writing a kind of a comprehensive report and getting it out there, he'd have to dismiss the cases first because you don't want that sort of conflict kind of you wouldn't you DOJ would never release that kind of information if there were people left to be prosecuted. Yeah and let's talk about the potential of releasing a report because you just mentioned it. Now, regulations say he has to provide one to Garland who then must release it to Congress

once the case is done, right? And if he dismisses the case and it's over, that allows him to write this report and hand it over, which you and I have long said he's probably already written. But also Andy, he kind of has already written and released it to us in the form of the 165 page immunity brief that he filed with Judge Chuckin's docket. That is to me a lot what the report looks like. Now there may be more detail about some of the evidence, but I think, you know, the folks saying release all the evidence, I don't see them releasing, like for example, grand jury evidence. And I want to kind of explain why. Because rules of criminal procedure,

particularly rule 6e, let's take for an example, you can't make public grand jury stuff. You can't. And that's not a Department of Justice decision. It's not as though Merrick Garland or Jack Smith could say, I'm going to release all of the grand jury material. The rules of criminal procedure are written by the judicial conference. They're written by the judicial branch. And it would be the Supreme Court that would decide ultimately if any of these underlying documents could be released. And we have to remember, we talked about this in the Mueller She Wrote podcast, the Jaworski special counsel or independent counsel grand jury materials in the Nixon Watergate case weren't released for 50 years or so. We didn't get them until just a few years ago.

Yeah. And that's when the court, when the judicial conference decided, okay, we can release these now. It won't damage the sacrosanct grand jury. So we could see more detail like we did in the Mueller report about specific evidence and interviews, but it wouldn't be grand jury material because all the grand jury material in the Mueller report is redacted. But we could see a report released, but only like you said, if he actually shuts down the case, which you can't do if you indict everybody else. Yeah. You can't overstate the importance,

Yeah. You can't overstate the importance, just the independent importance and also the level of importance prosecutors put on protecting grand jury information. It's really the lifeblood of the criminal investigative process. And so they follow these guidelines very closely. There are some circumstances in which grand jury information is approved by the court to be made public. Obviously, grand jury information is made public during the course of a trial. But that's clearly not going to happen here. I understand how people see this.

I've been in that camp many times myself. I always think, I want Jack Smith to write the historical compendium on the entirety of January 6. I want to know exactly what he knows and I want to hear his version of history. But I think what you're saying is absolutely right. You have to step back from it and realize like, we have a lot of information already from, forget about the January 6th committee, which obviously revealed a lot of what happened and what Trump did and did not do on January 6th. But even just in this case, we have a lot from those indictments, from this latest immunity

motion, from the massive appendix of evidence. Okay, a lot of it. We had already. Redacted, but a lot of it we had already. So there's a lot out there to begin with. He still has to write a report. It's part of the regulations. He will write something and hand it into the attorney general. It'll be interesting to see what that is. It could be a summary. It could be kind of an overview with his conclusions and recommendations and things like that. It could be a see my immunity brief. Yeah, I don't think it'll be like a super granulated thing for all the reasons we've

just been discussing. It's hard and improper in many cases to release that stuff. But the reason that- I'm sorry to interrupt you, but something that will be included is any declinations to prosecute, right? Yeah, that has to be in there. So that would be new information. And the reason, one of the reasons they give it to the AG is because the AG then his staff goes through it and redacts all the things that they don't want made public if the AG is going

to turn it over to Congress, which they almost always do. Congress always gets a copy of these things. And so it's important for the AG to redact people's names, personally identifying stuff, whatever, or grand jury material. So I think he'll turn something in. I think whatever he turns in, Garland will review it, redact those things he thinks should be left out, and then turn that over to Congress.

But that's a lot to get done in not a particularly long period of time. It is. And something else about the declinations that I just mentioned, and then perhaps other cases that were handed off to other US attorneys, for example, like Appendix D in the Mueller report, all of those that had yet been unknown were redacted. And there

might be, you know, because of not publishing people's names that haven't been charged, which is a rule, you might not see the decl- the declinations could be redacted. So I just want to prepare everybody for the eventuality that whatever Jack Smith decides to do, we're likely not going to see much, if any, information that we didn't already have. That's right. That's right. Yeah, the declinations are weird because again, you don't want to put someone's name out there who did not get charged with anything. But on the other hand, people who receive declinations very often make them public because they want the public to now see.

They couldn't find anything that I had done wrong. As someone who received a declination and then did exactly that, I know how that process works. Right. With Donald Trump, for example, in the Mueller report, his name wasn't redacted. It was like, we declined to prosecute him and here's why. But here's all the relevant information. Because at that point, Trump's not going to be sad that he wasn't charged. So yeah, there's a lot of different things that the department is going to have sad that he wasn't charged. So, yeah, there's a lot of different things that the department is going to have to weigh and it's not just Merrick Garland. There's teams

of people that go over these things that are experts on what needs to be redacted, what's exempted from being redacted. And so those rules, again, written by the judicial conference, not by DOJ. So it's not like Merrick Garland could wave a wand and say, I'm not going to redact any of this. Ha ha ha. Right. So I'm sorry. I know you were hoping for more. Not you, but I was. We all are. We all want more. Whatever we get, we want more than that. Yeah. And even if we do, let's talk about if we do get some new stuff,

a bonanza or there's an indictment or release the hounds or whatever, does it even matter? Does it matter? I mean, I guess it's good to have the truth and transparency is great. It matters to us, you and me. And it matters to the people who are listening to us now because they're interested in these things.

They wanna stay informed on them, which I think is great. But in the same way that Trump held his victory party at the White House after the Mueller report came out and said total exoneration, which it completely was not total exoneration, that's what people will do. You know, whatever Jack Smith comes out with, depending on how you feel about Donald Trump. You'll see it very differently They won't you know if we get new information half the country won't care about it But they'll remember is see he's they tried to get him and they couldn't yeah, and it's not like There's going to be any accountability for any of the trove of new information that comes out and let's talk about that final point Because a lot of people want to know

kind of like for accountability sake or or it comes out. And let's talk about that final point because a lot of people want to know for accountability sake or could people be indicted and the cases be held? Do you remember back in the day there was a lot of chatter about Mueller filing indictments under seal for later and all that stuff, none of which came to fruition. And so I wanted to sort of address the idea that these cases could be on hold and revived if 2028 goes for the Dems. And I just want to first say no, because everyone will be pardoned. Yeah. And then we can talk about, even if they aren't, what the other implications might be.

But that precludes really any other discussion, but we can still have the discussions. Yeah, it really does. And you can't seal cases. You couldn't indict someone and then seal it, have the court seal it, and then just let it sit there hoping that the administration that's coming in now wouldn't know about it. Like they're gonna know, they know.

DOJ knows what indictments are out there. Yeah, there's no secret docket like Eileen Cannon has where you can just hold it on the side. It's not sealed from DOJ. They're responsible for it. So they would know who was indicted and then those people would be pardoned. Or the cases would be tossed for some faulty OLC memo reason, like what Bill Barr did with the Mueller obstruction stuff.

So let's put that aside. There are other reasons not to do it. The first that comes to me is simply that it would be 2028, right? Assuming a new administration comes in, let's say a democratic administration comes in in 28, so then what? We revive these old prosecutions like the case is old by then. This case is eight years old. I say yes, but there's obstacles, right? Like you're going to be able to impeach every single witness because memories aren't fresh.

Exactly. All your witnesses, their recollections are softening. It's just, it's not getting, cases cases don't get better with age, unless for some reason you stumbled across brand new evidence, which is not going to happen during the period that the case, these, these phantom indictments are sealed. So that's a bad thing. And then also there's just the political reality of like, even in that situation, if a new administration, even a democratic administration came in in 28, are they going to want to like go down this road again? My guess is no, this is something that's in the past that a new

administration is not going to want to be bogged down with. So I find that, you know, like you said, it doesn't get past the pardon issue, but even if it did, there's all kinds of reasons that you might not want to do that. Yeah. And I don't necessarily believe in the, it's old and let's move forward, Sitch, but there's just too many legal obstacles to making it a reality. So yeah, very, very good points. But yeah, the pardon thing just sort of usurps it. You can't hide an indictment from the next attorney general, whoever it might be. No, they would know. And that would be that would be swept away quite quickly with pardons.

Yeah. All right. We have to take another quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about your buddy, Rod Rosenstein. Sweet. I know you're excited. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey everybody, welcome back. So your pal Rod Rosenstein tweeted today, Andy, he said, the Justice Department didn't prosecute people unless it was justified by the facts and the law during President Trump's first term, and it probably

won't do so in his second term." That quote comes from a CNN article that he shared, and we'll talk about how laughable that quote is in a moment. I want to get through this article. John Fritz writes, the roiling debate over the strength of democratic restraints to keep Donald Trump in check when he returns to the White House in January has put a renewed focus on a divisive Supreme Court ruling that some fear could enable his worst impulses. Trump's sweeping election victory has relit fears on the left of an empowered president

pushing the boundaries of his authority, only now with a precedent in hand that grants far-reaching immunity from criminal prosecution. Taken together, the political and legal alignment will usher Trump into a second term with unprecedented power following a campaign in which he vowed to fire special counsel Jack Smith within two seconds of his inauguration and has flirted with the idea that President Joe Biden himself could be a convicted felon.

Now I'm not sure because he has immunity too, but that's really up to the Supreme Court. Yeah. Quote, for 250 years, the possibility of criminal prosecution operated as a guardrail on the conduct of our presidents. That's Neil Eggleston, a veteran attorney who served as White House counsel in the Obama administration. He went on to say, that guardrail is gone now. And I see few, if any, others that will constrain President Trump. Yeah. So the article continues, but just how far that immunity extends is murky. The Supreme Court's six to three decision left many questions unanswered and lower

courts have not yet wrestled with them. And they may not get the chance. Within hours of Trump winning, Smith was discussing with the Justice Department officials how to wind down the federal cases against him. What is exceptionally clear in the Supreme Court's ruling from July is the notion that a president's discussions with Justice Department officials are completely immune from prosecution. Smith's first indictment in the election subversion case alleged that Trump

pressured department officials to quote quote conduct sham election crime investigations and send letters to states falsely claiming election day problems as a part of a broader effort to encourage them to submit fake electors for certification. But the Supreme Court majority ruled that a president's power to direct the Justice Department's investigative and prosecutorial work is within his exclusive constitutional authority. Trump, the majority ruled, quote, is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials. When Smith submitted a new indictment this summer, Trump's alleged interactions with

the Justice Department were gone. Going forward, those interactions are of particular concern for ethics experts. The same would presumably apply to Trump's oversight of intelligence services and the military, though the high court wasn't explicit on those points. Quote, at least for the short term, the problem is the Justice Department said Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. The president has near complete control. Yeah. And that's frightening. And Richard Painter literally wrote the book on government

ethics. That's right. Article goes on to say Trump supporters brush aside the remarks as campaign hyperbole, an extension of the Locker Up chance at his 2016 rallies that were meant to intimidate Hillary Clinton but never materialized once he entered office. Others pointed to institutional checks on a president's power that were in place during Trump's first term and remain today. While the Supreme Court granted former presidents wide immunity, the ruling made no such promises to aides in the White House or Justice Department. That could create a line of defense against a president pushing to edge, pushing to the edge of the law. On

the other hand, Trump has made clear that he learned from his first term when White House aides frequently stepped in to thwart him and has made clear that this time around he will install loyalists instead. And a president has significant pardon powers. You and I just talked about that, Andy. Supreme Court on Friday is also considering whether to hear arguments in an appeal from former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who wants to move his Georgia federal election subversion case to federal court, where he will raise his own immunity claims. A decision could come as soon as Tuesday. The Supreme Court's immunity

ruling this year also doesn't change the way federal prosecutors think about evidence, the law, and the types of cases that can eventually move forward before a judge. Even the conservative Supreme Court and several lower courts repeatedly blocked Trump, who according to a study last year had the worst win rate at the high court of any modern president. Quote, there's no law against the president expressing his opinion about who should or shouldn't be prosecuted, but the constitution and ethics rules prohibit prosecutors from selecting people for prosecution based on their political views. That's a quote from Rod Rosenstein.

Has he met John Durham or David Weiss or Robert Hur? He knows them. He knows them. I know he knows them. I know he actually had some discussions with Robert Hur about you. They say he's a veteran attorney who worked in the Justice Department in three presidential administrations and he told this to CNN and he went on to say, and here's the quote, the department didn't investigate people unless it was justified by the facts in the law during

the president's first term and it probably won't do so in the second term. Andy, do you have any response to the assertion from Rod Rosenstein that Trump's Justice Department in the first term didn't investigate people unless it was justified by facts and the law? Yeah. So, I really feel like this is very right on the nose performance by Rod, who is assiduously involved in kind of constantly cleansing his reputation from his time in the Trump Justice Department. For those who are playing at home but don't remember, Rod was the Deputy Attorney General, first Deputy Attorney General

in the Trump Justice Department. May 1st and only, right? You think he stayed for the whole time. In any case, this is under Attorney General Sessions. Sessions recused from the Russia investigation, which made Rod the acting attorney general for that investigation. Now, Rod is also the guy who, in the course of just a couple of days, first helped Trump

fire Jim Comey, then offered to wear a wire against Trump in the White House to collect evidence of his obstruction of justice, and then begged to be connected with Jim Comey so he could call him on the phone and ask him what to do. So my point here is that Rod has a somewhat bizarre track record of kind of being all over different sides of the same issue, but he typically lands in the spot that is most protective of his own reputation. And I think that's kind of what he's doing with that first quote.

He's ostensibly talking about the Justice Department and the Trump administration, but it's really, he's talking about himself. Yeah. Well, you know, and they did investigate people when it wasn't justified. Yeah, of course. They did. And I thought it was also interesting the way he phrases this here. He says, Justice Department didn't prosecute people unless it was justified by the facts

in the law during President Trump's first term, and it probably won't do so in his second term. I just think that this is a very careful way of phrasing what he's thinking about there. He's not really coming down on the side of full confidence for the second term. Probably, probably not. Probably, probably not. Maybe, maybe not. And this whole, we didn't prosecute people unless it was justified by the facts and law. I'm sure, let's take my case as an example.

No, he said they didn't investigate people unless it was justified by the facts and the law. So maybe that's his way of saying, we did try to prosecute people that wasn't justified. But we had a justification to open an investigation. Maybe that's what he's trying to say. You know, people who are investigated for no apparent reason, I know some of these people, one of them really well, that being me, the investigation part sucks.

It's not just the fact that you didn't get indicted. The existence of an investigation, especially one that the Justice Department decides to tell the world about, even though that sort of business is supposed to be done outside the eyes of the public, it's incredibly disruptive to your life and to your reputation. It's your ability to find work. It cuts you off from your friends and former colleagues. That's the retribution. It doesn't have to be jail.

It doesn't have to be an indictment. Yeah. Just the investigation itself or some of the more stringent IRS audits, for example. I don't know if you know anybody that ran into those. I do. I know two people, one of those being me and the other being Jim Comey, who got subjected to those as well. So yeah, I take, I mean, sorry Rod, I'm not really sharing your confidence about round two.

And I don't really share your review of the success of round one either. Well, especially because Trump has said multiple times with his mouth, I am going to go after people. I mean, so yeah. with his mouth, I am going to go after people. So yeah, and you know, you talk about the protections, you know, how the Supreme Court, the conservatives, I don't like to call them that, but the extreme justices on the Supreme Court justified presidential immunity by saying we don't need rogue prosecutors all the time, going around investigating everybody all the time, and Justice Sotomayor is like,

well, we've got so many protections in place. And I think Justice Jackson said this too. We've got grand juries, we've got judges, we've got circuit courts, we've got the Supreme Court, we've got a pedant juries, we have a trial, we have appeals, we have a million different things in place to ensure. And if memory serves, I think your case was brought

to a grand jury and they said no. Then it was brought to a second grand jury and they're like, no, still no. So those protections were in place and did hold. But for him to say, I don't think there's going to be any vindictive or selective prosecution in a second Trump term, I think it's just extremely short-sighted, but it also reveals who he is and what his character is, which is to just fall somewhere where he just doesn't get in trouble with anyone, but maybe everyone a little bit, but not anyone in a serious way. I think you're right about that. It's a bit rich, right? It's like first he gives himself an A plus grade for his time in round one, which I'm

not sure I would agree with that. And then he says, and then I think they'll probably get an A plus as well. I'm sorry. There's a lot more, there's a lot more in-depth analysis to go on here to figure out exactly what we need to be looking for and aware of in this new Trump administration. And as you said, maybe you start with, give the guy the benefit of the doubt,

listen to what he says, and believe him. Like, blithely dismissing everything as campaign rhetoric, not a great strategy when he's said over and over and over again, he's going to go after the enemies, he's going to investigate and prosecute the enemies, the vermin within, who he then identified by name, at least two, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. I mean, this is not, and these were not in moments of, you know, entirely just moments standing behind the podium looking for applause at a rally.

They were in one-on-one interviews with journalists who gave him many off ramps and opportunities to soften the things that he had said in the past, but instead, you know, he doubles down. So he said that. Now on top of that, those expressions of intent, let's get this back to prosecution theory, that would all be evidence of intent. On top of that, you look at the circumstances around him are very different than they were in 2016. The kind of legitimate people who are there to kind of keep them within the guard rails, tell them when things are illegal, probably not a good idea, they're gone.

Right, like Don McGahn saying, you can't fire the special counsel. Exactly. You're going to have a Stanley Woodward. Right. Replaced by flunkies who will make things happen. He's also not ever running for reelection. So that concern, that perception that I need to, it would look bad for me if everyone in the Justice Department quit on the same day and walked out of the building. He doesn't care anymore. He don't care. And then finally, there's immunity.

The immunity decision is the magic coat that cloaks him now and protects him from any accountability. So with that intent combined with these circumstances, I think we could be in for a rough road. Yeah. Yeah, as Justice Jackson said, I think we're about to see the Oval Office become the seat of criminality in the United States. Yeah.

And Rod's confidence, I guess I'll say, that maybe DOJ would never go along with this, come on. I mean, Jeff Clark was part of DOJ and he was right there up for the election thing, wrote the letters, submitted them for signature. So yeah, no, these are a million examples. I was just the first one that came to my mind. All right, everybody, we're going to take one last quick break. We're going to come back, talk up just a minute about the Florida case, and then we'll take

some listener questions. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Welcome back. The Florida case. So as we know, Judge Eileen Cannon, who is on the list of possible attorneys general in the second Trump term, dismissed the case, you know, for espionage and obstruction of justice, against Walt Notta, Carlos de la Vera, and Donald Trump, dismissed it on the faulty grounds that Jack Smith was appointed and funded improperly. Jack Smith appealed to the 11th circuit as he said he would, and that appeal seems to still be going forward for now. And unlike the DC case, there are two co-conspirators indicted alongside Trump, as I said, that's

Nauta and De La Vera, who aren't presidents, nor do they have immunity. And we have listener questions about this case and the co-conspirators this week, right? We do, yeah. So a couple of people have talked about, have written in questions about that case and specifically what happens to the case and what happens to the co-conspirators, the other defendants in the case. Honestly, I think that case probably goes away as well. Right. Because Nancy wrote in, right, with a question about this specifically, didn't she? Yes, she did.

So she said, now that Jack Smith looks to run up his Trump cases, can he still prosecute the co-conspirators? DOJ policy only applies to sitting presidents. What about Nauta and Dale Lavera, Jeff Clark and all the others from January 6th? So that's Nancy's question. We have, and a few others wrote in very similar questions. We have talked about the January 6th co-conspirators, why it's unlikely that those folks will be indicted. Obviously Nauta and Dale Lavera are in a very different position. They're already defendants in the case. They were indicted and presented and they've been charged and they're moving towards prosecution. So it's on, okay. So if Jack Smith decides in the January 6th case that he can't, because

of the OLC opinion, the DOJ policy, he can no longer continue to push that case forward until January 6th because it doesn't really have a chance of going to trial before January 6th, or I'm sorry, January 20th when Trump becomes president. That same sort of logic would apply here. And I think because it's basically impossible for this case, it's not even going to get heard and decided by the 11th circuit probably before January 20th, right? I imagine not. Unlikely.

But like, he would have to first of all file a motion to remove Trump from the case. And then he would have to say, all right, now let's decide whether or not a special counsel is appointed and funded appropriately. And it may be worth it to him not to see Olivero or anything continue the case or be remanded back down, but to get the decision perhaps about special counsels going forward. I think that, yeah, although I think that if they think they can't do anything in the January 6 case, I think they'll actually pull the appeal in this case.

I think they'll say this one has to stop as well because there's no way we can complete it before he's inaugurated. And could they leave, could they just pull it? Could they just pull him out of the case and leave the other two? I mean, I guess they could, but- Well, yeah. I mean, he could not indict anybody on January 6th and wrap up and give a report. But if he continues, if he pulls

Trump off the Florida case and continues with De Lavera and Nauta, he won't be able to write a final report on this case. And so in the interest of putting out a final report on this case, maybe he might just drop the case and then file his report if he does decide to file a report. Or he might say, we need a, this is an important legal question about now we've got a conflicting opinion in a district court in the 11th, you know, in, in down in Southern Florida that says that independent council should never exist again and we need a decision there. And so maybe he hangs out and stays on that case. He could do both of those things at the same time and then end up being fired anyway on January 6th, because now De Lavera are going to be pardoned

anyhow. I think they will. And I think there's also a fairness issue here. I don't think they're going to let this case go forward against these two guys who had a wildly smaller role in the charge conduct than the main defendant who now we've determined can't be prosecuted. So I think under normal rules, there are no normal rules in this case. There's nothing normal about any of these cases. I think DOJ would just pull the entire thing. Well, in other big cases that you've worked on, if you're going after like a mob boss or something, and there's some little guys that are wrapped up as co-conspirators and the mob boss, I don't know, passes away or is no longer part of the case.

Do you still go after the little guys? It depends, right? It depends on a case. Those guys committed like independent crimes, yeah, as part of the family, but like maybe they went out and did a homicide or something. Those cases would probably keep going. But it's awfully awkward for the government when things happen like, do you remember the Iraq case, the Nyser Square case, where you had the contractors who got in this firefight

with a bunch of civilians and killed a whole bunch of people? And that case has a super tortured past, so I don't want to go into all the details of it. whole bunch of people. And in that case has a super tortured past. So I don't want to go into all the details of it, but you know, they had one of the contractors came on board, took a plea and was a cooperator against the others. And then the others were ultimately released with pardons. And so the cooperators left serving time, right? Like that's a real inequity that DOJ does not want to have if they don't. And it's just that there's an unfairness to that sort of result. So yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine that they would allow the general, the Mar-Lago document case to continue because you have the same problem

with Trump being president before the case is finished. And if you're going to pull the case from him, I mean, there's really no point in going to trial against Nauta and De La Vera. Right. Well, we'll see. We'll see what happens. And obviously we'll report it to you here on the Jack podcast. Karen wrote in and said she was watching Glenn Kirschner and Brian Tyler Cohen and said among the points made, opinion stated was Jack may need to dismiss the case per the OLC memo stating the justice department should not prosecute a sitting president.

And I think we've covered that. I think, yes, that's one of the reasons. And we talked about where the OLC memo comes from. What do we, what other, what else do we have? That's one of the reasons. And we talked about where the OLC memo comes from. What else do we have? Well, she says that she remembers a recent discussion on the podcast where Judge Chuckin said she's not bound by justice department policy. Can she take a stand to not dismiss?

And she goes on to say this would be echoes of the Mike Flynn situation. Perhaps Trump would try to pardon himself. It's a really good reference and it's good because it gives us an opportunity to explain that. So if you remember in the Flynn case, Flynn came in and stood up and pled guilty and was convicted based on his plea. Then he filed a motion to take his plea back. And the government continued to prosecute him. And I'm trying to remember, this is another tortured one. So this, this is the one that Barr came in and said, we want to, now we

want to dismiss the case against Flynn. And the way that actually works is the prosecution has to go in and request leave of court to dismiss the case. They can't just say, you know, it's the judge that dismisses the case. So the judge does have some ability here to weigh in and say, no. And in the Flynn case, it was really acute because Flynn had already admitted guilt. And now then he backed away from the admission. And so it was a mess. And the judge said, okay, hold on a second. I'm going to request amicus briefs basically to give me arguments on both sides of the issue. And as that was proceeding, eventually Trump stepped in and pardoned Flint so we never

got a complete resolution to it. Here the government would have to probably do the same thing. They would go in and file a motion requesting leave of court to drop the case. But I think Chuck is going to grant it in this particular case because she refused to, I guess she has the authority to do that, but it would be, she would be shut down by the DC circuit. Yeah, it would be kind of ridiculous or, or an especially and eventually the Supreme Court. And again, that is because the constitution says you can't do this.

This is the president, the people elected him. He's got to be able to be free to do his thing. Yeah. And it's, it would be DOJ coming in and say, listen, as a result of the change in circumstances, we have now determined that by our department of justice policy, we can no longer proceed with this case. So, so Chutkin is not going to weigh in and say like, no, you're, you're interpreting your policy wrong. She's going to go, that's a, that's a very relevant and reasonable request that the government has to make. It's She's going to go, that's a very relevant and reasonable request that the government has to make. It's unfortunate, but it's understandable and clearly

lawful. So she's going to grant it. Yeah. And my guess, if I had to guess what was going to go on here, my guess would be that on December 2nd, they would file a motion to dismiss this, if not both cases, which she would grant. And then he might say he's going to file his report. He might not and just file his report or he might not file a report, but regulations say he has to. So I am pretty convinced that if he moves to dismiss the case or cases that whatever case is dismissed, that she'll grant that and that he will submit a report to Garland who then has to submit it to Congress.

He's not a guy who's not gonna follow the rules. Right, now what that report looks like, that field is wide open, right? It could be a massive report like the Mueller report with a lot of stuff redacted, or it could be a letter. It could be a couple page letter, basically saying, see my indictments and this motion and that motion and like a very top level

kind of wave top summary and an explanation as to why he's not going any further. So we really have no idea. It's like every turn of the screw in this case, it's a new ground and we'll have to just, you know, sit back and see what happens. Yep. And we will tell you what happens. We'll be here. Like I said, we're not going anywhere. And we've got some really exciting stuff in the works. So is there any other final questions here? I'm looking, I'm looking. I think we covered most of these. Laura asked about whether or not the two federal cases can be put on hold until after the term is up. We just talked about that a few minutes ago.

I guess this last one, which I thought was kind of interesting, I didn't think about this. That's a pretty cool question. Yeah, it's a Fennu-Lenu special. So there you go. If the documents case is terminated, who gets custody of the confiscated documents? Do they go to the government or back to Trump? Well, both, my friend, Fennu, because first of all, the government already has the documents. They may have had to give some back to

Trump in the course of discovery, but technically the government is in possession of the documents. But now he's president again, which means they're his. Everything is the president's. President doesn't even have a clearance because as president, you're entitled to all of the government's information and then you make the rules as to who gets access to that information and how we protect it or not. So yeah, it's the government's information, which means on January 20th, it'll be President Trump's information. That is probably the most frightening thought that we could leave you with.

There you go. And you know, I'm just so devastated by this election result because of things like this. And every day I'll think of something and I did like over like every hour I'll think of something new that occurs to me. Like for instance, he's going to have his hands on every single classified secret that we have. It's things like that. You know, and even on the other side, we don't get to have Tim Walz as a vice president. I was really looking forward to that, you know?

Yeah, good guy. So it's, these things are going to keep hitting us and we encourage you to take a break when you need to. But we will be here for you. Yes. And if you have questions, as I said, we're going to have a full on just questions episode. And it doesn't have to be restrained to what we talked about today or what we've talked about for the last 102 episodes now. It can be about anything. You can even just vent to us. Yeah.

But, but because you know, Andy, I'm glad that you thought of this idea. I think the most important thing we can focus on right now is a community and that people aren't alone. And that's why I think it's such a great idea to bring everybody into this next episode so that we can have these discussions. We will figure out a plan. We will do work. We will put our heads down.

We aren't giving up on anything. As Vice President Kamala Harris said, it's not a time to throw up our hands. It's a time to roll up our sleeves. But community right now, your loved ones, friends, family, voices that you trust, I think it's so important to commune with them right now. And so that's why I'm loving that we're gonna do this questions episode. Yeah, I am as well.

That's really well put. I agree with you. It's a tough week. There's a lot to handle, certainly. Step back, take a break from things here and there. But boy, so many of you have invested so much time and attention and you've been so generous with that, with us to listen to what we have to say every week. And in the course of doing that, you've taken on so much information and such a deep

understanding of these cases and how the system works and what the people in that system are doing for the good, bad or otherwise. And you've built this knowledge and understanding of this process and your country as a result. Don't let that go away. You know, stay tuned in. And there is a direction forward for our conversations about these things. Allison, you and I are trying to figure out

exactly what that is. And when we have a keen view of it, we'll share that with the audience. But for the meantime, until this case is dismissed and the gavel comes down, we'll be here on Fridays and we'll be talking about all the stuff and it'll be a place you can reconvene to hear the things that you're interested in. We record on Fridays and it comes out on Sunday. And you know, all that knowledge that you just talked about, Andy, that everybody has now, you are now extra armed to be able to execute chapter two in Timothy Snyder's book

on tyranny, which is to defend institutions. All of you are now armed to do that in the next four years, and it's going to be critical work. So we thank you. We will see you next week. Send your questions in. Click on the link in the show notes to submit your questions. Rants, and they don't have to be limited to the Jack Smith investigations. Just anything you want to say to Andy and I. Andy and me. I always get that wrong.

Or me. All right. You know what? I'm going to go back to grammar school here. I've had like three french fries since Tuesday. I need to eat. I need to get the focus back in my mind. I need to do something sure or something. But we'll be here with you. We aren't going anywhere.

And the fight goes on. Thank you so much. I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe.