Jack - Episode 11 - Mike Pence Subpoena (feat. Barb McQuade; Hugo Lowell)

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

This week: Former Vice President Mike Pence receives a subpoena from the Special Counsel’s Office; the DoJ and ODNI offer Congress a briefing on their risk assessment of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago; the looming indictment from Fani Willis could have ripple effects on the Special Counsel probe; Rep. Scott Perry’s secret privilege battle over the contents of his phone; and more.Follow our guest:Barb McQuadeLaw Professor; Former US Attorneyhttps://twitter.com/barbmcquadeHugo LowellInvestigative Reporter with The Guardianhttps://twitter.com/hugolowellDo you have questions? Click here: https://formfaca.de/sm/PTk_BSogJFollow the Podcast on Apple Podcasts:https://apple.co/3BoVRhNCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on Twitter, but you can buy his book The Threathttps://www.amazon.com/Threat-Protects-America-Terror-Trump-ebook/dp/B07HFMYQPGWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyhttp://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortThis 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

When is the last time you didn't fill enough? If you relate to that question, check out the podcast authentically us. This is where we talk about what it means to be authentic and everything that you do and every space that you occupy. Join us on this journey. I signed in order appointing Jack Smith. And nobody knows you. And those who say, Jack is a finesse. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor.

Wait, what law have I written? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is. Send me to jail. Hello everyone, welcome to episode 11 of Jack. It is Sunday, February 12, 2023. And this week is full of the most significant special counsel investigation news we've seen since we've started the show 11 weeks ago.

The former vice president, Mike Pence, has been issued a subpoena by Jack Smith. And while that is the biggest news in the probes thus far, there's a lot more going on this week in the special counsel's office. I'm your co-host, Alison Gill. And this is Andy McCabe, and as always, Alison, you are right. A lot to cover today. So we'll be chatting with Hugo Lowell about his reporting on the DOJ and ODNI offering Congress a briefing on their risk assessment of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Also, the ripple effect of a Fannie Willis indictment and what that could have on the special counsel probe. Representative Scott Perry's secret privilege battle over the contents of his phone

and the testimony of Chad Wolf and Robert O'Brien. There's so much to cover. We certainly aren't seeing a shortage of news from the special council's office. But first, let's answer a listener question, Andrew. So again, you know, another great week of really penetrating questions. I wish we could get to them all, but we're just going to do one this week. And this week's question comes from CJ. And she starts out, high beans, babes, and Andrew McCabe. I don't know. Should I be a little offended that I'm not in the group referred to as the beans, babes,

maybe? Well, you're generally referred to as Andy McBabe. So I think you could probably include you in that group. All right, I'll take it. I will definitely take that. Okay, the question continues as the proud boys and oath keepers trials and sentencing goes forward. Why are these two groups not designated as domestic terror groups by the FBI and Homeland Security? At least the last time I checked, they were not. And why aren't the leaders getting enhanced sentences under the terrorist act?

So this is a really good question. And it kind of goes right to the heart of how we treat domestic terrorism very differently than international terrorism. And one of the many differences there are between those two sides is we don't designate terror groups on the domestic side. So there isn't really the same sort of listing of terrorist organizations. And talking about domestic extremists. On the international side, there is, right, because it's basically illegal to be a member of an international terrorist organization. Once you've been designated like Al-Qaeda or ISIS or Philin, your favorite terrorist group here,

that designation basically makes anyone who provides material support to those groups or provides them self to those groups because a member of those groups and acts on their behalf. You become vulnerable to some of the terrorist legislation that could send you to jail for a very long time. It's very different on the domestic side because of the essentially because of first amendment rights and the fact that domestic terrorism, although it is defined in federal law, it is not criminalized. So there's a, there's a definition of domestic terrorism and it basically means any violent crime that you commit for the purpose of coercing or intimidating a population and done for, you know, here in the continental United States.

So inexplicably, when you're looking at groups that are advocating for political causes, that is at the heart of the First Amendment's protections, political speech is some of the most protected speech that we have. And so we have to be very careful when we're investigating groups on the domestic side that we're. And so we have to be very careful when we're investigating groups on the domestic side that we're looking at them basically because of their involvement in or

advocation for violent crimes. And that's why we don't designate political groups as domestic terror groups. It would probably not survive constitutional scrutiny. So that's essentially why there's no such list. And then what about, you know, we were wondering, and you know, we've talked a little bit on some other podcasts about sentence and guidelines and adding a domestic terror, sort of enhancement to some of these issues. And I know that this listener, or to, you know, some of these issues. And I know that the solicitor, or to you know, some of these charges,

this list was asking about that, why hasn't it been added? Well, I actually, we haven't seen from the office of probation or from the Department of Justice a sentencing memo on any of these folks who have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. So I don't think we know yet whether or not they're going to try to enhance the sentence

with a domestic terror enhancement. Do I have that right? I mean, that's where that would appear, right? And this in the sentencing recommendations from the department. It would, although those terrorism enhancements typically only apply to people who are convicted of engaging in something connected to international terrorism. Those are the IT laws carry those enhancements.

In other words, if you are plotting on behalf of Al-Qaeda and you are arrested by the FBI and you are interviewed and you make false statements, you could be charged with 18 USC 2001, which is the false statement charge. And if you're convicted of that, of making a false statement to conceal an act of terrorism, then the sentencing of the terrorism sentencing enhancement applies to that 2001 charge. And it makes it much more serious, much longer term in prison.

We don't, I don't believe we have those same sort of enhancements on the domestic terrorism side because you're essentially talking about convicting people for simple criminal acts, assault, murder, use of a weapon of mass destruction, things like that. There is no being convicted for an act of domestic terrorism, because domestic terrorism, even though it's defined in statute, it is not defined as a crime. That makes any sense. There's a lot of people right now, myself among them, who are arguing that one of the many things we need to do

to step up our mitigation of the threat of domestic violent extremism is to actually make domestic terrorism a federal crime. Some folks say we don't need to, because you know, you have all these other great criminal laws that you can apply in many of these situations. Yeah, that's true, but it's hard to do often for the folks who investigate domestic terrorism.

Very frequently, FBI agents end up having to go to local and state prosecutors to try to bring prosecutions against their domestic terrorism subjects because they're just aren't adequate laws at the federal level that address that sort of conduct. So certainly something we'd like to see come out of Congress I would, but I'm not holding my breath. Yeah, especially when like almost half of Congress participated in some of these crimes. So yeah, I could see how they might not want there to be any kind of enhancement but I am looking forward to see what or how they address that or if they even address it in the

sentencing recommendations that have yet to come out at least that I've seen and Specifically with regard to the Citizens' Conspiracy Convictions that we have recently got with the Oath Keepers and then some additional Oath Keepers. And now we know that the Proud Boys trial is continuing on as we speak. That's right. Those are really interesting questions.

We do not see a lot of convictions and sentencing for a Citizens' Conspiracy in this country, which is a great thing. And so yeah, I think everybody's kind of sitting back to see how this one's gonna play out. Yeah, and which table they use, because it's so rare that we don't have a table for seditious conspiracy.

They're gonna have to use either obstructing an official proceeding or treason or something close to it that we do have a table for. I'm very interested to see how that comes out in the wash with when those sentencing recommendations come out. All right, hey, Andy, it's Sapena time. I feel like we should have a song.

It's my favorite time of the year. It's Sapena time. Love it. Love it. Yeah, and I want to talk about, before we get to the big daddy of Sapena, I want to talk about a couple of other ones that were, I guess, followed through on, but we're issued earlier. First of all, we have Chad Wolf.

Okay. He sat for an hour interview, a four hour interview, excuse me, with the FBI and DOJ staff, and they're looking at, again, whether Trump and his allies meddled or influenced or tried to overturn the election. Now, he was a former acting Homeland Security Secretary. And this is part of special counsel, Jack Smith's probe into efforts by the former guy and his allies to overturn the election. And that's according to a person familiar. The government questioned him about where he was during the insurrection by Trump supporters at the capital, but he didn't have much to

provide because he was out of country during, before, during and after January 6th. And that's again, according to this source. And you know, oftentimes like we've said, these sources tend to be the lawyers for these folks so that they can get out ahead of this stuff. But we don't know who this source is. But that, it feels like that here. He was also asked about his department's role in the 2020 election. And, you know, as we know, Trump was trying to get the DHS to seize voting machines along with the Department of Justice and the DOD and the DOJ. I mean, he went everywhere knocking on the door trying to get people to seize

voting machines. And so it'll be interesting to see where this goes. And I think there were also questions, and this comes from Johnny McIntes' testimony, right? Also questions about the statement that Krebs made who worked for one of the sub agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, where he said, hey, this is the most secure election ever. And Trump went through McIntes to try to get that guy fired. agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, where he said, hey, this is the most secure election ever.

And Trump went through Macinty to try to get that guy fired. He was eventually fired. And of course, I think they sort of fudged the story about why they decided to fire crebs. But there was a lot going on behind the scenes about that statement. And that could go toward intent. So I think that Chad Wolf might have some things to offer, even though he wasn't in country on the day of January 6th. Yeah, as we know, A.G.

You know, much of the really questionable and potentially illegal activity took place not on January 6th, but in the, you know, weeks leading up to it. Certainly the day is leading up to it. We have some of our really key meetings, the great showdown in the Oval Office with DOJ and Jeffrey Clark and Donald Trump. So it's going to be really interesting to see what Chad Wolf has to say. I'll also point out that this is kind of the standard way of interacting with a witness who is cooperative, not necessarily a signed up cooperating witness, but somebody who is not resisting the investigators. And that is, you come in for a very long interview

with FBI agents and prosecutors before you're ever sat down in front of the grand jury. Prosecutors want to know what do you know, right? They want to know what sort of know, right? They want to know what sort of questions to ask. It's also an opportunity, likely somebody like Chad Wolf goes to that interview with an attorney. It's an opportunity for your attorney to kind of negotiate with prosecutors to maybe stay away from certain areas that you really don't want to talk about from one reason or another. So these are like really wide in scope and they help the prosecution, the investigative team, really target whatever testimony that witness

is gonna end up giving in the grand jury. Yeah, that's such a good point. And you know, like you said, there's so much that went on in the days and weeks and months leading up to January 6th and even after that Chad Wolf would know, especially all of that staff shuffling and removal of people and replacement of people after post-election, lame duck, and also,

maybe some of the characterizations that some of these higher level cabinet members might have had of how Trump, whether Trump thought he actually lost the election or not, because again, that's something else that's going to be important to prove. And then we also had Robert O'Brien, a testify former National Security Advisor. He was subpoenaed in both investigations, the one in classified documents and the January 6th, and that's according to sources familiar. He's been asserting executive privilege in

declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him according to the source. So we might have a behind the scenes privilege battle there as well. And we have to remember he actually considered resigning after January 6th, but decided to stay on. That was from previous reporting from CNN, National Security Council, quote, should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at the end of the Trump presidency. And O'Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago. So I think that this, he probably testified to both grand juries. I'm assuming, you know, assuming that there's separate grand juries for January 6th and for the documents case, but he would have inside information on the, you know, the packing up and moving of those documents.

He definitely should. And he's also, you know, similar to Chad Wolf. He's a guy who's right there in the West Wing. In the days and weeks leading up to January 6th, he is no doubt having multiple face-to-face interactions and conversations with Trump. And all of that makes him a possible witness for statements that could be indicative of Trump's intent. And that is the kind of brass ring that Jack Smith and his team are trying to shed light on and ultimately prove if they decide to take this thing to court. So they're not going to let any of those witnesses, any of those people who had that level of interaction

with Trump in the time that we're all concerned about. I mean, those folks, they're going to pursue each and every one of them and try to get them on the record. Lots of potential claims of privilege here. And you know, certainly the National Security Advisor to the President has a, you would think a legitimate claim to privilege, but as we have seen with others, this is a new ball game now. This is a criminal investigation being conducted

under the authority of the grand jury. There's a much higher compelling state interest in obtaining that information in the context of a criminal information than there is in the context of a congressional oversight investigation. So those privileged claims are going to be tougher to prove when they're trying to hold back Jack Smith and his investigators. Yeah, and we have yet to see anybody win a privileged battle over the Department of Justice so far in these investigations. I can't think of a single one, except for, I think, some

certain bits and pieces of maybe Lindsey Graham's testimony at the Fallen County DA where he didn't have to talk about stuff that he did when he was legislating. Yeah. And that wasn't executive privilege, right? That was speech and debate clause. And so they did. I think, you know, that was a little bit of a split-the-baby, I'm feeling like that was like, okay, we'll let you kind of sculpt the scope of what they can ask you, but you can't use speech and debate to knock down the grand jury's subpoena in Georgia.

Yeah, and really the correct way to go about is to go in and answer questions and assert those privileges, whether it be speech or debate or executive or attorney client or a deliberative process privilege while you're being questioned and then sort them out in the courts instead of just a blanket I ain't talking because I'm a senator and then we have to go up and down through the courts unless delay is your goal which which oftentimes it's delay is the friend of everyone who

falls in the crosshairs of the special council for sure. Yeah, absolutely. All right. And now we get to the granddaddy of all subpoenas. And there's been a handful of times, Andrew, during these investigations, even before Jack Smith got here, a handful of occasions where I've been like, whoa, a handful of occasions where I've been like, whoa, ballsy, right? One of them was bringing seditious conspiracy charges. I didn't think that was gonna happen. I was all on the 1512C2

obstructing the official proceeding train. I'm like, it's easier, it's cleaner. And no, this DOJ was like, nope, we're doing the seditious conspiracy stuff. The contempt motion that Jack Smith brought to Judge Barrel how to get to force a records administrator to be appointed for the Office of Donald John Trump so that they could actually hold somebody accountable for, you know, where those classified documents

were or had that if they had all been turned over. Another one was the appointment of the special counsel. I was like, well, all right. We're doing this. I wanted one. Or how about the Mar-a-Lago search warrant? The search warrant. Whoa!

Searching at the home. That was a whoa moment. We're representing the home. We smoked. Yeah, that was a big one. And now this, which happened yesterday, they subpoenaed the former vice president Mike Pence. And we don't know too much about this.

I can read here from the lead at CNN. Former vice president Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, according to sources. Special counsel Jack Smith is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and on the day of the attack on the US Capitol. So this was,

this was explosive news when it came out, Andrew, what were you? Where were you? Do you remember where you were when the former vice president was speaking of were you from? I was president, what's the peanut? Sure, so I was just kind of hanging out and I got a text from a good friend of mine who alerts me to these things. I don't know if you know our name is A.G. She goes by and I said, I responded if I recall correctly,

I responded to the text with just, wow. You know, always a brief in my texting text with just wow, you know, always a brief in my texting. Yeah, I, you know, having been on the other end of these, of issuing these types of subpoenas in, let's just say sensitive investigations, there's really a broad scope of what could be happening here, right? So we have, there has been some reporting I heard Caitlin Collins reporting this on CNN last night that, that the negotiations between Jack Smith's team and Mike Pence's lawyers have been going on for quite some time, even since maybe last November. And so there's a couple of big possibilities here.

One out of the spectrum, it could be they came to some sort of an understanding about how and when uh, the former vice president would actually come in front of the grand jury and what sorts of questions he would receive and then he requested a subpoena so that he can kind of maintain appearances on the outside. Yeah, that's what we know as a friendly subpoena right like we saw it with mazaars for example Trump's accounting firm. They're like we would love to hand over everything as a friendly subpoena, right? Like we saw it with mazaars, for example, Trump's accounting firm. They're like, we would love to hand over everything, send us a subpoena to provide us some sort of cover, right?

That's exactly right. And particularly a guy in his position, he's still considered to be a likely candidate for the presidency. He's trying to kind of uphold his creds on the Republican side. You know, the subpoena gives him a fair amount of cover and he can say, listen, it's a, it's a lawful subpoena, I have to comply. On the other hand, it could have gone entirely the other direction. It could be that negotiations fell apart and the prosecutors ultimately got frustrated

with the resistance they were seeing or receiving from, from the former vice president's team and they decided, you know what, screw it, here's the subpoena, we'll see you on such and such a date and you can tell it to the judge if you don't wanna come. So at this point, we really don't know what the current status is between the two sides but there's a lot of possibility there. Yeah, I'd also be interested to find out

whether or not those negotiations began under Jack Smith or began before Jack Smith arrived. I'd be interesting. I mean, if he just walked in and said, all right, Emma Reffers, we got to get this going, you know, or if it had been going on or, you know, he seems, this seems like another indication that he is bold. He is moving fast and he is, you know, I mean, just he's not gun shy about anything that could be considered or construed political. And I guess that's the cool part about being a special counsel is that that's, you know, your job is to follow the facts and I mean, that's any attorney general's job. But, you know, you have to take those political considerations into account probably less than a political appointee.

I think that's right. And it's also consistent with what I, what I'm hearing from friends and associates, former DOJ and and FBI folks who know Jack Smith and worked with Jack Smith that what I, what I keep getting from people is like he has a very strong reputation of being very aggressive. He's going to lean forward. He's going to take risks. He's not afraid of taking on the big, you know, the big political issue, the big political trial. We saw that. We talked about the Edwards case. We talked about the his his role in the McDonald case. So he's it would not surprise me, you know, in an initial evaluation of the investigation, it would be pretty obvious to say, well, no matter where this thing goes, we got to talk to Mike

Pence. He is a critical witness. He was, he was exposed, you know, he had conversations with Trump that no one else had. I mean, I'm thinking specifically of the morning of January 6th, that he information was called where apparently it got heated. There were other people in the Oval Office who heard Trump's end of the conversation. Only Mike Pence knows what Trump actually said and what he said in response and all that kind of stuff. So he potentially has some blockbuster evidence for these guys and they have to, have to, at least make an effort to get that testimony anyway they can.

Yeah, and I have a lot of questions about this too and some of the implications and I know you do too. And we have just the person to help us. After this break, we're gonna be talking with former US attorney. She's a law professor at UMish. We're gonna talk to Barb McQuade right after this. So stick around, we'll be right back.

Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. When's the last time you didn't fill enough? If you relate to this question, you wanna check out our podcast, Authentically Us. Yes, guys, our podcast, authentically us, is what we talk about. What it means to be authentic and everything that you do in every space that you occupy. Tony and I created this podcast,

the creative space to talk about just who we are, our experiences and just things that we are going through. Yes, so come join us with the journey as we figure out what it means to be all clinic together. Hey everybody, welcome back. We are happy to be joined today by former US Attorney and law professor at University of Michigan, Barb McQuade. Hi, Barb, how are you? Hi, A.G. doing well. Thank you. It has been a long time since I've seen you.

I'm so glad that you're here because I really wanted a great legal mind to help us break down this Pence subpoena. We talked a little bit about it in the first segment of the show, in the first block. But we had some specific legal questions. And I wanted to ask you, some folks are reporting that they don't believe, but they aren't sure that this is not a friendly

subpoena and that the DOJ has actually been negotiating with Pence for months now to try to get this testimony, do you, what would be the implications of it being a friendly subpoena or not a friendly subpoena? Well, there are times, A.G., when someone actually asks for a subpoena to give a cover politically when they are asked to provide information about somebody who might be a friend or a family member or an associate, someone that it would be painful or difficult or even dangerous for them to testify against. And so if the person can say, look, I got a subpoena, I had no choice.

My choice was only whether to comply with the law or go to jail and only under those circumstances did I agree to testify. So that can be done. It can also, however, be the case that there were these months of negotiation to try to agree about the parameters of the testimony that he'll talk about this, but not about that, which wouldn't surprise me in the case of someone who had a job as sensitive as that of the former vice president. And then at some point, Jack Smith and his team just said to hell with it, you know, you're not negotiating in good faith. We're not getting what we want, we're entitled to everything. And so here's your stupina and see it at the grand jury.

So I'm not sure which is the case here, but either is certainly a possibility. You know, I think it's what you said is spot on. And I think when we look at that in kind of Pence's history, respect to January 6th, he's kind of stands up as the guy who followed the law, right? The guy who did what he was supposed to do on January 6th, rather than what Trump allegedly asked him to do. So to me, it really makes sense that he would want to be subpoenaed, that he would kind of see his responsibility as, you know again complying with the law now of course

I don't know and you're absolutely right it could it could have gone the other way too but uh well i guess just have to wait and see yeah well i know and that kind of brings up the second topic i wanted to talk about that you know pence wrote a book and he's spoken publicly about the discussions that he's had with the former president. Barb does that pierced executive privilege. I mean, aside from the whole, you know, if he's, we'll talk about, you know, if he's the only source for this information, then that sort of pierced his executive privilege too.

But I mean, maybe Jack Smith was like, all right, we're getting nowhere here. You wrote a book about this, and you talked about it publicly. Can you talk about the implications of that sort of, I mean, I know attorney client privilege better than I know executive privilege, but if you tell the world,

it seems like privilege doesn't apply. Yeah, you know, it's a little bit of a yes and no when it comes to executive privilege, you're absolutely right when it comes to attorney client privilege because it is the client's privilege to assert or waive. And once the person waives that privilege, you can't use it selectively and say, oh, well, I told these people, but I'm not going to tell you in the case of Mike Pence and executive privilege, I think statements he's privilege to assert. It's not Mike Pence's privilege to assert.

So what you often hear from these witnesses is they'll say that implicates executive privilege. I need to consult with the president to see whether he will be asserting executive privilege here. But let's remember who the president is and who the president isn't. The president is Joe Biden. And so it is Joe Biden's privilege to assert. There's been a little bit of litigation on this already. You may recall when the January 6th committee

subpoenaed the National Archives for documents from the White House, and Donald Trump asserted the privilege there. Joe Biden said, I wave it because this is a matter of national interest. And the courts did review that and did determine that although a former president has a residual interest in executive privilege,

you know, if there was something that was of great consequence of the national security that happened during his administration, he has a stake and he may be able to recommend that the privilege be asserted and he can do that. And then Joe Biden will get to decide whether it does or doesn't and what the court held in the case involving the White House documents.

It was that the privilege had to yield in this case, regardless of whether it was asserted by Trump or Biden, because there was such a greater need to obtain the information. And that goes back to the United States versus Nixon case that said executive privilege is only a qualified privilege and that can be asserted. But if there is some greater national interest that outweighs the interest in protecting the information, then the privilege must yield. So I think for both of those reasons, it's very likely that at the end of the day, Mike Pence is not going to be able to use executive privilege to prevent the disclosure of his

testimony. Well, that and we have the argument that I mean, there are certain conversations and meetings that he is the only person They can get this information from right? I'm assuming we'll hear that argument too if there's if there's a privilege battle Yeah, um, so very often when you look at these things even the justice department When it comes to sensitive subpoenas subpoenaing targets One of the key questions is is there any other way you can get this information? Can you talk to other people?

Can you find it in documents? Is there public records somewhere? And if the answer is no, then that is usually a strong reason why the subpoena is necessary and will be upheld in a situation like this. Isn't it also true, Barb, that in this case, unlike if I'm correct, unlike in the documents executive privilege battle that you were referring to earlier, here it's in the context of a federal criminal investigation, not a congressional inquiry. And so the stakes are even higher on the side of necessary witness and the compelling nature of a criminal inquiry. So I think it's really stacked against

a successful execution of the privilege here. I think that's right, Andy, in the Nixon case, the case was done in the context of a criminal investigation, a grand jury investigation. And so I think it is really on all fours with that case. There was some argument that congressional investigation isn't titled to less weight. I don't know whether it is or isn't,

but I do agree with you that the precedent from US versus Nixon is very much in this context. That's a Supreme Court case kind of on all fours. So I don't see how to get around that precedent. And yeah, agreed. And I have just a couple more quick questions for you. I feel like Pence is the tippy, tippy top of who you could possibly subpoena. Because generally, you don't subpoena targets.

They're not going to subpoena Trump. I doubt to come in and testify to the grand jury. I mean, he might, but, you know, I don't know. I don't see that happening. But, you know, what do I know? We're in an uncharted territory? But this seems to signal that we are further along in this case than I had previously thought.

What are your thoughts about this kind of subpoena and what it signals to where we are in this, at least the January 6th part of the investigation? I agree, AG, that it does suggest that they are close to the end of the investigation. At least, typically, the way an investigation works is you want to talk to the lower level people. First, you want to gather all the documents you can. You want to be as educated about the cases you possibly can be before you question the highest level people in a case. And I would agree with you that Mike Pence is at that highest level.

It's interesting about whether they might try to question Donald Trump. Robert Mueller did try and remember he only agreed to respond to written questions. So maybe they will, maybe they won't try to do that in this instance. But I agree with you that it says that they're close to the end of the investigation. I also think AG it says to me addition, that they are very seriously considering criminal charges here. If you were, at some point, just waited that maybe there is no ability to file charges here, I don't think you would go through the very difficult obstacles of using a subpoena on

the former vice president, especially when it appears that negotiations have broken down. This is a big deal. You have to prepare for a legal fight that could get ugly, that could be unprecedented, that could be political. And I don't think people would make that choice slightly. And so it says to me that they believe they really need this testimony because the case is very serious and going in a direction that they believe is likely to lead to an indictment and that they have reached that point where they're very close. And, you know, I have always felt that it also falls into that category of things as an investigator that you absolutely must do, right? In this case, Mike Pence is there. We know that Mike Pence had unique and isolated conversations with Donald Trump in the lead up to January 6th. And then, of course, on the day of January 6th, there's that infamous heated exchange that

they have in the morning when Trump is sitting in the Oval Office. And there are others there who hear kind of Trump's side of it, but nobody, there's no other witness that can give us the entirety of that conversation. And that conversation could be directly relevant to Trump's intent, which of course will be at the center of any potential prosecution here. So he is clearly an undeniably relevant witness, and I think Smith has to at least attempt to get his testimony on the record, lockdown, as we like to say. And even if he's unsuccessful, if by some, you know, by some outside chance,

the assertions of privilege are able to ward off his testimony, at least Smith can say, I did it. I did everything that was reasonable and called for and now moving on with what I have. I agree with that, Andy. You know, sometimes people say, why are you calling a witness who might just be self-serving or might say something favorable to the target?

And it is to lock them into their story. You don't want there to be any surprises at trial that Mike Pence comes through as the secret weapon defense witness and it turns out they had some conversations were in some way exonerating. If that's the case, then you want to find out about that now. You have an obligation to find out about that now.

And so if he's got information that's either helpful or harmful to the case, those are facts that need to be known as you make a charging decision. So I agree with you. And I think it would be legal malpractice, not to at least try as hard as you can to get Mike Pence into the grand jury. No question.

One final thing before I let you go, because I have to know, I haven't been and I'm not too worried about the executive privilege fights when it comes to witnesses like this. But I am a little bit concerned about the privilege fight with Rep Scott Perry because of the speech or debate cause. And we know that there's a under seal battle going on trying to get at his stuff. And you know, Supreme Court's always been like, we're hands off this Trump executive privilege stuff. We're siding with DOJ, and they seem to be doing that at every turn. But I'm a little more worried about what this Supreme Court or the Appellate Court might decide about whether or not they can get at the evidence in Scott Perry's phone because of the speech or debate clause.

Have we ever seen anything like this before? I don't know if there's any Supreme Court precedent on this issue, but I don't know that it's sort of the get out of jail free card that you can just play and say anything about me as a member of Congress is a speech or debate. We saw this in the finally Willis investigation in Georgia, where some members of Congress tried to play this. Lindsey Graham was one who said,

I can't be subpoenaed because of speech or debate. And although the court did let, here the matter and did narrow the areas of conversation to make sure that they were not intruding upon matters that were properly within the legislative branch. When it comes to efforts to interfere with an election, if that's what happened here, then that would really be beyond the scope, I think, of the speech or debate clause protections.

So, I imagine that those fights are happening. I imagine my best guess is that ultimately a court may narrow the areas of inquiry, but I don't think it's going to block testimony altogether All right, well, thank you for that and thank you so much for for giving us some of this information I really appreciate it everybody former US attorney and Hey, if you feel like going to law school over at University of Michigan. She's teaching it Barb McQuade, I'm sure I'm sure Barb's classes are all full.

All right, every semester, it's like a knife fight getting in there. Was it all full or awful Andy? Yeah. No, no, all full. All right. Now, great being with you guys. Yeah, thanks so much for educating us.

I love listening to your podcast. Thank you so much. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back everyone and now in Jack, we're going to we're going to shift our gaze a little bit here, A.G. We're going to look towards the south, kind of the southern flank of this multi kind of the southern flank of this multi-offensive war going on that that Jack Smith seems to be coordinating. This one is the, let's look at the ripple effect of a potential. And we don't know that this is going to happen, but it's certainly a possibility at this point, potential indictment by Fannie Willis point potential indictment by Fannie Willis in Georgia. So as all of the, our listeners will remember Fannie Willis is a prosecutor in Georgia who is looking into essentially

the fake electors scheme as it played out in Georgia. And we've had a number of high level folks have been subpoenaed down there. We talked a little bit about Lindsey Graham. Others have been dragged down there as well. Rudy Giuliani. And we know from the submission of the grand, the special grand jury's report to the court in Georgia that they are close to, I would say, probably making a decision and announcing a decision as to whether or not folks will be indicted. So based on some of the reporting we've seen from Zohtilman and Christrom and Billy House at Bloomberg, it's kind of interesting to think through

if there are indictments, like how do those indictments affect what Jack Smith and a special counsel team are doing in the overall January 6 case. One of the possibilities here, AGF, is the Georgia case could end up being kind of a test bed for evidence and testimony to see how that stuff gets entered into court and how some of that stuff holds up in court. No doubt Smith's team will be looking closely at what happens there.

Yeah. Yeah. And I hate to think that the, well, let me say that I don't think Jack Smith would wait for all of that to play out necessarily, but it could be who the Department of Justice to see how some of that evidence and some of those witnesses play in court. Like we didn't you didn't have't have that, the benefit of that opportunity when they put Rick Gates on the stand in the Manafort case. That's right. We didn't learn until after that trial was over, that everybody was like, I'm not listening to that guy.

That guy is an A-hole, F that guy, but the documents are right here in front of our face. And so that would have been beneficial to know ahead of time before Rick Gates was put on the standard. You could kind of do this, but we already did it too with the January 6th commission. But again, we have to make sure all these, all these testimonies match so that these witnesses can't be impeached at trial. And, and Fani Willis said in the hearing, because, you you know, funny Willis does not want the special grand jury report to be released.

She says that it could damage the investigation. It could alert people to, you know, what's going to be happening and they can prepare their defenses. It would try the case in the court of public opinion before the, you know, it went to trial, which is bad. It could, it could taint juries. It could, you know, become prejudicial. And so she's asked Judge McBerney, don't release this. And she said during that hearing, my decisions are imminent.

This isn't forever. And I, now I went on Twitter and I said, let me, let me translate imminent in government speak for you. And I put it, I put it tweet out, I was like, imminent means like three weeks, soon means four to six months, and we're about to wrap this up, means by the end of the fiscal year. That's from my experience in the government.

And I was half joking, but that hearing was two weeks ago. And we are now on the third week of my imminent watch to see where she's at. We're approaching what normal human beings actually think of when they say imminent. Yeah, and look, let's be honest, the statements that she made in that hearing are not statements

you would hear. You would even be having this hearing from a prosecutor who had no intention of inditing anyone, right? She's trying to keep the reports secret because she doesn't want it to muck up what she's going to do in the future. And she said that. She said there's going to be multiple defendants and multiple trials. And she said that. She said there's gonna be multiple defendants and multiple trials.

And she those words came out of her mouth. We don't know who they are going to be and we don't know when these indictments are going to happen, but we can surmise from what she said that there will be multiple indictments in her case, imminently. That's right. What we know.

Now, talk to me a little bit about, because we saw this a little bit with Manafort in New York, and we saw it with Bannon now in New York who's been charged by the Manhattan DA's office for his We Build the Wall thing. Steve Vladik has something to say about the fact that there's no double, double jeopardy preventing similar federal charges. He says, for better or worse, the Supreme Court just reiterated the so-called separate sovereigns doctrine, which leaves states and the federal government free to prosecute

the same unlawful conduct and free to decide how to do it as well. Now some states have dual sovereignty laws on the books New York did, but then they made an exception for it, presumably for Manafort, but he didn't make the cutoff in time, but that's why we were able to get charges against Bannon in New York, where we wouldn't have before because New York is, you know, more like, we don't want any double jeopardy, so we don't allow this, but now that we do. So, but we don't have a dual sovereignty law like that in Georgia. And even if you did, the dual sovereignty law simply prohibits the state from coming in after

a federal prosecution, right? So a state's dual sovereignty law cannot restrict the federal government from doing what they want to do after the state is stepped forward. And so that's what we would have theoretically in this, in this fact pattern, if Georgia goes first, there is nothing to stop the feds from coming in and trying the same conduct. You know, typically on your or average ordinary cases, due to just reasons of, you know, judicial kind of economy, it's not typically done that way.

But on the other hand, you have seen in some cases like if you have, let's say a mass shooting and someone is, you know, like if you have, let's say, a mass shooting and someone is indicted for homicide, sometimes the feds will come in and bring an indictment for civil rights violations. And that just serves as a backup. If the state's case completely goes down the toilet for one reason or another, you have the option of a federal prosecution.

Here, I don't think anything that Georgia does to any of these potential defendants will cause the special counsel team to back off in any way. And to be clear, no federal prosecutor ever wants another state court prosecution to go before them. It's not ideal. You wanna have first cut at all the witnesses. You want to have first cut at the evidence. You don't want any witnesses that you might use,

have to travel down to, in this case, Georgia and put testimony on the record, which could then be used to impeach them in your case. It's a very problematic thing. However, they can't stop it either. If it's's gonna happen, then you wanna at least get some benefit out of it. You're certainly gonna watch it very closely, as you were mentioning earlier, Alice, and to get a kind of a feel for like, how did this theory play in front of a jury?

Or was this piece of evidence particularly compelling or was problematic? How did, you know, it gives you a chance to look at some of the defense, you know, attacks against the evidence and the testimony of the prosecutor. So, you know, you're not thrilled with it, but there's a, you can mind some benefit out of it.

Now, I have a question for you. Have you ever been a part of an investigation where somebody that you were thinking was a witness or a target in one of your federal investigations was indicted by the state. And then you were able to use the leverage of the state sentence, I guess, to flip them for the federal thing. I'm thinking right now that the glaring name in my head is is Weiselberg, the CFO of the Trump organization. You're sitting in Rikers right now on a state charge. And I'm wondering if the feds aren't like poking at them, like, hey, you want to testify for us,

we could probably spring you from Rikers if you help us out. But I honestly don't know how any of that works. Within a federal system and within a state system, I get it, but when it crosses, when you cross the streams, how do you avoid total pro tonic reversal? It can be very challenging, even within the same system. streams. How do you avoid total pro tonic reversal?

It can be very challenging, even within the same system. Let's say you want to bring a prosecution in federal court and there's a guy who you need to use as a witness. He's already been convicted in a different district in a federal case. That person is serving as sentenced. You would go to that district and see if you could kind of work a deal to say, hey, we want to pitch your guy who's been convicted to be a cooperator for us. And what would be the incentive for that defendant would be that they could make a motion after the fact, after they've already been sentenced and been serving time, they could go back with what I think is federal rule 12 to make a motion to have Senate relief from their sentence because of the cooperation they gave in the second case.

It's much harder to do that across systems. You'd have to have in this case, and on our facts, if someone, let's say, one of a Trump allies convicted in Georgia and you wanted to use that person as a witness, you would have to get the authorities in Georgia to offer them some sort of sentence reduction as incentive to testify in the federal case. That can also be problematic because what, let's say that actually happens, the witness takes the stand in the federal case. On cross examination, the defense is going to point out to the jury that that witness is only here in this court because somebody made him a promise down in Georgia to get him out of jail early if he

would come up here and tell a story in federal court. So. But doesn't that happen with all cooperating witnesses? Like, aren't you just here for the deal? I mean, every time I see it, I 100% of the time the defense is always like, Oh, but what did you get in exchange for this testimony? Like it's a new. Yeah, it, that's true. So it's a very effective defense tactic of undermining the credibility of a prosecution witness. If they can make it look like the witness is only testifying because they've been promised some sort of benefit. But then the prosecution gets up and makes it clear that the terms of federal cooperation agreements are if you lie or

you know mislead in any way, you lose the cooperation deal. So that it's like an insurance policy for truth, essentially. And that's what you have to put in front of the jury. Like, yes, this person is stands to get a benefit from being cooperative and providing information to the government, but he also stands to lose everything if it's shown that they lied to the jury or lied in their testimony or misrepresented anything. So there's ways to kind of rehabilitate that. All that becomes much more

complicated when you're dealing with these two separate systems, a defendant who or a witness who's already been convicted somewhere else and you're basically trying to get him to work off his state problem in a federal court. It can be done, but it requires a lot of cooperation between those two sets of prosecutors. Pardon me, wonders if the, the imminent, you know, the imminence here that we're waiting for. If there, if there's not some coordination going on between Fannie Willis's office at the Fulton County District Attorney and Jack Smith, because they're both investigating, kind of the same thing here. And, you know, like you said, the DOJ likes to go first, but we aren't as far along

in the Department of Justice investigation. Well, I don't know what the subpoena of Pence, but at presumably we aren't as far along as we are with the Fannie Willis investigation. And it's my understanding. And so, we Tillman says this here in the Bloomberg article that Fannie Willis investigation. And it's my understanding. And so, we Tillman says this here in the Bloomberg article, that Fannie Willis is not required to consult with the feds. Is that just a Georgia thing or did you run into that a lot with state prosecutions while you were federally investigating stuff? They are absolutely not required.

There's two totally independent systems, two different independent prosecutors offices. I mean, you know, we, my experience as an agent, working cases, working the prosecutors, bringing case to court was in New York. You know, we had two federal prosecutors offices, the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York,

but we also had borough level prosecutors, state prosecutors, and all five boroughs, the Manhattan DA's office, the Queens DA's office. And frequently, we would be bumping up against each other going after the same targets, especially in organized crime matters. And those could be, like, sometimes it works cooperatively, everybody's good, you're sharing access to witnesses and information. Other times it's like a race to the courthouse who to see who can file their indictment first and you know, stake the claim and the case as it were. And the more high profile cases get,

the more politically significant they get. It seems that makes that cooperation among prosecutors even more challenging because, you know, stakes are high, somebody's getting famous and going on TV about it repeatedly and people get very defensive about those opportunities. Yeah, I can imagine. All right, well, tell you what, we're going to shift gears to the Marlago Documents case and some reporting from Hugo Lowell at the Guardian about imminent congressional briefings on the risk assessment that the ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, did with regard

to the 100 or so 300, I don't know, hundreds of classified documents retrieved at Mar-a-Lago, we're going to talk to that reporter, Loll about that reporting right after this break. Stick around. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Happy to be joined today by Political Investigations Reporter for the Guardian. Hugo Loll. Hi, Hugo.

How are you? Hey, thanks for having me. Hey, Hugo. This is Andy. No, it's great to have you. So today, and everybody, I just you? Hey thanks for having me. Hey Hugo, this is Andy. Yeah, it's great to have you. So today and everybody, I just want everybody to know, Hugo is so busy, he is calling us from an airport lounge. So if there's, that's why what's, that's why we're dealing with maybe a little bit

of interesting sound issues, but we definitely wanted to talk to you today because of your reporting earlier in the week that the ODNI and DOJ are ready to give a congressional briefing on the documents that they found at mara lago can you tell us what you found out uh... yeah i mean i mean the american alliance lounge with a uh... jacket over my head trying to meet the noise but um... look you know the the house and senate intelligence, as well as the Republican Democratic leaders of Congress, are expected to get a kind of gang of eight classified

briefing about the Trump documents. Really, in the next couple of weeks, I think it originally was slated to be this week, but you know, how the government works, it always gets delayed. And so it's probably going to be in the next few weeks. But I think the fact that it's happening is quite an interesting development. Kind of what I could understand from, certainly on the House side, is they seem to have gone to the point now where they are able to provide a full risk assessment to Congress. And I should just mention that the House and Senate are looking for different

things from the Director of National Intelligence. The Senate won't access the actual kind of documents, at least the content of the documents, that were found at Mar-Lago. The House so far has not made that request. They just want a risk assessment and kind of a description of the kinds of documents that are at Mar-Lago. But I think the whole thing is really interesting because at issue in the Mar-a-Lago case has been the nature of the documents, right? DOJ and the kind of the special counsel has been pulling in witnesses before the grand jury, asking them about the status of these documents

and whether they were actually declassified because that could potentially impact whether or not there's going to be a prosecution. So basically, you're saying that there's a range here. The Senate wants the actual evidence from the ongoing investigation and the House wants the DNI, Avalhane's come in and say, it's all good, nothing to see here, move along, move along. Yeah, I mean, I think the Senate, it's not exactly clear what the Senate wants, whether they want the actual documents that were in Mar-a-Lago, or, you know, I think what the Senate have been saying

is, look, we have, you know, top secret, you know, level of clearance as we have access, or we believe we have the same level of access needed to see these documents. And so, you know, for us from a legislative kind of oversight standpoint, we need to know what these documents. And so, for us, from a legislative oversight standpoint, we need to know what these documents were. The House is more mellow about it. They were like, look, at the end of the day, we want to figure out whether there was any spillage, whether there was a risk national security,

and whether the DNI has been able to identify any of that, particularly because if you suddenly put the Republicans on the House side, they're like, look, if these documents really were declassified as Trump has claimed he has, and by the way, we all know that this is suspect because his lawyers have obviously not repeated that came in court where they face sanctions if they lie. But Republicans on the house side are like, well, if they were declassified, then maybe there wasn't such a national security threat.

And that's kind of how Congress sees it, although from the DOJ standpoint, of course, they're trying to see if there's a potential prosecution here. Yeah. And over on the Senate side, to try to get information from an open and ongoing investigation, I know the Department of Justice has sent out multiple letters in the last couple of weeks, especially over to House Republicans who are demanding all of the information, like in the Hunter Biden investigation, for example, where they, you know, DOJ just sort of gently reminded them, like we have a longstanding policy where we don't hand over anything. That is, you know, that is part of an open and ongoing investigation, but, you know, have a great day, Jim Jordan, and you look nice, and you're in your shirt and tie. Maybe we're

a jack-and-ex time. No, they didn't say that. But I don't think that when push comes to shove, I don't think the sound it's going to get sort of what they're looking for beyond the risk assessment, ODNI risk assessment, sort of briefing that they're going to get in the next couple of weeks. I think that's right. You know, Avril Haynes is a very smart, very thoughtful person. She's also a great collaborator, so I can't imagine her doing this briefing without having kind of checked in with DOJ and tested their comfort zone with what she's going to reveal on the hill. And typically, the way these things happen is the DNI or the DNI wrap will go up and basically

provide a gist, right? It's important for the centers for all the reasons that you go to stated. It's important for them to get a sense of what might have been exposed, and where their risks to national security created by that exposure, you don't actually have to have the exact document itself to understand that. She can say, okay, we found three documents that talked about whatever. Country X's nuclear powers and how they compare to country why and what they might be pursuing, that sort of thing. To give them an idea that they can work with without actually exposing them to stuff

that could end up being evidence in a criminal case. Hey, Hugo, remind us about the testimony of how this sort of ties in with the testimony of Cosh Patel, who you mentioned in your article in the Guardian, because they gave him immunity. At first, he pled the fifth, and then, for my understanding, the DOJ went to the judge and said, he can't plead the fifth here. And the judge said, yeah, you're going to have to give him immunity if you wanted to talk about this. But I think that all sort of went to whether or not he'd declassified these documents, right?

Yeah, it's been a really interesting subplot in this investigation. This whole idea that all of the documents, supposedly at Mar-a-Lago, weren't teach classified, right? That's what Trump is claiming. And Cash Patel, who is a very, very close A to Trump, and I can't kind of underscore how close he is. You know, he's one of these guys that regularly gets Trump's new phone number because every month also Trump changes his phone number. Cash is one of these guys that always has it even when it gets updated. And the same cannot be said for a number of other people who kind of rotate in and out of his inner circle

So, you know, I think the first thing to remember is cash is a really close confident Confident of Trump the second thing to remember is of course he is one of the designated liaison with the national archives for Trump and This claim of de-exhaification is really ended up taking such a center stage in the investigation, I think, and certainly it appears because, you know, if the documents at Marlago were indeed all de-classified, right, let's just say that for the sake of argument, then there are a number of people, I would recommend Justice who think it would be exceedingly difficult to do a, to kind of charge Trump with willful retention of national security materials, because if they are not, if they've been declassified and they're not particularly

big national secrets, then it might be difficult to convince a jury particularly in a Southern district of Florida, which would be the venue for this, because that was where Trump was retaining the documents, I suppose. That might be a burden for a threshold to kind of too high for DOJ to overcome. You know, on the flip side, if they weren't or de-classified, and we have evidence, and can't see seen from the sub-sena, that Trump was holding onto the kind of documents marked like special access programs, then DOJ, I think would be more potentially prepared to bring some sort of retention charge. And so I think the declassification issue has ended up becoming significant in this case

in a way that it might not have been in other cases, right? Because at the start of the investigation everyone, and we were talking about how the classification level doesn't matter at the end of the day. Are they MDI or are they not, you know, these documents in the eye or are they not in the eye? And I think this added wrinkle with Trump is turning out to be a real kind of point that the special counsel is trying to kind of figure out. And that was of course why the immunized cash portal because they wanted to know exactly what was going on with the document.

Yeah, and I think that when we talk about the declassification of these documents, I don't know that that necessarily touches the obstruction piece because I know that they specifically asked for documents with classified markings. So regardless of their classification status, but I have a question for Andy,

have you ever seen a case where no, I mean the answer's gonna be no. classified markings. Right. So regardless of their classification status, but I have a question for Andy. Have you ever seen a case where no, I mean, the answer's going to be no. But what if, what if these word declassified by Donald with his mind or with that memo of the January 19th memo, but they shouldn't have been like, what happens then? I mean, is that more of a counterintell intelligence national security risk and less of a crime? You know, it's really kind of, there's a number of really fascinating legal issues here. The interesting thing is that the power to classify

and declassify anything really starts with the president of the United States. He has basically unlimited authority to make those determinations. So if a president declassifies something basically unlimited authority to make those determinations. So if a president declassifies something and the entire intelligence community stands up and says, that's bad, you know, you're harming national security by letting this out, please don't do it.

It kind of doesn't matter. The president has the last word on it. But there are of course limitations and what Jack Smith's investigators will be looking for are things like, well, how did he purportedly classify these documents? When did he make the decision? Did he communicate it to anyone else and if so, how was it ever preserved in writing? And ultimately, if the determination of whether they're not, there's still classified or not, comes down to like those sorts of very individualized facts, it raises another question of, well, can anyone impose a requirement or a limit on the president in the way that he

exercises this exclusive authority? I think that would think that's the sort of issue that really would be right for ultimately Supreme Court consideration, because it's a fundamental balance of power, constitutional question. And at that point, you know, it's really, you're far from where you started at that point, right? It's not, it's much less about, was this document should it have been declassified or not?

It's really comes down to like, can Congress or can the Department of Justice impose these essential, essentially demands or requirements on the president in how something is declassified? And a lot of people would say the answer to that is no, but we'll see how it plays out. And Hugo, while I have you before we And you know, a lot of people would say the answer to that is no, but what we'll see how it plays out. And he'll go, while I have you before we let you go, I'm going to change subjects here really briefly, because, you know, I know you have your ear to the, what do they say? Nose to the grindstone ear to the ground. That's definitely this,

this would be right up your alley here. But you know, or or coat over your head as the as the situation right right. That is the new ear to the ground. I know you've got your coat over your head. You got. But we already talked about the the the pens subpoena a little bit earlier in the show, but something that's just occurring to me as I'm talking to you because I know that this is your Bailey Wick. We never got a Meadows subpoena that we know of. I haven't heard about Meadows. I haven't heard a peep about him. And I find that very interesting.

Either he's been subpoenaed and we don't know anything about it and it's happening quietly because it feels like Meadows is somebody you would talk to before you would talk to the Vice President. So it makes me wonder if he's not already talking with the Department of Justice. What do you think? Have you heard anything? So, uh, meadows about a year ago, stop talking to reporters period. Um, you know, he's represented by, you know, strong council, you know,

George to Williger, formerly of the Justice Department. It's his lawyer and it has, you know, if you talk to people around meadows, it is abundantly clear that meadows was told to say nothing about the January 6th investigation or any other investigation that he gets caught up in. I mean, I think one would assume that meadows has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury

or, you know, will be subpoenaed and then because he's such a central character in the entire narrative of January 6th. He pops up at all of the key moments, especially in the kind of the days and weeks leading up to the capital attack. If you think about, and this was the January 6th committee finding this,

he was trying to get in contact with people out of the will of the you know, Cassie Hutchinson testified about how Meadows wave and on whether he should go to the will of the to meet with Roger Stone, you know, Trump asked him to call Roger Stone and Mike Flynn the night before the Capitol attack. And then of course Meadows was one of the people who was like, you know, I don't know, Cassidy. I have a feeling that something really bags can go down on January 6th. So without a shadow of a doubt, Meadows is, you know, such a key witness. And, you know, it is,

there is no way I think that the special council would not call him a polygantry. There's just, there's just no way for us to tell because he's not talking to us. And, you know, because it's all grand jury, that's really the only way we would find out. And Andy, we, we would find out something possibly with the indictments that come from Fawni Willis in Faulton County, Georgia. If she doesn't indict Meadows, that's a big hint to me that he's, he's on the help side. That is possible. Yeah, you can't, you can't possibly overstate meadow significance.

I mean, in the time honored children's game of who's your favorite witness. For me, it's meadows. There's no question. I would take meadows over Pence in any version of this game. He is there for everything. There's, with Pence, you still have this weird

kind of pseudo-combative relationship between Trump and Pence as we lead up to January 6th. Now, no question Pence is interacting with Trump and there's the pressure campaign to get Pence to delay or refuse to certify the election. All super juicy things that Jack Smith wants. But man, Meadows is there. Like you said, you go, he is dealing with like, you know, the crowds of people, I'll just use that word, who are dying to get in front of Trump, all the different lines of attack.

You could probably fake electors scams, you got the DOJ problem with Jeffrey Clark, you get all these different lines of nonsense. The documents all the stuff having meadows Burning stuff in his own in his own fireplace in his office allegedly After me he was Scott Perry his own we can't get into yeah, so then you know the war room over at the willard It's he would be a a Absolutely gold mine If if he cooperated andated and shared what he knew.

Yeah. I was actually that, you know, Mendoe also did write a book, right? And so, and he did divulge, maybe not as much as Pence, who, you know, who we described as interactions with Trump and the lead up to January 6th, and quite detailed ways. Although, although, and I pointed this out to you as in the last night, although not the December 21 meeting between Trump Pence and the Republican members of Congress where they strategized how to obstruct the joint session. So, you know, Meadows is another of these guys that has already discussed stuff that would have otherwise been covered by executive privilege in the public domain.

And so, I mean, to me, having looked at these cases for a very long time and seeing how, you know, Chief Judge Barrow Howell in the District of Columbia has ruled in these cases, he probably is going to have a real uphill struggle to kind of shield his testimony from investigators. If that is indeed what he's trying to do in the event that he gets appealing. and he from investigators, if that is indeed what he's trying to do in the event that he gets appealing to. I think that's right. He also might have some, you know, who knows, if Meadows came in and actually was completely forthcoming about everything he knew, he might raise the uncomfortable issue of some

of those statements, not exactly, you know, jiving consistently with some of the things he put in the book. So there's always, you know, witnesses can present challenges if they have prominent prior statements on the record. And certainly your own book would count as one of those. Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much, Hugo, political investigations reporter at the Guardian covering Trump in the Justice Department.

Any tips Hugo.Lol at thegardian.com and you can follow. Any tips, Hugo.Lol at thegardian.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at Hugo.Lol. I appreciate your time today, and you've taken some time to answer our questions. Thanks, Hugo. No, thanks for having me. And yes, pay some tips, you always do one news. You know it.

You know it. We'll do. You know it. All right, everybody, that's our show for this week. Thank you so much for joining us on the Jack Podcast. And thanks to Hugo Loll and Barb McQuade for coming in and answering questions today. We will see you next week.

I can't, the news will just keep getting bigger and bigger. So we'll see what happens next week. But I've been Allison Gil. And I'm Andy McCabe. And we'll see you next time on Jack. Buh-bye. Buh-bye. Hi, I'm Harry Lickman, host of Talking Feds. Around Table, the brings together prominent figures from government law and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day.

Each Monday, I'm joined by a slate of Feds favorites and new voices to break down the headlines and give the ins's view of what's going on in Washington and beyond. Plus, sidebar is explaining important legal concepts read by your favorite celebrities. Find Talking Feds wherever you get your podcasts. M-S-O-W Media you