Jack - Grand Jury Manipulation

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

Lawyers for former CIA Chief John Brennan have written to the Chief Judge in the Southern District of Florida accusing the Justice Department of forum shopping.The Supreme Court has ruled that Trump does not have the authority to deploy the National Guard under title 10 USC section 12406.The Justice Department issues a memo asking assistant US Attorneys to work through the holidays to redact the Epstein files as they claim to have found a million new documents.The White House has taken over the Justice Department communications on social media.Plus listener questions…Do you have questions for the pod?  Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M.SW. Media. The Supreme Court has ruled that Trump does not have the authority to deploy the National Guard under Title X, U.S.C., section 12406. Ex-C.I. Chief John Brennan's lawyers have written to the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida accusing the Justice Department of forum shopping. The Justice Department issues a memo asking assistant U.S. attorneys to work through the holidays to redact the Epstein files as they claim to have found a million new documents. And the White House has taken over the Justice Department communications on social media. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 49 of Unjustified.

It's Sunday, December 28th. We're working through the holidays, just like those DOJ lawyers. redacting Trump's name in the Epstein Files. I'm Allison Gill. I'm Andy McCabe. We certainly are, but there will be no retractions here, I guess, except one major retraction that I should probably explain. So you may recall, Allison, a couple of weeks ago in one of our episodes,

we covered the investigation that the Justice Department is apparently pursuing in the Southern District of Florida. not sure why, and that I had received a subpoena from the investigators in that investigation. And so because I have received a subpoena, and I am then presumptively a target in this investigation, I'm not going to be commenting about it's a great story for us here on Unjustified, and you will certainly cover it, but I will not participate in the coverage of that story, just because, you know, being in the case, if that's exactly where I am, then I probably should not be talking about it on the podcast.

Yeah, even though it seems like they're completely sort of focusing on John O. Brennan, or the ex-C-C-I-Chief, you know, that was in charge of the CIA when the intelligence community did their 2017 ICA intelligence community assessment on, you know, the interference into our 2016 election by Russia in order to help Donald Trump. And I haven't seen many outlets covering this letter. Okay. So John Brennan's lawyers have written a letter and they've written the letter to the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida. And in this letter, John Brennan's lawyers acknowledge that John Brennan is a target in this criminal investigation. But there's not too many outlets covering this letter. The New York Times did. But they left a bunch of stuff of really

important stuff out of the letter. So I wanted to cover the letter from John Brennan's lawyers today. And just like you said, Andy, because you have also received a subpoena pursuant to this criminal investigation, as have many others, about 30 people. That's right. You can't talk about it. You aren't going to be able to talk about it. So, you know, I'll be going over this letter because, you know, I can't not talk about what John Brennan's lawyers reveal in this letter, which is evidence of grand jury process manipulation and forum shopping.

So, again, the letter outlines how the Justice Department has tried and failed to launch this criminal probe in multiple jurisdictions. This is, again, the retribution investigation. into the 2017 intelligence community assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. So I really want to go over what the Times reported and then what is not in the New York Times reporting, but is in this letter. So the Times says John O'Brien, former CIA director, sought on Monday to prevent the Justice Department from steering a sprawling investigation into political adversaries of Trump to a judge in Florida who issued rulings

favorable to Trump during his classified documents case. Wonder who that could be. The request addressed to Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Federal District Court from the Southern District of Florida was extraordinary. It would be highly unusual for a chief judge to block a colleague from overseeing an investigation, but a lawyer for Mr. Brennan argued that under the circumstances, she does have the authority and the duty to do just that. So the Times, again, it continues saying in a 16-page letter, 16-page letter, everyone.

The lawyer, Kenneth Weinstein, I believe that's how you pronounce it, asserted that the Justice Department in what he portrayed as a violation of prosecutorial ethics, appeared to be planning to, quote, manipulate grand jury and case assignment procedures to put the investigation into Trump's perceived foes under Judge Eileen Cannon. Citing a pattern of this judge's rulings in the documents case as indicating bias, Mr. Wainstein wrote, We urge your honor to exercise your supervisory authority as chief judge to ensure the United States attorney does not steer this matter to the Fort Pierce Division and to the courtroom

of Judge Eileen Cannon. The letter by Mr. Wainstein, who served in the administrations of G.W. Bush, and Joseph Biden also amounted to a public pushback on what he described as a concocted case and a politically motivated, fact-free criminal investigation. Mr. Weinstein said he was making his request public as a means of shedding light on the government's course of action in this matter. Boy, did he shed some light. There are some stuff in here that I had no idea had happened with this particular investigation. Prosecutors loyal to Mr. Trump, he said, had been taking advantage of the secrecy around the grand jury process to undertake a regular activity outside

public view. Officials working on the investigation led by the U.S. Attorney in Miami, Jason Cuniones, have already sent subpoenas to former officials involved in the January 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded that Russia was trying to help Trump win the 2016 election. The focus for now appears to be on Mr. Brennan, who helped oversee that assessment. pursuing the case in Fort Pierce, Florida, would draw jurors from a more conservative area than D.C. and put it under Judge Cannon, who has shown Mr. Trump unusual favor during the documents investigation. In particular, Mike Davis, an influential former Republican Senate staff aide and very good friend of Mr. Kenyonez, has pushed the idea of a Fort Pierce grand jury,

warning Mr. Trump's adversaries to, quote, lawyer up. Now, under the rule for the Southern District of Florida, the judge on duty at a courthouse oversees any grand jury that meets in that courthouse. It's not like D.C. where the chief judge is in charge of all the grand jury stuff, right? Down in Florida, it's the judge who oversees the courthouse. It's where the grand jury in that courthouse is. That's the judge who oversees the grand jury. as the only judge at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Judge Cannon is by default its duty judge.

Mr. Cagnonis has convened a special extra grand jury to meet in Fort Pierce starting next month, which is exciting to Donald Trump supporters. Kenyones has not said why he's putting an extra grand jury in Fort Pierce, but I think we can guess. Now, the judge overseeing the grand jury, wields particular influence over this contested investigation. She could quash subpoenas on grounds ranging from an expired statute of limitation

to claims of privilege or grant requests by prosecutors to compel recalcitrant witnesses to testify under threat of being jailed for conduct of court. But Mr. Cagnonez, putting an extra grand jury in Fort Pierce, where Judge Cannon sits, is not the only problem. According to the letter, the Justice Department engaged in a classic case. of forum shopping as the leadership searched for a federal district that would be favorable for this conspiracy investigation. There seemed to be two objectives animating this search. The first was to avoid pursuing the case in the District of Columbia at all costs, despite the fact that

D.C. is the natural venue for any alleged criminal conspiracy involving a sitting president and his cabinet and sub-cabinet officials. The second objective, if you know, you're not going to pursue it in D.C. at all cost is to find a district with a U.S. Attorney's Office that would be willing to engage in a politically motivated and fact-free criminal investigation. That was a more challenging objective to accomplish as prosecutors from different districts resisted being pulled into the case. This is what we didn't know until this letter came out. All of the previous attempts and failures to launch this criminal investigation in other venues. So it's not just that they wound up in Miami with their eyes on Fort Pierce. According to Brennan, quote, in late summer,

witnesses and counsel were contacted and interviewed by FBI agents who said they were working with the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. But within a short time, Pennsylvania dropped from the scene. And then attorneys from the Eastern District of Virginia started interviews on the same topic. their involvement was similarly short-lived as those interviews ended after a couple of weeks. The Justice Department leadership ultimately found a home for the investigation in the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, where the recently confirmed U.S. attorney Jason Redding Cignones was reportedly quite willing to take on the assignment. It goes on to say in short order, the U.S. attorney established a special group to run the investigation.

He reworked the office hierarchy to ensure politically friendly leadership and circumvent career prosecutors and supervisors and inserted his personally appointed executive assistant U.S. attorney into direct management of this investigation. Soon thereafter, after he got his whole team of sycophants in place, two newer assistant U.S. attorneys resigned, quote, under duress after being asked to join that grand jury investigation. And at least one of them resigned because they felt like there was something they could not take part in because it would violate their ethical responsibilities. So they went to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is like, nah. And then they went to Virginia.

Virginia's like, no, bro, not here. And then they went to Miami. And even a couple of people in Miami was like, no. But then he replaced everybody, put his own team in place, had those other folks resign. But that wasn't the end of it. The United States Attorney also opened an investigation in a grand jury of the Miami Division of the Southern District of Florida, and they have a grand jury investigation number here. Director Brennan received a subpoena dated November 7th from that grand jury investigation.

News reports indicate at least 30 other current and former officials of the United States intelligence community received similar subpoenas and letters, but he didn't stop at the Miami grand jury. because if he stopped at the Miami grand jury, Annie, he might be subject to Judge Middlebrooks, who just dismissed a sprawling civil suit against the same group of people for deep state violations and then sanctioned Alina Haba and Donald Trump for a million dollars.

They could end up with Middlebrooks if they stay in Miami. So they want to take advantage of the fact that in the Southern District of Florida, the judge that sits in the courthouse where the grand jury meets is the judge that deliberates and oversees the grand jury. And so he opened an additional, he impaneled an additional grand jury in Fort Pierce, which is 130 miles away from his office, by the way, Kenyone's his office. And the Miami grand jury, the Miami courthouse is like, of you walk across the street. And that's nothing to say anything of the venue. And they bring that

up in the letter and do they say, while it's mystifying how the prosecutors could possibly believe there's any legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation, they have done nothing to explain it. When asked by this counsel, John Brennan's lawyer, and counsel for other subpoena recipients to identify the specific federal crime or crimes being investigated with those subpoenas, a question that prosecutors typically answer so that the recipient, can knowingly evaluate his or her posture in the investigation and decide how to respond to the subpoena, the executive U.S. attorney and his colleagues remain vague when asked how they expect to work around a five-year statute of limitations and establish venue in the

Southern District of Florida for the prosecution of conduct involving an intelligence report that was issued nine years ago and produced by personnel in D.C., they were equally unforthcoming. While foregoing the effort to forum shop, this case among districts is troubling enough, significantly more troubling, both legally and ethically, is the indication that the Southern District of Florida is attempting to judge shop the case within the district. And this is what I was just talking about. As has been widely reported in the press, there are several circumstances that indicate that the United States attorney is intent on steering this case to the Fort Pierce Division and to the sole judge who sits in that courthouse, Judge Eileen Cannon. The United States Attorney's decision to seek an additional grand jury in Fort Pierce, which is a division that has no apparent caseload need for a second grand jury.

Basically, they have one grand jury there. They don't need a second one. There's no caseload to justify a new grand jury there. And that has historically been fully served by one grand jury and reportedly has only one room for grand jury proceedings. And like I said, it's 130 miles away from. Kenyonez's office, whereas Miami's right next door. So it looks to me, and I know you can't discuss this, Andy, but it looks to me like they're

going to get around the statute of limitations by trying to connect a wide-ranging, sprawling conspiracy between the Russia hoax and the classified documents case. even though no one that, you know, did the intelligence community assessment in 2017 was around for the classified documents case. That's how they're going to connect it. That's how they're going to try to keep the statute of limitations alive. And I also want to just remind everybody that this chief judge, you know, don't forget, she actually called Judge Cannon back in the day when she was quote unquote,

randomly assigned the classified documents case, the chief judge that Brennan's lawyers wrote to called Judge Cannon and said, you should probably recuse from this case because of her botched showing in the whole special master debacle that she lost and got bench slapped by the 11th Circuit for. So anyway, I just wanted to go over that story. Andy, I know you couldn't talk about it, But something you can talk about, speaking of Judge Cannon, she issued a decision, kind of in the case over the release of volume two of Jack Smith's final report. And we'll tell you about that decision after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back.

All right, everybody, welcome back. Now we can talk about something that Andy can talk about. It's good to be back. It's good to be back. that you had to kind of sit there and sort of not say anything for the entirety of that story, my friend. But we could talk now about Volume 2 of Jack's Miss Report as it pertains to Eileen Cannon, because this is not something that you're part of. Remember how the 11th Circuit gave Judge Cannon until January 2nd to decide the motion to vacate her order block in the release of Volume 2? Yes, I do remember.

It appears that she's found a way to get around that. So I remember, Andy, you and I talking about when the 11th Circuit put out an order saying, you know, because the Knight Institute of Columbia University asked the 11th Circuit for a writ of mandamus. Please tell Judge Cannon to rule on our motion to vacate her order block in the release. And what the 11th Circuit did is said, okay, we got your writ of mandamus. We will hold it in abeyance. We'll put it on hold. We'll put it on ice for 60 days, which expires January 2nd.

it's so that Judge Cannon has a chance to resolve this entire matter. And I was like, oh, God, she's going to come in on January 1st and say, we need to have hearings and this and that and use my email secret do all these things. But you had reminded me, and we had discussed the fact that the 11th Circuit said, no, ma'am, you have to have this done and resolved by January 2nd. Yes. Otherwise, we'll lift our abeyance on the writ of mandamus and force you to rule on it. Well, she issued this weird ruling to seemingly get around that deadline.

So here's what she wrote. And I want to get your input on this, Andy, because I don't know how she's able to do this, given the January 2nd deadline. She says, it's ordered and a judge just follows. The restrictions on the release of volume two outside the DOJ as set forth in my January 21, 2025 order will be automatically expired. It will automatically expire without further. order of this court on February 24th, 2026. However, nothing in this order prohibits any former or

current party to this action, Donald Trump, Walt Nata, Carlos de Hilavera, from moving for leave to intervene if warranted and or from timely seeking appropriate relief before that deadline of February 24th, 2026 when all this expires. Andy, how can she extend the deadline from January 2nd imposed by the 11th Circuit to February 24th. Yeah, I mean, you can't, but she kind of gets away with it, right? Because her argument would be, well, I did resolve it. The whole thing is resolved by February 24th, unless someone else files a competing motion, then I'll have to deal with that motion as well, but that's only being fair.

So, yeah, I mean, I guess it's up to the, uh, It's up to the plaintiffs, the Knight Institute. Right, Knight Institute at the Columbia University. To now go back to the 11th Circuit and say she's violating your order. And, you know, whether or not they'll actually hold her to the letter of what they said, they should. They absolutely should. But will they? I think that's kind of, I don't know.

I don't feel like it's, I'm not confident that'll happen. Because their order wasn't a hard deadline. They just said, we're going to hold the writ of mandamus in abeyance until 60 days from now, which is January 2nd. And the or else was implied. They didn't say what they would do once that deadline passed. But, you know, the 11th Circuit isn't a huge fan of Eileen Cannon. At least they weren't when she tried to appoint that special master in the classified documents case. and so I mean

I tell you what you got to give her credit she's got nerve I mean this is like okay that's how I resolved it I resolved it by extending your deadline now I dare you

I dare you to come after me I dare you to I dare you to issue the habeas and then she'll invite the other side to come to file to go to the Supreme Court it's ridiculous

yeah I mean I imagine what you said is probably what's going to happen. I think the Knight Institute on January 2nd will file notice with the 11th Circuit saying, hi, she still hasn't resolved our motion. We would like to lift the abeyance on our writ of mandamus and have you tell her to fish or cut bait. Right. And she's going to say, no, I did resolve it. It's resolved. It is going to be released on. February 24th. But the whole pending

interference from this court and pending intervention from interested parties, like she already, like Donald Trump already asked her to file an amicus brief so he could intervene. And she granted it and also said

and no one else can file anything. Well, he's the only one that's going to file anyway. He basically controls the defense, the legal representation of other two former indictees in the case, co-defendants, whatever, yeah. So he's definitely going to file and he's going to request oral argument and an extended briefing schedule. And, you know, all of this is like flashback to Jack, right? It's the same, same thing. It worked perfectly for her

and for him there. I'm sure that was important to her as well. And why not? Why not do here she gets away with it so she's going to keep doing it yeah and and i mean you know it's interesting i brought up in the last segment that it was actually the chief judge and one of her colleagues in the district of southern florida who called up judge canon and said you really should recuse yourself yep from this classified documents case because of your your shenanigans with the special master thing where the 11th circuit like where you lost really really, really badly. And that gives the appearance of bias, which you can't have any appearance of that, you know, if you're going to preside over a case. And she ignored them.

Yeah. And think about, think about like she and her colleague issued that guidance to Canon early in the case, right, at the very early stages. And then had to sit back. and watch all the, all the ridiculous things happen over the course of that litigation. So if that was an indicator of the fact that she was suspicious of or concerned about canon in the early days, can you imagine how she must feel about her now? I mean, that case was a disaster the way it was run. It was, it, it bears every indicia of bias. Whether or not she's actually biased or she just stumbled into all those mistakes coincidentally,

well, I'll never know. But all the indicators of bias are there. And it made that court look terrible. And you have to imagine that the chief judge probably has a bad taste in her mouth from that experience. So who knows? Maybe, you know, I don't know what will happen in that big South Florida investigation that I don't talk about. But it is an interesting element. Meanwhile, you have Donald Trump and Todd Blanche filing all manner of recusal requests for judges that preside over his.

cases for the appearance of impropriety. Oh, yeah. And they, you know, they, and they make the argument, hey, they don't actually have to be biased. They just have to have the appearance. Yeah, remember that. And, and here we are with Judge Kinan, somehow trying to get around the January 2nd deadline to completely resolve the matter to either deny vacating her block of Volume 2 or

vacate her block of volume two. And so you're right. She's going to say, oh, no, I resolved it. It's going to be vacated. It'll expire on February 24th. Right. But that doesn't take care of the part where anyone can intervene between January 2nd and February 24th as long as they're on one side of this argument. Yeah. And try to push it back even further. Another missed opportunity here by Cannon, if she had any inclination to actually do the right thing and to do a good job, she would have just lifted the thing. Like, throw one back the other way. Prove all of us wrong.

Everyone out there who thinks she's biased and thinks she's in the tank for Trump and whatever he wants, she could have gone the other way on this thing. And then he would have fought it. And who knows what happens? It goes up, you know, it goes up the river. But yeah, no, she doesn't care about that. It's not her concern. Well, that and she can't because she's in the tank for Trump.

I mean, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know. can't won't very thin line so I'm very interested to see what the Knight Institute does here I will probably learn more in what three short days when yeah for real

when the rid of mandamus abands is supposed to be lifted by the 11th circuit and again the or else was implied so we actually don't know what the 11th circuit is going to do here they didn't explicitly say if you don't we're going to do this, they just said, we're going to hold this in abeyance. We're going to hold the mandamus in abeyance for 60 days. And they allowed, I think that left a big opening for. I mean, they could turn around and say, all right, we're going to, we're going to act on the abeyance. We're going to

schedule oral argument, you know, and have that process moving forward. Or we could just come down on her and say, no, it's no longer yours. We're taking it. Yeah. Jurisdiction is now ours. Or, no, you have to rule on it now, you have to say yes or no now. No intervention, no February 24th. You have to say yes or no to the motion to vacate your block. And theoretically, they could take over. Like they could say, no, you must rule within the next 24 hours. And you must rule to release it. And then anyone who wants to intervene can intervene with us. Yeah. You must deny the motion or grant the motion in 24 hours. Otherwise, we're taking it over. and, yeah, then the jurisdiction will go to the 11th Circuit.

Right. They can do that, Suez-Bonte. Not sure they will. No, I don't think so. They're going to go, oh, all right. February 24th, January 2nd, who cares? They'll make some other thing, like, all right, you have till February 24th or else, dot, dot, dot. Like, you guys already waited a year.

What's another month? They won't tell you what the or else is after February 24th, just like they didn't, nearly 60 days ago. All right. So that's what's going on with the part of the judge canon stuff that you're able to talk about. And also something else that I want to talk about is the botch rollout of the Epstein files. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, brother.

We covered this a little bit last week. But, you know, it was the day. When we recorded our last episode, that was December 19th. That was the day that the DOJ was supposed to release those files. A lot has happened in the last week. We'll talk about that after this. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, let's talk about the past week's completely botched rollout of the Epstein files, which actually isn't supposed to be a rollout at all. As CNN reports,

the Justice Department's leadership asked career prosecutors in Florida to volunteer over the quote, next several days, to help redact the Epstein files and the latest Trump administration pushed toward releasing the hundreds of thousands of photos, internal memos, and other evidence around the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. A supervising prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida's U.S. Attorney's Office emailed the entire district office on Tuesday,

two days before Christmas, announcing an emergency request from the deputy Attorney General's office, the Southern District of Florida, must assist with, according to a copy of the email reviewed by CNN. Quote, we need AUSAs to do remote document review and redactions related to the Epstein files, the email said. Ah, Merry Christmas from Todd Blanche. Can you do some redactions of, you know, really gross men over the holidays? that would be super great. We really appreciate it.

What I don't get, and I mean, we could talk about this once we're done talking about some of these other things that CNN is reporting, your colleagues over at CNN. But didn't they do this last March? Didn't they lock 1,000 people in a building for a whole? I totally agree with it. Like, I said this a couple nights ago on TV. I was like, I don't get why this is like starting from scratch again. Didn't they do this in like March? and reviewed everything and determined there was no client list

and there was no one else that could possibly be charged and there's nothing else to do here. So let's all just move on. You're not going to see any files. And that, of course, went over like a lead balloon. So why are we starting all over again? I don't know. I don't get it.

No, I don't understand it either. They have at least 300,000 redacted files and logs of where Trump showed up in them. Like, start there. But, I mean, I guess it was not to be this Christmas, this holiday season. So the Christmas week request from a top career prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office attempts to entice volunteer attorneys who I'm sure have, the morale is super high at the Department of Justice right now, to work on the files in exchange for days off later down the road. You better get that in writing. That's all I'm saying, right?

Forget Christmas. Don't you want to take time off and. late January when the weather's so great. It's also possible that the call for volunteers frustrates busy career justice department employees after a year of departures and firings across the ranks by the Trump administration leadership, as well as several in court incidents that have hurt the department's reputation in the legal community. Oh, I don't know, like the 79% success rate that they're having in the District of Columbia versus 99.5% that they enjoyed for the past decade. Here's a quote, I am aware that the timing could not be worse.

That's what the U.S. Attorney's Office leadership wrote on Tuesday. For some, the holidays are about to begin. But I know that for others, my pals in the Jewish community, the holidays are really coming to an end. So maybe you could. I mean, I don't know. Who writes that in this, in this email? I mean, dude, how about a little empathy for all religions? Yeah. And to be clear, They didn't specify the end of Hanukkah. They just said, but I know for others, the holidays are coming to an end. They did put that in there. The first time I read that, I thought, does he mean for the people who are going to volunteer?

You're no longer on holiday. I mean, like, what's up, Grinch? Take it easy. You're trying to get people to volunteer. Yikes. Oh, man. So the Justice Department was using hundreds of lawyers at its headquarters, especially national security specialists. because, you know, they don't have anything better to do than document review on Jeffrey Epstein.

I'm sorry, that part I added. National Security Specialist to process the files over the past month, picking up a project that the FBI and other agencies had worked on in Slivers previously. The Tuesday request appears to seek to add lawyers to the project, more than a month after Congress passed the Transparency Act, and President Donald Trump signed it into law. Something that could have been done when the law passed. That thing was so clearly going to pass for, like, I don't know, a long time before it actually

passed. Something you could have done in January when you were promising that you were going to release the Epstein files. But I have to interject here because they say the top lawyers in the national security specialist, the top lawyer overseeing those guys is John Eisenberg. Okay. And I have to remind everyone, he's the guy that altered the Zelenskyy. Trump transcript, that perfect phone call, that's that guy. He's in charge of the national security

lawyers right now. Well, handpicked probably for that reason. Yeah, you think. Hey, guy who's really good at covering up embarrassing stuff for Donald Trump. Can you be in charge of redacting the Epstein files, please? Now, also, CNN reports, Andy, get this, that the Justice Department on Wednesday says it has uncovered a million documents. Wait a minute. What's in that box under my desk? Oh, no, it's a million more documents. What's in that 400 boxes under my desk? That's about how many boxes holds a million documents, by the way. That's more than was at Mar-a-Lago. Anyway, the Womp-Womp-Womp. So the Justice Department just found a million more Epstein documents. And they may need, quote, a few more weeks to read.

review and release them to the public. The department made the revelation in a post on Twitter saying that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI had informed the department of the new documents. So we should remind people that on November 3rd, Representative Jamie Raskin wrote a letter to Pam Bondi saying, until January 2025, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York was running an act. investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell's co-conspirators. In January, Southern District New York prosecutors were ordered to transfer the Epstein case files to DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C. Since that time, according to information provided to our committee

by counsel for Epstein survivors who provided the key evidence enabling the successful prosecution of Ms. Maxwell, the investigation into the co-conspirators has inexplicably seen. ceased, and no further investigative steps appear to have been taken. DOJ and FBI formally closed the case in July 2025. That would be right around the time of the great nothing to see here. That is the nothing to see here memo. Yeah. Close the case in July of 2025, abruptly issuing a memo that declared, without offering any

supporting detail, that DOJ and FBI, quote, did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. So this million documents has come from the New York FBI field office in the Southern District of New York. But this past January, Trump swooped in, shut down the investigation in the Southern District of New York, shipped the files to D.C. And then fired all the prosecutors. Yes. Okay. So maybe they just got lost in transit? He's the one who shipped the files to D.C.

But further, maybe you should check that scary room in FBI headquarters where he keeps finding things in the garbage. Check there. I don't know. Maybe there's more documents there. Yeah, the guy who posted on social media, he's a scary lawyer guy, right? He's a very cool prolific poster on blue sky and Twitter. He said, yeah, that's about 400 boxes, bankers boxes. And I said, yeah, but how many burn bags is that? Because I thought immediately of gosh, Patel and his weird burnbag accusations. Bring me the burn bag with the stuff from Russia in it, but don't bring the burn bags with the stuff from Epstein and leave them and burn them, would you? Right. But we should also point out, besides that fact, besides Jamie Raskin having multiple whistleblowers telling him that

there was an active and ongoing investigation in January that got shut down and the files got transferred to D.C., we should also point out this past February, Pam Bondi wrote a letter to Kosh Patel saying, before you came into office, I requested the full and complete file. related to Jeffrey Epstein. In response to this request, I got 200 pages of documents, which consisted primarily of flight logs, Epstein's list of contacts, and a list of victims' names and phone numbers. Late yesterday, I learned from a source that the FBI field office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and the indictment of Epstein. Despite my repeated requests, you never disclosed the existence of these files.

and when you and I spoke yesterday, you were just as surprised as I was to learn about this information. By 8 a.m. tomorrow, February 28th, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files from the Southern District of New York and the FBI field office in New York to my office, including all records, documents,

audio, video recordings, and materials related to Epstein and his clients, regardless of how much information was obtained. I'm also directing you to conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the FBI was not followed. You will deliver to me a comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days.

Andy, do you remember getting a report, a comprehensive report of proposed personnel action within 14 days of February 27th? No. I don't remember. I don't think I got one of those. this is just there's so much about this that's bizarre and like easy to make jokes about it's comical but it's also just kind of sad and you know disgusting in the long run the fact that

you know we're Jamie Raskin is kind of opening our eyes to some of these things because he's connected to like whistleblower sources and then we bounce right over to Pam Bondi who knows things she's got a source in New York like why does the Attorney General need a source in the New York field office. Why can't she just say to the FBI do this and then it gets done? Like she's out there developing sources so she knows what the hell is going on and the organization she runs. They are unhinged. Well, she ordered a full investigation of any documents related to Epstein that were in the FBI New York field office in the Southern District of New York back on February 27th. And she gave Kosh Patel two weeks to complete that comprehensive investigation. What happened?

So that would have been right before they locked. down all the buildings and forced everybody to review the files at the information management division. So I have to, well, call me crazy for assuming anything in this administration, but they had to have gotten a ton of documents because they called the red alert and locked everybody in to review them and log Trump's name in Excel spreadsheets. This is according to my sources, my anonymous sources. And they sent training videos out to the information management division because they weren't

as trained as Rids, which is the section that usually redacts things under the Freedom of Information Act requests. So they had to train the thousand plus people at the Information Management Division on how to do that. And are you telling me that wasn't pursuant to getting a ton of boxes of files from the Southern District of New York after an investigation was closed that had been opened and all the prosecutors were fired? Or did they really just find a million new documents? So there's, and I'm not defending any of this, but I will say that there is a long history of when you, when the train has gone completely off the tracks, to the extent that the attorney general or maybe the head of the FBI or the deputy director decides, I want everything. I want everything collected and put in one place. It's very hard to get that done because the more you look, the more you realize there are different places where different pieces of this might be living. How does that happen? Well, investigators go out and they serve a search warrant and they get back phone records. And they bring electronically, those get uploaded into the FBI's official case file system, which is electronic.

But they print themselves out a copy. And then they walk that copy over to the U.S. Attorney's Office to show the results to the Assistant U.S. Attorney they're working with. I'm just giving you a hypothetical here. Now the records are in both places. and so a lot of all of what I'm sure is part of this million documents or whatever the whole we still have no idea what the total number of documents of everything is but I guarantee you whatever that number is a very high percentage of it is just copies and duplicates and things we have in 15 different buckets if you remember back to the the Oklahoma City bombing case and the and the Terry Nichols and what's the guy got put to death I'm spacing out here. Somebody's going to remind me in the comments and questions section this week, I'm sure. When those two were on trial, there were all kinds of problems with the government had

collected so many records, so many documents, so many files that had to be turned over in discovery. They screwed up in turning over the discovery to the defendants. And then there were all these second and third efforts and they were constantly finding more things that should have been turned over to the defendants. And it was having a negative impact on the prosecution. So it happens. But honestly, this one, they've known since January, certainly since February, that they needed to know.

Whatever they decided to do with it, put that aside, they needed to know what they had, where it was, who had control of it. And so to be still stumbling with this stuff now is just, it's terrible. Can you imagine Donald Trump picking up the phone after he signed the law, the Epstein files, transparency law? Hello, is this, is this Maureen Comey? Hi, can you tell me where the files are, where you put the- How are you doing? I hear you great. You're terrific.

You've got all this time now. It's great, right? You're on vacation. By the way, we're looking for some things. We don't know where they are. Where should we look? Oh, my goodness. Good Lord.

I mean, you know, and then you've got Gilling. Maxwell filing a writ of habeas petition challenging without a lawyer by the way no one would sign on with her she's doing this pro se challenging her incarceration on a bunch of BS because you know her her appeal's already been exhausted through the Supreme Court they denied her appeal uh to to to have a a new trial or to overturn her conviction and so now she is trying to say uh to the courts like hey you can't release Epstein files because it would be really bad for my habeas petition. If I should get a new trial, it would be really devastating to my case for you to release any any Epstein materials that might have to do with me because it would severely prejudice

my ability to get a fair trial should my habeas petition that I'm filing pro se that no lawyer in their right mind would sign on to gets any traction. So here she is trying to give this administration a reason to not release documents as well. Yeah, and you know, and I thought from the beginning of this whole thing, there's absolutely no way any, no matter how this plays itself out, the file gate, whatever we're calling it, the one thing you can count on is no one will be satisfied. The victims, the survivors will not be satisfied. Their advocates will not be.

Democrats are not getting what the law clearly requires. they get. Republicans are tired of hearing this story because they know it's bad for them. It's just everyone is disgusted. But the biggest loss here is that the entire idea around this kind of fulminated by people across the country who are very connected to this issue for whatever reason, maybe they're actually have a connection to it or they're just very interested in it. And then up through Congress and people on both sides of the aisle, it's gone as far as it has

because people have associated this effort of releasing the files with the concept of getting justice for the survivors. That's not what this is. DOJ dumping millions of documents into a morass of a database that has no index, it has no file structure, it has no context, you don't know,

you just do text searches to find stuff that occurs to you. No one is going to ever get a, comprehensive understanding of what happened here by an asset like that, if you were a professional investigative reporter, it would take you years to go through that and to draw any reasonable conclusions. The only way accountability, it's another word you hear around this a lot, the only way accountability actually happens is if Congress convenes a committee to investigate it. We need a bipartisan committee, like the 9-11 committee, kind of like the January 6th. committee, although some people say it wasn't bipartisan, whatever, bipartisan committee with like

top flight lawyers and investigators to dive on this thing, all the documents, all access, conduct interviews, bring in Alex Acosta, bring in Maureen Comey, ask her what her perspective was, bring in all the prosecutors that worked for Alex Acosta, and all the colleagues of Maureen Comey and the folks from the Southern District. Let's hear from them. Why did they? John Berman, who did the press conference after the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein. Right. He was fighting. too. Bring him in. The bottom line is no one else has ever been charged. So decisions have been made about that since 2007 and get some of the people who are involved in those decisions to sit their asses down, swear them and do it publicly and have them testify as to what

happened. Why did you, Alex Acosta, send this case back to the county prosecutors? It's outrageous. But you're not going to get that by looking at searching for a name on a database. No. And I also wanted to ask you another question, too, because I was like, I'd like to see declination memos. But, you know, it occurs to me that a declination memo by a U.S. Attorney's Officer in AUSA is different from a declination that a special counsel is required to make under special counsel rules. So, like, when you think of the declination from Robert Hur on why he didn't prosecute Joe Biden, he has to explain under the rules of special counsel. why he didn't. But for general AUSA is they don't even have to tell you they've declined to

prosecute anything. Sometimes they do if there's a big public interest, but they also don't have to tell you why. They don't have to give you their reasons why they declined to prosecute. For example, they declined to prosecute Rudy Giuliani for Ukraine in the Southern District of New York put out a little memo, a little one-sentence thing that says, we're just letting the public know because there's a big public interest in this case. We're declining to prosecute Rudolph Giuliani for his behavior in Ukraine. No explanation. just that they're declining to prosecute and the reason that they were telling the public is because there was a huge public interest at the time. And so they aren't required to do that, which is exactly,

Andy, why we need to have that commission. We need to have a panel. We need to have a full investigation and we need to ask those prosecutors why you declined to prosecute those 10 co-conspirators that were mentioned in that email, which is, which Ryan Goodman calls probably the most consequential release of the Epstein files released so far. Yeah, I agree. people inside an investigation from the agents to the line prosecutors, they use terms like co-conspirator, but it doesn't have like an official legal effect until you're actually indicted and referred to as a co-conspirator, right? So that's one thing. Declination letters are unbelievably rare. It hardly ever happens. You might have a big investigation in which you

make, you start with one or two targets, we call them subjects, not targets. You start with subjects, subjects of investigation, and you keep adding subjects as you find people who are related to your original subjects and you develop an understanding of the organization they worked with or how they all interacted. But at the end of the day, you have to then decide who do you have evidence to charge? And some of them will be in and some of them will be out. And you don't then go sending letters out to the people you decided not to charge. They don't, half of them don't even know they were under investigation. Sometimes you think, well, I'm not charging him now, but maybe I could charge him later. Let's see what kind of evidence I get from the first

round of this prosecution. I'll get cooperators. Maybe somebody comes in and talks about that guy. So you don't get letters of declination. Sometimes if there's a fight between like the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office over a particular case, and the FBI goes in and officially pitches a case and the prosecutors don't move on it, don't move on it. And the FBI starts complaining when aren't you doing anything? Sometimes they'll issue a declination letter on the case to the FBI. No, we're not taking this case for the following reasons. But the subjects or the proposed subjects don't know anything about that. Yeah. And sometimes when the DOJ wants to prosecute, but the FBI won't do search warrants and won't issue subpoenas, then Carol Lennox writes a book about it.

Yes, she does. Oh, Lord. And that case goes nowhere. Thank you for sending me a copy. I finally got it. I'm going to be reading it. As you know, I've been, for many, many years, I've been cursing the names of folks like Dantuano. And you're like, yeah, he comes up quite a bit in this book as a Stonewaller at the FBI. So the book is great, man. I'm reading it now. And it's it takes you inside some of these meetings we heard about that we knew about,

but you really get the details on it. And I got to say most of her, you know, I know a lot of the people that she talks about in the book. and, you know, her characterizations of them, I think, for the most part, are pretty good, pretty accurate. Well, that's a whole discussion for another time. Maybe we could do a book club episode on that injustice, I think it's called. Is that the name of the book? Yes. Yeah, all right.

But yeah, and you know how I feel about the Supreme Court canceling all those trials anyway. That's a story for another day. We've got a couple more quick stories and a listener question to get to, but we're going to take one last quick break. everybody stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Just a couple more stories for you. A big loss in the Supreme Court. What they're calling over at Slate, the biggest loss of Trump's second term in the Supreme Court. A couple months ago, you and I talked about how the Supreme Court, and this is in the National. the National Guard deployment case in the Northern District of Illinois, which the lower court said, you can't do it. And then the Seventh Circuit, the Court of Appeals, said,

we agree, you can't do it. And Donald Trump went to the Supreme Court and said, let me do it. And on November 3rd of this year, almost two months ago, Andy, the Supreme Court put out an order saying, you know what, we read this amicus brief by law professor Marty Lieberman. And Marty Lieberman contends that the words regular forces in the law, Title 10, United States Code Section 12406, the law that Trump claims gives

him the authority to deploy the National Guard. He thinks regular forces means the military, whereas Donald Trump thinks regular forces means local federal law enforcement. And if the regular forces aren't enough, then the president under 12406 can deploy the National Guard. So we would like for you to define for us, Donald Trump and Chicago, tell us what you think regular forces means. And when that order came out November 3rd, I was like, wow, it looks like they might actually rule against Trump in this case. And that is exactly what they did this week, Andy. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this because they came forth and said, Marty Lieberman's right. Regular forces means the military. And since the military hasn't failed to keep law and order

in Chicago, Trump cannot deploy the National Guard under 12406. So he is no longer allowed to deploy the National Guard under this particular law doesn't mean he won't try other ways. Right. But this is a massive loss for the Trump administration. It is a big loss. I think there are people out there probably not so many in our audience, but people out there who miss, who are kind of confusing this with like a military deployment generally. This is, this ruling applies only to the president's efforts to deploy state National Guard assets, right? Because the way to do that properly is they get deployed by their governor.

So the president can go to a governor and say, hey, I'd like you to send your national guard to whatever state to do whatever, but it's ultimately the governor's choice. Here, he actually deployed them and is being totally can't. And that doesn't mean he can't deploy the United States military. That he has the exclusive power to deploy wherever he wants. but it's much harder to deploy regular troops, U.S. military troops, in the United States. Basically, our system is set up to prohibit that under what we call the Posse Cometatus Act. So there are only a couple of instances in which the president can send the military. So this is my only concern with this ruling is this going to force him that his next step is going to be like, well, screw it.

I'll just send the Marines. Yeah, well, I'll invite the Insurrection Act. Right. Because of a, there's a danger of a rebellion because of Antifa. Right. We've claimed as a domestic terrorization. We've created. Now claimed is the worst thing ever. So I think this is a, this is no question, this is the right ruling, and it is a big loss for them. But I do, my fear is that it is going to back him into a corner.

Now he's just going to go to more extreme measures to send actual military. Like he did in L.A. He sent the Marines to L.A. as a part of that deployment. Yep, I agree. Either that or it could push him or Stephen Miller more specifically to invoke the Insurrection Act. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then we'll see all the lawsuits and litigation against that. And speaking of lawsuits and litigation, another Trump lost this week in the courts, a federal judge has blocked Trump from enforcing the revocation of Mark Zade's security clearance as a lawyer. So he lost that as well, saying it's, it's, it's, illegal. This is, you can't revoke a security clearance of a lawyer just because you don't

like what that lawyer is doing. So, congratulations to Mark Zaid. Yeah, great win for Mark. He's a very well-known and respected attorney here in D.C. does a lot of whistleblower representation, stuff like that. Here, the court said what the problem is that the executive order eliminated his, not just his clearance, but the other, I think, 17 or so people that were also included in the same order without any process whatsoever. So let's remember that because the president actually completely controls the classified access to classified information, right? It's the president's responsibility to protect secret information. So that's why we have a classification system and clearances and all that kind of stuff. So you can take a clearance away from someone. But because we've always had a

standard process for doing that, this thing, this goofy order stood out because it denied all those people any sort of the regular process. And that's what Zaid pointed out in his suit. He's like, I've got tons of clients I represent on national security matters. Now they will not have access to their chosen attorney because I've been denied my clearance without any process to process whatsoever. So yeah, good victory for him. It's hard to understand how it will affect the other people in the order, but my guess is they should probably get theirs back as well. Yeah, I would assume at the most they would have to file to say, hey, me too. And then, you know, yeah, so the judge was careful to say, like, this only applies to Zade, but I think probably

because he's the only one to sued. So I think, yeah, there's got to be some way to kind of jump on. Right, because you would have to certify a class action. There's no more nationwide injunctions. And so the preliminary injunction can only apply to the person, you know, I think that can do this unless there's a certified class. So you may see an application for a certified class for the other, however many, a dozen or more. Or maybe they'll all file individually,

but I think we'll, they might wait to see what the appellate court and the Supreme Court have to say about it as well. Yeah. Because this is just a preliminary injunction, which I'm sure will be appealed. Final thing I wanted to ask you about, Andy, because this blows my mind given...

what's supposed to be a huge wall between the White House and the Department of Justice, which has completely been obliterated because the Department of Justice is acting as a personal attorney for Donald Trump and not we the people. But it appears the White House has taken over the social media account of the Department of Justice to respond to the Epstein-Files debacle. And they're trolling people. They're like, you dope. The official Department of Justice account is trolling people on the internet. And it's doing it from the White House. This actually, this blows my mind. This would be like if the attorney general was going to give a press conference and Donald Trump walked in and shoved him out of the way and says, I'm going to do this press

conference on behalf of the Department of Justice. The White House is speaking for the Department of Justice. Yeah. I mean, this is like, it's insane. right, 1974, maybe, early 70s, all the reform of the intelligence community and the FBI. One of the things that we got out of that was the DOJ contact policy, and that is the official policy of the department. I think it's still a policy, not that they observe it, that there shall be no contact between employees of the Department of Justice. That includes FBI and U.S. Marshals and everybody else, and the White House. if there's the only exception to that is like FBI employees are allowed to deal directly with national security folks, the national security staff at the White House on national security matters. Of course, you have to have that kind of interaction.

But there's no connection to the political side of the White House. Well, that's, that's a, I mean saying that sounds ridiculous in this day and age because we know that the political side of the White House is controlling everything right now. And they believe that they're entitled to that as part of this whole unitary. executive theory. So yeah, this is something that could never have happened under any other administration, Republican or Democratic. It's a terrible idea. It's a horrible look for DOJ. It continues, you know, DOJ loses credibility every single day by playing these political games for this president. And this is just the latest. Yeah. And, you know, throw it on the pile of the laws of presumption of regularity with this Department of Justice. So.

All right. I think we have time for one quick question. Again, we have so much news to cover this week. So thanks for hanging in there with us and being patient. Andy, I love it when you read the questions. Listeners, if you have a question in the show notes where you can submit it. What do we have this week? Yeah, it's question time again. This one comes to us from Anne. Anne has clearly been doing some thinking about all these renovations to the White House. She writes in, regarding the Trump ballroom and national security, isn't the ballroom itself a national security? Isn't the ballroom itself a national security? concern in that it is going to be built over or near the bunker and that the ballroom by its very nature will allow visitors and outsiders near the bunker. That's a really good question, Anne. I'm going to say, I always give you the bottom line up front. My bottom line here is yes, but maybe not for the reason that you're thinking. So the quote unquote bunker in the White House has always been, well, it was underneath the east wing. You remember the east wing. It was the east side of the White House before it got destroyed by President Trump. So there was, that's where the bunker was underneath the East Wing. And people still came and went through the East Wing.

It was the official entrance to the White House for a long time. The office of the First Lady is over there. There's a bunch of other offices on the, on the first floor. They let me into the East Wing. Yeah. So there are people, see, there you go, right there. There are people who go, who are in and around the area and other quite sensitive areas in the White House. Like when you walk in the West Wing, you come through the door and there's a secret service uniform guy sitting at a desk to like kind of point you in the right direction. And to your right, there's a little tiny staircase that goes down to a hallway. And if you go down there, on one side is the White House mess.

And on the other side is the sit room. So there's like very sensitive places all around. But there's plenty of security there to kind of make sure people don't get to where shouldn't go. But here's where the national security problem comes in for me as a national security watcher. Who's paying for it? We only know that hundreds of millions of dollars have been collected by the White House to pay for all of this construction. We know who some of those donors are, but we don't know who all of them are. And we have no idea what's been promised to these people, what kind of access, maybe contracts. Who knows?

who knows, whether it's a quid pro quo or just kind of an understood thing, nobody gives money because they don't want influence, right? So I think that this is such an opportunity for all kinds of people with all kinds of agendas to cozy up to decision makers in the White House. And to me, that can be a national security problem. Yeah. And the national security aspect is actually Trump's argument for why he is not no one should be able to stop him from from constructing the east wing because he you know there's a there's a big lawsuit out there saying you got to run this by six different commissions before you build and he's like nope it's national security and he and they talk about the below grade construction which is the bunker and so he's saying it's national security so you can't tell me what to do because it's of utmost national security concerns which is why we're letting Saudi Arabia pay for it um So, you know, here we are. I mean, Russia would help pay for it if they had any money left.

But here we are with him using national security as an argument to be able to complete this. And, you know, Hitler built a ballroom. Yeah, and he had a bunker, too, where he ended his days. But I draw no comparisons. I just saying citing the history there. Apropos, something. Something, but I don't. know what. Okay, I better stop. It's time for me to go. Yeah, if you're a bunker, I'm sure,

has nothing to do with what's going on in Washington. All right, everybody, thank you so much for your questions. Again, there's a link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. We hope you had a wonderful holiday. We hope you have a wonderful new year. We'll see you on January 4th. And I really hope that you and your loved ones and your chosen family and the members of your family you continue to speak with have a really, really wonderful holiday season and a prosperous new year. I'm looking forward to 2026, at least as far as we're heading into primary season. We've got a

16 point advantage on the general ballot, which we've never seen. And I'm looking forward to taking back to Congress so that we can have some of these investigations that you and I talk about Andy because that's going to be where the accountability happens. It's not going to be. It's not going to be. Pam Bondi's not

going to arrest anybody. Oh, here's another million. Yeah, no, I totally agree. This is time. Take a beat. appreciate the fact that you have family and friends spend time with them give yourself a little bit of a break and then yeah let's charge into the new year let's go as my kids always say let's let's get in there and look for the opportunities we have to make this place better yeah there are opportunities yeah lfg as they say that's right all right everybody we'll see you next week i'm alison gill and i'm and i'm andy mcabe

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