Jack - Episode 27 - Docs, Lies, and Audiotape

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

This week: Special Counsel has an audio recording of Trump acknowledging that he retained at least one classified document after his presidency - blowing up his “I declassified everything with my mind” defense; Evan Corcoran was waved off of searching anywhere other than the Mar-a-Lago storage room; the “IT Guy” and Nauta share a lawyer paid by the Save America PAC; the firing of Kris Krebs speaks to Trump’s state of mind around creating a coup-friendly environment; plus listener questions and more.Do you have questions about the cases and investigations? Email [e-mail] and put Jack in the subject line.OrClick 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

M.S.W. Media. I signed in order appointing Jack Smith. And nobody knows you. And those who say Jack is a finesse. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, what law have I grew? The events leading up to and on January 6. Classified documents and other presidential records.

You understand what prison is. Send me to jail. all things special counsel. It is Sunday, June 4th. I'm your host, Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And oh my gosh, do we have a week this week? You know, we say this every time, Alison, it's like you, you would get a day or two into the week and things are slow and we're starting to wonder, oh, how's this going to go? And then bam, we get a couple of dumps on Wednesday, Thursday. And then we just have a hard time squeezing it into the hour. So here we are again, another big week on a special council scene. Yeah, we even had some news drop just like an hour ago about the document, the Iran document, which we'll talk about. But yeah, trying to pack all this news into an hour a week is getting pretty tricky.

But I think we pulled it off. I think we've got a good show for you. And we've got a lot of news coming from Hugo Loll, our friend over at the Guardian this week, including our very first story. And Hugo opens up saying, federal prosecutors obtained audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting where Donald Trump suggested he should have declassified a military document about Iran that he admitted retaining. I'll give you some details and then we're going to talk about this because this is I think it's very, very important, but I don't think it's really important for the same reasons that a lot of folks, a lot of pundits think it's important. And we'll talk about that in a second,

but the recording was made at Bedminster, right? This is New Jersey. This isn't Mara Lago. That's right. It was July of 2021. So it was almost two years ago. And this is when the former president met with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a book by his aide, Margo Martin. She's who recorded it. And she regularly taped conversations with authors, which says to me, there could be more out there. Oh my God. I mean, she opens up a whole door of how many more of these great conversations of the president saying ridiculously bad things could possibly access.

But more about that later, I guess. There's just so much to cover. And for several minutes on the audio recording, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify it because he's out of office. But he suggests that he should have done it when he was still in the White House. Yeah, that would have been a good idea.

And he might have tried and ran into some procedural problems because as we know know on May 24, Jack Smith got 16 documents from the National Archives proving that Donald knew there was a declassification process. And I'm assuming one of the ways that he knew was failed attempts at declassifying documents. You know, they say you should try to learn from your failures. And hey, maybe that's what happened here. I'm trying to put a good spin on it, but that's tough getting tough for every day. Yeah. And so when he's waving around this document in this meeting, and you can hear the paper wrestling, whatever the doc, whatever's in the document, we don't know. But he says, I,

you know, I can hear him now. I'd love to show it to you. It's explosive. It proves so many things, but I can't because it's classified, because I'm allowed to have it, because I'm awesome. You know, it's beautiful. It's strong. Everybody says so. So I'm sure. You know, what really amazes me is the context of this conversation.

Apparently, the media took place days after a story appeared in the New Yorker by Susan Glasser that talked about, it wasn't based on an interview of Mark Miley, but talked about somebody related to story to Glasser about how Miley had to convince Trump at the very end of his administration not to bomb Iran. And I guess Trump reacted negatively to that revelation. So he had this document theoretically in this conversation with Mark Meadows writers, ghost writers of Mark Meadows memoir, in an effort to essentially kick shade on General Mylay.

So it's so classic. You can completely see this lining up. And it also, in a way, if this is all bears out, right, we haven't heard the tape yet, but it totally sheds at least a little bit of light on why he kept this stuff. Why did he want this stuff around, right? We've talked about that.

Was it for money? Was it for power? Was it for leverage? Who knows? Well, maybe one of those reasons might have been, hey, I could really use this to exact revenge upon my enemies and people who say bad things about me, which is completely consistent with his personality and his modus operandi. Yeah, and this document, if it is the document

that I think it is, it's basically Trump wanted to bomb Iran after Iran bombed Iraq and, you know, missed our base. And nobody was killed. But there were some of our service members who ended up with TBI, traumatic brain injury because of the blast. And so Trump wanted to bomb specifically 52 sites in Iran, religious sites, art sites, cultural sites, and wanted them to draft this up. And Millie was like, bro, that escalation does not match what just happened, basically. And if my sources in the Pentagon are correct, this document does exist. It wasn't

drafted by Millie, but it may have, it may have been briefed by Millie, but it does list these 52 sites that Trump wanted to target. You know, this, this is also like totally understandable. This is how business gets done in the National Security Council and at these principles meetings and deputies meetings. First of all, the principles, the big head honchos like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they don't draft anything. They're not the authors of the material that they bring into the meeting, right? He probably has hundreds, maybe thousands of analysts and people who work on his staff, who put a ton of time and effort into producing this stuff.

And no matter what the president asks for, the agencies, in this case, DOD, they produce documents to discuss options. It doesn't mean they're advocating for one or another. They may get to that point of a recommendation eventually, but they say, okay, you said, what would it take, how would we do it, where would we go, if we decided to bomb Iran, they produce a document like the one that's been described here that lays out some of the details about how that would happen. It's not a war plan per se. Those things are much bigger and more evolved, but this is like a way to discuss the issue at the table in the situation room to put the president in a position to make a decision. Yeah. So this is this is

purportedly what Trump may or may not have been talking about, right? And and Trump's lawyers believe the document is classified at the secret level. That's according to Trump's lawyers, which referenced military action concerning Iran had been returned. They said they believe it had been returned to the national archives months later. Now, I want to talk to you about secret level documents. I know that when I saw Hugo Law on MSNBC, I believe it was on the readout, he said that secret level documents are kind of like the Goldilocks documents, right? They're not so top secret that they can't be used as evidence in court, but they're

not confidential, which is like, okay, you got a confidential doc, I used to stamp my algebra homework confidential when I was in the Navy. So it's not because I decided, but because they told me I had to. So it's not that moving moving document to use in court. And so the folks at DOJ who are the experts at deciding what evidence is used in classified documents cases generally go for the secret documents. So that this document would be one of those documents. And Hugo wanted to bring that to everyone's attention.

Now, Jack Smith got this recording in March. And Empty Wheel brought up the fact that in April, he subpoenaed Saudi docks. Now, I don't know that they, I don't know she's implying a connection here, but I was sitting here trying to figure out what Saudi Arabia might want with some Iran war plans. Well, US war plans in Iran.

Well, I mean, you know, you're talking about two like bitter rivals in that region. And certainly the Saudi government probably spends a lot of time and attention trying to figure out how to gain advantage over the Iranians and how to understand what the Iranians might do. And also to understand how they can enlist the support of their allies. And we are, of course, one, to engage and address the threats that they are facing from Iran. So it's not beyond the scope of the possible or reasonableness to think that it's the sort of topic that they would certainly be interested in. That said, it's hard to make a connection, I think, at this point between Trump's allegedly, you know, credibly irresponsible and likely illegal

use of this document in his private golf club in New Jersey in 2021 and some sort of involvement of the Saudis. There's a lot of other reasons I think that they also might have an interest in Saudi Arabia. We know, of course, of the longstanding relationship and interactions between Trump and members of this family and the Saudis. So, you know, you got to look at each one of these issues with the assumption that the prosecutors, Jack Smith, his team, they know a hundred times more

than we know, there could be multiple streams of investigative interest happening here, and they just haven't been exposed to us yet. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, a month after he subpoenaed the Saudi Arabia stuff. One month later in May, all of a sudden, Vivek, the guy running for president on, I guess, maybe the no labels or the independent party something. I don't know. He's running for president. He had to fire a firm that had people who'd been told they have to register under the foreign agent registration act for their ties with the live golf tournament. And I was wondering like, oh, did he get a bunch of stuff and like handed over the

ferry unit and said, you might want to call these guys like, I don't know. We're going to talk about Vivek later in the show. But basically, here's the Friday, the today bombshell from CNN, attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid March in response to a subpoena related to that document. So after the recording, Jack Smith subpoenaed the Trump team for any and all documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump's chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting. So he, you know, he's following that thread to its logical conclusion.

Although I just want to point out a couple of things here. It was made clear when we had the special master battle down in the 11th circuit, in the old 11th circuit, with a judge-Iling cannon in the district court down there in Florida, that none of these documents have to be classified for any of the laws that were in the search warrant affidavit to have been violated. National defense information is national defense information. And this document, if it is what Trump says it was in the meeting, is National Defense Information. It doesn't matter if it's classified or not.

Absolutely. Yeah. And the Department of Justice argued to the 11th Circuit, declassification is a red hearing. And by the way, that's a public defense. Trump has not, has refused to. They, they tried to get Donald, is your defense that you declassified these documents?

No. That he never made that defense to the courts. So it's interesting here that Jack is following this threat all the way down, because on one hand, it seems like, you know how you and I are talking about evidence that you gather to rebut a defense from Donald Trump versus evidence you gather to build a case. And this felt like evidence you gather to rebut a defense from Donald Trump versus evidence you gathered a bill to case. And this felt like evidence you gather to rebut a defense from Trump, but is Trump

even going to make the declassification defense? I mean, I suppose he could in front of a jury, but he hasn't so far yet made it to a court. He hasn't, I think his lawyers have been particularly careful about that because they're, you know, obviously, I would expect them to be concerned about getting burned, right, acting and making representations of the court that might be based on misrepresentations they've received from their client. So I agree with you. I think this is most significant in that bucket. It works to directly undermine several possible defenses by my count three and those are, you can't say the discussion allegedly caught on tape

completely debunks this theory that he didn't have classified documents, right? This is him admitting that he had classified documents. So that's one. So you can't defend yourself by saying I didn't have any. It also debunks the defense of I I didn't know I had any, for the same reason, he discusses it and admits it on this tape. And then finally, he knew that they were classified and he knew he didn't have the ability to declassify them after he left the White House, which cuts the legs out from under the defense that you're talking about. So, the tape is very significant as a piece of evidence if he's indicted and goes to trial.

And then of course, the... Are intent too, right? Like why'd you steal them and hide them because you knew you couldn't take them? Yeah, it also starts to fill in that hole of intent, right? Because here you have him. Again, we're basing this on our assumption that the tape lives up to its description.

But if so, you have him actually doing something with the things he stole. That shows the jury what he intended to do with them, and it's most basic sense. And of course, it's him speaking in his own voice. There's nothing more powerful than having a jury, or a jury listen to the defendant describing what's been charged as a crime. I mean, it's the best evidence you could possibly have, other than maybe a videotape and Lordy,

I hope there's videotapes. I think we do. We have several videotapes. We're going to talk about the surveillance tapes at a little bit. There you go. But my other point that this, you know, this is probably evidence toward intent and evidence toward, you know, to rebut a defense. This is everyone's, where's this one document? Where is it? Because New York Times just a 10 minutes ago put out a story. They can't find the document. Revoyers think they sent it back to national archives.

I'm sure Jack would have it. He wouldn't have subpoenaed it if he if it was given back to him at that point. So I think maybe maybe one significant thing is that he had classified not only after the subpoena, but after the search warrant was this was issued. If he in fact had this document, but if it can't be found, I don't want to ever anyone to worry. This is one secret document. We found hundreds of documents after that search warrant

that were hidden and obstructed and moved around and possibly so that we don't need this, the case does not hinge on this on finding this document or proving that he had it. That's absolutely right. It's contrary to maybe what you heard in the interview of Tim Parletore on CNN the other day, that he tried to, he tried to posit that the relevance of the tape collapses if you can't find the document.

That is not true. The tape is relevant for the reasons I just laid out. It's easily authenticated and admitted as evidence because you have the woman who made the recording has already testified in front of the grand jury. So that's a hurdle. That's already over. Like you said, it doesn't matter so much that they base a specific charge on that specific document. It's got all these, all these other elements of significance to it. As to whether or not they have it or could find it, that's really a ball in the air from my perspective.

There's no question. They've been very concerned for a long time about this idea that they don't have all of the classified or important national defense information documents, a sensitive stuff. They've been pursuing it for months, right? We know that they went in and made a motion for sanctions against Trump and his attorneys for failing to comply with the original subpoena. They didn't get the sanctions yet. I think that's still a possibility, but they haven't, as far as we know, they haven't gotten

them. They made that great effort to get Trump's searchers, the two, whatever, investigators, people who allegedly conducted the 14th thorough search of all of his places. It came up with two more documents, even in that effort. They went to Great Lanes to get their identities revealed so that they could be subpoenaed and they testified in front of the grandery. So clearly, this is important to the special counsel team. I think it's possible that they don't have it. But even if they do have it, they still would have dropped the subpoena,

like the one that you described at the beginning of this conversation, simply because they're like, well, what else could be there? Let's drop another subpoena. Let's create another obligation, legal obligation on Trump and his attorneys to conclusively hand over anything to do with General Miley or Iran or, you know, I, whatever else is described in their maps and war plans or whatever. That's kid rock. Didn't you show a map to kid rock? It's ask Kid Rock. Didn't he show a map to Kid Rock?

Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to keep track of this now, but yeah, I think this is really, this thing is a watershed moment. As if they didn't already have an embarrassment of riches in terms of evidence, really inculpatory evidence on this document investigation. Now you have this tape. It's just, you know, I said it on TV the other night, the idea that he won't be indicted is, I think an impossibility at this point,

with all of this evidence, having proved the crime fraud exception to a judge, the idea that they would now back away and say, you know what, we're not gonna ask a jury to vote on this, grand jury to vote on this is just, uh, I don't see that. He's as a remote possibility. No. And the only other defense I can think that he might bring up is, Oh, I was

lying. It was a blank piece of paper, like my healthcare plan. There was nothing there. Yeah. You know, in which case he would have to admit that he was lying. I'm fascinated by that because I know I, and I want to ask you about that because it doesn't matter. What's on the tape is him admitting that he can't declassify stuff after he leaves office and that he and that he that he had classified information with him.

And I mean, so it might make the I had classified information with me argument a little hard, but that second part where he knows that he can't declassify stuff after he left office and he should have declassified it before he left office. And is that the only one of the 300 that you didn't? Oh yeah. It's brutal. You're absolutely right. The significance of the tape can even just the tape itself and isolation cannot be overstated. But think about this. His lawyers have made no public defense of the tape so far. They've gone so far out of their way, twisted themselves and nots to like talk about anything else. Oh, DOJs leaking, FBI is leaking, which by the way, I find to be unlikely and we have no indications of that so far. Oh, well, you know, if they can't find the document, it all goes away like a puff of smoke.

That's all nonsense. What you should be taking away from that is not one of them has come out and actually defended this and addressed it directly. The only person who has a trub who today made a some kind of statement, oh, it's all nonsense. I don't know what they're talking about. This never happened. That's what he said. This never happened. That's what he said. This never happened. So now there not only does the tape come in, but they bring

in witnesses. How many people were in the meeting six or eight people? I've heard it described differently. How about bring six people in to testify about what they heard in the meeting and what they saw. And most importantly, what he was doing while he was speaking. They can't say what he said they don't have to because the tape covers that who would be here say for them to do that anyway. But what they can say is like, okay, they play a little piece of the tape. All right. Do you remember him saying it? Yes, I remember that. Okay, what was he doing? Well, he was holding a document in his hand and he was waving it around and he was kind of pointing at it as he was speaking. And witness one, did you take from that, from his expression, from his use of the document, holding the document, waving the document, what did you conclude from that? Well, I naturally thought that that was

the document he was referring to. So if you have multiple witnesses who come in and testify about that, you essentially force him to testify. Now he has to take the stand. If his defense is gonna be, oh, that wasn't really the document I was talking about, he either has to come in and say, yeah, that was the super sensitive classified document in my hand, or he has to say, no, I lied, I made it all up.

And that is not a good thing to tell a jury. You don't want to sit in front of a jury and say, yeah, that tape you just heard me, that's me lying. That's what I sound like when I'm lying, which coincidentally is a lot like what I sound like right now. It's terrible. All of this gets in front of the jury, even if they can't find the document,

the jurors can still consider all this evidence and come to the conclusion, we think these six people are telling the truth and that one guy behind the defense table is not, and therefore they convict him. That's how it works. So, you know, the efforts to minimize this are really kind of laughable. Yeah, and they might not have responded yet to this publicly because Trump's got a new lawyer in the documents case. We'll talk about that later in the show too, but we have to take a quick break right now. Everybody stick around.

We'll be right back. And we are back. All right, Allison, we've got another development in the weekly saga of as the Marlago documents turn. As the revolving door of lawyers in Florida turns. Yes. And boxes are moved in and boxes are moved out. And there's four more people who know about the boxes. So I have, I have a picture in my head of, you know, the famous, I love Lucy where they have the conveyor belt and the chocolates going. And, but it's classified documents, like trying to get them to get them out of the pockets or putting them in boxes. Territom up, eating them, splashing them down the toilet. That's all possible here. And hopefully

someday we'll have video of all of we'd be watching it as a trial is ongoing. But in any case, from the Guardian this week, we have Donald Trump's lawyer, Evan Corcoran, who was tasked with searching for the classified documents at Marlago after the Justice Department issued a subpoena. Well, Corcoran has told associates that he was waived off from searching the former president's office. So several Trump aides had told Corcoran to search the storage room because that was presumably where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump's presidency ended up being deposited. Well, Corcoran found we know now 38 classified documents in the storage room. Of course, this is the storage room that then rendered another hundred or so, but nevertheless, he'd been asked if he should search anywhere else, like Trump's

office or any place else in Marlago, but he was basically steered away. It's not clear who waived Corcoranoff from searching elsewhere at Marlago, whether it's Trump himself or Trump employees who advised him to look for classified documents in the storage room. So I think it might have been not a good witness. You're saying? Not a good decision by not a good witness then. So that is of course the question in our minds right now. Now the Guardian has previously reported that prosecutors determined that Trump and Nauta knew

when and where Corcoran intended to search because Corcoran needed Nauta to unlock the storage room according to Corcoran intended to search because Corcoran needed nodded to unlock the storage room according to Corcoran's roughly 50 pages of notes. I mean, maybe he kept his diet coke in that room as well. It's probably totally innocent. And you know, that's why Corcoran and that's why Nodda had the key. I could be, you know, somebody had to go down to the storage room to reload the omelette bar upstairs. I mean, I don't know any of this could happen, but my guess is it was really all about the documents.

Well, he was, now there was his Diet Coke Valley in the White House. Remember how you had a Diet Coke button on his desk? Yes, yeah. Yeah, that was, that was not a, that would, that would respond with the Diet Coke. So I was wondering if that was the Diet Coke storage. It's a bit like, you know, classified documents, Diet Coke.

Yeah, sure. Then anybody who's cleared to access die coke would then by definition also have some access to the classified documents. And I actually saw those die coaks on the resolute desk when I was in the office with Trump. So, you know, I was doing a good job with the coaks. That's all I could say.

So what's the implication, criminally speaking, or if you're an investigator where somebody has been maybe materially misled, particularly a lawyer, where not to search. You know, should you want me to go look in the office? You want me to look in the residence? You want me to look here? You want me to look there? No, nope, just the room.

Particularly interesting, because we know from previous Guardian reporting that Nauta was seen on videotape returning boxes to that room the day before the, you know, Jay Bratt came down from DC to collect the documents that were found. I mean, the possibilities are not good at the extreme. Because here's what I'm sorry, I don't know if you hear what the timing sounds like to me, right? They get the subpoena. Trump tells NADA to grab, you know, maybe Trump goes down there and marks some boxes or looks through some boxes

or tells NADA to grab the boxes and move them up to the hall outside of the residence. And then Trump goes through them and tells them to take these back down and pull us out some documents, put them in his desk, put them in the residence, hide them somewhere else, and then says, all right, here's a key. Go let Corcoran in to search the storage room. And then Corcoran goes, okay, and I searched and he found 38 documents down there.

And then he goes, do you want me to look anywhere else? No, no, no. And then he goes, all right, here's the key back. And then we have not a returning the boxes back down to the storage facility, putting a lock on it, maybe, maybe not. And then, all right, call up the Department of Justice, tell him to come on down.

And when they do come down, we'll show you where the storage room is. We'll open the door, but you look in, but you can't actually look in any boxes. I mean, you know, I think the possibility you laid out there is exactly that, a possibility. If we think about what we do, no, absolutely. We know a boatload of documents ended up in his office because that's of course where we saw the great photographs from the search, you know, the results of the search warrant with the cover sheets all over the floor. It, you know, on the in the sense of like, could people be, could this be

criminal activities or something that would lead to a here? Yeah, the answer is absolutely. Any attorney who receives a subpoena from the Department of Justice for particular records, whether it's the classified stuff in your bathroom or whatever else it might be, it's attorney 101. The first thing you do is you sit down with your client and say, okay, this is what they've asked for. Anything that meets this description has to be turned over. So I'm going to, I'm going to collect all that material, but you cannot destroy it. You can't hide it. You can't move it. We'll have an affirmative obligation to turn this stuff over. Now, we might collect it and then say we object on this grounds or that grounds, but you absolutely can't like hide stuff. That is the heart of obstruction of justice. You've got to make reasonable efforts to search what you have and to make it available. So if

by the way, also just to throw this little piece into the timeline scenario that I just gave June second. So pull, you know, pull everything out, Walt, look through it, Trump looks, we have public reporting saying Trump looked through some of these boxes. And then all right, take it back down on June second. He takes it back down on June second. We have that on video with his friend. Then all right, here's the key. Go ahead and let Corcoran in and tell him to search only

in the storage room. And then the next day, Walton Outta and his buddy are helping pack the SUV to go to Bedminster. And we have photos of public reporting of documents box as being loaded into that SUV on his way to Bedminster. Did he take them out before Brat got there? I mean, again, I'm speculating, but all these pieces of information that we know, if put in the right order, just absolutely spelled as aster

for obstruction charges for Trump. Yeah. And it's, it's just as much obstruction if you're doing it to deceive your own attorney, right? And it then makes sense. Like if your attorney is actually doing his job and obeying the law, as attorneys are supposed to, it makes sense that you might want to hide from your attorney the incriminating records or material or contraband that you have.

So I think it's, it's really a ripe source of potential obstruction charges. It smells very obstructiony. Now whether or not the government can prove that is a different story, right? You're it's it's based a lot on witness testimony and of course the infamous video tapes which apparently they have some of but they also have some concerns What they have or what they originally received might not have been The whole story or have been complete. Because we know they've gone to some lengths to go to the service provider, the company that basically stores the recordings, the electronic recordings of that stuff, and they've had people testify about that. So this is really at the heart of one of the many aspects, many ways in which Trump

may have obstructed DOJ's efforts to recover this important national security material? Yeah. And let's take this a step further with Walton Audit because this is from the New York Times just this week, two weeks ago, two weeks ago, an IT worker named Tavaris, Yiskel Tavaris, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, DC. Now, by the way, that's at odds with the Washington Post reporting that the grand jury has been on hiatus since May 5th. So I think that's interesting.

Yeah, very much so. Unless they meant three weeks ago. But Tavaris, the IT guy, I'm just gonna call him the IT guy, was asked questions about his dealings with two other Trump employees. That's Walt Nada, long time-ade to Trump, and a guy named Carlos Deo Levera, that's the guy who helped Nada move the boxes.

So we're gonna call him Carlos. So we have got Walt and Carlos, and then we've got the IT guy. Now the phone record show that Carlos called the IT guy, that's Walts friend, called the IT guy after Trump was subpoenaed for his surveillance tapes and asked the IT guy questions about the cameras and how long the recordings were kept, stuff like that. Now his lawyer, John Irving, has told the, that's totally innocent, just curious, weird IT talk.

Okay. Now Walt Nada and Tveris, the IT guy, have the same lawyer and he's being paid by the Save America Pack and the lawyer for Delivera, the Carlos, the friend of Walt Nada, is John Irving. We've talked about him before. And he's also being paid by the Save America pack. And reports are that DOJ and Jack Smith are skeptical of all of them. Yeah, we know they've been, you know, they've been 12 rounds with Nauta in how cooperating not and now apparently all those conversations have broke down.

We're not sure what the status is, whether or not they're seeking the cooperation of either of the other two guys. And look, to be fair, if you receive a subpoena that requested, surveillance tapes, videotapes from a designated time span. It's not outrageous to think that you might then reach out to your IT guy to figure out how do I get that, how do we download it? Is it even available? How long do we keep recordings of stuff?

So there could be. Yeah, but why is this guy, why is Carlos asking those questions and not Trump's lawyer? Yeah, I don't know, it's just weird. It's a, I tell you, it could be innocent, but, or not. Corcoran might have been like, hey, ask this IT guy, you're friends with some questions.

Or it could be right at the center of this, how do we get rid of these tapes without leaving the trace that we've had them? That's the beauty of getting these witnesses in front of the grand jury. Now, you know, if they're all represented by Trump paid for attorneys, that's the built-in conflict here

that we've seen with so many people, and it's not just in this investigation, you got that in the January six investigation, you had that for with witnesses in front of the January six committee, and we've talked a lot about about are these attorneys truly representing the interests of these witnesses only or are they also actually, you know, trying to represent them in a way that's consistent with the interest of Donald Trump?

That seems highly likely in my estimation, just, you know, worth what you paid for it. I think if anybody can weed that out, I think it would be Jack Smith. I think I think Jack Smith could be like, look, I'm on a charge, and if you, you know, you might need some different counsel. There's all kinds of room for that to happen here, right? The first round of indictments that comes out of this thing

are likely not gonna be just for, you know, one person, just for Donald Trump. So you throw in a few of these people, they now are looking at not the prospect of being charged, but actually being charged and that has a way of convincing people to say, you know what, it's time for me to cooperate. We saw it a lot.

We saw it with Rick Gates. We saw it, I mean, this, you know, this is how the lessons we learned from the Mueller investigation. And also, I think one of the buried leads in this story, which they're very good at at the New York Times, bearing leads, there were multiple subpoenas sent out for surveillance tapes. So the first one came in June, June 24th, and we know that because Corcoran had a phone

call with Trump on that day, same day that that's a pinnacle went out for the surveillance tapes, the first one. And that phone call, information about that phone call had to be turned over, compelled by the court because of the crime fraud exception to pierce attorney client privilege. Now, but the Times here reports, people with knowledge said, the first such subpoena was issued last June,

but prosecutors sent separate subpoenas to the company. That's the Trump organization, seeking surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, several more subpoenas, that is, for a wider array of footage. So that's also interesting. Like, oh, well, we only got the footage from the camera looking at the door. Now we would like it from the place outside the residence and inside the residence and

out by the loading dock. And, you know, because now you might have some, oh, it looks like there's some boxes missing from this room because 12 were taken out and four were brought back, we know, I'm making stuff up. But that would, oh, we need to, where does other boxes go? Let's look at the, you know, look at the rest of those surveillance cameras.

Let's go to the videotape and the, it's, so you're right. and we've talked about this before. This is what happens when you see investigators lock onto a new and surprising and productive lead. They'll often take a step back and then broaden the scope of what they're asking for just to make sure they've swept up everything that's relevant. So obviously they see the cameras. I'm guessing in the hallway when they're there with Jay Brad for the infamous meeting, they have the brilliant idea to say, let's drop a subpoena for that. What let's see if they have any recordings.

Well, this could be the evidence that was developed that they talked about in the affidavit. We've developed evidence that there are still documents there. That's right. We saw it. We saw it boxesavit. We've developed evidence that there's still documents there. That's right. We saw boxes go out, we saw four boxes come back. We looked for, we got, you know, subpoenaed some more surveillance footage and found out that, you know, they were being stored somewhere else or they were sitting outside the residence or inside there.

And whatever it is, it's nothing else. It might just identify additional people who are cruising up and down those hallways near to the document spaces. And it's easier to see who is actually there and who might have seen something heard, something participated and something. And then focus your interviews on those people rather than just asking for a list of every employee at Mar-a-Lago. That takes a while to get through. Yeah, for sure. All right. Believe it or not, we still have more news, by the way, Todd Blanch, former prosecutor who resigned from an elite law firm

is going to defend Donald Trump, not only against the New York Manhattan DA criminal charges, but he's now involved in his defense in the documents case. He was a supervisor at the Southern District of New York. He's replacing the vacancy left by Parliamentary. So that's happening. And also today, breaking news, Mike Pence has been cleared by the Department of Justice, wrongdoing for his having classified documents found at his residence in Indiana. And this is significant because it ties up that loose end. is significant because it ties up that loose end. But also importantly, Andy, I want to read to you what I had posited. Let's see if I can even find it. You know what, I'm not going to bother to read the tweets. But basically, you know, everyone, I remember all the pundits saying, Oh, Merrick Garland's painted himself into a corner after he appointed Robert

Hurr to investigate President Biden's classified documents sitch. And I was like, Oh, well, now he's going to have to appoint one to look into Pence. Now he's going to have to appoint a special counsel. He's painted himself in a corner. What a dumbass. You know, people were, and I'm like, look, that's not going to happen here. He doesn't have to appoint a special counsel. It, uh, you know, Pence is not a candidate, uh, for president at that point. Uh, and I, I, I was like, I don't think he's gonna. And that is exactly what happened. The Department of Justice itself looked into this, determined there was no wrongdoing and sent a letter yesterday, Thursday, I should say to Pence's attorneys,

saying we, we found nothing wrong. Yeah. So this is a big, a big result. And it's not unexpected, obviously, because I think that everybody thought that this was going to head in that direction. But it's a really inconvenient and unfortunate comparison for the Trump team right now. You know, I think you're absolutely right. He made the right call on having DOJ do it. This, this investigation, this inquiry really into the Pence documents didn't have near the political implications of the other two.

And that's why you bring in a special counsel, right, to convey to the American people that you're investigating in the most neutral way possible. Yeah. Could you imagine America, Garland himself investigated Biden's whether it. Yeah, it just did not make any sense for it to have Garland overseeing the investigators, who were investigating the guy who hired him. So in any case, I think he handled it the right way. One of Trump's more frequent defenses recently, particularly with the letter they sent to Congress, has been, oh, this is not fair. This is an illegal investigation. I'm not being treated fairly to have a very similar inquiry on the most in the most basic sense conducted, concluded, um, and announced in this way. Is it tough

comparison for him because it highlights how different his situation is from Mike Pence's situation. And I think you will probably find the same result in the Joe Biden situation. And ultimately hats off to Mike Pence. I got to give him credit when this thing opened up, he did the exact opposite of what Trump did. He said, we found these documents. They should never have been there. We made a serious mistake and I'm totally, I'm taking full responsibility for this.

And so it started and also, as soon as they found this stuff, they handed it over to DOJ and opened up the residence for a search. That's the way these inquiries are usually handled. People often find they've made a mistake with classified, they find it home. And I say people, I'm talking about like really highly ranked former principals, political folks in the White House and in the agencies, people who live, you know, swimming in a sea of classified material everywhere they go. These mistakes happen. They get looked into when you see there's no criminal intent here, there's no intent to withhold and take this stuff out of the places where they belong,

you just wrap it up and walk away. That's why most of these things never end up in criminal inquiries, but that is wildly not the situation with Donald Trump. Yeah. And I think we'll even find similar situations within Donald Trump world. When they found those two documents

in an offsite storage facility, that Trump probably had no idea they were there and never knew they were there and they were probably accidentally packed and just shoved in there. And that's likely what happened with Biden's situation, likely what happened with Penses. But I think that even, like I said,

with even within Trump's own world, there will be non-inditable, accidental, retention of classified material. Because like I said, with even within Trump's own world, there will be non-inditable, accidental, retention of classified material. Because like you said, these people are surrounded by it every day. It happens sometimes to get swept up in boxes, but they're packed by aids. So I think that we'll see it within itself too,

to compare to. And this is some stuff I think that is good to wrap up before any charges are brought against Donald, because it's significant. I think that's true. And up before any charges are brought against Donald because it's significant. I think that's true. And the last thing I'll say about is it does raise some I think very relevant questions about Rob Her. So two very similar inquiries, Biden and Pence, and this thing done by DOJ was basically opened, done thoroughly, they've concluded it, announced it. So what's going on with Rob Her? Especially since the Rob Her Biden thing was going on for two months before Rob Her was even

appointed. In the first month or so of that, he wasn't doing anything because he didn't actually start the gig until several weeks after he'd been appointed. So shows a little bit of that, this is some of the trouble with special councils. Often they take a long time to get staff to get funded to kind of get off the ground. And they drag on forever. Not the case so much with Jack Smith. I got back here quick first playing bag from where the heck he was. And he was issue in letters on Thanksgiving day before he even came back. Yeah, laying up on a sofa with a broken leg or something.

He's firing off search warrant applications. So yeah, very different. As far as I'm concerned, he's the flying Dutchman in the season finale with Ted Lasso. That's all I have to say. No spoiler, no spoiler. I haven't watched it yet. Okay, no worries.

Anyway, sorry, a spoiler alert. I thought everybody would have watched it by now. Anyway, we're going to be right back. We've still got more news, you guys. There's so much this week. Stick around. All right, everybody. Welcome back. Remember when I hinted about Vivek Ramaswamy at the

top of the show? Do. The presidential candidate. Well, he's fired one of the firms consulting for his presidential campaign after it was revealed that the firm had simultaneously been doing public relations work for a major Saudi-backed entity. This is the firm that was working for Vivek revealed. It drafted marketing materials. The firm by the way is called Gitcho Goodwin. Goodwin, I think actually Gitcho Goodwin. Yep. And they revealed that they drafted marketing materials, conducted media training for players.

This is the live golf tournament, Andy, and advised the golf league on its corporate social responsibility strategy. Is that something they actually wanted advice on? I'm a little surprised, but like did they come up with the trophy idea? That's hideous. According, and this is according to new foreign agents registration act filings. Now a lawyer who advised the firm on its decision to register as a foreign agent told Politico that get you a goodwin had parted ways with the golf league. They're like, okay, well, if we have to, you know, we'll file, we'll register, but we're,

we want to quit. We're going to quit working with Liv if it's a, if it's a big deal to you. So they left on Monday morning and the firm would take the appropriate steps to terminate its fairer registration. Now, they also were like, I, you know, then Vivek fired them. And that's sort of the end of that. But this is interesting because like I said earlier, it's comes a month after we got information subpoenaed by Jack Smith about the live golf tournament. And I can't help but think that is probably not in his purview at all. You know, who's, who's a shilling for the, for the live golf tournament. But I feel like there was a list of names handed over to the fair unit by Jack Smith after upon receiving, you know, information pursuant to that subpoena.

Yeah. And, you know, handed it off just so you know you know, Mueller handed off like, I think, 14 cases. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally within the, within the duties of the special counsel, if they come across other potentially criminal activity or potential national security threats, that they would refer those back to the Department of Justice if they're outside the scope of their of their remit, as it were. This thing is really interesting because of course the live golf tournament, when you're talking about the live golf tournament,

you're talking about the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which is basically, this is the absolute highest levels of the kingdom. And the idea that you have Saudi royal money going into the public relations firm, you have same firm who advises a current candidate for the presidency, it just really raises some hard questions about that proximity of foreign money to domestic campaigns. Now, of course, there's a cutout in this connection here, and that being the public relations firm, you could view it as a cutout or you could view

as a connection, depends on how your perspective on it, but it certainly seems worthy of further poking around it. Yeah, I agree. And in still yet more news more news, let's switch over from documents because, you know, we've been talking about documents about Walton Notta and his friends. Walton Notta and friends. That's the new segment we talked about. Vivek, we talked about the tapes and the audio. Let's switch over to the January 6th investigation because Jack Smith is still, this is still

an ongoing investigation into everything that happened on January 6th. And from the New York Times, according to, I think it was Haberman and a couple of other people on the byline, Jack Smith has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cyber security expert Chris Krebs, whose agency judged the election as, quote, the most secure in American history. They go on to say that Smith's team is seeking information about how White House officials, including death that at the presidential personnel office approached to the justice department, approached the DOJ and presidential personnel office, that's our buddy,

Johnny McIntee. That's right, our favorite legal brief author. Johnny McIntee, who used to hide full bottles of schmiernauff ice in the PPO, and if you found him, you had to chuck them. One of the Ocha nostra, who has not yet been brought back in to testify again, because, you know, Judge Howell said, no, no executive privilege come back in and answer all the questions. He hasn't been brought back in that we know of. He also is the guy, Mammackenty, who drafted the withdrawal from Afghanistan,

memo. He also drafted a legal defense about Thomas Jefferson over the issue of whether or not Pence could throw out electors. And he also drafted a document to replace Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, because he said he was not amenable to invoking the Insurrection Act. McIntee is the guy who went around and did the loyalty interview of a pointy level of folks within these agencies. So this is Mackinty. And he put together a list of reasons to fire Chris Crabbs.

And we learned all this in the January 6th hearings that took place last year because Chris Crabbs, after he said that this most cure election ever there was no foreign interference there is no vote changing votes nothing just no there was none of that it's just like bill bar said it's bullshit and that incensed Donald Trump he was very upset about that and wanted him fired say they put together a list of reasons to fire him now I wanted to ask you, Andy, this seems like information that goes toward intent. If you're going around and firing anyone who says the election wasn't rigged, that seems to go toward, you knew the election was rigged. I'm not quite sure how to make that argument. I'm sure somebody smarter than me would be able to make it.

But it seems to look, he knew the election was rigged and he fired anyone who didn't. Now, of course, Trump could say I fired them because they were wrong or incompetent. That's right. But regardless, I think Chris Krebs would make an excellent witness for special counsel in January 6th. I agree with you. And full disclosure, I know Chris pretty well. He's a person of high integrity. He's a professional.

I think he did a great job at Sissa and I think his comments about the election were accurate. I think we all we've all seen that now. Not all of us admitted, but many of us do. I think you're exactly right. There's no possibility of a criminal charge related to the firing of Chris Krebs. He was a political appointee. He could be dismissed by the president at any time for any reason. But what makes this interesting, and this is the way prosecutors, if they intend to rely on

Krebs's testimony and evidence about this, they'll want to put it in front of the jury, because in that shaping that you just mentioned, they'll want to say, no, he got fired because he wasn't going along with the lie, with the fraud about the claims that the election had been undermined. So you imagine some sort of conversation went on with Macinty, maybe Trump, who knows, like, hey, we gotta get rid of this guy because he's blowing up our spot. He's directly contradicting the falsehood

that we're trying to perpetrate. They got rid of me. They got rid of me too. Wow. So I digress. But then Trump can come back or McInti, whoever it is, come back and say, no, we had all these other reasons

to get, we didn't weren't happy with his performance. He spoke out of turn, he was out of control, he was off message, whatever, whatever. So where you come down on, which side do you come down on that is not quite as important as just the fact that prosecutors can get this in front of a jury through Krebs's testimony. And, you know, the jurors decide they weigh all this stuff out and they decide who they think is lying and who's telling

the truth and why something was done or why, you know, why it may not have been done. So you're right, it goes to intent, it goes to whether or not there was truly a conspiracy to perpetuate this fraud of a stolen election. And one of the ways you could prove that was by the conspirators acting out against getting rid of, taking out firing people who wouldn't go along with the conspiracy. And that's, that's how the prosecutors to try to use this. It would be very powerful, just as it was powerful in the January 6th hearings, to have Republican after Republican after Republican come up and testify that we told him that he lost the election. And that this was BS. and that it was the best election or not.

Well, the most secure election is the best election for America, but the most secure election and et cetera, et cetera, just over and over and over and over a montage of just, you know, people saying that the big lie was a big lie. And that kind of brings me to this last point that I want to make. And the last three of the Ocha noestra, the three eighths ranch, I call them. And that's O'Brien and McIntee and Meadows. And if they are not brought back in, that says to me that they're either cooperating or their targets.

And so I'm wondering now is McInt T become a target? Is he cooperating? I think O'Brien's a cooperating guy. I mean, he was about to resign when January 6th happened. He wasn't in the country at the time. But that brings us down to Meadows. What is going on in Mark Meadows? Where is he? He's got a fantastic lawyer. I mean, I don't like him personally, but he's a great lawyer, Terwilliger, right? Yes he is. Very smart. One of the smartest lawyers on that side of the, yeah.

Very well respected. Huge reputation in town in DC. So yeah, he brought in the heavyweight. The mysterious Mr. Meadows, he has been on both sides of this thing from the very beginning. He releases a book that enrages Trump and then he comes back and refuses to testify, but that he gives over thousands of texts.

So he's back and forth. I tend to interpret the things he does as being not very well advised and maybe poor decisions, but he's still out there floating around kind of maintaining his mysterious position. So maybe he's cage year, then I give him credit for. A lot of talk about, you know, in light of the the infamous tape that we discussed at the top of the show, there's a lot of talk about maybe Meadows cooperating had something to do with that. I think that we have a pretty good understanding of how the government found out about the tape and it doesn't really include a lot of any specifics about

meadows. So I'm not so sure about that. Well, it was the aid, right? Margot Martin that was recording that meeting. Two people working on meadows' book were in there. I'm not sure if they're ghost writers or researchers, but they've all been questioned. And, and, and Margot Martin is, it makes sense that the prosecutors would have gotten around to interviewing and, and possibly bring, and well, we know, interviewing and bringing before the grand jury, Margot Martin, because she's in it, she's a Trump aid. And so that might have been the, you know, the initial kind of pry bar under the door that got us to this point, but it's hard to say.

They eventually ended up after she testified about the recording. They said, peanut her devices, right? Or a computer and stuff. We'll have more to find out on meadows because he's going to show up at the end of this story in either the defendant's box or the government's witness box, one of the two. Well, because Meadows in his book wrote about that a random thing.

And I can't see Jack Smith not questioning him about that. I know, I mean, I know that he's part of the January 6th, but Meadows was also burning documents and Meadows had the memo that, you know, when on January 19th, the Meadows was also burning documents and Meadows had the memo that, you know, when on January 19th, the day before I left off, his Trump wanted to classify a bunch of Russia documents and Meadows was like, no, and took him back to the DOJ. Yeah. So Meadows can't have not been questioned in the documents case.

And since he hasn't been brought before the grand jury, there is meeting virtual areas cooperating or I don't know. I just don't know. He can't have not been questioned in the Gen 6 case, right? And he is, he is the essential, he's right there. Yeah, but that's still going on, right? And the whole documents case is sort of wrapped up according to some reporting, at least, you know,

with the witnesses. So I feel like if he hasn't been brought in before the grandeur, if brought in before the Granger, that he has to be, he has to have been questioned about the documents. It's a totally reasonable guess. And it's also possible that if he's not essential or is less essential to the documents case and like really important for the January 6th,

this is like, let's assume for the sake of the argument that he's cooperating and his information on documents is good, but his information on Gen 6 is like, you can't do without it. You could see prosecutors constructing a case avoiding him in the documents case. Don't use him because you want to save him and his testimony and everything else

for the January 6th case. So. And how does that play into what Fanny Willis is doing? He's involved in her investigation as well. So, you know, I mean, at the very least in August, we should know whether or not Mark Metta's is cooperating, because if he's not indicted in the, unless the DOJ made me said, you can't touch, you can't have him,

but he did testify in in front of the phone. Okay, I don't know, man. I don't know. Crazy. So much stuff. All right, we have a time for a question, I think maybe two if they're short, but we, you know, we've, we have so much news this week.

So what do we got? I've only got one for you. It's a little bit longer, but I think it's a topic that I think a lot of people are thinking about right now. Okay, if it's a little bit longer, why don't we take a real quick break and then we'll be back with these questions and we'll wrap it up.

Everybody stick around. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, Allison, we are back and we have time for our listener question of the week. This week's question, I picked because I think it's a topic that a lot of people are thinking about right now. And it is, it comes to us from Michael B and Michael asks, for each of Smith's investigations, what do you expect to see in terms of indictments? As you both know very well, Mueller indicted people periodically throughout his investigation,

typically with speaking indictments, and that's what we call indictments that are really heavy with facts and explanations. Thus far, we have not seen that from Smith, but the Jan 6 case especially looks like a target rich environment, so to speak. When Jack Smith gets to that stage, do you expect him to indict everyone all at once

or will the indictments play out more like they did with Mueller? So there's a couple of issues packed in there. I think that Jack Smith will make a pretty big statement with a lot of indictments right up front. But that does not mean that he won't after those indictments come out, then continue to indict additional people. The only problem with doing that is it extends your timeline a bit because you're stretching out the time that you could bring the initial case to trial if you keep adding folks into it later. But nevertheless, prosecutors do that when they find that they're going to what we call

super seed or bring additional charges to the original indictment. So my guess is he's going to hit pretty hard right up front. It's not going to be a low level person, a onesie toozzy. He's going to shoot, I think, right at the center of whatever conspiracies or crimes that he's gonna indict. So that's what I'm looking for from him. What's your thoughts on that? Well, T.D. Y'all also ask what crimes in each of the investigations we thought would be charged? He kind of started out with that, but didn't finish.

I think that's the other piece here that a lot of people are talking about. On the, it's easier question to answer, right, in terms of the documents case, because we got a foreshadowing of that with the search warrant, affidavit, which talked a lot about obstruction of justice and also using the espionage act, which makes it a crime to withhold or basically take national defense information. I also think it's possible that they could throw in charges that are based on having misuse of classified information or felony misuse of classified information. I think there's still a lot of potential there with respect to specific documents as well.

On the Jams six side, it's a little bit more murky. Yeah, and on the Jams six side, it's a little bit more murky. Yeah. And by the way, our friends over at Just Security have put out an updated prosecution memo for what they think could be charged. And this is Weissman and Goodman and all of all of those folks. And so in that model prosecution memo, the crime specifically laid out are retention of national defense information, which is 18, 793 E, concealing government records, that's 2071, 2071, conversion of government property, which is 18 U.S US code 641, obstruction of justice, which is 18 US code 1519, criminal contempt 402, section 402 and false statements section 1001.

Those are the crimes they think are on the table anyway, are on the table. And with January 6th, we've got 15 12 C2, obstructing an official proceeding. We've got a title 18 US code 371 conspiracy to do stuff. Yep. And then we could look at 2383 2384 insurrection's initials conspiracy. I don't know what Jack Smith has to feel comfortable to say either of those are are chargeable, but they're definitely on the table. And we know Judge Carter in California said that, you know, pursuant to, you know, piercing the attorney client privilege with the crime fraud exception that Trump and Eastman were guilty of 371 and 1512 C2.

So that's kind of those are sort of what what I'm looking at. Yeah, Charlie Savage in the times. I think a few days ago had an interesting piece comparing, comparing seditious conspiracy with insurrection. And I think on the Trump facts, certainly seditious conspiracy is probably the more likely of those two simply because it doesn't require the use of force. That's a... Are you mean, inciting an insurrection?

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, but we'll have to see. I mean, that case is much bigger, arguably more important. And it's the one that, I think it is. Yeah, we haven't had the same sort of revelations about, you know, bombshell evident pieces of evidence and tapes and everything coming out every other week. So it's harder, harder to pick, but there's a lot there for them to work on. Yeah. And those are also 371 and 1512, the two crimes that's January 6th

commission submitted as criminal referrals for Donald Trump. Very cool question. But yeah, no, I just, you know, I would say I agree 100 percent with you. You know, I, I think that's where we're at with it. I mean, it's very complex case, one of the biggest, if not the biggest in history. So, I mean, we'll see how it all shakes out, but with the Mueller investigation, we got Papa Doppler's, then we got Manafort Gates,

then we got Patton, but the thing the difference here is we weren't waiting for him to indict Trump. He couldn't indict Trump, and he knew that going in, that he wasn't going to indict Trump. So, it's hard to say whether he could, whether he would have indicted Trump for obstruction right when he indicted Maniford and Gates. You know, who knows?

It's really hard and you know Flynn for lying. Yeah. A couple of times. And it's hard to tell because we just don't even have something, we don't even have apples to compare it to. Yeah. Muller really used that technique of inditing people as we were just discussing as a way of pressuring them to cooperate. And that worked with Gates.

Didn't work quite so well with Manafort. It worked a little bit at the beginning, but then that all fell apart. You don't see that happening here as the investigation is going on. Sounds like they tried that with Walt Nottah. Didn't work out. We don't know if they've tried it with the Naughta. It didn't work out. We don't know if they've tried it with the other with Naughta's two box moving friends or the tech guy or anything else, but we haven't seen that work successfully yet. But I don't think

that that could be telling us that they don't need to. That they have enough people who are cooperating and telling them what they need to know. And they're going to drop the hammer hard first round and see who starts knocking on the door after that. Yeah. And one lesson learned from Mueller might be, don't do it that way. Because then people blow up their plea agreements. Yeah. Stop cooperating and get pressure from the Trump side. So, you know, when I think of, if I'm Jack Smith, should I go ahead and indict Eastman and Clark now, or should I wait? Because if I indict them now, I could create all sorts of interference and obstruction and problems with the Trump side. And just wait, get them

all at the same time. And if everyone's being represented by Trump-funded attorneys, that makes that even more complicated. Yeah. One quick question for you that was submitted by a listener before we get out of here from L Baker. And this is a great question. I think I heard Weissman talking a little bit about this on Deadline White House, but a lot of folks wrote in and asked why if we have him on tape talking about having a classified

document at Bedminster, do we not have a search warrant for Bedminster? Well, the answer to that is the prosecutors have to prove to the judge that there is probable cause to believe that that evidence, in this case, the document is on that premises now. And there's a number of, it seems like, oh, well, here, here he was talking about it. Let's remember the conversation was in, I think June or July, it's one point I had, right? Two years ago.

And since that time, there's allegedly been, and I say allegedly with air quotes around it, there's allegedly been multiple thorough searches for additional documents. All these documents should have been turned over under the original subpoena before the infamous J. Brett meeting down at Marlago. So there's been a lot of time has expired. There have been searches. They've been told there's nothing else there. They had the so-called independent or private searchers do that work as well. So all

of that activity kind of undermines your argument about probable cause that there's documents there now. The, you know, the judge is looking for what they call that is that's the PC going stale, right? If your information is there was a document there two years ago, the judge is going to say, that's stale. You need something new. You need someone who's there now who says they saw it recently and something like that. And it's like when they went back in and searched through the again, they had had they got fresh information and athletes that allowed them to do that. Exactly. I think and with the, what the obvious concern that Jack Smith has about more documents being in these Trump, Trump controlled spaces, there's no doubt in my mind that if they had

probable cause to search bedminster and Trump tower or any place else, they would have done that. So it tells me they don't think they have PC at this point. Yeah. And I don't think we would not know if they did. Oh, no, you know, because Trump would tell you he's the one that one of Trump's lawyers who hated another lawyer and wanted to get back at Epstein. So he told, you know, I mean, yeah, I've been zooted down there. That's how we found out about Marlago Trump tweeted about it. So or put it out on truth or whatever it is. All right. Well, heck of a show this week. Every week I ask you like, what possibly could happen this week? I don't know.

We'll have to see. Yeah, we'll have to see. I do think charges are coming sooner rather than later. But again, I want to emphasize anything could happen. They could get somebody flipped. They could get some information back pursuant to a recent subpoena that went out a couple of weeks ago. It's all very up in the air until it's not. I mean, that's just sort of... The only thing I'm confident about is this time next week we'll be talking about something that we didn't know today. That is 100% true. And if you have any questions, please send them to us. Hello at mullershearote.com. Just make sure to put Jack in the subject line

or we will miss it because that's how we sort our emails. Thank you so much, Andrew. This was great. Thank you for answering these listener questions. And thanks for everyone. Thanks to everyone for sending them in. We will be back next week. I've been Alice and Gil.

And I'm Andy McKay. Thanks for listening to Jack.