Jack - Episode 22 - Two Firms and a Former VP

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

This week: Pence testifies before the Federal Grand Jury; Trump’s lawyers send a letter to Congress pleading for them to shut down the documents investigation; a second firm that was paid by Trump��s campaign to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 election gets a subpoena; Jack Smith’s office reached out to Abby Grossberg’s lawyers for her audio tapes; 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 22 of Jack, the podcast for all things special counsel. That means we've been here for 22 weeks now. It is Sunday, April 30th. I'm your host, Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe, this week, Allison, former vice president, Mike Pence testified. Yes, testified. That's past tense before the federal grand jury in DC, as a part of the special counsel's investigation into January 6th. We're going to talk about the implications of that. And Trump's lawyers have written a 10 page letter to Republicans in the house demanding

that they tell Jack Smith to stand down. Yeah. And that's a weird letter. And I want to talk about why that letter might have been written a little bit later along with a bunch of stuff that's in it. And I'm just like really honing in on this letter because they've pretty much given away their one of their biggest defenses that we hadn't really heard yet. Also, we have some more friendly subpoenas, including grand jury testimony from employees of, remember the Berkeley research firm? That's do. Yeah, that's the organization

that Trump paid 600,000. Well, maybe he paid $600,000. Let's make it clear. They build him 600,000. We don't know what or if he paid. He got an invoice to investigate. Maybe those are the invoices that Corcoran has. I don't know, but they paid $600,000 to investigate over a dozen areas of election fraud. They found none, right? And knew this week from the Washington Post, Josh Dawsey writes, there's now a second firm, the Trump campaign paid $700,000. And Jack Smith has met with the founder of that firm and he has also issued some subpoenas.

So this sounds, you know, we'll get into it, but it sounds like they brought them into the office, same with the folks from Berkeley research and said, hey, we're going to subpoena, or come in and talk to us and they're like, give us a subpoena, you know, we just like to, it's called a friendly subpoena. We'll talk a little bit more about that. They did it with sales force, they did it with Chapman, they've done it with tons of other, Mazar's with the Trump tax return stuff. So we'll talk about that, but that is a big deal.

No doubt. And as if that weren't enough, it's now being confirmed that one of the law enforcement agencies that reached out to Abby Grossberg's lawyer for her audio tapes is in fact, special counsel Jack Smith. So aGR listeners, of course, will remember that Abby Grossberg is the former Fox producer of both the Maria Bartoromo and Tucker Carlson shows. And apparently she has pre-show recordings with people like Rudy Giuliani and Ted Cruz. But first, Allison, let's talk about the testimony of one Michael Pence. Yeah, wow.

I mean, the... And I know that there's... This has happened before. It's not totally unprecedented, right? Despite what you've heard on K-MNews for 24 hours. Right. This happened with Dick Cheney, didn't it? I mean, we've seen this before. We had a transcribed interview. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. This is a little unique. Right. A VP testifying against his president, his running mate, his boss for four years in a criminal inquiry. Okay. That part maybe is a little bit new, but yeah, you're right. High profile people and administrations have been forced to testify in all kinds of inquiries over the years. Yeah, and Jack Smith has a lot of experience with high profile political people testifying. However, it is not lost on us the historical significance of a former vice president testifying against a former president about a coup. I just, you know, that part is definitely new for sure.

So it's not unprecedented. We shouldn't be scared or timid or treading lightly, but it is a big deal. This is huge news. And just like others who went before him, I want to point this out because this is definitely something that the The legacy media is not talking about. But many this this has happened before within hours of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals denying a Trump motion to block Pence's testimony using executive privilege within hours Jack Smith had him bam right in front of the federal grand jury. Just like the fastest turnaround I've ever seen. You'll remember this happened with Kuchinelli.

It did as part as part of the Ocha no Stras. That decision came down. It was at overnight briefing and then in the morning, the decision was made and then that afternoon, you know, he was in the Kuchinelli. Yeah. And then it's also happened with Corcoran after after the Appellate decision was made and then that afternoon, you know, he was in the kitchen, Ellie. Yeah. And then it's also happened with court, grin after, after the appellate court ruled on, on the decision that he had to hand it

over, hand over things, pursuant to the crime fraud exception, overnight filings, you know, they had to pull an all nighter at the DOJ. But next day, they have them in front of the grand jury. Now we have the former vice president. And I'm surprised that everyone was sort of surprised that it didn't happen the next day because that seems to be the MO of Jack Smith is the next minute after. And how do you plan that, right? With somebody like the vice president,

did you know, are you so confident in your ruling that you're gonna get it and you're going to get it that day that you can Schedule the VP to come in the day after you believe you're going to get a ruling in the in the in the DC circuit You know crazy. You can only assume that that's the kind of conversation they have with With Pence's attorneys or Corcoran's attorneys or Cuccinelli's attorneys are basically saying, look, we know what the briefing schedule was on this motion. We, the court gives them some indication as to how quickly they're gonna come back

and they say, hey, be prepared because you're coming in the next day. You're gonna be in, you know, 12 hours, 24 hours later. I'm kind of surprised that they're not getting more pushback on that. From defense attorneys, oh, it's going to take us more time to prepare, but really, they've lost their opportunity to argue we need time to prepare because they're filing these motions to stop everything. So I think the court kind of says, well, you should have been doing that all along. And at this point, it's time to move forward.

as well, you should have been doing that all along. And at this point, it's time to move forward. And this also points out a huge disparity in our checks and balances system in that how much more powerful a subpoena from the Department of Justice to a federal grand jury as versus a subpoena, a congressional subpoena. Because if this were, I shouldn't even have to say if it were when it was the January 6th committee, people just ignored these. Pents didn't come in to testify the January 6th committee. I was mad. I don't feel like it. But this, I think, a combination of who Jack Smith is and his experience dealing with public officials versus the strength and the teeth behind a subpoena from the Department of Justice, especially at a special counsel office level, although they're all equal, right?

All subpoenas are equal in the eyes of the law, but I think that just shows how serious this is and how you don't really have as much of a choice when you're being subpoenaed to a federal grand jury, because you can be held in a different kind of contempt. Can't you? Then over in Congress. And I think that that needs to, something needs to change there. Otherwise, these congressional subpoenas are just going on answered. There is this whole process institutionalized process of escalation that you have to go through on the congressional side or you're supposed to go through according to the House and Senate rules. And it starts with you have to invite someone to come in voluntarily. And just by serving that letter, you all, you know, by definition, you open up a dialogue

between the committee and the person they're trying to get in. And that can drag out for weeks, by and forth, questions, answers, maybe some written submissions of questions and answers, maybe some written submissions of questions and answers. And if it doesn't go anywhere, only then do you have the opportunity to vote within committee to write and serve a subpoena. And, you know, under some rules, if you have, if the person whose testimony is sought has agreed to come in voluntarily, You can't subpoena them. So, it's like this constant series of steps that you have to go through. None of that is true on the federal criminal side.

If you decide you want someone in, it's usually a good idea to call them and talk to their attorney first, try to get them to show up for a voluntary interview in the office just so you can figure out kind of what the lanes in the road are. But you don't have to. You can hit them with a subpoena and it can have a date on it, you know, for two, three days later and there you go. If they don't show up, they're in contempt.

Yeah, and a lot of, I think, the reason that some of these, the turnaround has been so fast is because there were dates of due dates and appearance dates on those subpoenas. And the court, at least we know of so in so far as the corkrin overnight decision, those notes, his notes and his contemporaneous notes were due to be handed over on that Wednesday. And so the circuit, the DC circuit court of appeals made their decision prior to that deadline. So it's impressive, the speed with which they're getting this done. And I think it speaks not only to the teeth of these subpoenas,

the disparity between them and congressional subpoenas, but also the experience of Jack Smith and his team. I think that's undeniable. And the proof of that is it's not always done this way in a special council investigation look to the Mueller experience, right? We know now that the Mueller team spent months and months and months negotiating with and talking to Trump's attorneys over whether or not they would subpoena Trump to come in and provide testimony.

And ultimately, of course, they were convinced not to. And part of the reason they didn't is because they had basically run out of time. So they let that go on for so long that I think a lot of people ask, I think, good questions about how that was handled. You do not see that happening on the Jack Smith team. They, I'm sure there are phone calls and letters and emails back and forth with defense attorneys over all these issues for some period of time But after that the hammer gets dropped the pedal goes to the floor and this stuff actually happens So it's really good to see yeah, and that's something else. I'm wondering too is you know the the Mueller team worked Like you said for a long time all the best they could get with some written answers and only one round of written answers.

Do you think, I mean, I was, we don't normally see just a full on target of an investigation and we know Trump is the target of all of these investigations, Jack Smith is doing because he specifically was appointed to investigate Donald Trump. But do you think we'll see a subpoena of the president, the former president here? Or he's not, I know he's not going to do what Mueller tried to do, which was kind of put. Now, I also want to make it clear too that Mueller was walking, had a sort of damnoclase hanging over his head every minute of every day, that he would be removed as special counsel and not be able to get this stuff interned in history and down on paper while it was fresh in people's minds.

Totally fair. Totally fair. And so, you know, I know a lot of people have some criticisms of Mueller being a little pussy footing around, but they're, you know, he, it was that or be fired in a lot of these situations or he did attempt to do it on a couple of occasions. But I don't see that happening here. They had a different set of facts to deal with. Their subpoena would have landed on the desk of the sitting president who could have through hooker by crook could have killed the entire investigation. There's a lot of different

things at play. Whether or not Jack Smith will serve one on Trump and before the decision is made on the indictment is a good question. It's a tough one to handicap, but if I had to lay away, do I say no? Simply because it's not really common practice in federal criminal investigations

to always subpoena the target of the investigation into the grand jury. On the other hand, if the target requests to appear in front of the grand jury under the US Attorney's Office Manual, which I think they call something different now, but in my old days, that's what it was called, if the target requests, then you are supposed

to accommodate them. You have to. You have to let them in and give them a chance to say what they want in front of the grand jury. Yeah, you do have a right to, I think it's in the 6th amendment or something like that, federal grand jury to write to federal grand jury, but yeah, I don't know that any of Trump's lawyers would really want that to happen. Oh my God. No. It could be, it'd be his worst day ever. It's though, it's incredibly dangerous thing to do, which is why very few targets of

investigation actually request to appear. And as I said, I mean, I, I'm thinking back over, over many, many investigations and all kinds of different areas of criminal and national security law, I can't remember a handful in which the target was actually subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury before you made your decision to indict. It's just not very common. So on that ground alone, I'd say no. But then again, maybe it's something they feel like they have to do just to check the box.

They send him a request and he says no, and they just move on. But I would be concerned in doing that. You would essentially be opening the door to what would be undoubtedly a lot of delay. You'd be initiating this conversation with Trump's attorneys. It would drag on forever. They'd be arguing with you. It would be out offering to do things that you didn't want. You'd be turning that down. I mean, it just doesn't seem like it would lead anywhere productive.

Yeah, no. And put a pin in that because, you know, we do know that usually what will happen is they'll send an invite to the target, especially high level targets, and say, come in and argue your case. Tell us why we shouldn't indict you. We want to see you next week to do that. And I want to put a pin in that because I think something like that sort of an invitation could be behind this letter that we saw go out from Trump's legal team to Congress. But it could also just be an unprompted, hissy fit.

We don't know. But talk about checking the box, because I want to just briefly wrap up the Pence thing here, because I long have wondered, first of all, it's important to know that it was Merrick Garland that started the ball rolling on the Pence negotiations. This has been going on for months and months and months since before Jack Smith was appointed

He just sort of picked up the torch When when he got there to to finish to finish it off base finish him But that negotiation started with wind him who as we know Merrick Garland appointed in January of last year. That's right To to take over those more sensitive top level investigations. So that's been going on for quite a while. But we were all going, do we even need Pence's testimony? Like, what is he?

What can he say that such a bombshell? I mean, we know he can give his side of those phone conversations, but it's stuff we've already kind of know. And we've got testimony from other people that can back that up. I mean, there was a January 11th meeting that he probably has some very important information on, but probably can't testify too

because it was a congressional meeting. And he does have some speech or debate clause protections and doesn't have to talk about his role as a legislator that day. But I think probably what's most important is that Jack Smith may already have a lot of this information, but now it's being confirmed by the former vice president. Like it's that it's him that I think is what makes the, the information important. That's absolutely right. And there's a couple of, um, couple of aspects to that.

We have a number of people who have been brought, who were brought in and testified, first tried not to, and then we're ultimately forced to about Trump's interactions with Pence, like we're talking about Pence's counsel and his chief of staff and people like that. And they're able, theoretically, to provide interesting information that goes to the heart of the pressure campaign, right? And we know the pressure campaign is super significant because Trump is both pressuring Pence to refuse to certify the election, to just stop the whole thing. And he's also pressuring him to delay the certification, to just create that extra

weak delay in which we'd give them some more room to maneuver and do whatever else they had planned next. So it's one thing to hear that from Pence's staff. It's entirely different to hear it from Pence himself. That is direct evidence. Pence was on the phone with Trump on the morning of January 6th. What did he say to you? And Pence is going to have to or will have answered that question directly. So it's direct testimony, biopartism into the conversation. And then the follow up question is, how did that make you feel? Questions that go to the effect of the pressure campaign.

And no one else can testify to that. People could say, oh, yeah, Pence seemed like he was stressed out about this. Or he asked us a lot of questions. Or he asked us for legal memos, or whatever, whatever, totally different than hearing Pence say, I was shocked, I couldn't believe that the president, what I thought he was asking me to do was absolutely illegal, right?

Though you don't get that testimony from anyone else in the world, and that is why Pence providing that is could be really very damaging to Trump. We know from some of the little tidbits that he included in his book that there are things that haven't been mined yet, right? Like Pence claims Trump once said to him, you're just too honest. I mean, like that is great testimony in front of a jury, right? Yeah. The guy who you're who the out who's alleged to have committed a crime was angry with his number two, because

he wasn't as criminally inclined. So I mean, there's some good things there. And like you said, to get them from him is key. Right. Because if you truly believed this was within the four corners of the law, you wouldn't have said, you're a wimp, you're a pussy, you called him a pussy, you don't have what it takes. You're too honest, you're too much of a boy scout. It would have been, I don't understand. This is what the Constitution says. Why aren't you following the law?

It would be that conversation, right? You're too honest or you're not strong enough to do this. Is essentially acknowledging the criminality of what he's proposing. And so that, you know, we talk all the time about how important it's going to be for them to prove Trump's intent and intent in this case is knowingly and willful. Right. So to be able to get inside his head to show that he knew what he was doing was wrong, he knew it was illegal, and he did it anyway, Mike Pence could really take you there in a way that no one else can I for me Mike Pence and Mark Meadows are the two possibly most important witnesses.

Yeah, we still don't know what happened with Meadows, but we got one of them. So look out. Where's meadows? Unless he's just a full on target. You know, it could be, or it could be full on cooperating and no one knows about it. So it's really kind of a ball in the air at this point. Yeah, totally, truly.

And I want to also take a minute because Marcy Wheeler, who runs the empty wheel blog, talks a lot about this. This Pence testimony, I've heard a lot of mainstream and legacy media say, well, if it weren't for Jack Smith, despite Merrick Garland, we were able to get this Pence testimony. And I just want to drive home the point that Merrick Garland very early on within months of being appointed, set up this privilege fight to be victorious. The reason that we are getting these stays rejected and denied and that the courts are deciding very quickly

and rapidly that all these people must come in and testify. The reason we're getting this testimony is very early on. Merit Garland set up the firewall between the executive and the Department of Justice for the Independent Department of Justice, which plays a very important role in being able to get these subpoenas. And then secondly, was able to negotiate with agencies and the executive branch that for congressional stuff, at least, which is the foundation of this, he would not invoke executive privilege.

The current president, Joe Biden, would not and would waive privilege. And getting all of that set up as a foundation and then beginning the meetings with the go negotiations with some of these top guys before Jack Smith was appointed. Those are the reasons that Jack Smith, it's like he loosened the pickle jar, right? Like Jack Smith can just walk in and bam, bam, bam, get it done because of the things that have been set up prior to this moment. Yeah, you can't overstate the significance of that decision by the Biden administration to refuse to claim executive privilege over access to these witnesses and documents and everything else.

Because we know that the sitting president controls executive privilege. It's an unsettled question as to whether former presidents still have some degree of executive privilege over their test, their statements and documents and things from when they were president. But it's, there's no question that it's, it does not supersede the sitting president. And it also likely does not hold off a criminal investigation. So yeah, I agree with you. They, they made some important decisions early on when it seemed like they weren't making any progress. They actually were in a foundational sort of way.

And so that's how we're seeing it now. Yeah. And I also asked her while I was there, like, why didn't Jack Smith wait for the underlying appeals for executive privilege to be resolved? And you know, she basically said it was because of these early setups with executive privilege under Garland. We know we have that to thank for it partially, but also the stay was not granted because it was unlikely to succeed on the merits. That's right.

That's one of the big, she was reminding me, that's one of the big, you know, she, she was reminding me that's one of the big factors of getting an emergency stay as that you're unlikely to win on the merits. And we know because of the steps that Garland took and because of the stay that was denied that this is not going anywhere on the merits. And so therefore the DOJ was comfortable bringing these witnesses in before the resolution of the rest of that appeal. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.

So everybody, read Marcy Wheeler's blog. If you do, if you do, No, do you, if you don't know. If you're not, if you're not, and you got to follow her on Twitter, Marcy's really amazing. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's talk about this letter.

We have to take a quick break though, but this is some pretty amazing stuff, and we'll get to it right after this. Stay with us. Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh Welcome back. Okay, here we are. We're moving into that section of this week's show that really is just, it's just amazing. Coming to you right from Crazy Town, this is Trump's letter to Congress about the DOJ and this is going to be fun. So for those of you who weren't following this a few days ago, Trump's lawyers sent a 10 or 11 page letter to the Republicans in the House, basically demanding that the Republicans, I don't know, fire Jack Smith is probably the only

way to summarize this, to demand that DOJ stand down in what they claimed were these ham-handed criminal investigations. Because you know, that's the way a free and fair democracy should function. Congress should just point their finger down the street at DOJ and say, stop whenever they see a criminal, a duly predicated criminal investigation proceeding in a way that they think is dangerous to them politically, they should be able to stop that. Well, at least that's... Well, they're doing it for the Manhattan DA too. Yeah, you got it right. And it's because Bill Barr actually did this, right?

Bill Barr went to the Southern District of New York and told him to stand down on the Co- and Trump investigation. Please stop doing your job because it's inconvenient and bad for us politically. So, in any case, Oh, and they did actually use the phrase ham handed, which I thought was pretty impressive. It's all about ham, right? I can indict a ham sandwich,

it's a ham handed investigation. There's a lot of ham at the DOJ. I mean, honestly, if bar was still there, I could see maybe there'd be some argument because if anyone has got ham, there's more sausage fingers. Yeah, probably. But anyway, okay, so the letter opens by arguing that what Trump did isn't illegal, but

neither is what Biden did or what Pence did. So if you're following along, we're all innocent. It's basically. Yeah. And first of all, this is all about the documents case. This letter is focused on the documents case. Right. So here's a quote, as demonstrated by the discovery of documents with classification markings in the homes of President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Pence, deficient

document handling and storage procedures are not limited to any individual administration or political party. A legislative solution by Congress is required to prevent the DOJ from continuing to conduct ham-handed criminal investigations of matters that are inherently not criminal. And then of course, he began, he goes on to argue about NARA, but let's just acknowledge here that there are many criminals that statutes that have already been allegedly violated in the Trump case alone. We know that from, of course, the affidavit and support of the search warrant they had to execute at his house because he refused to cooperate with the government's efforts

to recover the documents that had been improperly and illegally taken from the places they were supposed to be maintained. Yeah. So this is defense number one. I did exactly what Biden and Pence did. I accidentally had some papers. They got moved to my house. Didn't know about it.

Why were you so mean? Right. Right. That's basically the argument here. And you know what? He did do this in one case. For the boxes of classified, the boxes, the two boxes with two classified documents that were founded at off site storage facility, I've been saying like that's probably not a crime.

He didn't know they were there. Right. And I actually tweeted out like you have to prove that they knowingly possessed these things. I got my, I got laughed off of right wing Twitter by the way for that. That's congratulations. That you know they were like, oh, you have to prove that you had them. They're in your garage where Hunter Biden is smoking crack or whatever they're saying. I'm like, no, you literally have to show possession. That's why the comingle documents are so important. And they get into that here too. But before we get to that, I got to tell you,

like I totally agree with what you said. And I have been saying this since the very beginning agree with what you said. And I have been saying this since the very beginning of the Marlaga search warrant stuff last summer, had Donald Trump simply given all of the stuff back when it was asked, this never would have gone another step. There wouldn't be an FBI investigation open. There would never have been a search warrant. There would not have been subpoenas that he refused to comply with. None of this would have happened. So there's no one to blame here for the festering sore that this issue has become for him other than Trump and his legal team who have made just a series of incredibly poor decisions and how to manage that.

No. Trump says it's the national archives fall. Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot. He argues in this letter that, by the way, this is parlator trusty halogen, that group, the non-borus, the Boris Epstein-Haters Club. That's this group. But they argue that NARA, the National Archives, well, they didn't come down and pack everything up for us

and take everything. So how can you blame me for having it? And not, by the way, I didn't even know I had it. And then start doing subpoenas and searches. What the hell, bro? I mean, like, it's this kind of letter, right? Why are you getting so angry? Like, you need to chill.

It's only been 18 months that I haven't given these things back. But it says, quote, whether Nara's departure from routine packout procedures, they're talking about, you know, come into the White House and packing everything up. Whether they departed from packout procedures for President Trump was intentional. If that was intentional or a product of the compressed timeline, so either NARA purposefully didn't come help him pack or it was because he was leaving so quickly because he refused

to go. Of course, you know, we've heard from many people who were there during that time that they couldn't even speak to him about packing before that day because he didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to, he didn't want to acknowledge the fact that he had to leave. So they deliberately left everything for the last minute. Yeah. And he goes on to say, it did not take custody, Nora did not take custody of the documents. And this made necessary the transfer of those 15 boxes to President Trump's

heavily secured home in Mar-a-Lago. The only reason we took those 15 boxes with classified documents that you wanted back so bad is because you didn't come and do this yourself. To be clear, had NARA offered Trump the same assistance that it had provided all previous presidents. He would have accepted the offer and there would have been no reason to transfer the documents to Mar-a-Lago. We had to take him to Mar-a-Lago because you didn't come get him. That's literally their, one, this is defense number two.

It's like victim blaming. It's almost like, imagine if you were going to the airport and we're going to get on a flight and you get stopped at security because you got a loaded gun in your suitcase. And you looked at the TSA guys and said, well, it's my wife's fault. If she had just packed my suitcase like I asked her, then the gun wouldn't be in there. But instead, I just swept everything off my nightstand into the into the suitcase. And it just, I guess guess I guess that's where the gun ended up, but it's not my fault. Yeah, this this bank robbery money, if you cops had shown up on time and stopped me from taking it home, I wouldn't have it. We wouldn't be here. You would be here, but for your hem-handed failure to come and take the bank robbery proceeds

from my hands. And he's award-hawk Do you remember when you, when Trump referred to Jackson with as a ward hog and I immediately went and I got Pumba from Timon and Pumba, the Lion King and I put him in the hay grobes and I started, but yeah, there's a lot of pork going on at the DOJ. Next up, they offer a very simple explanation of what happened after that.

And here it is, see if you can follow along with me. The 15 boxes contained all manner of documents from the White House. They're loosely grouped by date and they include newspapers, magazines, notes, letters, and daily schedules. Now, the lawyers say after we reviewed those boxes, the National Archives inserted placeholders where it removed documents with classification markings. Now, the vast majority of the placeholder inserts referred to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located

near the schedule for those calls. So he's now admitting that he had classified transcribed calls with foreign leaders in those 15 boxes. Okay. But Narcaim and put placeholders in where they go. The order of the documents indicates the White House staff simply swept all the documents from the president's desk and other areas into boxes where they have resided ever since that shows an order kind of to the chaos is what they're saying

This is indicative of the staff's packing process and not any criminal intent by President Trump some of these documents Just got swept up in the thing. They're just swept up and the stuff And we can tell that by the dates, then the sort of loose organization by the dates. As such, the matter should not have been immediately referred to the Office of Director of National Intelligence or your committee and not the Department of Justice. And the DOJ spent, by the way, dozens of pages explaining how the ODNI risk assessment

and the criminal investigation are inextricably linked, especially during their win against Judge Eileen Candidate Special Master in the 11th Circuit all the way up to Scota. So he's literally saying, hey, no, no, look, we have proof that these just got swept up and we didn't even know they were there. And that's because they were in this kind of order. And then you guys came and took the classified stuff out and put placeholders in them. So they're, look, no, there's no crimes. Why did you have to immediately refer it to the Department of Justice after 18 months

of non-working negotiations with the National Archives? You know, it's so hard to even try to distill like what is a credible defense in this, I don't want to say logic. There's not really much logic here. Even just the fact that they keep focusing on the 15 boxes. And I guess they're talking about the 15 boxes that they actually gave back in January of 2022. No where does it reference the, I don't know, like maybe another dozen or so boxes worth of material that they kept that even they they retain. I think what they're trying to get at here is that those first 15 boxes are what caused the referral to the Department of Justice and therefore anything beyond that referral

is fruit of the poison tree. Which is false, that's not a thing. I mean, that's true. That's why I'm like trying to like, I don't where are they going here? And that definitely seems like where they're going but when you get there, there's nothing there. It's like, it's, it's really remarkable. And, and it just raises all these

other questions that don't get addressed at all. Like, well, what about all the other stuff you took? Or, you know, the fact that this stuff ended up where it ended up, that is like per se a violation of the rules as to how this material is supposed to be stored and treated and who owns it after the administration is over, which is of course NARA, not Mar-a-Lago. But yeah, it's remarkably twisted. And keep in mind, a bit of a road map for everything that they'll likely bring up if this case is indicted. Well, that's what's dumb about this.

They're just handing their defenses over to the prosecutors right now so that they, I mean, now if I'm Jack Smith, I'm like, all right, well, we don't, we should shore up against these arguments in court. Yeah. Because basically what Trump goes on, by the way, in the letter of the lawyers, I should say, go on in the letter to say, from the inception of this matter, rather than working cooperatively to ensure the return of all classified documents and correct, and they say marked documents. Because it's not easy to work classified.

The underlying defense there is that we declassified them even though they still had classification markings on them. But that doesn't get them off the hook because the affidavit said we want all documents and the subpoena said we want all documents with classification markings, not classified document. And none of, as we know, none of the three laws that were mentioned in the search warrant affidavit require any of these to be classified. But anyway, if you would just have worked cooperatively with us, the DOJ, but you chose a path of aggressive combativeness. That's, they're saying we would have cooperated

this whole time if it weren't for you. And that's despite, they don't mention the fact that we have evidence and videotapes of boxes being moved after the subpoena came down and people going through boxes and moving things. Like, we, none of that's the here, but here's my favorite part, Andy. They're saying that by subpoenaing Trump for the documents,

the DOJ tainted, ruined the evidence because they sort of wrecked the context, meaning by subpoenaing these, let me see if I can explain this because it's kind of hard to get your head around. You subpoenaed my classified documents. We pulled all these classified documents out. Now there's no longer context

for where those classified documents were. And it's very important that we know the context of the placement of those documents because that shows that I am innocent of knowing possession, right? Like, I mean, it doesn't, but that's what they're saying. Yes. Because we've seen a lot of news where particularly the documents that were found in the top drawer of his desk were co-mingled with notes from an author, a spiritual leader,

and a polster, and that co-mingling. And the reason that when you go in and search warrant is the reason you take the entire box where you find the document is because of all of the stuff that's around it that can, that is also evidence. It's another reason that they not only wanted the classified documents back from the special master, but they were the special master never had to classify documents, but they not only prevented the classified documents from going to the special master, but had to get the unclassified, nonclassified stuff back because that is evidence of a crime. And so now, here's Trump's third defense.

Your subpoena wrecked my contextual, you tainted the evidence. Excuse. Maybe I mean contextual excuse, which is not evidence, really, of anything. You know, it's funny that he compares himself to Biden and Pence at the beginning of the letter. And that definitely comes back in this kind of contextual or that's what he's trying to build to, right? Like, just like in those cases where there's no evidence that those two guys intentionally did anything wrong, the same was true here until you Big Bad DOJ came in and destroyed the

context. But it's not the context. We don't know what papers were next to the documents in Biden's garage or Pence's grant, like not with the sort of specificity we know here. garage or pensions like not with the sort of specificity we know here. That's not what makes what they did seem like it was inadvertent. What the evidence of inadvertence with respect to those two gentlemen is that they called up and said, Hey, I have this stuff here. I want you to I want to give it back. And when the government said we'd like to make come in and make a look around and make sure there's nothing else there. They said, come on in. Compared to here, here they argued with Nara for a year over giving back anything and then just when they came on June 3rd to pick up the stuff pursuant to the subpoena, they

wouldn't let them look around. Right. There's so many moments in this timeline that clearly indicate an intentional retention. And so that's the evidence of criminality. It's not the fact that, oh, these are next to you know, the front page of the West Palm Times. It's not, if anything, that they were sitting in your desk drawer, which you clearly had accessed many, many times since leaving the White House, that's actually evidence of your knowledge of the fact that you had classified documents. So it's just, yeah, here's the paragraph.

Here's how they word it, quote, by unleashing a grand jury subpoena, DOJ intended to put Trump on the defensive, not to invite his cooperation, even though they've been trying to do this for 18 months. 18 months. Moreover, grand jury subpoenas seek only the disclosure documents. In this case, any documents with classification markings, they do not provide any mechanism to document where those documents were located or what they were near, thus destroying the contextual evidence, that is, the critical to understanding the handling of the boxes that were ultimately

transmitted to Nara. So, you know, by subpoenaing us instead of just coming in and doing a search warrant at first, you've wrecked it. And then, of course, they don't talk about the fact that in the search warrant they did have all the contextual clues. They came and had to get a search warrant because they felt like they didn't have everything handed over and they were right. And now here's their defense against the attestation letter, the certification letter signed by Bob, which was written by Evan Corcoran and perhaps coordinated by Boris Epstein. They say to be clear, the certification letter signed by Bob, which was written by Evan Corcoran and perhaps coordinated by Boris Epstein.

They say to be clear, the certification letter stated that a diligent search was conducted and all responsive documents found were provided, not that the search turned up all possible materials as many media outlets have falsely characterized the certification of saying. In other words, it wasn't very intelligent. And I, I, I, we talked to the certification so that we wouldn't be in trouble for not responding to what the subpoena called right because the subpoena called from all documents with classification markings. We voluntarily classified our search as diligent, but by no means do we mean to suggest

that it should have actually turned up the documents we were looking for? I mean, the thing here is this is not a legal maneuver. There's nothing really significant legally about this letter. And, you know, playing on recent history, Trump is not doing well in the legal realm right? He's losing motion after motion all of his claims of executive privilege and trying to ban people from Tesla All that stuff is failing. He's getting indicted and he's been indicted now in New York and who knows what's next So he's failing on the legal side where he wins is on the political side and that's what this letter is about politics about trying to energize

his, you know, wild-eyed supporters in the house to take this, take up the mantle of this is not fair. It's a unlawful or inappropriate, politicized investigation of a poor guy who's done nothing wrong. And in order to like throw, you know, throw shade at DOJ, maybe call some hearing, slow them down a bit, give them something else they have to deal with, kind of like that they've already done with Alvin Bragg in New York. So we'll see, he might actually succeed in that because he does well in the political manipulations. But legally, this thing is really not going to help him.

And I think we'll probably heard him by just telegraphing a lot of the stuff that you'll they'll likely bring up a trial through his one. Yeah. And then what's also interesting is that he tries to say, well, when you subpoenaed my stuff and didn't have the context, that's because I'm innocent. But Biden, you didn't get the context for what his stuff is and he's probably guilty. So like the context thing exonerates him, but it incorporates Biden. Of course.

Because he says DOJ represents repeated the same mistakes, allowing Biden's private attorneys to conduct searches and turn over marked documents without any documentation of where they were found and what evidence, if any, indicated knowing possession. And finally, the ask, here's their ask, they say, the solution to these issues is not misguided, politically infected, and severely botched criminal investigation. But rather, that's not the solution. But rather a legislative solution. DOJ should be ordered by Congress to stand down, which isn't a thing.

And the intelligence community, the intelligence community should instead conduct an appropriate investigation. They are, thank you, and provide a full report to this committee. No. As well as your counterparts in the Senate, they provide a full report to the, probably the gang of eight, but sorry if you weren't smart enough to make it onto the gang of eight, which is kind of a low bar these days on the Republican side. But that's their ask to stand down and they want basically to wreck the Constitution and have no separation of powers. Yeah, it's really kind of a new high point, I guess from their perspective, low point, in fact, in terms of how it will actually affect him indicator of the constantly elevating level of acrimony between the Trump legal team and DOJ. And again, have they taken it totally different tact with this issue and cooperated right off the

bat, you know, not fought them tooth and nail, not forced to go, you know, actually complied with the subpoena, not forced the government to go get a search warrant. We wouldn't, we wouldn't even be having these conversations. He'd be in no danger of being indicted over these documents. But this is all, this is going to work the way the rest of their strategic decisions have worked in this case so far, which is ultimately, I think, going to hurt him in a long run. Yeah. Well, now we've got a lot of the defense that they're going to try to pull if these indictments come down for this particular thing. And then also, there are very reactionary group, and I wonder what this letter is in reaction

to when the last segment, when I said, put a pin in it, why would you, Sapina, Donald Trump, would you bring in his legal team to argue against an indictment? Perhaps we're getting close to that point where maybe the special counsel has said, we're going to indict your guy. You want to come in and argue, talk us out of it. Yeah, take your shot and see if you can convince us not to. That seems like a tall order at this point, but maybe that's where they are. Well, this would be their argument, wouldn't it? I mean, this is their argument for that ask for when for when Jack Smith, if he has or

when he does in the future, says, tell me why I should indict. Yeah, I it could be. I mean, this is essentially the equivalent of like, uh, before that meeting, sending this letter is like, you know, threatening to have your dad beat your neighbor up. You know, I mean, like, it's not, it's not a good way to go into that. And what you want to be is level headed and acidiously grounded in the facts and the law and present an argument to DOJ that this is a bad idea. It's a bad case.

You're probably not going to win. And it's bad for the country and, you know, to try to appeal to that pure prosecutorial discretion aspect of what's going on. It's always a long shot, I think, but it is a, it's a moonshot on this one. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, we've got a couple of new subpoenas and some more breaking news from this week

in the Jack Smith investigation, but we have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around, we'll be right back. Boom, boom, it is? It's time for subpoenas. Yeah, it's a peanut time. All right, here's the big news, Andy. And we talked about this. I'm we teased it at the top of the show in the A block. We, you remember the Berkeley research firm tried to do about $600,000 to have a group of experts from a legit research firm come in

and look at about a dozen or so different areas of potential voter fraud. And we know that he got that report back. I believe as we know at the latest January 1st of 2021, believe as we know at the latest January 1st of 2021, he might have gotten it sooner through the grapevine, but that's when the actual written report was dated. And you know, that Jack Smith in January, we had reported earlier on a previous episode of Jack, Jack Smith got that Berkeley research firm report showing no widespread voter fraud in January of 2023, just a few months ago. Now, Washington Post,

Dozzy is reporting there is a second research firm called Sympathico software, and according to this new reporting, two things, two big pieces of news. First of all, the owner and founder of Sympathico software has met with the Department of Justice and there's going to be a subpoena issued for that person to, for him to appear before the grand jury, a friendly subpoena. And then second piece of news, in addition to the Sympathico firm, news. In addition to the Sympathico firm, Guy coming in to testify before the grand jury, it's not just the paper report from the Berkeley Research firm that Jack has. He has now taken the testimony of several employees from the Berkeley Research firm responsible for putting together that report. And so the new report costs $700,000, the first report costs $600,000. They both looked

at from what we understand we haven't seen the report yet though. The same roughly 12 different areas of voter fraud and they both came back and said we didn't find any. Well, if you don't get what you want from the first report, go out and hire a second one. If you don't get what you want from the second one, shame on you, right? I think not surprised by the result here, but this is just a really very happy development for the prosecution team and the investigators.

You have now got even more witnesses. So let's talk about the, in the context of Berkeley, because we know that they've gone in already several people from Berkeley. So the report gives you the conclusion and some good information, but the individuals give you the testimony around the report and other things that they, that they saw or heard or steps they took to come to the conclusions in the report. It takes a report and it turns it into a really like a living thing and it broadens out the amount of information that you can get from it. It also, in order to use that report

at trial, you would have to have someone from the company come in and authenticate it. That's how the report would get admitted as a piece of evidence. So it gives you a have to have someone from the company come in and authenticate it. That's how the report would get admitted as a piece of evidence. So it gives you a chance to see which one of the report the employees would be best to do that. And of course, it allows you to lock in that testimony under oath. So that'll happen again now with the Sympathico folks. And you're right. These subpoenas are friendly.

Any corporation, any legitimate corporation that's perfectly happy to cooperate with an investigation, they're always going to ask for a subpoena because it protects them from potential legal liability. So if you, for instance, if you're Berkeley, and you were hired by the Trump campaign, you did this research and gave it to them. And then all of a sudden, you know, you cooperated in an investigation

without a subpoena, you could always be vulnerable to some sort of legal action from the Trump campaign saying, Hey, you violated our privacy or this was a violation of contract. You shouldn't have shared our information with anyone else. Once you have the subpoena, that's a defense to all those things. You say, Hey, we were just simply complying with a lawful subpoena and, you know, tell your complaints to the DOJ. Yeah, when we've seen it a lot with Trump, there's been a lot of friendly subpoenas in Trump's orbit, right? We've got

Mazar's, we've got Salesforce, we've got Chapman University for the Eastman emails, we've got like, I can think of a million different friendly subpoenas for corporations corporations who are like take it take it I we pay sorry, you know, we don't No liability here, you know, that's right happy to help you. That's right And so you know, we we definitely see quite a bit of that So this again, like you said adds to the pile, you know, I can see in a charging document Going through because they'll be speaking indictments, I believe

And it'll say something to the effect of not only did his White House counsel tell him that he had lost the election not only did his campaign lawyers advise him that he lost the election Not only did his deputy White House counsel lawyers advise him that he lost the election. Not only did his deputy White House counsel. In fact, basically naming every attorney except Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and Johnny's men and Jeffrey Clark, every other attorney in the world. Not only that, did we have the closest advisors advising him, then we had a research firm that he hired. Come back and tell him there was no voter fraud in 12 different areas of election, a potential election fraud, then a second firm was hired. Like, I can see it all being

spelled out in the totality of the evidence of why, first of all, not just the January 6th fraudulent electroskeem is a crime, is a conspiracy against the United States, but the wire fraud over on the looking at the Save America pack and the fake election defense fund stuff that even after being told by multiple credible and all the way up to the attorney general that there is no voter fraud here, he continued to raise funds based on the lie. And I think that that's that's kind of had this. And this is just one more spoke in the wheel of evidence that goes to show that he had to know that he didn't win this election. That's right. And he can try to spin this, right? Is it? I'm sure any any good defense attorney would he could say,

no, I really believe there was fraud. And that's why I went out and hired these companies to look into it. Okay, that's great. Until they give you their report and they say, no, there's no fraud. We looked into it. There's nothing there. And here's, you know, here's the proof or the lack of proof depending on how this is going to be. And now we've got Rudy Giuliani admitting it to Maria Bartoromo before appearing on Fox News. We have that on audio. We have Sydney Powell admitting that it's not real. We have Ted Cruz admitting that it's not, you know, all of the evidence just starts to pile up. All the players had knowledge and that knowledge is incredibly important. It's going to be something they have to prove to make their case. And it's also going to be something they're going to need to counteract Trump's defenses that his efforts were based

on a legitimate, a dual legitimately held belief that there had been fraud. Yeah. All right. Well, big week. What sort of listener question do we have this week? All right. So we have two questions. One is real and the other, the second one is kind of funny.

So the first one, first listener question, is from someone who did not put their name in. So I can't give them credit. But the first part of it says, given the narcissistic tendencies, perpetual grifting, and deep financial troubles of the ex-president, what are the chances he is quote, selling top secret info to foreign adversaries?

So I picked this one because it is something that people ask me about a lot. So I think it's a question in many people's minds. And you're probably not gonna like my answer on this one, but I think it's really important that we don't kind of add to the suspicion around this because the problem is we don't have any, with the public information

we're aware of, there's no, there's no information that, at that point in that direction. For a variety of reasons, I would think it would probably be unlikely. That's just complete guessing on my part. Not the, you know, not the, the, the least of those, certainly is that he's not the least of those certainly is that he's not the ideal person you would want to be cultivating for some sort of an espionage relationship if you were a foreign service. He's wildly dangerous with information and talks too much and says things inappropriately. that's generally work that far and spies want you to do quietly. But I do think that it's important that there are so many questionable things about his handling of classified material and national defense material that we should

stay focused on those who don't really need to kind of add fuel to the fire of speculation about additional inappropriate or possibly illegal things he might have been doing. Let's just wait and see where the evidence goes. Let's see what the facts are and see if there's an indictment. As you said, a speaking indictment, let's see what kind of information the government is standing on.

So, and I would be very confident to say that I'm sure any damage assessment part of this investigation, which is done by not just the Bureau, but everybody else whose information might have been involved, and certainly under the auspices of the DNI, I'm sure they're thinking about all of those things and taking appropriate action. But right now, let's just go with the facts we know. Yeah, and the only real public reporting that we even have on any of this is that maybe he showed them to donors.

Maybe he, you know, that it was like a trophy and that he did mention that Nixon stood to make $18 million off of his stuff that he took with him from the White House. So it might have just been in ego, right, where he showed Kid Rock, a classified map of an Iranian nuclear site that we took out or something, a centrifuge or something,

and tries to get money. It tries to get him to perform for free at Arali. Like there could have been some sort of chartering here. He's a transactional guy. He's wildly irresponsible with sensitive information. We've known that for years. There's a million examples of it.

He's also vindictive. So there's a chance that maybe he was holding on to this information because he thought it might be useful to have to use against enemies. Yeah, to use against enemies. They're all those things are possible. I don't think you got to hold them in your head, but you know, it's all speculation at this point.

It's all speculation. And thinking down the road, they're like, oh, but he was selling this stuff. We don't really know that yet. So let's just keep our minds open and stay focused on the facts. All right, so that's second question.

This one comes to us from Diana. And she says, we keep seeing the same three pictures of Jack. Do you think he hides from the paparazzi or rides his bike to work wearing a wig and sunglasses? When might we get a glimpse of this guy? So that's a great question. Diana, I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. And I think that here's my theory. My theory is, I'm not gonna deny it. My theory is that Jack is such a badass triathlete. He rides so fast that nobody can, nobody notices him. He's like a blur on the streets of DC.

Like the flash. Yeah, and I used to ride my bike to work every now and then when I was back in yielding times and I was still working. And there are some pretty fast dudes out there on those DC streets on their bike. So I'm guessing that he's one of those and he just gets into the garage or wherever he drops his steed and you know, then he switches out into the work clothes and nobody's the wiser. That's my guess. But it's both. It's fine. They're somewhere. Yeah. Does anybody, does anybody even know where the special counsel's office is?

I know that judicial watch we talked about this last week tried to get the names of the people that were on the team. I think that they're a lot more secretive than the Mueller, the Mueller probe was. And I think that that might be why. And plus Mueller, which we didn't have a lot of pictures of him either, was the Friggen director of the FBI for 12 years. So, yeah, me and out there on him. Yeah, and like, we had to dig, by the way, to find that audio clip of Jack Smith that

we played in one of the earlier episodes. I cannot find any other audio on him. And that's very interesting because he's a figure, you know, so it's, but prior to him becoming, but it probably would have been easier to find prior to him becoming special counsel because now every search that you do just brings up the same, you know, fear the beard photo. Totally. Totally. So if he wanted to change, you know, changes, looking could easily just ditch the robe and get a shave and you wouldn't even recognize the guy. Like you're just looking for that kind of, you know,

Hogwarts sort of look that he's got going over there at the E.E.C. I would love for him to walk the streets of D.C. in the robe with the beard and just like ringing a bell or something. That would be crazy. Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.

Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead. Bong. We can only hope. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for the money Python at their end. That was awesome. And I can't like every week. I'm like, what could possibly happen this week? And we had the pens testimony and we got that new, you know, simpatico software system firm, a whole new report that just says there was no election fraud. So those are very, very big stories and we'll continue to get,

you know, it's like, what could the news fairies bring this week? We will find out and we'll bring it to you the next episode of Jack. Everybody, I've been Allison Gil. Absolutely. And I am Andy McKayb. We'll see you next week.