Jack - Episode 31 - Three Box Monte

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

This week: Jack Smith is still issuing subpoenas in the documents case; some Trump allies sign cooperation deals; new testimony from Rudy Giuliani and Brad Raffensperger; a FOIA lawsuit reveals sinks a key Trump defense; plus listener questions.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_BSogJCheck 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 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records.

You understand what prison is? Send me to jail. So it is Sunday, July 2nd, 2023, and I'm your host, Andy McCabe. Hey, Andy, I'm Alison Gill. And you know, each week at the end of the show, you and I asked ourselves, like, what could possibly happen between now and the next show? Every week. Every week. Well, this week, we're going to discuss the ongoing documents case and how Jack Smith's team is still issuing subpoenas, along with the news about new Trump allies

signing cooperation deals. Yeah, that's right. And we're also going to discuss a series of filings from the special counsel in the documents case, a whole bunch of new interviews and testimony, including from Rudy Giuliani and Brad Raffensberger, and a G. Afoya lawsuit that destroys one of Trump's key defenses. Because if Trump wasn't destroying enough of his own defenses with his public remarks, he's now got Afoya lawsuit that's helping him out, covering down on some of the other

defenses. So let's start with the disposition of the current documents case before Judge Eileen Cannon. Yeah, let's talk about that. because a lot of filings happened. First of all, DOJ filed a motion to submit their list of 84 witnesses, and they wanted to do that under seal. And Judge Cannon denied that motion,

and then she mooted some stuff that the media wanted. Now, this was in response to the bond condition that was set by Magistrate judge Goodman during Trump. No, I should say Trump and Nauta, but just Trump. Nauta hasn't been around yet during Trump's arrangement. If you remember, the DOJ didn't have any conditions to set for bond, but the judge was like, I think there should be some. So why don't we make it so that Trump can't talk to Walton Nauta about the case?

And then also, DOJ, you submit a list of other witnesses. You don't talk to Walton out about the case. And then also DOJ, you submit a list of other witnesses you don't want him to talk to about the case. So that's what this was in response to. DOJ was saying, all right, here's the witnesses. We don't want you to talk to, which is all of our witnesses, which is 84 of them. And we want to file it under seal. And the problem here is the Department of Justice did not explain, Jay Bratt, when he wrote this motion, didn't explain why they wanted it to be filed under seal or filed with the court at all

in the first place. He didn't say how long he wanted it to remain under seal. So she denied it. And since the DOJ conditioned that restriction of Trump talking to the witnesses, since they conditioned that on filing it under seal, she denied that part too. And then she mooted the media requests to get the witness list, you know, the media wants the witness list. And she denied that as, or well, she said that was moot because she denied them filing it under seal. The thing that stood out to me though, 84 witnesses. out to me though 84 witnesses. That's more than a handful. Yeah 84 is a lot and you know my guess is it's going to grow because we know they're still working, we know they're still doing conducting some investigative activity where we talk about that in a minute or so but yeah I don't think we're going to be done with 85. It's just starting a little bit of light on exactly how

complicated and long this trial is going to be even though from the It just started shedding a little bit of light on exactly how complicated and long this trial is going to be, even though from the outset, it looks like, oh, it's pretty clear. It's just a document's case very simple. Well, not so much when you're talking about 84 witnesses. Yeah. And to that end, DOJ also filed a motion to delay the trial until December 11th. And I thought that was pretty shrewd because you know, I know we talked to Brian Grieber about this. The Department of Justice knew that when Judge Aileen Cannon set the trial date for August 14th, you know, which is one and a half from now, that that would

never hold. And so it seems like Jack Smith knew they needed some more time, at least for at least to get the clearances, the temporary clearances done for Trump's legal team. And so he filed to delay the trial and set this pretty aggressive, seep a schedule that they're going to have a hearing about to December 11th. And I think that that's a really a solid move because I think everybody kind of knows that the trial is not going to happen until the spring, but if he asked to delay it to the spring, that opens the door for Trump's legal team to come in and say, well, if you're going to delay it to the spring, why don't

we just delay it until after the election? Yeah, that's right. And doing it in December, I think prevents Trump from being able to delay it another 9, 10, 11, 12 months. Yeah, it's kind of shrewd on both sides to be honest. And we know that Trump is the one that's gonna really drive the major delays here. And he's managed to hang back and let DOJ

ask for the first delay. It's kind of allows them to keep their powder dry a little bit. But I agree with you, even though this comes in the form of a request for delay, what it's telling us is that Jack Smith's team is still hoping, planning, trying to keep this on a fairly aggressive schedule. He's saying, yeah, we do need a delay. We'll think we'll be ready to get through all these motions, all the CEPA problems, and ready to move to trial in the beginning of December, which still seems kind of unrealistic to everybody else,

but I agree with you. It holds out the possibility that this could happen, even though I think it's a remote possibility. And it's far enough away from the election, the kind of heat of the election, that it doesn't automatically tee up that response by Trump to say, well, well, you know, I'll be in the middle of campaigning then

and we can't possibly do it. So let's push it back till after the election. I think he'll make that motion eventually, but it didn't come yet. We haven't seen it yet. Yeah, he will. And I don't know whether or whether Canon will approve it or not. But also DOJ, as I said, has asked for a pretrial SEPA conference. And this is where you talk about all the things where we're gonna produce the classified,

not the unclassified, but the classified stuff. And DOJ put forth their very aggressive schedule for SEPA replies and briefings and back and forth to make the December 11th court data reality. And Judge Cannon said that Trump's reply was due July the 6th court data reality. And Judge Cannon said that Trump's reply was due July the 6th. But now Walt Naughty still doesn't have Florida Council to sponsor his lawyer Stanley Woodward.

And. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I'm sorry, you can hear me laughing a little bit. It is ridiculous. The guys had two weeks. We, he had his first non-arainment on June 13th, and then was supposed to come back two weeks later with an attorney in Florida. They have attorneys in Florida. There are some there. I've been to Florida. I've seen attorneys advertising all over the highway. All I need to do is call one of those dudes, bring them in for the purpose of admitting his real attorney.

It's just to support the what they call the Prohawk Vichet motion, which is when your real attorney is just to support the what they call the pro-hoc Vichet motion, which is when your real attorney is from a different state, you have to have an attorney from the state where the trial is happening, go before the court and say, I nominate this guy real attorney to be admitted to this bar, in this case, Florida, pro-hoc Vichet. That means just for the purpose of this case. You have to have a local attorney to do that. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sitting here like, what, why can't Chris Kai's do it for not? He did it for Trump.

Well, it's because, you know, again, his only defense here is to delay. Right. And now they've set his third try at a reigning, I don't know why they don't just appoint a public defender and get it done. Yeah, totally. But they keep pushing it back. And now the new arrangement is set for July 6, which is when Trump's reply to the SEPA conference is due, the SEPA hearing is due. And it just seems like Trump is trying to use the fact that NADA doesn't have council

to delay the SEPA hearing. That's the only thing I can come up with. This is just, it seems ridiculous and I don't understand why any of these magistrate judges are not just appointing a public defender to sponsor Stanley Woodward, Prohawk Vichet, so that they can get this ball rolling. But we know, and Trump knows that the longer this goes on, the more reasonable it is for him to ask for a delay past the election. Yeah, that's the ball rolling is what he doesn't want, right?

He wants the ball stop and stop all rolling right now. And this is a really kind of passive aggressive way of doing that. He on the surface appears to have nothing to do with it, except, of course, we all know that he's paying for and not as real attorney who's in New York or DC, not in Florida. So this is also, I think, another, it's a minor example, but it is an example of something else we're concerned about. And that is the control of the presiding judge. There are plenty of judges, and I've been in front of a lot of them in New York who would

not put up with what Nauta did this week saying, oh, I missed my flight. It was bad weather. I can't be there. And by the way, in two weeks, I haven't managed to find a Florida attorney. And he was allowed to appear remotely. It was, it's ridiculous. There are plenty of judges who would have said,

fine, you have 24 hours to get your, you know what, in my courtroom with an attorney. And if you're not here, I'm issuing a warrant for your arrest. Yeah. That's how federal judges, they don't put up with, oh, you couldn't make it bad weather, whatever. No, your responsibility is to get there for court

and the fact that he gave him more than another week to figure this mission gas out is pretty ridiculous, but that's where we are. Yeah, yeah, I agree. All right, so that covers the, the filings, the recent filings that we've had from Jack Smith's office in the documents case. We have more to cover in the documents case,

but we need to take a quick break. So everybody, stick around, we'll be right tapes came out about him waving classified documents around at Bed Minister, it was confirmed this week. Andy, what you and I have been saying all along, those Bed Minister surveillance footage tapes were subpoenaed last fall. Remember? That's right. We talked about how they did a subpoena for the surveillance tapes

outside the door at Mar-a-Lago, and then weeks later, they subpoenaed more surveillance tapes. And then they went to the software company to get them. And instead of where the pool boy drained water into the server room, where the surveillance tapes were just kept. The server room slash swimming you know, swimming drain. I don't know how you combine those two, but apparently Marlowe got that's how it works.

Yeah. Oops. I just accidentally put the hose right there in that room where I asked if the surveillance tapes were being stored there. It's weird. I mean, you know, the documents are stored in the shower. So I guess it all kind of, it all kind of works together. Yeah. And all, yeah, it all has to do with the water. So we also learned from this reporting from the Times that the Department of Justice at the time, back late last year, actually wanted to execute a search warrant at Bedmenster. And Hugo Lowell at the Guardian reported that indications of classified documents at Bedmenster so alarmed prosecutors that they focused part of the investigation on whether Trump might have transported the materials or disclosed their contents there in addition

to refusing to return them to the government. And we had speculated that when, well, Nauta was packing the boxes into the SUV. Remember all the boxes he moved out, so Trump could look through them and then he was packing. He had the pool guy help him carry the boxes, packed them in so Trump could look through him and then he was packing. He had the pool guy help him carry the boxes, packed them in the SUV that was headed for the plane to Bedminster. And that was all on the same day that Jay Bratt was there to collect on the subpoena, right? On June 3rd. And they, you know, so they were hiding these clad, they were like, all right, let's get them in the truck. Let's get them on a plane out of town. They're here to collect. It's like it's three box Monti. It's just like,

you know, they're moving, they're moving the boxes. You look in one room, they go out the back door. Yeah, these are the same boxes that, uh, unnamed female family member, slash Melania. It was Melania. It was angry on text message saying, don't put those boxes in my plane. I'm not sitting on the plane on the way to bed, minister, surrounded by a bunch of his stupid boxes. So then the boxes we believe ended up in the car or the SUV, whatever. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And the guy helped him carry him, right? The other guy who's also being represented by Stanley Woodward. That's right. So the Department of Justice told Trump's legal team to search the other properties. We need you to search the other properties. And Chris Kies and Boris Epstein, we didn't want to do that. But ParliTore and trustee wanted to take a more cooperative approach. This is according to Hugo Lowell's reporting. Those two, by the way, recently quit the legal team. Gone. Together. Now, Trump's legal team ultimately agreed and searched Bedminster, but said they

found nothing. And then the DOJ was like, well, a point of custodian of records to sign a thing. And they suggested that they were like, no, we don't want to. How about you? We just have Tim Parlatory testify to you that we found nothing. And that's when the DOJ sought those contempt proceedings that we still aren't sure kind of how that ended up, but that's kind of where we're at. Yeah. You know, this is fascinating to me

because we know, well, we've known for a long time, there've been a bunch of signals that the special counsel team was very concerned about Bedminster. Now, of course, we understand why we understand about the meeting with the Iran military document and then the meeting with the map and all that stuff was going on. So, it's been clear for a long time that the government is very concerned about additional documents that have not been recovered and that they might be at Bedminster.

And of course, how could you possibly, if you're the government, how could you possibly trust the representations of the Trump legal team that there are no more that they looked but didn't find anything? When one of the allegations that you are about to place against the subject of the investigation is that he lied to and hid evidence from his own attorney to foil a previous search. So it's like foiling the search, playing three-box Monti is part of the investigation. So of course, when they come up and say, oh, we look, but we didn't find anything.

And no, we're not going to give you a custodian of record who's willing to sign an affidavit and put himself and his reputation on the line over what we've just told you. The problem is, and I've been asked as many times, to get a search warrant for Bedminster, the government has to have, just to be able to prove to a judge that there's probable cause to believe that there's evidence, i.e. documents, embeds minister, now, when you're asking for the search warrant. And it's that temporal aspect of the probable cause that is often the hardest thing. If you have, you know, you've learned about the meeting with the Iran military document that took place a year and a half ago, a judge is likely going to say, that's not recent

enough for probable cause now. So that's why likely they go out and they look for the surveillance tapes and see if they can find something that's clearly indicative of classified documents. That's hard to do without knowing. Even if you're seeing boxes, you don't know what's in them. So it's a tough PC argument, and that's probably the only reason they didn't search bedminsters. They just couldn't get over the threshold with probable cause. Yeah, and what's funny is is the parlatory is saying, well,

look, he traveled to bedminster for the summer and brought stuff with him, but he always brought it back, which admits to the fact that he took classified to bedminster and then brought it back and still had it. Right. So it's like, well, thanks for that argument, dummy. But also it's interesting. Hugo Lohl also mentioned that the reason, because we'd ask this question too, why did they subpoena the office of Donald John Trump instead of Trump himself? And as it turns out, the reason is because when you when you subpoena an entity as opposed to a person, there can be no fifth amendment, you know, sort of objection over self incrimination. Again, admitting that you handing over these documents wouldn't

discriminate you. So just, I mean, their defenses are end up becoming evidence. So here's something else. Remember when we discussed the unclassified discovery motion filed by Jack Smith for a protective order, and they wanted to, you know, all the unclassified stuff we're handing over, discovery, all the unclassified, but we need to have a protective order over it.

It was granted, but we pointed out that in that protective order, one of the reasons that it needed to be protected was because it could harm ongoing investigations. And I said, that sounds like this is an over. That's right. That he wasn't done investigating. Well, from the times, this week, in recent days, the grand jury has issued subpoenas to a handful of people who are connected to the documents case. So there's a lot of questions now. Could this mean superseding indictments? These subpoenas, by the way, come from Miami, not New Jersey, but I don't

think that matters because after all, most of the documents case testimony happened in DC before I moved to Florida. But what are your thoughts on this? Because I think that it's, that they're still investigating. And New York Times has sometimes you just have to finish the threads you were working on and it could lead nowhere. But other times you could be working on super-seating indictments.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential there. I think first regarding the Miami thing, you're right. The subpoena from Miami holds just as much weight and New Jersey or anywhere else as a subpoena from Miami holds just as much weight in New Jersey or anywhere else than a subpoena from DC would. I think that's probably more just a timing issue. They clearly empaneled the grand jury in Miami to shift the case down there. So that grand jury probably has a lot more time on it,

because all grand juries expire after a certain period of time. They may have, the grand juries in DC at this point may have expired. We knew they had two. So in any case, this is probably just a timing thing on that. But as far as- And you also might not wanna open a grand jury up in New Jersey, if that's where you're thinking of charging,

because then it'll be like, oh, circus, we know what's happening, it'll tip off the Trump team as to what you're doing, just stick with the grand jury or have, and then move the grand jury you have, and then move it at the last minute, right? That's right. And if you're actually thinking that you might super seed, and a super seeding indictment would be adding additional charges to this case, it could be additional charges against the two people who are already charged,

not a Trump, or it could actually be bringing another person into the case. But if you're going to do that, if you're going to bring in a new defendant with new charges, you have to do it pretty soon and you definitely would want to do it out of the same courthouse, out of the same grand jury. Because you're trying to build that argument that this new person should be included in the existing case. Whoever gets, let's say someone gets brought in through a superseding indictment, they could easily say, I want to be severed from this case. I'm in Jersey. This case is already too far along. I can't catch up in time. There's a lot,

a lot, a lot. There's a bunch of arguments they could make. Yeah, you would just bring separate charges in Jersey if that's what we're going to do. Exactly. Not supersede this one. And to your point, if you supersede this one, Trump has an argument to say, we're gonna need way more time now. Oh, now we're gonna slow it down again. Yeah, so that, find that kind of unlikely. The other thing is, from what we know

from the existing indictment, the existing indictment doesn't really point a finger at any other obvious person to be charged with respect to those crimes. Now that doesn't mean they won't charge more people. It just means it would likely come, as you've described, additional charges against someone new in Jersey or New York or wherever else things might have happened. And that person or those charges are really not clear to us at this point. There's not like some other player here

that we're not aware of, or some other player here that you would naturally think should have, could have, would have been involved in this. I guess the best example would be if they had brought the January 6 case, and let's say the January 6 case included Trump and Jeffrey Clark, and they didn't bring Giuliani. You'd be thinking, like, what about Rudy?

Because he was so involved in all this stuff in so many different ways. And so that's a guy who you would think. I bet they bring additional charges later, either superseding in this case or in a new case against Rudy. There isn't the same sort of character in the document schemes that I can say. Yeah. And I mean, it could be that since trustee and parlor Torrey, with their search of Bedminster, now we know that they know that those documents were there and were moved, then they know that they're, I mean, they could be part of that conspiracy to obstruct or they quit the team.

They could be witnesses now. I mean, there's, there's all sorts of different things that could be happening here. We have no idea. But what I can say and what I'm pretty sure is that the DOJ is is is leak proof and that all of the stuff that we get Like the audio of what happened at Bedminster is is not coming from the Department of Justice as Trump is Asserting and I think that this is this is typical Trump. He'll leak a thing to the press and then say the DOJ is leaking and they need to be arrested or whatever. His way of tearing down the institution or trying to discredit somehow the work of the Department of Justice or the intelligence community or investigators, etc.

prosecutors. So I think I think that's where we find ourselves. And speaking of that, a RAN document, CBS has confirmed that that document, just as we thought, and as we talked to Brian Greer about, it's not one of the charged documents in this case. The 31 documents that are classified here under 793E that he's charged with under that part of the SB&AJ Act, do not include this Iran document that we have audio of him waving around at Bedminster.

Yeah, and that's an interesting piece. I think it was kind of leaning in that direction. It's interesting that CBS has been able to confirm that. You know, I've also heard from other sources that the prosecution team believes they have a version of that document, but it's not one of, they didn't come into custody of it through the search warrant or the subpoena. No, yeah. So essentially they... I have a friend who worked at the State Department who saw that document. Yeah, and that's not, that's basic investigation.

You would go back to, you know, your contact at the state department or at the defense department and say, okay, at this date, on this place, these people discuss the document that's described this way. Do you have any documents that fit that description? So it's not hard to see how they may have narrowed it down and they have a good idea of which document may have been used in that moment, but it's just not one that they recovered, which also explains why they went back to the Trump team with a new subpoena saying, give us any documents that reference Mark Milley or Ron,

that sort of stuff, and they were told that they don't have one. And do parlatory and trustee know what happened to that document? Yeah, so none of this affects whether or not the government will be able to get that tape, that audio tape we all heard this week entered into evidence. They'll get it in because they have the person who made the audio tape is already testified in front of the grand jury. So she'll testify, she will authenticate the tape, which just means she explains how she created it. And that's how it gets in in the jury. Here hears it. Yeah, that's Margot Martin. That's right.

And Hugo Loh confirmed that she confirmed the authenticity of the audio to the DOJ, pursuant to a subpoena. The tape is relevant because it shows his intent and it shows the way he was handling and exposing and endangering these documents. So it gets in. It does mean, however, that the Trump team could probably

make a motion to exclude it based on the fact that it's called a 403 motion, that you basically make an argument saying that the prejudicial value of that recording outweighs its probative value. It's not very probative, i.e., it doesn't help you, it doesn't help the jury understand the likelihood of one of the offenses having been committed because this document has not actually been charged, so it doesn't lead directly to a conclusion about a specific charge, but it's very prejudicial because it's basically horrible for Trump. I think it's done a statement to my case.

Right, it's the jury hearing him basically do what he's been accused of doing. So yeah, but they might not need it if they can get if the government's motion in lemonade to a because they're going to file the governmental file emotion in lemonade to prevent Trump from using the defense that he did that he declassified things or didn't have any classified documents with him. But if he's allowed to use that defense, then DOJ would that would open the door for them to bring this in to kill that defense, as opposed to it being probative. There's a million ways it gets in.

There's basically only only one way to keep it out and that 403 motion is a long shot. It's really hardly ever works, but it could give him something to scream about on appeal later. Again, I don't think it changes the effect of the tape, which is to be, we'll be absolutely devastating. Yeah.

I was saying to someone the other day, this tape, if you are any other person than Donald Trump, and you had a decent attorney who is representing you in this, and then you find out about this tape, you hear yourself saying those things, that's the moment when your attorney sits you down and says, please authorize me to engage

in plea negotiations. Make it deal. You'll plead guilty when you hear about this evidence because it's so bad and your best chance at this point might be to negotiate a plea for a lesser offense, no jail time, whatever, whatever. I'm not suggesting that that's going to happen here. I think that's a really long shot, but that's how significant recorded evidence like this can be in a criminal trial.

Yeah, somebody said it would be as if they had Nixon on tape saying, well, you know, that watergate was all us and that break-in, you know, you know. Like he is, exactly. Absolutely devastating. Check out these pictures that the boys sent me from the break-in that I ordered.

You know, I, that's what you're like. That I ordered on this day explicitly. Do you remember that? I had a holdrenman, do you remember? You remember good old days, past some house, me another scotch. At that point, you say, yeah, I can't beat this case at trial with that evidence. So let's start figuring out how I get on home confinement instead of federal prison. Yeah, yeah, that's make a deal, but he's he's not want to make deals. Um,

and those last quick bit of news, ABC news reported that that one of the pack staffers in the other audio tape is a current Trump campaign. Her name is Susan Wiles. And apparently Susan Wiles serves as the co chair of Mercury Public Affairs, link to lobbying for Chinese. And I'm pretty sure that's Manafort's old lobbying firm. I can't confirm that, but I love the coincidence. I really do. Fast, this is just another really incredible. I'll connect the dots if you aren't allowed to say. You're gonna have to go before it. I mean, this moment could be a really tough witness for the defendant because I'm not gonna be able to do that.

I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not this woman could be a really tough witness for the defendant because,

you know, all these people who come in, I don't know. I don't know. I talked to several times. I guess Don McGand did too after testifying. He's like, I need somebody to run my campaign for gosh sakes. Yeah, she is very, very close to him. As you hear or described in reporting, she is very, very close to him. As you hear, described in reporting, she's basically kind of the architect of his campaign right now. The problem with this for him is

the only defense strategy, when you have this stream of witnesses who are getting up there and say, and relating specific incidents in which the defendant showed you a classified map or whatever, very powerful testimony. The only way to defend against that is to get up and try to attack the witness's credibility and loyalty and things like that.

So you can imagine anyone, any witness who's like not a part of Trump world is going to be attacked as a political partisan, out to get the president, out to pre- or the former president to prohibit him from getting elected again, yada yada. They can't do that with this moment who's running his campaign. I mean, she is an inside, is an insider guest. Well, maybe he'll dismiss her as like the pop-up op-a-list coffee, uh, fetch her. Yeah, probably, probably, but that's not going to work in front of a jury. They're going to be like, wait a second, this woman was like,

you're right hand when all this happened, and she has no grudge against you, so yeah, it's a bad day. Yep, bad day. That's all he's gonna have for the rest of his life. He does a lot of good days lined up. We've got some more news about the January 6th investigation from Jack Smith, but we're going to take another quick break right here.

Stick around. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back. And we're going to switch horses now and direct our focus to the January 6th pro because AG, this one seems to be heating up this week as well. And we joke about how every week we close by saying what on earth could happen next week. I really think that the pace and the volume of things, news, developments is just going to increase over the next couple of months, particularly on the J6 side, where

I think we could really be building to a crescendo here, one way or the other. But in any case, this week, the Washington Post confirmed that DOJ has actively investigating multiple tracks of January 6. Now, you know, our listeners are gonna, they're just gonna sound familiar to our folks because we've been, when I read that article, I was like, oh, somebody's been listening to our podcast. That's right. We've been speculating about this for months. But Washington Post says the investigation is now looking at the ads and fundraising pitches, i.e. the basic fraud charges we've been talking about for months. These are easier to make and carry potentially big sentencing.

Also, they're taking a hard look at the fraudulent electors scheme, it's hard to say. And we've known this, of course, from the many subpoenas we've been tracking over the months. And then finally, they're looking at the willard, the infamous war room at the willard with Steve Vanan and all the highlights that are cruised through that place in the days leading up to January 6th. So key areas of interest. You got Jeff Clark, you got Rudy Giuliani, Ken Cheeseboro, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman. So what do you think? A lot of

names, familiar names back in the mix now. Yeah, I think with the fraudulent electors scheme, I'm feeling like there is certainly, certainly those lawyers are targets of the fraudulent electors scheme. Whether they bring Trump into that or not, I'm not sure, although Jack Smith's, his charge is to investigate Donald Trump. So I can't imagine he's being left out of that circle. But that's how you get up to Trump, right?

It's through those lawyers because it was Judge Carter in California who said Eastman and Trump, more probably than not, violated 1512 C2 and 371 with this fraudulent electors scheme. Now, the thing is, the way we know this is because because Giuliani, all we know from the public reporting is Giuliani met with the Department of Justice and had a queen for a day of proper session. We don't know how that came about.

To me, I feel like Rudy begged for it. Totally. Totally. And it was part of his, it was part of his, uh, he got a letter saying he's, he could be indicted, I think, in, in the fraudulent electric scheme and, and, and has now, throw a thrown his hat in the ring to say, please let me come in and dance from my life. And then also, uh, somehow worked out with, with the DOJ. This is kind of how I figured it went. Rudy's like, come on, please, can I just, we'd talk, I'll tell you everything I know. All right, we'll take a listen and they sat down

and he told him everything that he knew. And DOJ is like, thanks, we'll take an under-envisement. Yeah. And whether they make him a witness or not, he would be a terrible witness. You and I texted about this. Yeah. But he could have some very significant important information.

I remember Rudy saying, I have an insurance policy against Trump if he ever throws me under the bus. But that was like back and that was before January 6th. Like what he could possibly have on this guy is probably pretty immense. And to remind us about what happens if you lie in a proper session.

Yeah, it's not a good thing. It is definitely not a good thing. So, I think, first of all, I think you're right. I think this was a meeting that convened at Rudy and his lawyers request. I think it's very similar to the meetings that most high profile defendants try to take at the end of an investigation, which is I'm going to go in and convince DOJ why they should not charge me, why they should not be bringing this case against me. And so, a lot of those meetings, DOJ takes them just out of courtesy.

They're always happy to hear if someone is volunteering to actually bring information to the meeting. They're going to sit there and listen to it. This is not a little different, but in style, but not different in substance from the meeting that Trump's lawyers had with DOJ right before the indictment came out. Of course, they took an odd tact

and went in and insulted everybody and made accusations. Hard to persuade people to go your way when you go in there throwing fists at them, but that's the Trump legal team. Oh, they were probably just fishing for prosecutorial misconduct. Yeah. Yeah.

So Rudy's team in a more traditional tact came out after the meeting and said, very professional, very courteous. They treated as well. Again, to me, that signals this is a team that's like desperately trying to get on board. Yes, yes. Now, if he got a proper agreement for the, you would get it really just for that meeting so that they couldn't turn around and charge you with things that you admitted you did during the meeting. So I could see maybe that happening. But here's

the problem. Rudy is a terrible witness because Rudy says absurd and false things all the time. There's thousands of public statements that anyone could use to destroy him on cross-examination. And that is not... You don't use Rudy for anything that you would have to depend on his word, because it's almost impossible. And if you put a witness, that, you know, a witness who's that banged up in front of the jury, as a prosecution, you run the risk of losing the jury entirely. Juries don't like to listen to people who are then exposed as like

serial liars. So you don't want to degrade your case by putting on a witness who's a real problem. The only way that I see Rudy actually testifying for the government is if he's able to bring a blockbuster piece of evidence that stands on its own. So this is a hypothetical here, but if Rudy showed up to this meeting with an audio recording of a conversation he had with Trump in which Trump admits to wrongdoing.

That would be enough to get him on team America because you would put me in. Or especially if there's another more credible witness that was in the room on that audio tape that they could go and get. That's the thing too, right? He could give them information to go to other more credible witnesses. He could. He could. He could start getting a little more complicated. But if he shows up with the tape that I described, you put him on the stand to authenticate the tape.

Literally, you ask him five questions. Did you call, did you talk to Trump that day? Did you have a recording device? Did you turn it on? Is this, is this inaccurate, you know, depiction of that recording? That's it. He recorded a lot, we know, because of that loss from his ex-employee. And the defense will get up and go for three days, ripping him as a liar. And at the end of that, the prosecution gets up and rebuttal and says, once again, did you have a call?

Did you make a recording? Is this it? That's all you need him for. And then the recording speaks for itself. Yeah. I don't know. I doubt that that's happened. It's a pretty, a pretty, it's a long-shot. A long-shot.

A long-shot. But nevertheless, I think it's a long shot to use Rudy in the case, but it's pretty typical that he would try to do that. Yeah, especially in the position that he's in. He's also in a heap of trouble down in Georgia. And with some personal liability lawsuits for defamation with shame awesome Ruby Freeman.

Yep. And I mean, he's in a lot of trouble. Also, DOJ has interviewed Brad Raffensberger in Atlanta, which I thought was interesting. Maybe that's just because they built a little home base down there in Florida. So maybe Atlanta was closer. I'm not sure, but they interviewed Brad Raffinsburg.

And a lot of people were like, why now? Why has it been so long? And I think and tell me if you agree or not. I mean, he would be one of the last people because he's only gonna come in and verify that phone call and what happened on that phone call. We have all that information. We have all that evidence. There's nothing new or probative he could bring to us. It seems more like it

would just be like grand jury prep. Like, here's what we're going to ask you. We're going to bring into the grand jury. We're about to go in here pretty soon. So we just wanted to get in here to talk about it. It seems like a, it seems like a last step, not something that should have happened a long time ago, but I don't know. It also comes down to what you would possibly use Raffin's burger for, right? His biggest potential as a witness is as the victim of the pressure campaign. And to me, specifically, the Trump world's efforts to pressure different states, in this case, Georgia,

of course, to essentially mess with the election results. And to me, that conduct is most likely to be prosecuted by Georgia, not at the federal level. The feds are clearly looking for stuff that they can prove as frauds or you know fraud against the government or frauds in the ad you know They the fundraising efforts So Raffin's burger Doesn't really play a huge role in those sorts of investigations. Yeah, you want them

You want to put them on record which means locking them in in front of the grand jury in terms of what he did and of course authenticating that phone call but it's I think it's possible that Jack Smith's team is really kind of maybe looking away from that specific Georgia activity assuming that Georgia is gonna pick that up local authorities down there Fonny Willis and her team we're gonna prosecute that stuff and let's not overlap too heavily into what they're doing. So in other words, like leaving Raffensberger as a witness for Georgia, you know, maybe

slightly in the federal case if they need them for a technical thing here and there, but that's how I see it. Yeah, or just the defense that, you know, I didn't put any pressure on anybody. Yes, you did here. So that could be one of those other like straggler wrap up type of things, get prepping your defense. But you know, I mean, we'll see it. We'll we'll find out soon enough. That's right. Also, Mike Roman has signed a cooperation agreement. Earlier in the week, there was a New York Times piece that came out that said, it appears that Mike Roman could be signing a cooperation deal,

but he has. They have confirmed it. We know his phone was seized previously. He was the head of election operation, election day operations for Trump in 2020. His deputy was Gary Michael Brown. He's been brought in for questioning and had his phone seized.

And he was also, by the way, Mike Roman was also on the golf course at Trump's sterling property one month after the search warrant was executed at Mar-a-Lago, having a meeting about the live golf tournament. And as we know, Jack has subpoenaed information about that live golf tournament and also property deals that he made in seven different countries. So that's an interesting thing, but Mike Roman, like kind of like Susan Wiles, right? He was election day operations guy. He can't be discredited as some anti-Trump blah, blah, blah. So this is a very important witness, I think.

And the news coming from CNN is that he is signed up as a cooperators. He's been through proper sessions and he has not been in front of the grand jury, which leads you to believe that they are really working on him as a witness and thinking of him as a crucial witness. He'll probably show up in front of the grand jury eventually, but this I think has the smell of significance around it. Also, he was interviewed by the House Investigators in the Jan 6th Committee work, and he admitted in under questioning there, well, he claimed that he'd had no interaction with Rudy Giuliani before the election, and then when he was asked whether

he had interactions with him after the election, he took the theft. So, there could be some interesting information there for the Jack Smith team about specifically Rudy's involvement with campaign operations post-election. And that would point right at things like fake electors scam, the fraud stuff that we know that they're looking at. Everything that Rudy may have touched after the election and then in the run up to January 6. Yeah, and then we have a credible witness as opposed to a Rudy-type situation. We know they asked Rudy about all the meetings that they had leading up to January 6 at the White House, but you know, Mike Robyn

could have a lot of that information as well. So we'll see how that ends up turning out. And also about a half a dozen secret service agents have testified about January 6th. Then just a couple of points on this before we take a quick break. It can't be or not a or angle. They no longer work for the secret service. We know the text messages are gone because they just so happened to have some sort of a system update on January 6th.

The dog ate my homework of text messages. Yeah. And Kufari who was supposed to investigate that and then waited 18 months to tell the Congress that he lost the text messages, which is actually the amount of time that they have to keep those records before they're purged. Interestingly, he's still under investigation by the IG. He's still at the secret service. He could have been asked to be interviewed in here, but we just don't know. But those secret service agents about 1-6 will probably have a lot of insight, especially as to whether Trump wanted to go to the capital or not, what his intentions might be, you know, his movements and things like that. So we'll be looking for information on that, hopefully, in a speaking indictment. All right, we have one more thing to talk about, which are Trump's potential defenses,

but we have to do one last quick break. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh first, at first, the Department of Justice in the office of the ODNI, right? They said they couldn't confirm or deny the existence of that standing order document. That was a while ago. But this week, after being protted again, DOJ and ODNI admitted that there's no standing

order document. It doesn't exist. We can't comply with your FOIA request because the document you want does not exist. So there goes that. But it was in my head all along. That was in my mind. I have it right here in my pocket.

Another defense that came up this week is that after the Trump tape came out of him waving the thing around at Bedminster, the mille document. He said, he now claims, oh, it was bravado. It wasn't really a classified document. I was lying. That's the worst thing.

And Todd Blanche's lawyer has to just be banging his head against the desk because he just admitted that he knows he can't have classified documents. And also that he's a giant liar. So now I want to do the head of lettuce challenge with Todd Blanche. I'm not sure how long he's gonna last to do those as his lawyers, but he's like, you gotta stop talking, man,

shut your mouth. This is amazing to me. This is possibly the worst defense ever for two reasons. One, it requires him to get on the stand and say to the jury, oh yeah, what I said in that meeting, the tape that you just heard was all a lie. I really just had a fistful of news stories yet on the stand and say to the jury, oh yeah, what I said in that meeting, the tape that you just heard was all a lie.

I really just had a fistful of newspaper clippings and golf club plans, and I was pretending that it was some sort of a Rand War document. Juries don't like it when you say to them, I'm a liar and you just heard me lying and I sound the same now as I did then. It's a very bad thing for you.

And it's really bad for him on a second level because it would mean he'd have to take the stand and then he gets cross-examined and that's not going to go very well. No, no. And then the final defense is the... This one kills me and he's been saying this for a while. The election interference defense, right? They been saying this for a while, the election

interference defense, right? They're just doing this to interfere in the election of the best president ever. It's election interference. They need to be arrested for election interference. Now, in my opinion, Andy, since the investigation began well before Trump declared he was running for president, that means actually, I think his candidacy is interfering with the investigation. His candidacy is an act of obstruction of justice. I like that. I like that theory. But you can't be like, no, it's like chicken in the egg, man. The investigation was there and then you declared. So you can't say, I mean, he's going to keep doing it, but it's just the most ridiculous. Your investigation of my crime is getting in the way of my election.

Okay. Not the climbing. Okay. Have a nice day, sir. Yeah. Mr. Bravado. All right. We have one.

Listen to your question this week. If you have any questions, you can send them into us at hello at mullershyrote.com. Just make sure you put Jack in the subject line so we can make sure that we know that you're asking a question for me and Andy for this podcast. Andy, what do we have this week? All right, so we have one question. This is kind of a random question, which is why I picked it. We haven't talked about this in a while. It comes to us from Chuck, and Chuck says, has Peter Navarro turned over his emails per court order, and if not, what are the consequences?

So a little bit of quick background. Back in April, NBC reported that a federal appeals court denied Peter Navarro's efforts to block and order requiring him to hand the government 200 to 250 emails that he sent using a private email account during his time in the Trump administration. So you'll remember, this was a lawsuit that DOJ brought against Navarro under the Presidential Records Act to compel him to hand over these emails. He refused because his theory was, well, they're really just fishing for evidence to use against me in my contempt of Congress case. Therefore, turning over this material is a violation of my Fifth

Amendment right. So he lost on that argument Judge Colarkatelli rejected his argument, ordered him to turn over the emails. He immediately appealed it and back in April the appeals court shot him down. Judge Catelli told him he had to then turn over the emails as per her earlier order. So that's a long way of saying we don't really know. I was looking around today and there's been no recent reporting as to whether or not he actually complied with that order, which leads me to believe that he probably did or else we would have heard about him being held in contempt of court. Getting the wicked double of contempt charges, contempt of Congress and contempt of court at the same time, that would be really unique.

If that happened, and here is gets to your consequences question, really, if he fails to comply with the judge's order, he can be held in contempt of court, and that can result in all sorts of things. Since this is a civil case, she could potentially issue a judgment against him. She could fine or issue sanctions against him and his lawyer, or she could throw him in jail. Technically, you can be jailed for being in contemptive court. It hardly ever happens, and I think it would be unlikely to happen here, but you never know. So we'll have to keep looking around for this one. If anyone hears a development on this, send it to us in the question email, and I will read

it out as soon as we get it. So that's our question for the week. Awesome. Thank you so much. Again, if you have any questions, you can send them to us at helloatmolorshiroat. Awesome. Thank you so much. Again, if you have any questions you can send them to us at helloatmullershirote.com. Just put Jack in the subject line. Whoo! What a show! It's been a day and again, I can't wait to see what we talk about next week. You will have plenty. That's I don't know where it will be, but it will be plenty. We'll be picking it up all week long. It's always plenty. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to Jack, the podcast about all things special

counsel. I'll see you next time. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. M-S-W-M-D-A-M-S-W-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D-A-M-D- you