Jack - Epstein Day Delayed

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

The Department of Justice has announced that it will not be releasing all of the Epstein files as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but will instead release them on a rolling basis.Jack Smith testified for 8 hours behind closed doors in front of the House Judiciary Committee, saying that he amassed powerful evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump violated the law.Co-Deputy Director Dan Bongino says he will leave his position at the FBI next month.And the Department of Justice asks for more time to return Daniel Richman’s materials to him.Plus listener questions…Do you have questions for the pod?  Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MSW Media. The Department of Justice has announced that it will not be releasing all of the Epstein files as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but will instead release them on a rolling basis. Jack Smith testified for eight hours behind closed doors in front of the House Judiciary Committee, saying he amassed powerful evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump violated the law. Co-deputy director Dan Bongino says he will leave his position at the FBI next month. And the Department of Justice asks for more time to return Daniel Richmond's materials to him after they violated his Fourth Amendment rights. This is Unjustified.

Hey, everybody, welcome to Unjustified at Sunday, December 21st, 2025. Andy, I don't know how you got through co-deprivate. Deputy Director Dan Bongino says he will leave his position at the FBI next month without laughing. But, I mean, just because of the co-depity director moniker. But anyway, hi, everyone. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe, crying tears of joy. Yeah, well, you never know what you're going to get.

But that was still something I didn't expect. We're going to get to that a little bit later in the show. But for now, Allison, let's just dive right in with what's really breaking news as we, you're recording this. As you probably know by now, this past Friday was the deadline for the Department of Justice to release all of the Epstein files to the public, with some redactions to protect the victim's identities and personally identifiable information pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Now, the act was passed nearly unanimously by Congress last month, with only Clay Higgins voting no, and it was signed into law by President Trump on November 19. But

Todd Blanche, you remember him, Alison, right? I do, I recall. I figured you would. Todd Blanche has other plans. The Hill reports that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice would not be releasing the full Epstein files on Friday as required under new legislation, instead sending over a partial batch. Blanche told Fox News, the Justice Department would release, quote, several hundred thousand documents on Friday.

and then over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more. Huh, over the next couple of weeks. Yeah, just I've heard that before. No surprise here, though. Blanche attributed the delay to the need to redact any names or identifying information about witnesses, but failing to turn over the full unclassified files could run a foul of the law, which gave the department 30 days to publicly share the documents. Quote, so today is the 30 days when I expect that we're going to release

several hundred thousand documents today and those documents will come in all different forms photographs and other materials associated with with all the investigations into mr epstein that's what blanche said went on to say what we're doing is we're looking at every single piece of paper that we're going to produce making sure that every victim their name their identity their story to the extent it needs to be protected is completely protected and so i expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So he's blaming the victims here. Yeah. And also kind of trying to take credit for looking at every single piece of paper, which is a bit like your lawn guy trying to take credit for cutting every single piece of grass.

It's kind of like part of the job, right? Yeah. And you've had these the whole time. You tried desperately to release them last March when you locked a thousand FBI agents in a building and forced them to go through the job done that time? I mean, paid him a million dollars of overtime over five days. Like, yeah, that never happened when I was there. Okay, DOJ was compelled to turn over the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a bill that got near unanimous support in Congress signed into law after President Trump reversed his earlier stance opposing their release. While the bill does allow for redactions related to victims and for DOJ to withhold some information about the investigation, it does not provide for a rolling deadline

to turn over the documents. Under the law, the DOJ has 15 days to turn over its rationale for any documents withheld. Yeah, and I'm interested to see the rationale because I have tried to search this database and the search function isn't working very well. But the guy who owns the onion was able to search and find the release of the New York grand jury material. And it's 100% redacted. So I'm interested to see they've got 15 days to tell us why. It might have something to do with Gillian Maxwell filing a writ of habeas, a habeas petition to challenge her incarceration, even though she's exhausted her appeal with this through up to the Supreme Court. But she's, you know, her lawyers wrote a letter saying she's going to be doing this pro se, by the way, with herself as her attorney.

But we as her attorneys want to let you know that if you release grand jury material, it would really be devastating to her habeas case. And you aren't allowed to do that. So I'm interested to see if that's the excuse they use. I'll be interested to see if they give an excuse at all, because the act is kind of vague as to how much detail or what they have to say. I mean, you could from this DOJ, get something like, we decided to withhold some documents pursuant to the Epstein Files Release Act. Well, it does, the law does stipulate that there has to be reasons. And if there's anything redacted that might have classified information, they have to provide

summaries of what's behind the redaction bars. I think it would probably be a general sort of, you know, how they do like, oh, this is 6B21 or this is, you know. Kind of like the FOIA process is what you would have. expect, but I don't know that we're going to get a lot of detail at it. But we'll see. See what happens. Well, we didn't get the full files like we were supposed to either. There you go. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said not releasing the required files in full amounts to breaking the law. And he says, quote, the law Congress passed and President Trump

signed was clear as can be. The Trump administration had 30 days to release all the Epstein files, not just some failing to do so is breaking the law. That just shows the Department of Justice Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are held bent on hiding the truth. That's what Schumer said in a statement on Friday. Another quote here, Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out, unquote. Representatives Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, said they were,

now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law. Representative Thomas Massey, one of the bipartisan duo that pushed to force a vote on the Epstein-Files Transparency Act, posted a screenshot of the bill on X with the language of the 30-day deadline highlighted. On Thursday, he said there was no ambiguity with the law and what the law requires to be released. Trump, quote, has agreed to comply with this law, and Bondi has to comply with it. and there will be penalties if she does not, Massey said. Yeah, and he went on to say, this is a very unique situation. This is Massey.

This is a case where the president who appointed the Attorney General and for whom the Attorney General works has signed the law and the ink is not even dry yet on his signature on this law. There's nothing subject to interpretation. Trump will interpret things, though, and so will Todd Blanche. Of course. The Guardian reports that Roe Kana posted a video on social media. a Thursday threatening legal action in the event of tampering or excessive redaction of the documents.

He said, let me be very clear. We need a full release. Anyone who tamperes with these documents or conceals documents or engages in excessive redaction will be prosecuted because of obstruction of justice. We will prosecute individuals regardless of whether they're the attorney general or career political appointees. We need full transparency and justice for the survivors tomorrow. Remember, he posted this on Thursday the day before the files were due. Finally, rich and powerful men who raped underage girls or who covered up for their abuse will be held accountable. The Epstein class needs to go. Now, in order to prosecute that, he can't prosecute anything.

He's a congressperson. They can do investigations and make referrals to the Department of Justice once they get the control of the house back in the midterms next year. But in order to prosecute, since Bondi won't arrest herself, we would have to get the White House back in 2028 with an attorney general willing to bring charges. with a statute of limitations that would expire in December of 2030 because that's the five-year statute of limitations. So if you wanted to prosecute obstruction of justice, you would need somebody willing to do it and they would have a year. And of course, they probably wouldn't get there until halfway through the year. And then you probably wouldn't get a U.S. attorney in D.C. until November like we did in 2021. Because the Senate, you know, that's why we also need the Senate

because they would block any of those confirmations. So that's a tall order. I think the more likely route, Andy, is a lawsuit that could expose perhaps over-redaction or inappropriate redaction, much like they did with the Mueller report. Yeah, I agree with you. I think the criminal charges is a bit far-fetched. But, yeah, I mean, there's nothing to stop in a lawsuit, and that can continue long after Ms. Bondi is no longer in her position. So no statute of limitations problem there.

Aside from criminal prosecution, the ranking members on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, respectively Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, have issued this statement slamming the Trump administration's decision to defy the Epstein Files Transparency Act by not releasing all the files today. Quote, courts around the country have repeatedly intervened when this administration has broken the law. We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law. The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice. The co-conspirators must be held accountable. And the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ, which they're never going to get. And I want to make something kind of clear here. This release of the Epstein files is not per a court order.

So there can't be contempt for defying it. And the courts, you know, when Raskin and Garcia say the courts have intervened, they can't intervene sua sponte just by themselves on this. There has to be a lawsuit filed. So it's not like Judge Barrel Howe can just stand up and say, this is against the law. And, you know, yeah, throw a flag on the play and, you know, do an Ed Hoculis type thing. No. Somebody has to file a lot. lawsuit, and it's mentioned in the law that if there seems to be malfeasance with over-redaction or inappropriate redaction or withholding of documents, destruction of documents, that that could trigger a lawsuit from Congress. So I imagine that lawsuit is pretty much written because, I mean, I don't think anybody was under any sort of delusion that they would release all of the full

Epstein files compliant with the law today, or Friday, I should say. So I imagine that lawsuit is mostly written, and I imagine it will be filed pretty soon. As of this recording, we don't see it yet, but I, but I think there may, that may happen. Yeah, I mean, expect it will at some point, although to be honest, fixing this problem through a lawsuit is not realistic, right? Maybe, maybe you can hold people accountable and expose the machinations behind this violation, but it doesn't, it's not going to have any. the only goal. Right. It's not going to have an impact on the DOJ now. So then it causes you to wonder like, okay, what do we do then? What's the point of this whole exercise? Well, the place where people can

actually be held accountable for this is politically. Right? This should be remembered by all those people on whatever side of the aisle you find yourself, all those people who are very focused on this case and this horribly disgusting history of abuse by this person and his Epstein and his cohorts, you know, you have to remember as you go forward what this current administration has done and maybe more importantly hasn't done to kind of bring truth and, transparency to this issue. Yeah. And it will be remembered at least through 2026 because first of all, Gielane Maxwell herself has filed a habeas petition that's going to have to go through the courts and that news is going to come out drip by drip. They have 95,000 photos that they got from the Epstein

estate and the House Oversight Committee that they'll release a little bit at a time getting probably as we go on worse and worse, you know, over over the course of the year. There's, potential litigation here that we'll keep this in the news. So it's, I don't think the issue is going anywhere. Um, but that is, you know, when you don't have control of the White House, the Senate or the house, it's really political consequences. That's right. That are the only consequences that you're probably going to get. And I, and I've said this about all of the crime and corruption in this administration. If we're able to get the gavel back in the house and maybe even retake the Senate, That is where you will get your 9-11-style commissions on what ICE is doing.

That is where you'll get, you know, people like Gregor Bovino-Bronin for questions. Christy Noam, you know, anybody, any amount of corruption, Jared Kushner, I mean, pick somebody. Something's corrupt is through those kinds of hearings, which do not result in jail time. But there is a political price to pay. and that is important as well as getting the truth out is important because that also has political consequences. So those are the kinds of consequences, I think, that we can expect here. Maybe a lower court judge sometime in the future saying these were overly redacted. I've reviewed them in camera. These were inappropriately redacted. Pamela Joe Bondi lacks candor,

et cetera. Those are the kinds of then. Then if we have the house and we have subpoena power, we could bring Pamela Joe in and question her in front of everybody about this. We'll talk about Jack Smith later. That was behind closed doors. We'll be able to bring him out in public and question him in public, which he wants to do. So I think I just kind of want to temper everybody's expectations. As much as these people belong in jail, I think the political consequences are as good as we're going to get in the near term.

It's certainly the soonest and most impactful thing that you can affect. Stay focused on that. Yeah, exactly, because political consequences and voting, you know, we have the biggest single check on the government. Yeah. And hey, look, I mean, if you're, I'm going to describe someone, and I'll first acknowledge they're probably not listening here, but if you're someone who voted for this president because you were so invested in this issue and you wanted to see transparency,

you're not getting it. And so you should remember that when you walk in the next time you find, yourself in a voting booth like this you know this is a promise is made promises abandoned yeah next time you're in the grocery store paying 1899 a pound for ground chuck and yeah yeah i wonder why we don't have the upstein files just just remember why we're here yeah all right the night before the upstein files were due co-depity director dan bonjino who is partly responsible for the right wing interest in the upstein files in the first place ironic announced he is going to be leaving the agency, the FBI. We'll discuss that in more detail after this quick break. Stick

around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Carol Lenig is reporting for MS now that just hours after she reported that Dan Bongino told confidants he planned to move on from his post as the deputy director of the FBI, co-deuty director. Just hours after that. The code up. Just hours after that, the top leader confirmed the news in a social media post. Bongino had quietly told his confidants he planned to formally leave his job early in the new year and would not be returning to headquarters to work for the rest of this year. That's according to eight people briefed on his account. And then he later confirmed the reporting on Twitter.

Quote, I will be leaving my position at the FBI in January. That's what Bongino wrote. He thanked President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI director Cash Patel for, quote, the opportunity to serve with purpose. He went on to say, most importantly, now this is the most important part, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you. He said, God bless America and all those who defend her. Now, interestingly, zero mention of the men and women of the FBI in this goodbye speech to the nation. That seems to be a habit of Kosh Patel, of any of these leaders. They rarely mention the men and women that work at the agencies with them. They seem to mention them only when they're being fired.

It's one of the most offensive things about these last few months to me has been the complete and utter lack of appreciation of these two people for the opportunity they've been given, wrongfully given. in my view, but nevertheless, they're there, and they rarely ever say anything about the majesty of being able to lead that workforce, which is unfathomable to me. But anyway, Bongino had told his team and some senior FBI officials that he tentatively planned to announce his departure on December 19th, according to four people. Several people said some of Bongino's personal effects have been cleared out of his office as of last week. Yeah, I don't think he wanted to deal with the fallout of the DOJ, not releasing the Epstein file. I mean, that didn't go well for him, though, first time.

No. The screaming fight with Pam Bondi in the White House. And he's like, you know what? Yeah. I'm out. Yeah. And I think Carolenich touches on that. She goes on to say that Bonjino, Trump ally, former Secret Service agent,

who built an enormous following as a conservative pro-Trump radio and podcast host, was an unusual choice when Trump installed him in the post in February. That's a very nice thing to say, actually. Yeah, yeah. He was the first deputy director in modern history who had no experience as an FBI agent. The deputy serves as the day-to-day operations chief of the entire agency. Now, Bongino had stayed mostly mum, as media reports teased a departure that could come as soon as this week or possibly in the near future. And when reached by MS now earlier on Wednesday, Bongino declined to confirm or deny the reports of his plan, saying, print whatever you'd like.

No one believes you anyway. Thanks. That's maturity runs rampant once again. Okay, with word of impending departure has come speculation that Bongino is returning to podcasting, which reportedly made him worth $160 million. What are we doing wrong, Andy? I don't know, but I can pretty comfortably tell you his run as deputy director did not make him worth $160,000. Okay, so I see the income difference there.

It might have been a motivating factor. In August, after Bongino privately sparred with Bondi, Trump took the unprecedented step of naming a co-depity director to help and share Bongino's work. And that person is Missouri, former Missouri Attorney General, Andrew Bailey. I can hear you holding back the laughter on that one. Would you like to share your work? Sure. You take this hard part. I'll keep these easy ones. Let's all go flying the plane.

Yeah. Now, Bongino faced tremendous backlash from pro-Trump MAGA supporters related to the Jeffrey Epstein case when he and fellow Justice Department leaders backtracked from earlier claims that the Epstein files contained a secret client list of prominent people that Epstein had kept as the fodder for potential blackmail. Before he joined the Bureau, Bonino promoted MAGA conspiracy theories about the Epstein matter, suggesting there were things being hidden. Quote, listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal. Please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this. Deal, Dan. Bongino told his listeners this in 2023,

also suggesting he had strong doubts about official government reports that Epstein had committed suicide, died by suicide in his jail cell. Yes. But once inside the Bureau, however, Bongino said in a television interview that he had concluded

there was no evidence Epstein was murdered. Really? Hmm, that sounds suspiciously like what the Department of Justice and the FBI said. The Justice Department and the FBI issued a joint memo in July saying the Epstein files contained no client list and the furor it unleashed from the MAGA movement

led to an angry confrontation between Bongino and Attorney General Bondi in July. Bongino has drawn disdain and ridicule from a wide swath of FBI agents. This part does not surprise me. me at all. The Bureau personnel generally lean conservative in their political viewpoints, but also include some progressives. They tend to agree, however, that Bongino is out of his depth as a leader of the Bureau, multiple sources told MS Now. Quote, agents are counting down the days

one law enforcement source said of agents looking forward to Bongino's departure. MS Now reported last month that Trump and his White House aides have been weighing whether to remove FBI director Cash Patel and replace him with Andrew Bailey in the new year. Oh, Patel. Oh, Kosh Patel. Don't worry. We haven't forgotten about you with all the focus on Dan Bongino this week. The Times reported that a heinous act of violence is how they start the story. A faceless killer on the loose. A desperate manhunt. An FBI director. I feel like I should have my movie voice on. An FBI director with a finger poised over the post button on his social media account.

These circumstances collided over the weekend during the search to find the suspect who opened fire on a Brown University classroom, killing two people and injuring nine others. They came after Kosh Patel, the Bureau's self-promotional top official, reported on Twitter that his agents had apprehended a person of interest in a hotel room in Rhode Island, acting on a lead from local law enforcement. Little or nothing seemed to come of it. The person was released a few hours later. in an outcome that was awkwardly reminiscent of an earlier moment in September

when Mr. Patel announced that the FBI had helped capture the person who gunned down conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah, only for that to be a dead end as well. In October, Mr. Patel again jumped onto Twitter to trumpet the FBI's work and thwarting a potential terror attack in Michigan, blindsiding the Justice Department lawyers who had yet to file criminal charges. The move infuriated some prosecutors, according to people familiar with the episode. Yet even if Trump officials have privately criticized Mr. Patel for embarrassing the administration,

particularly over his use of government assets, which is, of course, the plain shenanigans that you and I have covered very closely in the last few weeks, rumors about his firing or forced resignation have yet to materialize. In fact, Mr. Patel has recently told people in his orbit that he intends to stay on at least, least through the 26 midterm elections while acknowledging that the president could change his mind at any time. And that is such a bizarre statement to talk about the position of FBI director that, do I change his mind any time? There's a reason that the FBI director serves 10-year terms, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Is it 10? It's 10. It's a 10-year term. And Mueller got extended to 12 years

that's right a special exception it's an act of congress they actually have to pass a law to accept it um it this was a post hoover uh reform of the fbi i remember there were many there was the the pike commission and what was the one in the senate i always forget the church committee uh that kind of exposed all the malfeasance um in the intelligence community and in the fbi i think people the country was coming to a reckoning with the ways that Hoover had abused his position and partially because he was in it for too long 40 years so congress passed this law that limits the term of the FBI director to 10 years now most people think it's because well they want him to have a 10 year term so that he has to um bridge one administration to another so that

that will make the position less political and that's true to a certain extent but the much bigger purpose, just to make sure we never got a guy like Hoover who was there for more than 10 years. So in any case, that both of those concerns made the role, the position of the director of the FBI kind of universally accepted as something that was above politics, that an FBI director would serve 10 years or pretty close to it, and that that was a good thing for the, not only for the FBI, but for the country. This is one of my biggest fears about this whole crazy, um, period that we're going through now, Donald Trump firing FBI directors right and left

and putting in people like Cash Patel who should not be in that position it's kind of forced the hand of the next administration. So if in 2028, a Democrat wins the White House, one of the first things they should do is get rid of Cash Patel, even though he can stay for 10 years. He's in the middle of a 10-year term if he's still there.

So you'd want to get rid of him, but by doing that, you're basically falling into the same process that that trumped it and obliterating. Sometimes you gotta. I agree with you. But the cost of doing that is destabilizing this tradition. Right. But I mean, we're in different times.

Yeah, I know. I don't, I'm not arguing with it. Like, I thought Biden should have fired Ray. 100%. 100%. But that was, that's where, you know, the institutionalism of a Joe Biden. Right. And Ameri Garland bugged me.

is because Merrick Garland knew there were a ton of people stonewalling him at the FBI, and he didn't go in and pick people off one by one. I wish he had, but it goes again, like if he's trying to return the Bureau or the Justice Department to, you know, sane old ways, but, you know, in the face of some circumstances, I just don't think you can. Now, Garland eventually did fire the chief of staff array that was one of the sources of the bottlenecks for all he was, you know, blocking him searching Mar-a-Lago, blocking his warrants to, the war room at the Willard and all that other stuff.

But it didn't happen until February of 2022. So, you know, we talk about that it's, it wasn't so much like Biden and Garland didn't want to seem political. They just wanted to get back to what's normal. That's right. That's right. That's hard to do when you have, when you, yeah, when you walk in and Koch Patel is the director of the FBI, sorry, bro, you got to go.

And if Ray is stonewalling you on the most important. investigation in the history of the United States, he's got to go. Yeah, listen, I have many issues with Christopher Ray, and I think that Biden should have moved on to a different FBI director. I do think that there is a, even though that would have happened, it will be absolutely necessary if there's a Democrat. It takes the White House in 28 because Cash Patel should not stay one extra day in that role. Or whoever replaces him if he's fired. Of course, but there is a cost to that. There's an overall degradation of the effectiveness of that position because of how Trump has politicized it.

Yeah. And also, I will say, to be fair. Right. You say, okay, starting now. Yeah. I will say, to be fair, and I, as I said, I have my issues with Chris Ray, and I think Biden would have been better served if you replaced him. Chris Ray is no cash Patel.

No. He was capable of doing the job. He was a person with background and experience and credentials. So, yeah, they're not, there's not, there's not an equivalence. Like, Cash Patel is, he's a, he's a train wreck of his own making. Yeah. And, I mean, even if you're degrading the way that it is, should be the next Republican in office, if they're a MAGA type or a Trump type, it's not going to pay any attention to any of it. So, like, oh, well, they'll kill the filibuster.

Yeah. so we should now, right? Like, it's just, yeah, I agree. We're not in normal times, right? That we have ratcheted up the kind of take no prisoners approach to all this stuff. And it's like, it's the gerrymandering, right? It's like California was all in on like neutral congressional districts drawn by neutral nonpartisan officials.

But they're heaving it out because they have to, this is a survival tactic now. Anyway, we're drifting out. No, I mean, we could talk for hours about it. But we do have some news on Jack Smith and how his behind closed doors testimony worked. And what he has to say after the fact as well, some demands that he's making. He made demands before. He's making demands after. I like this guy.

He's not afraid to, he's taken his case to the public. And I appreciate that about this particular prosecutor. But without degrading, Andy, the kinds of norms. that you're talking about. That's right. He's doing a really great job of being like kind of what we wanted Merrick Garland to be. You know, like you can be loud and follow the rules at the same time. And that's what I appreciate about Jack Smith.

We'll talk about it after the break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, our next story comes from Ryan Riley at NBC. Former special counsel, Jack Smith, told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Donald Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.

Now, Trump also, quote, repeatedly lied to obstruct justice to keep secret his retention of classified documents found during an FBI search of his Marlago estate in Florida, Smith, hold members of the House Judiciary Committee at a closed-door deposition. Yeah, he also said his team turned up, quote, powerful evidence that showed Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021, storing them at his social club,

including in a bathroom and a ballroom, where events and gatherings took place. That's a quote from his opening statement. We know all this, especially if he listened to the Jack podcast. And, of course, he had powerful evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, because a good prosecutor doesn't bring a case unless he can get a conviction beyond reasonable doubt. True that. He or she.

True, true that. Now, Jim Jordan subpoenaed Jack Smith to testify as part of Republican efforts to investigate the investigators, right? They won't investigate the special counsel's office. Smith's investigations led to two indictments of Donald Trump in the classified documents case and in the 2020 election interference case. There were two trials on the calendar well before the election. The January 6th one was scheduled in March of 2024, and the documents case was scheduled in May of 2024. Those trials would have been completed on time if it were for Judge Eileen Cannon and the Supreme Court. I just want to put that out there.

Trump appointed U.S. Judge Eileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in July 2024, and a separate judge agreed to drop the 2020 case in November after Trump won re-election. Trump has repeatedly called for Jack Smith to be prosecuted. Facing a renewed wave of Republican attacks on his investigations into Trump, Smith was expected to try to use the testimony to correct what his team has described as mischaracterizations about the special counsel investigation. Smith had wanted to testify in a public setting, but House Republicans refused to accommodate his request.

Jordan told reporters after the meeting that he hadn't, quote, ruled out a public hearing. Yes, he has. He totally has. He ruled it out. It's out. It's not happening. Previous special counsels, including Robert Mueller and Robert Herr, publicly testified about their actions. But Jordan chose to first summon Smith for a private deposition. Trump previously said he supported a public hearing for Smith. I'm throwing the hugest BS flag at that. I'm sure he said it. I'm not saying this is wrong. Just like he supports the release of the Epstein files, right? Exactly. Trump once told me I was great. Okay. So there you go. You cannot believe what he says. Ha, ha, ha, that's actually true.

After the deposition on Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Raskin joked that Jordan, quote, made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, who boy, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president's men involved in the insurrectionary activities of January 6th. And I just want to point out, insurrectionary is a new word for me. Larry Brewer? He's a wordsmith, though, and I love the way he always refers back to all the president's men. It's such a great reference, and he's just, like, digging it.

It is. It is. It's like a little, just a little twist of the knife. Yeah. Now, Lanny Brewer, who is Jack Smith's lawyer, told reporters Wednesday that his client, quote, is showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House. And, I mean, therein lies the tremendous courage that comes with knowing. that you've done absolutely nothing wrong. Amen.

Pushing back against criticism of his team's decision to obtain and analyze the phone call records of nine congressional Republicans, Smith told members of the committee that those records were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation. He said, January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy

in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day, Smith said. Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I didn't choose those members, Smith added, President Trump did. Now, I was listening to a couple of former U.S. attorneys, former prosecutor. Maybe you can attest to this as well

because I know you've been part of a lot of cases. But that's kind of an old idea. When somebody, you know, when you have a witness who's a cooperating witness that's also a bad guy and the defense is always like, oh, what did they get in return? And you can't trust that guy. He's a murderer and a liar.

And then the thing to say to the jury is, I didn't pick him as the witness. John Gotti did This is John You know This is not He picked him And so I thought it was really fascinating

That Jack Smith used that I didn't choose those members of Congress To go through their phone records I didn't pick them President Trump did I think that's an excellent line Yeah it really is And it also

It delivers that subliminal message of like There was no political We didn't subpoena these nine people Because they were Republican they were just the ones that the president was trying to conspire with. And the other thing that kills me, too, is like, there was no effort to go after any of these people.

They were simply confirming that Trump and Giuliani and these other bozos had reached out to them. Right? I mean, it just, I don't know. Yeah, it's to put together a timeline of events of what happened that day. Now, Smith said in his testimony Wednesday that while he is responsible for having made the decisions to charge Trump and bring him. both of the cases, the classified documents and election subversion, the basis for those charges,

quote, rests entirely with President Trump and his actions as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts. And I love there's like eight parts of this sentence. This sentence works on so many levels. It rests. First of all, do you remember in liar, liar where she's like, oh, your client held up somebody at an ATM this time at knife point what is your legal advice stop breaking the law a whole right um so he's like do all of this these charges are the responsibility rests entirely with trump and his actions as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries meaning i didn't again i didn't indict him grand juries indicted him people yeah right through our process so i love that sentence too it does

like it does multiple things. As Smith recounted, he was taught as a young prosecutor to follow the facts in the law without fear or favor and to do the right thing, the right way for the right reasons. Principles, he says, have guided his career. If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or a Democrat, he said.

And CBS reports, lawyers for former special counsel, Jack Smith, reiterated their call for Smith to appear publicly before lawmakers to answer questions about his investigations into President Trump after he testified privately earlier in the week. Quote, Mr. Smith welcomed this opportunity in hopes that it will serve to correct the many mischaracterizations about the work of the special counsel's office they wrote in their letter dated Thursday. Brewer and Koski urged Jordan, an Ohio Republican,

to promptly release the full videotape of the deposition, and said doing so will ensure that the American people can hear the facts directly from Mr. Smith rather than through secondhand accounts, i.e. congressmen who misrepresent what he actually said. Koski and Brew are also reiterated their request for Smith to address lawmakers in an open and public hearing. Yes. And I hope they do one of the, you know how they're doing these shadow hearings? Democrats are having hearings outside of Congress because the Republicans won't allow them to happen. I think we should do that in this case. And also in volume two news, Volume 2 of Special Counsel Jack Smith's final report.

After ignoring for months on end, the reminders from groups interested in shedding sunlight on ex-special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a Lago report, the judge who tossed out the prosecution is letting Donald Trump register his opposition as he requested roughly two weeks ago. The brief Sunday order from Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, who remains on an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals deadline to rule on two groups' attempts to intervene. for the purposes of lifting an injunction blocking the release of volume 2 stated only that Trump's motion to participate as a friend of the court was granted

and that no additional filings are permitted by this order. I'm so surprised by that. Not at all. The order comes not long, relatively speaking, after Trump, on December 2nd, sought to back the efforts of his former classified documents case codified. Valle Walteen Nauta and Marlago property manager Carlos Deo Lavera, keeping volume two of Smith's report hidden. That day, Trump requested, quote, to leave to participate in the proceedings as amicus

curate for the limited purpose of reaffirming and incorporating by reference his prior legal arguments to the court, as well as those made by co-defendants Nata and Dale Lavera, that volume two of Jack Smith's final report should not be made public. Yeah. So this is the whole thing where on January 21st, Judge Cannon said, can't release the report because the co-defendants could still be on the hook. But then in February, the Department of Justice said, nope, we're dismissing those cases against Nauta and Dale Lavera, and we're not going to bring charges again.

So then on February 14th, Happy Valentine's Day, Judge Cannon, the Knight Institute of Columbia University filed a request to vacate her order blocking the release of the report. She sat on it for eight months, so they went to the 11th Circuit and said, can you make her do something? And the 11th Circuit said, hey, you got 60 days to do something. And we're going to hold this writ of mandamus in advance until then. That expires on January 2nd, by the way, Andy. And so you and I joked about, I bet she's going to, you know, say the last day on January 1st,

she's going to say, well, I think we did six months of hearings and we should do this on a shadow docket. We need to litigate every redaction and then talk about privacy logs and privilege logs and, you know, like to drag it out. But you pointed out, no, it has to be completely resolved. She has to completely resolve the issue by January 2nd. So I was trying to get a copy of this order that allows him to intervene as a, amicke, amicus curi. And I couldn't, it's not available on Pacer. You even, it even says buy on pacer. You click the button and it says, no, you can't have it. Wow.

So there's no. I know. Maybe it's on her secret docket. So there's no date by which he has to file his amicus brief. We don't have it yet. I checked the docket. It's not there yet. But she has to rule on it and the Knight Institute of Columbia University's motion to vacate her order.

By January 2nd, or she runs the risk of. of having the 11th Circuit reinstate the writ of mandamus and force her to rule. Yeah, although the one thing I would say is she doesn't really have to do anything with whatever he files, right? It's just an amicus. It's not requesting anything it doesn't get ruled on. It's just meant to inform or quote unquote inform really influence her. Take into consideration. Correct.

She has to take it into, if she's going to take it into consideration. But she does have to. rule on the motion to vacate her blockade on volume two by January 2. Otherwise, the 11th Circuit can come back in and say, okay, rid of mandamus no longer in abeyance. You now have 30 days to make a ruling or whatever. And then that's the mandamus forcing her to rule, in which case she would have to. She would probably deny it at the very last minute on the very last day of however long they give her to do that. And then it's appealable to the 11th Circuit because right now it's trapped in her jurisdiction.

Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. This thing's been going on since Valentine's Day? Yeah, that's when DOJ dropped the charges and the Knight Institute filed their motion for her to vacate. She sat on it for eight and a half months. Did nothing. Wow. The argument to the 11th Circuit was that is effectively a denial.

So please order her to do something. Yeah. You can't just sit on something for eight months like that. Crazy. Unless it's my personal lawsuits that I have filed on the federal court docket, then they can sit there for years. Forever and ever, never. All right, everybody. But yeah, like I said, I couldn't find a deadline. We'll see what happens on January 2nd. But we've got a couple more very brief stories and some listener questions, but one last break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Okay, everybody, welcome back.

We have some updates on the Jim Comey and Letitia James cases, or what's left of them, I should say. Last week, we told you a judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the government from using, looking at, touching, smelling any of the materials seized from Daniel Richmond. That's Jim Comey's friend and lawyer, and they were seized from him pursuant to search warrants back in 2017, 2019, 2020. the first batch during Trump's Arctic Hays investigation into FBI leaks. Well, this week, the judge ordered those documents to be returned to Mr. Richmond as a remedy for the government violating his Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure. I read this from Kohler Koteli who said, look, there's a lot of different remedies for when the government violates someone's Fourth Amendment rights and keeps their stuff. One of those remedies is for that you have to give it back.

So she ordered it all to be given back to Dan Richmond. And that's in addition to the TRO we talked about last week where they had to sequester it, put it in a box, not look at it, make a single copy if you'd like, but you have to destroy everything else. And if you want to touch it again, you've got to get a search warrant. It's like Al Gore's lockbox. Okay. This week.

David Pecker's safe at the inquiry. This week, the Department of Justice filed its opposition, asking the court to allow Pam Bondi to designate some, to certify compliance with the order to give Dan Richmond his stuff back. They cite, yes, you heard that correct. They cite separation of powers saying only someone in the executive branch can order this, not the judiciary. They also asked for an additional week to comply with the court's order, which the judge granted.

The reason I'm laughing at that first part is because, yeah, we're telling you that the attorney general has to do this. Like nobody's, the judge didn't call the, you know, it's the dumbest weird thing. I totally did not understand this, but it comes, it becomes more clearer in a minute. Yeah, when the judge responds. When the judge responds, it's like, what are you talking about? Kohler-Cotelli says, the government requests a seven-day extension of its deadline to certify compliance with this court's order to give the stuff back, as well as several technical clarifications or modifications to the scope of the order. Petitioner Richmond does, not object to the government's request for a seven-day extension. But the, you know, Trump, the government

raise a variety of issues related to the handling of classified information and information that may be subject to the government's own privileges, including the attorney-client privilege and the deliberative process privilege. The government could have and should have raised many of these issues earlier in its initial response to Richmond's motion for return of property, but didn't do so. Of course. The court will clarify its order at greater length by separate order, and if appropriate, will request further briefing from the parties. For now, the court notes three important clarifications.

These are like the no-dah moments. Like, I'm going to write a bigger order later, but guys. I'll in detail lay out all of your mistakes, but I don't have time for that right now. So just let's get on with this. That's what she's saying here. okay the first important clarification on the present record it is the court's understanding that petitioner richmond has already consented to the deletion of classified material that may have been included in the image of his personal computer that is at issue here remember they don't actually take the computer they quote unquote make an image of the hard drive so this copy everything on it that's what she's talking yeah and and and dan richmond was like you don't have to give me that stuff right i don't want to classified back that's the last thing i need The DOJ is like, we need more time because there's classified in there. Accordingly, the court did not order and is not ordering the return of classified information to Petitioner Richmond.

The fact that they have to spell this out is just a ridiculous. Yeah. Further, this court's order directed the return of Petitioner Richmond's own materials and any copies of those materials. Not any derivative files that the government may have created. Okay, here, if anyone, like, read the stuff they weren't supposed to read, that was Richmond's, and then, like, wrote up a summary of it to give to their boss or whatever, that's what the derivative material is. Accordingly, compliance with the court's order will not intrude upon any of the government's privileges. Right. He just wants his own stuff back. He doesn't care what you had to say about it. You can't have privilege over his stuff. This is America for Christ.

sake. That's the whole reason this thing is in court because you took his stuff and you did not really have the legal right to do so. Okay. Finally, it was not the court's intention to require a personal certification of compliance by the attorney general of the United States. The court's memorandum opinion makes clear that a designee of the attorney general could discharge this responsibility. Like, dumb. So they had all of these ways to say, No, we object. And she's like, but you're, we don't want any of that stuff. It would be like if I asked you to give me my...

Like I asked you to give me my apples back and you're like, Your Honor, I refuse to give the oranges over. It's just the weirdest thing. Who is making the lawyer work over there? I don't know. But it doesn't seem like it's actual lawyers. All right. The deadline for the government certification of compliances continued.

Nunk pro-tunk, I've never been good at that one, to 4 p.m. Eastern on December 22nd. All right. So December 22nd is when that certification from a designee of the Attorney General is due that they gave him his stuff back and not anything that they wrote about it and not any classified information. Oh, my goodness. All right.

And as far as New York Attorney General Letitia James's case, we learned this week that on their most recent attempt to get an indictment from the grand jury, member, there were four attempts by Trump. First of all, Siebert wouldn't go to a grand jury. They fired him. Then Lindsay Halligan went, but she was a private citizen, so that got canceled. Then they went back again, and then they went back again.

So this is about the again again. This is the most recent one that happened two weeks ago. Okay, so they left, first of all, in that particular presentation to the grand jury, they left out the part where she used the second home as a rental property, probably because they have ample evidence now that she didn't do that. But they left the part where she didn't use the home personally.

She didn't, even though she put her family in there and visited and had extended stays, I guess it wasn't enough for them. They left that in there. But they added a third charge, another charge for lying on a bank document. And we're unclear as to what specifically the DOJ alleges she did.

But the grand jury rejected all three counts, three counts of that indictment. So the other ones that were rejected were two count indictments. This was a three count indictment with some language removed, but with some language added. They rejected that one as well. I have not heard yet. If they tried again a fifth time this past Thursday, just this past Thursday, I haven't heard. Maybe they've given up the ghost. I'm not sure. But by the way, a magistrate judge recently noted, Andy, that there is now a 21% dismissal rate for the DC U.S. Attorney's Office criminal complaints over the last

eight weeks. That's one in four almost, one in five. That is unbelievable. Normally, for the last decade, there's a 0.5 percent dismissal rate. If you had asked me totally outside the context of all this nonsense with the DCU has turned off, it's just like, hey, what percentage of cases are dismissed, I would have put it below, I would have guessed less than 0.5. It's really rare. And that's because, in the past, federal prosecutors are really careful. And they're very demanding of the evidence they want to bring a case forward, much to the chagrin of federal agents, FBI agents and others everywhere, constantly complaining, like, they're always asking us for more evidence, more evidence. But that's,

how you get that lower rate. But not anymore. Not anymore. 21% in the last eight weeks. And there's just, there's another one that just popped up in my news feed

in illegal immigrant charged for allegedly ramming his truck into federal officers in California. Those, the DOJ just moved to dismiss that criminal case against him in San Diego. Quoting,

additional investigation has caused the U.S. to reevalue, prosecution in this matter. Is that the guy whose sons were all Marines? I don't think so. But I'm not sure. I'd have to...

No, I'm confusing him with the guy who was working outside with a weed whacker maybe. No, yeah. Those is a truck driver. Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that.

But yeah, that guy, the magazineer brought in when questioning Christy Noem had a bunch of veterans stand up and then brought one in on Zoom that she deported. Yep. That was a brutal take down. It was rough.

I think that's all the news we have. That's it. That's plenty. That's good. We're going to talk about the Judge Dugan case over on cleanup on All 45, but that was a split verdict there. So the DOJ actually got a win. Yeah.

In that case, which honestly surprised me. But aside from that, yeah, I guess we're all through. And it's time for maybe a listener question. I think we've got a couple minutes left. I've got two quick ones for you. I think we can get through both of them pretty speedily. All right. So the first one, it comes to us from Grandma Kobe.

Hi, Grandma. Grandma says, AG and Andrew, thank you for helping us navigate this nightmare we are all living through. Every episode you make educates us without raising our anxiety levels with your calm, smooth, and almost sultry voices. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Now that feels a little weird having just done that because the next sentence starts with the Epstein files. When the government, here's her question. When the government seizes evidence, the target gets an inventory list of what is taken. That's absolutely right, Grandma. Are there copies of what they take? I understand that there are logs and chain of custody, but how do we know they didn't throw out burn or flush evidence?

She finishes by saying every week, I can't wait for the release of the next episode. and greedily take it in. Thank you so much for all you do. Well, thank you, Grandma. Great question. And thanks for listening. That's a really good question, too, because I was wondering that, too,

because the Democrats were demanding an audit of what's released in the Epstein files. But how do you know what's missing and what's not? I mean, we barely do that with classified information. Yeah. So, all right. So a little, as with all things, Epstein, it's way more complicated than you think.

Yes, when the government goes out and seizes evidence, like pursuant to a search warrant, they leave the person they got the evidence from with a receipt. Now, to be fair, these things are filled out by hand on the site of a search warrant most of the time. So the specificity can vary greatly. Sometimes, you know, if you're, let's say you're going into a doctor's office because you're investigating like Medicaid fraud or something like that, you might take like boxes and boxes of documents.

So that's going to be on the, that's going to say 13 boxes from room six, you know, something like that. So, so those, those receipts, inventory lists are, can be a little bit sketchy. But the Epstein files is a lot more than just evidence that was picked up at Epstein's residence or someplace else. It's a lot of internal government documents. So FBI 302s, right? the write-up of an interview of a witness or a victim or somebody like that. And there's really no way for anyone other than the FBI to know how many 302s were there. So if, and I'm not suggesting that they want to do this or that they are doing,

and I'm absolutely not suggesting that. But if the FBI decided we're just going to purge this particular document out of the system, I mean, I suppose, I don't know the mechanics of how you would do that, but I suppose it would, it could happen. Like there's no other entity that knows what was in there versus what's in there now. That's my only point. Now, I do not believe, you say what you want about Cash Patel

or Dan Bonjean or anyone else. I absolutely do not believe that the FBI would engage in like, holding documents back, not turning them over to DOJ, or turning them over to DOJ and having DOJ say, get rid of these, that is like unbelievably illegal and horrendous and is the sort of thing that could take down an entire institution. So I don't think that would happen. So I'm not, that's not my biggest concern when it comes to, you know,

tracking this issue and how do we know how transplant they're being. I think the government is going to look at everything they have. Where you're not going to see things is in the decisions around what gets redacted out of an individual document or what documents. So as I read the act, they can decide not to turn something over. They have 15 days to explain what they did.

We'll see how good those explanations are. But how do you know it's not being turned over, that it exists at all? I mean, yeah, well, I mean, what I'm saying is there's no perfect way to know that. Yeah. Based on how these systems work. I think that there will, you know, if they make decisions to hold things back or to redact things in a too broad way, you know, we'll have to see. Well, if something's redacted, we can see that it was redacted because you're going to have the rest of it, right?

it's more the withholding of something entirely that raises this issue. And again, you know, that's going to come down to how they handle that. And what sort of explanations are you a process for that. If you have predicate to believe that stuff was withheld, then you can launch an investigation. And then you would go in and start asking people around the office or, you know, teams. Did you see anything with stuff withheld? Did you discuss anything, et cetera, et cetera. You have to do an investigation.

And that's not going to happen under this administration. Absolutely not, right. So in other words, a special counsel or some such thing would have to come in in a subsequent administration and run a suit to nuts kind of one end to the other sort of investigation interviewing hundreds, thousands of people and going through thousands and thousands of files to see what's there and compare it to what was what was actually turned over. Yeah. All right. Did we have another quick question we can get to you? said that there were. couple and I. I did. Here you go. It comes from Heather and Heather asks to the all-knowing truth seekers, which I believe she means us, will Bongino lay low or start podcasting again? How soon will he spill the beans on FBI under Cash Patel? Thank you for the show. He'll get back on the microphone and start lying probably almost immediately. Yeah, for sure. He missed it so much. He hated that he was under scrutiny. He told Fox News that he was like, oh, I used to give my opinions and now I have to deal

with facts. And it just seemed like it hurt him so much that he had to deal with facts. So I imagine it's going to be pretty fast. He loved having fawning cult members listening to him and listening to his lies and his conspiracy theories. So I don't think it'll be long. And the fact that he worked in the FBI, he can pretty much just say, oh yeah, this is what I saw and this is what happened. And it could be complete like just totalize totally agree he's gonna hold i don't think he'll go after patel i don't think there's much of an upside for him there but i do think he'll like hold himself out now is the greatest expert of the 100 year history of the f i've spent three months in the deep state or whatever in my eight months working there i learned these three things or whatever yeah it's going to be kind

of comical but that's that's the business he's in He'll put out a book, Deep State from the inside or whatever. Yeah. Look for it. All right, everybody, thank you for your questions. There's a link in the show notes if you want to submit a question. Thanks for hanging in there with us. I know it was a lot of news this week, but we really appreciate it.

So I'm going to go like the party girl that I am and spend my Friday night searching the Epstein files for stuff. But probably coming up woefully short about finding anything. But we really do appreciate you, all of you that are listening. We couldn't do this without you. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. So thank you. Yes, absolutely. It's been a rough week, man.

A lot of really dark news this week. So hopefully you've had a couple of yucks here listening to the show and come back next week and get a few more. All right. We'll see you then, everybody. I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie.

Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.