Jack - FBI and DHS Override Prosecutors

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

A top Justice Department official threatened prosecutors with termination if they didn’t pursue voter fraud cases.Minnesota officers arrested ICE agent Christian Castro during a traffic stop after Texas Governor Greg Abbott refused to extradite him. Castro now faces both federal and state charges stemming from the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Selis. Kash Patel testified before the Senate this week and defended lowering standards for hiring agents at the Bureau. The FBI halted cooperation with Canada over references to the September 11th attacks, further straining relationships with foreign law enforcement agencies.Plus listener questions.Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT?   Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AGMueller, She Wrote SubstackMueller She Wrote on Blueskyhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodMore from Andrew McCabeThe Real McCabe on [e-mail] on BlueskyThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump This Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at https://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. A top Justice Department official threatened prosecutors with termination if they didn't pursue voter fraud cases. Minnesota officers arrested ICE agent Christian Castro during a traffic stop after Texas Governor Greg Abbott refused to extradite him. Castro now faces both federal and state charges stemming from the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Salas. Cash Patel testified before the Senate this week and defended lower. standards for hiring agents at the Bureau. And the FBI halted cooperation with Canada over references to the September 11th attacks, further straining relationships with foreign law enforcement agencies.

This is unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to 87, episode 87 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, September 20th, 2026. I didn't get any indictment or grand jury subpoena for, episode 86, so I think we're in the clear. Nice. I'm Allison Gill. I'm Andy McCabe.

Allison's not much going on this week. Just kidding. Just kidding. Lots to cover today. But as usual, at the end of the show, we will take some listener questions. Of course, if you have a question for us, you can click on the link in the show notes and fill out the form to send your question along. We love reading them and we like answering them as well.

So please continue to submit them to us as your questions arise. Excellent. And Andy, before we get into the lead story, which by the way, blows my mind. As it should. I wanted to touch base on something. If you thought our discussion, listeners, dear listeners, gentle listeners, if you thought our discussion about the FBI lowering its hiring standards to allow for theft, prostitution and bestiality last Sunday was strange,

nothing could have prepared you for Kosh Patel's testimony on the Hill just two days later. And I want to play this brief clip for you. I mean, he testified a bunch, but this was a standout moment. It's an exchange between Kosh Patel and Republican Senator John Kennedy. Let's listen. What about the bestiality? Same thing, because the regs wrote it up in a fashion before I arrive that addressed prostitution, beastiality, and trafficking.

They were there before I got there. Tell me what it said before. It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminals. The bestiality? Yes. So you disqualified the animal? Well, I don't think we have great canines, but we're not going to disqualify it.

I understand. I'm trying to understand why you did this. This is not directed at you, Mr. Director. And I understand the game. People try to make you look bad. We do the same thing when the other party's in office. And all this stuff has really hurt the FBI. It's really hurt the FBI.

So I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. Why would you, why would you, in light of the context, and what we're going through and we're having a tough time attracting agents, good quality agents we all can trust

because so many people fairly or unfairly think that in order to be an FBI agent now your political point of view matters. Why would you even get into bestiality? We are not into

beastiality, but a lot of these individuals I know you're not, but you changed But I'm trying to explain it. You changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality. If Joe participated in beastiality, not as the animal, but as the human, don't you think he ought to be qualified, disqualified? If he voluntarily did it, sure, but if he was trafficked into it, then you would involuntarily do it.

In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers, who are some of the worst individuals on planet Earth, They don't just traffic you for prostitution. They traffic you for degrading acts of all kind, and they force you into that type of conduct. And some of these individuals would go on to be law enforcement officers who qualified to be law enforcement officers and later applied to the FBI. I mean, this didn't, these changes didn't start with you, did they? Somebody came to you and recommended it? Yeah.

Yeah. And when you saw bestiality, I say this with respect, the person who recommended it, why didn't you just say what planet did you parachute in from? Why do I want to leave? Well, that was my initial response. Why do I want to leave with my chin and get into bestiality? That was my initial response, Senator.

But they then explained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and had applied to the FBI. And so I thought they should be considered. It's not an automatic disqualification. That's all. Okay. All right. I think I understand.

But you're not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent? No. Are you? No. They can't be, can't? They cannot.

In fact, they ought to be in jail, right? They all are. Yeah, well, okay. So you're going to disqualify the animal? Okay, so what he's saying here? What Kash Patel took a long time to get around to saying, is that if you were trafficked, like a victim of sex trafficking and forced into bestiality, you're not disqualified from working at the FBI, which begs the question, Andy,

are there throngs of people that were sex trafficked into bestiality that are trying to apply for jobs at the Bureau? And if there aren't, why do you need to change the whole rule for it? I mean, if memory serves, you can get like an individual waiver for something, unless, I mean, it's an automatic disqualification? I mean, of course. So this all felt to me watching the testimony like, this is Patel constructing some sort of after-the-fact rationalization for a really big PR mess that he, you know,

this is an own goal, right? Self-inflicted wound. But let's say this was actually a conversation that they had. This is that he felt this need to be done. What's the thing to be done? the population of people who are applying to be FBI agents who were also trafficking victims infinitesimally small, like not even identifiable, probably. And of that population, you then winnow it down to those trafficking victims who were forced into acts of bestiality. I defy you

to go through all the applications we received in the last decade and show me anyone. So, no, I had never heard of anything about this in all my time, the Bureau. And I did spend a fair amount of time working with our HR folks and our training folks on issues like hiring, recruiting, standards, how we were filling classes or not, that sort of thing. So this is not something that ever came up. So end of the day, a completely needless, embarrassing, regretful distraction for the FBI. The FBI has never discriminated against anyone who has been a victim of crime. he could have handled this by just saying, hey, let's say for every disqualifier, narcotics, criminal activity, whatever, let's say the disqualifiers are all intended to

apply to people who voluntarily engaged in the described behavior. If you have extenuating circumstances that indicates you did these things, but not voluntarily you can apply for a waiver from the policy. It's just a policy. It's not a law. Yeah. So there are many other ways that this could have been handled. It clearly wasn't handled any other way. And once again, draws the spotlight too. The problem here is Cash Patel and his incredibly poor judgment. Yeah. And Senator Dick Durbin had an exchange with him because his actual language says anyone who's engaged in beast reality. It's no longer. And he's like, so, So now you're going from engaged in to victim of.

You're just turning it on its head as you sit here in front of us. And of course, Kosh Patel said something like, I've arrested 10 million people and you should shut up or, you know, whatever. He turns to whenever he doesn't like a question that is asked of him. So just all in all, a very bizarre set of testimony. I mean, so many senators. asked about this. But Kennedy, I thought, was like, so wait, what? Yeah. And I'm, you know, normally not a huge fan of his. I think he's, he loves the spotlight, these moments and

testimony, he's just, you know, he's always going to say something a little crazy. But he's the one person that said that got to the question of like, why would you have done this? This was such a stupid decision. And of course, Patel didn't really have an answer for that. I thought Durbin's questioning, too, was one of the low points for me. Not. because of Durbin, but because of the way Cash Patel acted while Durbin was asking him questions. He wouldn't even look the guy in the face. The whole time, he just turned his head away and was reading his little cheat sheet of pre-written zingers.

So incredibly disrespectful, so unprofessional. And, you know, I'm just thinking back to all the time. I've been in that chair, many of those chairs many, many times. No one likes it. It's uncomfortable, especially when someone is asking you hard questions or things you don't really want to talk about, but you have to. It's your job. The FBI is obligated by law to disclose things to Congress. This is how oversight works.

And also, there will be a time when the director needs to go to Congress and ask for more people, more money, more legal authority. For example, 702 reauthorization, right? I think comes up all the time. In those moments, you're going to need more people than just the senators or the congresspeople who share your political preference. You're going to need more than that to get the job done for the FBI and get those people the resources they need. And Cash Patel is never going to be able to do that because he's so, is such a partisan that he can't even look at people from the other side or grace their questions with his attention and a legitimate answer. It's disgraceful, and he's not doing his job. No, no, he's not.

And there's some pretty incredible shenanigans going on over with Akash Singh at the Department of Justice. You have this story from MS now, yeah? Yeah, for sure. So it comes from MS now. And they're saying that a senior Justice Department official warned managers in a recent conference call that federal prosecutors could be fired if they declined. to investigate and pursue cases of reported election fraud, according to two people with knowledge of the call. Akash Singh, the top lieutenant to the Deputy Attorney General, warned that Department of Justice lawyers must pursue, again, must pursue election fraud cases that the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security agents present to them, or risk termination, according to the people who sought anonymity to avoid reprisals for sharing internal discussion.

discussions. This is, I'm worried that this might read as not that big of a deal to folks. Like, oh, you know, well, they're just trying to go after political enemies or whatever. But check this out, Andy. I've never heard anything like this. Singh told supervisors that FBI and DHS can overrule a prosecutor who declines to pursue an investigation and that the office of the deputy attorney general is going to be the one to make the final call on whether a case goes forward. That's what one of the people told MS now. That is bonkers to me. Yeah, absolutely bad shit crazy. To think that the investigators get to stroll in and tell the prosecutors what to do that is like, let's turn the world upside down now. Yeah. Now, word of his

comments, Singh's comments, which came in last week in a standing weekly conference call with senior supervisors overseeing criminal prosecutions in U.S. Attorney's offices, that word of what he said quickly spread through the department. The news shocked many because the instructions appeared to override and reject longstanding Justice Department rules, which require prosecutors to independently assess whether the evidence presented to them justifies investigating further and possibly bringing a prosecution. Now, Justice Department spokesperson, Emily Covington, denies that Singh threatened to fire people.

So they know how terrible and bad this is. Yeah. Quote, he never said anybody. She goes, he never said anybody would be fired. That's what she said in an emailed statement. And went on to say, the department's been very clear, that election integrity is a priority. This isn't a partisan issue.

Yes, it is. Only those who are allowed to vote should be voting in our election. that's what happens 99.99.995% of the time. If you break the law, you'll be charged accordingly. That's not what he said. He said the FBI and DHS can overrule a prosecutor and that you could be prosecuted or fired, excuse me, if you don't do what we tell you to. Yeah. Yeah. So the internal reports of Singh's threat come as the Trump administration has aggressively sought to investigate non-citizens for possible or supposed illegal voting. The results of those investigations, led in part by the DHS investigative unit referred to as Homeland Security Investigations,

have so far turned up little evidence of fraud or crime. No kidding. The department reportedly targeted nine states in a recent surge and has been hunting through some voting roles for non-citizens illegally voting in elections. Former Justice Department prosecutors and election security experts said any pressure on prosecutors to pursue election fraud cases is dangerous for the public and ignores decades of Justice Department policy designed to avoid unfounded investigations.

Quote, if true, this is outrageous, said Ryan Crosswell, former Justice Department prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section, which oversaw election crime prosecutions, for the Trump administration dismantled the office. Quote, it is the prosecutor, the expert on the criminal law, and the expert on whether the facts satisfy the elements of the crime that has to make these decisions. Yeah, that's what, that's, that you have one job.

That's it. Yeah, no kidding. It's called prosecutorial authority for discretion. Yeah. It's not agent's discretion. There were many times I wished it was, but it's not. That's not how the game works. That's why the FBI doesn't bring charges.

That's why the T.J does. Yeah, yeah. Just absolute. My mind is blown by. The damn handbook says you have to be able to sustain and maintain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt in order to bring charges. Like, it's right there in the handbook. And so they're just throwing that out the window here. Pretty much.

Now, former prosecutors say they fear prosecutors face a chilling. effect from such a threat, yeah, but the greater harm is to citizens who may now face unwarranted accusations from the immensely powerful Justice Department. Quote, one of the most important parts of the prosecutor's oath is to ensure that they shut down investigations if the evidence isn't there. That's Ryan Crosswell again. This is a protection of everyday citizens. Crosswell resigned in early 2025 when Trump political appointee Emil Bovi ordered his public integrity section to shut down that corruption investigation into then New York Mayor Eric Adams. Singh has been an unabashed and fierce defender of some of the Trump White House's most

controversial efforts to deploy the Justice Department for its policy goals, including efforts to deport immigrants and prosecute protesters of immigration and customs enforcement surges in key states. Singh also championed a rule requiring prosecuting, to carry a minimum caseload of 25 cases, turning upside down the department's traditional support for pursuing complex and time-consuming investigations with greater impact. Singh was also instrumental in bringing criminal charges against Kilmara Brago-Garcia, which have since been dismissed for vindictive and selective prosecution. Attorney General Todd Blanche recently promoted Singh to be Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General,

which we refer to as the pay dag. It's a position widely considered the number three job in the department with responsibility of overseeing all daily operations. Singh has enjoyed a strikingly rapid rise through the agency since President Trump was re-elected, formerly a line prosecutor in the Eastern District of North Carolina without any supervisory experience. Singh became a key aide to Blanche

and most recently served as an associate in the Deputy Attorney General's office. Now, prosecutors being ordered to pursue all cases or face termination violates what many Justice Department attorneys consider their professional Bible. I put that in quotes. That's the department's principles of federal prosecution, sometimes called the prosecutor's manual. Several, that's according to several former Justice Department attorneys who spoke to MS. Now. Singh's warning, as shared by insider accounts, would void the prosecutor's duty to assess the legal basis for opening investigation and measure the likely success and merits of a case before you proceed. The published Justice Department principles impose a duty on prosecutors to carefully weigh the evidence that investigators present alongside the law and the public interest in opening a probe or pursuing a prosecution.

The principal state that, quote, a prosecutor may commence or recommend federal prosecution only if he or she believes that the person will more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased tier of fact, trier of fact, excuse me, and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal, which is I think what I mentioned earlier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Crosswell said the Trump Justice Department's reported emphasis on pursuing election fraud is especially disturbing. He said his former office received numerous reports of alleged violations of election law, and the vast majority ended up producing no evidence of a crime. Quote, the fact that the one area where they appear to be doing this as election cases makes this even more chilling, Crosswell said. According to a ProPublica investigation of data from the Department of Justice, between January 2025 and May 26, 41 alleged non-citizen voters were charged with involvement

in unlawful voting practices or voting illegally. More than 150 million people voted in the 2024 presidential election and more than 112 million ballots were cast in the last midterm election. Non-citizen voting is extremely rare, even by the Conservative Heritage Foundation's own assessment. Despite the president's obsession with uncovering widespread non-citizen voter fraud, his administration has failed to produce evidence to back up its claims. But I got to say, A.G., you and I and many people listening out there know that this is just the pry bar.

This is just the excuse to decertify elections, gum up the process, and walk away from what otherwise would be a free and fair democratic result. after all this time and all this experience, Donald Trump knows as well as anybody else that non-citizen voting does not happen. But it's being able to say it's happening, throwing all these investigators and prosecutors at it and seizing voting documents from different states and demanding the voter rolls. This is just laying the foundation for all sorts of complaints that would be made later if the midterm elections don't go the way that the president would prefer. I guess the good news, the silver lining is that none of those cases prevailed in 2020. And I don't see any of them prevailing this time either. But there will be tons and tons of lawsuits. No doubt.

After this election. All right. Well, thanks for that reporting. Thanks to MS now for that reporting. That's a bombshell. That's the lead story this week. And so, you know, I just, I'd never heard. Like, we could all sort of guess that's what they were doing.

But to hear somebody say it in a conference call with a bunch of people, like, it's just bizarre. Yeah. And, you know, like the article said, it's spread like wildfire throughout the department concerning tons of people. Do you remember how worried we were in 2020 when Bill Barr changed DOJ policy and put out, this memo to the to the to the all the u.s. attorneys office is basically saying any questions about election cases have to come in and must be reviewed by him and then eventually rudy juliani was somehow involved in all that nonsense so like that was like dipping your toe in the water this is like diving headfirst

into the pool there's no messing around here it's just like do it don't even look at the evidence just move forward yeah all right well Well, our next story, despite Greg Abbott's best efforts to keep Castro out of the hands of Minnesota law enforcement, he was arrested. We're going to talk about that and his plea in federal court after this quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Next up from NPR, the Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio. I got this, put this story together from a ton of different resources because not every story covered all the aspects that I wanted it to hit. Christian Castro, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot a man through the door of a North Minneapolis home in January was released Thursday evening on conditional bail from the Hennepin County Jail where he was held for state-level charges.

At his first appearance at federal district court in St. Paul on Friday, he's a busy fellow. In this separate case, Castro pled not guilty to six charges of making false statements stemming from six alleged lies, he told the FBI. after the shooting. Now, Castro had appeared in state court in downtown Minneapolis the day before to face state charges on four counts of second-degree assault, as well as one count of falsely reporting a crime. On January 14, during the peak of Operation Metro surge, Castro engaged in a car chase with Alfredo, El Jorna, ending at El Jorna's home in North Minneapolis. Castro and another ice agent had mistaken Algornah for another Latino man, according to an FBI affidavit.

Aljornah exited his car and slipped as he tried to get inside his house, at which point Castro attempted to arrest Aljornah. Julio Cesar Sozacelis, who is Aljornah's roommate, tried to help Aljornah, leading to an 11-second scuffle between the three. After both men escaped and ran inside the house,

Castro shot at them with the bullet passing through the front door, and hitting Sosa Seles in the leg before coming to a stop in the wall of a child's bedroom according to charging documents. What a mess. In an interview in the aftermath of the shooting,

Castro told an FBI agent that Sosa Seles and Aljornah had assaulted him with a broom and a snow shovel in a three-minute fight before Castro opened fire, leading to assault charges against the two men that were dropped after surveillance footage proved Castro's statements false.

Yeah. State prosecutors charged Castro in May and Minnesota State and a federal grand jury indicted him in early September. An assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota, that's the feds, had been pursuing hefty federal civil rights charges against Castro for the shooting itself, but was instructed by Maine Justice to downgrade those charges. The attorney was then fired, according to CBS News. and that's citing four unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The state and federal cases are taking place simultaneously. Castro, who's refused to consent to extradition to Minnesota from a Texas jail for months, turned himself into federal authorities in early September after a federal grand jury indicted him with those six charges.

He was released on bond after appearing in federal court in McAllen, Texas, in order to appear into federal court in Minnesota for the Friday hearing this past week. Castro drove up to Minnesota from Texas this week, where he was arrested Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Dan Gertz, who is representing Castro, said the arrest was prearranged and that he had been in contact with the BCA to arrange his clients surrender while Castro traveled from Texas. Gertz said the parties agreed to make the arrest at his law office, but Castro was instead arrested on the street. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety said in a statement that Castro's arrest was not planned or voluntary and that Castro was taken into custody around 2.15 p.m. BCA agents were trying to negotiate a surrender with Castro but saw an opportunity to arrest him and took it. Quote, you do not get to dictate how you were taken into custody, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at a press conference following the court appearance.

Good for them. Let's remember the guy fled the state and wouldn't come back. And they tried to extradite him to do it legally. And the Texas governor opposed it, blocked it. Yeah, yeah. And that was that arrest, that street arrest, a traffic stop. It was a full circle moment after the BCA traveled to Texas to help with the initial arrest of Castro by members of the Texas Rangers in May. Now, that arrest set off a lengthy legal process as Minnesota law enforcement officials waited for,

Governor Greg Abbott to sign extradition paperwork to send Castro to Minnesota. The state of Minnesota unsuccessfully sued Abbott in federal court to force the extradition. The paperwork was never signed as Abbott continued to investigate the charges against Castro, or so he says, and then last month he walked out of a Texas jail of free man after 90 days in custody. Quote, Mr. Castro was taken into custody by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension earlier today in Minneapolis and were grateful to the BCA for their collaboration throughout. That again, Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County attorney. Governor Abbott's attempt to shield Mr. Castro from accountability has failed. We look forward to commencing our prosecution. And I love that because after Greg Abbott unlocked a jail cell

and let Castro walk out, he went on social media and mocked Minnesota officials. Like a niner, nina, you couldn't make me. And so they, that, So, of course, if you got him at a traffic stop, you arrest him and you bring him in. And now she's got the last laugh. Once you have the arrest warrant, you're supposed to take that person as soon as you can. And you're certainly not going to delay it if there's a risk of flight. This is just how it works. And if they did not come to a, you know, the idea of like being allowed to self-surrender

or be arrested at, you know, your attorney's officer, whatever, that's a courtesy that prosecutors extend in some cases to people who they believe, you know, for whatever reason, deserve it. So, yeah, it's not guarantee. On Thursday, Henneman County District Judge Paul R. Skagin set bail at $200,000 if Castro agrees to not possess firearms, not contact witnesses, to be electronically monitored, to sign a waiver of extradition, which is an agreement to be extradited without a form of. hearing in the future, the NV flees somewhere else and is later arrested, and to surrender his passport to state authorities immediately if he gets it back from federal authorities.

Now, Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty said that she expects Castro to file a motion to move the state case to federal court, which she said her office is prepared to litigate. Castro was released on conditional bail from state custody at around 6 p.m. Thursday, according to the Hennepin County Sheriff's Jail roster. He wore a black suit and an ankle monitor to federal court on Friday, a stark difference from the day prior when he was still in state custody and appeared in state court in a glass panel box and an orange jail uniform. Sorry, that pleases me. Yikes.

Yikes. There's just no aspect of this story that's normal or like uplifting. The whole thing is just a saga of, from a myth. mess that never should have happened when they were following the wrong guy anyway and tried to arrest him in his front lawn as he ran into his house. I mean, what a, what a disaster. Yeah. Yeah. For even Trump's DOJ to even bring charges of lying to the FBI is pretty astounding. But it is not surprising that they quashed any assault with a deadly weapon charges, civil rights under color of law charges in the civil rights division. And then against the strong objective,

of the prosecutor who was then fired. Yeah. And let's remember, like, that is the absolute least they could have done here because the only reason we're here talking about this is because the whole thing was caught on video, right? They ignored this, they weren't investigating, anything. They were happy to prosecute these two innocent people until the video came up and got shoved in their face

and then they had to do something. So this is the least they could have done. And while all this nonsense is going on, we're nowhere with an investigation of what happened to Alex Preddy or Renee Good. Yeah, no, you're right. Anyway, I'm very happy that he's brought into custody. I'll be watching. We'll be watching both of these cases because we still don't have any charges in the Alex

Preddy or Renee Good murders because the feds won't cooperate with Minnesota authorities there. in this particular case, Minnesota was right on it. They investigated. They got all the information evidence they needed so they didn't have to rely on the feds. And so we'll be watching both these state and federal charges. Remember, state charges are not pardonable by the president of the United States. That's an important distinction here. So we'll keep an eye on these cases going forward. All right. Next up, we have a story about the federal grand conspiracy case. which, you know, I will take the lead on. So I get to take a break for the next block.

Have some water, maybe throw in a no comment, well placed here or there. I can do that, I'm sure. But this story actually did, has prompted me to want to ask you some questions about investigations in general, not this specific investigation. So we'll get to all of that right after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. back. Andy say hi. It's the last time you'll talk for a minute. Hello, everybody.

Next story is about the federal grand conspiracy case. So we'll have to take the reins. I will have to take the reins on this one as Andy is no comment mode. This reporting comes from Gerstein and Cheney at Politico, who just by the way got ousted from the White House press room along with CNN and MS now. Federal prosecutors are still pursuing multiple grand jury investigations, multiple into Trump's perceived enemies, including a far-reaching probe into purported violations of Trump's civil rights, a prominent defense attorney said in a court filing on Monday. We know this because ex-CIA chief, John Brennan's lawyers, have said this stuff in a court filing. One of the ongoing investigations focuses on whether the former CIA director lied to a House committee about the intelligence community's conclusion

that Russia sought to aid Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, according to Kenneth Weinstein. That's an attorney for Brennan. He did not lie. Neither did the other 600 investigations about what happened in Russia. We're going to go after the Senate Intelligence Committee next? Right. Yeah.

You're going to bring in Marco Rubio? Just drag Marco Rubio and he wrote that summary. John Huber. I mean, look, there's a whole of Durham, all these people. Now, Weinstein said in a declaration filed in federal court in D.C. that he participated in a conference call Friday with several prosecutors handling this grand conspiracy case, including Kurt Olson, who strategized with Trump about ways to block Joe Biden's 2020 victory, who worked on an unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge. Red states filed to that election. And that was the Texas V suit for Texas v. Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court was like, no. And it's also the one, by the way, that Trump intervened on as a candidate for president, which has really helped Jack Smith's case in proving that he wasn't the president at the time and therefore didn't have immunity. Anyway, I digress. Those were the olden days. Kurt Olson was also brought into this administration earlier this year to pursue Trump's false claims that the election was stolen.

Now, Weinstein said Kurt Olson also described a far-reaching investigation. into whether Trump's civil rights were violated by the criminal investigations he faced after leaving office. John Brennan is a subject of that broader probe. Weinstein said he was told, and the investigation of the former CIA chief's comments to Congress should be treated as an element of that larger grand conspiracy. The president's loyalists have viewed the probe into violations of Trump's civil rights as some sort of carmic comeuppance for the people who investigated him, including former special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump, as we know, violating civil rights laws by seeking to disenfranchise millions of voters. Trump's most vocal defenders have long suggested his Justice

Department should use the same criminal charge to target his adversaries. Kurt Olson described those efforts to Brennan's attorney just one day after the abrupt resignation of Joseph de Genova, former prosecutor who rejoined the Trump administration earlier this year, specifically to work on this investigation. Waynestein indicated that he received a grand jury subpoena signed by DeGeneva and exchanged emails with him just hours before he resigned. The subpoena called for Brennan to appear before a grand jury in Fort Pierce on October 15th. Now, DeGeneva's departure, which took some members of his team by surprise, appears to have followed tension over whether some charges should be filed quickly, perhaps in advance of the midterm election. So we're getting closer to the bottom of this.

No comment. In an interview last week, DeGeneva, who says he wouldn't discuss it further, discussed it further. Of course he did. That was my addition to the story, by the way. Quote, I take my time when I bring cases. Whatever the facts show they show, however long that takes to do it properly, it takes. Sometimes it takes longer than some people want. And they want things done faster.

And that's just not possible sometimes. So as a result, there's disagreements about timing, and that happens all the time in the Department of Justice. Sounds to me like the Department of Justice wanted to charge before the midterms, and DeGeneva wasn't ready. I'm just speculating. No comment. That's what I was waiting for. The filing disclosing the new grand jury subpoena came in a lawsuit. He filed to get federal agencies to retain evidence.

that could be used in his defense if he's charged. And at a hearing in this lawsuit on Monday, U.S. District Judge Gia Cobb sounded very skeptical of Brennan's argument. She said, do you have any evidence that there's something happening to any investigation of this plaintiff that suggests the government is not preserving records? That's what Cobb asked. She's a Biden appointee. And she also expressed concern that the suit relied on various contingencies about whether Brennan would be charged and what the charges could be. Now, Weinstein acknowledged that he doesn't have direct evidence of destruction in the Brennan probes, but noted several top officials have been part of encrypted chats on other matters on platforms like signal that can be set to auto-delete.

Quote, it's sort of putting the cart before the horse, Waynestein said. The government's not going to disclose what it's destroying. Now, Weinstein acknowledged the suit was unprecedented, but said, so is Trump's directive to prosecute his opponents. Now, Andy, aside from this case, speaking more generally, you can't talk about this particular case. Have you heard of a party having to ask the DOJ to preserve records? Because, I mean, they normally do. And I think Judge Cobb here, since this is a civil suit filed by Brennan,

is actually right on the law here because you actually have to suffer an irreparable harm, you can't be standing on some potential future thing that hasn't happened yet. And he hasn't been indicted. And there's no direct evidence that any documents have been destroyed. But in general, have we ever even had to ask the DOJ to preserve records? It's always sort of, well, I know that the DOJ asks us to preserve our records when they want to investigate us. That they do. That they do. So this is a brand new one by me. I've never seen anything like this, particularly in the context of criminal investigations. Because although this lawsuit is civil, it's obviously being filed to protect, well, I'm not going to say obviously it looks to me like it's being filed to protect, in this case, Mr. Brennan's position in these criminal investigations.

In a normal criminal investigation, the prosecution is obligated to collect and preserve evidence, not just evidence for, to prove their case, but also evidence that goes to, that's to the benefit of the defendant. And all that material must be turned over to the defense. So there's very clear rules about not just keeping stuff. Yeah, Brady and Jenks required prosecutors to turn over, basically evidence of innocence or evidence that could be used by the defendant to impeach the prosecution's witnesses. So, yeah, really never comes up. And I agree with you. I think the judge's skepticism is fair here because it's such a weird thing and there are questions about standing and is this even necessary? Is there a real case or controversy at the bottom of this suit? But on the other

hand, and this is why they're in kind of the pickle, we know that this administration, many people, many leaders and people in positions of power in this administration are having chats on signal and using personal devices and personal emails and all kinds of things like that. And so there's a, I mean, just as an observer of the administration, I would say it's fair to presume that they are not following the standard, you know, records, preservation sort of rules and procedures. I think that might be something that could be left up to a jury, though, and maybe not necessarily a matter of law.

Yeah, but then it's too late. Yeah, and it's too late. So if they're like I see that I get Weinstein's argument. He's a very, very talented, smart lawyer. I don't know. The suit may just be kind of the means of like putting everybody on notice, you know, but. Like, oh, we told you later. We can point back to it.

But also the terrifying thing here is he's right. There is no way to, Weinstein's right. There's no way to know if the government is destroying. for example, Brady material or James material. And, you know, if he's anticipating, if Brennan is indicted in one or more of these cases, he's thinking, I would guess, he's thinking, like, we may be in a position to want to file a selective

and vindictive prosecution motion. And the success for those is always a long shot. And to be successful, you really need solid evidence of what the prosecution, the prosecutors, intended. And for that, you would want things like internal communications between prosecutors or between the DOJ and the White House, if any exist. That's not the kind of stuff that you ever use in a normal criminal defense case. So it is a weird situation that I think, I think Mr. Weinstein is right to be concerned about this. I just don't know that he's got a lot of really obvious avenues to, you know,

to protect this stuff. No, and that did come up in the hearing, by the way, that this is pursuant to a possible vindictive and selective prosecution motion. There you go. In the event of an indictment. All right, a little bit more here. The Justice Department also issued grand jury subpoenas last year

connected to the Intelligence Community's 2017 assessment on foreign interference in the 2016 campaign. No comment. Yeah. Biggars. Wayne Stee just. I don't know anybody who participated in that 2017 assessment. Weinstein has indicated that Brennan provided some records related to one such subpoena.

And in April of this year, prosecutors are also issued grand jury subpoena seeking testimony about Brennan's appearance before Congress. But the latter set of subpoenas were dropped shortly after DeGeneva joined the Justice Department ranks that month. Huh. Federal prosecutors do not normally subpoena the targets of grand jury and. investigations to testify because they will almost always invoke their Fifth Amendment right. However, Wainstein said that Kurt Olson indicated that while Brennan is a target of that probe focused on his testimony, he's not currently a target of the broader probe he was subpoenaed to testify in, which is odd because in a conspiracy case, everyone's a target.

I mean, come on, dude. I'm no Kurt Olson, Andy. I don't even have a law degree, but I don't know. But Andy, remind us the difference between, we haven't talked about this in a long time, the difference between targets and subjects, not pursuant to this specific investigation, just in general. Targets, subjects, witnesses, what are the differences? Yeah, sure. So it is confusing because they're thrown around a lot and not used accurately by many people. And they're also different between DOJ and the FBI. So a target to the DOJ, a target is someone who's basically going to be a defendant. You are like at the red hot center of a grand jury

investigation and they expect that you're probably going to get indicted. A subject is to the DOJ is just someone whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury investigation. I know there's a lot of nuance there, but the subject is basically like you could think if you were the person being described by one of these words. And they call you a subject. You're in like medium risk problem. And they say you're a target. You're a high risk of getting indicted.

On the FBI side, it's different because it's more like we call anyone who is who we are investigating a subject. And in the FBI, when we've opened an investigation on you, your name goes in the title of that case. that's the traditional way to do it, unless the case has a code name for whatever security reasons or whatever. That's, I'm sorry, that's a subject to the FBI.

You are the subject of investigation. And to the FBI, a target is a person or a business or an entity that is currently under an electronic surveillance order. So you're a target because there's a Title III order intercepting your emails or your phone calls or whatever or a FISA court order. So Target is exclusively in the area of electronic surveillance.

Interesting. Thank you for that, my friend. Because it's always good to have those little reminders about, you know, they don't really explain them to us every time. They write an article. So thank you for that. In DOJ speak, you're probably getting indicted. Subject, you very well could get indicted or maybe not.

That's basically what it comes down to at the department. Yeah. All right, well, everyone, guess what's next? Oh, I have a guess. It's time to hit me in the head with a bat. But it's a little different. We're doing a twist on Hit Me in the Head with a Bat this week. So we'll go over that after this break.

Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, it's time for your favorite segment. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Now, usually we focus on the loss of the present.

assumption of regularity that the DOJ used to enjoy from the judicial branch. But this week, we're going to change it up a bit and discuss a different type of the erosion of trust that we've spoken about in the past. And that is the loss of trust between executive branch agencies and their law enforcement partners. Okay. So this one's going to go in a slightly different direction, but the same theme that the current nonsense we're seeing is undermining the effectiveness of our justice system. Okay, so this story is from the New York Times, and it has a five-person byline,

including Maggie Haberman, Jane Bradley, Jonathan Swan, Adam Goldman, and Matina Stivas Grineff. Gridneff. Okay, so they say, Cash Patel, the FBI director, temporarily halted some cooperation

with the agency's counterpart in Canada this month after the nation's public broadcaster reminded its journalists of a longstanding policy not to refer to the September 11th attacks as terrorism without attribution to experts according to multiple officials with knowledge of the event. That is a longstanding policy, by the way. Now, the extraordinary move to punish the Royal Canadian Mounted Police appears to have been short-lived, and it was specific to Kash Patel's FBI. other parts of the U.S. government involved in intelligence sharing continued their operations.

And not every element of cooperation between the FBI and the amount of police was halted. That's according to the officials with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Still, the abrupt move by Mr. Patel risked disrupting FBI operations with Canada and jeopardizing the organization's relationship with Canada's national law enforcement agency, which works closely with the Bureau on a wide range of issues. including terrorism and cybersecurity cases. It came as President Trump was ramping up pressure on Canada, hitting the longtime U.S. ally with punishing tariffs

and taunting Prime Minister Mark Carney. FBI officials canceled meetings with their Canadian counterparts during the halt and cooperation, saying they would be out of touch for some time, leading to a chilling between the two agencies, according to officials with knowledge of the fallout. So yet another, I don't know, knee-jerk reaction that chips away at the cooperation between countries? I mean, how important is our intelligence cooperation with Canada? It's our neighbor.

Five-eyes. It's a five-eyes country, meaning they are one of five countries in the entire world that we share most. freely with. That's like huge volume of intelligence exchanges and our most sensitive stuff. We do like very sensitive joint operations with them. We do things with undercovers and technology and all sorts of things that you would never expose to a foreign government. We do that with our Five Eyes partners, particularly Canada. They are great partners. And I had extensive of interactions with them and all kinds of different jobs that I had in the Bureau and they are wonderful people who do great work.

You know, like any foreign country, they have their own way of doing things and sometimes it's not exactly the way we do. In this case, this guidance to journalists from their state broadcasting entity, I mean, even if you think it's a silly rule, which it might be, it's their rule. They did change it after this. They get to make their own rules for their own stuff. That's how it works, right? The journalists, I guess, didn't feel comfortable calling something terror without an expert to back them up on that, meaning all they would have to say is experts say, right?

Yeah, yeah. They don't actually need an expert there. Like, they don't need an Andy McCabe in the chair on CBC saying, I'm here to tell you. They can just say, according to the FBI or according to the 9-11 commission or according to. And that really pissed off Patel. Yeah. And, you know, it's long established that it was an act of terrorism. And so they, Canada went ahead and changed that because they were like, oh, geez, we can't lose our partnership with American law enforcement, national law enforcement. You know, there's two things that really jump out of me here. One is this comment that not every element of cooperation between the FBI and the amount of police was halted. That, the read behind the line there, that's like agents work in cases with Canadians continue doing it.

They're just like, whatever. I'm making my case go forward. I'm working with my partners. I'm just making it happen. And while a party that warms my heart to some degree, it's also really dangerous because it shows you that like agents on the ground and they are ignoring what the director is granting and raving about. And that is not a good condition. You know, that's not a good bill of health for the agency. The other thing that jumps out of me here is there was another article in the post a few days ago

about how basically the same thing has now happened with Brazil, because Brazil is on the outs with President Trump because he likes the old guy who's in jail, Bolsonaro, who's running against the current guy who I guess is a liberal or whatever. I'm not an expert on Brazilian politics. And so we have refused to acknowledge or accept Brazil's law enforcement adages that they want to send to this country. And they have now refused to accept ours. So we're at a point where we don't meet with Brazil anymore. Federal law enforcement agencies have told Brazilian authorities they will not be able to meet with them for like many months.

They're too busy, whatever. So again, these petty political battles are getting in the way. of intelligence exchanges with countries that are really important for us. So the things, the very relationships we built as a result of 9-11, the administration is apparently content to see those things just atrophy and die.

Yeah, sad and dangerous. Yeah. I don't know if, yeah, I read a report that something like Kash Patel is fired over like 10,000 years of experience at the FBI, like people, you know, with the amount of people that he's gotten rid of. And I don't know if they just don't understand the importance of those partnerships, like people who actually do it every day do, or if they're sitting there thinking, why do we need

to, why do we need Brazil's help? What the hell do they ever do for us? Without knowing what the hell else they do for us. Yeah, I mean, I, well, two things. I mean, here he is in his hearing the other day, bragging about the fact that he finally opened a Leagat office, that's an FBI office, and the U.S. Embassy in New Zealand. They were the only five-eye country without a full league at office. And isn't he great for opening an office there? Love New Zealand. Nice to have an office down there. But dude, you're basically shutting down cooperation with Canada. They're right over here. Right on the other side of us. We do so much more work with them just because, of their size, their location, yada, yeah, yeah, very obvious. So that's a little bit

ridiculous, but... Well, that's because he was just going to New Zealand to snorkel or whatever. I don't think... I mean, that certainly makes sense to me. It's not about doing important things. It's about doing what he wants. And boy, Senator Booker laid into him, by the way, in that hearing when he was like, look, you're just like an 18-year-old frat boy who couldn't get into the frat he wanted to get into. So now you're wielding levers of our power that we need to actually protect ourselves. Grassley, who can barely lift his gavel, is trying to get Booker to stop talking with his little tink,

tink of his gavel. And then Booker went after Grassley. Like, this is a sham. This is a sham hearing. You let Mike Lee go on for an extra four minutes, but you cut me off and that you won't tell the witness to shut up. You know, I mean, he just. Yeah.

Yeah. Such a wreck. Such a wreck. I think Patel is doing these things because he will just jump. on the bandwagon to mimic whatever Trump is doing in the moment. If Trump decides he hates Canada, then Patel's going to do something to mess with Canada. Trump decides he doesn't like the regime in Brazil, then FBI's not working with Brazil. He doesn't care about the overall kind of security impact.

It's just pleasing the dear leader. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. It's a show for one. All right. Thank you so much. That's an interesting installment of Hit Me in the Head with a Bat. in which I think gosh Patel is hitting himself in the head with a bat. But regardless, it's time for listener questions. If you have a question, there's link in the show notes.

You click on it, fill out the form. Send us your question. What do we have this week, Andy? Okay, we got two pretty quick ones. I don't think they're going to take too much time. And real quick, before, though, it's just a thanks to BP for his comments in the question box about our jokes about Fennu Linu last weekend. I did point out that I didn't explain it. I think we've explained it before, but just to be clear,

Fennu-Lanu is the name that goes on in investigation when you don't know who the subject is. And it means first name, unknown, last name, unknown. Sounds better as Fonu-Lan-N-U, so that's how we roll. That's how it's pronounced. Yep. All right. So, okay, this first question comes to us from long name here,

wanting a real justice department back in PA, exclamation point. So Wanting says, every Sunday morning I wake up extra early to listen to your silky, educated voices, walk me through the bad shit crazy week we've had. Okay. And then she jumps over to Epstein Files. She says, so years ago, there were investigations going on in the Southern District of New York and Southern Florida, presumably elsewhere as well. Okay, these are her words, not mine. When Orange Diarrhea Man stopped the investigation, what happened? into the evidence collected in those cases. Do all originals get sent to DC or do they send copies?

In other words, does Blanche have the entire kitten caboodle that he could destroy? And I don't know if that's intentional because kitten caboodle is definitely funny, but I do believe the expression is kit and caboodle. Not kitten caboodle, but who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. I like kitten caboodles though, so. I knew you would. I knew. I know exactly where some of them went. Where's that? Because I spoke to an FBI analyst and a couple of DOA. people who went through and were locked in buildings for 24 and 48 hour shifts last March to go through and log and put in spreadsheets where Trump's name appeared. So it depends on what investigation you're talking about. I can speak to the 2023, 2024 ongoing investigation by the Biden

Justice Department at the Southern District of New York because in a letter from a senator to Pam Bondi, a whistleblower came to that senator's office and said that Donald Trump came in in January 2025 and shut down a sprawling open investigation in DeBstein co-conspirators that was happening in the Southern District, took those 100,000 documents from the case and evidence, which is about 300,000 pages, boxed it up, fired the prosecutors, who include Maureen Comey, sent those boxes to the FBI for them to go through and begin redacting and reviewing so that they could find and release, you know, some Epstein files. As it turns out, they didn't release any because I'm going to guess that people were in there

that didn't want to be in there and they'd be super redacted and it wouldn't make any sense. But that is what those FBI analysts, that world of documents, that evidence from that SDNY investigation is what those information management division FBI agents and some FBI New York field office agents were thrown into given a million dollars in overtime for two weeks in March to review that's I know about that now the rest of it I'm not sure yeah so in a normal case which this definitely is not evidence the evidence is the technically evidence is only the original so if you're talking about documents which is what we're talking about here It's the original FBI 302 that has the signatures of the agents on it.

Or it's the original record or complaint or whatever that you got from a witness or a photograph, whatever. The originals are always held by the FBI, not the U.S. Attorney's Office. You have these massive evidence kind of procedures and lockers and things like... They're called burn bags, Andy. They're definitely not called burn bags. I'm sorry. You're just sent us down that rabbit hole. So anyway, and you bring the evidence to the trial.

Like you give copies of the documents to the U.S. Attorney's Office and those are the things that you work with and you're building your case, getting ready for trial. And then on the day of trial, you show up to testify, you bring the actual original. So usually evidence, and then after the trial, the FBI keeps all the originals back. And then after some period of years, you can destroy it under certain circumstances. So that's normal. here, the U.S. Attorney's Office had copies of all these documents, and that's probably what they then sent were forced to send to Maine Justice, which never gets any of this stuff. The prosecutions happened in the field. So typically Maine Justice doesn't have, never has original evidence and doesn't typically have copies of all the documents in a case. But that was what was done here, allegedly, and that's probably how headquarters-based agents who working out of the records managers,

division did all the review that you're that you're thinking of but once the act got passed then they had to scrape up every piece of information with anything related to epstein on it and that's how you got to where we are now that those original evidence boxes that came from the southern district in york which were copies of documents and stuff now you got like 10 times that much stuff three million documents something like that yeah and i know the stuff for the Florida investigation. I mean, a lot of it's in-court dockets. A lot of it's been filed as appendices to court documents have been handed over in discovery. I know the Epstein Estate has exposed to that, if not all of it. I know Gaylene Maxwell has all the documents in her case. She got it in

discovery, yeah, which is why I think she's tried to file this habeas petition after she exhausted her Supreme Court appeal in order to keep those from having to be handed over pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act because her case is still open and ongoing, but no lawyer would sign on to her habeas petition, not even her lawyer. So that I think is a good sort of representation. There are copies and copies and copies, like all over the place. So I don't think there's going to be like certain very sensitive documents that there only exists one copy of that could be destroyed in order to forward on with this cover-up that they're trying to do if that's the concern because there's just millions and millions and millions and so many duplicates.

It's a sea of stuff floating around at this point. I agree with you. Now, the same thing that would make it really hard to make sure one thing got destroyed, that's also the same factor that makes it real hard to make sure everything gets turned over. Because every time you turn around, you're finding more stuff and more things and another different person in a different place has some documents. Did we already put those out? Are they duplicate? So it's, it is a little bit more complicated than it seems, but yeah, DOJ has done a lot to mess it up. All right. Second question, and this will do it for us this week. This comes from Jerry in Buffalo. I got to say go bills after a nice performance this week. And I play the Canadian National Anthem at the game.

Nice, very nice. And Kash Patel lost his mind. No, I'm guessing. Jerry and Buffalo said, Even though the Supreme Court ruled against Trump's attempts to control mail-in ballots, I feel like he and Mike Johnson have plans. If Democrats control the House in the election, they will refuse to seat them on January 3rd.

Johnson already had a trial run with this by delaying Adelita Grijalva's special election win for weeks. please talk me off the ledge about this. What might happen? Not trusting a decision if it goes to the Supreme Court. All right. So, A.G., can you talk her off the ledge here? Well, Judge Luddick spoke recently on Substack about this and his concern that Mike Johnson might refuse to seat the winners of the election. Even though it is this Supreme Court, and let's say he does try to try to choose.

do that. I don't think this gets passed even this Supreme Court. There will be multiple lawsuits if this happens. They will be resolved extremely quickly. So that would be my moment of talking you off the ledge

for that. But we do have to be prepared for any eventuality. So it's kind of across that bridge when we come to it because as we discussed earlier in the show, you can't sue somebody. You can't have standing for some possible future event, that harm actually has to have happened or is an imminent threat. And so,

you know, Mark Elias, I'm sure already has what I call a Madlibs lawsuit ready to go. It's already written. You just got to fill in the blanks with the dates and the names. I'm sure, you know, and I spoke to secretaries of state who have said the same thing. We have lawsuits ready to go, ready to file the second anything funky like that happens in multiple different scenarios that we've tabletopped with other secretaries of state for the last year and a half, were as prepared as we can be. The only thing is that I'm sure there's going to be stuff that nobody saw coming that we'll have to react too quickly.

So that's my two cents on that. I think you're as you're spot on. You know, there's no question if given the opportunity, Mike Johnson will try anything. I mean, he just sent them home for seven weeks to get them out of town. to get them to not have to vote on impeaching Hegseth. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's outrageous.

They've done nothing. This is the slackest, least amount of work we've ever seen from a congress. And that's saying something because a lot of them have been pretty dull. But he'll definitely try. But I agree with you. This is an obvious tactic. This is one that everyone can see coming. So you've got to imagine any person who wins a seat in this election, any Democrat who wins a seat,

is not going to sit around and sit on their hands for a couple of weeks thinking about filing a lawsuit. Those things are going to be ready to go if they're not able to be sworn in on January 3rd, I think. Yeah. And if you think about Judge Ludig, the one who's basically raised this possibility, he's connected to Mark Elias, Democracy Now, Democracy Forward, Public Citizen, Public Integrity, ACLU. This guy knows everybody. And I'm sure there have already been discussions if those suits aren't already written. Absolutely. We will fight our way through it and we'll do it through the judiciary.

And the fact that the Supreme Court decided on the merits not to let this mail-voting shenanigan thing happened or go through at least six justices, five plus Kavanaugh based on that concurrence. I think you can rest easy that this Supreme Court knows at least five of them do that states control their elections. Yeah, yeah, very true. And you can't just not seat a certified election result because the states certify the elections. Great questions, as always. Thanks so much again. Link in the show notes to submit your questions. Any final thoughts before we get out of here on this Sunday morning?

You know, I'm just hoping for less beastiality next week. That's how I'm keeping it. I'm just keeping it real. And, you know, that's, that's my goal. I told my mom this morning, I talked to my mom every morning. I told her, yeah, I put something up on substacks. She said, please tell me it's not about bestiality. And I was like, it's absolutely about bestiality.

But that's it. That's my last word on it. So, yeah. Well, I think my favorite. meme this week I will find it and read it to you Kosh Patel is probably in some bar right now pounding wild turkey he might also be having a drink

that one and inside of you are two wolves this will no longer disqualify you from an FBI career that's it's the memes are pretty glorious yeah the implications it's just we laugh so we don't cry. Exactly.

Exactly. My heart goes out to all my former colleagues who are still at it. This is not how they want to be represented. This is not what they want people talking about. You know, you are, when you're a FBI agent, as long as you are and you end up being, you know, deputy director, you end up acting director for a minute. It's you. You are the bureau, right?

And to see it be treated like this and run by. a couple of bozos. Yeah, yeah, even just in the most basic ways, the most basic requirements of the job that require a degree of decorum and respect and conducting yourself in a way that engenders respect for the agency and the people you represent.

And Congress and everybody, and independence and integrity. And you see those things just really slide. especially out of one office. Just blowing up, yeah. We'll get through it. We're going to get through it. We will. We will.

We will. And ballots start going out today. So vote. Get out there. We need to tell everybody. Anybody listens to Unjustified. I'm sure there's tons of non-voters who listen to this program. But we really appreciate you. We love your questions.

Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week. I'm Allison Gil. I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written an executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hockey 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.