Jack - Hostis Curiae

Episode Date: December 7, 2025

The Department of Justice failed to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on mortgage fraud charges. The FBI has arrested and charged a suspect for the pipe bombs placed at the DNC and RNC on January 5th, 2021.Jim Jordan has subpoenaed Jack Smith to appear behind closed doors after rejecting the Special Counsel’s request to testify before the House Judiciary Committee publicly.Kash Patel faces more scrutiny about his personal use of public resources after ordering an FBI detail to give his girlfriend’s inebriated friend a ride home after a night out.Plus listener questions…Do you have questions for the pod?   Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MSW Media. The Department of Justice failed to re-indite New York Attorney General Letitia James on mortgage fraud charges. The FBI has arrested and charged a suspect for the pipe bombs placed at the DNC and RNC headquarters on January 5th, 2021. Jim Jordan has subpoenaed Jack Smith to appear behind closed doors after rejecting the special counsel's request to testify. before the House Judiciary Committee publicly. And Kosh Patel, the director of the FBI, is facing more scrutiny about his personal use of public resources after ordering an FBI detailed to give his girlfriend's

inebriated friend a ride home after a night out. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to Unjustified. It's Sunday, December 7, 2025. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Allison, so much has happened with the Department of, of Justice this week. It feels like they can't get out of the middle of any story. They're just

right there in the center of the target ring every week. Yeah. And it's it's kind of hard to know where to begin. There are so many lead stories to talk about. But before we get into any of the big Department of Justice news from the week, I wanted to talk briefly about and address the boat strikes, what's been going on with Heg-Seth, Pete Heg-Seth, Secretary of War Crimes. And these boat strikes in the Caribbean because it was like a one-two punch for him this week when we had all of this information coming out about a follow-on strike to an initial strike they made on a boat in the Caribbean on September 2nd that showed that they killed shipwrecked crew members, which is actually an example they use as an illegal order not to follow in the Department of Defense war crime manual. That's right. And then we get an Inspector General report from Drebins from the Pentagon that his use of Signalgate or his use of the Signal app, I should say, what we call Signalgate,

actually endangered the lives of U.S. troops. So that came back up in the news this week as well. But what are your thoughts on the legality of these boat strikes in the Caribbean? It feels like they're all illegal, but especially that follow-on strike. Yeah, this is such a crazy and really disturbing thing. And I'm thinking about it a lot and have been for the last month or two because I teach my class at George Mason University in the spring term, which begins in January. And we do a whole week on essentially targeted killings. We do a whole week on war crimes and things of that nature.

So I'm thinking, like, how am I going to even talk about this in class? there are so many questions here. And even just to talk about the most recent example, like you cited this double tap, they're calling it, the boat that they shot first and then shot again, just to have a conversation about that, you have to basically accept all these other decisions

that have been made along the way, which I think are unacceptable. So, for instance, the fact that we are, you know, the administration's position that we are at war with Venezuela, We are very clearly not at war with Venezuela. And their answer to that would be, well, the president has decided we are.

Well, last time I checked, the Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not to the president. Now, can the president deploy troops? You also have to concede that drugs are weapons, which is what the administration is claiming. Right. Even if we're in an armed conflict with them,

whether or not these speedboats, allegedly bearing drugs, drug shipments or what have you, constitute some sort of an imminent threat or an attack on the United States, is, it's factually laughable. These are small crafts that aren't, you know, their theory, again, is that these are boats that are bringing drugs to the United States. Those drugs are eventually are being sold to U.S. citizens and eventually killing some of them, and so therefore it's a lethal threat. Well, that doesn't work. I mean, the boat itself is not even um it's not even capable of reaching the united states that was the other thing right like

there's a hundred stops between venezuela and the united states of course do they have intelligence that these guys were on their way to the united states i mean if if they do they haven't shared any of that with us um so there's just a there's a million links uh that have to be connected to get to this end of the chain where we're talking about the the double tap strike and And I want to make it clear, I don't believe any of those links have really been substantiated in a legitimate way. But now you get to the double tab. So they hit the boat and there are pieces of it left and there are supposedly two human beings who are clinging to those pieces. First, they tell us that, oh, you know, no, they were on radios, radioing for help and that makes them still in the fight.

Well, they, according to the testimony the Admiral gave yesterday, or on Thursday, They had no capability to radio anyone. They're literally clinging to the upside-down broken hull of a boat. And then we also learned in that testimony that they watched them hang on there for about 45 minutes. Waving. Waving. And, you know, let's remember, too, that these strikes are coming from a U.S. operated drone. there's not like there's another ship there a U.S. ship that could be fired upon by this boat

or it's already shot operators or whatever what was the U.S. presence, the U.S. troop presence that was in danger of this sinking ship. I mean, the whole thing is just, it's confounding. And I think it's blatantly illegal. Yeah, it's bizarre. And I guess, there were some Republicans who spoke to some people in the press on background without giving their names saying that there's congressional Republicans who want to investigate this, saying that, well, you know, and I'm paraphrasing here, but we don't think most of these are legal strikes, but the egregiousness of the second strike, the follow-on strike of that September 2nd attack is so bad that it gives us a foot in the door to start investigating the

entire operation. I mean, it's about time. Like, do your job. That's what you're there for is oversight. You don't need, I mean, I agree. This is so egregious. It's what's drawn a lot of attention to this. But they don't need that foot in the door. They have a foot in the door. It's called the Intelligence Committee. This is their job. The, you know, the Senate Army services, all the, all the committees that form the oversight umbrella over DoD. And, you know, I have to say, too, one of the arguments back you hear from some of the more hawkish right-wing people on the hill, like Tom Cotton and others, is like, well, you know, kind of you never, where was all the complaints when Barack Obama launched a kinetic strike against an American citizen on Moralaki in Yemen?

Well, I'll tell you where, I'll tell you where President Obama was at that time. First of all, that was the end of like literally years of debate, which I know from personal experience. And there was a lot of outrage. I was outraged. Like, what do you talk? Where was it? It was there. There was plenty of outrage. And but also there was this little thing called the authorization for use of military force. Congress had enacted a law which gave the executive branch the authority to essentially pursue a war against al-Qaeda and all affiliated sources. And Moralaki was unquestionably, leader of AQAP, which was al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the main and most lethal affiliate of al-Qaeda, and also had been engaged in a series of brazen terrorist attempts

to take down American-bound airliners. Like, there is no, this was not some drug boat out in the Caribbean with a bunch of unknown people on it. Right. That's not even comparable. Someone with actual weapons, not drugs that are weapons. Yeah, he and his bomb maker of choice were like figured out a way to turn computer printers into bombs and got them on planes. But for some lucky work by some of our foreign partners, those bombs would have detonated on planes as they approached their landing spots in the United States. Like they were very good at what they were doing and they were getting closer and closer and closer. So imminence of that threat was pretty clear. But in any case, the debate on the Hill is just basically obfuscating things at this point, as usual.

Yeah. And we know that, I mean, this is connected to the Department of Justice because that is who would pursue a criminal investigation into these strikes, separate and apart from the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the military doing it themselves. There's no double jeopardy that attaches in those kinds of cases. But neither Pete Hegsef nor Pamela Bondi are going to launch any sort of investigation. In fact, it could be said that they got Admiral Bradley to say that he decided he made the call, perhaps in exchange for not having to face a court-martial. Heggsat has a history of this. Trump pardoned that Gallagher guy who shot civilians in Iraq. So they have a history of letting those folks off the hook if you take the fall.

So I also would like to hear from Admiral Holsey, who was forced out by Hegsef for flagging problems with these boat strikes. And DOJ's got a piece of this because it was the Office of Legal Counsel, the part of DOJ, that advises the president's, he had sets policy. They supposedly reviewed this program initially when there was significant pushback coming from some parts of DOD and gave it their official blessing. So once again, DOJ weighing in on, shall I say, dubious legal grounds. We don't even know what their grounds were because, of course, we don't see those memos. But, you know, I mean, look, the post-9-11 torture memos, DOJ and numerous official memos advising CIA and advising the White House, that torture, that what the interrogators were doing using enhanced techniques,

with terrorists overseas at black sites did not qualify as torture. And eventually all those memos were officially retracted and all of the legal reasoning was thrown out as garbage. Nobody ever went to jail over it, but nevertheless, you know, you have to wonder if we're kind of backing our way into a similar situation like that now. Yeah, agreed. All right, let's kick off the other Department of Justice News this week.

I think one of the bigger stories coming out of Maine Justice is that the department decided to forego appealing the dismissal of the charges against Jim Comey and Letitia James on the grounds that Lindsay Halligan was unlawfully appointed. And instead, instead of appealing, they decided to go back to the grand jury with a new prosecutor to try to re-indite Letitia James this past Thursday. And when I heard news, well, first of all, when it seemed like they weren't going to appeal these decisions, because an appeal doesn't take, it's just a. page. It's like notice to appeal. It seemed like they weren't going to do that because too much time had passed. I was like, please, I dare you to try this again, knowing everything that we know now. And they did. And they failed. So we are now back at the point where they have failed to return a grand jury indictment again. Yeah, that's exactly right. So the New York Times reported it this way. They said, a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia declined on Thursday to re-indict Letitia

James, New York's Attorney General, according to people familiar with the matter, rejecting efforts to revive a criminal case that had been sought by President Trump. The decision dealt another embarrassing setback to the president's efforts to exert greater control over the Justice Department, highlighting how judges and jurors have acted as a check on Mr. Trump's desire to use the criminal justice system to punish his political foes. Yeah, and New York Times also answered my question, who are you going to get to do this? is not lawfully appointed. Well, it turns out they looked around and found a guy named Roger Keller, who's a federal prosecutor from Missouri to handle the case. After career lawyers

determined, the evidence was too weak to support the charges. And he presented a new version of the indictment on Thursday. And shortly after 9 a.m., granders convened on the fourth floor of the Walter E. Hoffman courthouse in downtown Norfolk, a court security officer guarded the room when they met. And their deliberations seemed to be very brief and uncomfortable. complicated. And by lunchtime, they were adjourned. So it, so it was. They didn't let this nonsense get in the way of lunch. I don't blame. Yeah. So if that weren't enough, even as a federal grand jury in Virginia voted down a new indictment, lawyers representing Ms. James' office appeared before a federal judge in Albany, New York, where the Justice Department is pursuing a separate civil rights investigation into her work as the state's top lawyer. lawyer. Lawyers from Ms. James' office are seeking to quash subpoenas issued by the U.S. attorney there, a guy named John Sarkone, arguing that he was unlawfully appointed. That appearance also appeared to have gone poorly for the government. Go figure. The judge, Lorna

Schoenfeld, was skeptical that Sarkone was appointed properly, though she didn't issue a ruling from the bench. Yeah, Sarkone, we've talked about him here on the program before, among other several U.S. attorneys who have been or are in the process of being disqualified. He's the guy who appointed himself. Oh, yeah. He appointed himself his own deputy, yes? Yeah. Yeah.

So that he could then be lifted up to be the interim U.S. attorney. Sally, get my deputy in here. Oh, hold on a second. He's here already. Right. He just has different hats that he put on. Damn you. Who wrote this crap?

It must have been my deputy. So, Carol Lenig is reporting for MS now, which used to be MSNBC, that the DOJ now is contemplating going for a third try to indict Letitia James possibly next week. This is bad for them for several reasons, though I don't think they have any shame and don't care. But if they do eventually go a third time or a fourth time and eventually do get a grand jury to indict, that presents two more, that adds to their problems because that bolsters of vindictive and selective prosecution claim. Like, boy, you really are vindictive and selective here. And it also calls into question what is presented to the grand jury, like in Comey's case,

where he was able to get the grand jury testimony and the tapes from the grand jury room because he assumed there must have been some sort of malfeasance there. If Letitia James were indicted and were to make a case that she needed to hear the grand jury materials because why did juries one, two, and three say no, but jury four said yes. What did you say to them? What was different? What was different? Did you put a new evidence? I mean, there's got to be something here. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And it does push them further down the whole vindictive or selective prosecution. But, you know, honestly, I don't, I think they'll just keep going because the alternative is someone, one of those people, has to walk into the Oval Office

and tell the big guy, we can't do it. And whoever that is is going to get fired eventually. So this is a matter of personal survival for these very political people. And, you know, they're going to have to burn through a few more grand juries before they get so desperate that somebody's willing to go in there and dive on the grenade. Yeah. And there's a couple other problems complicating this case, too, because the central evidence in Letitia James's case or her mortgage.

fraud documents. And there is now a government accountability office investigation into how Bill Pulte got his hands on those. There's a grand jury was asking questions about a potential conspiracy for Bill Pulte to get his hands on mortgage documents. And Eric Swalwell has sued saying, you violated my Fourth Amendment rights when you went in and got my documents without a subpoena or anything. So his mortgage documents. So that could all complicate this too. But we haven't heard about a second attempt to indict Jim Comey because, and that's going to be harder because of the statute of limitations, but they haven't appealed it either. But something else happened this week that could make that case more difficult to pursue. As I said, Swalwell is suing for mortgage

documents and the GAO and a grand jury was investigating Pulte. Well, you'll recall that the entire case against Comey was based on material seized from Dan Richmond pursuant to multiple search warrants in 2019 and 2020. And in one of Comey's filings in the case, he argued that not only did the DOJ fail to secure a second search warrant to rummage through those materials again for Comey, but that some of the material wasn't even subject to the original search warrants and should have been destroyed a long time ago. Yeah, that's right. I think the original, if I remember correctly, the original warrants had very clear language in them requiring the destruction of that material if it failed to prove relevant in the case that was being investigated at the time.

And, of course, that case got closed with no charges sought, no action taken. I wonder if it was in one of the burn bags that cautioned tell file. The infamous burn bags. Yeah, so I think Mr. Richmond has got some, he's on to something there. And also this week, we heard CBS reported that Dan Richieff, Richmond is taking legal action against the Justice Department over that material that investigators seized from him were the five years ago and is asking for a federal court to block the government from using the files in any way. Now, this bid from Richmond, who's a law professor

at Columbia, comes as federal prosecutors weigh whether to seek a new indictment against Comey. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the White House said the decision to dismiss the indictment against Comey would be appealed, but prosecutors have yet to formally notify the court that they will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to review the ruling. Yeah, and Judge William Fitzpatrick found that the government likely seized materials outside the scope of the original warrants and held on to that information for years after the Arctic Hays investigation was closed and then conducted a new search of Richmond's files in September. Pointing to the judge's findings, lawyers for Richmond argued his Fourth Amendment rights were

violated, and he's asking the U.S. District Court in D.C. to order the immediate return of his files and blocked the government from using the improperly seized or retained materials any further. Richmond's legal team argued that the files taken by investigators in connection with the 2019 and 2020 warrants, as well as the search earlier this year, were illegally seized so the government cannot hold on to them. They've asked the court to issue a temporary order that would prevent the government from using or relying on in any way is seized material while it considers whether his constitutional rights were violated. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens there and whether or not the Department of Justice is going to appeal the dismissal of the Comey case or

try to indict him again somehow. It would be interesting to watch. And we'll tell you about it. I will say, because this is a, I know from my review of the questions every week, this is a topic that is of incredibly high interest to our listeners. If Richmond is successful in this motion and a court essentially substantiates that there has been a violation of his constitutional rights, it might open the door for a civil claim and or lawsuit for damages

because it's a violation of a constitutional right. So there you go. Right. Like we say you can't sue the government for prosecuting you and dragging you through that, but if they violate your constitutional rights, you can file. That's right. It's one of the ways to kind of pierce that protection that the government has.

Yep. All right, we're going to address the arrest and charge of the D.C. pipe bomber. This is the man who placed pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC headquarters the night before the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. We have to take a quick break, though, so stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Let's talk about the D.C. pipe bomber. As you have probably heard by now, the Department of Justice says it's arrested and charged

the person who planted pipe bombs at the DNC and the RNC headquarters near the Capitol on the night of January 5th, 2021. DNC and RNC are both within a mile of the Capitol. Yeah. And the 30-year-old suspect, who's now... now in custody, Brian Cole has been charged with two counts, transporting an explosive device with intent to kill, and attempted malicious distraction by means of fire and explosives. Both charges carry a 20-year max sentence.

Co-de deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino, has focused on the investigation since starting at the FBI earlier this year. Yesterday, Sean Hannity confronted Bongino about his previous podcast statements that the FBI attempted to cover up the bombing investigation and that, quote, they don't want you to know who it is because it's either a connected anti-Trump insider or an inside job. Well, apparently not. Bongino replied to this question from Mr. Hannity by saying, I was paid in the past for my opinions. One day, I will be back in that space. But that's not what I'm paid for now. I'm paid to be your deputy director. And we base investigations on facts. So that's a big admission that the

January 6th was an inside job was a lie. Yeah. That's a big admission. Yeah. And that, I don't know. I mean, his, his, I guess everything he said on his podcast was just nonsense based on nothing, not based on fact, and because he was getting paid for it. So that's kind of what I assume. but it's nice to hear him confirm that. I don't know. You know, look, I will, I'll give Bongino some credit. If he reinvigorated this investigation or simply spent a lot of his own time on it,

overseeing it, asking questions about it, pushing people to do more and to accomplish more with it, that's great. Good for you. You should be doing things like that. But what the problem I have is with the press, conference yesterday where Bondi and Patel and the others were saying things that were very critical of the way the case had been worked until they arrived. In an effort to take all the credit for

themselves, which is a really gross thing for people in leadership to do, and to try to make the Biden administration look bad because that's kind of what they live for. They said things like this, there was no new, nothing new happened here. We just took the evidence that was already existing and we did something with it. It's been sitting around gathering dust for years. The investigators hadn't done anything. You can't take that shot at the Biden administration and the FBI without attacking the men and women who've been working this case from the day it happened. And that's just unforgivable. In a moment of victory, a little bit of chest pounding is I guess expected but to do it at the expense of your own people and try to make them

look like a bunch of slugs and aren't they lucky that we showed up and fixed the case for them all that's just really a horrible thing to do and it's undeserved whatever success they had in the last couple of months in this case could not have been would not have been possible without the work that was done from the beginning preceding it so that's my tirade on that one no I I I I agree with you and you know we're learning more now because we didn't get a lot of information from this affidavit we didn't get a lot of information from the press conference and i think that that may have been by design andy and of course that is speculation but you know marcy wheeler pointed out you know she's she's looked at a lot of affidavits arrest affidavits for january sixth rioters

and all of them shared one thing in common which was that they were very third and that they all explained what the suspects were doing in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th. All of them did that except this affidavit, which completely left that blank. Yeah. It didn't say anything about being in the Stop the Steel movement. It didn't say anything about traveling to D.C. to respond to Trump's call, to be there on January 5th and 6th. that didn't say anything about being in the area or traveling to the area or conspiring with a group of people to travel to the area or, you know, all these other things that we see

in January 6th, the rest affidavits, and in general in affidavits like this, that help bolster the case that this is your guy and perhaps point toward a motive. But if you leave all that stuff out, it reminds me of when Bill Barr wrote a four-page letter after the Mueller report came out and said, total exoneration. and then didn't release the report for three weeks and went on tour, say, you know, on a spin tour about how that report exonerated him.

When you leave out details like what he was doing in the days and weeks leading up to the attack on January 6th or what his affiliation with January 6 was or the stop the steel movement or any of that stuff, when you just leave it out and leave it blank, then you leave a vacuum for conspiracy theorists to come in and make their own decisions. And that happened for the first 24 hours of this case.

We had all the right wing influencers on Twitter, for example, and truth social, saying this is an Antifa, anti-Trump, you woke, Marxist, radical left Democrat, blah, blah, blah, you know, and putting all of that. This is clearly a cover-up. The Biden administration was covering it up the whole time. Kosh Patel also indicated that a little bit in his interviews. But, you know, it just feels like that was all purpose. fully left out. And, you know, as I said, Patel was on television claiming Joe Biden either ignored

the case or intentionally didn't solve it. But that's ridiculous because Joe Biden doesn't work at the Department of Justice or the FBI. Of course. Did he ever? It's the FBI. So what do you think about, because you have so much experience in this in maybe taking a step away and then looking at the evidence again and then maybe something stands out. I mean, there's so many ways that this could have finally gotten solved. But I really wanted to note all that missing detail that is normally in an affidavit. Yeah, this affidavit was very kind of skeletal, very technical as well. There's certainly enough information there in my view to establish probable cause and that's all they have to do.

Maybe they are also sitting on a lot more evidence that they decided not to expose at this point. That's all pretty normal tactics. But I think what you saw in the January 6th cases was an effort to be more revealing than they had to be, right? It was kind of like what you saw at the Jack Smith indictments. We refer to them as speaking indictments because in addition to just establishing probable cause, they like tell you a story. We're going to give you this is how this happened. We're going to give you the probable cause, but we're going to put it in this context that makes it make sense. We have evidence that speaks not just to guilt or innocence, but to people's motives.

So none of that was in this indictment. Really, this indictment talks about it. I mean, they did mention a credit card receipt that he ate in the area. He ate food on December 13th. But then there's nothing between then and January 5th. And makes me wonder where his whereabouts were and what he was doing during that time. I think it goes toward motive. And does it show, well, will those facts reveal things that the current regime finds uncomfortable?

Like, it very well may. If this reporting is true about comments that he made in his interview, then, yeah, that might be uncomfortable for them. But what this indictment basically says, it makes a couple of, there's three basic things that it proves. One, they basically found this guy by doing a detailed look at the bomb components. Remember, these bombs didn't go off, so we were able to recover them, and that's like a trove of a treasure trove of evidence. So everything from the pipe to the end caps that sealed it, to the wires that were used, the battery connectors, the kitchen timers, they identified the sources of all those things. They went back to all the places that sell those things, and they identified all the people that bought those things. And if you take each one of those populations and you kind of layer them on top of each other and cross correlate all that data,

you're going to keep narrowing down the population of people that bought all of those things, right? So that's kind of how they, this process of elimination, they came up with either just him or a population small enough that they could then really deep dive and figure out which was the right guy. On top of that, they looked at his cell phone records and they showed that his cell, the cell phone that we know is his was on the capital hitting the relevant cell towers on the, the Capitol in the moments that he that's that the that the bomber was seen on video in those places so that's pretty good evidence too and finally they have his car basically driving into the area right before the bombs are placed so it's pretty good but again there's no they told they have a confession now and now apparently they have a confession which is kind of amazing I can't believe they got this guy to talk to them that's phenomenal work yeah the reports are they they talk to him for

like four hours. And he admitted that he is a Trump supporter. He's MAGA. He admitted that he is an election denier that he thinks the 2020 election was stolen for Joe Biden. And that he did it, that he planted these bombs. So that's amazing. And the fact in the affidavit that blew me away was they also, in researching his purchase history, they also found that he went out on January 20, and 21st and started buying more bomb-making materials. Like, do we know where those are? I mean, so, yeah, it's a great piece of work by the FBI. And I'm proud of them for doing it, and it sounds like a pretty strong case.

But it will be interesting to learn more about it, that's for sure. Yeah, I just don't trust their motives for withholding the clear motive behind what he did. so that they can have time to spin it and create conspiracy theories and try to edge him over to a lone wolf Antifa Anarchist instead of Maga Stop the Steel Trump supporter. Yeah, did you see they took his mugshot and they made him put on a rage against the machine t-shirt before they took the picture?

No, I didn't see that. I'm sorry to be making that up. I totally made that up. It was a joke. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, totally an anarchist. But what I was wondering, Andy, was whether or not this, I've read this and I've looked at this a hundred ways.

And it seems to me that Donald Trump's pardon of January 6th people at or near the Capitol with crimes related to January 6th covers this guy at least, now I don't think so. But at least according to arguments that Trump's Department of Justice has made in other cases. Yeah. I mean, I'm fascinated by this as well. So I pulled up the language, and I'll read it. So people are all on the same page here. It's pretty short. So the pardon begins by granting clemency to all the seditious conspirators, right? The oathkeepers and those guys. And so it starts out by saying, I hereby, and then it names all those folks and talks about the clemency. So put that aside, that's not really relevant here. But then it gets into the basic meat of the pardon for all the rest, the, the, thousand or more other people convicted or being prosecuted. So it says, I hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Attorney General shall administer and effectuate the immediate issuance of certificates of pardon to all individuals described in Section B and shall ensure that all individuals convicted of offenses related.

related to events that occurred at or near the Capitol on January 6, who are currently held in prison, will be released immediately. And then in the next relevant part, it says, I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. So I think there is plenty of room for a lawyer defending this young man to say this indictment should be dismissed. Yeah. Now, there's some good arguments. First of all, he planted the bombs on January 5th. Yeah. But the pardon says, it doesn't say, you know, events that occurred out

or just events that occurred out near the Capitol on January 6th. It says convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6th. And I would maybe be able to make a pretty strong argument that putting pipe bombs to draw cops away from what happens on January 6th is related to January 6th. Or just use your, if you're his attorney, you use your client's own confession. He said he thought the election was stolen. Maybe he said, that's why I did this, because I wanted to, this was my, what I could contribute to this effort to overturn the stolen election. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what he said,

but they talked for four hours and he made apparently incriminating statements. So, yeah, I feel like we're going to see that motion. Now, the other argument is it says individuals convicted of offenses and he hasn't been convicted. However, in that last paragraph, it says all pending indictments. That's right. Okay. This is now a pending indictment. It's not something that he did And after Donald Trump issued this pardon, his crime was related to January 6th, it's, I think, pretty easy to argue, especially since the Department of Justice has argued this in multiple cases. In other cases were January 6th rioters who rioted there on January 6th, when they were searched, when their homes were searched in, you know, pursuant to the January 6th investigation, they found illegal firearms and they brought separate illegal firearms charges against a lot of these guys. Yes. And at first the Department of Justice was like, no, that's not covered by the pardon because that's an unrelated crime. But then they changed their mind. It said, no, it is related because those searches were pursuant to January 6th. And so if you are searching someone's home related to something that they did related to January 6th and you find weapons or contraband, Donald Trump has argued in multiple instances to the court that that should be covered. by his pardon and that is exactly what happened here yeah i mean who knows how it'll land but i it would

be malpractice not to bring that motion if you're representing this guy yeah and and the joj has a history here of arguing certain unrelated crimes to january 6 should be pardoned and certain unrelated should not so like the child pornography case they said that's not related but the gun charges are even though the child pornography stuff and the guns were both found pursuant to search warrants related to January 6th. And judges in the courts have said, this is inconsistent.

There's no consistency here. So I wouldn't be surprised if DOJ argues this isn't related, even though these other things were related that are exactly the same. I wonder if there's even room for a presidential correction. What's to stop the president

who has unlimited power when it comes to pardons to issue a statement that says, my pardon of whatever day this was issued does not apply to this person. Yeah. I don't know. We know certainly, you've never seen that before, but... Pardon powers broad.

Yeah, sure is. All right. Well, interesting discussion, and we will definitely cover it here. We have more to get to, including some news about Special Counsel Jack Smith and the battle to the continuing ongoing battle to release volume two of Jack Smith's final report. But we have to take a break, so stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, our next story comes from Politico.

The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to former special counsel Jack Smith, who led investigations into President Donald Trump, ordering him to appear at a closed-door session later this month. Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan demanded in a letter to Smith that the former DOJ official who oversaw cases around Trump's retention, of classified documents and efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election, provide documents by December 12th, and sit for a deposition with the panel on December 17th. Yes, now this is a marked escalation after Jack Smith signaled in openness to answering questions and weeks of negotiations over the terms of an interview. But Smith wrote a letter and asked for a public hearing rather than a closed door interview. He also said, I need all my files,

including Volume 2, Volume 1, and all my case files. If you want me to answer questions about my files, you have to hand those over. Now, Smith's lawyer, Peter Kosky, said in a statement that his client looked forward to meeting with the panel later this month, but that he regretted he could not appear in a public setting. Quote, nearly six weeks ago, Jack offered to voluntarily appear before the House Judiciary Committee in an open hearing to answer any questions lawmakers have about his investigation into President Trump's alleged efforts to unlawfully overturn the election results, and retention of classified documents, Koski said. We are disappointed that offer was rejected

and that the American people will be denied the opportunity to hear directly from Jack on these topics. Republican lawmakers have become increasingly fixated on the probes launched during Joe Biden's presidency and Smith's stewardship of the cases, arguing that the efforts amounted to a campaign to undermine Trump. They have sought to argue that Biden and his allies weaponized the Justice Department,

even as Trump has publicly called on his attorney general to prosecute his political adversaries. Can you imagine John Gotti being like, your investigation into me is an attempt to undermine me? Well, yeah, kind of. All right, they go on to say that the cause has become personal for some Republican members, following revelations that the Justice Department requested their phone records as part of the investigative work. Jordan recently revealed that the Justice Department subpoenaed years' worth of his phone data. Okay.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the committee's top Democrat, defended Jack Smith and his tactics in a statement and questioned why Republicans are insisting on having Smith testify behind closed doors. But he also criticized the phone record request targeting Jordan, which was issued before Smith was named to his post. Oh, so Garland did something? I just, I just, I can't this. We're the transparency administration, but we have to interview you behind closed doors. Yeah, yeah, of course. So Raskin said, special counsel Smith's careful investigative steps stand in contrast to a separate subpoena issued for two and a half years of Chairman Jordan's personal phone records that was recently produced to the committee

and appears manifestly overbroad, he said, adding that Smith's requests were, quote, narrowly tailored to obtain phone records for the days surrounding January 6th. I got to say, I mean, two and a half years is a lot of phone records. That is. I'm not saying you can't ask for that many, but that's not common. Well, they had an early team of Cracker Jacks on the quote, Investigations Unit, member that was opened by Gaston and Merrick Garland, like, the month he got there. Yeah, yeah.

We didn't learn about that until, like, later in 2023 that he was, like, doing that really early on. And he only had, like, five people on the case. But that one of the very first things that Mali Gaston did when she got there, too, was to get a second warrant to go through the Rudy Giuliani stuff that was taken to investigate Ukraine. But she knew, because she's not an idiot, that if she wanted to go through that material to investigate January 6, she'd have to get a second search warrant, which is just something that this administration failed to do at the Jim Comey case. It just might have been that they thought, you know, it takes so long to get a subpoena from this guy. let's just ask for all the records on earth. Yeah. Give us all two and a half years worth.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Now, also the fight to unseal volume two of Jack Smith's final report is continuing. You'll recall that way back in February, after Trump's Department of Justice dismissed the cases against Trump co-conspirators, Walt Nata and Carlos de Lavera in the classified documents case, after that case was dismissed, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a motion to vacate Judge. Cannon's order blocking the release of volume two of the report because the only the reason that she was blocking the release was because cases could still be brought against Nauta and Dale O'Fera. But not anymore. Then the Department of Justice said we dismiss those cases and we are not going to try to get any, we're not going to try to bring them back. Now after eight months of

Judge Cannon doing nothing, the Knight Institute filed a motion with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals asking them to issue a writ of mandamus ordering Judge Cannon to rule on their motion for her to vacate her order blocking the release of the report. Now, the 11th Circuit gave Canon 90 days to resolve the issue or they would intervene. And that 90-day window, that expires at the end of, or excuse me, it expires January 2nd at the beginning of January. And Andy, I said, I was like, oh, God, she'll probably order briefings and set hearings and use a secret email docket and litigate every filing for redactions and drag it out and drag it out and drag it out. But you reminded me, they can't, she can't, because the 11th Circuit.

told her that the issue must be fully resolved by January 2nd. Yeah, that's right. But now Donald Trump has stepped in and filed a motion with Judge Cannon for leave to participate as an amicus curate, which really roils me because, of course, that's the Latin term for a friend of the court. And I don't feel like he's any friend of the court. That's just my personal opinion. Okay. His motion says, President Trump hereby moves for leave to participate in the proceedings as

amicus curate for the limited purpose of reaffirming and incorporating by reference his prior legal arguments to the court, as well as those made by co-defendants Nata and Dale Lavera, that volume two of Jack Smith's final report should not be made public. Yeah, and I think I'm going to actually call this episode Hostess Curai, which means enemy of the court. Very nice. Somebody's taking out the old high school Latin book. I took Latin in high school. Oh, my gosh. Mm-hmm. So, I don't know.

It seems like he's just trying to delay this. And everybody was kind of worried when he filed this motion for leave to file an amicus brief. Yeah. But again, because the 11th Circuit said this has to be tied up and finished by January 2nd. Yeah. I mean, when I originally heard that, I thought, oh, 90 days. is way too much time. It was a lot of time.

But they did say that's it. It's 90 and then that's it. Now, what happens when she blows that deadline? I don't really know. To be perfectly honest, but I guess we'll probably find out. Well, because the 11th Circuit, well, the Knight Institute asked for a writ of mandamus. The 11th Circuit said, we hold your writ of mandamus in abeyance for 90 days. So after 90 days, if she doesn't do anything, the writ of mandamus kicks in, which I assume

at which point they order her to rule. Yeah, or maybe, yeah, because they're not going to order the thing released or not released, having not heard any arguments or anything themselves. Right, so they'll order her to rule. She'll deny it. And then it can be appealed by the Knight Institute

to the 11th Circuit. Yeah. All right, so buckle in. We've got a ways to go. Yeah, and who knows what the 11th Circuit will decide? I mean, generally, you don't release information like that against uncharged individuals. Yeah, that is true.

But, you know, in the special counsel situation, everything's a little bit different because of the obligation to write the report. And if you're not, you know, if you're not going to charge some pursue a charge, you have to write a report and they typically get released here. They did charge, but then they dismissed the charge. I don't know. It's a little more complicated as usual. The Supreme Court will, I'm sure, say, no, you can't do that to a president while he's president.

He can't deal with that kind of, I don't know. They'll figure some weird reason. But all right, we've got one last story. It's also from Carol Lennig. It's about Kosh Patel and his misuse of government resources. But we're taking one more quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back.

All right, everybody. Katie, welcome back. Our last story, as I said, comes from Carol Lenig. It's a continuation of the misuse of public resources by Kosh Patel. We covered a lot of that in the last two episodes. I think we counted 18 private trips between you and the Andy. Yeah, yeah. For Kosh Patel on the government jet. She says FBI director Kosh Patel has, on more than one occasion, ordered that the security detail protecting his girlfriend escort one of her allegedly inebriated friends home after a night of partying in Nashville. and that's on more than one occasion. That's according to three people familiar with knowledge of the incidents, plural. Patel's girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, asked FBI agents on her security team at least twice, including once in the spring to drive her friend home, and agents objected to diverting from their assignment to protect her. That's according to sources who were granted anonymity to discuss non-public matters.

But Patel insisted that they do as Wilkins requested, and in one case called the leader of Wilkins' security, detail and yelled at him about it. Nice. Nice. Okay, so news of the effort to deploy agents to provide security for a private citizen has spread through the Bureau and beyond, as agents have grown increasingly concerned by Patel's use of the Bureau's strapped resources, the people said. FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson broadly disputed that such events took place. Quote, this is made up and did not happen, Williamson said. At Patel's direction, the FBI provides a separate security detail for Wilkins, 27, a country

music performer who lives part-time in Nashville for her work. The FBI security detail, first reported by MS Now, is made up of members of an elite SWAT team based in the area. It has spurred concerns about Patel abusing FBI resources to essentially drive his girlfriend around for various events and appointments. The FBI has never before provided separate security detail for a director's girlfriend. Spouses of past directors would typically receive episodic security protection, but only when they were traveling with their spouse and the director's detail. So it's like by proxy, you don't get your own whole detail. No, they don't have a detail. They're just, but when they're with the protectee, which is the director, they come within the

umbrella of that, of that protection, that detail. Yeah, because they're there. Wow. All right. Former FBI agents and senior law enforcement officials said it was already disturbing that Patel had pulled elite tactical agents away from their SWAT missions to drive his girlfriend around town. But they told MS now that they were shocked that the director instructed tactical agents to use their time on yet another person. The FBI had no reasonable duty to protect. Quote, not only is the assignment of FBI SWAT personnel to a security detail to protect his girlfriend inappropriate, directing these highly trained professionals to babysit his girlfriend's friend is outrageous and demonstrative of Kosh Patel's complete lack

of judgment and integrity. That's what former FBI agent Christopher O'Leary said, who's an MS now contributor. Quote, FBI agents serve the public and swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. This is clearly a long way from that. Yeah, I guess holding her hair back for is not in the FBI field guide. Well put by my friend, Chris. Okay, so Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongina were criticized this week as ineffectual leaders who have left the FBI, quote, rudderless since they took the helm, according to a report based on anonymous complaints and accounts from more than 20 former and current FBI and law enforcement personnel. Patel was described as, quote, insecure, often exploding into tantrums and lacking the professionalism to withstand the public spotlight that is a natural part of his position. The report dated November 2025 appears to have been prepared for delivery to both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Yeah, this report is kind of like a buried lead here in the Carolinning story. It's cited one agent, a self-described Trump supporter, as saying that Kash Patel lacks the requisite experience. or the measured self-confidence to be FBI director. If you like Donald Trump and you think that a man is lacking requisite experience and measured self-confidence, that says a lot. Yeah. Now, one source of the report stated Director Patel's composure erodes very quickly when confronted by critics, which appeared to be a reflection of Director Patel's

lack of self-confidence. And I got to tell you, I remember when you were in the audience watching Jack Smith speak And he talked a lot about criticism and heroism, people who view him as a hero, people who criticize him, and how that is all noise. And as a leader, you have to, it has to just roll off you. Apparently, gosh Patel can't do that. It does. It's, you know, especially a leader in that role. You're constantly taking shots from people or being told you're the greatest thing ever.

and both of neither of those opinions are particularly relevant to the things you have to do to lead the organization so you've got to kind of put them out of your head. Nobody did that better than Bob Mueller, who truly did not care what anyone said about anything. It was amazing.

In the wake of the September 10th assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the report said, Patel called Robert Bowles, the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office and yelled at him about the lack of progress in the case,

asking if he needed to go out to Utah to run the investigation himself. Boy, I would have loved to get a look at that. Arriving in Salt Lake on September 11th, Patel directed, quote, an expletive-laden tirade at Bulls, complaining about what Patel considered blunders in the Kirk probe. I wonder if one of those was mistakenly claiming that they'd solved it when they hadn't. Oh, wait a minute. No, that was Patel that did that, not Bulls, sorry. Twice.

Yeah, yeah. At the same time, according to, to the report, agents found Patel's manner and priorities during his visit disconcerting, and he became the subject of agent derision. Patel, the report said, would not get off his FBI jet until agents brought him a medium-sized FBI raid jacket to wear for the cameras outside. The report said agents involved in the probe had to be pulled away from their assignments to help find a jacket that would fit Kash Patel. They only had larges and extra larges. They didn't have a medium. They were ultimately forced to borrow a female FBI agent's jacket. Now, Patel is very

angry about people reporting that and has denied that it's real. I'm so surprised that he denied that. Okay. Patel stated, quote, I'm entitled to a personal life, just like my other agency head counterparts with their partners. Do I support my girlfriend? Absolutely. Do I take trips with her? Absolutely. But when they're talking about ray jackets and Velcro and FBI plane use, they're not talking about the facts because they know this FBI is succeeding in ways prior leadership failed, Patel said. And then he finished it up by stating, I am a steward of the taxpayer dollars. Bro. Dude, yeah, you are. For sure you are.

You're just not very good at it. You're supposed to be. You're supposed to be a good steward. not just a steward that's like saying i was a student well man were you a good student did you get good grades or did you fail i mean i don't know i just god i'm a steward of the taxpayer wow i want a medium steward's jacket immediately do you know how many trips i went on when i worked at the department of veterans affairs using their um using their uh using their uh resources? I would know. No, I do not know. Four. Four trips for work in 12 years. And they were not. They were work trips. I never took a personal trip that relied on any VA resources. Not even to go to like a cage match or some sort of wrestling championship where your boyfriend sang the national anthem? No? When I sang the national anthem at, no, I never did. I can't, I just did like it's so ridiculous.

I can't even make up parity for what he's doing and then trying to say that he's a steward of the taxpayer dollars. Just whatever. He is a steward, all right. I, okay, so as deputy director, my security detail was one guy. There was no detail. It's not actually a detail. It's just one dude who was really part of my staff

and he did like scheduling and figured out like transportation, how to get me back and forth to like whether to meet your drunk friends home. no he never drove my drunk friends home or my sober friends home or me home for that matter the rare occasion when I my bureau car was like for whatever reason not available he would just give me his he had the suburban that he drove me around in he was like here's the keys you can take my car home for the night I was like thanks dad I appreciate it um but I did have to drive yourself I always yeah I drove myself I didn't have drivers but then And I had the detail for three months when I was the acting director.

And unlike really any other director that the detail agents had worked for, I used to do detail work. When I was an agent in New York, I traveled. I was on the SWAT team in New York. So I traveled with Louis Free to Russia and Kazakhstan and all these different places. And so I know how to do that work. And I appreciate how hard it is and how long the days are and travel away from your families and everything. So my family and I were always, for those three months, like super careful to like try to not, you know, if we had a choice to go somewhere and not go. If we could, we choose not to go because it was one less thing that they had to do.

Yeah, and you have ethics. You're a steward of the taxpayer dollar. I was a steward of the taxpayer, yes. I didn't, when I was doing, first starting the Miller Shrewa podcast, I didn't say what agency I was with. I never talked about that. when after I had interviewed Shalkin, who was the VA secretary, about his book that was coming out, I released the first half of that interview. But then I waited until one year after I had been separated from the agency to release the second half of that interview that talked about who I am

and what I did for the agency. Because I wanted to put that year in between my leaving the agency and trying to, I didn't want to make a penny off of the fact that I was in that agency. And it was very important to me. And that's how granular we get as government employees to ensure that we don't run afoul of ethics and that we're stewards of the taxpayer dollar. And here you've got Kosh Patel having a tactical SWAT FBI agent, hold his drunk girlfriend's pal, hair back while she vomits in a trash can't. I can't.

So disrespectful. All those SWAT agents that we talked about in that article, who are specially trained and have all these skills and do the high-risk things in their field office that they're assigned to. They're also just regular street agents. So in addition to all that SWAT work, they're on a squad where they are responsible for investigating cases. So they're very careful about how much time, you know, allocating their time between their SWAT responsibilities and their case responsibilities. I know this because that's what I did as an agent in New York. And to get a detail like this, that's just so abjectly abusive of the FBI and its resources and its people, it's like a morale crusher.

Like, this guy doesn't think anything of us. We are his, he thinks we're his pawns or his employees, you know, his personal employees paid to, you know, pick up his dirty laundry or whatever. It's awful. Yeah. And then you're surprised that people are telling the press what you're doing. Yeah, of course. Or this collection of former and current agents are submitting anonymous complaints to some unidentified person who's writing a report about it. I have all sorts of questions about that, but we don't have time for Congress. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, there's no confirmation that anyone held anybody's hair back. I was just assuming that that might have taken place. Seems like a tactical necessity, but you never know. But to drive an inebriated friend of a girlfriend home, it's just, wow, way beyond the scope of the duty.

All right, I think we have time for one question. If you have a question you want to submit to us, there's a link in the show notes, you can click and submit a question to us. Andy, what do we have this week? All right. So this one, as usual, this one is consistent with a lot of questions we got on the same issue. And it also touches back to the first thing we talked about on this show, which is an aspect of these. strikes on the drug boat. So this one comes to us from Andrea, who describes herself as a longtime listener from New Zealand. Hey, Andrea. Thanks for listening so far away. She says,

Hey, Alison and Andy, regarding the sickening drone strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and elsewhere, does the president have pardon power over military court convictions? And does the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling include the military court? Thanks so much for all you do. So two sides to that one. First, yeah, the president has the ability to pardon people. He definitely has the ability to kind of commute or erase any sort of action that's taken in the military under the uniform code of military justice. And the guy that you mentioned before, Allison, Eddie Gallagher is a perfect example of that. Gallagher was basically tried for war crimes for killing a prisoner in Afghanistan.

He was actually acquitted of the homicide, but he was disciplined pretty severely by the Navy. And Trump said, reversed all the findings and the judgment of the officers in the military and restored Gallagher's basically his rank and his participation in the Navy SEALs. So he can absolutely put his thumb on that scale. And he has. Yeah, yeah. And the second question. Can I take a crack at the second one?

Yeah, yeah. Have at it. Asking if the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling includes the military court. Assuming, Andrea, you're asking, if the president can be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he cannot. He is a civilian and is not subject to the Code of the Uniform Code. At least that's my understanding of it because he's the civilian head of the military. He's not an actual member of the military. That's my understanding as well.

Well, so that court, that process of military justice does not touch the president under any circumstances. But if someone had pursued him for violating some federal law, of course, that would be a waste of time because of the Supreme Court's granting, you know, kinglike immunity to our president. Something else interesting about the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Obviously, as I said, the president is not subject to it. But those that are can be tried for the same crimes under both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and in the federal courts. Double Jeopardy does not apply under the UCMJ. That's pretty interesting. It is.

Now, they don't generally do it. Right. But, for example, if somebody on base got a DUI, you're going to get charged in town for your DUI by the cops. And you're probably also going to, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, lose your rank, lose some pay. Yep. and be subject to that kind of disorderly conduct. I'm becoming a member of the military. Interesting.

Yeah. There you go. All right. That's our question for the week. Yes, thank you so much. I wish we had more time to answer questions. We'll probably put a question's episode together here at some point in the future. But we really appreciate it.

You can click on that link in the show notes to submit your questions to us. And they're always just so thoughtful. Really. Thank you for just thank you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. And do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here for the week, my friend? No, I think we covered a lot of it, a lot of crazy kind of non-traditional stories for us this week for the old DOJ beat. So who knows? Who knows what happens the next week? Tune in and you'll find out. But yeah, thank you for

making the effort to listen every week and staying informed. And that's the first thing. People always asking us, what can we do in these crazy times when we see so many things happening that make us upset. The first thing that you can do is stay engaged, stay informed. So this is one way to do that. Yeah. And I never thought back when we were, you know, you and I hosted the podcast called Jack, which was about Jack Smith's investigations. And then we learned that the Jack Smith's investigations were ending. And we talked about what we were going to, we wanted to pivot the podcast into something else. And we were like, maybe we'll cover the Department of Justice. Do you think there'll be enough news? Do you think that that would be, I mean, like, do you think we'll have

enough content? Yeah. Little did we know the soup sandwich that was becoming the Department of Justice. Oh, my goodness. All right, everybody. We'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to Unjustified. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.