Jack - HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

A federal judge has issued a new rule requiring Jeanine Pirro to notify the court when she fails to get a grand jury to bring charges. Jim Comey has been subpoenaed in the sprawling criminal probe against ex-CIA chief John Brennan in Judge Aileen Cannon’s district. Attorney General Pam Bondi attempts to flout a deposition subpoena from the House Oversight Committee in the Epstein Files investigation. The Department of Justice has suspended minimum work requirements for hiring attorneys. Plus listener questions, including a question about the predicate of Crossfire Hurricane. “Call me Mark” the answer to your question is in this episode and in this episode of Mueller, She Wrote.  Do you have questions for the pod?    Make laundry day the best day of the week! Get 20% off your entire order @LaundrySauce with code UNJUST at https://laundrysauce.com/UNJUST  #laundrysaucepod 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 Trump Questions for the pod?https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ We would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MSW Media. A federal judge has issued a new rule requiring Janine Piro to notify the court when she fails to get a grand jury to bring charges. Jim Comey has been subpoenaed in the sprawling criminal probe against ex-CIA chief John Brennan in Judge Eileen Cannon's district. Attorney General Pam Bondi attempts to flout a deposition subpoena from the House Oversight Committee in the Epstein Files investigation. And the Department of Justice has suspended. minimum work requirements for hiring attorneys. This is unjustified. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 61 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, March 22nd. We are just six days away from No Kings 3. I'm Allison Gil. Nice. And I'm Andy McCabe. My God, Allison,

so much going on. We got the war in Iran. We got inflation. Inflation is back and better than ever. And of course, the midterms, you know, with all that, we want to make sure that we're getting through with all the Justice Department is here, because that's what we're all about at Unjustified. And there's a lot this week from Cash Patel's performance at the Worldwide Threats hearing to God knows what else happened. So should we just dive in? Oh, the Worldwide Threats Hearing. Was Kosh Patel a worldwide threat? gosh is always a worldwide threat at least in my world um the rest of it i'm not so sure uh he just had a um i think i characterized it yesterday on cnn as being stunningly unprepared to answer some

pretty obvious questions like oh like questions about why did you fire all the a dozen iran experts on the night before the war with iran and his when asked if those people were iran experts he said, I don't think so. And then he was pressed on it and he said, I don't know, I don't really know who they are or something to that effect. Yeah, he was also asked about voter fraud and how the Heritage Foundation has found 77 cases of non-citizens voting in the last 24 years. Wow. That's a threat. Kosh Patel was like, sounds low, you know.

Like just. Dude, did you do anything to prepare for this? hearing like the most obvious questions uh and it is you know a big part of his job so you i did notice in some interesting post this week that he has had his own custom made Nike sneakers made with like punisher logos and things like that on them and then also he made time to go down to quantico and like uh train with ufc fighters so not so much on the prepare for congressional oversight hearings but like uh really he's he's bringing back the headlock i guess or something to that that effect. And here's the thing, you and I both worked for the government. All you got to do is put

together a commission of counterterrorism Iran experts that work in your agency and have a meet a couple times a month, maybe have a couple of subcommittees and subcommissions. So that when you're asked that in a hearing, you can say, you know what, that might be the case that some counterterrorism experts on Iran were fired for not, you know, vigorously defending this particular administration's interest. However, I have assembled a commission of the, I mean, like, I've been in so many of those that, I mean, it's BS, but it's better than, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know. I don't know. I don't know those people I just fired. Yeah, I mean, and in reality, the FBI should be doing a lot right now with respect to threats to the homeland as a result of

our engagement and hostilities with Iran. There's a ton of things that should be happening. Hopefully. they are happening. I know that the good men and women who still work in the FBI, they know what to do, and hopefully they're just doing it, despite the fact that they're probably not being particularly well led by their director. But... What did your director in on it, so he has an answer? Yeah, yeah. Well, he's got to ask, though. You know, he's got to care.

He's got to show that he actually cares about being prepared. But not this time. Who knows? We'll keep our fingers crossed. Maybe next time he'll do better. No. I think so, but that's just me. Yeah, so tons going on, but let's talk about the DOJ for a minute. And let's talk about their performance in court this week with this story from NBC. The chief federal judge for the District of Columbia has ordered that the judiciary be notified when a grand jury rejects the Trump administration's attempts to indict defendants,

following the failed effort to charge six sitting members of Congress over a social media video. This is Judge James Bowsberg. He said that the rule applies when the effort to indict comes first as a grand jury investigation. He said it would be in place for 120 days, but it could become permanent if he likes it. He wrote that the decision was, quote, in furtherance of the interests of consistency and transparency, and said this court finds that notification should be provided to the duty magistrate judge whenever a grand jury fails to concur in an indictment,

regardless of whether the defendant has already been charged. The new policy, dated March 4th, clarifies that even if a prosecutor decides to drop the case after a failed prosecution, the magistrate judge must be notified of the unsuccessful prosecution attempt. Now, Bozberg's order requires that the grand jury four-person, quote, promptly and in writing report the lack of concurrence to the duty magistrate under seal, and that those notifications be maintained in the confidential files of the clerk's office. Grand juries are a core part of the American system of government and recognized in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which mandates that no person, quote, shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime,

unless on presentment or indictment of a grand jury. Yeah, integral part, right? For sure. Now, as NBC News first reported, the government was unable to convince us. a single grand juror. They were shut out when, you know, that it had met the low probable cause threshold to indict those six Democrats featured on the social media video that upset Trump. Now, the video advised members of the military and intelligence communities not to obey illegal

orders. In November, Trump accused those six Democratic lawmakers of seditious behavior and called for them to be arrested and put on trial for behavior punishable by death. Now, days later, the FBI attempted to schedule interviews with the six law. lawmakers. That's Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlinder, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Hulahan, and Senators Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin, none of whom chose to sit down with the Bureau. I mean, yeah, I'm not surprised by that. It's speech or debate. It's clear in the Constitution that members of Congress cannot be questioned out, you know, when they're doing their jobs.

That's absolutely right. They have they have that and probably many of other defenses if this thing ever gets off the ground. And so why would you waste your time engaging with the folks that are trying to build this ridiculous case against you? There's no reason to do that. So in February, attorneys from the office of Janine Piro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, including a longtime associate and former House Republican staffer, presented a case against the six lawmakers to a federal grand jury, which rejected the attempted indictment. Now, Bozberg's order also noted that in a sealed memo, the government gave an opinion

on whether the judiciary should be notified, but he did not say what their opinion was. We can guess. I bet we can guess. Peerro's office declined to comment, and this order we've been discussing was first noticed by Politico. Yeah. Now, Judge Bozberg also issued a scathing order blocking subpoenas. that Piro issued to the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Bosberg suggested the investigation was political. Quote, there is abundant evidence that the subpoena's dominant, if not sole purpose, is to harass and pressure Jerome Powell, either to yield to the president or resign and make way for a Fed chair who will. That's what Boseberg wrote about that. And then Piro attacked Boseberg last week as an activist judge and said the Justice Department would appeal. And there is some updated news on this. Apparently, the White House and the Department of Justice were fine to let that go so that they could just go forward with nominating their new Fed share that takes over in May

because Jerome Powell's term will end and he will just be lowered to a regular board member at that point, Jerome Powell would. But they want to now fight it. They want to now appeal it. And in doing so, they could really screw up the nomination of the new Fed chair. It could put that off while this. is being litigated. Yeah, but I mean like cutting off their nose despite their face, kind of a standard decision tree formula for a lot of what comes out of the White House.

So we won't be surprised if that happens. So when NBC News asked Piro at a news conference on Friday, why some of the federal grandeurers seem to be skeptical of the cases being brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office, she responded that she was, quote, willing to take a not guilty and also say, said, quote, willing to take a no true bill because I'll take all the crimes and put them in. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

She's got a couple of slam dunk cases against Corey Lewandowski and Christy Noam right now, but she could really up her winning percentage, but I don't see her bring in all the crimes right now. I don't really, and I'm curious. I'll take all the crimes and put them in. Put them in what? What are you talking about like a tote bag here or another indictment? I don't even understand what this woman says.

The grand jury. I'll take all the crimes. to the grand jury. I'll put him in a box. It's bigger than a bread box, but smaller than an elephant. She even said, Andy, that it was up to her, even if she just had a feeling or if she just wanted to verify that the law wasn't being broken, that she had the right to take these cases to a grand jury. And that's completely untrue. It's against the federal rules of criminal procedure.

It's against the Constitution. You can't use, it's against the rules of federal grand jury. You can't use a federal grand jury for a fishing expedition or just to play key. your curiosity about whether or not crimes have been committed. It's not how it works. No. I mean, the whole concept is you going in front of the federal, going in front of the grand jury and proving, hopefully, for you, that they have, that you have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, has in the past been committed. So to just use it as like, it's a lark, well, see what comes back. No, that's not actually how this is supposed to work.

So on Friday, her office dropped a case against a man who burned an American flag. So maybe that'll be the first notification. Trump issued an executive order meant to crack down on that constitutionally protected action. And Bozberg had ruled that the man who was facing two misdemeanors over alleged violations of a federal park order, Boseberg ruled that he was entitled to an inquiry over whether his prosecution had been for, quote, allegedly illegal actions or for, his constitutionally protected speech. Yeah, yep. And she just dropped him.

Right after she got up and said, I'll take any crime to the grand jury, I take a not guilty, I'll take a no true bill. Thank you. Right after she said that, her office filed to drop the charges against this veteran who had burned the flag in opposition to Trump's executive,

illegal unconstitutional executive order. Now, damn you, Bozberg. Nah. You've out foxed me once again. I'll get your next time. I'd be it on dieting everybody if it were for that pesky constitution. Where's the ham sandwich guy? No, NBC goes on to say that the grand jury system was first developed in England.

And the handbook for federal grand jurors in the U.S. highlights the celebrated English case involving the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1681. Quote, displeased with him, the crown presented to the grand jury. grand jury a proposed bill of indictment for high treason and recommended that it be voted and returned, the grand jury manual states. After hearing the witnesses, the grand jury voted against the bill of indictment and returned it to the king, holding that it was not true. So early Janine Piro's trying to indict people getting a no true bill. She's more historical than I thought. And I love this quote because it kind of explains the origin behind the phrase no true bill. That's what we say now.

When a grand jury rejects an indictment, we say that they returned a no true bill. I always wondered like, it's such an awkward thing to say, where did that really come from? It's got to come from here. Where they said, we hold that it is not true.

What you've said about this person is not true. Yeah, it's not true. No true bill. There it is. The Earl of Shaftisbury. I'm sure I'm. saying that wrong. My apologies. Well, he's probably not around to complain about it. So I figure you're in the clear.

Very true. Yeah, this is amazing because I think it's worth noting that Bozberg is the presiding, he's the presiding judge over the D.C. district. And one of the responsibilities of the presiding judge is they oversee all of the action of the grand jury. So he, he's, he, Here, him issuing this order is entirely within what is one of his ancillary judicial responsibilities. He sees something very different happening in the grand juries that we are getting a spate of no true bills. And so he's trying to collect data on that, which makes sense to try to figure out what's happening here. My guess is the conclusion he'll draw eventually is that the U.S. Attorney's Office has become significantly less competent.

But we'll see. Let's collect the data and we'll find out. This is not him being an activist and shoving his nose and something that's not part of his biznatch. This is him like actually doing his job, which is a good thing to see. And he's, you get the sense from his rulings that he is not to be pushed any further. No, no. And we'll talk about him a little bit more later. But, you know, this is why, I don't know you can't talk too much about this case, but this is why the Department of Justice. is trying to bring this grand conspiracy case by attaching the Mara Lago executed search warrant to it down in Judge Eileen Cannon's court. Because as Judge Bozberg sits atop the grand jury stuff in D.C., Eileen Cannon is in charge of grand jury decisions down there. So if they bring a no true bill or whatever, she's not going to, I'm assuming, give them a hard time about it or quash subpoenas or do anything that you. you're supposed to do in those cases. Not that this case against, this is the case against ex-CIA chief, John Brennan and many, many more people, including yourself. That's why they started in D.C. They noped out of there. They went to Pennsylvania, noped out of there, ended up

down in Florida in Miami, and then moved it to Judge Cannon's courtroom so that she would be the one to make grand jury decisions. Because she's the only judge in that courthouse. Right. Not a chief judge of the circuit or the district, but the only judge in that courthouse. And you can see in another responsibility of being chief judge, and of course would also fall to canon, if for matters in her courthouse, is exactly what you just referred to, the challenging of a subpoena. So if somebody subpoenas you, there are legal grounds that you can just say, no, I don't think the subpoena is valid and you can attack them. That's what happened in the Powell case. And so it's remarkable. Like, subpoena is very rarely ever get canceled or what the legal term is, quashed.

But in this case, Bosberg stepped in and quashed those subpoenas. So what he's essentially doing is this is even before any attempt at an indictment. This is when the government is still in the investigative stage. And Bozberg is saying, no, these subpoenas have, they're clearly political. There's no basis for this. That is incredibly, that is incredibly, we talk about no true bills being rare, and they were before this administration.

Quashing subpoenas is like extremely rare, but Bozberg is not having it. So, yeah, I think it's a really interesting. He has the, it's in his jurisdiction. It's within his inherent power as a judge to do that. That's right. And he cites all of the case law from sister districts. He goes, that doesn't really happen here. And there's not a lot of case law, but here's all the sister district case law that goes with it.

And Janine Piro's lawyers, her office, lawyers from her office, agreed to that principle during the hearings. for quashing the Powell subpoenas. They agreed and said, yeah, of course judges have the power to quash a subpoena if it's inappropriate. We don't argue that. But then Bureau goes out and says, he can't do that. It's against the rules that I just made up. It's damn activist. Yeah, activist judge. And they really don't like, they really don't like him. So we're going to talk a little bit later about that other case that's down in Judge Cannon's neck of the woods, but we've got other stuff to talk about before then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. One story, a federal judge ejected recently, just this last week, a DOJ lawyer from his courtroom,

ejected him. Like, it was a nightclub and the guy gotten too rowdy and he got walked out the door. So we're going to discuss that, and we're going to discuss how the Justice Department is lowering hiring standards to fill the positions of nearly 5,000 people who've left the department. So we're going to get to all that right after this quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back. There is a real difference between laundry that smells clean and laundry that smells great. That is what stood out to me about laundry sauce. I thought it would be a nice change for my usual detergent, but I ended up being blown away by how much I absolutely love it. The scent is incredible. It's fantastic. It smells way better than what I had been using. And the scent actually

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It's time to make Laundry Day the best day of the week. All right, everybody, welcome back. So for a long time, Andy, you and I've been talking about the destruction of something called the presumption of regularity. That's the court's loss of faith or, you know, the benefit of the doubt that the DOJ usually enjoys in court. And we've been talking about that a lot here on unjustified. But the hits keep coming, Andy. The New York Times reports that a federal judge threw a top prosecutor from the New Jersey U.S. attorney's office out of his courtroom during a sentencing hearing this week and demanded that, the office's leadership testify about who had authority over their actions, according to court documents.

The rapid sequence of events on Monday and the courtroom of Judge Sahid Qarashi. This was the latest indication of growing tensions between the Justice Department and the federal judiciary in New Jersey specifically, but also on the whole. It came during the scheduled sentencing of a man who last year agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography. So this is a sentencing hearing on a guilty plea. That's right. That's right. And the hearing did not go as prosecutors had planned. Judge Qureshi grew frustrated with the office's head of appeals, a gentleman named Mark Coyne, who had not formally disclosed that he would appear.

And the judge fiercely interrogated a more junior prosecutor about whether the former interim U.S. attorney, Alina Haba, still had some role in operating the office. And Judge Qureshi then eventually threw Mr. Coyne, out of the courtroom. The judge then ordered the three leaders of the New Jersey office, who last week were found to be occupying their positions unlawfully, you ordered

them to appear to testify about their office's leadership structure. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed the unconventional three-person leadership team in December after Mrs. Haba was disqualified. The leaders are Philip Lamperello, Jordan

Fox, and Ari Fontecio. Now, Ms. Haba is now a senior advisor to the Attorney General and supervises U.S. attorneys around the United States. She's been in the New Jersey office in recent week. She's been lurking around. It's unclear why. Her presence alone would not be inappropriate or out of the ordinary given her position. It's unclear, though, what motivated Judge Karashi's questions about her. Asked for comment, Haba said she had absolutely no role in operating the office. quote, I'm not the U.S. attorney anymore. I left my post. She defended Mr. Coyne, the guy who was tossed out by this judge, as, quote, an incredibly talented attorney, prosecutor, and appeals chief, and said that he should only be treated with the utmost respect.

The clash in Judge Corusc's courtroom comes at the height of a remarkable extended confrontation between the Trump administration and federal judges in New Jersey, who have accused the Justice Department of prioritizing its own personnel. choices over public safety. Judges have warned that if the department continues to insist on installing the office's leadership illegally, the integrity of criminal cases will be threatened. Last week, the judge who disqualified Ms. Haba, Matthew W. Braun, found that the office's three-person leadership team was unlawful. He wrote that President Trump's reliance on illegal maneuvers to appoint New Jersey's top prosecutors might mean that, quote, scores of dangerous criminals could have cases dismissed or convictions reversed because the law would be in their favor. Now, Judge Brand paused any effect of his own decision to give the

government time to appeal, but it has yet to do so. It's trying to figure out what to say. Yeah, exactly. Now, the day after Judge Brown's order, Judge Koreshi asked the U.S. Attorney's Office if it wanted to delay the sentencing of this defendant, this child pornography defendant who planned to plead guilty, Francisco Villafane. And Judge Karishi said that if the government were not requesting a delay, the line prosecutor on the case, Daniel Rosenblum, would have to be prepared to answer questions about his office's leadership structure, sometimes referred to as the triumvirate. This is amazing because the judge, like, gave him a shot, right? He's like, do you want to, do you want an extension? Do you want to delay this? Are you sure you want to go down this road? And they did, and not much to their peril. So Mr. Coyne, who is a veteran in the office,

he accompanied Mr. Rosenblum, a relative newcomer, to the Monday hearing. But Judge Qureshi, upon determining that Mr. Coyne had no formal right to appear in the case, told him that he could pass Mr. Rosenblum notes, but he could not address the court. Quote, I'm not going to hear from you, Mr. Coyne, he said. If you want to sit there for moral support, or hand Mr. Rosenblum post-its or whisper in his ear,

I'll let you do that as supervisor. The judge then proceeded to ask Mr. Rosenblum questions, first about the details of Mr. Villafane's plea agreement, saying that the prosecutor had operated without having all the evidence in hand and was preparing to agree to allow the defendant to serve significantly less time than the guidelines suggested. Wow. And here's a quote. How did this screw up happen?

That's what the judge asked. Was it your office, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, or both? How did you execute a plea agreement without having all the evidence? Then Judge Qureshi asked Mr. Rosenblum a series of questions about who's running the office, including whether Ms. Haba retained some leadership role. Quote, none that I'm aware of, Rosenblum said. Quote, so she could be operating the office, the judge said. And then Mr. Coyne interjected.

She is not, he said. Judge Corresi told her. Mr. Coyne to sit down, quote, you don't get to blindside the court and do whatever it is you guys want to do, he mourned. So if you continue to speak, you can leave. Mr. Coyne then continued to speak, and the judge directed the court security officers to remove him. Before they could act, he asked Mr. Coyne to leave once more, and Mr. Coyne did so. The judge then resumed questioning Mr. Rosenblum, asking whether he knew personally whether Ms. Haba was still, quote, influencing the operations of your office.

When Mr. Rosenblum said he did not have personal knowledge, Judge Qureshi said that he would call the three leaders to testify under oath. Those are the three guys that are apparently running the office, but maybe not very well. He said that he would, quote, figure out who is currently operating this office before I proceed with today's sentencing hearing. Wow. Now, originally the judge said he would call the leaders to testify April 1st, but then on Tuesday, Mr. Coyne said, can we have 30 more days?

to allow for developments in the case in front of Judge Brand, in which the leadership team was disqualified. Maybe they're going to finally appeal that. In response, Judge Qureshi moved the hearing to May 4th. Yeah, you can have 33 more days, as a matter of fact. Get your S together. Okay, so toward the end of Monday's hearing, Judge Qureshi told Mr. Rosenblum to alert his colleagues,

some of whom had hearings scheduled in his courtroom in the next week. he said, they're not going to be able to just walk into this courtroom and say, we just want to proceed, he said. Quote, you have lost the confidence and trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community. And you are losing the trust and confidence of the public. That's, wow. To a DOJ lawyer.

Bad summary of the state of affairs in New Jersey. Wow. the rhetoric about the DOJ coming from the bench is pretty amazing. And Andy, in my FOIA case against Doge and Elon Musk, Judge Bozberg, actually last night, just ruled in our favor on a motion to compel. And in his ruling last night, he said this. He said, quote, the government raises vague separation of powers concerns with me ordering the executive branch to contact senators. In doing so, it provides no relevant case, constituted, provision or even a line of reasoning to support its argument, and the court remains dubious of the merits of such an objection. So, yeah, ouch, the reason he's bringing up separation of powers. Basically, I filed my Freedom of Information Act request and First Amendment Coalition joined me, right? And this is being filed by National Security Counselors, Kel McClainan. And we were just asking for documents from Doge. But then there was some sort of a public

thing at the White House where somebody said that Elon Musk had given his private phone number to Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, and several senators, and said, get in touch with me if you have problems of Doge, because we're trying to get at the bottom of whether or not, first of all, he's in charge. Elon Musk is the administrator of Doge? And secondly, is Doge part of the executive office of the president or is it subject to FOIA, right? Those are our goals with this case. Okay.

And so then Freedom of the First Amendment Coalition filed an amended a FOIA request to the lawsuit and said, hey, we also need you to file a motion to compel the court to order Doge to preserve any communications on whatever that private phone line is of Elon Musk's. And there was a hearing about it. And, you know, Judge Bozberg was kind of like, well, why don't I just tell you, Doge, that you have to ask these senators what they're. that phone number is and, you know, also ask Sean Duffy what that phone number is so we can just locate it first steps. And DOJ was like, you can't make us do that. And so our, my lawyer, Kell McClanham, was like, well, how about you just go make, you know, have them go through Doge records to see contacts from Elon, right? Go through the Doge Bros phones. And then that's when DOJ flipped out and said, you want us to go through all these records to locate this phone to,

blah, blah, blah, that's too much work. That's too much work. And the judge was like, yeah, I think so. And so he issued a minute order saying, all right, you just, just ask the senators and then ask Sean Duffy. And then DOJ filed a motion to reconsider that order saying, you can't make us ask senator stuff. There's a separation of powers problem here. That's where the separation of powers problem comes in. So Bozberg said, all right, well, then we'll go with what the plaintiffs originally suggested.

You can go through all the Doge communications. to look for this number, so you don't have to talk to the senators. So he amended the order. And so they have to now do all that work that they didn't want to do in the first place. But for Judge Bowsberg to say, you know, you raise this separation of powers issue, but you have no relevant case law, no constitutional provision, no line of reasoning even to support its argument. So we remain dubious of the merits of your objection. But nonetheless, we'll say you don't have to ask the senators.

So now you have to go through all of your... Kind of a have-it-your-way ruling. For real. They painted themselves in this corner and now they have to do it. Well, this whole thing, I mean, these two examples really highlight what we've been talking about

in terms of loss of confidence, loss of presumption of regularity. There's a couple of little things here that I think are worth explaining quickly. The whole issue, with this guy, Mr. Coyne, who gets kicked out of the hearing. So when you, Rosenblum is the attorney on this case, the sentencing case. And you can't just show up and cover that.

Like if Rosenblum wasn't available or you want to go with Rosenblum, you have to first send a request to the court saying we would like leave to. Oh, right. You have to ask permission to appear. Yeah. So that you're on the record as an attorney, you know, involved with that case. And I guess Coyne never. what's that? He should know that if he's been at the office for a dollar.

Of course. Of course. But you know what? Places that aren't well supervised, those sorts of details tend to get lost in the fog of war. It's been my experience. But in any case, I think that's what Coyne failed to do here,

but he shows up intending to basically make all the arguments for this new kid. And the judge just wasn't having it. This judge is going to say, like he's going to hold them to every little detail now, right? Because he sees this stuff slipping away. And the danger that Judge Brand is citing if these three, the triumvirate, the three basically AUSAs who are running this office as the U.S. attorneys or singular, I don't even know how you would phrase that, the problem is it's not lawful. If it doesn't comply with the statute, then any decision they make, any indictment they authorize is no longer valid. So all these criminals who are being prosecuted and these cases are going through the system every day, they have a built-in defense now.

They can come back later after they've been convicted and say, my conviction should be thrown out because there was no lawful U.S. attorney presiding over this office during the time I was indicted or prosecuted or whatever. So they're not, this is not a we don't like Donald Trump. So we're pushing back on Donald Trump. This is, the judges are standing up to try to protect the sanctity of the legal process in that district, which they feel like has been legally undermined by the shenanigans. Now, on Pam Bondi side, of course, she's doing this because they've run at it. They, as we know, with the Alina Habas saga, they ran out of time. You know, they appointed Haba. She did not get confirmed.

Therefore, you run out of time to serve as the acting if you're the appointed person and you don't have your, you know, not confirmed by the Senate. And then the responsibility flips to the judges of the circuit. They get to put the U.S. attorney in until that person is replaced by someone who's been confirmed by the Senate. Well, every time they do that, Todd Blanche fires them. It's happened in D.C. Or I think it's happened in Virginia. It's happened in other districts as well. And so in this case, Bondi is trying to get around that by appointing these three guys in the office to run it and that's not going to work either because it's not in the statute right it's just not how these things go yeah and that's the problem is that this judge has tried this is this is a

guy who's ready to plead guilty for child pornography and if it doesn't go properly because they don't have the right leadership in the office this guy could walk the judge wants to make sure that everything is proper i mean i've heard guilty pleas before i remember sitting there listening to mike flin's guilty plea are you sure this is what you want to do have you been coerced have you spoken to your lawyer. I mean, it's a long process to make sure that somebody pleads guilty properly. And if the leadership thing is screwed up, this guy could walk. And if I'm a criminal in New Jersey, I feel like there's a lot I could get away with right now. Totally. Totally. So this guy, Brand, who deemed the three of them to be unlawfully serving, he's not even from New Jersey. He's a lawyer

from Pennsylvania that's gotten brought into this problem to try to help out what's going on over there. it's getting worse with every effort by the administration to dodge the requirements of the statute that define how U.S. attorneys get appointed and approved. But we'll see. It's not getting any better. And like you said, they're running out of lawyers because everyone's leaving, quitting, being fired. So how does the DOJ replace all these attorneys? Well, we've already seen a Twitter post asking lawyers to apply, which is unusual because

DOJ usually is inundated with applications for these coveted positions. Now, much like the FBI and ICE lowering their standards, Department of Justice is doing the same thing. And we'll tell you what they're doing right after this quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, our next story comes from Bloomberg Law. The Justice Department has waived a policy requiring newly hired federal prosecutors to possess at least one year of experience practicing law. So let me back up because this is stunning.

DOJ used to have a policy that required that you had one one one year experience practicing law doing something. Trust in estates. Who knows? Writing wills for you, who knows, you had to have done that for at least a year before you could be an assistant U.S. attorney, a fully fledged federal prosecutor. And they have now waived that requirement. as U.S. Attorney's offices struggle to find qualified replacements following mass departures. Holy cow. Many offices have previously adopted their own rules mandating at least three years of legal practice

rather than the nationwide baseline threshold of one year. But the reduced standards of this month were implemented in federal districts such as Minnesota and Southern Florida that have experienced significant attrition to put new prosecutors to work straight at a law school, baby. Right out of contracts class, bam. You're putting people in jail for life. Wow, this move was confirmed by two people familiar and recently in newly posted online vacancy announcements in a handful of offices. In a March 13th message with the subject line suspension of attorney one-year experience requirement, DOJ headquarters informed U.S. Attorney's offices at the Department's Lawyer Recruitment Office now permits them to exclude the one-year

minimum when advertising vacancies. The memo reviewed by, what's next? You don't need to be a lawyer? Maybe. Maybe. The memo reviewed by Bloomberg Law goes on to state this suspension is in effect until February 28, 2027, and was implemented due to an exigent hiring need for attorneys across the department. Yeah, I bet there is. There are now public postings for assistant U.S. Attorney openings in Minnesota, South Florida, Montana, Alaska, and Louisiana that list a law degree and an active state bar membership as required qualifications. They don't mention a minimum period of service, while other U.S. Attorney's offices still mandate at least one or three years out of law school. The policy shift comes as federal prosecuting offices across the U.S. have faced challenges

meeting court deadlines in immigration proceedings, and as judges have increasingly criticized, the quality of DOJ's attorney's legal work. Well, stand by for more of those criticisms because the one-year rook, no-year rookies are less, are unlikely to bring up the quality standard there. Yeah, this is not going to help that. The department has previously exempted applicants from a one-year experience rule if they were hired through the Attorney General's Honors Program, which is an entry-level talent pipeline for elite new lawyers, or as uncompensated, special assistant U.S. attorneys. But the March policy revision has a potentially much further reach. As current and former DOJ supervisors have said, they're observing a sharp decline in the volume of

resumes they're reviewing in recent months for what have long been highly coveted positions. Sharp decline in people applying to be assistant U.S. attorneys. Wow. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The Minnesota vacancy that excludes a legal service requirement is for the office's civil division, which is among the many U.S. attorney's civil union. inundated by the recent surge in habeas petitions from detained immigrants who've been denied bond hearings. A federal judge held one of the Minnesota offices attorneys in civil contempt last month over his handling of one such case as judges and other districts are increasingly contemplating DOJ attorney discipline. Yeah, that's Minnesota. In the Miami-based South Florida

District, U.S. Attorney Jason Redding Cuniones has advanced Trump-aligned initiatives such as grand jury investigations into those involved in past cases against the president. The Trump Justice Department has tried other ways to backfill short-staffed U.S. attorneys' offices, such as recruiting emergency jump teams that transfer prosecutors to nearby districts for short-term surges and bolstering the number of military lawyers taking details as line prosecutors. Wow. Emergency jump teams. They're doing this with the DOD civilian employees, too, asking if they want to serve a

a stint in ice or, you know, whatever, voluntarily, right? Emergency jump teams. The idea that you could be maybe toiling away in the bowels of the Pentagon for a couple of years reviewing like DOJ, I'm sorry, DOD procurement contracts and simply raising your hand puts you on the front line in a courtroom arguing for the continued detention of, some human being from someplace else. I mean, it's absolutely crazy to me. But this is where we are.

And I don't think we should be surprised by it at all. This is what happens when a department is just in chaos and kind of free fall, right? You have people who are leaving for principled reasons because they don't agree with the things that they are being asked to do. You have people leaving probably for just fear. Like they're afraid of getting caught up in something and, you know, some political drama that then follows them around for the rest of their career. It makes it hard to find employment or what have you. It's just, or the workload is, you know, we've seen a couple of these cases where there was

that case where the female attorney in Minnesota just like, I can't say under this job is terrible. I quit right here. Yeah, or the other guy who's like just hold, oh, she said, hold me in contempt so I can get some sleep. Yeah, exactly. So this is not. She's running for Congress now. Oh, no way. So my point is this is not a well-led place right now.

You know, put the political part of it aside. It's a department in chaos. And that is not a good sign for the home team, meaning all of us, all of us who depend on DOJ to do their job well, to uphold the Constitution, to bring strong prosecutions against people who do bad things, put those people in jail or get them convicted of crimes, Like all these things start to fall apart.

And, you know, I'm just afraid, like, we can count the number of people who have quit to the best of our ability. We can now with the help of people like Judge Boseberg, we can count the number of no true bills that are happening. We can't count the lack that the erosion of competence. We can't count how many cases they didn't bring because they didn't have enough people. How many drug dealers or child sex traffickers or whoever didn't get sentenced or sent to jail because, you know, the unit or the division or the U.S. Attorney's Office is running on a one quarter staff or something. So, yeah, it's really, this is a serious concern. I think everybody should be kind of focused on. Yeah, agreed.

And, you know, that might be by design if you want to dismantle the government and dismantle the Department of Justice and undermine its integrity. drain the reservoir of trust, so to speak. That's one way to do it. But meanwhile, the people in the Department of Justice are drowning. You know, they're barely treading water at this point, trying to keep up with the number of cases. And, you know, maybe these, what are they called jump emergency jump teams? Well, we'll help.

A bunch of lawyers with... Jump Street. Yeah. Square back, square briefcases. jumping out of planes of parachutes, parachuting their way in. Good Lord. Yeah.

Anyway. All right, we got a few more quick stories followed by, of course, listener questions coming right up after this last break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back.

All right, lightning round time. I can't even say that. Attorney General Pam Bondi held a briefing with the House Oversight Committee this week in the Epstein Files saga. but Democrats walked out after Bondi insinuated that the briefing satisfied the deposition subpoena she had received from the committee. She was scheduled to be deposed on April 14th about her failure to comply with the Epstein-Files Transparency Act.

And I have to say, A.G., when I first saw this story, I thought, you know, maybe this is a little bit of an overreaction by the Democrats. But sure enough, on Friday, it's being reported that all of a sudden committee chairman, is now talking to the few Republicans who voted for the subpoena in trying to convince them that maybe they should pull that back. So that's exactly what the Democrats were concerned about here. That seems to be what's happening. Right. And the walkout happened pursuant to Representative Summer Lee trying to hold Pam Bondi to account saying, are you trying to tell us that this satisfies your subpoena for deposition that's going to occur on April 14th? And Jim Comer, accused her of bitching about it.

And the Democrats are like, that's it. And they left and he helped press conferences pretty much immediately after. But yeah, I'm sure we'll see a letter from Pam Bondi saying, this should satisfy the requirement for the subpoena. Please withdraw it. And we'll see if Comer's able to talk the other Republicans in the committee from take five of them voted for her to do this.

Yeah. For her to be deposed. We'll see if they change their mind. I don't know. There's a couple on there who are. pretty adamant about this, but we'll see. Next up from NBC, former FBI director Jim Comey has been subpoenaed in connection with that wide-ranging investigation being run by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Florida, Cagnones. The probe, which focuses on an earlier investigation into

Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and other prosecutions related to President Donald Trump, like I said, being led by Jason A. Redding Cignonas, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida. The sprawling probe has been dubbed a grand conspiracy investigation by Trump allies. So that's what's going on in this case. I know you can't talk about it because you've been subpoenaed in this case, but there's been a ton. 130 subpoenas have been sent out in connection with that investigation. And federal prosecutors have wide discretion when it comes to subpoenas, which can seek their records or testimony. But like we talked about earlier, if you've got somebody like Judge Bozberg sitting atop the federal grand jury,

it can quash these kinds of subpoenas, but here you've got Eileen Cannon. Federal grand jury subpoenas are typically issued by federal prosecutors without judicial oversight or direct involvement of federal grand jurors. While the subpoenas are issued under court authority, it's only when a recipient of a subpoena files a motion to quash as the Federal Reserve did, Jerome Powell, that a judge reviews the matter. So that's where we are with this right now. Yeah.

I mean, again, I can't really comment on this one because of my own. involvement in this, but, or the fact that I've received a subpoena, two subpoenas now, but I will... You're one of only 130 people in the country. I know, I feel so special. Special.

I will say that my attorney... Just honored to be nominated. My attorney did provide a quote that's been, has shown up in a bunch of media stories this week. He referred to this whole thing as a vendetta searching for a crime. Yeah.

So I think that's where we are. Okay. So from the Times, two former FBI agents fired last year for having worked on an investigation into President Trump's attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. These two agents accused senior leaders at the Bureau and the Justice Department for targeting them for, quote, political retribution in a lawsuit filed on Thursday. In their suit, the agents claim that the FBI director, Cash Patel and Attorney General. General Pam Bondi had retaliated against them for being, quote, politically disloyal to President Trump, even though they had worked on the election interference case known as Arctic Frost, only briefly and in largely administrative roles.

Yeah, the lawsuit accuses Patel in particular of going back on the vow he made under oath during a Senate confirmation hearing last January, not to fire any agents solely based on the cases that they may have worked on. and it noted that Ms. Bondi had been threatening as early as March 2025 to fire agents who had worked on Trump-related cases. Their lawsuit also claims Chuck Grassley, Senator from Iowa, powerful Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had worked in coordination with Patel and Trump to target and disparage FBI personnel involved with Arctic Frost. So there we go. another lawsuit for wrongful termination

for political reasons. Mine, I filed mine, my first complaint in 2019 and we still don't have a trial date. Oh, God, poor you. That's terrible. That's terrible. For these folks, I say,

go get them. Good for you. Stand up, stand up for yourself. Don't just slink away. It is worth it. for Senator Chuck Grassley, who's been accused of, quote, apparent coordination. I saw some of that apparent coordination once. One times, long times ago, I was told to go to the White House and go into the Oval Office

and talk to the dude who was the president then, who's the same guy who's the president now. And it was around the time they were kind of dangling the job, the permanent job of FBI director. which I knew was just really not a thing, but, you know, you get told to go to the Oval Office. You go. So I was sitting there in a little chair right outside the open door to the Oval Office, and he was screaming at a bunch of people who were in there, and then they left, and he got a phone call right before this quote-unquote interview of, you know, my job interview for the director's job.

and I heard his secretary, I guess. It was Hope Hicks. It was sitting there. I don't know if that's her official job title or not. She just kind of like put the person on, the caller on hold and then yelled through the door at the president. Chuck Grassley on line for you or whatever, some phone line. So I was like, oh, man, I don't think I'm going to get this job. Now if Chuck Grassley's calling him.

So sure enough, they have a little chat. He hangs up. and then they send me in. And, you know, I had surmised all this because I'm an investigator. I'm capable of that sort of, you know, serious thought work. Yeah. But if there was ever any doubt, as soon as I sat down, Trump looked at me and said, that was Chuck Grassley on the phone.

Boy, he doesn't like you at all. And I just said, yeah, I'm well aware of that. Oh, I was like, geez, you guys can't keep a conspiracy, can you? Jesus, it's supposed to be quiet about those things. Anyway. I can't. Good old, good times. Yeah, listener questions.

It's time for listener questions. Hey, everybody, if you have a question, there's link in the show notes. You can click on that to submit your question to us. What do we have this weekend? I think we've got time for one or two. Okay, so we have a few. I want to say that the names for the new segment, which we are just charging forward on here, the names keep pouring in.

And I know that at some point I'll have to stop. this and we'll have to pick one, but I just like reading them every week, so just kind of letting it fly. A few of the highlights from this week were hit me in the head with a bat all in one word. So it's really, you got to see how it looks. So everybody playing at home, just open up your computer, your phone or something, and type in capital H, IT, M-E-N-T-H-H-E-H-E-A-D, W-T-H-H-H-A-B-A-T. And I think you really get the sense of how cool it is. All right. It's a good name.

This is for the, the, the DOJ failures segment of the show. It's essentially the whole show now. I like hit me in the head with a bat. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, Pam's pernicious posse. Which is interesting. Could get you into some trouble there. But anyway, how about this one? Ignoble pursuits. Okay. Ignoble pursuits.

Get it? I get it. Ignoble pursuits. Yeah, yeah. It's got a real dead humor to it, which is probably why I think it's funny. And then the last one I want to mention because there's a number of suggestions

along this play on our name here, Justice Fried. They should have gone with unjustice fried? I don't know. Anyway, keep them coming. We love it. It's great. And creativity is awesome.

All right. So first, I still like hit me in the head with a bat, all one word. I know, right? All in one word. It might become my password to every account I am. It looks like a password. No, it won't.

Don't try to hack into my bank. It's not hit me in the head of the bat. Okay. First question comes to us from someone who did not share their name. And they said, can Cash Patel be investigated or sued for firing people specialized in bad actors from Iran if we do have an attention? attack within the U.S. or just in general for his complete ignorance and stupidity, not to mention lack of work ethic.

Nope. Yeah, as much as I love the idea, I'd know. The answer is no, he can't be because, you know, firing people's... Even if you make really dumb decisions as part of your official duties, it's still an official duty. That's right. Exactly right. And, you know, there is a remedy for making really stupid decisions and it's getting

the job taken away from you. So that would be one way to hold him accountable, but I really doubt that that's going to happen. So yeah, no lawsuit about that right now. So sorry about that anonymous, but that's where we stand on that. So should we go one more quick one before it's all over? Sure.

All right, here we go. This comes from Jerry Jay. She says, I am so thankful for you both, for your insight and service to our country. It seriously allows me to feel that there is some hope. I'm glad that's the case, Jerry. She says, do you think that Trump and his family have doubled down on the giant grift by creating the Iran war and further aggressions as a way to profit? His sons are now producing drones for the Defense Department with no bid with a no-bid contract.

Isn't this illegal and what can be done? How many other atrocities are they committing with false pretenses? It's all for the money. Well, that's a great question. And I share your skepticism about the way that Trump's family members have been really just capitalizing enormously on things that are dependent upon decisions that come out of the White House. And this used to be something that we were very concerned with in this country. And it's kind of a form of self-dealing and nepotism. It's something that politicians tried to avoid. Republicans, you'll remember in the last administration, got really exercised about

Hunter Biden going and marketing himself around the world to different places to try to make business deals based on his status as the son of the president. But apparently not so concerned about any of those things now, any of those same people. We're not hearing about like Don Jr's laptop showing up at a laptop repair shop somewhere in Delaware. So is it illegal? That would depend upon like the specifics of. one instance of this.

So I can't really say, you know, in general it's hard to say whether something's legal or illegal. You need the specifics. But what I will tell you is that the simple fact that they are doing it undermines confidence in the decisions that are being made. And that is why we don't. That's why politicians typically they don't allow or they discourage their family members from doing things like this. You don't want to create the impression of self-dealing and prophetizing, but that is gone. This administration does not care about that. And so as a result, many, many, many people have the same sorts of questions that you have, Jerry.

And that is just, I think, a really sad, you know, sign of where we are right now in terms of our mistrust of government. Yeah, agreed. We have one more question come in from somebody who listens to us, but I don't think really likes us very much. But, you know, hey, we want to take all kinds of questions from people who click on that link in the show notes. This person says, call me Mark. And he says, you probably won't choose this question

because it's not fawning over you, but here goes. I would love to hear Andy's explanation of the predicate for an FBI investigation of Trump related to Russian collusion relying primarily on the debunked steel dossier. As seasoned professionals, did you and the FBI's seventh floor believe the dossier was legitimate? How can your side think everything during the Biden administration is sacrosanct and everything Trump is illegal and worthy of prosecution? That's how it reads. So I think what he means is everything that Trump does is illegal and worthy of prosecution.

Now, Andy, when I first had you on the Mueller, she wrote podcast, I'm assuming Mark, this gentleman did not listen to the Mueller, she wrote podcast. That's a fair assumption. I asked you about what it means, what sort of standard you have to meet in order to justify opening an investigation, the predicate, right? And what that predicate was for opening hurricane, right? What was a crossfire hurricane? Yeah, yeah. Which was the investigation. And from my understanding, it had nothing to do with the Steele dossier.

It was that an Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer who had overheard, I think it was Papadopoulos, talking in a London pub, saying that he's got dirt in the form of emails from Russia on Hillary Clinton that he wanted to share with the Trump administration. in that particular campaign. And that, I think in June, I think it was before the dossier even came in. But I'm not sure. Can you refresh us to answer Mark's question here about what the minimum predicate is to open an investigation and how it was met in Crossfire Hurricane? Yeah, absolutely. I can.

And you will remember all these details. You will remember them better than call me Mark. I'm quite sure. But here we go. So, yes, you're, Right. The predicate for an investigation is information that a federal crime may have been committed or information that a threat to national security might exist. So that's what gets you a full investigation open. In this case, we knew a couple of things. In July, we knew that the Russians hacked into democratic systems and stole a ton of material, emails, documents. things like that from the DNC and that they had done that and released some of those materials like on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. When that happened, the friendly foreign

diplomat who you referenced saw what happened, the world saw it. It was in the news. And he then reached out and said, this is really troubling to me because months earlier in May, he personally had been approached by a member of the campaign, George Papadopoulos. They met in a pub, and Papadopoulos told him essentially what you said, that the Russians approached us. They offered to help the campaign by providing emails that they had stolen from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. So we knew that the Russians hacked into these systems illegally. That's a federal crime. We also then knew, based on what the story that we heard from this friendly foreign diplomat,

that they had offered to do exactly what we knew they did, uh, to the, they offered to help the campaign in that way. So we opened crossfire on that predication that the Russians, we're trying to meddle with the campaign by helping the Trump campaign. And we opened four cases. No,

we didn't even have the dossier when we opened the case. It was floating around in the New York City Field office. Nobody was really doing anything with it. It finally made its way to headquarters, weeks after we'd opened Crossfire Hurricane. So the dossier had nothing to do with the opening the case. That makes, I think, the 10,000th time I've said that, but I'll be saying it on my grave.

Now, much later, the dossier was used as part of a FISA application to open an investigation or continue an investigation into Carter Page, not Donald Trump, who had left the Trump campaign at the time because there was information in the Steele dossier, that had to do with him and his visits to Russia and a Russian college, I believe. That's exactly right. And the inspector general looked into that and decided that because the dossier was raw intelligence and hadn't been confirmed or denied, that it probably shouldn't have been part of the FISA warrant,

but that Rod Rosenstein, who Trump appointed a Republican, signed that FISA application. Yep. you know, that it would have gone through and he would have signed it without the steel dossier being part of it. But that, you know, in future, make these, here are 17 recommendations on what to do to change the FISA warrant application. That wasn't Donald Trump. Yeah. And didn't Papadopoulos plead guilty? He certainly did.

Yeah. So when we opened Crossfire without the dossier, there were four people who were under investigation. One was Papadopoulos because he was the guy that said that they had gotten help from the Russians. One was Carter Page because he was already under investigation in New York for interacting with Russian spies. So he was pretty likely a decent target at the time. One was Mike Flynn for reasons we all know. And the last was Paul Manafort. Manafort pled guilty. Flynn ultimately pled guilty.

Papadalos pled guilty. Carter Page was not prosecuted. Now, as you said, like of the four, only the FISA was only used. in the Carter Page case. And to be absolutely fair, there were mistakes in that FISA that should not have happened. And those were pointed out by the IG as well.

But that was an investigation into Carter Page, not Donald Trump or his campaign, correct? That's correct. That was an investigation into Carter Page. So that was pretty much it. There was no case, no individual case on Donald Trump at that time, not until he fired Jim Comey on May 9.

And I oversaw the opening of that case and I supported that. And we opened that case because, not because of the dossier, didn't have anything to do with anything in the dossier. It only had to do with what Donald Trump had said and done in the lead up to the opening of that case. He said repeatedly, did not like the fact that we were investigating Russia, asked us to stop investigating Russia. When we didn't stop investigating Russia, he fired the director of the, FBI. Then he told the media that he fired the FBI because of the Russia investigation. Then he told

the Russians that he fired the director because of the Russia investigation. So with all that, we had to say, gee, is the president trying to obstruct a lawful and valid and fully predicated investigation? The answer was very possibly. So there you go. That's that predication to open a case against Donald Trump. for trying to shut down that case. And also, if the president's trying to get us to stop investigating Russia, why would that be? It feels like there may be a national security threat there as well. So with that joint predication, we opened an individual case on Donald Trump. And there you go.

Then it all went to the Mueller report or to the Mueller team. And how many convictions? Mueller concluded that those actions against Jim Comey met the three. elements of obstruction of justice. Yes. And however, stopped short of saying that Donald Trump obstructed justice because you can indict a sitting president. And if you can indict a sitting president, you can't make accusations against him because it violates his constitutional right to face his accuser in court, which left the door open for Bill Barr to come in and say, nobody obstructed any justice, which means the case could never be brought in future. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. So I guess

I guess the answer for call me, call me Mark. Okay, Mark, we did choose the question. We don't require fawning, although we appreciate it. So, yeah, that's what actually happened. I know that's probably not consistent with the version of the Russia hoax story that you've probably heard many times. But, yeah, dig a little deeper, Mark.

And, you know, one way of doing that is to ask us, which you did. so we have answered your question. There you go. Check out the Mueller, she wrote podcast. It was an episode with Andy McCabe called, I think it was called Mueller Goes to Paper, and it was in 2019. And we talked about, no, actually, it was the one I interviewed you about the threat, your book.

Yeah. Right? And I asked you about the predicate to open that and what's required. So, yep, no dossier used at all in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane. I hope that answers your question. Thanks for writing in. Thanks for listening. I mean, even if you don't like what we have to say, appreciate you taking the time to listen. And thanks to everybody else as well. We appreciate you. And please continue to send in your questions. I'm sure we'll have a question, nothing but questions episode coming up soon.

Excellent. Because we keep getting so many questions. So thanks for sticking around with us. There was a lot of news to cover this week. So it was a long show. So we appreciate you. Yes, absolutely. Always great to kind of round this stuff up. be here next week to do the exact same thing again, so stay tuned. Yeah, we'll see you then. Thanks so much. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Allison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reeder at Moxie Design Studios.

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