Jack - Felony Friday with Sam Patten (feat. Natasha Bertrand & Grant Stern)

Episode Date: September 3, 2018

Ep #44 - Joining us this week is Natasha Bertrand, MSNBC contributor and staff writer for The Atlantic. We also have Grant Stern, an investigative reporter and producer of The Dworkin Report. Plus, Jaleesa reports on the GOP possibly releasing unredacted SF-86 security clearance application forms of democrats running for office this year, Jordan has some information on Trump’s latest interview with Bloomberg, and AG goes over our beautiful Felony Friday. Enjoy!

Hey, it's Kimberly Host of The Start Me Up Podcast. If you like your politics with some loose talk and salty language, you're going to love my show. I interview the coolest people like Mary Trump, Kathy Griffin, and DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. The Start Me Up Podcast has an easygoing, casual style and a strong emphasis on left-leaning politics. We also have Frank discussions about sex and more than a few spirited rants. Just visit patreon.com slash start me up or wherever you get your podcast and start listening today.

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to continue being a patron at that level, but all new patrons beginning October 1st will be buying it at a $5 minimum. So sign up now to take advantage of all the extras as an official patron while the one and two dollar levels are still available, and thank you again for supporting women in podcasting. Don't undervalue yourselves. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said.

That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn't have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have nothing to do with Putin. I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So it is political. You're a

communist! No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello, welcome to Muller She Wrote. I'm your anonymous host, A.G. I use a pseudonym because I work in Trump's executive branch, so I'm one of the lucky ones that gets to pay for tax cuts for the rich people by not getting a cost of living raised this year. Yay! So if you're rich, you're welcome. With me, as always, is Julie Sojanson, and Jordan Coburn.

Hello. And this was a busy week, you guys. As expected, I think it's going to be continuing to be a busy week until on into next year. And joining us this week is Grant Stern. He's an investigative reporter and the producer of the Dwarken Report. And we also are lucky enough to have MSNBC contributor and staff writer for the Atlantic Natasha Burd-Trand. Jolissa is going to report on the GOP possibly releasing unredacted SF-86 security clearance

application forms of Democrats running for office this year. That's crazy. And Jordan has some information on Trump's latest interview with Bloomberg, also crazy. I'll be going over our beautiful felony Friday that we had this week. But first, I have a correction from the Greg Prooup's interview.

I had said Chuck Rosenberg was the US attorney in the Southern District of New York when actually he was the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. I caught that listening back to the interview, so thank you me for letting me know about that. We have a lot to get to this week, so let's get into it with just the facts. Okay guys, Sunday Cohen's lawyer, Lanny David, walked back his remarks about what Cohen could potentially offer Mueller, including information about Trump having foreknowledge of the Trump Tower meetings, and that Trump knew about and participated in the weaponizing of hacked emails from the DNC and the D-Triple C. Davis did not rule out that Cohen could have the information, but he said he couldn't corroborate the claimsC and the D-Triple C. Davis did not rule out that Cohen could have the

information, but he said he couldn't corroborate the claims either and wished he'd been clearer. In other Cohen news, though, it's of note that his plea agreement states that the agreement itself does not preclude them from other prosecutions, including 18 U.S. Code 1960, which is or 1961, I think, which is racketeering. It's Rico. So put beans on that. We had mentioned that last week that he might be wrapped up in other investigations. So put some beans on it.

There you have it. Beans. Beans. Then everybody started freaking out Monday about a report in Policó. Hey, human sacrifice dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. a report in Politico. The report was about a sleeper case that could supposedly torpedo the entire Mueller investigation. Basically, the DC Court of Appeals will hear a case next month about a guy who was murdered decades ago and the Justice Department wants to set precedent that judges don't have the

freedom to release grand jury information that's usually kept secret. And a lot of folks who are afraid this could be a problem for Mueller releasing his report because Congress would be deciding to publicize it, not a judge. However, chill out. First, we need to vote in November because a Democratic Congress would render this point

completely moot. If not, I think a court case could easily create an exemption, not to mention denying an indictment would automatically trigger a report to Congress, the gang of eight. And above all, Mueller, I'm sure, has every base covered, so don't let this stress you out. Then, Bloomberg reported on a Russian guy in a California jail that is of interest to the Mueller investigation.

This Russian guy named Yifgeny Nikulan was charged with hacking LinkedIn in apparently the saddest Russian hacking attempt ever. Who hacks LinkedIn? Anyhow, it's like, it's a place for business, it's business place. Connections and network. Anyhow, he was charged in 2012 when he hacked LinkedIn and Dropbox and he was extradited from the Czech Republic, that's an important note back to the US. Moscow apparently had a dueling request to extradite him, but he landed in NorCal this past

March. The trouble is he could literally be insane. Defense is asking for a mental health evaluation of him because he just laughs with a thousand yard stare whenever he's asked questions like I just imagined. So where were you on the March 17th? Haha. Haha. Like I just did it just a time.

Good. So creepy. Yeah, it is weird. So they're having him evaluated. But the Russians are really interested in this guy. They've tried to visit him a few times without lawyers present, which is what is making him of interest to the Mueller probe. Maybe he's connected to Cohen. I don't know. Check Republic Cohen steel dossier. I don't know, check Republic, Cohen, Steel, Dossier. I don't know, I could just be making weird connections. But the story isn't very clear about any implications,

but we thought we'd bring it to you anyway. Yeah, stop trying to contact him, Russia. Brose, what the hell? Stupid idiots. We'll just shit. And we'll just sneak in. No one will notice. Yeah.

Also Monday, Roger Stone, Stone, says he's about to be indicted and he emailed all of his friends to ask for help with his legal bills. He even started a GoFundMe, which is hilarious. Peter Strucks GoFundMe made $325,000 the first day and Stones has made about $2,900 after a week. Ah! Ah!

Ah! And his douchebag grandson, by the way, who looks like an extra from the Jersey Shore, is also panhandling for stone on the internet. This guy has like shaved head, bril cream back hair, like he looks like he's got ears pierced, looks like it drives a Mitsubishi eclipse anyway. Where's Fedora's in his spare time? Oh God. Probably a libertarian. Maybe a stone should sell space on his back

for you can get your face tattooed on his back for $50,000. I would do that. Not for 50 grand, but I'd probably send him $100 if he tattooed my face on his back. Or a logo, just muller she wrote, really big. Oh, that'd be so cool. Contact us, Stone.

What a predicament. I wish we had the money to actually offer that. I know, We can give you $200,000. I know. If we started to go fund me, we could probably raise $50,000 in a day to get our faces tattooed on his back. Oh, my God. That's so much influence he has. Anyway, we'll keep you posted on what goes on with that. Also, Monday, Giuliani told reporters that the president's lawyers have not heard back from Mueller's office in nearly three weeks. Remember, they're back and forth, love letters. Will you set me free, you check this box?

Um, three weeks. And Giuliani says he figured he thought that they would at least hear something back after the Manafort trial, but they didn't. Mueller's office has told Giuliani that they're still studying the latest letter from the Trump team. And Giuliani was like, it's only five or six pages,

can't you read? And I'm paraphrasing. And Giuliani says he figures they're planning something like issuing a report without interviewing the president or he thinks Mueller might be weighing issuing a subpoena. Other options are he could be waiting until after the midterms to make his next move. September 1st, incidentally, marked the Giuliani imposed

deadline for major molar activity. But note that it's not until September 7th that we will actually be within 60 days of the election. And I'll talk a little bit more about what kind of bullshit I think is deadline. What do you think is the reason why Mueller's team is not responsive right now? I think they're I think they're weighing a subpoena. Nice. I think they're done. I think they've done their due diligence.

I think they can show they've done their due diligence. And I think they're just going to subpoena his ass. Yeah. I was hoping they would do it before September 4th, because that's when the Kavanaugh hearings begin, which is Tuesday. But yeah, it's already the weekend. So I don't know. Yeah, I think it's either that or just because Mueller is so traditional waiting for the elections to run their course makes sense as well. Yeah, I kind of, I disagree with that a little bit in that I don't think, I don't know, Trump's not a candidate, but you know, who knows what Mueller's thinking? There's no way to know. He doesn't ever talk.

Then something of note dropped Monday evening. According to the Wall Street Journal, Who knows what Mueller's thinking? There's no way to know. He doesn't ever talk. Then something of note dropped Monday evening. According to the Wall Street Journal, Manafort sought a plea deal during his Virginia trial, but the talks broke down based on issues raised by Mueller's team. The talks took place while the jury was deliberating in his first trial that would eventually

find him guilty on eight counts with a hung jury leading to a mistrial on the remaining 10 counts. The prosecution had until August 29th to tell the court if it was going to retry the 10 counts, but they filed a motion to ask for more time, which the judge granted Thursday. We did get the release of over 2100 pieces of evidence for the upcoming trial in D.C. And there's lots of interesting bits in there, including Trump's name is in a few of the emails, some bits about Project Veritas, and all the photos of all the tacky clothes are going to be allowed. They weren't allowed in the last one.

But I guess Amy Jackson wants to see him. Like socks? You know, I did the three-quarters sleeve Python jacket, dust-gusting. The trial was set to begin September 17th, but has been pushed back to September 24th. Nobody knows why, but it's probably because the defense asked for another week to review the evidence since the evidence took a week. It was delayed by a week coming out.

Regarding the talks breaking down, Mueller's team has declined to comment, which means we get to guess. Yay. What we do know is that Mueller raised, the Mueller is the one who raised concerns. And here's what I think. And please note that this is conjecture.

I'm not a lawyer. But I think about, when I think about this, I think about what we learned from the rural juror in the First Manifort trial. I will never forget you, rural juror, I'll all the ways, be glad I met you, rural juror. The rural juror was the lady that came forward and told us all that it was just one juror that was hung up on the remaining 10 counts. And even though she was a Trump supporter, she was compelled to vote guilty on all 18 counts because of the strength of the evidence, the documentary evidence.

What we also learned from her is that the jury threw out Gates' testimony because they thought he was not credible. He's a slime ball. He's a dick. He was a liar and a thief and they simply didn't take anything he had to say seriously, even though he would have gotten a hundred years for lying on the stand. They're like, he's a dick, we don't like him. So what if Mueller began questioning the credibility of Maniford as a witness? We always hear that testimony is gold, right? I've said it. But what if your complete piece of shit And the documentary evidence against you is your star witness, like it was in the Manifort in the first trial.

Manifort's testimony could actually hurt the case, so his proffer might not have been worth it. They'll cost benefit analysis in order for Mueller to let him off the hook. By not cooperating early on, Manifort might have fucked himself, because now that he's guilty on eight counts, his credibility as a witness could be gone dashed. And Mueller might realize that his documentation is enough to convict whomever Manafort would roll on. And there's another theory out there that the talks broke down because Manafort just wouldn't pony up the goods. We'll see. Mm-hmm. I'm sure that there's an internal sort of standard that they set for maybe how many times someone gets caught in a perjury

Situation, you know that they'll be forced to essentially label as them as like a unununcredible Uncredible it's not incredible incredible with incredible incredible incredible Noncredible witness tainted. Yeah, that is interesting. I think though. I really hope, I hope that they can't, they don't have to throw out man of fort. Yeah. And I could be wrong. He could have the most amazing and intense information and he's just not willing to hand it over. Right. I mean, he does for sure. Yeah. So yeah. But, but he could be completely tainted. They might have learned in the trial using Gates as a witness that he's useless useless to them. He also loves him. He also loves him. He also loves him. I also think it's important to know that Maniford was found not guilty on zero counts.

He was not guilty at all. Yeah. And we still don't know if they're going to retry those 10 counts. So put some beans on it. Somebody said this week that when Matt Alpazza's, they expect her to say put some beans on it and they get sad when she doesn't. That's funny. Then we had some awesome reporting about a trip. Nunez, that's Devon Nunez, that's Jordan's boyfriend, took to Europe on his never-ending quest to discredit the molar probe and joining us today to tell us about what he was doing abroad is MSNBC analyst and staff writer for the Atlantic who broke this story Natasha

Bertrand Natasha welcome to Mueller she wrote Thanks for having me. I'm so glad you're here. I'm like really honored. I can't believe you. I kind of have like a little I'm nerding out a little bit that I'm talking to you so for bear with me. So do I have this right? Nunez, Mullet Boy, thought he could go to Europe and out spy Christopher Steele? Basically, yeah, he went over there and he had planned to meet with the heads of MI6, or at least high level officials, MI6, MI5, and GCHQ, and they could not find time for him.

And I'm told that he was snubbed essentially. And that when he wanted to have these meetings with them, they were very concerned, um, understandably about his track record with dealing with sensitive and classified information. Um, he has been known to compromise uh, uh, sources and methods in the past when it comes to kind of undermining the smaller investigation. So they were understandably wary about entertaining his request for a meeting. So he came away meeting only with the deputy national security advisor. And it's unclear to me whether or not he actually gleaned anything of value from that meeting. But it's highly

unlikely that they would have told him anything about someone who served in their own intelligence service. Do we know anything more about what he was trying to get any like specifics on the things he was looking for or how long he was there and if my taxpayer money paid for this? Yeah, so all good questions. I think that what I'm told is that he was looking for information about Chris Steele's record in MI6. Of course, he was there for just over two decades. He was the head of the Russia desk at MI6. He was trying to dig up dirt on whether or not that Steele ever had any problems with his superiors or whether or not he ever broke the rules the rules. And he kind of, you know, all in the name of discrediting him.

And he also wanted to discuss with M.I.5, I'm told whether or not M.I.5 knew about his deals ongoing communication with Bruce Orr, the top Justice Department official, who is the president's like a favorite target now after Peter Strach and Andy McCabe were fired. He's kind of set his sights on Bruce Orr, who has known still since 2007.

They've been friends for over a decade. And Bruce was very concerned about what steel was telling him. And so he kind of debriefed him over the course of a couple months between 2016 and 2017 about the intelligence that he had found about Trump and Russia. So of course, Devonunas was trying to kind of stir up trouble and try to figure out, oh, well, was he doing this covertly without the knowledge

of his own authorities? And of course, what I'm told is that he would have been given, he would have been disappointed because MI5 and British authorities, in fact, did know about steel and orres communication. Okay, the or the or thing makes more sense to me than steel because I mean, didn't noon as his own memo say that the steel dossier was not what kicked off the

investigation, I'm trying to figure out like, it seems like he's grasping for straws at this point. Right, and he's using, I mean, he still is kind of pedaling this, this talking point that the dossier was the entire basis of the FBI's investigation. That really hasn't changed much. He says that it was the basis of the FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, et cetera,

even though, you know, none of that is actually true. But yeah, I mean, they've set their sights on people within the Justice Department who they think had a hand in launching the Russia investigation, including Bruce Hore, who actually didn't have a role in launching the investigation itself. That was an FBI counterintelligence investigation. But of course, when you kind of dig in and attack the DOJ and FBI enough, then that talking point that it's all a witch hunt can take hold. Yeah, though it seems with this new Washington Post polling that's out that it might not be working as well as they planned. Right, it seems like the president's approval rating

is kind of at an all-time low right now. I think it's like what, 60% of people now disapprove of his job performance. So yeah, I mean, the Mueller investigation, I think it's hard to criticize something that we really know so little about. I mean, we Mueller has been very, very quiet throughout the year and a half that he's been investigating all of this, whereas the president, of course, has been very loud. So, I also don't think that the president is used to actually being held accountable for anything. So the fear that he now will be scrutinized over, you know, people like Michael Cohen flipping on him, Alan Weiselberg, you know, what Bruce or may now tell the House and tell committee,

Senate and tell committee, I think is reason for panic. Yeah, especially considering if the House flips that the Democrats are going to take over these committees and subpoenas will most definitely follow. So I mean, I can see how the walls might be closing in a little bit. Right. And we saw that list that Republicans are circulating now of all of the investigations that the Democrats plan to launch if and when they do take the House. And it really, you know, it all has to do with Trump's ties to Russia, his business conflicts, you know, the security clearance issue. It's going to be a busy, busy time late this year and early next year if the Democrats do take over because they're going to, I think, return with the vengeance. There's a lot that

the Republicans have obstructed by way of actually thoroughly investigating all of Trump's many conflicts of interest, his many contacts with the Russians. There are Republicans have kind of acted like the defense lawyers for the people that have been brought before the committees rather than actual investigators

is what I've been told. So it should be interesting what we, what we glean from that. Yeah, that list is funny. It almost reads like a confessional. It's like, thanks, guys. Oh, Jordan has a question for you. What's up, Jordan? Hello, this is Jordan.

Hey, I'm the one that gets the lovely title of Nunez being my boyfriend, because I said he was attractive one time. I don't know. Oh my god. You will never live that down. No, never. That's how it's been going. I had a question for you that I think you would know more about than anybody else currently. So the talking point that I've been seeing for Nunez and for those select GOP members that are still allied with Trump as strongly as they are, is that Bruce Orm

had a wife who has a potentially, you know, conflicting position within this. Could you talk a little bit about that and just how that can be negated and how it's, you know, basically a nun burger that his wife has the position she has? Definitely. So Nelly Orr is a linguist. She's an expert in Russian studies. She's fluent in Russian. So her role, and she's a professor at BASER,

my alma mater, so I may be a little biased here. But her role of her fusion GPS was as a contractor. And so what they would do was she never had a permanent position there. She was kind of brought in on an ad hoc basis to, for example, translate documents that were given to fusion that were in Russian. She was there to look for Russian media reports that would perhaps bolster intelligence that was given to fusion by outside sources.

So she was there as kind of the translator. But during the whole steel dossier debacle, I don't actually know. And this is something I've been trying to figure out, what role she actually played in that project per se. I'm told that there may have been a few times when she was brought into translating, and again, to look for evidence in Russian media reports

that some of the things that Steel was reporting were accurate and could be backed up. But that was really the extent of it. And of course, there is no evidence that what she was doing in any way influenced what her husband was doing. They've both known Steel for quite some time, again, for over a decade.

So by her working for Fusion is kind of just a weird coincidence, I think. Yeah, that's definitely what it seems like. And of course, the GOP or their select members are trying to take this as an opportunity to say it was a big collusion effort on their side. So yeah, I appreciate the insight into that. I just wanted to know some accurate facts about her and her involvement. Yeah, of course.

Anyway, I'm really glad you were able to join us today. Everybody MSNBC contributor and staff writer for the Atlanta who broke the story Congratulations again on this Natasha Bertrand. Thank you. I'm so happy we got to speak with her you guys I hope she comes back. She's such an amazing reporter. She's awesome Yeah, and I love watching her on MSNBC. She breaks everything down. She's super succinct. She's got really great organization of thought She's just she's awesome. Yeah, I like how she talks She's awesome. Yeah.

I like how she talks. She's got pretty mouth. Yeah. Good words. Yeah. Well, it's like easy to comprehend, you know, like an approachable, yeah, she presents things in a very approachable way. Yeah, very easy to understand.

So that's and being that is one of our missions here. I appreciate it having her on. So yeah, thank you, Natasha. Yeah. Wednesday we found out from CNN that prosecutors declined to grant immunity to a second Trump organization employee and that person was not called before the grand jury. The details are super limited, in fact that's about it. So they didn't talk about when they discussed this potential immunity, was it before or after

a co-implemented guiltier, was it right close to it? Why didn't they call them to testify? They didn't say that and we don't even know who it is. So it's kind of a dud story unless we can get the details on when their discussion happened because if it happened close to or after Cohen's guilty plea, that kind of adds to our, you know, conjecture that prosecutors are going after more than just Cohen in this case. Totally. Then Trump fired McGann via tweet, though he said he was resigning,

but like all Trump White House resignations, McGann was taken by surprise and told, surprise you're resigning. Yeah, yeah, whoa, it was kind of like when happened to Comey, it's happened to a lot of people, they learned by tweet, and that's how it goes down. We put beans on this a while back when we predicted Emmett T. Flood, remember, QQQ, I said he's coming in as a ringer man. He's going to take over

McGann's job. So I was probably less surprised than McGann was. But it's important to note that McGann did offer 30 hours of testimony about obstruction of justice to Mueller's team. And since pre-bus and bannons still have the same lawyer as McGann, that means they're all cooperating. Otherwise, one lawyer wouldn't be able to represent all of them. It would be unethical. So remember that. And remember, the firing of McGann is just going to be added to the pile of obstruction of justice in the end. I'd be curious to see if he switches his lawyer now that he's resigning slash fired. Oh, if McGann does? Yeah, because on one hand, unfortunately, there's the possibility of them all being under the same lawyer because their story is all the same, but on the wrong side.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, no, no. After 30 hours of testimony and he still hasn't switched lawyers, I tend to think that that he's cooperating. Yeah. And it's been said he said we're fully cooperating. And yeah, the only I can't, I think that they, if they don't have the

same lawyer after he's fired or resigns. And the reason he's staying on is because they want to push the Kavanaugh nomination through. But I think the reason wouldn't, wouldn't have anything to do with a change in story. It might just have to do with a change in legal strategy. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, I think so. I think so, I'm hoping so too. Fingies crossed. We also learned Wednesday that Mueller filed a motion Monday to block Concord management and consulting to join Andrew Miller's appellate case. So Concord management is a Russian firm that's been indicted by Mueller. And Andrew Miller is Roger Stone's cabin boy. He's the one that he's the scheduler and he's the one who held himself in contempt of court so that he could appeal Mueller's constitutionality

to the DC Court of Appeals. Concord is the entity that funded the internet research agency. So keep your eye on that, because I'm sure the judge will side with Mueller, though it would be funny to allow a Russian entity to join their side and try to make their case in high court. Like it's me and the Russians. We're trying to argue against Mueller's constitutionality.

That would be funny. Yeah. How does that, I didn't know you could just join a case like that. They filed a motion to join, Mueller filed a motion to not let them. Basically. Yeah, that's what they're Russians. Right. And they're indicted and sanctioned.

Oh, God. But I, I don't know. I kind of they're Russians. Right. And they're indicted and sanctioned. Oh, God. But I don't know. I kind of wish they would. Yeah. I don't think the judge will let them, though. There's just trolls to their core. Like, do you want to add giant judicial prejudice to your case? OK.

Then let's talk about this week's winner of the What the Fuck Award. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department is investigating whether a fugitive Malaysian financier named Jo Lowe, who I'm going to call JLo, laundered tens of millions of dollars through two associates and used the funds to pay a US legal team that included Chris Christie and Mark Casowitz. We know who Chris Christie is and Mark Casowitz, that's one of Trump's awesome lawyers. Christie is representing JLo in an asset forfeiture case in California and Casowitz is

repping him in Justice Department matters. And it's not clear whether Christie or Casowitz knew they were being paid off with laundered, embezzled money. So that's, we don't know if they knew. But finally, here's the kicker. J. Lowe has also retained counsel from a guy named Bobby Birchfield who has served as an ethics advisor to the Trump administration. So he's a failure. And Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist, is also consulting Jolo. Now here's where it gets fucking weird. Elliott Broidy is also consulting this guy. And he met Elliott Broidy through Pras Michelle. You got to know who that is? No.

Founding member of the Fuji's. What? That Pras Michelle. No way. So now we have ice cube and Pras Michelle. Oh, this is great. Who are the Fuji's killing me softly. Oh, Fuji's.

Yeah, Lord Hill. Originally it with me softly? Oh, Fuji's. Yeah, Laura Hill originated with that crew. Yes. Yes. Yeah, Wycliffe, Sean. Nice. And, uh, no, the other guys. Yeah.

Any other guys. That makes sense. We got Kardashians and then West's. That's true. Kardashians and West is an ice cube. And now, the Fuji's. Anyway, he may have been, or Michelle, excuse me, may have been one of the associates that laundered money with JLo, not Jennifer Lopez, Jolo, the Malaysian financier, fugitive.

And the Justice Department is investigating whether or not Brody tried to sell his access to Trump to Chinese and Malaysian governments. So Jolo is so close to the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who we reported on a while back for being arrested and co-alol and poor for money laundering. Remember when we got his yacht and we're like, let's go party on his yacht? That was the asset for Fritz your case. And now Chris Christie is burping his friend and his asset for Fritz your case. And they got introduced through a guy from the Fugees. What the fuck is happening?

This reality TV now. That's I guess what you get when you vote for a reality star. Yeah, seriously. Muller's office is probably just like, please just stop. We do not have the resources to pursue. Just don't bring a child who's can be known to this, okay? Yeah, no. Yeah. How did you not win video of the year? Whatever. That's crazy, right? Yeah, of course, I didn't see any of the other ones, but still.

We're still on Wednesday, by the way. Mueller's team is asking to review emails between Manafort and one of his former lawyers. You never do this because normally those emails would be protected by attorney client privilege, but these emails are special. Attorney client privilege does not apply when the client hires the lawyer to help him commit a crime.

It's called the crime fraud exception to attorney client privilege, and we've talked about it before. And that's what Mueller, I'm not guessing. Mueller says that's what's happening here in his filing. So Mueller wants to see four emails, and they're asking for the attorney to also testify. So you tell me, is Manafort still being investigated? Super seating indictments are coming, that's conjecture, but we're right.

Business Insider reports this week that bank examiners and the feds are investigating an unusually large payment deposited into the account of the Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak. You know when it happened? 2017? November 2016. Oh, damn. Oh, right.

Right after the election, he got a $120,000 payment. It came from a Russian embassy and we have long since suspected the Russians are using their embassies to move money around the US unnoticed. The check was marked payroll. However, it was more than twice as much as the ambassador makes in a year. As a refresher, Kushner met with Kissleyac in December 2016 to set up a back channel. Flynn was fired for lying about meeting with Kissleyac. Sessions recused himself for lying to Congress about meeting with Kissleyac. Trump told Kissleyac in the Oval Office that he fired Komi because of the russure thing. But I'm sure, though, that this $120,000 payment is nothing. Oh yeah. Who is the pay

on that payroll check? Who got it? Sorry, not pay. Pay your, the Russian embassy. Aw. Yeah. Then they've been funneling money through the embassies. Yeah. For a while. Maybe they just gave everyone a 200% pay raise. Just for that day. just right after the election. Yeah, they did. Just to cover it up. Everyone gets paid double today. Congratulations. You got a lot of work. All that envelope stuffing. That's what you get. Wednesday, a big story dropped about Paul Ryan's Super Pack using classified security clearance application information from Democratic opponents as opposition research.

And this is fucking gross. And Jalice is going to go over that later for us. And Poppedopolis accepted a plea deal and he decided he will not fight the charges. His sentencing happened September 7th. I think it's interesting that there was chatter about Poppedop maybe blowing up his plea deal and going rogue and having a trial, but it's no wonder he had second thoughts after we found out from the rural juror that they threw out Gates' testimony and that talks about Manafort's plea deal fell apart when Mueller had concerns. So that could have been part of it or he just realized he didn't want to go through what Manafort's going through.

Finally, Thursday happened. It took a while, but Thursday came. And we found out Trump wanted to buy decades of dirt on himself from the inquirer leading up to the election And this is important because if he spent money on this and if it influenced the election and he didn't report it That's a felony and if he and if he did this in Cahoots with Pecker and Some other folks then then we have conspiracy and some other folks, then we have conspiracy. According to multiple Trump associates, he and Cohen planned to buy the whole safe

swarth of Trump dirt going back to the 80s from Pecker and the inquire and the months leading up to the election. And if you remember the recording of the tape, you know, with Cohen's tape, where he said he had to set up a company and his name for a quote, all that info, indicating it was more than just the McDougal payoff he wanted to buy from David, which is David Pecker. David. David, air quotes.

David, air quotes. Dave. So in a perfect fantasy world, he would get charged Trump being he, he would get charged with conspiracy to commit a federal election campaign violation and also actually committing that campaign violation. He could be charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud, rico violations, because the personal violations, yeah, that's actual stuff. Yeah, we had enough, they could tie that in just in the recordings, but...

Well, I can't get it. You never know. If you paid to do it. Yeah. That would be an interesting throw in there, which is prostitution. Is that the end? It's plus-twist. It's still illegal.

I guess it's just a legal question then. So with all of those potential charges, then do you essentially get to double down on that by charging them with conspiracy to commit all of those things? Right. If there's more than one person involved, and it's known to be a... And then there's also misprision. Mm-hmm. I think they could be charged with that too

when you know you're covering up a felony. So there's tons of different things in here. And also, I need to remind everyone, Weiselberg was the one who was gonna set it all up and that was noted on the tape. And in fact, Cohen was like Weiselberg, Alan Weiselberg, like he said his full name, like, yeah, and he's immune. Yeah, he is.

But the deal never went through guys to buy all the shit. AMI backed out and advised Cohen to shred the documents and Cohen did not. Then if that weren't enough, another top executive from AMI named Howard, who is the guy that removed all the trump dirt from the safe. He went in after the election, got all the trump dirt out of the safe and whisked it away in the night to somewhere. We don't know where. He threw it in the ocean, but I love sets it free in the ocean, right?

I return it to the devil. These are yours, I believe. I'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Same time. Thank you. Anyway, so he was granted a beauty. Mr. Infowisker, deal with the devil.

And the Associated Press reported Thursday that the inquirer and AMI are in serious financial trouble. Like, they're almost bankrupt, and they have been for a while, like, for the last couple of few years. So then the question becomes, why would AMI be willing to make these large payments to Trump playmates and run bullshit covers for him if the paper was sinking? Why would Howard and Pecker be willing to tank the paper to cover for Trump? Was Trump paying them off or promising them could be Secretary of the Army or something?

Like, what's going on there? And with these two executives that now have immunity, I'm sure we'll find out. So even if the deal didn't go through, he could still be charged with conspiracy to commit that. Yeah, and that's important to remind Rudy Giuliani who actually went to law school, even though I didn't, that you don't have to commit or complete the crime in order for you to have been conspired to commit one. Right.

A time getting murdered is still a really big deal. That is. Like when they say, oh, the Trump Tower meeting, nothing came of it. So it doesn't matter. No, it does. If if you can spy her and anyway Yeah, they don't seem to understand that or at least they do fully understand it and they're trying to convince their idiot base That that's the case correct. Yeah, I mean judge Ellis himself also was like remember when he told the prosecutors Let's not bring up, you know fraudulent loans that didn't actually go through yeah, and he had to apologize for saying that because that's not how the law works.

Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that. Finally, we get to Friday. And I was really looking forward to Friday because it was the last full day before the Giuliani window of prosecution that some assume Mueller can't operate inside of, right? Like from September 1st, after Labor Day,

you can't wear white and you can't indict. Oh my god, what a mulley does both. I'd be so sexy. It comes out. No white, you guys are white, sure. Yeah. Yeah, don't wear white, don't indict. That's if you have trouble remembering what to do. That's so good. And after Labor Day. I love that.

Or he may operate, just not release any charges or plea agreements or indictments or referrals or motions. But then again, he might just keep going because Trump is not a candidate and the DOJ policy can be easily overridden by Rosenstein anyhow. And it's more of a guideline. It's not even a rule. It's just a norm. A principle of matter, yeah.

Yeah. So Friday started out pretty slow with the news that two lawyers have left Mueller's team and everyone asked me, what's going on? Well Well here's what we know. We know two lawyers left and here's what I think. One of the lawyers was, well I know he was working on the Vanders Juan case and the other guy was working on Russian indictments and I think they're just finished with their work. Their specialties are no longer needed. They came in to work on the Russian indictments, one of them and the other guy was a computer guy and he was working on the Vanders Juan case so maybe they just don't need him anymore. Or the computer guy was working on the Russian indictments, one of them, and the other guy was a computer guy, and he was working on the Vanders one case, so maybe they just don't need him anymore. Or the

computer guy was working on the Russian indictment, sorry. But I'm sure we'll find out soon or later, but Mueller's team says they actually made a statement. They said they didn't leave for any untoward reason. Good, I believe it. Yeah. That's rare. They actually issue a statement over those things. Well, you know, gossip makes an impression, so they have to, I guess, clear the air. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, but it is weird, right? Yeah, it was a very short statement.

Nothing to see here. Now, we're going to go back to undying your asses. And Friday started to heat up a little when we got word from the Associated Press that Bruce Orr said Christopher Steele told him in a breakfast meeting on July 30th in 2016 that Russia had Trump quote over a barrel, which is a horrible mental picture. Yeah, like getting spanked. Bent over a barrel, is that one? Yeah, think more pulp fiction.

Okay. Yeah. And I'm not going to play the clip because we don't need to go. Kids could be listening. And in that, the guy who was over the barrel actually comes back and kills the shit out of everybody. But Fusion GPS, or as wife worked for Fusion GPS, Nelly. And they both are under constant Twitter siege

from Fuckface McGee because they know what he did. We had known that these two had had breakfast, steel, and, or, but that little nugget has been missing from the reports. It wasn't in Russian roulette, which is where we got most of that information. So interesting, over a barrel. Thanks for that mental picture on Friday. Then later on, the US Attorney and DC filed a motion to impose a gag order on Bhutina's lawyers.

And we kind of saw this coming because Bhutina, boutina is the Russian NRA lady, friend of Torschen, dating Paul Erickson, wrapped up in the Mayflower stuff and she's kind of a wannabe spy. And she was really working hard on influencing the election, particularly the RNC platform at the, or the Republican platform at the RNC, again, you know, regarding Ukraine. But she was moved from prison to prison. She's in jail right now because, um, she's in flight risk. And, uh, anyway, they put a gag order on a lawyer's because her lawyers are out talking to the press like, hey, here's what's happening. Blub a blub. So they're like, nope, no more, no more talking to the press. So we'll see what that happens with

the, but they did issue the gag order. No, the US attorney filed a motion to impose a gag order. I don't know if it's been approved yet or not, not as of this recording. So, but then Friday delivered hard. We had a felony Friday and I'll go over that in hot notes. But before we go to break, we have some feel good polls. I'm going to throw a lot of numbers at you, but they're going to make you very happy. Throughout the past months, I've promised things would go our way, and I've done what I could to help you guys tread water and keep a hold on hope, right? That justice would prevail. And then we had that amazing Tuesday and things were looking up.

And now, a Washington Post poll just came out with some awesome shit. It gives Trump a 36% approval rating. Lois to date, and a 60 a 36% approval rating. Lois to date and a 60% disapproval rating. And what's funny is all the Trump supporters on Twitter think that it means a 60% approval rating, which is hilarious because they don't read. This is an all-time haters gonna hate record. It is like 60% disapproval ratings huge. Also 49% of Americans say Congress should begin impeachment hearings while 46 say they should not. More people think we should have impeachment hearings. 53% say they

think Trump has tried to interfere with Mueller's investigation in a way that amounts to obstruction while 35% say he hasn't. And 45% approve of Trump's handling of the economy. Well, 47% disapproved. So his one big thing, the economy, we're still under water on it. This is proof that Americans aren't buying his bullshit attempts to discredit Mueller, nor are they buying Giuliani's Lube the Truth Tour, which we've been covering for a while. And further, 63% of Americans

support the Mueller investigation now. It was 48. Remember, it's 63% now, since the Manafort Guilty Vert guilty verdict and only 29% opposed this Investigation and 67% say Mueller's case against manifold was justified while only 17% say it wasn't that's lower than his core base of like 35% 20 30% 53% opposed Trump pardoning manifoldfort and only 18% supported it and 64% say he shouldn't fire sessions with only 19% saying he should. Wow. 61% of Americans think Trump committed a crime while only 31% say he did not.

So the tide is turning my friends. And that's before it really pops off. I feel like once everything starts getting laid down, the bigger indictments I mean, we're already so close to a majority, but like, you know, a solid like 75 plus majority like we're not that far away Well, and the reason for this major turn if you look at if you kind of break the numbers down, it's the independence Oh, since the Manafort trial the Manafort guilty that have flip yeah, Yeah, still a lot of Republicans support him and still a lot of Democrats support Mueller, but it's those independents making the difference

that have jumped over onto the right side of history, basically. Yeah, it's so much hinged on that trial. And the fact that it went the way that it did is huge. Yeah, so thanks, Mueller. Yeah, thanks, Maniford. Keep the faith, everybody. We'll be right back. Hey, Mueller junkies, I wanted Maniford. Keep the faith, everybody. We'll be right back. Hey, Mueller junkies.

I wanted to tell you about another podcast you should check out. It's called The Daily's Ike Guys. It's a daily comedic news podcast from How Stuff Works. And it's hosted by Jack O'Brien, who is the founder of Cracked.com and the former host of the Cracked podcast. Every weekday, Jack and his co-host, Miles Gray, and a guest comedian, yay, guest comedians, will take you through the most important events and interesting ideas that are driving the

news cycle. They'll make you laugh while they tell you exactly what's going on in the nation's mind. Some of the recurring segments include Over Under, which is an analysis of things in the culture that are either overrated or underrated at that time. Mengazi, this is a digest of all the men being caught behaving badly. There's the Bloid Watch, which is a weekly report

on the narratives being published by the tabloids, and Google Trend Schim, which is a look at what America's searching for. New episodes are released every week day with a weekly roundup on the weekend. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So please check out the Daily Zeitgeist.

And thanks for listening. Hot Notes. Hello, welcome back. Today Jordan is going to cover the Bloomberg Trump interview, but first Jolissa has a disturbing story on the Paul Ryan Super PAC using Democratic Security clearance applications as Oppo Research. Jolissa, do you want to tell us about that? Oh yeah, super disturbing. So the New York Times reported this that basically one of Paul Ryan Super PAC's the Congressional Congressional Leadership Fund illegally obtained the full,

unredacted security clearance form of former CIA officer and Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger through a FOIA request and then immediately began using it against her and the campaign So she's running against Republican Congressman Dave Brad in a super competitive district in Virginia and basically what happened is the Trump administration gave extremely personal information about this Democratic candidate to a Republican opposition research firm and then they gave that information to reporters. And here's why that's really bad. So first of all, it's illegal for the government to release someone's security clearance form without their permission because it includes super sensitive information like the applicant's

full social security number, their medical history, family history, relationship history, all that stuff, and the government is supposed to protect that kind of information. Secondly, to release this information, it's a threat to national security. So security clearance applications are designed to figure out if you have anything that makes you a liability. Anything that basically is could be used against you by a foreign adversary, and I mean, basically if the person is squeaky clean, it's still an issue that the exposure of their personal information could put them in their agency at risk. So journalists

aren't even allowed to file for a request to get someone's full security clearance application. And even if they tried, they just be sent back like a super black, down-redacted version that they can't even read, and that's to protect the information. It's the way it's always been until now. So as a result of all of this, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just sent out a warning to all Democratic Congressional candidates who may have submitted a security clearance to prepare

for their information being leaked by the Trump administration. And so this comes after Trump strips the security clearances of government officials like Brennan. And so now we have this. And for me, I was just, this is a conjecture now. I basically feel like the biggest issue is not the fact that that it's private information being submitted. It's Trump finding any way possible to use his authority as president to be political and abusive power.

Absolutely. Yeah. And so some people are just saying, like, oh, she just, you know, this politics is usual. Like people always leak information. This is coming from Trump. So it's a huge deal. Yeah. And it's not.

And when you're, when you're pressuring federal agencies to get, you know, to hurt your political opponents, that's abuse of power. It was an article of impeachment for Nixon when he was pressuring the IRS to do tax audits of all the Democratic candidates. Yeah, and they're trying to blame the US Postal Service. They're like, oh, you should go check with them and see why they let your information. Okay, yeah, Bob. Well, the US Postal Service apologized. And this is why I think he put the, he put the, the, you know, his thumb down on the US Postal Service.

Remember earlier when he was trying to get the Postmaster General pressuring them to raise the rates on Amazon? Exactly. Well, the USPS issued a statement saying, we're sorry, we did this, it was human error. And then at the end, they just kind of go, it's happened a couple of other times, but it won't happen again.

Oh, yeah. So like, you've done this for others, and who, and it's just sort of stopped there, and that's the frightening thing, and that has to indicate to me that Trump is putting pressure on the postmaster general in some way, he's maybe he's got some sort of a dirt on the postmaster general and is making this happen. That's all conjecture.

Yeah, but I mean, it's super likely. And it's become the new normal. This is just something like you said, it's scary because they might just get away with doing things like this, that little by little just chip away. The privacy of high officials. Yeah, and why else would the post,

but the post office take the blame? Mm-hmm. That's what, yeah, I'm kind of wondering, what could they've done wrong? That's that warrants them getting, you know, apologizing. It says that basically what they're indicating, what the implication is, is that it was a human error.

They received a FOIA request and released a full unredacted document by an error. But then they said they've also done this a few other times and they're real sorry and it won't happen again. We should probably find out the other times then. They said they're looking into it, but... Well, I hope she brings a lawsuit because this breaks HIPAA it breaks privacy laws totally against the law it's this isn't just one of those norms right it's a it's a huge deal yeah she did a cease and

this is but yeah I wonder if she'll do a lawsuit and did you see the letter they sent out to all the dumb candidates totally yeah basically saying that prepare for your security clearance forms to be released if you've ever done one you know if you have a national security background. A lot of Democratic candidates are running with that background. It's a huge wave of former CIA people. There's a good 15 or 20 at least. Yeah. So they're being targeted specifically.

That's like a cheat card for campaign op-o research too. Totally. It's everything. It's like, have you ever smoked pot? You know? Like a document looking for things that make them potentially like, just not trustable.

And her thing specifically is that, I guess she used to work at some Islamic school. She did a substitute teaching. And so that's what they're trying to use against her, the most in these like attack ads. And these robot crown children. She taught Brown Children. Well, the thing is, people at the school

have been arrested like students for terrorism. And they're saying just because they're brown and they were Activitarism that this is somehow a big she was teaching them terrible. Yeah, basically. Yeah, that's that's the thing. I see all the Columbine teacher should be arrested. Thank you And Obama was the founder of ice oh yeah It's crazy, but I'm sure it's working with the base wait you guys. It's all coming together to me now We're gonna have to cancel this podcast because it's clear to me what's happening. Oh yeah. I've been, I'm gonna go join Q and I.

You've been bamboozled. I've been so wrong. Q-boozled. You've been Q-boozled. Oh man. Alright, well that's frightening. Yeah. Thank you for that reporting.

And it's this blows my mind. That's a huge story. There's so many that came at us this week, but that's that's a pretty big one now Jordan This was amazing. What do you have for us the Trump Trump to interview what with Bloomberg? Yes, Bloomberg was on the other day Bloomberg was on the war path this week by the way They came out strong like we're like they're like we're gonna get some of these pollers from the New York Times and Washington Poets watch us. So this interview, let's hear about it.

Yeah, in this segment called, I'm calling it Trump Speaks. Please stop. That's when he's doing interviews. He keeps doing interviews now. It's like stop fucking talking. God, okay, so anyway, on Thursday, Bloomberg meets with him in the Oval Office. And so essentially Trump says that they're talking about Jeff Sessions,

which this has been in the news lately, most notably, Trump calling sessions an ineffective attorney general, essentially that is not loyal to him. And he talks of Bloomberg, he continues his narrative. He says that he will allow sessions to stay at least until November, despite him allowing this quote unquote, illegal investigation to continue. What a benevolent guy Trump is. He's going to let his attorney general stay through November.

When Bloomberg follows up with that comment and then ask him if he was going to let sessions stay past November, Trump declined to comment sketchy as fuck. So some good quotes for this interview. Some quotes include, quote unquote, I do question what Jeff is doing. I just want to look, I'm sorry, I would love to have him do a great job. All right. It's so weird.

Yeah, so of course, this is him trying to spin this narrative that sessions is maybe incahots with other forces trying to undermine Donald Trump. But because he's such a great guy, he's going to let him stay in his position. That he appointed him for. Well, we all know Jeff Sessions to be the liberal deep state fellow that was grown and loved, completely tolerant, not big of a deal at all.

Yeah, the race is possible. We just call him that for fun, not because it's based on anything. Ha, ha, ha. When Bloomberg asked him in this interview, if Trump will accept an interview with Mueller, Trump says, quote, I'll see what happens. And then he goes on to say, he goes on to say, I view it differently. I view it as an illegal investigation

because, quote, great scholars have said that, quote, there never should have been a special counsel. All right, once again, just going right to the great scholars. Yeah, exactly. I love Carter Page as a PhD. Wow. Yeah, that says something, I guess. I don't know what it says, but it says

that I am a PhD apparently. It says I'm really not as proud of my PhD as I know. No, don't let him do one of the good ones, AG. Yeah, when he said great scholars, I was trying to think of like, like, who's a baby? Socrates. Yeah, exactly great scholars. Uh, then on Thursday evening, that same day at a rally in Indiana, Trump goes on to say that

he'll have to get involved at some point if the law enforcement agencies don't quote straighten out. That's so messed up. It's so messed up. So reflecting on these comments that he makes to Bloomberg basically and on the road that same night, Republicans in Congress are now saying they expect the president to get rid of sessions after the elections in November, despite them warning him in the past that the Senate would not be able to muster the votes to confirm a successor. So there's a growing group of the GOP that is not on board for him ousting Jeff Sessions at all. Yeah, and if we flip the Congress, do you think you're going to be able to get anybody

through? Right, honestly. Right. Even now, I think you would have a hard time firing sessions and getting anyone through, particularly the Senate. They're a little more scrupulous than the House. But I mean, what do you think you're doing? Yeah, and congressional members, too. It's like their patience is wearing thin. I think I know what they're doing.

They're trying to signal their voters that they have to vote for Republicans because if they don't I Can't fire Jeff Sessions exactly or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's true Like the buck is gonna stop once we flip Congress blue for him so much is gonna change There's a really good quote this week by Senator Lindsey Graham Southern California Southern Carolina. Coward. Yeah.

All right. No, we're leaving that. That's awesome. I love it. He's a Northern Carolina, Southern California. I put SC like an idiot here. So I'm like, well, Southern California. Yeah.

That's so, Cal. Yeah. His accent and general demeanor just rings Southern California. Yeah, logical. Us, that's so cal. Yeah, his accent in general demeanor just rings Southern California super surfer like Heybro telling in fire sessions. Hell, it'll be hell to say. California burrito. Now, when you say good quote, do you mean good or do you mean interesting?

I think it's good. Oh, okay. I think it's good. So Republican Senator of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham says, quote, he, meaning Jeff Sessions, is not the only man in the country that can be Attorney General.

He is a fine man. I'm not asking for him to be fired, but the relationship is not working. Graham said on NBC's today, is there somebody who has, or who is highly qualified that has the confidence of the president and will also understand that their job is to protect Mueller? Yes, no. Right. Yes, I think we can find that person after

the election. If that is what the president wants. So I say I like this quote because of his bit about understanding that their job is to protect Mueller. Yeah, he did add that. Yeah, that's important. Interesting that he that he threw that in there. Maybe after his buddy, McCain, buddy McCain died he had to come to Jesus or something. Yeah, and he's like, uh, can't keep me in a dick. McCain's watching. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then, um, so he has that interview with Bloomberg and then he says, I'm just gonna report on the other place he popped up in the media this week. In his interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, sessions wasn't the only target. As we know, NAFTA and high stakes trade talks have been in the news this week, with Trump going around swinging his mouth dick as usual with a no-day quorum. And

some of his word vomit that was meant to be purged in private and off the record included secret and disparaging remarks about Canada. You may have heard about this. It came out in the news late this week, and they were picked up by the Toronto star. So Trump said in his interview with Bloomberg off the record that he's not making any compromises at all with Canada and that he could not say this publicly because quote, it's going to be so insulting they're not going to be able to make a deal. Trudeau and other high level officials confronted Trump about these leaked remarks on Friday and Trump goes on to say that the leak was a breach of trust, but also good. Now, Canada knows how I really feel.

Yeah, they were a little sketchy about how you felt after you accused him of burning down the White House in the 1800s when you wanted to have the tariffs put on them for national security reasons, very scary country, Canada. Yeah, yeah. As always, I always fear struck into me whenever I think of Canada. You know what probably happened, is you probably said, I'm going to say this off the record. There are a bunch of fucking assholes.

And everyone's like, I never said you were off the record. And like just went and told the Toronto star, like you can't just say off the record and make it be off the record. I think it has to be agreed on by both parties. Yeah that's good point. I didn't read anything. I could be wrong. I just could be making up that's a Canada rule and I'm just making it up. But I don't know. Yeah. Yeah well whatever happened he you know of course takes to Twitter after this gets released and I love his tweet. It says, wow, I made, I made off the record comments to Bloomberg concerning Canada. And this powerful understanding was blatantly violated. Oh well, just more dishonest reporting.

I'm used to it. At least Canada knows where I stand. I feel like you could replace the words Bloomberg with Rachel and Canada with Becky and it would read exactly the same because our president is a high school girl. That's exactly what this reads us. Did it Bloomberg? Like, Leaked or the Toronto Star? No. So Toronto Star didn't leak it. Someone who was in the interview or got word of what he said in the interview leaked it to the Toronto Star. Oh, God, but Bloomberg didn't necessarily.

Bloomberg was not the source, not necessarily. Yeah. I don't know if that means, you know, it was someone that works with Bloomberg. That leaked it still. I personally think Trump's people leaked it. Yeah. That are just turning on him. Or to continue the fake news narrative. Yeah. That the news is attacking him.

I think this is all a Trump. Yeah, that's very true. Created drama. This doesn't happen. Right. Yeah, not from the Bloomberg side. Exactly. Yeah. So Bloomberg was not the source of the comments themselves. It came from another source. So, you know, to hang on Bloomberg or do I don't really care. I think that it's a needless to say,

you as in Canada, we're unable to reach a deal by Friday, which was the informal deadline set. So talks are supposed to resume on Wednesday. And I'd like to end this with a classy quote that Trudeau says, in response to all of this, he says, we will only sign a deal if it is a good deal for Canada. Over the past year and a half, there's a lot of things that have been said from time to time. I think people have noticed that our government's approach

is always to stay constructive, positive, to engage on the substance of issues, and to demonstrate that we understand that the path forward is one of making sure that there's a win, win, win on all sides. So I'm just going to start posting Trudeau quotes I think whenever I'm going to need to something presidential. Yeah, I'll just reply to Trump tweets with Trudeau quotes. I think that would be great.

He would love it. He'd be like, thank you for sharing that immense, wonderful quote. Yeah, I'm going to steal that. And that's what this is. Well, Melania style steal that. And then this is it. O'Millania style. Nice. All right, well thank you for that.

I don't want him to stop talking. I think it's amazing every time he opens his mouth. Yeah, this is true. All right, well I want to cover felony Friday, you guys. This was so good. Remember when we saw a picture of Mueller at the National Airport in close proximity to Don Jr. Yeah. And I speculated they were flying to New York and it turns out they were.

And then we learned that Mueller was actually handing off several lobbyists to the criminal referrals on lobbyists to the Southern District of New York that included both Republicans and Democrats. Remember that? Well, one of them rolled on Friday. Oh, nice. And it was in the same court to the same judge, Manifort, will face September 24th. Amy, Judge Jackson, if you're nasty. The guy's name is Samuel Patton. He's a Republican lobbyist and associate of Paul Manifort and an employee of Cambridge

Analytica. He struck a deal Friday, pleading guilty to one count of failing to register as a foreign agent. And he's agreed to cooperate with the government. He was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia after he was referred by Mueller, and his plea agreement stipulates, now he must cooperate with Mueller. He has to cooperate with the Special Counsel's Office. The fact that Mueller handed this off, and then it came back to him, jives perfectly

with our evidence laundering theories, and additionally, he's, I also think he's spreading this out. He's putting this in all these handing all this off to protect the investigation if something should happen to him, either with the firing of sessions or the firing of him or the firing of Rosenstein or the installation of a pro Trump stooge like Benchkowski that could stime me the probe. It's just like Justice Wackemoll. He's like, here, but you have it, you have this, you have this, you have this, go ahead, try to stop it, you know, I think it's beautiful. And because he knows anything he hands off if it's got to do with Russia, he's gonna get it back and that's exactly what happened in this case, which we've been saying this whole time.

So Samuel Patton, he worked for the same pro-Putin Ukrainian faction that Manafort worked for, worked for it, worked for it. So the opposition block. And he is also allegedly the boss of Constantine Columnick. That's Manafort's buddy, right? As a reminder, Columnick is the guy that Manafort emailed back and forth about becoming whole with Olegg Darapaska, right? He was kind of his go-between to Olegg Darapaska through private campaign briefings. He's the guy Manafort was having dinner with at 666 Fifth

Avenue. The night Darapaska's private jet landed in New Newark and then they took off for that yacht meeting in Norway with the Prime Minister of Russia and Nastya Ribko was on the boat and she took the video, remember? This is a guy, Tad Divine knows a bunch about to, right? Yeah, exactly. And Kalimnik is also the dude that tried to help Manafort tamper with witnesses while he was in jail. And he's the co-defendant with Manafort in his upcoming September 24th trial in DC,

though he won't be there where he's he left. He snuck away. Samuel Patton's payments also went through a separate bank account, much like Manafort's did. According to the criminal information document, Patton and Calimnick started a lobbying firm together and were paid over a million bucks from 2015 to 2017. Manafort was lobbying for Yanukovych and Patton was lobbying for Yanukovych's chief of staff named Sergei Lavochkin. And Lavochkin was the guy who paid the tens of millions of dollars to Manafort that he laundered.

The document says Patton contacted members of Congress and their staffers and state department officials and the press on behalf of his Ukraine clients. That's the Enacovitch's chief of staff Levochkin. He contacted all them, lobbied all them. So this patent guy might have a connection to the two EU lobbyists. We brought up an episode 17, the two that Manafort tried to tamper with from jail. Using Kalimnik as a go-between, and I wonder if one of the congressmen patent had contacted that was mentioned in his criminal information packet was Dana Rorobacher.

That's speculation. But Dana is the guy who everyone half jokes about getting paid by Putin. He's also the guy that was briefed by Vessel Nitskaya about the Magnitski Act, same as what happened in Trump Tower. Dana is basically the devil. Come on, I want to talk Trump Tower. Dana is basically the devil. But it gets even more interesting, guys, because the charging document says it seems to

implicate the Trump campaign. There's a law that says, inaugurals and campaigns cannot accept foreign donations, right? We all know that. And patent admitted to cheating that system by having a US citizen quote, straw donor, unquote, by four tickets to the inaugural, the Trump inaugural for $50,000. The tickets went to Lavachnik, Kalimnik, patent,

and another unnamed Ukrainian. So those were the four tickets. Then Samuel Patton paid back the US citizen, and the Levochnik paid back Patton through a separate account. And you guys remember that note? I keep bringing up a Manafort took during the Veselnitz guy, a Trump Tower meeting to use Cyprus as an intermediary.

Was he talking about using Cyprus as an intermediary to funnel Putin money into the Trump inaugural fund? That could have been it too. And don't forget that Roarabacher is also connected to Vesselnet Sky. So there's all these weird connections that keep coming back. Oh yeah. And the hub seems to be the inauguration. Given the insane size of the Trump inaugural fund, and many have been questioning the math on this for a really long time, but how many others have done this? Like how much money has gone through the Trump inaugural? And who is the US citizen mentioned in the patent criminal document?

Well, I have an idea. I have a theory. And please note, this is just conjecture. But according to the cooperation agreement, patents started cooperating on May 22nd. First of all, that's how leak proof this investigation is. Patent has been cooperating for three months, and we didn't hear a peep about it until he decided to make the plea agreement public.

Anyhow, he started cooperating on May 22nd. That same week, we reported that Mueller was looking into Vexelberg and his cousin Intrater's donations to the inaugural through Cohen's slush fund. Remember that guy? Intrater spoke to Cohen about investing in the taxi business and sat with him at the Trump inauguration. Vexelberg is Intrater's sanctioned pro-Russian Ukrainian-born cousin. So check out this clip from episode 30 back in May. If Vexelberg sounds familiar it should. His cousin, Intrater, owns and operates a company

called Columbus Nova, which paid $500,000 to the Cohen slush fund for access to Trump. If you remember Cohen set up that slush fund selling access to Trump, and it was called essential consulting. It's fucking essential. You got it. I love it. Avonotti released this information that he got from a suspicious activity report, an S.A.R. leaked by a law enforcement officer who thought it was weird that two of them disappeared, but one of them didn't. So there was reporting just a couple of weeks earlier that Mueller was looking into the inaugural and then bam patent starts

cooperating with US attorneys and Mueller. So so my money is on in trader as the straw man for this. He's a US citizen. He has Russian cousin donated 500 large to the inaugural fund through essential consulting. And I think the fourth Ukrainian that got a ticket could be Vexelberg, but that might be a bridge too far. And that's like, I'm just going out in a limb there. I don't get any money for that.

This is the first time federal prosecutors have charged someone for actually dumping foreign money into the Trump inaugural. It's a big deal. And you know there was more to come. There was at least $50 million extra dollars in that slush fund of an inaugural. And that's if he had Beyonce. Would you do Nettie?

He had Scott Beo and like the, I don't know. I was going to say the Backstreet Boys, but that would have been a much better act than what he had. Back in January, we reported that after a year, there was still a bunch of watchdog groups trying to figure out what happened to all that Trump inaugural money. And as a reminder, they raised 107 million, which was twice as much as Obama's record-breaking 2008 inaugural. Imagine what Obama's inaugural cost in 2008, double it, and then Trump spent that on his

inaugural. I don't think so. Yeah. So shame no one came out to it. No. And who? think so. Yeah. So shame no one came out to it. No. And who shame, I guess. Do you know who ran the organizing committee for the inaugural? It was Tom Barich. That's the guy who got Manafort the job is Trump's campaign chairman. Oh snap. Right. And for no money. For free. Hmm. He'll work for free. Hmm. Make you wonder. Finally, Patton admitted to lying to Congress,

specifically the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he withheld documents. Friday, the Intelligence Committee made a statement, quote, we can confirm that Mr. Patton produced documents to the committee and was interviewed by the committee. Due to concerns about certain statements made by Mr. Patton, the committee made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.

While the charge and resultant plea today do not appear to directly involve our criminal referral, we appreciate their review of this matter." So no one knows if what the Intel committee referred for has been addressed. So he lied to Congress, he violated FARA, he committed conspiracy to defraud the United States. He likely violated campaign finance laws. He probably participated in wire fraud and probably computer fraud.

He certainly is guilty of tax fraud and bank fraud, and I'm not a lawyer, and I'm totally guessing, but he only copped to violating Fera, which carries only a max of five years and a $250,000 fine. So his proffer must be bomb, right? To get off of all that stuff. Now, because when you think about what, you know, I mean, that's kind of what's happening,

like they'll get that one either lying to Congress or lying to the FBI agents or whatever. But get this, he also is tied to Cambridge Analytica. This isn't over yet. He worked with them since 2014 on multiple overseas campaigns in the US. He was the guy Christopher Wiley. Christopher Wiley is the pink haired whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica. Remember that guy? He alleged Patton was in the US testing voter response to Putin.

So we are not hearing the end of this because he's deeply tied to Cambridge Analytica. And I'm sure he knows Brad Parscale who is now Trump's 2020 campaign manager. It's like full circle. You go from one shitty campaign manager to the next and they're all connected. Yeah, why would you stop? Why would you stop making bad decisions? You only know assholes, that's what happens.

All right, guys, an update on this case is due to Judge Jackson on October 31st, so we'll have a happy Halloween when we find out what happens. But we'll be right back. Hey, Mueller junkies, thank you so much for supporting our show and supporting women in podcasting. I need to ask you for a quick favor happens, but we'll be right back. spans our efforts to flip Congress blue in November. And don't forget, follow us on Twitter at Mollarshee Road to be automatically entered to win a PlayStation 4. Don't ask.

Thank you so much for listening. We would not be here without you. All right, guys, you ready for the fantasy indictment league? Yes! Excellent. We got another one. The guilty plea of Sam Patton counts. This was a result of a Mueller referral to the Southern District of New York and he now has a full cooperation agreement with Mueller.

So if you named Patton, if you named him by name, you get two points because he's an outer ring American. And he's been reported on a little bit in the Patent Natasha Bertrand, did a whole story on him back in April. Whoa. She interviewed him and everything. So if you named him, you get two points. But if you didn't name him, he counts as a rando.

Yay. So you'll get one point for him if you had a rando on your team. But only one. So if you had two randos, he doesn't count twice because he's only one rando Okay, I got one I got one rando nice. I took the rando off to put the trump organ So I got no points this week. So I don't know who's keeping track. I am not I did get going I did but now I'm yeah, did you get going? No, no, okay cool Yeah, you're the only one of us that got Cohen. I think.

Woo, woo. Oh, yeah, yeah. All right, so I'm going to change my picks this week, based on my conjecture about this US citizen and patents plea agreement. So I'm going to take Intrader, Donald Trump Jr., Cohen, Kushner, and the Trump org. How about you guys?

I'm going to keep all in mind. I think I did have Cohen actually there. I know what I think about it, because it was down junior Cohen, I had one rando and then... I think you had Bettina and Kushner. Bettina and Kushner, that sounds about right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, keeping that, yeah. Okay, I'm gonna do Bettina still, Trump org.

I'm gonna do two randos again and Rora Bacher, because I want that guy to go down. No DT Jr No DT J and take a DT J and cushion her off for this week because I just don't think it's gonna happen that quickly Okay, then it happened. I'm trying to get miss out you You're playing tonight. 20 points. Yeah, it's that's true if it happens this week I'm gonna be so upset literally the only week this whole You'll be happy and upset. Oh, and there's a new thing by the way I was on the 45th pod talking with Susan the other week.

If you don't listen to that, check it out. It's awesome. It's a great podcast. And she brought up to me something I hadn't heard before. Have you heard about Bannon's hot tub? No. Okay. You can pick Bannon's hot tub as a fantasy indictment pick and have on your team.

It's worth a million points. So here's what happens. Somebody found acid in Bannon's hot tub. Oh, that's right. So like, why would you have acid in a hot tub? Is there more? Some work are in a acid? Sulfuric acid.

Oh my God. Like, breaking bad acid. Yeah, yeah. Well, he looks like he does meth. So he, yeah, he could also be in a business. Yeah, but it didn't use the acid to make the meth. They used the acid to dissolve bodies. Right, right, exactly. That's what he b bays into relax after that's what happened to his face

My god, I'm so mean. Yeah, he's a toxic super villain. Yeah, he's like, well, this is what I am now It is the episode wonderful toys. Yeah, maybe that's he's a toxic super villain somebody draw that up I know I've got amazing comic book artists. Yeah. Yeah, Bannon's Hot Tub, toxic. Wow. Avenger. Anyway, that's worth a million points. If you ever call that, and for some reason,

something happens with Bannon's Hot Tub. You find out. You win the entire fantasy indictment, like, that's just how it has to go. All right, time for sabotage. So late Friday night, the defense for Papadopoulos released his sentencing document, which confirms our theory that Papadopoulos was already part of Trump's national security team prior to speaking with Mif Suid, thereby blowing holes, big holes through the conspiracy theories that Papadopoulos told about the dirt on Hillary before he was the ever-with-Trump.

And here to speak to us about the document today is Mortgage Broker, journalist, radio broadcaster, and producer of the Dwarken Report, Grant Stern. Grant, welcome to Muller She-Rope. Thank you for having me on the program. I really appreciate you being here. Your depth of knowledge blows my mind. So off the top, I was wondering what your thoughts were or the major takeaways for you from this sentencing memo.

Well, for starters, I think the excuse level here is on a scale of 1 to 10 at 11, that he was just trying to advance his career. And I think that just clearly establishes criminal motive that he had something to gain by lying to the FBI. It's, I think, important that they mentioned Sergey Milion, who was one of these Russian-speaking nationals, who was friends with Trump and friends with other developers like Miami-based Jorge Perez, and he was kind of like a chamber of commerce guy and that was the what they considered the the lure that that drew their client in. And then of course I mean we've seen what the the special council published he said hey if you got it had been truthful with us we would have picked this guy mistook up when he was in the united states

and they kind of blame uh... pop it up with his lawyers is saying hey we were under virtual probation for last thirteen months the whole world knows about us uh... you know we didn't know at the time that this is all gonna go down this way he wasn't trying to obstruct justice so you know the back and forth there is very interesting. But obviously, what everybody is focused on is something that, you know, nobody can see on this podcast, even though I'm winking and nodding it, you guys. Yeah. It's, I mean, you bring up a really good point, but the,

yeah, the timing is so important because everybody was saying that, you know, a really good point, but the timing is so important because everybody was saying that, it was this big conspiracy and that he was going undercover for, you know, spying on the Trump team, working for the feds and we're like, no, he was actually quite an uncooperative asshole and he didn't provide anything. In fact, I think it wasn't as good

until his fourth proffer when they presented him with his own texts and emails and said do you want to come on and his sir and like search history and stuff uh... that the even cooperated so it's like c'mon man that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that well not only that but something that the the prosecutors office mentioned in their

filing which is that after you spoke to the New York Times they discharged him from being a witness in the case any further and I think that that is what they're going to argue in court you know just that my big takeaway from both filing the the special counsel is going to show up and say look you know it would have been better if he had just kept his mouth shut instead of going out there and seeking publicity when he was supposed to be cooperating with us. Now the flip side to that is that George Poppidopoulos actually confirmed one of the biggest

most amazing stories I ever wrote. The first story I wrote on the Sternfakt.com, which is that the Trump-Russia dossier oil deal decoded. And in that story, which was simply a meta-analysis of everything that we knew about the steel dossier, incorporating Scott's work in recent report on it, everything that was confirmed, some of the stories I had written that confirmed it, the one thing that popped out to me about all of it was that the night at the Mace-Lower Hotel was significant. It was a meeting of the minds, that's what I called it.

And George Poppidopolis told The New York Times in December that it was a signal to meet. So a meeting of the mind is a real estate term. It means there's a contractor agreement. And George kind of confirmed that very publicly. And I could see why the investigators would be upset about him spilling the beans on the line of their investigation, because then other people might try to cover up rely or do the same thing he did, just try to play it all off and hope they get away with it. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we've discussed and done many reports on the Mayflower meeting,

the Marshall Plan, building reactors in Saudi Arabia, that whole thing with Bud and KT, McFarland, working for Flynn, and Bhutina comes in there. I mean, the whole web is pretty ridiculous. But before we get too deep into those weeds, the russian weeds uh... what's up with his trip to italy can you explain that to us and who was there and what was going on you know jord's pop it up was a strip didaly yeah it was mentioned in the in the sentencing report you know as we've seen recently

italy has a very strong and internationally oriented right wing political party, and they just took power in the Italian government with a minority, but they do have political power now. So, you know, George was flying all over the Middle East during the campaign. For him to be an Italy wouldn't be so unusual because he was really focusing on the Mediterranean countries. And, you know, that's where he met Misfsued. And I mean, it just bears mention that the FBI has its main foreign office in Rome, like, you know, because for good reason, because there's always been a lot of international political activity going through there.

And I talk about the old Italian Communist parties, which for many years had links to Moscow as well. So I mean, it's just one of these things like it's an international meeting place. You know, the FBI has a very well-known officer, I guess, for good reason, as you can see by George Poppidopolis' story. But that's where he met the mysterious, you know, his wife. Benjanti.

Yes, Ms. Manjanti, yes. And, you know, I mean, what can you say? She's a real character herself, and a lot of people have noticed that she doesn't really have a very powerful back story, and Simona has a dressing accent. And we'll just say people have pitched that over to me and said, you should take a really close look at this. Like, where is she from? Yeah, every time I hear her, I'm like,

son, they to's, they're Monday, Thursday, Saturday, Friday. But it is. It is odd. It's hard to place. I've been to Italy. I'm not an expert. But have you found anything out about that?

Or are you still working on it? That's next on the plate. Let's just say that we have some stuff brewing, but we haven't gone full full deep dive yet because there really wasn't a reason and now that he's not uh... trying to challenge the plea deal which never tends to work out by the way uh...

if you want to think about people who've challenged plea deals and lost think about republican senator larry cragg of the wide stance plea deal didn't work out for him it's very difficult to challenge a pleadial once it's been entered into. And even worse, if you win, they can still admit all your statements against you, typically.

So for our listeners, really quick, because I know we've got a lot of younger listeners. Larry Craig was in, I think, public restrooms signaling to men in stalls next to him to have, to engage in homosexual acts by sticking his foot under the stall. And when asked about why he was doing that, he said, I wasn't, I just have a wide stance. Basically, when I shit, I man spread. And so the foot went over into the stall. So, and I'm not gay, I'm not gay. Yeah, that happened in the Minnesota airport, by the way. Minnesota. Yeah.

It's not that long ago, either. It's like 2005. Well, those are pretender days, though. So, I mean, you know, to be fair, you've got to use the foot. I swipe left on the foot I guess but uh so the big question is and I have to ask you because I know that you know all sorts of crazy secret shit where is miff sud oh he's certainly in hiding i mean you know his wife Simona her everything and she's done in the last three months or so, buying into the conspiracy theories and chanting them essentially, it brings into question her whole story, because she actually worked for misud, if you recall.

That's how she met, you know, popped up list. So, I mean, misud is gotta be in hiding. I mean, it's not for his own safety. Maybe Moscow has him. Maybe he's not with us anymore. I mean, this man had a lot of high level connections at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the MFA was one of the main organs used

in Russia's intervention in our elections. So, you know, a lot of these people tend to have hard attacks very suddenly when Russia's upset with them. And, you know, we don't know if he's still around or not, but I believe that there was BuzzFeed that got copies of the text messages with his romantic partner. And, you know, we just don't know where he is today,

but he has obviously some very good reasons to hide they certainly seems to be at the center of a massive investigation that it probably doesn't end with him at all but it's certainly you know an important starting point because that's really where the authorities did actually start. Yeah you're right they have mysterious heart attacks or they fall down in their hotel room multiple times and hit their heads or I think recently a VP of a steel company was fell out of his 20 story apartment. There's all sorts of Yeah, they fall out of apartment windows that are very very high-paced. Anyway, we really appreciate you having

Having you on today you've really kind of given us some clarification on this on this pop it up case I know we're looking forward to having you on soon for a bonus episode on cutter because that's kind of that's one of your specialties but for now can you tell our listeners where they can find your blog where they can find your reports and your tweets and everything so they can follow you sure go ahead and follow me at grants stern on Twitter building the brand there and then my website is theeasternfacts.com, thesteranfacts.com. I write for WashingtonPress.com sometimes, it's been a little while. They were on a summer high, it is or whatnot.

And you can also check out the Dworkin report. I produce that. We release anywhere from three to seven podcasts per week. Some of them are deep dives and some of them are you know interviews and you know Twitter is the best way to get hold of me say hi afterwards and tell me what you think awesome Well, we really appreciate your time. So thanks for being here and we'll talk to you soon It's my pleasure and I'm gonna tweet an article about George Poppidopolis from last November So everybody can check it out. We'll do. Thanks. Have a good one.

You too. All right, guys. I wanted to bring back the Q&A. I missed it. So we're going to do a little Q&A today. I still don't have a song for Q&A. So... Q&A. Here we go. A Q&A song will be really funny. Do-do-do-do. Does Q&A have songs?

They need a theme song. Okay. Yeah. We need a Q&A theme song. I think somebody made my cap remember. Oh, can I- I'm so Okay. Yeah, we need a Q and a theme song. I think somebody made one. I can't remember Oh, can I I'm so sorry. Yeah, what I'm my fantasy and diamond league. I'm taking Bettina off super sitting And diamonds for rock and I'm putting DTJ back on okay, okay, I'm not too late. No, I'm sorry No, it's totally fine. No, you guys encounter if you if you anytime for between now and the end of the episode you want to change that

Yeah, I'm gonna call you a midnight All right, so at Clint Jenkins 85 asked what are the odds on trump firing sessions post midterms regardless of Dems take control seems like a given no matter who wins. I think it would be incredibly stupid of him to fire sessions at any time because it's going to look like obstruction of justice. He's tried to fire him multiple times. McG, he's testified to that. I'm sure in his 30-hour talk. And if we, even if Dems take control, like we were just talking about, he's no way he's going to get anybody confirmed. There's just no way. And that means that Rosenstein would take over the investigation. Now, he could fire Rosenstein. And that would put Bench Kowski as the attorney general. And he's a pro-Trump pro-Putin fuck fuckface. Remember he represented Alpha Bank. Yeah, yeah.

Who's implicated in the steel dossier and whose communication servers were talking to Trump Tower early on in the campaign. So that could happen. There'd be super consequences. I don't think he'd want to do that. No, no, yeah, I mean unless you're already going to get impeached, like let's go ahead and scream.

Exactly. But if he knew, and the things Trump would do if he knew for sure he was getting impeached in like a week, he would go crazy. I think he's doing out and scream. But if he knew, oh man, the things Trump would do if he knew for sure he was getting impatient like a week, he would go crazy. I think he's doing it right now. Oh, probably. Yeah. At Conner, underscore grants.

I'm glad you grant. He wants to know if we think Mueller will retry the charges manifold wasn't convicted on, or if it's really not worth the time since there's another trial in DC. From what I know of Mueller, I think he would retry him. I don't think that he would consider anything not worth it or worth it. I think he's after justice and I think he knows that there was one juror that was hung on those 10 counts and I think he might do it.

But he's asked for more time. It's an easy win for him and he must know that. Yeah. But I think the reason he asked for more time. It's an easy win for him and he must know that. But I think the reason he asked for more time is to see if they can work out a plea deal with Manifort. Oh. Because if they do, then I don't think they'll retry. That might be part of the deal. We won't retry those 10 counts.

And we won't take you to court in DC. And you've got to plead guilty to this. And then you've got to give us all of the information on the superseding indictments where we were going to drop on you. Yeah. So I think if Manifort doesn't cooperate, I think he'll retry him. Interesting.

And then would he be defending himself in two separate cases at the same time? Is that how that would work? Or do you think they would postpone the trial that's coming up this month? No, I think they would probably do the 10 counts after GTC trial. Yeah. I don't think that you can do them at the same time. I think that that's probably undue stress or something. That's fair.

That is a bit ridiculous. Yeah, that'd be crazy. What's your schedule? Two court cases back to back, you know. That's what he deserves, but like it's, yeah, that's good. That's good, that's not a thing. At Rob Duck Moto asked if Trump pardoned somebody for crimes he's connected with, does that make it harder for him to be charged for related crimes?

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think so. I think if Trump pardoned somebody for crimes he's connected with, that actually is a abuse of power, and I think that that's an impeachable offense, and if we flip the Congress blue, which means you have to get out and vote, but I can't send you money. But Jordan can. And so the word's over here. to get out of vote, but I can't send you money. But Jordan can. Jordan's in here. Julie's in here. Yeah, send me money.

Not you, not me. Send me money. My friend, who is Ed Jordan, who is the one. At Caitlin Schmidt, not at Caitlin, just Caitlin Schmidt on Facebook wants to know if we think Mueller will actually stop announcing things now. And if not, when September September first feels made up, it is made up.

First of all, if you're gonna do the 60 day rule, that's September 7th. I think again, Giuliani was just doing a labor day thing, don't wear a white, don't indict. And I think it's, I actually think that Mueller's not gonna stop. He may withhold specific big time indictments. Yeah. He might just seal those and wait until after the election

and then let him all go. Like, and I think, let her have awesome. That's great. It's the Anamana Pia for indictments. No, no, no, no. Weird. Sorry. But that's how I think it's made up, too.

I actually think we should pay attention to what happens on Tuesday. And all of next week for that matter, it's still quite a bit of ways out from the election. It's closed, but also Trump's not running. Yeah, I love that you bring that up. It's the first time I thought about that today when you mentioned it earlier in the episode.

He's not a candidate. So like, would that even apply? It'd be like a courtesy, I guess, to Republicans, but they don't deserve that. Well, yeah, it's kind of up to, yeah, I just don't know how Mueller thinks. He might just, you know, he seems like a conservative fellow, but he also seems like a justice guy.

So, true. I don't know, because remember when we talked about his dissertation, how he thought even though the case was lost on a technicality that wasn't what was right. Yeah, it was a moral issue for him, yeah. Even though technically, he shouldn't indict after Labor Day, he might be thinking like, I can't, I have to think of what's the best interest of justice

in the United States of America, and that might be to do that. So, I mean, especially like the myths of things a good example, I think there are things that have happened that have impeded the investigation because they didn't come out quickly enough information. So like pop it up with holding information about MIFSID and stuff.

If they stop investigating basically or they slow down their investigation, that could make it so people literally leave the country that they need to talk to or something. Right, yeah, they don't wanna, they wouldn't imperially investigation in favor of the election. Some people think that he'll just keep investigating and arresting people and stuff, and he's

very good at keeping things from leaking, leaking, leaking. He wouldn't just make sure that information didn't get out. Maybe, I don't know. I don't think it matters. I think he's going to bring indictments when indictments need to be brought, regardless of the election. I think that the September 1st thing is bullshit. They're hopeful. They've given a lot of deadlines that were bullshit.

So that's why this could be the same. But I'm also very brash compared to Mueller, so I wear other than white shirts. Sarah Oatman has asked on Facebook if we think Mueller has referred Jarrod and Ivanka at all to other US attorney's offices. I think it depends on what it's for. If it's for a hotel-year shit in Azerbaijan or her jewels and diamond laundering shit, I think he will hand that off to New York. Yeah, just like the other money stuff. Yeah, and if anything Russian happens, it'll come back to him.

And it's, again, not just a launder the evidence, but not just to keep his jurisdiction intact in his scope small, so he can't have holes blown in his investigation for that, especially now that Andrew Miller is taking a subpoena and appeal up to the Supreme Court. They'll be like, he's done nothing but Russia stuff, so you're at a luck. He's not unconstitutional here, even though he does have the right to do that. So I think keeping that scope close, but also, I mean, putting out the tendrils, that whack-a-mull thing I was talking about, so it makes it really difficult for anybody to squash this investigation now that it's taking place in multiple areas. Right, almost like the mini-muller theory, but in different jurisdictions. Yes.

Mini-mullers out on the march in the trench. They're multiverse of mullers out on the march. In the trench. They're multiverse of mullers. Yeah. Oh my god. A million muller march would be really cool in Washington. Trump daycare probably is like Jerry daycare.

That's Rick and Rooney. You brought your Trump with you. Oh. At CGW459 Cindy wants to know what we think of the lame duck meltdown and what citizens can do if this goes down like that. She's referring to what I was talking about earlier, Republican loss, to keep the house and Trump firing sessions to replace him with someone who will subvert the investigation

though that wouldn't go through so he might fire Rosenstein putting bench Kowski in charge. That's kind of what the lame duck meltdown is. And again, I think he's just out of luck because if we flip the Congress, that's where the power comes from in these situations. And we can feel that because we have nothing we can do about the Kavanaugh nomination, we have nothing we can do about the president.

There's no check on him. And a lot of independence are gonna vote Democratic just to keep the check on the president. It happens in the second year all the time. I just think it's gonna be much bigger this time as a referendum on this, particularly now with those poll numbers that we're seeing. Yeah, and a lot of Republicans, especially with what just happened with McCain too, it's like Trump is so tainted in the eyes of people that are truly GOP members. Yeah, that flag half-mast and then raising it back up and then not doing it in the first place

and then having to have the foreign Legion or the American the foreign Legion Having to have the American Legion tell him to put it back at half staff and he's like okay, and then he does It's like oh my god. Why are you such a fucking bitch? Yeah, oh? And no offense to bitches At all things Mul one asked to what is up with Trump's obsession with or like what's behind it? I've seen suggestions that it's because he has he's been tough on Russian organized crime over the years. Yes, that's absolutely it. And it's probably boils down to a guy named Simeon McGillovich. Greg Proops has brought him up. He's the crime boss of crime bosses in Russia. People call him Don Simeon. He's really a fucking bad dude. In fact, he might

be why Bannon had acid in his hot tub. Like, he is insanely, like, think of our mob bosses, Goddie, and all that, like, nothing compared to this guy. Wow. And he is real close to Putin. And I guarantee you, we had a hand in orchestrating this, and it, and had a hand in having Trump over the barrel for, for example. So I do think that that's why Organ involved again. That's all conjecture. I think we'll be talking about Don Simion more as we get closer to Finding how all this russia stuff ties together, but he's definitely a part of it And I think that's why he's going after Or and Nelly Or worked for fusion GPS who you know Did Opal research on him. He just hates people who don't like him. Yeah

did Oppo Razor John him, he just hates people who don't like him. Yeah. Yeah, to me it makes sense because it gives him an opportunity to keep pedaling this completely dead end null point that the dossier is what kicked off the Pfizer Warren. Yeah. I just I love the picture of Nunez like going into Europe trying to spy on an MI6 operative like putting shoe polish on his face, and he's got his headphones on, listening to the Mission Impossible fake mustache.

I'm in Feather Moomins. I'm curious to speak to you about Crystal Thirsty, like it just sounds like the dumbest fucking shit to me. Yes. Oh, okay, it's just, the picture in my mind is hilarious. It's cute, it's like he's going out in his own little adventure, trying to investigate. Like if it's a movie, it should be played by McCulley Cockin

or something, you know, yeah. Like my first passport thing, you know, just for it's like, he's just going out there, just trying to figure it out. Yeah. I'm on my trip to the big city. I'm gonna figure out what's going on, guys. You're gonna make it after all. He throws his hat in the air.

Then he runs after his hat and trips and falls. Awesome. At Sarah Bitts asked if the 60-day tradition even applies when Trump isn't up for election in November and we kind of already cover that. I personally don't think it does, but I don't think it should. But Mueller might. It can have an influence on, and even a midterm,

even none of them are running. Just it can become a referendum on the current administration's party affiliation. Yeah. But we'll see what happens. We will see what happens in the next. That's the best thing. I can see here and make predictions.

We're going to find out. We'll or will not happen. At Dark Fury, MN, Minnesota, Dark Fury, Minnesota, asked if Mueller could be holding off on Kush and Jr. until the midterms knowing Donald Trump might go ballistic and attempt to shut down the investigation. I don't think so. I don't think he does anything strategic like that.

I think when he's got his indictments ready, the one thing I could see him doing is ceiling him and putting aside, putting them aside for something like that. But Donald Trump's already going ballistic, so... Yeah, I don't think Mueller is afraid of what Trump is capable of, like, between now and the end of it. I think he just wants to take his time and almost tune it out, but then he has to tune in things that are relevant, so that's going to be confusing for Mueller, like what's a care about and what to not care about? Well, I think what he's done is he set up an investigation in such a way that it's bulletproof that he's got many mullers all over the place. He's got dead men switches. He's got

fail safes that he doesn't have to pay attention to that kind of thing. He can just focus on the investigation. I think that's what he's doing. Unless it's evidence and a tweet. Of course. Yeah. And he's you've seen that thing where he's like, you stop fucking breaking the law so I can finish this. Um, Maria Carmona asked to explain why one would hold one self in contempt of court. I think she's speaking of Andrew Miller. And I think we, we've touched on this a little bit.

Basically, when you hold yourself in contempt of court, it gives you the right to appeal, that finding and that case that you're in contempt of. And that's his vehicle to get basically the constitutionality of Mueller's existence heard at a high court. Okay. So that's why he's doing that. Otherwise, he wouldn't have a mechanism to get this up to the DC appellate court.

That makes sense. Eventually, maybe the Supreme Court. Yeah. this up to the DC appellate court. That makes sense. Eventually, maybe the Supreme Court. Yeah, yeah. GypsyCon wants to know if Mueller's team hasn't communicated with 45 lawyers and weeks because they have enough info to drop indictments on him without his testimony. Yeah, I think it's because they're, I think they're just going to drop a subpoena, whether they do it pre-election

or post-election, I think that that's what they're thinking. Yeah. They're like, we're not going to talk to him. We're never going to talk to him. And Julie Ann even said, you're not talking to him after September 1st. So he's like, all right, well, here you go. Take this. But yeah, that's what that's kind of what we think. Joe Otto wants to know if a vice president can be indicted. Yes, totally. And should be. And Kevin at K underscore to underscore T asked me if jeeps are still cool? Answer is no what and I have a jeep. I love jeeps

The room is split. That's actually why I said no Yeah, I know I guess it depends on the jeep too, but almost all jeeps look cool when they're like a little dirty dip I do I like jeeps. I got a two-wheel drive Jeep, that is not cool. Objectively. You can convert that. Yeah. Yeah, if you wanted to spend a whole shitload of money

for nothing. Yeah, for a whole other time I spent off-rooting, bro. I'm gonna hit the speed bumps like a fucking chase. All right, thank you guys for listening this week. Please spread the word. This is about to get crazy. And we are the only place right now you can get all the Mueller news and easy to swallow morsels.

So please become a patron before we stop undervaluing ourselves at patreon.com slash Mueller, she wrote, head to Apple podcasts of the A.K.A. iTunes. Give us a rating and subscribe. That's like the number one way we can get the word out. And thank you so much for all of your support. I've been AG. I've been Julie C. Johnson. I've been Jordan Coburn. And this is Muller She wrote. Muller She wrote is produced and engineered by AG with editing and logo design by Julie

C. Johnson. Our sound engineering is courtesy of Resonant Recordings. Our digital media director and subscriber managers are Jordan Coburn, Sarah Lee Steiner and Sarah Hershberg, Valencia. Fact checking and research by AG will support from Julie C. Johnson and Jordan Coburn, Sarah Lee Steiner, and Sarah Hershberg, Valencia. Fact checking and research by AG, who support from Julie Sir Johnson and Jordan Coburn. Our web design and branding are by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios, and our website is mullershirove.com. Hi, I'm Harry Lickman, host of Talking Feds. Around Table, the brings together prominent figures from government law and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day. Each Monday, I'm joined by a slate of Feds favorites and new voices to break down the headlines

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