Jack - Episode 111 | History Will Judge

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

Jack Smith has resigned; the Justice Department released Volume One of the special counsel’s final report; the fate of Volume Two remains to be seen; plus listener questions. 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 nobody knows you. 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 the final episode of Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. It's Sunday, January 19th, 2025. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And you heard that right. It is January 19th and this will be the series finale of the Jack podcast. But we're gonna be back next week with a new name and a new mission. That is to report on the Trump administration's Department of Justice. Yes, 100%. And you don't have to do anything to continue to receive the new podcast. And all patrons of the Daily Beans and the Jack podcast, you'll automatically be patrons of the new show and receive it ad free.

So if you signed up at the level that gives you both this podcast and the Daily Beans, you will now have the new podcast and the Daily Beans. You don't have to do anything. It's very important that we stay informed about the Justice Department in the coming months and the Daily Beans. You don't have to do anything. It's very important that we stay informed about the Justice Department in the coming months and years. If we take seriously, at least, the mission outlined in chapter two of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, Defending Institutions.

So that's what we've decided to do, and that's where we're gonna have our focus. Yeah, and I think in some ways it's very similar to our original mission, which was to watch how the government tried to hold people accountable for what were offenses against the government, offenses against us all. And so I think it's perfectly natural that now we're going to see, okay, well, how does

the government pursue justice in this new age under this new administration with some very, very different characters making the decisions? Yeah, that's one way to put it. Especially, you know, and we'll talk about Pam Bondi's confirmation a little bit later and much more robustly on the very first episode of the new show.

But she wouldn't say she's not going to prosecute Jack Smith or prosecute Liz Cheney or prosecute any of the investigators that worked on this. And then if she's confirmed along with Kash Patel, it's going to be really important that we understand what they're doing. Aaron Norris Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So as for today's episode, Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So as for today's episode, Jack Smith has resigned and the Justice Department was able to release volume one of the special counsel's final report. We're going to go over the highlights and what's different from the hundred and sixty five page immunity brief that Jack Smith released before the election in September. Yeah. A lot of folks were like, we could have used this before the election.

And I'm like, we had this before the election. We had a lot of it. We had a lot of it. What we didn't have was some of the investigative procedures, other charges considered, some of the delays because of protracted privilege battles, Trump's defenses, how Jack Smith planned to take care of those, overcome those defenses, and then of course all of the reasons why he decided to prosecute. All of that is

new, but most of the rest of the stuff is the same. We'll get into it shortly. Keep in mind that in this podcast feed, you will find an audio version of volume one that you can listen to. We have two more installments of that coming out this week. And I believe we're the only outlet providing this service. Nice. Today, we'll also cover the fate of volume two of the final report. That's the classified documents report, along with, like I said, a little bit of Pam Bondi's confirmation hearings, a comprehensive timeline of the January 6th investigation, and we'll take some listener

questions. So Andy, let's start with the battle to release volume one that had us all on our toes last week. Andy Bartheson Yeah, it was a bizarre and hotly fought exchange. You'll recall that when we last met, Judge Cannon had issued an order blocking the release of the entire report, it'd be both volumes, until the 11th Circuit ruled on Nauta and De La Veres emergency motion.

The 11th Circuit denied their motion, but didn't vacate Judge Cannon's order, saying the DOJ had to go back and notice appeal to Cannon's court, which they did. The 11th Circuit has still not ruled on that appeal. Now this past week began with Carlos de Oliveira and Walt Nauta asking Judge Cannon to extend the three-day hold she issued in her injunction order. That order was going to expire last Monday at midnight.

Yes, it was. And that was a very interesting day. In response to Nauta and Deolavere's motion to extend the three-day block, which they filed last Friday, January 10, Judge Cannon ordered the Department of Justice to confirm to her that there was nothing in volume one that had anything to do with volume two, which they already had, but she wanted it in different words. And she ordered the Department of Justice

to submit any relevant language about volume two that appeared in volume one so that she could consider it herself. Now that was due to her by Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern. Now mind you, she has no jurisdiction to do any of this, but the 11th Circuit had not ruled on the DOJ's motion to vacate her order blocking the report. So the DOJ complied with her order and confirmed that volume one doesn't mention volume two, doesn't mention the remaining defendants, and they filed the relevant language from volume one under seal on the docket. And then on Monday, about 12 hours before her order to

block it expired, Judge Cannon denied Nauta and Dale Lavera's motion to extend the block of volume one, surprising everyone, but granted an extension to block volume two from being sent to Congress and set a hearing on volume two for Friday, January 17th, just a couple days ago. So because she wants to go over volume two and decide whether to block Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice from allowing four congressmen to review the report in camera. They weren't even going to get to keep a copy. No, it's a simple read through. You can't take notes, can't bring devices in, can't bring devices in. It's pretty strict.

Well after that, the clock started ticking on the release of volume one. There was speculation about whether Merrick Garland would release it at midnight or wait until the morning. But then, a bit later on Monday, the DOJ filed notice with Judge Cannon that they also intended to release a cover letter written by Jack Smith, Trump's letter to the attorney general asking him to block it and the DOJ response to the Trump letter. Yeah. And, you know, the thing, the thing about that was I was like standing there when that hit the docket and I was like, no, why are you giving her something to deny? Stop

just shh. Why are you, just stop talking. Just dump it, dump it out, right? I mean, like you could easily say this is part of the report. Yeah, come on. You already said that too. That was already said. But she didn't, she didn't deny it or respond to it. But within two hours of midnight,

Trump filed a last minute motion begging Cannon to stop it. He did all of his stuff. He complained DOJ was trying to interfere with the innocent, incoming presidential transition of power. And he asked to hear arguments. We need a hearing. Stop this. We need a hearing from your secret doctor. And can I get a hearing on the law thingy? Can I get a witness? No, wait a minute. I don't want a witness. No, no witnesses. So he actually said, you know, you're going to check out volume two on Friday. Let's have a hearing on this on Friday. Don't release it. Don't release it.

And I was like, uh-oh, here's where she'll do something. But she didn't. She actually, an hour later, denied that too. And then just after midnight, we got word that Merrick Garland had released the report to Congress. Then the press got it. And then around 1230 in the morning, the public got it. And Andy, I ran into the studio, I ran to the studio, breathlessly ran to the studio. I recorded the first episode of the audio version of the report for our podcast listeners and the public. It was like a mad late night scramble

with our network director, producers, audio engineers. We're all running around with our hair on fire trying to get this first part out to the public before anybody else did. I wanted to be first. And when it was all said and done, our amazing team got it out first thing Tuesday morning. And I was like, we did it. We're first.

High five team. And then I sat there and I waited for all the other audio versions to come in and no one else bothered. Nothing happened. We were racing against no one. But it's been downloaded tens of thousands of times, Andy. That's awesome. People are listening. People care about the truth, people care about the facts.

And I think that that's pretty, pretty awesome. Hey, listen, winning the race, even when there's no one else racing, it's still a win. All right? A win is a win. Come on. That's amazing. I can just hear your slippers scuffling their way into the studio. Get it on, get it on, get it on. This guy, let's amazing. I can just hear your slippers scuffling their way into the studio.

Hey, get it on, get it on, get it on. This guy, let's go. Yeah, pat my hair out because it's on fire. No, but I don't want to confuse this with my long held belief that an anger with the corporate media is rushed to be first and not right. That wasn't this because I'm just reading a thing that already exists. So I couldn't be wrong. I mean, you could disagree with some stuff Jack Smith said, but that's not on me. So I don't want you to be like, Oh, why do you care about being first instead of right? No, this is just reading a report. I just wanted to be the first to get an audio version out there. So we are currently the only podcast and we're currently the only network, including

the bigs that have released an audio version. Hey, this is the place you got to go. You want to know all things about the special council. Okay. That's, that's tense. The tagline. You're right. 111 episodes and gosh darn it, it's still true. I figured people would parse through it and we'd get information about the standout points and what was different. So I actually didn't, when it first came out, I just went right into the studio and started reading.

So I didn't get to read the whole report at first. Of course I did after that, after getting a nap in because it was the middle of the night and people were like, how come Andy wasn't on that first one? I was sleeping. All right. No shame. I wasn't going to wake Andy up and be like, come on, we got to do this now. I'm the obsessive one here.

So I'm very glad. Thank you everybody for listening to it. I think I posted on Blue Sky a couple of times. My heart is full that people are, tens of thousands of people are interested in listening to what Jack Smith had to say. And in particular, I mean, we're gonna go over this a little bit,

that cover letter was amazing. Yeah, truly. I didn't expect that. I wasn't kind of, I wasn't aware of the filing on the doc the night before, but when I downloaded it that morning and started with the letter, it's like, wow, even the letter is pretty revealing. It's very raw. There's some emotion in it. And some people reacted negatively to that. Some of commentators on tv is kinda surprised by that but.

Is seem to suggest that jack smith's kind of emotional. I mean i think emotional is overstating it is just kind of is a very potent letter and by charging it in that way, he sacrificed his kind of nonpartisan approach, which I really don't agree with at all. The thing that he speaks most kind of passionately about is his team and what they've gone through. And under the circumstances, like, I mean, how can you fault the guy for wanting to represent how much he thinks

of the people that he worked with? And certainly in light of what they've had to go through, the threats, the security questions, how hard you know they must have worked over the course of these whatever two years. Yeah. My hat's off to the guy. I think it was a good thing what he did. Kaitlin Luna Yeah, I agree too. And also when we get into this as we read the report in the audio version, which is also in the feed here for this podcast, that I appreciated that he took the time to explain what took so long. Yeah. Because there was a vacuum of non-information for years about what went on.

And I felt like Jack Smith felt that and wanted to explain. Yeah. Well, and it's a big part of this narrative, right? People will spend the next however many dozens and dozens of years talking about this and evaluating, you know, whether or not the government lost an opportunity to hold Donald Trump accountable because they ran out of time on the clock. And to some degree, the answer to that is yes. But it's more complicated as to whether that was the result of poor

choices by the government, either the attorney general in the department or the special counsel, or whether it was entirely bad luck. I think it's a much more complicated, it's not a binary. I think both of those possibilities can be true. And we go over them in the report. Perfect storm to not get this done. Right. Very helpful though to hear those things in the report, to see that side of it, right?

Understand why it took so long. Because these are things that must be addressed if a future attorney general is going to be successful at holding accountable somebody who tries to overthrow or retain power, overthrow the government or retain power. So if we ever do get to appoint an attorney general again, and this happens again, which now there is a higher likelihood because there's criminal immunity in the Oval Office, as Katanji Brown Jackson warned, it might become the seat of criminality in the United States, we have to make sure that our processes and our justice processes for these types of prosecutions need reform. Otherwise, it doesn't matter who you put in

as attorney general, you're gonna end up running out the clock again. Yeah, I think so. And I mean, to be fair, I think there are some fair criticisms of decisions that were made very early on in the immediate aftermath of January 6 by DOJ and by the FBI in terms of the way they thought about the investigation and the way they pursued it initially. That I think if those decisions had been made differently, the timing would have been slightly

more favorable to them. Now would it have made a difference in the long run? Probably not. No, and that's the problem. That's what needs to be addressed. Is we need to have a constitutional amendment overturning this immunity ruling. And we need to have better processes

to overcome bunk privilege. And like another decision that could have been made early on that wasn't, is instead of going through all of this to get these eight key witnesses plus there were actually several more than that that we didn't know about that are revealed in the report, not by name, but numbers wise. upfront, they would have gotten this testimony much sooner. But they wouldn't have been able to bring charges against those folks, but they didn't bring charges against anybody else. So, and inevitably, Kash Patel and Mark Meadows got immunity anyway after that whole, almost year long thing. And it's like, we just spent a year to compel testimony and they're still not given it. All right, immunity, fine just spent a year to compel testimony and they're still not given it.

All right, immunity, fine. Well, they could have maybe saved eight months had they just given everybody immunity up front. But again, I imagine Jack Smith wanted to indict some of these co-conspirators and just ran out of time. So yeah, yeah, I think so. Because he wanted to do it after the Trump trial. All right, we have a lot more to talk about, including some of the highlights of volume one,

but we have to take a quick break. So stick around, we'll be right back. Welcome back. All right, let's talk about the highlights of volume one of the special counsel report. As we expected, there's not much new about Trump's crimes that we didn't already learn from the immunity brief filed with Judge Chutkin back in September, though there were a few things we noticed that weren't discussed in the immunity brief. First, Jack Smith found some

non-related crimes committed by one of Trump's six co-conspirators that he referred to the DC US Attorney's Office. On page 67, Jack Smith writes, in addition, the office referred to a United States Attorney's Office for further investigation evidence that an investigative subject may have committed unrelated crimes. Wow. What is that? I know I was like, what? Tell me where is an end. Unlike Mueller's report, there's no appendix D here with referred criminal cases to even though they were all mostly redacted when we got the Mueller report. So I thought it was like that jumped out at me like who did what? What was it? We have no

idea. None. None. I mean, it's presumably it's one of the six, right? One of the six co-conspirators, although we don't know that for sure. Right, it could have just been a subject. Some other rando, you know, easily described co-conspirator who wasn't one of the top six that was referred to in the indictment. So yeah, I don't know. I have a lot of- And that person may have been indicted

and we just don't know for whatever it is they did and we have no idea who it is. Yep, no idea. Okay, so also we got some additional detail on the exchanges between Trump and Pence, specifically that Trump told Pence he would have to attack him publicly if Pence put out the statement about not having

the authority to essentially disqualify the electors. Like, I don't think we had that specific, you specific, we'd heard a lot about Trump's phone calls with Pence and the meeting in the Oval Office with Pence, the phone call the morning of January 6th before they went to the ellipse. But this was like a weekend contact in which Pence says, no, I can't do this. And I'm going to put out this statement. And Trump says, yeah, well, I can't do this. And I'm gonna put out the statement and Trump says, yeah, well, I'm gonna come after you. Yeah, and I do remember there being some,

I think January 6th committee testimony about someone saying that Trump said he would have to, you know, publicly say that. But I don't recall if that was different than this instance, you know what I mean? To me, this felt like it probably came from Pence. Now we don't know that for a fact, but I should have the, uh, I don't have the page number site here, but it's very specific. Right. So it seems like it had to been, certainly wasn't Trump. So came from the Pence testimony,

which is something else they had to sue to get. And they talk about that later in the report. We also learned Jeffrey Clark and Scott Perry had some secret messages on signal that the special counsel obtained from a warrant issued before he was the special counsel. That was a Merrick Garland warrant. That's the warrant for Scott Perry's phone. And here it says in the report, co-conspirator four obtained a highly classified briefing. This is Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to make the attorney general, obtained a highly classified briefing on foreign interference in the 2020 election on January 2nd, 2021, a briefing that yielded nothing to support the conspirators allegations as demonstrated by contemporaneous electronic messages between Jeffrey Clark and Scott Perry, the same member of Congress who introduced Jeff Clark to Mr.

Trump. That really stood out to me because I was trying to figure out how you're going to prove that Donald Trump, because one of Donald Trump's defenses here is I thought I heard my DNI said there was foreign interference in the election. And so that's why I was having everyone investigate and claiming fraud. And so that's a big part of his defense. And he ordered his DNI, who was Ratcliffe, to brief Jeffrey Clark. But Ratcliffe said, there's no foreign interference, and there's none. And the DOJ had signal messages from Clark to Scott Perry confirming that. So apparently, either Jeffrey Clark told Scott Perry, hey, Ratcliffe said there was no foreign interference.

What do we try now? Or, you know, I don't know, I'm just making it up. But he had those text messages. This is a crucial piece of evidence, a trial to overcome that Trump defense. But Andy, what it took to get that one piece of evidence is nuts. Okay, because Merrick Garland ordered the seizure of Scott Perry's phone. And then they had to unlock it, which took a minute. And then they had to, then Scott Perry sued and said, no speech or debate clause. And it went through this whole long trial. So they couldn't just immunize Scott Perry here. Right. And then they got what they needed. And then also on a

parallel track, Radcliffe sued saying I'm going to, not sued, but said I refused to try to quash his subpoena to testify to the grand jury using executive privilege. Rackliff was one of the ochanostra, one of the eight key witnesses that fought this in court. So to get that one key piece of evidence to overcome a Trump defense, you had to get a warrant to get a phone, unlock the phone, get the contents of the phone in a second search warrant, do the whole speech or debate clause thing, finally get the piece of evidence you needed while also trying to compel Ratcliffe to testify to things that he claims are executive privilege or work product privilege or attorney-client

privilege. And so finally, after months and months and months, you get that one piece of evidence. That's, again, I think goes toward understanding everything that's involved in proving your case and how long it can take and the roadblocks that are in place. Yeah, particularly when your case is an investigation of a whole bunch of people, basically all of whom have access

to a limitless legal representation. Right, like most criminal defendants could never fight on this many grounds at the same time. Most witnesses in federal investigations don't fight subpoenas. They don't claim crazy privileges They just they show up and they you know, they get interviewed by the US Attorney's office or whatever. This is a a Uniquely intense level of litigation of every little micro point Loads to the time those There's lawyers, members of Congress, and a president.

Yeah. So there's all sorts of other privilege. And a president who has access to a limitless fund to pay for everybody's legal defense. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All right, so that brings us to what's included in the report that isn't about Trump's crimes,

but rather about the investigative process, other charges that Smith might have considered, and also rebuttals of Trump's defenses. Yeah. And one of those main defenses was the advice of counsel defense. And the way that Jack Smith writes this up is brilliant because Trump said, well, I was just listening to my lawyers, Jeffrey Clark and Rudy Giuliani. And they told me Sydney Powell told me, and there's so much evidence, first of all, that Trump called Sydney Powell crazy. There's evidence to rebut this defense, especially the advice of counsel defense, that they weren't there to advise you of legal stuff, right? That wasn't their purpose in this thing.

And he even brings up the fact, Jack Smith brings up the fact of something that we covered pretty extensively on the Jack podcast. And that was when Jack Smith went to Judge Chuckin and said, you need to order Trump to tell us whether or not he's gonna use an advice of counsel of defense. Because if he does, that waives his attorney client privilege with that counsel. And we're going to get a whole bunch of new evidence and we're going

to need time to go over it before trial. And Trump's argument was, well, I only want a little bit of defense, advice, a council defense. I want the kind where I don't have to turn over my communications like. I want the cake and eat it too approach to the defense of counsel defense. Judge Chuckin was like, yeah, no, sign Judge Chuckin. And so we, that, you know, I thought that that was a really interesting part of the report is how Jack Smith talked about how he was going to push back on that defense were it used at trial. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. Even on the legal side of the report where he gets into the rationale as to why they brought charges at all and what the purpose of bringing the charges were and the federal the he believes compelling federal interests that he felt he had to defend by bringing a criminal action against the president of the United States and you know it really kind of helps put the entire effort into a better perspective this This isn't just a Jack Smith versus Donald Trump, you know, former Democratic administration lawyer going after former Republican president. We tend to personalize everything into these binary conflicts. That is not really how these decisions are made in the Department of Justice. At least it hasn't been so far. We'll see going forward.

But the idea that every prosecutor I've ever known thinks about and refers to that, like the touchstone of their work is like, what is the right thing for me to do here in light of my obligation to seek the truth and to seek justice? And you really get that when Jack Smith is going through each, he's describing in detail,

each of the compelling federal interests that he thought were essential and could only be defended and pursued by taking this course of filing criminal charges. Yeah, that and, you know, it's all in the federal rules of criminal procedure. You have to be able to obtain and maintain a conviction before you're gonna bring charges.

Yeah, the justice manual. The justice manual, excuse me. Yep. You have to ensure that they're not being properly prosecuted in a different, are they being effectively prosecuted for these crimes in a different jurisdiction? And he weighed that. He thought, well, maybe what Fulton County is going to bring here, because he indicted before Fulton County did.

But if they bring charges, will that satisfy this or do we still need to proceed? And he determined, and we go over this as we still need to proceed? And he determined and we go over this as we read the report that it is correct to proceed with criminal charges here. There are a lot of different factors that have to go into it. Yeah. The fact that there was no alternative process to pursue accountability through a non-criminal process. This was the only way to do this. And it was a challenging case, no question about it, but also one with a lot of evidence. Yeah, and speaking of challenging case,

something else that he went over in this report is why he did not bring Title 18, US Code 2383 charges inciting an insurrection. And I thought that was a fascinating exercise. It's kind of what we thought. At least me, I sort of on the surface thought, well, that just seems way harder because of First Amendment and protected political speech.

But Jack Smith goes into it, the history of the statute, how it's been brought, what the two elements are, how meeting each element in this case would be different. Something I hadn't thought of, that insurrection charges have always been successfully brought when someone's trying to overthrow a sitting government, but Trump was trying to maintain his sitting government.

So how would he go about proving insurrection when he's not trying to overthrow something. He's trying to maintain power and there's not a single analog, another, any case where he can get the information or or hints on how to proceed with proof for that. So I thought that was a really interesting discussion as well. Yeah for sure. He talks about a question that we debated on this show so many times, like, why weren't other people charged? Right? And, you know, we've, I think, kind of come to the conclusion we had a while ago, because it was all about time. It was all about timing. It was about keeping this

thing tight and focused on, by far, without a doubt, the most significant possible target of this investigation. That is President Donald J. Trump. He was the center of the conspiracy and he was the beneficiary of the conspiracy, the intended beneficiary of the conspiracy. And he is the person who essentially incited the riot and advocated, directed his followers, at least those on the ellipse that day, to march up to the Capitol. So yeah, it was good to kind of see him walk through that. It kind of confirmed the way that we've been analyzing this for a while. You definitely got the sense that he felt like there were cases to be made there.

But it just couldn't be done before Trump. And the only chance they had of getting this thing completed before the election was to focus on the president. Yeah. And that's kind of a between the lines reading. He doesn't come out and say, well, I didn't want to slow this thing down. We had to get this done. He basically says, look, we considered whether or not to bring this, the other co-conspirators' charges against them in separate cases or a consolidated case. And as we were considering all of this,

Trump won the election. So, you know, and I thought it was interesting at the very end of that section, he said, by the way, so we aren't actually accusing any of the co-conspirators or subjects of this investigation of committing crimes, but we are also not exonerating them. And I thought that that was well said. And something, you know, talking about accusing people of committing crimes, that's all over this report with Donald Trump, which was not in Mueller's report because Mueller concluded he couldn't accuse Trump, he couldn't accuse a sitting president of committing a crime

because you can't indict him. And if you can't indict him, he can't face you in court. So you're violating his constitutional rights and his due process by accusing him of a crime without giving him the opportunity to defend himself. That was nowhere in here. And it was very clear. Jack Smith was like, he committed crimes. We prosecuted him. He meets all the elements of this crime. Yeah. He's been accusing him of committing crimes for a year now. So he was indicted and then a superseding indictment. So, and then, you know, many, many times in extensive motion practice. So it's, there was no, uh, hiding

the, hiding the football here. He's, this is, uh, the fact that he, Jack Smith believes and a grand jury believed that there was probable cause to, to, to believe that, uh, that the president committed these, these four offenses. So there you go. And he talked about his process of, of considering whether to bring a superseding indictment after the immunity ruling and how that whole decision went down. Very interesting. Yeah. But that, that last line, um, there were some really, there were some really standout lines in this report? No doubt. No doubt. And I think generally the report is, it's a rare opportunity to hear, to get this kind of perspective on these decisions. Like decisions,

not maybe not on this volume of them or in a matter as significant as this, but these sorts of tactical and legal decisions are made every day in prosecutions. You never hear about it, right? The only thing you hear about is the indictment, and then what's entered at trial, if there is one, and then of course the sentencing phase. And that's it, prosecutors walk away, they fold the file up in boxes

and send it off to be stored, and that's it. You get in this report, the real behind the scenes kind of, here's what we were worried about, here's how we read the law, here's how we applied it to these facts, here's what we thought was strong about it or weak about it. So it's really kind of fascinating. If you're someone who has an interest

in criminal prosecution and the law, it's a rare opportunity to kind of see behind the curtain. Yeah, I agree. And what was that other quote that you were talking, you reminded me of that you found was- This is really like almost kind of my favorite part of the report and it comes from the cover letter that he sent to Merrick Garland.

And for me, this, this answers the question that I get so frequently now about Jack Smith from friends and people I talked to and they're like, Oh, it was all for nothing and what's the big deal. You know, you can't hold people accountable anymore. But I understand that disappointment. I share it to some degree, but Jack Smith said this in his letter to the AG. He said, and I'm quoting here, while we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters. I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal cost matters. The facts as we uncovered them in our investigation

and as set forth in my report matter. Experienced prosecutors know that you cannot control outcomes. You can only do your job in the right way for the right reasons. And I just think that's a brilliantly pointed statement of why we do this, why these cases got investigated in the first place. It wasn't to cost Donald Trump the election. That was never the goal. No matter what you hear from Republicans and people on the Hill and Donald Trump himself, that was never the goal.

The goal was to find out what happened here and hold people accountable if they had broken the law. And whether or not Donald Trump won the election was not a matter of concern for Jack Smith. It wasn't then, and I don't think it is now. Yeah, that quote really got me, as did the final sentence of the report, which let me see if I bring it up. Yes, I have the report ready to go in one of my windows. It's never far away.

No, it's kind of always just right where I need it. All right. The final paragraph, the department's view that the constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government's proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind. Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial." And I know that that was the big headline everywhere. We believe that we would be able to do this.

And it was funny because I saw like Bar McQuade and Joyce Vance and a bunch of US attorneys is like, well, yeah, you can't bring charges if you don't believe that you can obtain and sustain a conviction at trial. But that was, I think a pretty good closing statement. It's as strong, what he says is as strong as what he's not explicitly saying, but very clearly communicating, which is, we got this. I mean, yeah, that's the standard, and it's appropriate that he ends the report that way.

And he must have been able to conclude that if he was going to bring the indictment in the first place. But when you read this report, you realize, man, there is a mountain of really impressive evidence here. And I have every confidence that Jack Smith and his team believe to this day that had this case gone to trial, Donald Trump would have been convicted of federal charges. And I believe that as well.

Yeah, I agree. All right, we're thanks for listening, by the way, to the audio report. And again, we have two more episodes of that to conclude the audio version of volume one. But I want to talk a little bit about volume two, but we have to take a quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody.

Welcome back. All right. Let's talk about the fate of volume two of this report. This is the one about the classified documents case. Glenn Kirschner sums it up pretty well writing for MSNBC. He says, it's a win for transparency. Volume one of the special counsel Jack Smith's investigative report documenting Donald Trump's alleged 2020 election subversion crimes was released Tuesday, reminding readers of what the report calls Trump's unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.

Now, the less good news. Judge Cannon, who had temporarily blocked the release of volume one of Smith's report, has made it less likely that volume two will be released to the leadership of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees by scheduling a hearing on the matter for Friday, January 17th. Yeah, Garland agreed with Smith's recommendation against publicly releasing volume two, but he announced his intent to make it available for quote in-camera review by the chairman and ranking members of the House and Senate Judicial Committees. Now prosecutors note that such limited non-public disclosures to members of Congress

are routine and necessary to ensure that Congress can fulfill its own constitutional oversight functions. To minimize the risk of public release and potential harm to Nauta and Dale Lavera, the chair and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees would be required to agree to specified conditions of confidentiality, including an agreement not to share information

in volume two publicly. Yeah. So as we discussed in the A block there, Cannon has extended her injunction to block volume two from going to Congress and the 11th circuit has yet to weigh in. Maybe because they think Trump's about to put her on the 11th circuit with yet to weigh in. Maybe because they think Trump's about to put her on the 11th circuit with them, and they don't wanna make real bad enemies, more enemies than they have. They've overturned her several times.

And maybe they'd rather just let this whole thing expire past January 20th. But Cannon held a hearing Friday, and actually she's holding the hearing as we sit here and record this, because we record this show on Friday And they're only a couple hours into it right now But I'll break in here with an update if we if we get one if we need one

Like if that information comes out before the enough time before the episode airs To get it in however on Wednesday Before the hearing Canon ordered a paper copy of volume 2 of the report to be hand-delivered To her court for review in camera. She said in anticipation of the January 17th hearing, parties in perspective intervener President-elect Trump are advised as follows. First, the court is prepared to hear argument on President-elect Trump's motion to intervene as to volume two. Accordingly, honored before January 16th, 2025, council for president elect Trump shall file a notice advising of his intent to present argument as to volume two only. And if argument is requested, specifying the name of the council designated to present

the argument during the hearing. Second, now that sounds simple, right? But I'm sure they'll find a way to screw it up by not signing it or putting it on the wrong docket or something. Yeah, for sure. A second, to facilitate the court's review of the defendant's joint emergency motion as narrowed by the court's order, the United States is directed on or before 2 PM, January 16th, 2025 to hand deliver a copy of volume two to the court to be reviewed in camera. Council shall contact chambers via email

for the limited purpose of arranging delivery and shall communicate promptly with the classified information security officer in this matter to the extent volume two contains classified information. Further, counsel for the United States shall provide a reasonable opportunity for the defendant's counsel to further review volume two

prior to the hearing, if that opportunity is requested by the Defendants' Council. So she's ordered the DOJ to not give this to anybody, and now she's ordering the DOJ to give this to his attorneys if they ask. The hearing is a public hearing, but any discussions of specified content in Volume 2 will be conducted in closed closed sealed session to preserve the defendant's fair trial rights and to fully respect protective orders previously entered in the case.

And maybe I'm a cynic, but this sounds to me like she just doesn't want a copy on the docket. I feel like a hard copy would have to be preserved by the court because it was reviewed in camera as part of a case, as part of litigation, but would it be safe from Trump and Cannon's care? I don't know. But because several journalists have filed FOIA requests for this volume, I imagine they'll be litigation. But if all the copies are destroyed, what are you going to hand over to the journalists? You know, I don't know. Yeah, this is a hard one to figure out. Actually, the only piece of this that like makes a lot of sense to me is the fact that they that the government might be obligated to share the hard copy with

the defendants if they if they request it because the reason they are not the reason they're doing this is because there aren't electronic copies of the report floating around right they want to be they're not sending it's not on the docket because you don't, the existence of the electronic copies that can then be downloaded, then the cat gets out of the bag. So they're trying to be very, very careful about not creating a situation in which an electronic copy could be mishandled or misappropriated. Yeah.

But if I'm a DOJ, I would be like, oops, I forgot. I just put it on the docket for the public Pull a man a fort right he did that like four times I remember when he tried to redact something and only used black highlighter and journalists just removed it. Yeah, that's pretty fun I mean, yeah, it's I'm trying to remember there's some big DOJ document scandal where they posted something to a docket they were not supposed to and it got all downloaded in the middle of the night by a bunch of people. It happens fairly, not frequently, but it does happen. So they don't want that happening here because that would just give rise to all kinds of outraged lawsuits and... You know what? At this point I'm like, fine, bring it. But I don't work at the DOJ.

I think it's a security thing. They're trying to do everything on limited hand copies. But there was no classified information. The DOJ said, well, here, we delivered your copy. There's no classified information in it. So we don't have to contact the security officer. Yeah, it's not classified. But man, they don't want this thing getting out.

No, they really don't. And you know, that kind of brought up the whole idea of you. We discussed this like last week, you brought it up. Why don't they just drop the charges or drop the appeal? They're not going anywhere and just release the report. Yeah. But some lawyers have argued, I've got a lot of pushback on this. Some people argued that the Department of Justice can't do that because if Merrick Garland drops the appeal and the 11th Circuit never overturns Cannon's dismissal, which that's what would happen if they dropped the appeal, they would never overturn her dismissal, then her ruling that Jack Smith was appointed unconstitutionally stands until it's overturned at some point in the future.

And if we're ruling that the special counsel's appointment is unconstitutional stands, then his reports and work product are unconstitutional. But other legal experts and the Department of Justice argued against that in their 11th Circuit appeal. That's right. So the DOJ argued, the attorney General is the Senate confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is vested with the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the Department. The Attorney General thus has the authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.

That authority is inherent in the office of the Attorney General. It does not depend on the lawfulness of the special counsel's appointment to take actions as an inferior officer of the United States or on the department's specific regulations authorizing the attorney general to approve the public release of special counsel reports. Indeed, the attorney general would have the authority to decide whether to publicly release a report prepared

and provided to the department by wholly private citizens. Defendants objections to the special counsel's appointment thus simply have no bearing on the attorney general's authority here. Right. Great argument, but the 11th Circuit hasn't ruled on that argument. Nor have they ruled on Cannon's dismissal of the case. But regardless, a week ago, I still thought this was a good idea that you brought up, Andy. So I asked

our listeners at the Daily Beans to write to Attorney General Merrick Garland and ask him to dismiss the appeal and release volume two. And guess what? On Thursday, four days later, Democrats on the House Judiciary did the same thing. Yeah, coincidence? I think not. Yeah, so the Judiciary Democrats wrote, as Attorney General, it is incumbent upon you to take all necessary steps to ensure the report is released before the end of your tenure, including, if necessary, by simply dismissing the remaining criminal charges against Mr. Trump's co-conspirators, Waltine Notta and Carlos de Oliveira.

To the extent that such a decision to dismiss these cases might encourage these defendants to keep enabling the corruption of their superiors, those concerns are outweighed by the many indications that Mr. Trump will simply end the prosecutions against his co-conspirators upon taking office anyway and then instruct his Department of Justice to permanently bury this report. Mr. Trump has not been selective about his plans to weaponize the DOJ for his own personal whims and preferences. He has promised to name a special prosecutor to target political opponents, stated he would

use the department to prosecute his enemies, and threatened to quote, direct the DOJ to investigate progressive district attorneys who have not supported his personal agenda. And of course, we are all well aware that his administration plans to give quote, loyalty tests, only extending government positions to those who pledge to put Donald Trump's interests above the Constitution. The letter goes on to say, based on a review of court filings by the special counsel, this report presumably not only outlines the evidence supporting the 40 felony counts against Mr. Trump related to Will fully hiding and mishandling extremely sensitive national defense information,

but also explains why he retained and concealed classified documents and what they intended to do with those materials. Neither of which was included in the indictment. Now how do they know that? Yeah, that's my question. It is essential that the American people in Congress understand how Mr. Trump mishandled our nation's most sensitive classified information, especially because he'll be sworn in as commander in chief and taking leadership of our national security apparatus in just five days. So yeah, how did they know that this report says that it says why he hoarded these documents and what he intended to do with them? And then

I also wanted to point out the fact that they, they assume a lot in that part that you read that there's still charges against Nauta and Dale Rivera. They're asking Merrick Garland to dismiss the charges. Yeah, I think that's just a mistake and really kind of a silly one. I can't imagine, I mean, there's probably 50 lawyers who could have read this thing before they sent it out. They don't, there aren't charges as we both know,

as we all know, cause the case was dismissed. There's only a pending appeal and it's only pending because the government filed it. So the government could, without seeking leave of court or any of the sort of things that you need to do when you dismiss a charge against a person, here they could just file something on the docket that says we hereby withdraw our appeal. So yeah, it's, it's very easy. Um, but this is really remarkable how they

know that there are these comments in the report about what they intended to do with this information is that's really right. Cause I'm looking at it. It doesn't say the report could contain that. No, it doubles down, right? It says, um, the report, well, it says presumably not only, not only outlines the evidence against Mr. Trump related to willfully hiding and mishandling, but also explain. So they do that presumably in there. Okay.

So maybe it's just a little just a little creative on their part. But they also don't mention anything about the DOJ's argument that the attorney general has. They don't cite any case law like, or the regs or 509-510, which give the attorney general the power to release a report. I do like the thing that Jack Smith argued in his 11th Circuit appeal where he's like, the attorney general could release a report from Krusty the Clown if he wanted to. It doesn't matter if Judge Cannon thinks that Jack Smith wasn't appointed appropriately. The attorney general has the is vested with the power to release reports.

There's never going to be some judicial determination that all of the work product that Jack Smith and his team did is now unconstitutional. That's not really a thing. In fact, once the report's out, it's out. The detractors can say, I'm not going to read it. I don't believe it. It has no credibility because he was unconstitutionally appointed.

I mean, who cares? Like, people are going to say that anyway. I don't think that's a big deal. I do think that DOJ, on some level, feels like it's important to them, institutionally, to get this ruling overturned because of what we've discussed before that it's, it does, it does take a, it lands a shot at this concept of the special counsel. But honestly, it's from a district court judge in Florida who

has a particularly challenging reputation as almost no preced presidential value, certainly not outside of that 11th Circuit. So I don't know, I would, you know, balance that against the importance of getting this information out to people. I agree. To me, it's a clear case, but. Yeah, and we're not gonna get a ruling from the 11th Circuit on her overturning or dismissing the case or saying

that Jack Smith was appointed unconstitutionally because there haven't even been oral arguments on that. So there's no way we're going to get a ruling on that before January 20th. We might get a ruling vacating Judge Cannon's order making this whole stupid hearing moot. Right. And it might, that might be the one last thing that stands in the way of Merrick Garland releasing the report if he dismissed or withdrew his appeal or the appeal down there in Florida. But it's not looking good for volume two. But we do have volume one. Yeah. And again, we have to remember the question is not like release the report entirely. It's release it to four people in Congress. Garland

has already said it's not coming out publicly until the case is resolved. I guess if he pulled back the appeal, he could just push the send button and send it out to the world. And what I don't get is why Dick Durbin hasn't written a similar letter saying I'm one of the people that would be reviewing this report and I need to review it because I'm about to provide advice and consent on the confirmation of Kash Patel who is mentioned in this report. That's my constitutional duty. He's got a kind of a stronger case here than anybody over on the House Judiciary Committee. So we haven't seen anything like that.

And I have asked listeners to write to Dick Durbin and ask him to do that, but he hasn't. But the judiciary dems did so high five, even though you made the little bit of a mistake there saying that he needs to dismiss the charges when there are none. He just needs to withdraw the appeal. Yeah. Total high five. They're appealing to the boldness of Merritt Garland. Oh, which there is not much. So I don't want to raise expectations. That's why I wanted them to put all the law citations in there. Not like the be bold man.

That's not the way to get Merritt Garland to do a thing. No. The way to get him to do a thing is to say, hey, here's the law. You even argued in your 11th Circuit Appeal that you have the authority, regardless of Jack Smith's constitutionality of his appointment. You have the authority, so release it. But no, they didn't. But we'll see what happens. Keep writing those letters. My instructions

and links are on my sub stack. All right. We have run out of time to talk about Pam Bondi's confirmation hearing and the comprehensive, I guess, timeline of the Trump prosecution starting back in January of 2021 by the Department of Justice. But those are going to be great things, I think, to discuss on the first episode of the new podcast that comes out next week. So we're gonna save that. And the reason I wanna do that is because I think it's important that we take some listener questions,

but we do have to take one last quick break and then we'll come back with a couple of questions. So stick around, we'll be right back. Bum bum bum ba da da da da da da. Ba da da da da da da da. Ba. Welcome back. Okay, here we are. And this is for the last round of listener questions for the Jack podcast.

I'm kind of, I feel like a tear come in my eye here. It's, it's, uh, it's been such a great adventure. It's so much fun doing it. And we have heard so many great things from all the listeners who've taken the time to hit the link and send us their thoughts, their sometimes really crazy jack new podcast name recommendations, and just to ask questions about things that really forced me to think differently about the material we're covering. So I thank you so much for all these questions. And we will continue answering your questions starting next

week. So any questions you have about Pam Bondi, Trump's Justice Department, anything like that, any concerns that you may have? Cash Patel, the FBI, if anything the aperture is is widening now and there's going to be even more subjects and investigations and people and personnel moves and things like that that I think are going to be interesting to people. So I'm looking forward to what we hear from this amazing audience then. Me too. So today we're going to start with a pretty direct one from Jackie and I think it's perfect

with what we've covered today. Jackie says, Andy, you've read lots of indictments. On a scale from one to 10, how bad is this report compared to what you've seen before? So Jackie, that's a great question. And I have to say, yes. Bad or good? Like bad for Trump?

That's how I interpret it. I think she means like how strong is the indictment? Like how confident are you that the you know, that the government's got a strong case? How bad are these crimes? Yeah, yeah, that too. I've read a lot of them. Some of them are like really so ironclad that they are even stronger than this one, you know, an indictment in a drug case where somebody is seen selling drugs and then they are arrested and they have all

the evidence on them. So, you know, there's like those run of the mill crimes, but like really strong indictments. But I have to say that this indictment and the report that talks about it is really, really amazing. It's an incredible thing because this is a very hard case. It's using charges that have never ever been used in this context before against a president of the United States with limitless Legal resources to employ to defend them as super biased Supreme Court. I'm just gonna come call it out This is a Supreme Court that is absolutely biased towards the president and this idea of an imperial presidency and this idea of an imperial presidency. So this was a big, big ask. And I think they were able to do it

because they have a ton of very powerful evidence. You read the report and you imagine what it would be like to be in the room as witnesses like, oh, I don't know, Mike Pence is sitting on the stand and talking about a conversation he had with the president in which the president basically is extorting him to abandon his oath and do something to overturn the results of a free and fair election. I think it's the scope of matters that are up in the air here, that are the subject of this indictment and the report. Incredibly important to all Americans and truly

historic. And I think it's a very strong case. And like I said before, I'm confident that they would have gotten, they would likely have gotten some convictions if this thing had gone to trial. Yeah, if this thing had gone to trial, you have to recall there was gonna, we still had another second inter lot in a locatory appeal after all the back and forth in the briefings judge Chuck and would have to rule on what she thought were official acts and what was immune and what wasn't immune I'm assuming she would have ruled in favor of the DOJ and

most of the requests and then that would be appealed by Trump and then that would go to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and then we would have to wait for a ruling there and I'm sure that they would uphold whatever Judge Chuckin said depending on who was on the panel. If not, it would have to go on bonk and then I think it would pass and then it would have to be appealed to the Supreme Court. And at that point, sometime at the end of next year, the Supreme Court, I'm sure, would have taken the longest time possible to consider their arguments. They would have set some oral arguments.

We would have had to hear John Sauer again, who we're going to hear a lot more of because he's going to be the Solicitor General for the next four years. But he would have argued the case to the Supreme Court. If you have faith that the Supreme Court would let Judge Chuckin's ruling stand, you have more faith in the Supreme Court than I have in the Supreme Court. I think she, I think they would have gotten a couple of shots through to the net. I think there's a, I think the evidence that's in the superseding indictment that is based on non-official conduct might have survived. I think the stuff in which they believe the presumption of immunity has been rebutted, the presumption of immunity arguments, that's a 50-50 at best, and they

could have lost some of that stuff. But you get just the non presidential official act evidence in and some of these, some of these charges survive and now it's game on. I don't know. Maybe I'm an optimist. I've never thought of myself. I feel like if they got rid of the Penn stuff, um, that when reevaluated, there might not be enough to go forward, but we'll never know. I just want to make clear everybody it would be another at least year and a half. Oh my god two years probably. Once you get through all that litigation and the Supreme Court cycle which would not have any sort of you know

they wouldn't be on the hurry-up schedule which turned out not to be much of a hurry-up anyway. Yeah a, long time away. All right. Last question. You ready? Yep. This one comes from Sally. Sally says, my question is a wide angle lens inquiry. This podcast has provided so much information and education, not only about the special counsel investigation, but also our judicial system writ large. While I'm grateful for this podcast and all of your hard work, I do feel a sense of anxiety now that I better understand the vulnerabilities of our legal system, the inequities that can be exploited, and possibly the lack of constitutional or

institutional mechanisms to check these abuses of power. So, my question is, do you foresee a path forward for those who wish to uphold the rule of law? Will it be possible to move in the direction of a rules-based system? The far right looks at the vulnerabilities of our system and figures out how to exploit them. Are there people on the pro-democracy, pro-rule of law side learning from the ways that the system gets exploited so that they can close the loopholes or shore up the vulnerabilities? Well, the answer to that part of your question, Sally, is yes, there are.

I don't think those voices are nearly as loud and insistent right now in our political environment as the voices from the other side that you've pointed out, but they are there. And I think that fundamentally, our constitutional system is based on ideas of fairness that are more enduring than one litigant's opportunity to game the system.

I'm not trying to be Pollyanna here. I do think that we are in a tough spot and the next four years could be really challenging. And so we need to keep our eyes wide open and listen and consume information intelligently and to keep track on to how things are going. But at the end of those, but four years are going to come and go and then we'll have another big decision to make as to who's going to take this country forward for the next four years and the four years after that and on and on and on. And I do think that our institutions will survive.

They'll be battered and weakened in some ways four years from now, but the opportunity begins anew to rebuild, rededicate ourselves, to do better about explaining to our fellow citizens about what we think is important and why they should maybe make political decisions one way and not another. So I do think that there's hope and light in the future. We're a big, strong country. We've been here a long time, and we've endured worse times than this.

And I think that we'll get through it, and there's always a chance to get better. Yeah, and Sally, I'm so glad you brought this up. It reminds me, you and I are great minds think alike. I wrote up a sub stack that's called Between the Lines of Jack Smith's Report, because over a quarter of this is dedicated to the processes and how they were slowed down and exploited by Trump and his allies through witness intimidation and protracted privilege battles and doing battles with Twitter about

handing over Donald Trump's account and making them not tell Donald Trump they handed over his stuff. I mean, all of these things are things that have to be addressed. These privilege communications, these presidential communications, immunity granted by the Supreme Court, they all need to be addressed. And these guardrails need to be shored up. And that's what I think something I think Jack Smith is trying to tell us that because but if not for the election of Donald Trump, we would have got a conviction. And you know, I hear all the time, you know, AG, I love your work. I love your stuff. But why

do you keep defending Merrick Garland? What's that about? Why are you gonna merit? They call me a Merrick Garland apologist And I'm like look I've criticized him on a ton of occasions especially especially and including in this investigation but in other things too and Jack Smith I think has made a couple of unforced errors when we talked about one of those last week, yeah, but a couple of unforced errors. We talked about one of those last week. But I'm not necessarily defending Garland as much as I'm defending the facts and why this thing was so slow and people with the FBI pushing back, Trump holdovers pushing back, systems that are in place, maybe the OLC memos that say you can and die to sitting president. And my worry is I'm not so much defending Garland as I'm pleading with people to please don't only blame Garland and then throw the

rest of this away. Because if we blame Garland in favor of not updating our systems, I'm afraid that any future attorney general is going to face the same problems. And so that's kind of why I wanted to write that up. And so I appreciate you bringing that up. But I'm with you, Andy. I do think that the rule of law matters and it's going to be a lot, like you said, a lot harder to defend it over the next four years. That's why we want to have this podcast going forward. And I appreciate you, Sally, writing this question because it's kind of a good segue to end the Jack podcast and begin the new podcast. So we appreciate you.

And we still have our link in the show notes, the same link. So if you have a question for us for next week's show, the new show, please click that link and send it in. We really appreciate your questions and thanks for listening. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for going on this journey with us and hey, come with us on the next one. Yep, we're not going anywhere. So we'll see you next week. I've been Alison Gill.

And I'm Andy McCabe.