Jack - Loud and Clear (Feat. Andrew McCabe)

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

This week: HOLY MAJOLY we had one hell of a Friday news dump this weekend. The Department of Justice is not messing around, my friends, and we love to see it. So much has happened that indicates this Justice Department is NOT just going to ignore the former administration and their misdeeds and I’m glad we were all a little patient with Merrick Garland; there is still one more litmus test for me. I had three red lines I was hoping the Justice Department wouldn’t cross and they did the right thing on two of them so now there’s only one left. The three red lines were the DoJ representing mo brooks, the DoJ representing trump in the insurrection suits, and the DoJ announcing they will not pursue obstruction of justice charges against the former guy. With the decision this week from Main Justice that they want the court to deny certification of Mo Brooks’ speech at the Ellipse being within the scope of his job as a Congressman, the DoJ said LOUD AND CLEAR.Check out Andrew McCabe’s book:The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpFollow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill (@allisongill)Want to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://dailybeans.supercast.tech/Orhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeans

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.

Hello and welcome to Muller She Wrote and Holy Majoli. We had one hell of a Friday news dump this weekend. The Department of Justice is not fucking around, my friends, and we love to see it. So much has happened that indicates this justice department is not just going to ignore the former administration and their misdeeds, and I'm glad we were all a little patient with Merrick Garland, and there are still more litmus tests for me, believe me, and I still am against a couple of the decisions that he's made. I had three red lines. I was hoping this justice department wouldn't cross and they eliminated two

of them for me this week. So now there's only one left. Those three red lines were if the Department of Justice represented Mo Brooks, which they decided this week not to do. If the Department of Justice represented Trump in the insurrection lawsuits, which they clearly said they weren't going to in the Mo Brooks decision. And so those two are gone, but the third one remains. If the DOJ announces they will not pursue obstruction of justice charges against a former guy, red line for me. So yeah, with that decision, this week, from main justice that they want the court to deny certification of Mo Brooks' speech at the ellipse being within the scope of his job as a congressman.

Basically, they're saying, he, his speech is, we can't step in as a defendant for Mo Brooks. And Mo Brooks asked the Department of Justice too. They said, we cannot. We can't, because in Stigay, I'll tell you why in a minute, but the message was loud and clear. Oh, God, he's so eah!

I'm going to need some information. What's the mission's name? Loud and loud. Loud and loud. Clear. Loud and clear. This is clear. So they will not defend Mo Brooks's speech,

nor would they defend any federal employee that instigated the attack on the Capitol. So it's not just, it wasn't just about because the first reason they gave, and I did a deep dive on this decision a couple days ago on the daily beans, so check that out. But the general gist was, Mo Brooks was given a campaign speech, campaign speech as a part of your job, and hey, Court, if you don't agree with us that this given a campaign speech, campaign speech is a part of your job. And hey, Court, if you don't agree with us that this was a campaign speech,

then fall back on this to deny it. Instigating an insurrection is not within the scope of the job of a Congress person, or any federal employee. So that wiped out Mo Brooks and Trump, and Julie, well, Julie Ann is not a federal employee, but any Congress person who did that. And Trump, Jr., as well.

I think I believe he was considered a federal employee. I can't remember though, maybe not. Might just be Kushner. Anyway, like I said, check out that episode of the Daily Beans. But today on Mollarshi Road, I'm going to cover a lot of the Friday news dump and some other stories. And I'm happy to announce we'll be chatting later in the show with Andy McCabe. Always excited to speak to Andy. He brings such a good and important perspective. So all right, let's get this kicked off. Let's jump into the headlines with just the facts.

All right, first up, Russian hackers, the ones behind the massive solar winds cyber espionage campaign broke into the email accounts of some of the most prominent federal prosecutors offices around the country last year. And that's according to the Justice Department, who said this on Friday, the department said 80% of Microsoft email accounts used by employees in the four US

attorney's offices in New York were breached, all told, the justice department said 27 US attorney's offices had at least one employee's email account compromised during the hacking campaign. The justice department said in a statement that it believes the accounts were compromised from May 7th to December 27th, 2020. December 27th is an interesting date because that's the day Trump made the call to the Justice Department and pressured them to announce that the election was corrupt and he would take it from there.

That's some more crazy news that dropped this Friday. Notes from Donahue, and we'll talk about that with Andy McCabe. Now such a timeframe is notable because the SolarWinds campaign, which infiltrated dozens of private sector companies and think tanks as well as at least nine U.S. government agencies, was first discovered and publicized in mid-December, 2020. And Biden said Tuesday that he'd been briefed on Russian efforts to spread misinformation related to 2022, the midterm elections.

Quote, look what Russia is doing already about the 2022 elections and misinformation. This was during a speech at the ODNI. He referenced information that he said was contained in his president's daily brief. It's a pure violation of our sovereignty. Biden said the intelligence community needs to take on the rampant disinformation that's making it harder and harder for people to assess the facts and be able to make decisions. Biden repeatedly referenced Russian President Putin during his remarks suggesting at one point he believes Russia's weakened economy makes Putin more dangerous in the cyber realm. The intelligence community previously assessed that Russia sought to interfere in 2016 and 2020

on orders from Putin. A report made public last year, or excuse me earlier this year, said Russia acted to boost former Trump's campaign and damage Biden's candidacy. Russia has denied it all. So that's going on. US attorney's offices. They're got all sorts of interesting information on some prosecutions that may have been sitting there, including maybe Tom Barrick. Although I guess nobody tipped him off because he was arrested in Los Angeles surprise. And we have a ton of news from the Justice Department. Like I said, first main justice announced they would not invoke executive privilege for potential testimony from former Trump DOJ officials, including folks like Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donahue.

And then, they handed over several pages of contemporaneous notes written by Donahue during a phone call between Trump and his acting attorney, General Jeffrey Rosen, that sounded awful lot like the phone call Trump had with Zelensky that led to his first impeachment. And again, talking with Andy McCabe about this later, what the implications of this new evidence could mean and what the strength of this new evidence is. And finally, the attorney general for the District of Columbia will continue investigating

whether Trump's 2017 inauguration committee missed more than a million dollars. I think they missed probably more than 50 million, but okay, and this is after discussions to resolve the matter out of court. They tried to do a little settlement, didn't work. The AG's office had a civil lawsuit against the inaugural committee and a Trump organization.

This month, the case was forced into mediation, which is a deal-making session in which neutral negotiator tries to get different sides to come to an agreement. When while lawyers met on July 14th to discuss resolving the case, out of court, the meeting went nowhere. According to court records, the closed door meeting resulted in no agreement reached.

The reason investigators are dead set on seeing this case through to the end. That's according to a source with knowledge of the case. That means the case will proceed. As all sides wait to see whether the DC Superior Court judge Jose Lopez rules that the local law enforcement agency has already proven its case before proceed. As all sides wait to see whether the DC Superior Court Judge Jose Lopez rules that the local law enforcement agency has already proven its case before trial, the office of the local attorney general Carl Reicine has a pending motion for summary judgment, arguing that evidence already presented ways heavily in his favor. The local attorney general claims the Trump Organization and Trump International Hotel in DC were unjustly enriched by overbelling

the nonprofit inauguration committee. The office wants the judge to force the return of $1.08 million in misspent charitable funds. The Attorney General's Office wants to award that money to another civic-minded nonprofit of its choosing. Racine's office is seeking a similar outcome to the victory that New York's Attorney General had in 2018 over the Trump foundation.

Member Tish James forcing the Trump Foundation to disband and hand over money to charities, and they can't work at a charity in New York. And with that, like I said, I was able to speak with an old friend about some of this week's news. Let's take a listen to that interview. So what a treat today. I get to talk to author of the book The Threat and former acting director of the FBI, Andy McCabe. Andy, how are you? I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me.

Good. No, I'm really glad I got to talk to you today. I've been watching you. You're popping up a lot because we got a lot of department of justice stuff going on. And I wanted to talk a little bit about what the Department of Justice is and so far what we haven't heard or they aren't doing. And that's namely we haven't heard anything about any investigations into the leadership or the insiders or the funders of the riots. And also we don't know if they're going to look at obstruction of justice charges from Donald Trump from Mueller's findings. He hasn't made an announcement on that either way.

I'm not sure if they will. But I wanted to ask you if you could kind of remind everybody sort of how an investigation in the Department of Justice gets started, what kicks it off, what has to be there in order to open an investigation into something like, say, Mo Brooks language at the ellipse or Donald Trump's language at the ellipse. Sure. So it helps to think about the FBI's investigative authorities, which come to them from the Department of Justice in the form of the attorney general guidelines. And those guidelines are then interpreted by the FBI and encapsulated in something called the domestic investigations

and operations guidelines, which is we call it the dialogue. It's available online for anyone who'd like to see it. It's fascinating, although excruciating the dry reading, you can answer a lot of your questions right there. The dialogue lays out what predication, what's necessary for the FBI to open an investigation. And there's all kinds of different levels of investigation. There are assessments that we do just to look into threats that come our way that we don't know much about,

but people bring information to us. It's our obligation to look into it. All the way up to full field investigations, that's the biggest, most kind of robust investigation you can open. And a full field investigation can be predicated on a pretty low level of facts that you have. And it's basically when the FBI has information, you have to actually have facts or not just allegations of actual facts and information that indicate either that a threat to national security might exist or that a violation of federal law, federal criminal law may have taken place or might take place

in the future, then that is adequate predication or factual basis to open a fulfilled investigation. And I saw you talking, I think it was to Jake Tapper today. It was a really great interview on CNN saying that you, this is definitely what the bombshell that came down today, the Department of Justice, that Trump had called the former acting attorney general and said, Hey, just make up some election corruption. I'll do the rest. Me and the Republican Congressmen will do the rest. And we have the handwritten notes. And could you talk a little bit about the strength of a contemporaneous note as evidence? And also, you said that you didn't think that this rose to a level of a federal crime, but would

definitely be considered an abusive power. And I was wondering if you could address that as well. Sure. So first on the contemporaneous notes, contemporaneous notes are some of the most effective pieces of evidence that you can have in an investigation or trial. And especially when they are the notes from someone who had a pattern or practice or habit of routinely taking notes. So in this case, you have Mr. Donna Hugh, I don't remember his first name, but he was serving as the acting deputy attorney general. So he was the kind of right hand to Jeffrey Rosen, who was the acting attorney

general at the time. And Mr. Donna, you was in the habit as most good lawyers are of taking notes when he's having a phone call with someone else or in a meeting with his boss. This occasion happened to be both of those things. He was sitting with Mr. Rosen and they were both participating in a conference call with President Trump. And during that call, as is his habit, he took notes and recorded his impressions of what Trump was saying. And then, of course, what sort of responses he and the acting attorney general gave President Trump. Now, because of his elevated position in the Department of Justice, Mr. Donnie, whose notes must be preserved, they can't just throw them away or get rid of them. Those are federal records.

And so all of his notes, probably when he left his position, were taken by the Department of Justice and they are kind of cataloged and will forever be preserved in the National Archives. The same thing that happened to my notes and other people who serve, if you're serving above a certain level in the FBI or DOJ, that's what happens to your stuff.

So these are contemporaneous records, so it's exactly what he heard in that moment and how he thought about it, he's capturing what they said back. And he's even writing little interesting things in the margins like couldn't possibly be true, which is fascinating and funny at the same time. Question mark. Yeah. But it's, you can't assail them later by saying, oh, you're just saying this now because you see how things worked out or you're trying to achieve a certain result. No, he took these then on that phone call and then they were locked away from him.

So they were really interesting. Record they kind of take you right back to that call. And how is this not a crime? How is this not, for example, 18 US code 2384, right? So this is conspiracy. If two or more persons in any place subject to the jurisdiction, United States conspire to overthrow put down or destroy by force, the government of the United States or to levy war against them or to oppose

by force, the authority there of or by force to prevent hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States i.e. the certification of the election. How is that not a a federal crime and and do you think the Department of Justice has enough predication to at least open an investigation into into this? Yeah, so so just to be clear, I'm not saying conclusively that there's no crime was committed here. I just haven't really thought through in my own way exactly what the best route to a violation of federal law would be. But since somebody has been reading her federal code book again, I think the important thing to note here is, first of all, from the FBI side, would this be something that

the FBI would investigate? Well, it would, if the Department of Justice being the witness and involved in this thing, would have to refer it to the FBI for investigation. And so that really puts the ball in the department, the DOJ's corner. If the FBI had somehow come across this on their own, could there be predication to open investigation? Yeah, there probably could be, but an investigation of a political matter like this is by definition what we refer to as a sensitive investigative matter. And so we would have to very quickly notify DOJ that we had opened such a case. And then DOJ would have the opportunity if they wish to tell us proceed no further, you know, for whatever reason we don't, we don't think you should investigate

this. So my point is that DOJ really is always in a very decisional position to decide, you know what, we don't think this should be investigated because it's against DOJ policy or we don't believe, you know, the facts weren't investigation at the sign, what, what have you, that's the prosecutorial discretion, right? So in this case, they would have to have referred it to the FBI for investigation. And in order to do that, the most of this, they would have to first decide that they wanted it investigated is very possible that they would decide that it was not enough to investigate simply because those sorts of cases that you're referring to, sedition cases, even obstruction of justice cases, very, very tough cases to prove, especially when they are interlaced with what might be first

amendment protected political speech, that's kind of like the Achilles heel to really any obstruction case or certainly sedition case So there's all kinds of very complicated legal math that needs to be done on this thing And I certainly haven't had a chance to do that. I'm maybe not even the best person to do it, but I'm sure if you got five prosecutors together two of them would say yes to would say no in the middle one, but say you didn't know. Probably, you're probably right. That I agree with. The obstruction of justice stuff, though, that's plain as fucking day, Andy, and I think that that needs to be pursued.

But that's I share your interest in getting all these things investigated. I just want to know. I want to know. And holding people accountable, I mean, like that's what that's how this just want to know. I want to know. And holding people accountable, I mean, like, that's what that's how this is supposed to work. And not being derelict in your duty. That's right. That's right. That's right. That when people were calling for impeachment, and they say, Oh, why bother the Senate's not going to convict anyway. Why bother? Because it is the duty of the Congress to impeach a president for impeach black. And let's think about this,

right? He was impeached not once, but twice for essentially abusive power, right, for abusing the office. If Congress had known about this telephone call that took place on December 27th, do we think that might have changed their approach to the impeachment proceeding round two? I mean, how could it not? Right? So there was all this evidence of additional abuse of power just sitting there, never got considered, never got brought to the table. It's really unfortunate. I can't imagine all of the stuff that's going to come out that we have no idea happened. We know about this a little, but yeah, I think there's going to be tons of it to come. And I appreciate your time today. Thank you so

much. Sure. Everybody, he's not on Twitter. So you can't follow him. We want you to get on Twitter. We're going to start a campaign. Okay. Any more cable on Twitter. But you can buy his book, The Threat. You can get that wherever you get your books. It's an amazing book. Well, you can listen to it. Listen Listen to we have episodes all about it. That is an amazing lesson. I'll say. Thank you very much. And I appreciate your time. Andy McCabe. Have a good day. Thanks. All right, everybody. Are you ready for sabotage? In a bombshell interview, Rudy Giuliani talked to NBC New York about the month's long federal probe accusing him of illegal Ukraine dealings, an investigation Rudy calls Lawless.

The former New York City mayor has been the subject of investigations and FBI scrutiny since two business associates were arrested in 2019 in a separate case. That's the Parnason Fruman show. But in an exclusive interview with news for Giuliani emphatically maintained he did nothing wrong, becoming seemingly fixated on declaring his innocence. I committed no crime. If you think I committed a crime, you're probably really stupid because you don't know who I am. That's what Giuliani said.

That his, as this investigation looms into whether he was working as an unregistered lobbyist for Ukrainian officials. Kind of makes you wonder if he'll be charged with Pharaoh or that 951, right? A little espionage, a little light espionage. Rudy said he was working for then president Trump. Let's Trump denies. Quote, is the guy who put the mafia in jail, terrorist in jail, ed Koch's commissioners in jail, and the worst people on Wall Street, I'm not gonna file a form. I mean, that's just crazy. He didn't file a form. And with that, it's time to play the fantasy and diamond league. I'm gonna be a dinosaur!

No way, it's gonna be okay. I'm gonna be a dinosaur! I'm gonna be a dinosaur! A dinosaur! I'm gonna be a dinosaur! Or that they can't, it's gonna be okay. Just calm down. I can't calm down, I'm gonna be dead! All right, my picks this week's day pretty much the same. I still think it's a bit early for Rudy,

but given today's sabotage in this wackadoo interview, I'm gonna go ahead and draft Rudy. I know that in the Cohen case, he was rated in April and pled guilty in August, and we have the same special master, and I haven't seen an update from Barbara Jones, so I still think it might be too early, but I don't know what part of it is, but I'm gonna go ahead and draft Rudy in August and we have the same special master and I haven't seen an update from Barbara Jones

So I still think it might be too early, but I don't know what prompted him to go on and declare his innocence in New York So I'll draft Rudy why not? And we're in prime time right now for the charging decision for Matt gates so I'm gonna go with Ingersoll angles and gates and But you know, we did have Greenberg push his sentencing back so he could keep talking about all the crime. I don't know. And we haven't heard.

There hasn't been any reporting about whether or not that would push back the original public reporting that said a charging decision would come for gates in July or August. For my final pick, I'm going gonna go with a Kalamari plea agreement and the Manhattan DA's investigation. And whether or not we see a plea agreement, we might not, we might only see him testifying to the grand jury. And if he is testifying, that means he's cooperating.

Either that or he's waived his rights, which that is very doubtful. So I'm gonna go with the Kalamari plea agreement. So let's watch for him entering that grand jury room to testify, that'd be the sign. Same with Weiselberg, but I don't know if he's gonna flip or not. As Lincoln's Bible says, he was born to go to prison for the Trump organization.

Almost said administration, but same, same, same thing. All right, that's the show. You got to add free this week. So if you want to continue to get it add free and be eligible to meet up with me personally for some cocktails in Lower Manhattan this Friday at 5 p.m. You can become a patron by visiting patreon.com slash muller she wrote, we'll be sending out location information for the details of that meet up in New York and then we're going to have that in lieu of our Zoom happy hour this Friday.

So I hope to see all of you there. I love you all. Check out our daily news dump complete with appropriate profanity every week day morning on the daily beans. And for all the shows on our network, please head to mswmedia.com. Until next time, I'm your host, A.G. And this is Mola She wrote 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 Joe Elrider at Moxie Design Studios. Mueller She wrote as a proud member of MSW Media, a group of creator-owned podcasts focused on news, justice, and politics. For more information, visitswmedia.com. Season 4 of How We Win Is Here. For the past four years we've been making history in critical elections all over the country. And last year, we made history again by expanding our majority in the Senate, eating election

denying Republicans and crucial state house races, and fighting back a non-existent red wave. But the Magga Republicans who plotted and pardoned the attempted overthrow of our government now control the house thanks to gerrymandered maps and repressive anti-voter laws. And the chaotic spectacle we've already seen shows us just how far they will go to seize power dismantle our government and take away our freedoms. So, the official podcast of the persistence is back with season 4. There's so much more important work ahead of us to fight for equity, justice, and our very democracy itself. We'll take you behind the lines and inside the rooms where it happens, with strategy

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