Jack - It Was A Sprint (feat. Pete Strzok)

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

This week: AG talks with Pete Strzok about the Grimes/Barrak defense deal; the sprint to start Crossfire Hurricane, and more. Plus the Fantasy Indictment League.Follow our Guest:Pete Strzokhttps://twitter.com/petestrzokhttps://www.harpercollins.com/products/compromised-peter-strzok?variant=39935652495394Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://dailybeans.supercast.tech/Orhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansPromo Codes Subscribe to SpyTalk: https://link.chtbl.com/SpyTalk Subscribe to Frangela: The Final Word https://link.chtbl.com/frangela-the-final-word

Welcome to Teacher Quit Talk, I'm Miss Redacted, and I'm Mrs. Frazzled. Every week we explore the teacher- Exodus to find out what if anything could get these educators back in the classroom. We've all had our moments where we thought, what the hell am I doing here? From burnout to bureaucracy to soul-secing stressors and creative dead ends, from recognizing when it was time to go, to navigating feelings of guilt and regret afterwards, we're here to cut off a gaslighting and get real about what it means to leave teaching. We've got insights from former teachers from all over the country who have seen it all. So get ready to be disturbed and join us on teacher quit talk to laugh through the pain

of the U.S. education system. We'll see you there. Hey all, this is Glenn Kirschner and you're listening to Mull clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't

have not have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin? I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So it is political. You're a communist. No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red hailing.

Like all members of the oldest profession, I'm a capitalist. Thank you. Hello and welcome to Muller She-Route. I'm your host, Alison Gill. The artist formerly known as AG. Today, I'll be chatting again with our friend Pete Struck, his paperback version of his book Compromised Comes Out Tuesday, January 25th, and we're going to be discussing what's going on with Tom Barich and his associate Grimes, not the one that married Elon, different Grimes, and how that whole investigation is

going. And then, of course, we'll'll have some sabotage followed by the fantasy indictment league. I'm very excited about it but up first we have that interview. Let's listen. All right, I'm happy today to be joined by the author of Compromised which comes out in paperback on Tuesday, January 5th. Pete Strach, Pete, how are you? Hey, I'm good. Allison, getting ready for this fifth, Pete's truck, Pete, how are you? Hey, I'm good. Allison getting ready for this soft launch next week, and which is exciting. Yeah, it's going to be great. So if you, if you, all I know everyone already has the hardback version,

now you can get the paperback version easier to travel with, you know, more comfortable to set on your bed next to if you're single like me. And that's where you keep your remotes and your cats and your books. That's, you know, takes up less space. It'll be good. So I wanted to talk to you today because the story came out about an interesting court hearing. We all know Tom Barich was indicted last July, along with a guy named Grimes and another guy named Rashid Al-Malik Al-Sha, who actually took off a few days after he's on the lamb. But the other

two have been indicted. They've pled not guilty. We were all sort of wondering if there was a plea deal maybe in the works with Tom Barich. Like he didn't seem the kind of guy that would go to jail for anybody like, say, Weiselberg would, the CFO of the Trump organization. But it appears that there was a hearing

because Grimes wants to pay for, no, excuse me, Tom Barich wants to pay for Grimes' attorney. And so I wanted to ask you, first of all, who that attorney is and why the prosecution may have wanted to discuss this with the court. Yeah, so the attorney, it's an interesting question. And the attorney in question for Grimes is Abby Lowell, and your folks may remember that he has been around in the DC bar for a lot of government work for a long time. Certainly has, again, has been investigator, not as a attorney, I think, has a certain

reputation amongst the bar. And by that, I mean prosecutors and other attorneys, which, I mean, to charitably, to charitably frame it, I don't know that he is seeing as a, you know, sort of, um, upstanding sion of, of, uh, ethical truth. Yeah, and I want to be careful because I don't, he is not. I mean, there are unethical attorneys, there are sleazy attorneys. He is not in my experience that, but he is also not somebody that, you know, there are, there are, you get a range of opinions when you talk to people who have worked with him, who have dealt with him. And so, you know, certainly,

he, you know, people, your listeners in particular may remember him from representing Jared Kushner But certainly, people, your listeners in particular may remember him from representing Jared Kushner and some things that came up. Jimmy Corralik was originally representing him at some point in time. And Abilow took over. This is in the early days of the Mueller Special Counsel Office when I was still there. So I don't want to get into anything I shouldn't or can't talk about. But there was some interesting dynamics that went on in terms of what was going on in Jared Kushner's life. Some of it unrelated to the Special Counsel's office. I know there was a lot

of media reporting about his clearance and his inability to get a clearance and information and facts surrounding that were Abilol and became involved certainly in some of that. So he's got a long history involved, certainly in some of that. So he's got a long history. And it is not, you know, we were, before we went live here, we were talking a little bit about, you know, why would Grimes do this? And specifically, why would he allow Barrick to pay for his defense? And people may say, well, you know, Lul's a good attorney, why would he not? And the reason why not is at least twofold. And in this case, the government after hearing from the defense attorneys brought this matter to the court, it said, hey, we want to make sure that Grimes is aware of the potential conflicts, because there are two things in particular

that would come up if you are being paid by a different defendant. There are a couple of areas where it might impact you if you're Grimes. One is, do you agree to cooperate? Do you go when for a lesser sentence or to reduce your criminal exposure by providing and compulsory information about Barrack? And then the second thing is, I just ran out of my head, but it is a similar conflict in terms of, if you are thinking about whether or not to testify against him, there's a question about if you're Abby Lowell, if you're advising your client to do something

that is against the interest of Barrick, who by the way is the person paying your legal bills, are you, do you have an inherent conflict there? Now, Lowell assured the way, is the person paying your legal bills? Are you, do you have an inherent conflict there? Now, Lowell assured the court, no, I can absolutely do this. There's no sort of strings attached. I am here to represent Grimes, that nothing is going to impact that sort of zealous advocacy for Grimes and only grimes. But if knowing what I know of Abby Lowell, knowing that Tom Barrick is paying him,

if I were grimes, I don't know that I would be resting that easy. Now, it could be grimes doesn't have better options, right? I mean, he does not have Lowell's a good attorney. He may not have the financial wherewithal to go out and find somebody to represent him, certainly pro bono or at some drastically reduced rate because my understanding is he is not, you know,

Barrick is wealthy beyond belief. I don't think Grimes is, so he may not have better options even though this is an ideal. So it's all curious. Like you, I thought maybe Barrick would plea. I think certainly there would be some interest on the part of the Department of Justice about whether or not he might have information relating to the Trump campaign, the Trump inaugural committee that would be of interest to prosecutors and investigators from the standpoint of what

Trump here may not have done, but he may not or he may not be interested in doing that, or they may think that just independent of any sort of cooperation that they can, you know, dig in and defend their case and have a reasonable chance of winning a trial. I don't know. Yeah, and something you brought up and this story that came out also mentions, which is interesting is that whatever the relationship is between Grimes and Barrack, because I'll just read to you from the article, Grimes worked as an assistant to Barrack, that is real estate private equity firm called, you know, Callini Capital. And while, quote, bank records and telephone records reflect that, prior to his arrest, Grimes listed Barrack's $15 million home

in Aspen, Colorado as his primary residence. And that's in a November 2nd pleading by U.S. Attorney, Breon Peace. And he went on to say further, thousands of emails and text messages communications obtained during the course of this investigation confirm that the defendant and Barrick have a close, albeit asymmetrical relationship, meaning they aren't similarly situated, especially considered, as far as finances go, and it appears they either live together or Grimes is using his address as Barrick's address

as his main resident, but residents, but it also shows that bank records and telephone records reflect that he lived there as well. So it's a it's a interesting kind of shines a little bit of light and brings a little curiosity into what the relationship between these two gentlemen are. I mean, the one is way younger than the other. I think Grimes is like 28 or something like that. Right. And Barraka is in his 60s. So, you know, that kind of didn't really come up a lot elsewhere in the pleading about their personal relationship, which could also prevent conflicts of interest if I'm correct. Yeah, although I think that's something that you can't, I mean, it may certainly do

that. It may present a conflict or a certain chilling on the willingness of Grimes to testify about Barrack, but that's true of any friendship, you know, and two people are engaged in the conspiracy or alleged conspiracy that, you know, just because of those bonds of friendship or whatever it may be that it's you're going to run into that. Now, the interesting thing is I'm certain given the probably volume of information that the government has in this possession, I'm sure they have a lot more information than we do about the nature of the relationship. Other crimes was living there, whether he was kind of like a personal assistant taking care of all kinds of things,

it was just involved in this one particular set of alleged illegal activity. I like you, I did not have any idea prior to reading the charging document that there was anything other than this clear alleged co-conspirator who was at a much lower level, sort of helping and engaging in the alleged criminal activity. But from this, yeah, it certainly looks like there is more there, separate and distinct in addition to running up to $2 million. And so you you're again, you may know this from litigation, then I had no idea until well,

I had a little bit just from the other side, but when you start getting into, you know, certainly federal, criminal defense with high level legal work, you burn through two million dollars on heartbeat. You are going to go through that easily in under a year. It's just when you start talking about attorneys of the stature of an Abbey Lowell, but really any top-tier law firm that you think about big firms, particularly when you do criminal work for sure, federal

criminal work, but also congressional investigations or very high profile work for your listeners. And for me, for you, $2 million may seem impossibly large, but it's nothing. You can burn through that so quickly. Now, most of these top flight law firms, if they run into a government employee or somebody who doesn't have the wherewithal, they will either do it, you know, pro bono or a slash reduced rate, because they understand, somebody, me for example, or a different public servant, isn't going to be able to pay

what some CEO of a Fortune 100 company can or that Fortune 100 company itself. So what is billed versus what is paid is very different, but I think people would be shocked and stunned the amount of money that exists and powers the top level legal work in this nation. And it's huge. So two millions a lot. It wouldn't surprise me if they blew through that very quickly and had to raise that two million up to four or five. But, you know, we'll see where that goes. Yeah. And they brought up that contingency too, right? Because the judge was like, well, two million, you say it's capped at two million because

that was one of the arguments. Oh, well, we're only capping it at two million. And the judge goes, well, what happens after two million? And they go, well, then we renegotiate and see if they'll pay for more. So it doesn't, it seems like sort of an arbitrary and non-committal cap. And nor did the judge come back and say, you must cap it in any specific rate or total or billable, whatever, you know, billable versus payable, etc. So it seems like if it goes over 2 million,

that Tom Barak would be happy to just throw more money at it. But it is really an interesting. And I personally can't haven't heard of since we've been going through this, I mean, outside maybe Brian Benschkowski being ahead of the criminal division. I haven't seen like a bigger glare and conflict of interest. I mean, this is pretty straightforward. Yeah, and it's not, you know, they will have an in addition to this. I mean, there is almost certainly, I would, it's called the JDA Joint Defense Agreement, which allows the defense attorneys

to sort of discuss and coordinate amongst themselves and have some idea about, because there are common interests, there aren't those diverge in some cases. Clearly, what their defensive posture is going to be, information that is excompatory or inculpatory to the extent that implicates both of the clients, there will be a sort of, can be a sharing, you know, in kind of a common interest, there are a number of privileges on the defense side

that might attach to this, but that's exactly the point where, you know, yes, there are many similar things that overlay with each other between Grimes and Barrack, but there certainly, there are points where they diverge, and that's where this ethical conflict potentially comes to a head. That is, you know, if Grimes is able to say this, I was told to do this. This was not my idea. This was something that Tom came up with or told me to do, or I said to him, are you sure we should do that, or I had concerns, anything that would tend to incomppate Barrack that the government

might want to say, great, then Grimes come in and we want you to test fine, say one, and two, and three, and four that, and we'll cut you a deal. That's the kind of thing if you're saying, okay, well, fine, but on the other hand, you know, I've already racked up, you know, $3.2 million and I'm negotiating

to go over that two million dollars and What's gonna happen if I suddenly, you know, walk into a proper session with the department of justice and start Spilling my guts by everything that Tom did it isn't better do it before you hit that two million dollar mark Yeah, well or get yeah or get like yeah get to get whatever money you're gonna get and then then go do it and again it's, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's how Barrett going to send, you know, the knuckles out there with a lead pipe to go after him. No, of course not. But there are different ways of bringing pressure and impacting people that are not so ham-fisted. And I think that's exactly

why you saw the government do what they did and file that, you know, the judge to kind of flag that issue. And I think that that's why, you know, additionally, why some legal experts are thinking that this signals the fact that neither of them, at least at this point, are cooperating or willing to cooperate, because like you brought up the JDA, right, the joint defense agreements, the one of the ways that I used to put beans on stuff and say, ooh, someone's going to flip is if somebody backed out of a JDA, right, that's one big giant, huge signal that you're no longer

in a joint defense agreement with a group of people. I'm specifically thinking way back to the rites, pre-bus ban and days, where they were all represented by the same lawyer. And if any of them broke away, you know, it's because there's a disagreement there, legally or otherwise. So that's why I think a lot of legal experts are like, this is a signal that at least in so far, it appears as though neither of them are cooperating, sticking with their not guilty please.

Yeah. And I don't know that you're going to get them to flip against the other. I mean, Barrick, the government at the end of the day could care, I shouldn't say they could care less. The government will never go to Barrick and say, hey, if you tell us everything about Grimes, we'll go easy on you and really go after him. That's not the way this works.

They're going after everything in this is targeting Barrick and all of these, you know, to the extent that the people who are charged, sure, they broke the allegedly, you know, broke, have this reasonably, they broke the law. But the end goal here is Barrack. It is not, you know, the big fish in this particular pond. And then the whole thing is right that, you know, independently, maybe you get them, but then also maybe you get him to talk about higher ups or others. And I don't think in this case, you bring up Bannon in previous life.

And that was like a little, not only was it accessible, but they all hated each other. I mean, there are a thousand different factions. They're all dicing on each other. They have the reason that, you know, there's so many extraordinarily disturbing reports coming out about the Trump administration, as they all hated each other.

And they were all talking about the other guy. And whether that was Kellyanne or Corey LewinDowsky who hated Manafort and you know, Scare Mochie, you had certain opinions about all this and Previs and Bannon and all, you know, their opinions of everybody had an opinion about somebody else that they sucked. And so they were talking to whoever would listen about how that other person not me was awful. And so you got, you know, just all this dish coming out of the White House, but you don't, you don't have that with. Yeah. And they certainly could, like you said, flip stick together on a, a JDA or, you

know, we're just, we're together and flip together on, on other people. It doesn't seem like in this case, they're gonna flip on one another. And like you said, if somebody flips on somebody, it's gotta be the little guy against the big guy. And in this case, the asymmetrically situated grimes would be that guy. Right, and knowing that, so what do you have? Knowing that, they don't, you know,

very smart enough to understand that, okay, they're not, they have no, they're not gonna use me to get to grimes, and so let me take care of grimes, because the only way this is gonna go is flipping upwards, so Grimes, and so let me take care of Grimes, because the only way this is going to go is flipping upwards. So let me do what I can to take care of that. And some of it is he has the financial ability to do that, but it certainly is in Barrick's interest to have Grimes very well represented if that representation results in Grimes fighting

the charge rather than flipping. Yeah, the other interesting thing too is if I'm not mistaken, if, if let's say they both say, let's flip up on somebody together, if you come in and do your proper session, you have to tell them everything you know. So if Grimes knows stuff about Barric, he would have to tell them if, if he were to enter a full and truthful cooperation agreement, a lot like when Michael Cohen went in, didn't give him everything in the Southern District of New York. And so they didn't offer him an official agreement for cooperation or plea.

So it's like, it seems like that conflict of interest will still play a role. And that's where a good attorney will work the government hard to sculpt that procession. And I mean, you know, we've gone round and round about, you know, kind of attorneys, again, on the investigative side working with prosecutors saying, okay, you know, we want, we want so and so to come in for a procession. And then the attorney will push back and say, well, you know, either no or okay, maybe, but then they'll try and say, okay, but we're only going to talk about topic X, you know, and so. And so in this case, if Lowell being a good attorney, I can very much imagine him saying, all right, well,

again, I don't even think they will get to the stage of going in for a proffer, but were they to do it? One avenue might be, I'm going to, well, coming for a proffer, but we're talking about this very narrow set of facts and events, and we don't want you talking about outside that, that's not what the proffer is.

So the government's sitting down there, and if the government wanted to say, set of facts and events and we don't want you talking about outside that that's not with the profit. So the government's sitting down there and if the government wanted to say, Hey, did you work with Mr. Barrick on the inaugural committee or you wear wear that money when are you aware about that is, you know, then the attorney, the defense attorney will step in and say, Hey, look, no, that we're not here to talk about that today. We're here for this profit session just to talk about these things within the four corners of the agreement. So it is a yes.

As long as it's a great idea upon ahead of time. You know, you can get charged if you go into a pro-procession and a lie or materially omit things, but a good defense attorney is going to really scale back the scope of the discussion of what's going on there so that you get credit for what your client's doing, but at the same time you're not opening your client up for, you know, not a wild goose chase, but, you know, anything, a free for all on the part of the government to explore everything you know. Yeah, well, it makes sense. Let's talk about your book just for a second.

Remind everybody what your role was in the Mueller investigation. Yeah, so for Mueller, I was just, it was interesting. I was coming off the, we just wrapped up the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, which I led with a kind of a co-lead analyst. And literally had just put the finishing touches on that and we had started seeing the Russians poking around on the cyber front with a lot of the systems and the DNC and the D-Triple C and other places. And as we were looking, you know, the

Bureau of the Cyber Division was looking at that, then we suddenly, you know, we came across the information during a release by WikiLeaks of some of the hacked material that the Russians had gotten the hold of that triggered a memory and a referral of bit of information that came from Allied Foreign Nations saying, hey, we had this meeting with a guy named George Papadopolis overseas in the spring of 2016. He mentioned that somebody in the Trump campaign had received an offer of assistance from the Russians saying that they had damaging information on Obama, that they were offering to coordinate the release

of that to help Trump. And then seeing WikiLeaks' release, doing exactly that, releasing all this information that had been stolen by the Russians that everybody in Trump campaign was calling about triggered a memory that started, that created the case that was known as Crossfire Hurricane, that the virus started looking at at the end that was known as Crossfire Hurricane, that the Bureau started looking at at the end of July 2016, that progressed.

I mean, so we started, and again, I know this isn't Mueller, but the genesis of that investigation really began in the summer of 16, and we're chasing that down, running through the election with increasing concern about what we're seeing. If I remember, it was like activated over a weekend because of what was found out. So I like July 23rd, 24th, something like that. You like, oh yeah. I remember Alexander Downer with this and the Mifsood and the figlets get somebody over there

and it was like within 24 or 48 hours that you guys were on it. Yeah, we were really, we were running. And, you know, again, the kind of the absurd part of this is what the name of the nation let alone the individual who provided the information has never been released by the US government having, and so I can't release it. Having said that, Alexander Donner, who was the high commissioner of the equivalent of the ambassador of Australia to the UK, publicly stated, as George Poppett,

Oblis, yes, we're the people who met with each other and had this discussion. So I can point you to their public statements, but I cannot as a former US government employee tell you whether or not that's accurate from the US government's perspective. But yeah, we were running. And the scary thing was, you know,

because this was exceptionally, the allegations are extraordinarily great, right? That the, the Russian probably are our former schoolable adversary. We're helping, wittingly, potentially helping one of the two canas for the president of the United States of America and in a way that we've never seen in our nation's history. And so we were spreading like crazy. And the concerning part, you know, that was in late, I think July 29th, or we got it. In the cases actually open to 30 to 31 July, I don't remember anymore. But we were sprinting, and sprinting with the idea that this is really potentially horrible,

and we need to understand what's going on, and sprinting because we needed to figure it out before the election, if not sooner, and concerned because we had already been in the middle of this political mistrum with the Clinton investigation and gotten dragged into the general election and pulled the FBI in there in a way not of the swatted. And so we wanted to avoid that. So we're doing all this in secrecy and sprinting and sprinting and sprinting. Most things, most cases in my experience, you know, as you investigate things start coming to a head, they start narrowing and your little candidate pull gets narrowed and you're excluding people and you're focusing down on understanding. And we're sprinting and everywhere we look, it's bad.

And just keep getting bigger and bigger. And like, Manafort's done all kinds of crazy bad shit with Ukraine and Russia. And Carter Page is a counterintelligence disaster. And Mike Flynn is a intelligence disaster and one after another after another everywhere we look the path isn't getting smaller it's getting wider and so we're sprinting over an ever increasing front and then we we hit the election and sure shit you know what nobody thought possible. Trump gets elected and it's like what do we do now you know we haven't resolved any of these things. We are still concerned. We have all these

concerns. And, you know, then that again, to, you know, I don't want to talk for 10 days about this. But essentially, the bureau then continues to investigate, tries to go and make the Trump administration know, like in the case of Mike Flynn, hey, look, he's had this contact with Kissley, with others and trying, you know, give the administration a chance to succeed while trying to figure out what the administration knows about what the left hand and knows about what the right hand is or isn't doing. And then, you know, Flynn gets fired, then Komi gets fired by Trump, and then the concern about, okay, why did Trump fire him?

The question about whether or not he did that to obstruct the investigation into Russia and the members of the campaign and the administration. Eventually that accommodates with Mueller getting appointed to special counsel. To preserve this crossfire hurricane investigation. Right. Some of it is to get it out of there's a understanding of like, okay, well, can the because the Attorney General and the deputy attorney general and others are political appointees to preserve the both fact and appearance of independence of the

investigation to put in the hands of a special counsel. And because I had worked all these cases in the beginning, I went over and set up, you know, working with director Mueller, establishing the office, setting up its structure, staffing it out with agents and analysts and forensic accounts and computer forensic experts and building the team and the structure that became the Mueller investigation. So are you part of the Mueller team

or are you part of or you head of the 40 or so collocated FBI analysts and agents and then and then final question there were several teams I think five that we know of now one for Manafort, one for obstruction, one for Russia, one for the Egypt money, which is now a new story, which the government's probably not talking about yet. And I did something else, but was there a specific team you were on or were you kind of up at the TIPPY top? Now I was up at the it's a good question. I was up at the top. I mean, I was the lead

bureau person there and the way, you know, it was all, if you, if you were to ask me, what was the Mueller team? I would include all the FBI personnel there, but the fact of the matter was, you know, that was a very interesting question about how you, if you get agents and analysts assigned, you know, you don't, when agents are working in a criminal investigation with prosecutors, they don't report to those prosecutors. I mean, the prosecutors are driving the case towards prosecution and assistant US attorney saying in DC, the Eastern District of Virginia, wherever they may be, they are going to, at some point, take over the investigation and start saying, okay, here's what we're doing,

here's the information I need, here's what we need to do, but those agents still report up an FBI chain of command. So if you were to ask me, who is the Mueller team, I'd include everybody in the FBI, you know, there's roughly, I think, you know, 40 issues is about right. Again, that's, I don't think the specific numbers have ever been released. But so while I would identify them and me at the top of that as the Mueller team, then it was also very clearly like all the attorneys reported up to Director Mueller. That was the clear chain of command. The FBI personnel, he directed that team, but again, that chain of command for everything

from performance evaluations to financial administrative things to when it came to gun carrying agents and questions about use of lethal force. If somebody went out in the rest and somebody discharged their weapon, the investigation of all that, that chain of command would have gone up through the FBI channel. So it was a sort of bifurcated process. I think everyone does this all the time. I worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was embedded with DOD.

So I was the top dog VA person. I didn't report to the top dog DOD person, but we worked together. I'm up in the VA chain of command. They're in the DOD chain of command, but we're part of the same interagency health office team. So it's kind of a similar thing. The government does that all the time.

A lot of people always wondered what happened. Our understanding is any counterintelligence stuff went from to those FBI agents and they reported it somewhere. And I know a lot of people wondered what happened to the counterintelligence piece. The only thing that I've gleaned from experts that I've talked to is that, well, there really isn't a resolution to a counterintelligence investigation that I've talked to is that, well, there really isn't a resolution

to account intelligence investigation that gets put out to the public. But I know a lot of people wondered what happened to that piece of it. Yeah, and this isn't going to make you feel good, but I wonder about it, too. And I write about this sum certainly in the book, but also I wrote a new epilogue and afterward rather that addresses some of these concerns, that when we set it up, the understanding was that for Director Mueller in the Special Counsel's office and his mandate, it was very much to look at violations of law and what he could or could improve in prosecute, that there's this whole question from the counterintelligence

perspective about what happened. That is not Director Mueller of the prosecutor's job to go out and do a counterintelligence product, but it was the FBI. And so when I talked to then, you know, acting director Andy McCabe, when I talked every, you know, I've met twice, certainly beginning of the day, into the day, and frequently many times, during the day with director Muller, it was all of our understanding that the FBI, specifically the FBI personnel on the Mueller team, we're going to be doing as part of their mission, this counterintelligence work. And the question of how to do that is really complicated because it's a huge task.

It's probably a task on paralleled in size and resource intensity of anything the FBI ever did. But, talking with Andy McCabe, it's like, yeah, we're going to do it. And he understood that was going to go on. And then I get, you know, summarily dismissed off to human resources division, the FBI after DOJ leaks, won't go down that path now, but essentially I pulled off the team, listening to what Amy McCabe said later, he's like, well, I assumed this was going on in the team, which is my assumption too, and I that he was shocked to

hear that it didn't appear to get done. And my belief is, I don't think it did. I think, you know, the closest Mueller came in his testimony, he said, well, you know, there was a team. We had agents who came into the team and that counterintelligence leads would be spun off to the FBI. Now, that's good. And certainly, you know, if you go out and you do a search warning, you get material that points to some oligarch or somebody in Ukraine or Russia wherever the case may be that might be of interest to the FBI, if we can't tell his own perspective, it's good you send that to

the FBI. But that isn't anywhere near close enough to sit there and say, what do we understand about Donald? Because we're able to case on Donald Trump shortly before, you know, Mueller was in paneled. There was a case on Trump himself. And sending a lead on Russian oligarch, you know, Boris Badanov is and his lovely wife Natasha for those who watch Rocky and Bollinger that it isn't enough just to send the lead on him. Somebody needs to be sitting there and looking at the entire horizon of, you know,

what is the counterintelligence exposure and problem with Donald Trump? And you can't just do that with these one-off referrals. You need to go back probably easily 10, 15 years to beginning this work with, you know, in Moscow, all the money coming into his financial and other business empire, his travelers' communications. And that's so big and so hard that I fear,

and I think I fear very accurately, that it just wasn't done. That there was not a comprehensive counterintelligence look into the question I pose, and to ask your listeners, anybody out there in the government, it's like, well, so who loses? Because that was never done. He's still the Kingmaker and Republican politics. He is undoubtedly the most vulnerable of any president we've ever had from a counterintelligence perspective and a risk perspective. And for the FBI who is the lead agency for counterintelligence through the United States to have not done

a comprehensive look at that, how is that acceptable? And it's it, I don't know. Yeah, and the other thing too, is I'll never forget, you know, talking to Andy, and wondering if you did that and found out all the stuff at that point in that administration, who do you tell? The best we could come up with is, you know, the eight, the gang, you know, the intelligence folks and the in Congress, like, who do you tell?

And the Dutch, you know, he got the Dutch. No, and you can't. I mean, it's a good question. And that's something we all did. And I remember thinking about it. And I don't, you know, maybe many of us have that idea of like you do want to, you want to make this more than just the FBI, because who the FBI is supporting it to the president. And so to the extent that you, you know, our system ideally works under a system of checks

and balances, to the extent you can incorporate and brief Congress to get the, you know, and so Andy, we prepped him and he went up there and he briefed the gang aid and answered all their questions. And they were fine, including, you know, then Speaker of the House Ryan and I think Mitch McConnell still was the majority leader at that time. Any question they had was answered, not a one of them said you shouldn't be doing this or we have a problem with it, it was okay, go do that.

And then ideally you find some way to get the court involved. Now we were doing it every time you go out and you get a search warrant or apply for a Pfizer which ended up being problematic with a cart of page. You're doing that, but I don't know. And kind of thoughtful, Jack Goldsmith has written, I think, wrote a book, but also talked a lot about, is it appropriate for the FBI to be investigating a president or not for some of our counterintelligence investigation? And it's a good question, but I don't, if there are problems like this, you don't just get a pass because suddenly you're elected president. That doesn't seem possibly right to me

to sit there and say, well, you know, you, you suddenly got legally or not elected. And so now, therefore, not only can you not be prosecuted based on this old oil seed memo, but you can't even be looked at on the intelligence side or from a counter intelligence issue because you're the president and that can't be right. And then I don't know how you then, you know, the FBI on the other hand can't be this little kingdom unto itself

where they are investigating the elected leader of the nation without some sort of oversight and boundaries. Right. Is that it's just like, all right, high five, we know now what, you know, right. And I don't, and nobody wants, you know, you think back to Jager, who or nobody wants the FBI to be this kind of all powerful, all-knowing entity who is going to investigate and know these things, but, you know, not be sub, how

they, how that knowledge and information might be misused. We've had terrible history and a lot of very hard lessons learned from that. But I don't know. The problem was everybody looked at this and kind of the thoughtful like attorneys and theorists and, you know, kind of constitutional scholars, scholars all looked at and said, well, you know, okay, he's no longer in office. So this is kind of a one-on-one problem we're never going to see anybody like him. We can't even guess what. And here we go, charging in the 2024 and all of a sudden it may not be some hypothetical,

once in a lifetime outlier, it may be staring down at us again in two and a half years. Yeah, and then you also have the message that it's totally legal and totally cool. And yeah, it encourages people to act that way again, especially if we don't go It's two and a half years. Yeah. And then you also have the message that it's totally legal and totally cool. And yeah, it encourages people to act that way again, especially if we don't go after those obstructions of justice charges. All of this is in the book. You've got new material in the paperback version of Compromised. I really highly recommend everybody pick it up.

And also you get to read about Ghost Stories, which is one of the coolest things seriously in history. Well, you're like the top restaurants by Hunter in the universe, and I appreciate all that you've done, and I thank you for being here today, and we will talk again soon if more stuff comes out about Barric or anything else from the old days. Yeah, absolutely, and what's all going to be new again,

so I have no doubt will people think that as much as everybody recalls about it, right? You know, the same going away. And people think the one six investigation has taken a while. There's still stuff going on that was handed off from the Mueller Pro. Never in the line. We're never in. Never in. Thank you so much. Everybody pick up compromise Tuesday, January 25th, out in paper back. you can order now. Thank you very much. Pete Struck.

Thank you. All right, everybody. It's time for some sabotage. So sabotage this week, pretty simple. We found out Matt Gates' ex-girlfriend who did the three-way call with another one of his ex-girlfriends and tried to pressure her not to work with authorities, which is witness intimidation and obstructing justice. She was granted immunity, the girl who was on the call and recorded it with Matt and

testified against him for that and for sex trafficking. She went to the Bahamas with the person who was a minor but was 18 at the. She went to the Bahamas with the person who was a minor but was 18 at the time they went to the Bahamas and that's crossing state and international lines. I'm pretty sure for commercial sex acts, which is sex trafficking. And then of course she would be able to also tell a corroborate Joel Greenberg story because he's a shit witness, right? She'd be able to corro tell a corroborate Joel Greenberg story because he's a shit witness, right? She'd be able to corroborate his story that Matt was starting dating that girl when she was

17. And dating is a strong word. Venmoing. Let's say Venmoing that girl. And that's sex trafficking a minor if you're removing her. Anyway, you know that. And we also call it rape. But aside from that, we also had this immense, giant filing put out by the New York Attorney General,

the Tisha James. And I've been saying all week I was going to go over that in depth, but I already did it on Twitter and I put seriously about 10 hours of work into it. So I would just direct you to my Twitter account at Mueller. She wrote, and look for thread on the New York AG filing parts one, two, and three. I did part one. There's about 20 tweets in it. And at the end, I added a link to part two and a link to part three. So it did take me quite a while. I put a lot of work into it. And so I would like to just advise you to go check that out. But trust me, there's lots of crimes and Tish James wouldn't have published all that evidence

and witness testimony. If Bragg, the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, didn't already have it and didn't already have that testimony, right? Because she said in her filing, she's like, you know what? Because, in her filing. She's like, you know what? Because, you know, what does John Stewart column clown stick? Fuck face Von Clown stick? Because he opened his mouth and said that I was just out for political, that this is a fishing expedition. I've got nothing, and I'm just out because I don't like him. I'm just out doing this because I just don't politically like Donald Trump and his family. That's why I'm coming after you. Because he has made that allegation because he's leveled that allegation against me in in order to quash these subpoenas, which I'm asking you to compel them to testify. Because you did that, I'm going to need, I'm going to update you on the crimes that I've

found and show you that this isn't a fishing expedition and show you that there are crimes. So I'm going to share with you seven things, just seven of the many things that I've uncovered and she also said, I feel comfortable that sharing with you these seven particular things and sharing them will not jeopardize the current ongoing investigation or investigations plural, which means that, and you know, when you, when you look at the stuff, there's some new things that we didn't know. Like I didn't know Ivanka was the contact point for Deutsche Bank.

I didn't know they had a second set of books for multiple other things. But we did know that Rae, Rosemary, Ray Black, who wasn't named but was hinted at as the Deutsche Bank banker lender and referred to as she in this filing. She was mentioned. We know she's been interviewed. We know that the Forbes guy was deposed.

We know that McConey has been deposed. We know Eric Trump, what we did learn about his deposition was that he invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination over 500 times. And while that can't be used against you in a criminal Manhattan District Attorney investigation, it can certainly be used against you in civil litigation, which is what Tish James is trying to finish up by compelling the testimony of Trump and his giant crotch fruit. So that is part of

sabotage because I think it's going to impact who I draft for my fantasy and Dytman League this week but I really want to encourage you to go out to App Muller she wrote on Twitter and check those threads out I break it down in an easily understandable way. And, you know, use their appropriate profanity here and there and I think that you'll enjoy it. So, and I put all that work into it. So, I would appreciate if you would check it out. And that would be, you know, in lieu of a me just reading the thread to you here on this podcast. Although I'm sure you love this down in my voice, but I actually do have a birthday dinner. I need to get to.

Now I'm kidding. I would never put you off for my own personal gain. But that is sabotage this week. And with those two stories in mind, Maddie Meets stick with her ex-girlfriend in the three-way call and sex driving a minor. With that, and the New York Attorney General, Tish James, her filing, compelling the three, Trump, Jr., and Ivanka to testify are all going to impact the fantasy indictment I'm gonna be a princess! No it is gonna be a princess! I'm dick! And I'm a princess! I'm gonna be a princess! Or they can't, it's gonna be okay.

Just calm down. I can't calm down, I'm gonna be a princess! Okay, now you know I've had Maddie on my draft for a while. So I'm gonna keep him. I'm gonna keep him and I'm actually gonna move him into the quarterback position because I feel like that post-ponement of the immunity deal was the last thing that they needed. I think I went over that last week too, but we're going to keep them on.

And I'm also going to add angles who is wrapped up in that Greenberg investigation as well as a person named L.A. Key. Both of them had weird contracts that they got paid from the tax collector's office for without doing any work. And we've already seen a couple of indictments for people like that. And so I'm expecting indictments for those. So we got Gates Engels and L.A.K. at a middle district of Florida. Rudy, Tonzing and DeGeneva out of the Southern District.

But I think that's going to be for older crimes, not necessarily newer crimes. And I, you know, Barbara Jones, who's the special master that's been going through all Rudy's stuff, she's been handing that stuff over on a rolling basis, right? So the prosecutors have it. They weren't waiting for her to go through everything and then she handed it all over. She was handing it over as she went through it. So I think they have enough. I think they'll indict Rudy and DeGeneres and Tonsay unless Tonsay and DeGeneres flip and do a plea deal, but I'm one you know one of the other And that's out of the Southern District of New York. I think super seating Trump organization and super seating Weisselberg indictments Along with I'm gonna put Ivanka an Ivanka indictment all out of the Manhattan District Attorney's office because Tish James like I said wouldn't have published all those crimes and witnesses if Bragg and the DA's office didn't already

have it. And finally, I'm going to draft Sydney Powell out of the DC US Attorney's Office, where a grand jury has been impeannled, headed up by the assistant US Attorney in that office in DC District of Columbia, Molly Gaston. She's been heading up a grand jury at least since September, at least since September. And by my count, September, October, November, December, January, four months into an investigation, I think we should start seeing some indictments very soon, if not next week. All right, that is the show. I will see you tomorrow for the Daily Beans and also out today MSW Book Club Corruptible that going over the next chapter by Brian Klaus. Absolutely

incredible book. I really, really recommend you either get it on Audible or you buy it and read it. It's truly, it's so intelligent and so smart and funny. So, I highly recommend checking it out. All right, so you tomorrow also for the daily beans, and until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, and take care of your mental health. I've been A.G. And this is Mullershi Road.

[♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background Mollershy Road is written and produced by Allison Gill in partnership with MSW Media. Sound designed in engineering or by Molly Hockey, Jesse Egan is our copywriter and our art and web designer by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. Mollershy Road is a proud member of MSW Media, a group of creator-owned podcasts focused on news, justice and politics. For more information, visit MSW Media dot com. mswmedia.com. Hi, I'm Harry Lickman, host of Talking Feds. Around table, it brings together prominent figures from government law and journalism

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