Jack - Episode 21 - When Lawyers Become Witnesses

Episode Date: April 23, 2023

This week: new evidence about text messages tying the Trump White House to stolen voter data in Georgia that was going to be used to overturn the 2020 election results; potential utilization by Jack Smith of audio recordings from the Dominion defamation case against Fox; Epshteyn’s long meetings with Special Counsel prosecutor; Fitton FOIA fails; plus listener questions.Do you have questions about the cases and investigations? 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

I signed in order appointing Jack Smith. And those who say Jack is a finesse. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, what law have I grew? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is? Send me to jail.

Hey everybody, welcome to episode 21 of Jack, the podcast about all things special council. Today is Sunday, April 23rd. We have a lot to cover. I'm your host, Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Okay. So today, Alison, we're going to cover some new evidence about text messages tying the Trump White House to stolen voter data in Georgia that was going to be used to overturn the 2020 election results, as well as the potential utilization by Jack Smith of audio recordings

from the Dominion defamation case against Fox. And we'll talk about how our right wing media outlet got faced by DOJ in their effort to mine info about the Jack Smith team. That is amazing. And I love that because we did an episode early on about lessons learned, but like how Jack Smith is going to be so much more successful because he has the entire Mueller investigation to look at, right? And that's sort of, we'll talk a little bit about that.

We're also going to talk about Trump attorneys making attorneys get attorneys Boris Epstein and his long, long ass meetings with special counsel prosecutors this week, along with another Trump attorney of Encorecran, recusing himself or stepping aside as Trump's lawyer in the documents case and what that could mean for these investigations that Jack Smith is conducting. Andy, let's start though with Boris. Oh, yeah, Boris. Here we go. Everybody hates Boris, right?

That's a new TV show. This week on Fox News. He has become the kind of Hollywood bad guy figure and the whole documents team slash January 6th team, slash whatever else. Yeah. So check out this one two punch that happened on Wednesday, April 19th.

The Washington Post reported that Trump consultant and lawyer, Boris Epstein, was going to be taking a more limited role in the January 6 case and the documents case, not an all-out recusal, according to the sources, but backbench you a little bit. And that might be because a lot of people are confused about whether or not he's legally representing Trump or whether he's a campaign consultant. But my immediate thought was it must be because he's a potential witness in both of these cases. That's what happened with Evan Corcoran. We're going to talk about Corcoran later on in the show. He quit Trump's documents legal team when he had to go in and testify before the grand jury,

pursuant to an order by Judge Bozberg who said, you know, crime fraud exception, go speak. We've covered that pretty extensively. And like I said, we'll talk more about Corcoran a little bit later. But so April 19th 2 p.m. Washington Post says he's taking a more limited role, not more than two hours later. After the Washington Post story dropped, New York Times came out with a story reporting that Boris would actually be meeting with special counsel prosecutors in DC. And we didn't have a lot of information at the time whether or not he was going to be meeting with, you know, like, was it people from the criminal division?

Is it line prosecutors? Is it Jack Smith? We didn't know what case it was necessarily about, although we had a feeling it might have been the document's case. But before we get into some of that speculation or whatever is happening here with Epstein, what are the circumstances, Andy, under which a person would have to meet the DOJ in person and talk to prosecutors versus like a subpoena? Like why are you bringing somebody in to talk to prosecutors versus like a subpoena. Like why are you bringing somebody in

to talk to you physically? What, like, you know, I always think of this as a meeting that could have been handled by email. What's going on? So even before we get to that, just to touch on this idea of like, he's kind of stepping back from the January 6 case maybe a little bit sort of.

Recusal is like pregnancy. There's no middle ground. stepping back from the January 6 case, maybe a little bit sort of. Recusal is like pregnancy. There's no middle ground. You're either pregnant or you're not. You're either recused or you're not. You're out of the case entirely or you're not. So that, to me right off the top, sounds like a bit of a euphemism trying to cover for what is actually happening here.

And then of course the drop from the New York Times kind of confirmed your sense that there was something a little bit strange happening. So why would DOJ want to meet with Epstein in person? Well, let's just say, you know, why do you bring somebody in physically instead of negotiating via email or over the phone or telecom or whatever? So we have a tendency to think about investigations and how they're conducted. We always think about the high level people, like the target, like what's the target or the potential defendant doing?

What are they thinking? And then you think a little bit about like co-conspirators and co-conspirators becoming cooperators. But in reality, much of the investigators' time is spent identifying, locating, and talking to just plain old witnesses, people who are not subjects of the investigation, but they have critical information that the investigators need to build their case. And with a witness, just imagine a regular fact witness, what you would want to do is you'd go out, you'd find them at their home or their work,

you'd talk to them, you'd convince them to come in for an interview. And they would then sit down with the agents and also the prosecutor to go over the scope of what they know so that the prosecutor gets an understanding for what can this person actually provide for my case. Oh, so this is sort of like cop shows where we see him like watch, come downtown and answer some questions and go in and talk to the investigators or the line prosecutors and figure out sort

of what they know, right? Like that's probably the most common reason you bring somebody in. It absolutely is and it also gives you an opportunity to flesh out if there's going to be any problems like whether or not this person has any privilege that might prohibit them from talking It absolutely is. And it also gives you an opportunity to flesh out if there's going to be any problems, like whether or not this person has any privilege that might prohibit them from talking about what you need them to talk about things like that. So you would talk and it's friendly, right? It doesn't mean that person's a cooperator working for the government, whatever. It's just friendly. You've asked them to come in and they agree. So the next step is if they have the information that you need

for your case, you would then bring that witness in front of the grand jury and you'd ask them the same questions again for the purpose of getting that testimony quote unquote locked in, right? So it's under both. It's preserved. And we have a really great recent modern day example of that with Michael Cohen going in a bunch of times to speak to the DA at the DA's office or prosecutors at the DA's office. And then during the last week of that whole investigation, he goes before the grand jury once or twice to answer questions and then maybe gets brought back in as a rebuttal, but

I don't think he did. I think it was somebody else. But so that's a very excellent, yeah, it's not federal, but it's a very good example of a friendly, tell us what you know. He knows things, they're important, he's coming in to provide them. And then it's like, yeah, we really need this information. We could need it as testimony of trial,

so then you get them locked in. That's all under the assumption that the interaction between the government, the witness, the witness, totally friendly, no coercion, no nothing. And why do you do that in person? Just because it's a much better FBI, I mean, or experts I know. And probably some of these line prosecutors are experts at talking to, and we talked

about this a lot in the Mueller investigation when Komi came out with his book about, hey, we're way better at interrogating potential witnesses than this torture shit that you're trying to do in stellar wins or whatever. It's very much like you want to talk to them in the office away from distractions, away from their family, away from their co-workers or other phones ringing and that sort of thing. It's a way to get their attention very focused. You have the opportunity to work with them on their recollection, like they may think, like, oh, I don't remember anything about X.

And then you can, through the cognitive interview techniques, you kind of go back and reset them, put their mind in a place in time when events took place. You prompt their recollection with talking to them about things like what were you wearing, what had you done that day before you saw the car accident, that kind of thing. And it kind of brings back for people more detail about what happened. Also crucially, it really allows the prosecutor to assess the witness and to make a determination as like, how good is their recollection? Are they credible?

Do they have other problems in their past that might make them look like a, like a not a very truthful witness? Because all that's important for the prosecutor to figure out could I actually rely on this person at trial for that? And do they seem cooperative? Do they seem like a recountivement witness

who's gonna be a, you know, like a real problem? So that's where it gets interesting. And you would start with a witness like that in the same way. You'd say, we'd like you to come in and talk to us. And sometimes a not a hundred percent cooperative witness will come in and do that just for the purpose of gaining their own intelligence to understand what is the government want to know about? What kind of questions are they asking me? Who's running this thing? Who's the prosecutors of the agents I need to be concerned about? Ultimately, if that person doesn't come in or they do come in and then they don't want to go to the grand jury, then you start to wave things like subpoenas and compulsory process

over their head. Then you start talking about, well, we'll just bring you in front of the grand jury. Well, at the grand jury sort out all the things that you know and things that you have done and criminal exposure that you might have. In that very kind of leveraged, I'm not going to call it coercion, but it seems coercive sometimes. That process is how you end up with either a full on hostile witness or someone who ultimately strikes a deal with the government. Okay, I'll come in, I'll testify, but I want immunity for X, Y and Z.

Okay, so this could be them just bringing Boris in to take his temperature and see what he knows. That's one possibility, but we already know last year the feds seized Boris Appshane's phone. And he's been under at least some kind of investigation for a while because in order to see somebody's phone, you have to have at least evidence that a crime more likely or that not occur. Sorry, it's all caused. The evidence on probable causes on that phone. So maybe this, you know, if it's just a temperature taking thing, maybe it's a more advanced temperature-taking situation,

but there are other reasons that you would bring a witness in like this, aren't there? There's, you know, it's likely in this case with the evidence off the phone, and who knows what other evidence they might have from other witnesses, other documents, things they've subpoenaed that we're not even aware of. It's likely that the temperature on Boris is already high.

You don't have to have him come in to explain what was on his phone so you understand it. You understand it. You know what's on there. You know the significance of it. But you might bring him in to walk him through what's on his phone to confront him with things. What'd you talk about in this call? Whose phone number is this?

Of course, you know whose phone number it is. You're just trying to see if he answers the questions truthfully and fully. And that is all part of this process of escalation, I'll call it, not coercion, escalation, where you're making it clear to him that like, he could be in the soup here. He could be in trouble.

It's time to start thinking about doing something other than being shady and trying to dance with the other side. Yeah, and a couple of things here. Like I said, they've got his phone. And that is another reason to bring people into the DOJ offices. To show them evidence you don't want to send via email or to walk out or some sort of evidence that is protected. Just evidence that you don't want to send via email or to walk out or, you know, some sort of evidence that you that is protected, just evidence that you don't want to get out of the office. So you bring them in and show it to them and then they can take notes and leave. It's also a note that Boris Epstein was part of the alleged conspiracy to obstruct justice in the documents case. He is the one who

coordinated Corcoran and Christina Bob's letter of attestation that classified documents had all been handed over pursuant to that May 11th subpoena that they all went down and had a party about on June 3rd of Mar-a-Lago. A month, a little, two months before the, the actual search warrant was a month, a little, two months before the actual search warrant was executed. And so I could see them. And again, we're just speculating here, but I could see them saying, oh, hey, we talked to Bob, we talked to Corcoran. We got Corcoran's notes now, and we've got transcripts of audio calls. And what do you have to say about this?

Well, you could be looking at an obstruction charge unless you want to help us with the fraudulent electors scheme or something else. I mean, you know, again, part of, I guess, to make it more general, part of this entire escalation situation that you're talking about. That's right. You have no idea what what Jack Smith's team may have gotten from Christina Bob and or Evan Corcoran. It could be that either one of them sat down in front of prosecutors and said, oh yeah, this whole thing was planned from the beginning. The plan was, don't give up everything, keep all this stuff, the Trump wanted.

Okay, how'd you know the plan? Oh, well, but Boris told me. He called me on such and such a date and said, here's what you do. Here's what you tell the feds, get them out of there and give them nothing. And that's, I'm completely speculating here, saying that just to create the hypothetical. But like, if that's the case,

then you're at the point now in this investigation where you talk about flipping up, right? You always start at the operational level and then you keep going up and up and elevating to targets of greater responsibility and greater significance. It's entirely possible that they think of Boris in that way, that he is someone who was really calling the shots behind Corcoran and Bob, and therefore is ultimately could be held responsible for the obstruction that they executed.

And it could be the opposite. It could be that they have a fraudulent electroskeam evidence that he participated in that conspiracy, and they're using that to get documents information, or save America a pack information, which I want to talk a bit about as well. Those are generally the main reasons

that you would bring somebody in. At the end of the day, it may be, and I would find this to be reasonable and logical, it may be that Jack Smith's team has concluded that Boris Epstein is very close to Donald Trump. In terms of the hierarchy of how decisions are made at Mar-a-Lago, you could be one heartbeat away from Trump if you have some goods, some leverage, some sway over a guy like Epstein. So I'll see how that goes.

Now, something else you would bring somebody into talk to is perhaps to hash out some privilege in vocations. And something that's of note, and I've been reporting on this for a while, we've talked about it, is that Boris Epstein, after the search warrant was executed on Mar-a-Lago, he immediately went back and changed his disposition, his relationship with the Save America Pack from consultant for the Trump campaign to legal. And presumably, he did this, and he did it retroactively, saying all the work I've done for the Save America Pack in the past year and a half has been legal work, not consulting work.

First of all, I don't think you can do that. I don't think you can change the disposition of, and make yourself a lawyer retroactively. Unless somebody writes you a letter saying, yeah, we go back, he's been giving me legal advice on this for the beginning, but it's pretty broad, the attorney client privilege. And it usually applies. And somebody might say, okay, it's reasonable. A judge could say it's reasonable to assume you were acting and giving legal advice to the Save America pack, even though you called yourself a consultant, but he went back and changed it to legal. So this could also be

a meeting about not just taking the temperature or escalating or putting pressure on him, but it could be about to discuss what sort of privilege claims he might make if he's brought in and maybe trying to hammer that out prior to if they're going to turn him into a witness or if they're going to turn him into a target or, you know, however they decide to go, They could be hashing out a lot of things. He was there for eight hours on Thursday. And we are recording on Friday. And as, as of this recording, he came back for a second day today and is still there.

Yeah. So that's why I think that this, this is possible, but I find it to be unlikely because if the, if the, if the, some total of the difference, let's say, or the discussion between Epstein and DOJ or Jack Smith's team right now is what he'll be able to testify about and what he can't testify about because of claims of privilege, that's the kind of thing that the lawyers negotiate over the phone. You don't come in for two solid days of in-person meetings to work out a legal technicality like that. Right. And I do agree.

I just want to interrupt you real quick. I do. I agree with you on this because the way that Jack Smith has operated in the past is you brings you into the grand jury. And then if you invoke any kind of a privilege, or take the fifth, he'll run across the hall to Bozberg or previously Barrel Howe and deal with it there, right?

And that's generally how subpoenas work, right? You show up, you invoke your privilege and then we discuss it. We don't sort of preempt any sort of privilege discussion. So. That's right. And you would have to also prepare like a privilege log, which is like a list of all the things you have

and a claim for specific privilege. Some of that would be done with Epstein's attorneys ahead of time, just so everybody knew like, okay, what ground is everybody gonna be standing on? But then you're right, you would actually, you'd say, you know, they would call, you imagine prosecutors calling Epstein's attorney and say, we wanna come in and interview him. And then Epstein's like and say, we want to come in and interview him.

And then Epstein's like, well, what do you want to ask him? And then they say, well, we're going to ask him about bad X, Y and Z. Okay, well, he's got attorney client privilege with all these entities and these people. So he's not going to testify about any of that. So they would noodle that back and forth a little bit to see if they could come up as something that was worthwhile. And if they couldn't, bam, you hit him with a subpoena, and it's like, okay, fine. You come in front of the grand jury, you make

your claim a privilege and then will litigate it quickly. So the almost 16 hours he has spent over the last two days indicates to you that this might be more of the accelerated sort of pressure stage. Right. I think it's substantive for sure. You don't do two days over legal arguments between the sides that can't even make the final decision. So it's definitely substantive. Whether they're really turning up the heat on him is possible, is maybe that the heat has already worked and he's now in their testifying. There's just all kinds of possibilities, but I think it's serious.

Yeah. And one last thing, one last reason you bring people in to the DOJ's office is if you get a call and say, we're going to indict your guy, come in and hit you have one last chance to argue against indictment. And I honestly don't have a temperature reading as to whether that could be this or not, other than does that take two days. Well, that's an interesting prospect. So typically when that happens, and to be fair about

the unfairness in and all, it's really, that only happens to really like high profile people get that kind of, you know, last minute opportunity to kind of make their case to the prosecutor's try to convince them not to indict your client, but usually that conversation is only between the attorneys. You wouldn't actually bring the client in for that. Now, I say that with full disclosure here, my attorneys did that in my case,

when there was a criminal investigation open on me for zero reason, but nevertheless, it hung out there for two years. My attorneys went in and talked to the prosecutors at every level, you know, many times, explaining to them that there was no case here. And one of the times they said, well, we would really like to talk to your client.

And this is like not something that any sane person who actually was facing criminal liability would ever do, which is why I said, yeah, sure, I'll go in and talk to them. So I went in to the prosecutor's office and they let them ask me whatever questions they wanted for like, I don't know, like three or four hours it seemed, it was or four hours seemed.

It was a very long conversation and you know, that was it. So I guess I just, I say that just to indicate that like there's a lot of possibilities here, but at the end of the day, what we know is Epstein is here in person long sessions. Those are substantive conversations about something. Whether you're looking at him as a witness or a cooperator or a target, you know, there's different likelihood on all those possibilities, but it's one of them. Yeah, and I think it's possible that they're not just talking about the fraudulent electric scheme in January 6th or just the documents case or obstruction in the documents case. They could also be talking about the save America pack fraud investigation. That's right.

Because as I said, he retroactively made himself a legal adviser for that organization. And we'll talk about this a little bit later in the show, but a lot of lawyers are being paid out of that pack. And they could be asking questions about that among other things. There's so many things that he has information about on so many cases across so many different crimes, potential crimes, alleged crimes, that I can see why he could be there for two days. No doubt.

I mean, there was reporting just this week from CNN, Caitlin Pollan, it's reported that a number of Trump associates and staffers and people like that who have had their legal representation paid for by the Save American Packed have now been interviewed by the special council team with questions about that representation and how their lawyers treated them and the kinds of questions they asked them. And this is all getting at that topic that you and I have talked about a couple of times now,

particularly with the example of Cassidy Hutchinson, who we assume, we don't know for sure, but we assume is probably in that group, that, you know, this Save America Pack paying for everybody's lawyers, is it really trying to provide representation to people who need it, or is it an effort to control their testimony, to limit what they say, to keep them from cooperating fully with prosecutors, all in an overall effort to control their testimony, to limit what they say, to keep them from cooperating fully with prosecutors, all in an overall effort to protect Trump. You know, one guy I'd like to talk to to find out the answer to that question would be the self-designated and therefore retroactive lawyer for the state of America, pack Boris

Epstein. So all roads bring you back to Boris. And one way or another is a lot of possibility there. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we're going to be right back. We've got some breaking news that came out on Friday to talk about. And a couple other things. We're just going to take a quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. All right, there's some new explosive reporting coming out from Zachary Cohen at CNN. Cohen reports that in mid-January 2021, two men hired by former president Donald Trump's legal team discussed over text message, what to do with data they obtained

from a breached voting machine in a rural county in Georgia, including whether or not to use it as a part of an attempt to decertify the state's pending Senate runoff results. Wow. So this, yeah, this scheme involved, Jim Penrose, Sydney Powell,

Doug Logan of the Cyber Ninjas, Rudy Giuliani, and the three people that actually executed the burglary of the voter data in coffee county, Georgia. Yeah. And remember, we've seen like there's been some pop-up reporting here and there of actual video footage of these two people going into the coffee county voter registrar's office, somebody, you know, going under the computer, downloading these data, handing them to these people, and now we have a connection to several

criminal investigations. And in the text messages, which were obtained by CNN, which have not been previously reported, Penrose, Jim Penrose references the upcoming certification of John Ossoff. So it's not just about Trump's 2020 election loss. Now we're talking about Perdue, David Perdue, who lost to Ossoff. Remember because we found out in the we morning hours of January 6th that Democrats seized control of the Senate because Ossoff and Warnoch won their seats and the Georgia runoff.

And then, you know, we were happy for like a couple hours. Two seconds. And then, bam, we were blindsided by now. And it was like really big news that got zero coverage because very quickly we were watching that disaster at the Capitol. Yeah, so Penrose basically texted, we only have until Saturday to decide if we're going

to use this report to try to decertify the Senate runoff election or if we hold it for a bigger moment. The texts were obtained from someone familiar with the Fannie Willis probe, by the way. And it's also being used possibly in the Michigan investigation. A lot of people forget because it's not getting the media coverage that Fulton County and Manhattan, DA and Jack Smith are getting. There's a criminal investigation into election interference happening in Michigan, which is run by Gretchen Whitmer and Nestle and like all these amazing,

Jocelyn Benson, amazing, amazing people. And so this has to also do with cyber ninjas, which ran that racket down in Arizona. And ultimately wave the white flag at the end of the day, they found nothing. A hundred times, right? But so this seems to be have a lot to do with state election official

and maybe attorney general or district attorney investigations. But this could also tie in to, you're like, why are you bringing it up on the Jack podcast about Jack Smith? This could tie into his investigation, couldn't it? Well, it could, and on a number of different ways. We know that Jack Smith is examining

and is interested in the broader effort to breach or seize voting machines. We know this because of some of the questioning that Kuchenelli and others from DHS received under grand jury subpoena asking questions about did Trump ask was he was he was it suggested to him to seize the voting machines who did that. Of course, we know that's Mike Flynn and Sydney Powell. So that's a piece of what they're looking at in those crazy town meetings leading up to January 6th. Yeah. And Derek Lyons, who was a Deputy White House Council in the Trump

Administration, testified to the January 6th Committee. We saw it on video that Rudy Giuliani brought up Georgia voting machines in that infamous December 18th, 2020 oval office meeting, which is also being investigated. And well, I should say in conjunction with what you just mentioned, with a seizure of voting machines, like, and we talked about this last week when Flynn and Sidney Powell, like you said, came in and said, here's a draft executive order, you know, saying that you can seize voting machines. You can do anything.

You can do anything. Yeah. And everybody was like, no, you can seize voting machines. You can do anything. Yeah, and everybody was like, no, you can't. That's stupid. No, you can't seize voting machines, Kuchinelle. And now there are all these people, like probably even Hirschman are testifying the Pats. I don't think they were there because they had been disinvited because, you know, lawyers with common sense, the normies, I guess, as they were called, were disinvited to these kinds

of meetings and emails and stuff. But Derek Lyons told them that. That Giuliani brought up the Georgia voting machines in that meeting. And here's his testimony. Lyons said, quote, his Rudy's point of view, was it in some way the campaign, I believe, was going to be able to get access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure and that like stealing. And that evidence could be leveraged to gain access to additional machines. Meaning, hey, look, we got this information,

we don't know how, but look, we got this Georgia voting machine information. This is the pretext for seizing all voting machines or you know, what a voter data or whatever to stop the election, which is what they were trying to do. So that is exactly the line straight to these Jack Smith investigations. Yeah, not to get into too much of a legal argument with the distinguished Mr. Lions, but actually government actors, people acting on part of the government, going out and taking

voting machine data. That's a seizure. It's an unlaw, voting machine data, that's a seizure. It's an unlawful seizure, but it's definitely a seizure. And I think it's also important to put this in the bigger context. We know that Jack Smith is looking very closely at the lecture scheme, very closely at the effort to delay the certification, very closely at the pressure campaign on pants, all that stuff. But most of that has at least one thread

that comes back to this idea of fraud, that what many of these people did was committed a fraud against the United States of America, against the government, against the voters in of America, against the government, against the voters, in trying to tip back the results of this election, knowing that there was absolutely nothing to any of these arguments,

there was nothing to this evidence. It was all essentially being used to deceive people to commit some level of fraud. And I think that's really where the foundation of whatever case he brings against anyone, Trump or any of these other people, a lot of that case is going to be based on very basic claims of fraud. Yeah, for sure. And then to go, I'll read a little bit here from Cohen's article in CNN, in their hunt for evidence to support their baseless claims of voter fraud.

After the 2020 election, Trump allies hired a little known Texas-based security company called Allied Security Operations Group to investigate alleged voting machine irregularities in a handful of swing states that Trump lost, including Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. A few weeks before the coffee county burglary in late December 2020, Trump allies were granted access to voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan. That's a county of about 24,000 people where Trump won Handelie, same with coffee counties, very red. The team then took those data with the help of the Allied Security Operations Group, produced a report alleging Dominion voting system vulnerabilities. And that report, which has been widely debunked, formed the basis of a lawsuit filed by Sydney Powell.

And that's that antrim lawsuit that we've all seen. That suit was one of more than 60 suits filed. And she's actually been sanctioned for it and had to go back to take some classes on how to write pleadings because of that. But still Logan and Penrose, who were part of the team that produced the Antrim County report, considered using the coffee county data in a similar way to challenge the Georgia Senate runoff. In their text from January 19th, the two men planned to create a report with the help

of the Allied Security Operations Group's lawyer, a man named Charles Bundren, who was deeply involved in earlier efforts to gain access to voting systems. If you can draft a report for review on Friday morning with Charles Bundren, that would be the best. Penrose wrote to Logan, and Bundren was part of the team enlisted by Trump's lawyers to find evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election. He helped oversee the multi-state push to access voting machines on behalf of the Trump

legal team. And he also had a hands-on role developing some of the most extreme options, considered by Trump's inner circle, including helping draft those executive orders directing the military and the DHS to seize voting machines. So this guy and this coffee county situation are directly tied to these Flynn, Sydney, Powell, voting machine seizure executive orders that were laughed out of the oval office by people who know what they're talking about on December 18th. Completely. And I think evidence like this really ties it all together in a vivid and effective way for prosecutors.

It's one thing to say, like the fraudulent electric scheme is ultimately an effort to deceive and that's great. We understand what that means, but at trial, you have to be prepared to go down in the weeds and show the chain of custody and this person told this person what to do, that person went and did it. You have to be able to really build this thing brick by brick. And in this case, that's clearly kind of what they're adding here. Yeah. With this text exchange between these guys about Georgia.

Yeah. And further, Arizona was going to use the allied security people for their report, the Bundering guy. But because of the backlash on the Antrim County, the scrutiny over the Antrim report, Arizona opted for a different firm to investigate their false claims of election voter fraud called cyber ninjas. Bring in the cyber ninjas.

Uh, but Bundren remained involved in that process. The guy from ASOG and the allied solutions or allied security operations, uh, and coordinated directly. They all coordinated as part of this. And he also worked with fellow ASOG member, allied security member Phil Waldron. He's a retired Army colonel who is part of Giuliani's team that helped write up that entire slide show on how to pressure Pence to throw out the electoral votes. That's right. So this is all,

like, like the overlaps and the cross-currants, which is like a very hard to keep track of, but that's why we're here, right? We're shedding a little light on the whole thing, but fascinating, really good stuff. Yeah, absolutely incredible how everything is tied together. I remember, you know, connect the dots,

blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's what we're doing. I am Charlie from Always Sunny in front of my murder board, talking about how all these things mixed together in Zachary Cohen as he and I did an excellent job of writing this up. So I highly highly recommend you check that out. All right, we're going to take one more quick break and then we've got some more stuff to talk about. Stick around. We'll be right back.

Hey everybody, Welcome back. So we spent a great part of the show in the first segment and the A block there talking about Epstein, Boris Epstein and how he was, you know, back benched or slowly retreating from working on Trump's legal team. You know, like you said, it's like you're being, it's like pregnancy. You're either on the team or you're not. And he's more like Homer Simpson slowly backing into the treasury. But we do have somebody also on Trump's legal team who has made a clean break with the

legal team that he was working on. And that's Evan Corcoran. We know the story. We know the backstory that he came in and testified previously to the grand jury. He invoked some attorney client privilege, and then Jack Smith team overcame that invocation of attorney client privilege using the crime fraud exception. And then he, a corkeren, had to come back in and testify to what he knows and also hand over some notes and invoices. Invoices is interesting.

And things like that. So then all of a sudden we hear it, because a year ago when Bob withdrew as legal counsel on the documents case and loyered up, I was like, all right, your turn, Corcoran. I mean, you guys are witnesses in this case. She was very forward leaning about that, actually. She immediately pulled the rip cord, got a lawyer and started meeting with the joj which

is the smart thing to do under the circumstances if you're thinking along the lines of staying out of jail and retaining your law license yes so corcoran just now has recused i guess i'm not sure left the legal team uh... and was you know brought in to testify again uh... to to again to the committee. Now, it or not the committee, the federal grant jury. Sorry, so many investigations that I can't keep the ball straight. I think this is interesting because he says that it was his law firm that made him do it.

Right? The law firm was like, we don't want to, we can't be part of that and part of this at the same time. But then why didn't they do that when he testified before? Or did he, or did he, or did they? I'd never say, that sounds a little bit to me, like him kind of putting the blame on the decision on someone else, kind of like, my parents won't let me. So that's hard to know, but it's also impossible, like in the regular, regular world of litigation

and even the regular world of criminal defense, the idea that your attorney would end up having to go before the grand jury and essentially testify against you, is it almost unheard of? It's so rare that happened here. And the idea that you would then continue having that person represent you, it's just, that's the time to find a new attorney. I mean, it's insane. Unless there's none left. There's not any lawyers left that are willing

to take your case for less than a $3 million up front cash retainer. Or, or unless you have some other reason for wanting to remain connected to your, I guess, former kind of still current attorney who testified against you. And that would be to keep tabs on what's going on with that guy. And who's he actually meeting with and what's he saying about me and let's keep him under the tent just for now? Yeah. And before this all happened, Corcoran made a trip up to talk to prosecutors at the Department of Justice. And we weren't

sure what that meeting was about except that it had to do with the documents case. And obviously, I think Corcoran is more steeped in the documents case, less like an Epstein who was one of the architects of the fraudulent lecture scheme, architect of the letter, the attestation letter in the documents case, architect, like, see America, pack legal counsel. He's fingerprints are on everything. Every single criminal investigation you can think of, he's part of. But Corcoran here is the guy who wrote the letter that that Christina Bob signed and Christina Bob insisted on having edits be made to that letter to say to the best of my knowledge.

We've handed over all the documents pursuant to the subpoena issued, male, eleventh, etc., etc. And so that he, I think his feet are firmly planted in the old documents case. But he would be one of the last witnesses. And you know, he's, he's interviewed Jack Smith has, they've talked to in subpoena, I should say, not just interviewed, but subpoenaed, more than two dozen witnesses, just in the document's case alone. And Corcoran and Boris would be the last two. It could very well be.

They could very well be. They're certainly not on the front end of your witness list. You never really know what those folks, if in fact, are coming in and they're testifying, you know, completely, you never know what they're going to say. And they could bring someone up or mention something that then sends you back out, scurrying with another grand jury subpoena. That's the way grand jury investigations work. But yeah, it's hard to imagine that there's a whole boatload of additional people that

need to be talked to, at least on the documents case. Yeah. And that might be why Chris Kies and Jim Trusty were brought in because Trump was like, well eventually all my lawyers are gonna be witnesses, so I need two attorneys that didn't know me until now. To come in and who can't be called as witnesses against me, except maybe even an obstruction of justice in other ways.

All right, so we'll see what happened with Corcoran. We'll see what happens with Epstein. As soon as we get more information, we'll be able to talk to you about that probably on the next episode of Jack. But interesting, we know this week, and this isn't Jack Smith's story, but Fox and Dominion have settled their defamation case for $787.5 million, half of what was initially asked and apparently no apology. They don't have to admit on air that they did anything wrong.

And I have many, many feelings about that. But what I want to talk to you about today that has to do with the Jack Smith investigation is a little interview that a lawyer for one Abby Grossman who is a former producer at Foxx for the Barteromo show, she was fired. And because she filed a lawsuit saying that those Fox lawyers coerced her testimony, told her to not recall things that she recalled. And also that she had recordings and more evidence that were suppressed by Fox lawyers, that she wanted to come forward with. And that

evidence, including not just that evidence, but also the fact that Fox lied to the court about Rupert Murdoch being an executive at the Fox News News versus the Fox Corp, prompted the judge in that case to appoint a special master to review an investigate wrongdoing by Fox's lawyers. Now that has dissolved because of this settlement, which I'm bummed about, would have loved to have seen. And it would probably be Barbara Jones again. She's like everybody's favorite special master these days. These days, I'm in the last five years. And I would have loved to have seen that go through to fruition.

But what did that lawyer tell Ari Melber, Andy? Well, the lawyer for Abby Grossman tells Ari Melber that multiple law enforcement agencies contacted them about obtaining the recordings they had of the Fox News anchors. So this, of course, causes us to wonder, gee, what could those law enforcement agencies be? And would one of them be the special counsel's office? Yeah, because, you know, first I was like, why, you know, first of all, definitely, you know,

there wouldn't be a criminal case against Fox. Could there? No, I doubt it. But I doubt it. You know, I mean, I? No, I doubt it. But I doubt it. I mean, I did talk, I doubt it too. I did talk a little bit about it with Pete Struck, who said, well, you know, I mean, if they were giving in-kind campaign contributions

by coordinating messaging with the Trump campaign, perhaps, but that's real hard to prove. Yeah, there's a lot easier campaign finance, violation cases that don't get brought. Right. I think that one would be tough. But more importantly, there's recordings of Rudy saying they don't have any evidence of voter machine fraud, at least quote, not yet. And there could be some coordinated messages with people in the Trump circles saying that they know they lost the election and that it was all BS, right?

Because that was the big lie that the dominion was trying to prove, and they did prove it was ruled by the judge before the settlement happened that these were false falsities. They were lies. This misinformation about the voting machines. And that could be of keen interest to Jack Smith considering everything we've talked about in today's show about his investigation into the seizure of voting machines. I think that's possible. I think it's also let's not forget that some Fox figures on air talent things like that. We're actually in contact with Trump during the period that we know Jack Smith is most interested in. That lead up to January 6th, then the weeks after the election and before the 6th.

So it's possible that these, they believe these recordings would be relevant to testimony they may already have or may be seeking from these people, people like Sean Hannity and others who we know were in direct contact with Trump. And that testimony could be very important to proving this really elemental fact, which is Trump's intent. What did he actually believe at that time? This goes back to a point you and I've talked about. Probably every week, one of Trump's main defenses will light. If in fact, he's indicted and goes to trial will likely be,

he will claim that he legitimately believed that the election had been stolen from him. And therefore, the efforts that he took were not fraudulent or deceptive. There was just an effort to restore his rightful victory. I can't believe I just heard myself say that, but nevertheless, all of this evidence about things that people told me whether it's his own lawyers, the White House lawyers, his own hired forensics company that produced a report that said, yeah, no fraud here either. All, that's just a mountain of evidence to contradict a defense like that. So just show the jury that it's really unreasonable.

It would have been unreasonable for a defendant Trump to not understand that there was no fraud in the election. Yeah, and I mean, there's, first of all, like, there's a bunch of stuff that we didn't get to see. There was evidence that we didn't get to see in the Dominion defamation case that were communications between Fox, Newzankers, and all sorts of other people, and executives, and stuff like that. That's right. Now, and we still have a case out there pending that is going to be deciding or at least commenting on or considering the definition of corrupt intent as it relates to Title 18, Section 1512C2, obstructing an official proceeding,

which is one of the crimes I assume the Jack Smith is probably looking at with regard to Trump. So that's coming out in May. It's different from the one we just had, right? That was only looking at whether C1 and C2 were married and depended upon each other. This other one, and the reason that they didn't change the law in this more recent ruling that came out, is that they are going to be deciding, because somebody filed to dismiss

the charges on the definition of corrupt intent. That'll be decided. I don't think the law is going to change. I don't think they're going to rewrite the boundaries of what corrupt intent is. And Jack Smith will have always had to prove corrupt intent. But Andy, have you ever gotten evidence from a discovery in a civil case? I know we did it. The one that stands out in my head is the guy named, I can't remember his first name, but I remember his last name was Cock. And he wanted to be Secretary of the Army.

And Manifort, you know, we have David Pecker, we have the Cock guy. I got it, I always say. Yeah. He was a banker who gave a quarter of their, you know, balance sheet to Manifort, to get him to have Trump make him Secretary of the Army. There's a bribery thing.

And the DOJ was able to get the Mueller team, I believe, was able to get a ton of information because of a divorce proceeding with COC. And so have you ever reached into a civil proceeding? What when can you do that? Can you do it after Discovery's close? Can you do it after the resolution of the case? Can you do it any time to reach in for all of that discovery that was brought and is it legal to get all of the discovery that was brought in a civil

case? You know, these are all really good questions. And having spent my life on the criminal side, not the civil side, I'm not sure I have all the answers here, but I've never had, I never had to do that in any of my criminal investigations in reach into a civil case, chasing around Russian OC figures and terrorists. They're not prolific litigators on the civil side, I guess, the ones that I had. But it's essentially like any other information.

And in the course of a criminal investigation, particularly a grand jury investigation, as soon as you know it exists, and you know who the custodian of those records is, obviously, who has possession and control of those sorts of records, you can just hit them with a grand jury subpoena. Now, you might have a fight on your hand. Sometimes at the conclusion of, if a civil case is resolved through a settlement, sometimes the sides will make as a part of that settlement, they'll require each side to destroy the evidence

that the other one provided or return it or what have you. They'll be a um I don't think that happened here though because this lawyer said we're we're doing that. Yeah I mean I think that there's there I think it's possible in more cases than not. But I think Fox could sue to block that discovery from going to the Department of Justice and we might see a legal battle there. They could try um but what I'm likely that the government will do is they'll just serve the subpoena directly on Fox. Hey, you're a business.

You keep these records as a part of your business enterprise and we want them. And so you have a fight on your hands, but I don't think it's safe to say that pretty much anything you know about can fall within the scope of what you can try to get as a part of the grand jury investigation. Where, by the way, it was Steve and Cawke and he was sentenced to a year in a day in prison for that bribery scheme. There you go. All right. Let's take some listener questions. Sure. Yeah. So the listener questions this week are pretty good. I found two actually that both go to the same questions of timing. Okay, so our first question comes from Kevin.

And Kevin says, I know that Trump has tried to apply this artificial timeline for him to be charged, at least federally, the closer to the primaries, thinking that much more of a stink will be raised by his retrumpelkins. Is that going to stop Mr. Smith from bringing at least the documents case, especially if he uses the fact that he has other cases open on him? I really don't think this should matter, but does Jack or Merritt Garland, I really hope not. Thanks, and great podcast.

So it's a good question because it raises this issue that's been concerning me a lot lately, which is as we get deeper and deeper into the calendar and therefore deeper into the election season, how is that going to influence what Jack Smith decides to do? So first of all, it's not relevant. You know, the same, the reason that kept Mueller from inditing anyone that

OLC, that DOJ, OLC policy that you cannot indict a sitting president is obviously not relevant here because Trump is not a sitting president. But what might be relevant is the general DOJ policy that you shall, that shall not take overt actions in the period just before an election. Now, that period is not particularly clearly defined. Some people at DOJ, if you ask them, they'd say that's two months, some people would say it's three months. Generally, I think most people would say somewhere between 60 and 90 days before the election. So that basically defines, I think, the runway that Jack Smith has to deal with. And I think those are also overt and investigatory steps, right? Like if you've already been diited, there's no rule in the judiciary system that says we

have to postpone a trial. However, I could see a lawsuit coming from Donald Trump saying you're interfering with my ability to campaign, et cetera. And we've never seen anything like that. It might have to be litigated. But, you know, Garland was asked, point blank. Does it matter that he's running for office? Will that influence your decisions at all? And he said, no, that has absolutely nothing to do with any decision I'm going to make. And I can't imagine that Jack Smith would be more conservative than Garland on this now. No, no. And I do think that the take no action and the lead up to an election policy

would prohibit Jack Smith from inditing Trump in that period. So he's got to, if he's going to indict him, he's got to get that done before, whatever, 60 or 90 days before the election. But once it's done, it's done. I don't think there's any prohibition to going forward with that indictment in the normal course of business, if whether it's a trial or whatever, because the reason we've discussed before, it's different. You know, when you're trying to indict a sitting president, you are arguably denying the people, the country, the good and honest services of their president because you're throwing this massive distraction

on his plate. That doesn't apply when people have had the choice. Do I vote for a guy who's under indictment or do I not? That's how, I mean, I don't, look, I say this, so it's not like it's a resolved issue. I don't think that is ever quite been in this situation before, but that's my guess of how they would justify it. And if for some reason, I don't see this being the case,

but if for some reason, Jack Smith has not indicted Donald Trump, or at least made a charging decision about Donald Trump before the 60 day window, before the election, if for some reason that hasn't happened, and we elect, re-elect Joe Biden, then everything just resumes as normal after that. Game on. Game on. If a Republican wins, then the investigations will probably end or be stifled or they, but I guarantee you they will just be ended.

And you have to remember, though, that even if indictments and convictions happen before the election, if a Republican wins, they're going to pardon everybody for these jacksmith federal crimes that are, that are brought up. So I still don't see a clock. The only thing is, is that you have to make sure a Republican doesn't win in 2024 and take over the White House and stop everything because they'll either stop it by stopping the investigation or stop it by pardoning everybody if it's already been done. And that is the case whether or not they Trump was indicted a year ago or

you know, or or next year, it doesn't matter. You could even stop an investigation by just issuing preemptive pardons. You don't even have to be charged to receive a pardon that keeps you from being charged. Bannon. No, bannon was charged. No, he was charged. He was charged. That's all those mat gates and all of his friends who are asking for pardons at the end

of the last administration. So second question, same basic theme comes to us from Janice. Janice says, if Trump is federally charged in three separate cases, meaning January 6th, the documents case and wire fraud, would there be three separate trials or would any of them be collapsed? I think that it's a really good question. There's kind of a division of opinion. I mean, I think most people think of it as two cases, not three.

Basically, the documents case, and then the case of everything that's connected to January 6, whatever comes out of that, if anything. Yeah, I would kind of consolidate the wire fraud with the fraudulent electric scheme, because as we were just talking about with that voter machine thing and how that has to do with both. Right, it's all part of the same mess. It all rises from the same basic facts. So that's certainly arguably one possible case

that could go forward, and then you have the documents case, it's arguably separate. Some folks think that it's unlikely that Jack Smith wouldn't even bring an indictment unless he addresses all of that stuff in one indictment. I'm not so sure about that. But even if, let's say, the documents case gets indicted and then January 6th is ready, you could supersede the existing indictment with the January 6th related questions, possibly, if you could

make the argument that they're close enough related and bring them all together at one time. But I think the more likely resolution is those two cases get indicted separately and then proceed down their own tracks on separate timelines. Yeah, I agree. That's exactly how I see it going down as well. So yeah, but the question remains is, does he, if he's ready to go on the documents case, does he wait until he's ready to go and make a charge and decision on the January 6 case? Or does he, because, you know, sometimes that prosecutorial discretion brain has to look at everything ahead of you to decide what you're going to charge. So I don't know. I don't know if he's going to do that or not. I tend to think he won't. I think if he's got the documents, on that sucker and then go forward with a separate batch of indictments on January 6th, which

may or may not include the president. Eastman could be the tallest hog in the trough that gets taken down on that case if there's not enough evidence there. So, I tend to agree with you on that. And I think they're both pretty close to being wrapped up because you've got pens in the January six case is the next guy coming in and you've got a corkering in the documents case and and Epstein in all of it. And yeah, we're at the tippy top still waiting to see mark meadows show up somewhere,

but you know, keep your fingers crossed. There's there's always a little time left. Well, he's been ordered as part of the Ocho nostra to come in. And so I am assuming he would come in before Pencewood. I'm assuming everybody would come in before Pencewood. But who knows? Who knows? Well, see, we'll see. Well, excellent show. Great conversation. Thank you so much. Once we get all this information, we'll put it out. You know, we talk about this on the daily beans daily. We go in depth here on the Jack podcast.

Listen and subscribe. And if you want to be a patron of this podcast and get these episodes out free, you can do that by going to patreon.com slash muller. She wrote. So thank you very much to our patrons who are listening right now. You make this show possible. Any final thoughts before we take off for the week? No, I stumbled across one thing that it deserves,

I think a very brief mention, which is good to see that judicial watch, here's our right wing media outlet, judicial watch, announced on there in a release today that they had failed in their effort to foya the names and identities of all those people associated with the Jack Smith special counsel team. So they'd filed apparently on December 9th for all staff, rosters, phone lists, or similar records. And on April 12th, the Justice Department said that under exception six and seven A of FOIA,

there will be no soup for judicial watch at this trough. So I think that's a great move by DOJ. It definitely goes in that category of learning from past mistakes. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that because we knew all of the Mueller team, the 16 angry Democrats or whatever. And I guess maybe Jack Smith was like, I don't want to be labeled the 42 angry liberal, whatever.

A little of the rotors, professional prosecutors. I don't know. So yeah, I think that's really a good move. Having seen how people like Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch just spent a year or more relentlessly attacking the professionals that were associated with that team. That's right, it's Tom Fitton. He's the guy who has been advising Donald to not give back the documents, right? That's right.

Non-Layer. Tom Fitton. That's exactly right. So I would have been a remiss how to not point it out Tom's failure today, so happy to have done that. Yay. I love it when Tom Fitton loses. There you go.

It's always a good, it's always going to work. I think that means it's going to be a good weekend. And we won't have six more weeks of winter when Tom Fittons FOIA request fails. Fittin FOIA failure. FOIAed again by that's got some. That's got some legs to it. Yeah, I know. Well, I'll go work on that alliteration. But yeah, thanks for bringing that up because I know we talked about in episodes early on

what are some of the lessons that could be taken forward in the Jack Smith. We have the benefit of a full special counsel investigation into Trump specifically in the Mueller investigation. And that's a good lesson learned. It reminds me of why Judge Kaplan, Judge Lewis Kaplan, anonymized the jury in the E. Jean Carroll case because it is clear and evident mountains of evidence that Trump and his team and his allies will target you

and go after you. I'm gonna go after you. Absolutely sure. That's how they roll for sure. The fit and foya. All right. Anyway, thank you so much everybody for listening. We'll be back next week.

I've been Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe.