Jack - Loyalty Kash Bonuses

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

FBI Director Kash Patel may be operating a secret slush fund of taxpayer dollars to pay loyalist agents. Trump urges Republicans to postpone Jay Clayton confirmation hearings as leverage to pass his voter suppression bill The Trump Administration weighed suspending habeas corpus and invoking the Insurrection Act after being frustrated by the courts. Fifteen protestors in Minnesota have been charged with conspiracy to impede ICE officers during Operation Metro Surge. Plus listener questions. Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT? Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AGMueller, She Wrote SubstackMueller She Wrote on Blueskyhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodMore from Andrew McCabeThe Real McCabe on [e-mail] on BlueskyThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump This Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you Subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-S-W Media. FBI director Cash Patel may be operating a secret slush fund of taxpayer dollars to pay loyalist agents. Trump is urging Republicans to postpone Jay Clayton's confirmation hearings as leveraged to pass his voter suppression bill. The Trump administration weighed suspending habeas corpus and invoking the Insurrection Act after being frustrated by the courts. And 15 protesters in Minnesota have been charged. with conspiracy to impede ICE officers during Operation Metro Surge. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 74 of Unjustified.

It's Sunday, June 21st, 2026. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe, and I would love to say we're here in a, like, slow-going, easy, peasy week, but we are not. It's, we're drinking from the fire, hose once again, more news than we can cover it in an hour's time, but we're going to do our best. So let's kick it off with this reporting from MS now. FBI director Cash Patel may have authorized taxpayer-funded special payments to his inner circle

of FBI executives and agents on his protective detail, according to the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. This below my mind because pay scales and the government are just not something you can mess with. And the fact that his protective detail, like, is he trying to hope that they don't leak about? Is it a bribe? I mean, of course it is. Come on. Oh, yeah.

Okay. All right. Let's get through the. We'll save our comments for the report. Our wonderment for the end. Quote, we've been receiving troubling reports that you may be using part of the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a personal slush fund to make tens or hundreds of thousands. thousands of dollars in unlawful bonus payments to loyalist Maga Henschman who have engaged in misconduct. That's what a letter from Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat from Maryland says,

to Kosh Patel, obtained exclusively by MS Now. Committee Democrats have information that Patel has issued more than $1 million in awards. Oh, my God. The letter says the money went to special agents serving on his director's advisory team, which Raskin's letter describes as a curated group of agents who are willing to to carry out your unlawful partisan and personal orders. It also went to agents on Patel's security detail, circumventing the mandatory maximum pay caps established by statute. Can you imagine if Merrick Garland was like, hey, everybody, tell me if you're a Democrat or not.

And then if you are, I'm going to put you around in my special team and pay you millions of dollars in bonuses to go after the Trump administration. Can you imagine? On the spot awards for every Democrat. There's like six. What? There's like six Democrats in the people. It is just bonkers crazy to anyone who's ever been in government. But okay, here we go.

The reporting continues, by issuing these side payments, your office may be knowingly breaking federal law, the letter says. In some cases, nearly $8,000 payments have been made to multiple individuals every two-week pay period. Despite many of the beneficiaries of your selective generosity, already maxing out on a federal employee's salary. Now, the letter says it's unclear exactly how much each of the agents has received, but, quote, we can confirm that numerous loyalist employees have received at least five such payments in consecutive pay periods amounting to nearly $40,000 per agent. We can also confirm you have depleted this reserve at such a frenzied rate

that some of the payments have bounced back from exhausted accounts. The government's bouncing checks. Wow. Yeah. I used to get an annual performance evaluation review bonus. It was like $1,500, $2,000. And I was a GS-14. I was an S-E-S, but that's up there.

Neither are these people. The guys on the detail are GS-14s, maybe 1-15. And, you know, on the spot awards, right? That was the big deal. You did something like amazing in your job. You came in and worked by yourself throughout a holiday weekend. 20 hours a day to get a FISA up or something like that, you got an on-the-spot award, which is like, you know, $1,500 or something, $2,000.

Yeah, I got two of them in my 10-year career for about $1,500, maybe $2,000, one for revamping an entire call center and one for, like, setting up a medical support assistant university. Exactly. Like that kind of stuff. Right. It's for some big achievement. And also, once you get one, you're then ineligible to get another one for some period of time. That's specifically, that rule is in place so that some supervisor or whatever can't just keep dumping money on their favorite child, right?

You have to kind of like spread it around and be, I don't know, objective and normal about it. For five pay periods at least. All right. Yeah. Quote, it's not clear whether these bonus payments have simply been a corrupt attempt to slide cash to friends or whether they're also meant to ensure the silence of the agent. who witness your inebriation and accompanying professional negligence and misconduct. That's Raskin's letter. Raskin appeared to be referring to recent reporting by Sarah Fitzpatrick at the Atlantic,

alleging that members of Patel's detail have been troubled by his allegedly excessive drinking. Remember, he polygraphed everybody, too. Patel has disputed the story and sued the magazine, which stands by its reporting. Quote, either way, these freelance awards appeared to constitute gross mismanagement of public funds and an abusive authority by the director's office. I want to know, did somebody in payroll? Did somebody, like, somebody told Jamie Raskin, somebody blew this whistle,

and it wasn't the guy getting 40 grand. Look, or maybe it was. You know, you can't do anything in government by yourself. Everything you do, no, I don't care where you are on the totem pole, top, middle, or bottom. Whatever you do takes other people, Like the bureaucracy is big and complicated and all that stuff.

So things like this happen, there's no way you're keeping this quiet. It's coming out. And here it is. Right, because you have people who enter the pay codes. You have timekeepers. You have all of that. Yeah. Oh, there's paperwork.

There's got to be paperwork for this. I mean, not actual paper anymore, but you know what I'm saying. Then there's defas, which is a completely separate entity that does all the pay processing. It could be a clerk there, like a GS5 going WTF, bro. Yeah. Dude, like, if you thought you were going to keep this quiet, just shows how little you know about government. Okay, so the FBI did not respond to a request for comment by MS now.

Shocking. Raskin's letter asks the FBI to produce documents related to the payments. The minority Democrats have no authority to compel such production, but they would gain it next year if they retake the House in the fall, as some political forecasters have predicted. Yeah, they could gain the power, but that doesn't mean that the DOD is going to hand over the stuff. They can always find ways to slow walk that. But they can certainly have hearings and bring in the whistleblowers.

Hey, as happens with every conflict, right? Like, let's say they take the house, let's say they serve subpoenas or requests, whatever, and DOJ Stonewalls them. You got to pass a budget. At the end of the day, DOJ, you got to go to them and say, please may I have this much money same as last year plus this much more and unless you want to get that carved back to bare bones you're going to have to turn some things over that's how this works in a in a normal functioning in a normal functioning government administration yeah wow and the other thing

I thought about this when I read this story I was like and he's going to this is going to blow his mind losing my mind losing my mind like let's say you're just some agent you're like a GS 13 or something on the detail and all of a sudden this starts happening or you're offered it or your team the team that you're on like whichever team you're on is getting this like what a terrible position to put those agents in there got to be people if this is happening in the way that it's being reported this is an allegation at this point but man there are people on those teams that are just like they know this is wrong but if you don't take it then what happens to you right like if you don't take his personalized bottle of bourbon exactly

Exactly. Exactly. It just so such like paranoia and fear and instability, you know, at just another level. It's, now listen, you can't take it. If you think it's a corrupt payment, you cannot take it. But if you don't take it, you're not going to be in that job for very long. Well, if it were me and I couldn't afford to lose my job, I'd be holding all that in an account taking it under, you know, if it were put upon. me and then I would go and I would talk to Congress. Go to Congress. And that might be what happened here. Whistle blow. Blow the whistle. Well, we'll see. We don't know, but great reporting from MS now on that Jamie Raskin letter. Here's more FBI news from NBC over several days. Federal law enforcement quietly made arrests in a alleged foiled plot to attack the UFC fights at the White House. I don't know. I have I have questions every time.

there's a foiled plot that advances the ballroom agenda. But anyway, they were keeping a lid on the details because the investigation was still ongoing, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge. But then, Kosh Patel posted details of the arrest online Tuesday, claiming the FBI credit for the investigation with a nod to law enforcement partners that helped. Yeah, of course he did, because he's that guy. So it took some federal law enforcement officials by surprise. in part because authorities were, of course, still working to take suspects into custody

in the sprawling investigation into more than two dozen people on an encrypted chat, according to three law enforcement officials. Some of the suspects in the alleged plot spoke of flying drones laden with explosives onto the South lawn and then shooting at fleeing attendees, according to law enforcement. The ultimate fighting championship event was in honor of America's 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump's 80th birthday. Especially given that 250th anniversary isn't until the 4th of July, but I digress. Yeah.

Now, law enforcement officials worried that news of the arrest would spook the suspects, the officials said, who probably did nothing wrong. But anyway, we don't know yet. This is all an allegation. But on Monday, federal prosecutors had asked a judge to seal the case. One law enforcement official was shocked by the public disclosure and worried it could hinder the ongoing probe. The official said Patel did a lot of.

lot of damage, quote unquote, by treating the work of law enforcement partners as an afterthought in the investigation. The second official said there was frustration among career FBI agents who were working on the case because interviews were still being conducted after his public announcement. Interviews were still being conducted. Quote, there were still people being rounded up on a sealed federal case. That's what they said of Patel's announcement. It's not great. Someone else said. It's not great. I'm going to use that for every. I'm going to get so much mileage.

Perfect encapsulation of somebody who works in the government. Well, it's not great. It's not great. We're bombing Iran again. That's not great. Yeah, it's not great. Well, look, you can't fix dumb. No.

Right? I mean, this is what? Second, third time he said stupid things in the middle of investigations that have likely compromised operations. And in this case, even beyond just the operational impact, he's trashing his reputation with the Secret Service, which is a partner that he has to work closely with, particularly here in D.C.

It is not an easy relationship. It never has been. Both sides are constantly always looking over their shoulders. We're both ready to kind of take offense to any minor thing, and this is not a minor thing. But anyway, the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates threats to the president, made its frustrations known.

Quote, I'll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I'll tell you that it's ongoing, Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn said at an unrelated news conference when asked about the post. Quote, in order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security of the plan, we chose not to leak it. Quinn also recalled a phrase he learned early in his career when he was in the Secret Service's New York Field Office, quote, don't choke on your own smoke. Have you heard this one? It's kind of a weird thing to say. No, that's my first round with that one.

But I can understand his frustration. This is just a massive faux pa. And they had five people in custody when he went out and made his post. And there are supposedly like eight more people out there they're trying to round up. Just a moronic thing to do. Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, no, it's totally believable because he's done it a couple of times before, but here we go, you know.

Yes, all assuming that this was a legit plot to hurt people that day. And we don't know too much about it yet. But that doesn't really have any impact on whether or not the director should come out and tweet about an investigation. 100% right. Legit, seashell investigation or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't even interviewed the octopus yet. and here you are tweeting about the Seashell problem.

Yeah, I don't know. This thing, we don't really know that much. We know from the indictment what these guys were saying to each other. Whether they had the, you know, look, you always evaluate these things against two factors, intent and capability. That's how we look at it in the counterterrorism world. These guys clearly had bad intent. There's all kinds of statements testing to that. So they score high there.

But on the capability side, could they actually have done some of the things that they were talking about? it seems highly unlikely. Now, that doesn't mean they're not dangerous and shouldn't have been arrested. Yeah, it doesn't mean it shouldn't have been investigated. But to go out there with this tweet and make it seem like there were snipers nests around the UFC event is just overselling it a bit. But anyway. Yeah. And also interfering with people actually interviewing these folks to find out if the threat was real and if the intent was there.

Exactly. Or did you stumble upon a discord full of 12-year-olds? You know, like what? I mean, the ringleader is 19. No, I mean, you know, anyway, I'm not saying that a 19-year-old can't do some damage. But there's an investigation that needs to be done here to figure that out. Exactly. The director stepped right in the middle of it again.

That's the whole point. All right, everybody, we have to take a quick break. But our next story comes from that, you know, last week we had talked about some reporting from Haberman and Swan about what happened in the the Situation Room regarding the Epstein Files. We've got more of that, but we have to take a quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. As I said, our next story comes from reporting. Folks are getting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book called Regime Change. Last week, like I said, we brought you there reporting on the Situation Room Epstein Files cover up plans for Donald Trump. And this week, we have inside info from them

on Trump weighing some very dangerous actions. Last spring, a guy named Will Scharf, who's an arch conservative lawyer serving as the White House staff secretary wrote a secret memo to Susie Wiles, chief of staff, that reflected growing unease in the West Wing about one of the extreme measures being weighed by Stephen Miller, the powerful advisor driving President Trump's deportation campaign. Allison, he went to paper. Oh my gosh, he went to paper. He went to paper. He went to paper. Okay, dated April 29, 2025 and stamped confidential. The memo was careful and but amounted to a warning against the end running of the rule of law. The subject line read, quote, the writ of habeas corpus.

Now, habeas corpus is a centuries-old right to force the government to justify before a judge why it has locked a person up, and it's enshrined in Article 1 of the Constitution. Mr. Sharf's memo, in its unassuming way, was a blinking red warning light. The second Trump White House was deliberating an explosive new claim of presidential power. the suspension of habeas rights for unauthorized immigrants. Can I tell you how many posts on social media I made after the election, but before Trump's inauguration in his second term, concerned about him suspending the writ of habeas corpus?

Of course you did. People thought I was nuts. I'm like, I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm really scared. Anyway, the man who outlined his concerns in the memo, Sharf, is no resistance figure. He's a trimbalding Harvard-trained lawyer.

who had run for office in Missouri. He had bemoaned John McCain as too moderate for the 2008 Republican nomination and believed Trump had been vindictively prosecuted after his 2020 election loss. He had helped develop the Trump team's legal arguments behind the successful effort to get the Mar-a-Lago classified documents indictment thrown out, as well as the arguments behind the presidential immunity case that prevailed at the Supreme Court. That's this guy. This guy is like, This isn't good. Yeah, so... It's not great.

It's not great. Show title? I'm just suggesting. Yeah. Although that's a little self-defeating, I guess, from your show. Listen to our show. It's not great. It's not great.

Oh, geez. Okay. The Constitution, Mr. Scharf wrote in his memo to Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, permits the suspension of habeas corpus only in cases of rebellion or invasion. Courts have almost uniformly held that only Congress can do it. Suspending habeas corpus was one of two radical ideas Mr. Miller had been pushing that alarmed Mr. Scharf. The other was invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to enforce the law on American

streets as protests grew against deportation sweeps. And I have to say, suspending habeas corpus is. step two after the step one of invoking the Insurrection Act. Those two things go together. You don't get one without the other. You get the Insurrection Act. Next thing, it loses habeas corpus. And they started using all this language. Like when they were saying, oh, Minneapolis police aren't helping us enough. Therefore, therefore we need the National Guard. Therefore, you know, that seems like insurrection act language. And a lot of my concern was coming from, they're going to say rebellion or invasion is that we're being invaded by immigrants and there's a rebellion by Antifa and that they

were going to use those terms to try to legally set up the right to suspend habeas corpus anyway mr. Sharf wrote confidential memos to wiles on both topics uh insurrection act and habeas corpus a setting out in a low key way why taking either step would shatter historical norms likely precipitate hazardous legal and constitutional battles in the case. In the case, the Insurrection Act, J.D. Vance pushed to invoke it just days after federal agents murdered Alex Pretti allegedly. They definitely shot Alex Pretty. Let's put it that way. So I get the legal language right. That's a Minnesota critical care nurse from the VA who was protesting the immigration policies. A few days after the Preddy killing, and even as the administration was moving to de-escalate

the situation, Mr. Vance walked into Ms. Wiles' West Wing office. Mr. Vance got to the point. They needed to invoked the Insurrection Act swiftly to crush the unrest in Minnesota. It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send would make sure no one tried it again. My God. I have to wonder if what stopped them was something that you had mentioned before, that the courts have almost always unanimously said that only Congress can do this. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess they opted for, instead of J.D. Vance's invoke the Insurrection Act super aggressive thing, they said, let's actually get rid of Bovino and send in Kava bag of cash Tom Homan. Yeah.

So I think they went the other way. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that, you know, we, there was such a loud public outcry against what was going on in Minneapolis. is totally look there's many examples of this this administration is not deterred by the prospect of violating the law or the constitution they see those as opportunities to push the boundaries to reset you know the limits of presidential power in their own favor of course the only thing that seems to bend them off the arc of their own their own policy positions is political feedback. They tossed Bovino and went to Kava Man because they were getting their asses handed to them on TV every night. People were outraged by the killings of innocent citizens, innocent civilians who are simply trying to, you know, drop their kids off at school or maybe even voice their protest and their disagreement with the way the administration was running, the immigration raids.

that's why they turn around. Not because somebody said, Sharf said, hey, it might be violating the Constitution. They really don't care about that. No, but that's Second Amendment stuff. The First Amendment stuff, they don't care too much about. But the Second Amendment stuff,

when they were like, shouldn't have had a gun at a protest, shouldn't have been carrying a gun. And everyone's like, what, what? What? Did you just say? The needle came off the record. Let me tell you how I got here. It's not great, as they say. But you know what? They haven't really stopped, though, because they just arrested and charged 15 protesters, who I would consider peaceful protesters in Minneapolis, Operation Metro Surge.

And we're going to talk about that story. And we're going to follow it closely as the weeks go on. But we have to take another quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, we have another DOJ case that will likely face a few legal challenges. This reporting comes from the Times. Federal prosecutors on Tuesday unsealed conspiracy, assault, and other charges against 15 people accused of violently impeding immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis during an immigration crackdown this year. Daniel N. Rosen, Minnesota's top federal prosecutor, said the defendants were members of two Minneapolis-based groups connected with Antifa, a far-left movement. Of course he did. Twelve defendants were arrested on Tuesday, Mr. Rosen said.

One was already in custody for other charges and two remained at large. Antifa, named for its anti-fascist alignment, is not an organization with a leader, rather a diffuse and sometimes violent protest culture of activists who oppose the far right. Oh, sometimes. Okay, all right, New York Times, sure. It doesn't exist, but it kind of does. No, it doesn't. It doesn't exist.

Was there a name for the anti-war protesters in, during Vietnam, like Antifa? Was there some sort of, because I know that they had concentrated when they wanted to go after George Floyd protesters. They just said it's BLM. It's Black Lives Matter. Now it's Antifa, anybody who protests this regime. Yeah, they were called young people. Yeah. Oh, the U.L.S.

I mean, the youth of America? Yeah, it was different, right? It was a different time. Now we have this massive national security structure that we kind of developed after 9-11. And look, I'm a part of that. So I'm not trying to like tear down the whole process. But we have an administration that needs to use the terms and the like the lexicon and stuff of the terrorism.

fight. They have to paint everyone they don't like as a terrorist to justify taking these extra steps, the surveillance, the shots at the Insurrection Act, which thankfully hasn't happened yet, but we've gotten pretty close in places like Chicago and L.A. So, yeah, so now everything has to have a name and you immediately allege that it's some sort of, you know, international terrorist organization, Trenda, Aragua. Like, who'd heard of that before this administration. Yeah, exactly. Been working criminal gangs, international criminal gangs my entire life in the FBI.

Never heard of it. I'm not saying they don't exist, but like... No, right. But anyone who has a tattoo is part of it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Even if it's an autism awareness ribbon tattoo, clearly a member of Trende Aragua. The story continues here. The defendants were charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer.

Same felony charge they tried and failed to bring against a broad V6, by the way, in Chicago. also solicitation to commit a crime of violence interstate stalking assault on a federal officer and destruction of government property wow quote today like in stocking I can't get stocking charges against actual stockers

and they're saying that because they people who were ice and were big things that said ice and they were kind of blowing whistles at them that's stalking them okay today's charges and arrest reflect a broad federal effort to address organized lawless behavior, which seeks to disrupt the execution of, we want to shut down protests, is what is what he says. Which seeks to disrupt the execution of federal law, endanger law enforcement. Oh, like on January 6th. And importantly, endanger the very communities that these defendants falsely claim to be protecting immigrants. That's what Mr. Rosen said in a news briefing. That was annotated by me. The 94-page indictment was filed at a fraught moment for Minnesota federal prosecutors who have had trouble sustaining many criminal cases they've lodged against protesters demonstrating against immigration and customs enforcement since the Trump administration began its crackdown in the state late last year.

The indictment links those accused of being conspirators with a broader group engaged in apparently lawful protests and tries to draw a line between. criminal and protected behaviors. Good luck with that in front of a jury. The problem is, is if you're going to say they're co-conspirators, then they're all guilty of the worst person's crime in federal law. That's how it worked. That's how the Broadview Six case, one of the reasons besides the absolutely insane misconduct in the grand jury room,

one of the reasons the charges would have otherwise fallen apart in the Broadview Six case. Yeah. I mean, this, I've read this Senate many times now. I still don't understand the indictment links those accused of being conspirators with a broader group engaged in apparently lawful protests. So how does that advance your criminal case and tries to draw a line between them? Well, because they want to be able to say Antifa as a whole. Like they tried to do this with the pipeline protesters. They tried to link them with all people who protest pipelines every one. so that they could call them a terrorist group and go after them. I totally get that, but it has zero jury appeal because the jury's like, well, wait a minute.

If they're just like these people over here and these people over here are actually not doing anything illegal, then the first people you indicted apparently aren't doing anything illegal either. That's why one of the jurors in the Broadview Six case was like, I thought it was a crock of shit last week when you brought the case and I think it's a crock of shit this week. Exactly. Yeah. Defense lawyers say that about half of the 36 federal cases in Minnesota, charging individual defendants with assaulting or interfering with federal agents assigned to the crackdown

have already been dismissed. Half. 50%. Judges have questioned the evidence underlying the accusations. Half is nuts. I don't know how I can explain this any more clearly, but it's usually 99%. Yeah. 99 and a half percent.

We were all shocked when Janine Piro fell to 79%. This is half. Yeah. It's not a good number. It's not great. I'll bring all the, I don't care if I get a no true bill. I'll bring them all. Apparently, that's everywhere in this DOJ. Now, at Tuesday's news conference, which was so embarrassing for them, but they don't feel shame. It was in Minneapolis. Reporters confronted Rosen with the struggles that his office is faced in prosecuting officer assault cases. And he sought to defend the new indictment. You watch how this case plays out. You watch how the evidence plays out, he said. Did you say that to the grand jury?

We'll watch. We'll watch, we'll listen, and then we'll talk about her on the show and probably not a way that you will not like. Yes. The 15 defendants were accused of using debris vehicles and other objects to obstruct roads used by federal law enforcement and of wielding homemade shields to resist officers on foot. Not homemade shields. It's just like the garbage can lid. Okay, Ms. Morgan, a transgender woman who was addressed as Ms. Morgan in court and Ms. Raycott's were also each charged with one count of assault on a federal officer. But Mr. Rosen declined to say during the news conference whether any officers had actually been injured. Mr. Wagner, who had been previously arrested on other charges, was also charged with solicitation to commit a crime. of violence and interstate threats. Ms. Morgan and Mr. Sant were charged with interstate stalking,

and Ms. Morgan was also charged with destruction of government property. So there's a whole garden variety of charges in this one. On Tuesday afternoon in St. Paul, the defendants appeared in groups before Judge John Doherty, a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, who read the charges and asked if the defendants understood them. And Mr. Davis, a religious studies professor at McAleaster College, I hope I'm saying that right, in St. Paul. McAllister? McAllister?

That's probably better, yeah, McAllister College of McAleaster. Okay, yeah, Allison, in St. Paul told the judge, quote, I looked through the indictment at all the things that include my name, and I seem to be indicted for holding meetings. The indictment said that the defendants had often used information gleaned from group chats, whose members tracked. whose members tracked and monitored vehicles going to and from the Whipple Building, a hub of immigration agents. Those members who were not charged appear to be acting within the law. Prosecutors did not rule out the possibility of additional arrests, though. Yeah, I mean, keeping track of vehicles going in and out of a facility,

that is not impeding law enforcement. I don't care. I mean, maybe after that they do something totally different, but that is not going to be enough. Well, you remember when they were like you would see a bunch of videos of people just filming ICE officers and the ICE officers would go, US Code 1111, 111, baby, 111, look it up, as though videotaping them was somehow impeding them. Yeah, not even close. Okay, many allegations in the indictment appear to have stemmed from a promise made in January at the height of the protests by Cash Patel, the FBI director, to investigate encrypted chats used by activists to monitor immigration raids. The move was immediately denounced by free speech groups, including the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, as unlawful and contrary to the constitutional protections afforded to political groups. Now, federal prosecutors around the country have faced extreme pressure from the Justice Department officials in Washington to crack down on ICE protesters.

In January, for example, Akash Singh, a senior department official, spoke on a conference call with all of the country's 93-1. U.S. Attorney's offices and urged prosecutors to, quote, go big and go loud. Oh, wow. That's, by the way, the guy who works in Todd Blanche's office who denied, you know, being part of making sure that Abrago Garcia was arrested on criminal charges. He's king of the, king of the Blanche bros. Yeah, for sure. But the Justice Department has seen mixed results.

That's a really nice way to put it in the New York Times. Last month, prosecutors dismissed all charges against four protesters accused of interfering. That's the Broadview Six that went down to two of interfering with federal agents at an ICE facility in Chicago. After the judge in the case discovered an extraordinary series of grand jury violations. And I got to say, if I'm in this 15, the St. Paul 15 or whatever they're going to be named, the Whipple 15, I am definitely going to be trying to see their grand jury transcript. 100%. and Politico reports that the Justice Department is not going to actually just go back to the Broadview 6 for a second. The GOJ is not going to fight a demand by them to get paid according to defense attorneys and DOJ spokespeople.

Wow. Like to have their legal fees paid. DOJ is not fighting it. The highly unusual move appears to be a gesture by the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, Andrew Boutros, to quell the controversy over his handling of the Broadview Six. He's like, hey, remember when I totally broke all the grand jury rules here? If I just pay your legal bills, will you stop talking about it? Please go away.

Butros dropped all remaining charges in the case last month after acknowledging prosecutors engaged in grand jury misconduct, dismissing jurors who opposed charges, and communicating with grand jurors outside of their official meetings. Butros, a Trump appointee, later announced he was ordering, quote, sweeping internal reforms to the office's grand jury practices. Yeah, how about start with quit violating the rules? You don't need to reform the rules. They're already there. You just weren't following them. You need to reform yourself.

Yeah, maybe also second step might be trained some people. No. Anyway, defense attorneys have been unsatisfied by those changes. with several calling on U.S. District Court Judge April Perry to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential contempt of court by prosecutors and to order the government to pay the defendant's illegal feats. That's, I hope there is something like that. She has mentioned in a lot of the hearings, Rule 11 sanctions, she's mentioned issues with this. So I see something in the future of this and we'll keep an eye on it for you as well. as I'm just going to call him the Whipple 15. Roger.

While defendants who can afford it usually have to bear the cost of their own defense regardless of who prevails at trial, a federal law passed in 97 allows judges to award legal fees to a defendant who face prosecution tactics that are vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith. And I think that qualifies at the Broadview 6. In a court filing late Wednesday, defense lawyers said prosecutors took a noteworthy and rare step earlier this month by disclosing they did not intend. to oppose the defense request for fees.

Yeah, that's probably the, don't, we're not going to fight you on this. Please don't sanction us. The Sleeping Dog lie. Let's not have a, we don't need a special prosecutor. We don't need contempt stuff. We don't need any of that. Everybody calm down.

Calm down. All right, okay. Here's your money. Sorry about what we did. Sorry, sorry. It's not great. It's definitely not great. It's an ongoing theme.

Probably actually to this whole administration. in this entire show. But this episode specifically, we've got two more quick stories we need to cover and then maybe a listener question or two, but we have to take one more quick break. So everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Again, like I said, two more quick stories before we take listener questions. This first one comes from NPR. The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said that the confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton to serve as Director of National Intelligence has been postponed after Trump called Republicans to hit pause on his nominee.

The announcement from Senator Tom Cotton followed an overnight, middle of the night post from President Trump, who said he's delaying the nomination and blocking the renewal of a surveillance tool at the center of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in order to pressure the Senate to advance long-stalled voting bills and also advance another one of his nominees for a separate position. This is bizarre and bonkers this series of events, Andy,

because at first he really wanted to pass vise of 702. And the Republicans, he had Johnson and everybody on the Hill, we got to pass it. We have to pass vices 702 or our national security is going to crumble, you know, not putting Tulsi Gabbard in charge of it. Wouldn't do that. But this is the thing that's going to make it crumble. And the Democrats are like, not as long as you've nominated Bill Pulte to replace Tulsi Gabbard. And a lot of Republicans, too, they said, we're not going to advance. First of all, we want to reform 702 a little.

but we're not going to advance it until you get Palty out of the DNI. He's the mortgage guy. He's wholly unqualified. And so Trump sort of caved and said, all right, I'll put Jay Clayton. I'll nominate Jay Clayton. It also has no experience, but apparently the Republicans feel better about him than they did about Pulte. But now he's throwing the whole thing back on the Senate and saying, I'm not going to pass 702 or put in Clayton, J. Clayton, until you pass the state. save act. Yeah, and that's not going to happen. No, it's not. That's not going to happen.

He's, yeah, I don't, I can't, I can't figure him out. But one possibility is he just finally got pissed at the idea that he'd knuckled under to the pressure from Republican senators. But who knows? Yeah, yeah, and for him to be like, we're all going to die if we don't pass FISA and then to be like, I'm pulling it. Not me up, pulling it. Trump's attempt to derail the confirmation came as a surprise. a surprise social media post in the middle of the night, less than 12 hours before Clayton was scheduled to appear before his confirmation hearing. I'm sure it's quite a surprise to Mr. Clayton. Trump, who is currently at the G7 summit in France,

issued his demands in a post just before 4 a.m. Eastern on Truth Social. In the post, Trump said the plan to quickly approve Clayton was part of a deal with Democrats to derail his previous temperate. pick Bill Pulte, who has no intelligence experience and has been criticized as a political attack dog for the president. He went on to say he is demanding that reauthorization of the surveillance tool known as FISA Section 702 must be tied to passage of the Save America Act, the GOP voting bill that would require voters to show a document proving their U.S. citizenship like a passport or a birth certificate when they register to vote. The legislation failed in the Senate earlier this month.

He also tried to attach it to the budget reconciliation bill, and the parliamentarian was like, it's not great. So then he tried to pressure John Thune to fire the parliamentarian. And John Thune, when asked about whether he was going to fire the parliamentarian, said, no, just no. And so now he's just so desperate to pass this voter suppression bill that he's now tying it to FISA Section 702. Like, we're all good. Like, anybody is going to be like, oh, no, we can't get FISA Section 702 reauthorized, even though it's good until March of 2027 unless we kill voter voting rights. Like, like, people are going to fall for this. And I don't think John Dune is going to fire the parliamentarian either.

No. No. Anyway, that was a bizarre story. But then our second story is from the Times, the Supreme Court on Monday, turn down a request from the former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page and his hat. to revive a lawsuit that he had filed against a former FBI director, James Comey, and others. Others. Do you know any of those others? Yes, I know them all.

One of them particularly well. One of them I know really well, yeah. Mr. Page was surveilled during the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Page was never charged with a crime. Full stop. Most people don't know that, but it's true. It was not. But he sued Mr. Comey and seven others, including yours truly, over botched court applications permitting surveillance of his phone calls and emails. Lower court judges had dismissed Mr. Page's lawsuit challenging the surveillance by the FBI,

saying he waited too long to file his claims. Actually, and I do have a little insider knowledge here, there was a lot more doing than just that. The failure. was multi-layered. It was a statutory failure. He tried to seek relief in a way that's explicitly not permitted by the FISA statutes. There's all kinds of problems with this lawsuit, but timing was only one of them. He said public revelations of the surveillance, he meaning Mr. Page, had harmed his reputation and cut business opportunities, and he asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue. Was Rosenstein on there? I don't remember him being on there.

The guy who approved it, the Republican that worked for Bill Barr that approved that vice application? Okay. Yeah. In twice? In April, the Trump administration separately agreed to pay a $1.25 million settlement to claims brought by Mr. Page. But that is not enough. No. Nope.

The Justice Department back then issued a statement saying the inquiry into Page had relied on flawed and uncorroborated information calling it a political sham. None of that is true. The FISA warrant would have been approved even if the Steele dossier weren't involved with it. That action, however, did not end Mr. Page's attempt to sue former government officials. He got $1.25 million, but he still wanted to sue an effort that concluded with Monday's action by the Supreme Court. The court's action was announced as part of the publication of a routine list of cases. The justices have agreed to hear or declined to accept. The justices declined his. and did not include an explanation.

Well, that national nightmare's over. Oh, my God. You know, I kind of don't even believe it because he's lost at every level you can lose a civil case. He, you know, filing motions for summary judgment, denied, got his case dismissed, submitted for reconsideration,

was given it, lost again, filed an appeal, lost there, submitted for an en banc hearing, lost again. I mean, like, every time I, I think this thing is gone. My wonderful and hardworking and effective lawyer sends me an email out of the blue, like, well, he's back again. He's filed. Now he wants to go to the Supreme Court.

And he's not incarcerated, so he can't do what Galane Maxwell did when the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal and file a writ of habeas corpus. He can't, he's not incarcerated. There's no other way to keep this case alive. There shouldn't be. There shouldn't be. But I do feel kind of like Carter Page is like the zombie live. again in my life. It just never kind of goes away.

But anyway. I think of something. Yeah, we'll see. All right. Well, we've got time for a listener question. And if you have a question, there's link in the show notes. You can click on and send it to us. What do we have this week, Andy?

All right. So we have one question and one comment that we can cover as well. It'll be very quick at the end. But let's start with the question. It comes to us from Marion. And Marion writes about the, UFC cage match. A lot of interest in that this week. And she says, let's grant the people who brought the case against the UFC cage match on the South lawn had no standing, as the court declared.

Who had standing to bring such a case? Let's say no one has, if the court says no one has clear standing in this matter, does that mean that the American people have no say in what happens on publicly owned property for which we pay? We pay the president to live there and all his expenses. How is it possible. He gets to act as if he owns it and has no standing and none of us have standing to argue against that claim. That's a good question. So just to be clear, what we're talking about here is, Gus, just a couple days before last Sunday night's big UFC match on the White House lawn, two people from Virginia filed a federal lawsuit to try to stop the event. And they argued a couple things in their case. They basically said that the structure as it was erected on the White

House grounds was not authorized with congressional approval, which apparently is required for changes to the White House, although that seems to be happening all the time now. In other ways, it doesn't get congressional approval either. And they also said that the use of the White House grounds to stage a private for-profit sports event with all the promotional and branding opportunities will financially benefit the UFC president, Dana White, and Trump himself, because Trump apparently owns stock in the UFC's parent company. So what the court said was, I'm sorry, none of that qualified, you can't bring this suit because you don't have standing to sue. Now, to establish legal standing, particularly in U.S. federal court, there's basically a three-part test. It comes from an old Supreme

court case. The plaintiffs got to show that they suffered an injury in fact. Now, this has to be a tangible, like a concrete injury. It costs you money, maybe injured you physically, you know, maybe you lost a job over what happened, whatever. You also have to show a causal connection, which basically shows that the defendant's actions led directly to your injury. And finally, you have to show that the injury you're complaining of is redressable, meaning the courts can actually step in and kind of render an award that will compensate you for the injury you suffered. So in this case, they determined, I think they made the right call. These two plaintiffs weren't really personally affected in any way by what happened with the

UFC match, and so they were thrown out. Now, the question of who could possibly have standing, that's a tough one because here, the way you would remedy like moving forward without required congressional authorization, which if that's required here, I'm not even 100% sure, that's something that Congress has to stand up and enforce. They have to come after the White House. They have to hold hearings, do oversight, you know, take money out of the next budget to kind of penalize them for it, what have you. There's a limited number of causes of action, cases, laws basically, that allow for plaintiffs who are not directly impacted by a federal government action to bring a lawsuit to

basically enforce the law against the government. Very rare, and it has to be specifically granted by Congress when they passed the underlying law. The Voting Rights Act had that, essentially, right? Used to until it all got gutted. But here, I don't know who could have stepped forward and said, hey, I'm a citizen. I'm finding a lawsuit to stop the UFC. I just felt it was... Unless you're a competitive fighting thing and there was a no-bid contract awarded, or maybe you are a UFC fighter who doesn't want to get paid for this in crypto or, you know, somebody directly involved in, you know, got physically hurt setting up the claw or whatever. Yeah. And they also kind of said the judge in the case, I think it was Amit Mehta, seemed to say like, also what do you want me to do?

The thing is built. If you want to go on, it's hurting the environment or the lawn or whatever. First of all, I'm not sure how you're personally harmed by that, but it's built. And that kind of goes toward this administration's ask forgiveness, not permission way of living, where, you know, I'm just going to demolish the East Wing. Had anybody known about that, there were people who had standing in order to, you know, ensure that that destruction didn't happen. The commission that's required for these changes to national monuments, they could have filed a federal lawsuit to stop or, you know, to impose an injunction or something like that. But he comes in a public citizen a little harder. Yeah.

But you're right. And this is what I was talking about earlier in the show. They don't care. They're going to run right past the law. the rule, the policy, certainly the norm. And their attitude is like, you try to catch me. That's too late. What are you going to do?

That third prong of the Lujan factors has to be redressable. Right. What would you like for us to do? Yeah. Get back in a time machine and, yeah, it's, that's why they do the way they do. We fast and break things. That's something we've heard a lot of. All right.

Time for one quick comment. All right, great. I want to hear what you think about this. So Reed in Texas says, Hi, guys. I don't have a question, but Bojino has to be Haberman's source. I think it's Susie Wiles. And here's why.

Remember the recording of Donald Trump in the classified documents case in Bedminster, New Jersey, waving around a classified document about that from General Millie about attack plans for Iran? And Susie Wiles is there in the room, and there's a recording of that. That's why. And Susie Wiles has also, I think in the past, more recently, talked to reporters quite a bit about things that are going on to White House. But again, they did a thousand interviews for this book and talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of people.

But some folks are saying that the White House is concerned that there were. actually audio tapes of these conversations because they got it right word for word. They're not arguing that these things didn't happen. I agree with you. There are probably 50 sources for this book. And I think Dan Pongin is probably one of them. When those quotes that we read last week over the fight about the Epstein files release and he's like, I don't have anything to do with this. You're not taking me down with this. That's the kind of thing that someone says about themselves. no one would have remembered that in that kind of detail. I don't know, I can't say for sure, but it would be my guess.

It's my opinion that that was related by him. Now, you know, like I said, I take it for what it's worth. That's just my opinion. But look, they talk to Trump. They quote Trump. The amazing thing about Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and that whole team is that they get such incredible access to these people. They write repeated books about them that make them look awful,

and yet they still sit down and talk to them. Yeah, well, I'm sure Kosh Patel set up some polygraph tests and then start paying them $8,000 every pay period in bonuses to keep them quiet. But yeah, to imagine that a Trump White House, a Trump administration would not be leaky is a folly. These guys are always at each other's throats. They hate each other. That's how Boris Epstein found out about Corkrin

and all of the BS with the classified documents subpoena and they were just turning on each other. Just a big bag of rats. There you go. There you go. A thousand interviews for that book. Yeah. Anyway, great comments, great questions.

Send them to us, link in the show notes, and we appreciate you listening. I think we got it done in under an hour this weekend. We did. We did. We were doing it, pulling it off. Incredible. Well, we appreciate you listening. If you'd like to become a patron and support our work, you can do that at patreon.com slash muller, she wrote. Not only do you get this show ad free and early on the premium feed, you also get the daily beans and beans talk and plus like cool mugs and shirts and stuff like that. So again, that's patreon.com slash muller she wrote. And speaking of that, or we're having a patron gala this weekend. Yes, we are.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of our patrons there. It's going to be a really fun time. And we will then, I think next week, have a patron Zoom happy hour every month that we hop on and do Q&A with our patrons as well. It's like five bucks a month for all that. And it really, really helps us out with our work. So if you can, again, patreon.com slash muller-sh-sh-wrote. But thanks for listening. It's always free anyway.

So we appreciate you. Any last final, any last words? I almost said any last words. No, just come back next week for another hour of madness because it's not great. Yeah, we had so much news we couldn't even hit my hit me in the head with a bat this week. Yeah, we'll have a big one next week. We'll have a big bat next week. All right, everybody, it's not great.

Thank you so much. We'll see you next week. I'm Allison Gill. I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Allison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Design and editing is by Molly Hockey, with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.