Jack - Mueller, She Wrote Vol. 2

Episode Date: May 9, 2021

Hello and welcome to Mueller, She Wrote Volume 2. I’m your anonymous host AG.May is a very important month in Mueller World. It was May 2020 that we ran our series finale. It was May that we first had Andrew McCabe on the show. I dined in Utah with the McCabes in May 2019, and we won the Webby that month. It was the month after I was told my government job was moving across the country: a trick employed by Mick Mulvaney to get rid of government employees they didn’t like. I only found out later that I was being investigated and my social media was being monitored at the highest levels of the Department of Veterans Affairs.Also in May 2019, Tish James opened her investigation into the Trump Organization, which is now being criminally investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney. And that same month, Trump sued to block the House subpoena for the Mazars documents. Cohen reported to prison that month as well after being convicted for his criminal activity with an unindicted co-conspirator, Individual 1.During that month, we were all reeling from Bill Barr’s mischaracterization of the Mueller Report findings. Bill Barr had just testified to Congress that the decision whether to prosecute those ten instances of obstruction of justice was HIS, and said that it was an OLC memo that gave him that authority. As we’re learning this week, almost exactly two years later, that was a lie. We also learned that in meetings dating back to 2017, Rod Rosenstein cried, asked to wear a wire, and told Trump and Barr that he could “land the plane” in reference to ensuring Trump wouldn’t be prosecuted.We also learned in May 2019 that Mueller had gone to paper. He had written a letter to Bill Barr calling him out for misrepresenting the work of the Special Counsel's Office and the Mueller Report. Then we learned that letter was actually the SECOND letter Mueller penned to Barr. There were also two other meetings and a phone call on March 24th, 25th, and 27th about the release of Mueller's findings, but we’ve never seen those notes or the other letter. Senator Blumenthal has asked Barr during testimony if there were notes. Barr said yes, and when Blumenthal asked for the notes, Barr said “why should I give them to you?”So May is a big month for us here at Mueller, She wrote, and this May is no different. With all the Mueller news that dropped this past week, I decided it was time to dust off the Fantasy Indictment League and record an episode.

I'm Greg Oliar. Four years ago, I stopped writing novels to report on the crimes of Donald Trump and his associates. In 2018, I wrote a best-selling book about it, Dirty Rubels. In 2019, I launched Proveil, a bi-weekly column about Trump and Putin, spies and mobsters, and so many traders! Trump may be gone, but the damage he wrought will take years to fully understand. Join me and a revolving crew of contributors and guests as we try to make sense of it all. This is Preveil. This is Andrew McCabe, and you're listening to Mueller's She Wrote. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs.

That's what he said. That's what I think 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, a tree, and 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 herring. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello and welcome to Muller She Wrote Volume 2. I'm your anonymous host, A.G. And I will be taking you through this week's Mueller news. I am back after a year of being away. Of course, I've been on the daily beans, so I haven't really gone anywhere.

But May is a very important month in Mueller world. It was May 2020 that we ran our series finale of Mueller's She Wrote. It was May that we first had Andrew McCame on the show. It was May when I first dined in Utah with the McCames in 2019. And we also won the webby that month. It was the month after I was told my government job was moving across the country.

A trick employed by Mick Mulvaney to get rid of government employees they don't like. I only found out later I was being investigated and my social media was being monitored at the highest levels at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Also in May 2019, Tish James opened her investigation into the Trump organization. Now that's been opened over at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office too. They're criminally investigating that organization.

And that same month, Trump sued to block the House subpoena for the Mazaar's documents. Cohen reported to prison in May of 2019, as well as he was criminally convicted for activity with unindicted co-conspirator, individual one, if you'll remember. Also, during that month, we were all reeling from Bill Barr's mischaracterization, gross mischaracterization of the Mueller report findings. Bill Barr had just testified to Congress that the decision, whether to prosecute those 10 instances of obstruction of justice, was his to make and cited an Office

of Legal Counsel memo that gave him that authority. And said he had an Office of Legal Counsel memo that advised him that these crimes in the Mueller Report did not rise to the level of criminal obstruction of justice. And they do, at least four of them, meet all three of the criteria that are necessary to meet that criminal level of obstruction of justice, at least at the federal criminal level. And it was all very, very well laid

out. So, yeah, he said that there was this memo that said Trump was innocent. And they were like, well, let's see the memo. And he's like, no, no. So he's been hanging onto that crew filed a lawsuit, as we know, we'll get into that in a minute. We also learned in meetings dating back to 2017, Rod Rosenstein cried, asked to wear a wire, and then told

Trump and Barr that he could land the plane in reference to the Mueller investigation. We also learned in May 2019 that Mueller had gone to paper. He had written a letter, two letters actually, to Bill Barr calling him out for misrepresenting the work of the Special Counsel's Office in the Mueller Report. And we learned that letter was actually the second letter, Mueller penned, as I said. And there were two other meetings and a phone call on March 24th, 25th and 27th about the release of the Mueller findings. But we've never seen those notes or that other letter.

Now Senator Blumenthal asked Barr during testimony to Congress if there were notes of that phone call. And Barr said yes. And when Blumenthal asked for the notes, Barr said, why should I give them to you? So May is a big month for us here at Moller Sheerot. And this May is no different. With all the Mueller news that dropped this past week, I decided it was time to dust off the fantasy indictment league and recording episodes.

So here we are. There's a lot of news to get to. So let's do it with just the facts. So back in the day, right after the Mueller report came out, Barr cited that OLC memo drafted in 2019 that he said it advised him that Trump didn't commit obstruction of justice. He couldn't prosecute that the instances, the very detailed crimes that Mueller laid out in volume two of his report, did not rise to the level of criminal destruction of justice.

He also told Congress that because Mueller didn't make an obstruction determination, that meant Mueller wanted Barr to do it. That wasn't true either. Mueller wrote a couple letters about it, as I said, only one of which we'd seen. I'd like to see the rest. Barr was asked for that memo, and the bar Department of Justice refused to hand it over. So crew and Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request to FOIA lawsuit and sued to get that memo. Just this week, Amy Berman, that's Judge Jackson, if you're nasty, has ruled written an opinion

on this case. She is determined that the bullshit memo bar based his decision not to prosecute Trump for obstruction on has to be disclosed to the citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington. Two years ago, as I said, crew filed that lawsuit, DOJ responded, but they helped back certain documents under exemption five of the FOIA rules citing something called deliberative process privilege and attorney client privilege. Crew fought back and Judge Jackson agrees with Crew. And we'll go over her opinion in depth with Andy McCabe a little later in the show.

Merrick Garland has two weeks to respond to Judge Jackson by either appealing her ruling or handing over the memo to crew. How he responds could be an indicator of how he may proceed with holding the former administration accountable. Might give us a little insight into his appetite for holding the previous administration accountable. And accountability is very important. I'm going to go over a story, an opinion op-ed that Joyce Vance wrote about that for MSNBC this week.

I'll be going over that later in the show. And speaking of FOIA, BuzzFeed got another 300 pages or so of underlying molar investigation emails and texts and memos. And in them, we learned that Don Jr. Ivanka and Kushner were way more involved in Russia talks than previously known, at least to the public. I mean, we knew. Ivanka reportedly informed the co-chair of her father's campaign that her brother, Don Jr. could make recommendations

for military advisors, while Kushner offered details about his private meetings with Henry Kissinger. We also learned that in January 2017, Manifort sent an email to K.T. McFarland. That's Flynn's number two. Saying, I have some important information I want to share with you that I picked up on my travels over the last month. Manifort was already, you know, need deep in shit by this point. She immediately fired off an email to Flynn saying, hey, given all that's going on, should I meet with him? And Flynn said, I would not meet with him until we're in the hot seats.

Unknown who he is working for. And perception would not be good, especially now. They even knew it. They even knew it. They even knew it. The record show Flynn soliciting Trump's strategist, Bannon, as far back in September 2015, before Bannon officially joined the campaign, Steve, he wrote, just reaching a back out. Let me know if Mr. Trump needs any help with national security, intel, and intel community issues of foreign policy. So that's, I think Flynn's first reach out.

That December, he wrote to Cory Lewndowski and said, I, I wanted to send this to you this past week, but it'd forgotten and share a link to an article from Russia State Run Sputnik News that quoted Flynn saying the US must work with Russia and Arab countries to defeat ISIS. He says, this is an FYI, but something Trump should at least be aware of. I have been very outspoken on the issue at this point in the conflict with our current administration has run out of good options. Also, I met with President Putin last Thursday in Moscow.

We actually sat at dinner together. Merry Christmas. I don't even know what to say to that. Bragging about sitting next to Putin. It's disgraceful. Buzzfeed also got text messages. There's communications about Flynn's communications with Kislyak. These are texts about Flynn getting in touch with Kislyak. By the way, Flynn's calls with Kislyak are the ones he lied to the FBI about and then

pled guilty to twice. And then was pardoned for. On December 29, Flynn got a text from an unknown person with a link to a New York time story about Obama's Russia sanctions. And Flynn responded, oh, time for a call. And the unknown person said yes, and then Flynn responded, okay, tit for tat with Russia not good. Russian Ambo reaching out to me today. Now that was fast. He sure knew how to get Kislyak on the phone. Look at his blit. And this from

BuzzFeed's Leopold and Chromier, this is their story, quote, the documents revealed the array of individuals who sought out Flynn for his influence with the campaign, a vendor promised to knock 100 grand from the price of a data program that would conduct influence operations. Someone else wanted to share declassified FBI document that involved a contract to investigate servers. The document does not specify which servers. Flynn wrote, get me a number. Even WikiLeaks tried to contact Flynn. In June 2016, this is a month before WikiLeaks released their first tranche of emails that they stole from the DNC.

They reached out to see if Flynn would be a guest speaker on a live stream of Julian Assange. Assange was discussing Brexit and hoped the conversation would serve as a counterprogramming to some of the usual news discussion shows. Assange had seen Flynn on another TV appearance and was very interested in his perspective. Flynn's camp quickly declined, though, with one unidentified associate writing to another,

do we really want the general associated with this gentleman? No. In May 2016, Barbara Leiden, whose husband Michael wrote a book with Flynn, was in frequent contact with him during the campaign, reached out to a contact about what she said was a big story. And this is going to sound familiar to you because we reported on this way back in the day. Barbara Leiden was the lady who was finding the Hillary emails on the dark web, and they couldn't verify them, remember that? After mentioning her connection to Flynn and Newt Gingrich, yeah. She said her and a colleague

wanted to brief that person on material we have found on the Deepen Dark Web. Deepen Dark Web, regarding stories you have been pursuing, on the Deep and dark web. Deep and dark web, regarding stories, you have been pursuing. On the deep and dark web. The nature of the material isn't disclosed in this email, but Leaden said she hoped to speak with the person before the information was locked up because of its sensitivity, quote. According to the Special Counsel's report, Leaden had been seeking emails that were purportedly hacked from Clinton. In September, lead and claim to have found a batch of them, but in advisor determined they were not authentic.

That was according to Muller, in the Muller report. And of course, what pile of crimey documents would be complete without some stuff from Roger Stone? In an email, he sent August 18th, 2016 to Bannon with the subject line, congratulations. Trump wrote or Stone wrote, Trump can still win, but time is running out. Early voting begins in six weeks. I don't know how to win this, but it ain't pretty.

Campaigns have never been good at playing the new media. Lots to do, let me know when you can talk. And Bannon responded, Let's talk ASAP. And we know what that led to. In other news, the Federal Election Commission said on Thursday that it has dropped the case looking into WeatherTrump, violated election laws with a payment of $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to stormy Daniels that was paid by Michael Cohen as we know. Michael Cohen's in prison for this. The FEC doesn't think that they should look into it. The payment was never reported on Trump's campaign filings. Cohen would go on to say that

Trump had directed him to arrange the payments with two women during the 2016 race and would apologize for his involvement. He would sentence to prison for breaking those campaign finance laws tax evasion also and lying to Congress. Quote, it was my own weakness and blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness overlight. It's fucking essential. Mr. Cohen said of Trump in court in 2018 while Cohen has served time in prison. Like I said, Trump has not faced consequences for being individual one and his involvement with this payment. Now, the election commission split evenly three Republicans, three dams.

They declined to proceed. It was a closed-door meeting in February that they voted on this spent like almost three months. Two Republican commissioners voted to dismiss the case. Two Democrats voted to move forward. There was one absence and a Republican recusal. So why was this other Democrat absent? That's what I want to know. And I can't find that information. I'm looking forward. I'm asking that question because if that to Democrat had been there, we would have an investigation. This decision

was announced Thursday of this past week. Two of the Democratic commissioners on the FEC, that's Sean and Bersard who's and the current current chairwoman, no, excuse me, Shana is the chairwoman, Ellen Wine Trabbs is the other Democrat. They objected to this vote. They want to pursue the case. So, if I learn more about where that third Democrat was, just busy that day, get something better to do. Busy that day?

Got something better to do? Finally, the Justice Department. Under the former guy, secretly obtained the phone records for three reporters at the Washington Post from the early months of the Trump administration. This has just been disclosed this past Friday. Prosecutor sought records. This is a, I remember reading from the Times here, prosecutors sought records for the reporter's work, home, and cell numbers from April to July 2017 in an attempt to figure out who had taken them. Quote, we are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access

to the communications of journalists. That's from Cameron Barr, the Washington Post executive editor, acting executive editor. Quote, the Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion to the activities of reporters doing their jobs and activity protected under the First Amendment. The Department's decision to seek a court order for the records which came in 2020 would have required the approval of da da da da you got it bill bar. The Justice Department under the Trump administration also prosecuted

a former Senate aide over his contacts with three reporters in a case where prosecutors secretly seized a year's worth of New York Times reporter's phone and email records. Justice Department spokesman said Friday in a statement, while rare, the department follows the established procedures within its media guidelines policy when seeking legal processes to obtain telephone toll records and non-content email records from media members as part of a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. That's this justice department. He added, quote, the targets of these investigations are not the news media recipients, but rather

those with access to the national defense information who provided it to the media and thus failed to protect it as lawfully required. It was not clear what prompted the Justice Department to seize the Post's records, but in July 2017, the newspaper published an article about Sergei Kislyak, who was then the Russian ambassador to the United States. And Jeff Sessions, we know who he was, race is possible. The Post reported the two men had discussed the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election when Mr. Sessions was a Republican senator from Alabama and a prominent supporter

of Mr. Trump. You'll hear him in our introduction sequence. Talking about lying, excuse me, lying to Congress about that very meeting. The article referred to US surveillance intercepts, which are highly classified, and some of the most closely held secrets in the government. Beyond the phone records of the post reporters, Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller, and let's see Adam Entus, who now works at the New Yorker. Prosecutors at the DOJ also secured a court order to obtain meta data for the reporter's work email accounts.

New York Times also reported in June 2017 that surveillance intercepts appeared to indicate that Sergei Kisley act discussed a private meeting he had with Jeff Sessions at a Trump campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Ring a bell. All this old school news just popping back up. The Times has not received any indication that its reporter's records were seized, but I am not cool. I'm not cool with this justice department's response to this news. It sounds to me like they're trying to keep their nose clean at the cost of accountability, not owning up to what

the department did. I hope that that's, I really hope that that's not indicative of how Garland intends to respond to judge Jackson's order to release the bar memo or to hold any of the previous administration accountable. But this is just a department of justice spokesperson. I think we'll be able to get a better feeling once we know how Garland responds. All right.

Time for a little shot and for Eida. Shad and for Eida. From Politico, Calouti Rudy Giuliani has reduced the size of his personal entourage according to three people, I guess, who used to be in his entourage. I don't know. Giuliani laid off several staffers and independent contractors in the last couple of weeks. That's according to one of the sources.

Yeah, and they said one of the ousted employees has been told that the former New York mayor was seeking to cut costs. Giuliani has enlisted a part-time driver, Eric, the son of his friend, Maria Ryan. That's according to one of the people familiar with the matter, but he no longer moves around Manhattan

with the full complement of as many as five people. He keeps around him. My Campbell's leave. He's got an entourage. The news of Giuliani shrinking entourage comes after years of stories, suggesting he might have financial difficulties, or at least seeking creative ways to make or save money as he manages his massive legal woes. He was recently rated by the FBI as we know. And he faces a intensifying criminal probe and has reportedly faced a cash crunch before, with multiple divorces taking a toll on his balance sheet, Tiny Violin. on his balance sheet, Tiny Violin.

Yeah, it's interesting to note to, you know, Cohen, it was rated, I believe in April, and in dieted in August. So Rudy, rated in May, in dieted in September. I don't know, we'll see. This investigation's been going on for a while though. So it might just be a matter of dusting it off, but they just got all this stuff. And they're going to have to, they're going to, you know, the prosecutors have already asked for a special master. Whoops. Remember

and they're going to put together a taint team to go through all of this stuff. It's just exactly what happened to Cohen. They're going to have to go through all, because it's the president's lawyer, right? So they're going to have to go through all this stuff and decide what's attorney-clant privilege. The crimes they're looking for are not, no crime can be protected by attorney-clant privilege. We've gone over that many multiple times called the crime fraud exception. There's also the third party exception. I don't know if Rudy is intentionally an idiot about understanding the law, but if he's

not, if he's actually just an idiot, he may have stepped in it. So we'll see what happens with that, but that's the kind of timeline I'd be looking at. A little Rudy stuff, Rudy might have more than Cohen, but what's that? April, May, June, July. I guess what's that? Four months, five months. We'll see what happens. Anyway, I guess the rubles from Fertosh have dried up, especially since Parnis and

Fruiman were indicted and Fraud Guarantee had to shut down. Oh no! Anyway, that's the shot in Florida for you. Now it's time for a little sabotage. According to the telegraph, Chris Steele produced a second dossier when Trump was in office that contains, quote, raw intelligence making further claims on Russian meddling in the US election and also references to claims regarding the existence of further sex tapes. It is of note that this dossier has different sources than the first one, but we don't

know who those sources are. So now we have multiple sources. And that's triangulating the p-tap. I think it's real. And two years ago this week, Andy McCabe appeared on Muller Sheerot for the very first time. Let's listen to a clip. Then in the fall of 2016, we received for the first time the steel information.

So that information collected by Chris Steele, who was a known reliable source to the FBI, that is provided to us after the Russia case had been opened. We didn't know quite what to make of this deal information. He'd given us, as I said, solid and reliable information at past, so it came kind of from a well-known source. But the information itself was broad and controversial and alleged all sorts of things who set about the kind of meticulous process of trying to vet that information

that we received from Chris Steel. We'll be right back with Andy McCabe. Stay with us. Hey, everybody, it's A.G. and I am happy and proud to announce that this May 25th, we are launching our very own podcast network. It's called MSW Media and it's going to feature the work of some incredibly talented and intelligent people, including Glenn Kirschner with Justice Matters on topic with Renata Marriotti, prevailed by Greg Oliar,

opening arguments with Andrew Torres and Thomas Smith, the bureau with Frank Fagluzzi, which debuts the same day I launched the network, which is May 25th. And that's just to name a few. Of course, there's the Daily Beans, Mueller She Wrote, and our newest show, Clean Up on Idle 45. Our network is Woman Run and Veteran Owned owned and our mission is to curate news, politics, and justice, and engage voters so we can win in 2022 and be on. I am so proud of this community and this group of content creators so please check us out at mswmedia.com and

listen wherever you get your podcasts. Everybody, welcome back. Please welcome the former acting director, the FBI author of the book, The Threat, Andrew McCabe. Andrew, welcome back to Muller She Wrote, volume two. Thank you. Thank you. It's very good to be here.

Thanks for having me back. It was two years ago this week that you first appeared on Muller She Wrote to talk about Crossfire Hurricane, and the episode was called Muller Goes to Paper. And that was a significant thing because we had talked, and I think I brought this question up to you at your Q&A, at your book signing in Salt Lake, same week, two years ago this week, because I was trying to kind of convey because I was trying to kind of convey the importance of Mueller going to paper. Can you talk a little bit about that response to Barr's conclusions about the Mueller report?

Sure. I think you have to think about that response in a couple different ways. First is timing, right? So Mueller delivers the report to bar on March 22nd. Bar famously delivers his letter to Congress on the 24th. And on the 25th, Mueller apparently makes his first complaint to Bar about the letter that Bar had given to Congress. So this was like an immediate and strong reaction from a guy who does not react to things. And so that's really the second context I think

you need to think about when you look at these responses at Motherhead. He is not a person who complains, who, you know, mouth soft when he thinks he's been wounded or offended or something like that. He is a very, very reticent kind of keep your comments to yourself type of person, especially to someone who he would see as his boss or his superior. He's not the type to kind of make points after the fact. So, for Mueller to have written that letter and delivered it to bar, which I think I think you did on the 27th, just an incredible, he had to have been absolutely infuriated by what Barr wrote and said about his report. And I think that comes out in the letter. If you really read it for the nuance that is in it, I think it's a very, very strong statement

that he is saying you have grossly misrepresented our work and our conclusions. So I think it's a highly significant act. Yeah, a bar called it, Snitty. Remember? Yeah, it's for Bard to kind of try to minimize it in that way and try to couch it as like, you know, the complaints of a teenage girl or something. I don't even know where Senniti comes from. That's the only

thing I can think of. It's just another effort by Bar to misrepresent and kind of spin a comment by Muller to try to downplay it and make it seem like it's something insignificant and not worthy of real consideration, which of course it was. But now we know from so many perspectives that that was William Barr. William Barr is a guy who I think blatantly misrepresented the work of the intentionally,

misrepresented the work of the Mueller report from the very beginning, and he did it to protect President Trump. Yeah, and if you read that letter, that Mueller letter carefully, it indicates that there was a previous letter or communication. So there's actually two, and we also know about from questioning a bar during, you know, a couple of years ago, in his testimony about this to Congress, Bloomingfall asked about notes for McCall that he had with Mueller about the release

of the Mueller report. And Barr said, yeah, I have those notes, and he's like, well, give them to me. And Barr was like, why would I do that? He actually said, why would I give those to you? Yeah. Which to me, that's逆ty. But, you know, six or one... so now we've got we know

that there were multiple communications i think at least five known communications between muller and bar in the days following the his his infamous letter to congress and do you know have any kind of i mean we see the one letter but do you have any sort of feel for what was in the other letter or what took place during those phone calls? No, I sure don't. I wish I did.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to have listened in on those calls. But again, you know, Mueller, excuse me, Mueller, not the kind of guide, a continued-to-pound an issue after the fact. And I should say, Zebli is the same type of person. Aaron Zebli, who was Mueller's deputy on the special council team, also not someone

to complain after the fact. So the fact that the two of them, and I would expect that Zebli had a strong hand in the drafting of that letter or those letters, if they're more than one, they both must have really been compelled to try to write this wrong, to try to undo this misrepresentation of their, you know, significant amount of work. Unfortunately, it was to not much of fact.

Yeah, and we later learned that the redactions that Barr had made to the report were inappropriate according to a federal judge and was ordered to pull some of those red action bars off, and what we found underneath was a damning, just rebuke of how involved Russia was, the sweeping size and scope of their interference in our 2016 election, which bar was simply trying to mask. That's right. That's right. I always kind of felt, just my opinion, opinion that that was really that was the point or the volume

I should say that Mueller that Mueller felt much more strongly about. I think that Mueller you could tell from his testimony to Congress and you really tried to kind of footstomp that the you know we need to take heed of this malign activity that that had undermined the sanctity of our election, and it really takes seriously what the Russians had done to us across the scope of the campaign and leading up to it. So, yeah, I think that once again, Bar knew what was important, he knew what needed to be hidden, and he did that very effectively by misrepresenting the report initially,

holding it back for a few weeks, giving the president plenty of time, air time and oxygen to scream and yell that he'd been completely exonerated, which of course is false. So yeah, he set that up very nicely for his boss. Yeah, and what a shame that a lot of Republicans on the Hill not only deny or want to ignore the fact that the scope and the breadth of Russian interference in our elections is still ongoing today, but they did it to protect one guy. Yeah, that's right. So let's put the nation's security at risk to save, you know,

the political golden goose, I guess. I really not very different than what we see is happening right now in the aftermath of the January 6 attack, where you have so many Republicans on the hill who are low to confront the seriousness of that attack and want to basically talk about anything other than their supporters who attack democracy, right? They're all in on, you know, myths about hamburgers and Dr. Seuss, but let's not talk about the attempted insurrection. Yeah, putting together their voter suppression and anti-trans bills. Exactly. Exactly. Okay.

I think that the border crisis is over though, thankfully, but it'll be back. I have a, I have a feeling for sure. Well, now we have a new sheriff in town, right? Merrick Garland and judge Amy Berman, judge Jackson, if you're nasty, we call her, who has a great deal of experience with cases generated from the Mueller investigation and crossfire Hurricane. And she's read a bunch of stuff in camera.

I know she got to read the entirety of the Roger Stone unredacted portions of the Mueller report. And I was a jealous person at that particular point. I just imagine her like with a pipe and a silk robe by the fire reading the Rochester little masterpiece theater maybe something totally. But now she has ordered the Department of Justice which is now belongs to Garland, well belongs to the people, excuse me, but Garland is at the helm to hand over an

Office of legal counsel memo and this isn't the OLC memo that we all were talking about everywhere that says you can't indict a sitting president president That's not this memo that memo is from a long time ago This memo was written I think in 2019 But she wants to hand over, she wants the Department of Justice to hand over that OLC memo that bar sighted as the reason he exonerated Trump. You know, he said in, in, you know, in conjunction with advice from the Office of Legal Counsel and the paydag, the principal assistant deputy attorney general, O'Callaghan, they worked together and he was legally advised, apparently, to make the call to not prosecute Trump.

And that nothing in this volume too rose to the level of obstruction of justice, which is just not correct. But now she's given him two weeks to hand that over. I mean, this feels like a watershed moment for him, for the Department of Justice, and how he responds. It might give us some insight as whether it is whether into whether or not he has an appetite for holding the past administration accountable or whether he kind of wants to do the move forward and forget about it thing. What do you see about that? Oh, I think, I think this whole thing is absolutely fascinating, but I'm willing to admit that I'm a geek

and you have to go fairly far down the legal rabbit hole to fully understand it. So before I get to Garland, if I could just add a little bit to what you said, so this all comes out of a FOIA action, right? So an independent government watchdog group sent in a request for this and some other memos, but this is the one they really wanted. And under the law, when requested, the government has to provide the documents that have been requested under FOIA, unless the request falls into one of nine exceptions. And the DOJ resisted turning this over under what's known as exception number five. And exception number five allows any government agency, in this case, DOJ, to refuse to turn

over records that are deliberative, deliberative in nature. And that means records of discussions or advice or assessments that were part of the process leading to a decision. And it's for good reason, right? Because you want government agencies to be able to have discussions, open discussions, get legal advice and things like that. And when the decision is made, really the most important thing is the record of the decision. You don't really need all the back and forth. So DOJ tried to protect this memo by saying it

would have been produced for bar as he tried to consider whether or not the information in the Mueller report substantiated obstruction of justice charges against the president. And if you look at the timeline alone, it punctures that balloon. Because as I mentioned before, Mueller turns over the report on the 22nd of March 2019, Bar writes his letter and sends it to Congress on the 24th. Well, this memo is dated March 24th, 2019. So if he actually read the 400-page report, asked his lawyers to write a memo,

they thought about it, did some incredible legal research, and submitted a memo with accompanying affidavits to him all on the same day, and he managed to process all that material in what, 36 hours or something like that. And then it was all part of his decision on the 24th. Well, Amy Burmidjackson basically said, I think not. She had the advantage of reading the entire report, the unredacted version. And what amazed me is she said that the redacted pieces of the report prove conclusively that this report was produced after the decision had been made

to basically give Trump a free pass. So it was not pre-decisional. And DOJ's effort to try to hide it, to hold it, to refuse to turn it over as a pre-decisional document was in itself essentially a lie. Now, Jackson goes on to say that the affidavits filed by attorneys in DOJ in support of this motion should not be given any credence. Jackson refers in her motion to the fact that it's not only factually inaccurate, the representations that they've been made to that they made to the court and the course of this litigation.

So you lied to the court nicely done. Are you talking about the bars claims that this falls under the ambit of deliberative process privilege and attorney client privilege because she tears them apart. She tears those assertions apart. Yeah, she basically says, no, that's a lie and the memo in its unredacted form

proves that, right? And she says that it was done in bad faith. I mean, so for a sitting federal court judge to accuse the Department of Justice and the Attorney General and other attorneys who worked on this memo of basically misleading the court in bad faith, I mean, that is unbelievably significant. And it's, I don't know how. So now I get back to your question about Merrick Arlen. How does he handle this?

So he's in a very tough, well, maybe not so tough in the spot. It's a, it's time for a really significant decision on his part. Yeah, well, I do have to take a quick break, though, and I want to talk a little bit more about this decision because there are other reasons he may not want to hand this over. So we'll take a quick break. And I'm sorry, if we're laughing there in the middle of what you were talking about with the timeline, because you and I have both worked for the government, and I was just, I was just chocolateing that there's no way you get anything from any office or legal counsel in one day.

No way. No chance. No office or legal counseling. No way. No chance. Never have takes. It could take years. All right. We'll be right back. Everybody stick around. I'm former FBI assistant director Frank Figluzzi.

Join me on a journey deep inside the world's premier law enforcement agency to decode the mysteries and challenges of today's FBI. In his first-of-the-kind podcast, we'll sit down with active duty FBI personnel who reveal their mission, their cases, and their lives. The commonalities that we're looking at with the Highway Zero killings initiative are dealing with the long haul trucking industry. These offenders, as they plan preparing to consider for their attack, don't do that in the vacuum. Even if they end up alone at the end, that doesn't mean they started off alone.

The pattern of this bed spread, what stores it would have been sold at, an outlet for tips that lead us to possibly identifying that victim. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think so. Let's go inside the Bureau with Frank Fagluse.

Let's go inside the Bureau with Frank Fagluse. Let's go inside the Bureau with Frank Fagluse. Everybody, welcome back to Mueller, she wrote Volume 2. I'm talking to Andy McCabe, who it's our two-year anniversary, Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote. Andy, of you appearing on Mueller, she wrote that the anniversary. Yes, you as well. My happy anniversary, I guess.

And and we were right before the break we were talking about Merrick Garland having to make this decision by I believe she concludes her her order saying May 17th. You have to May 17th to to turn this over to crew not to her. She's already seen it. to crew, not to her, she's already seen it. It's to turn it over to crew who will undoubtedly make it public. I'm assuming. And I guess what Merit Garland's position is on unredacting her order because there's a lot of redactions in her ruling here. That's right.

And I'm assuming that's because it's about the content of what she's asking the Department of Justice to hand over. Yeah. So she says in the order that she's basically discussing in those sections of her order that are redacted, she's discussing actual pieces of the still redacted memo. So until DOJ releases that memo without redactions, she's keeping her discussion other redacted.

But I would assume that once this thing comes out, if it does in fact come out, that she'll pull the redactions from her order, I mean, that would make sense. Yeah, and less of course, the Department of Justice appeals that, or writes as something where they don't want that to happen. And a lot of people are positing,

if if Merrick Garland appeals this, or tries to continue to withhold this document that he's not interested in holding the former guy accountable. And if it's kind of like a, like I said, it's like a litmus test on which path he's going to be taking. And but I do want to make clear there are other reasons he may want to appeal this. That's right. That's absolutely right. So he is in kind of a tough spot here. The

deliberative privilege is very important to all government agencies. And so now DOJ is in the position of having to essentially defend the privilege. And there may be other arguments that the DOJ attorneys can make about, you know, to kind of try to convince the judge or at the next level, the appellate level that they weren't in fact straying from the bounds of the privilege as Judge Jackson determined. It is also possible that they don't want to just concede, like the state, the judge's statements about the conduct of the department in this motion are so damaging

that if they just let that stand and don't concede it in any way, they're really taking that hit, you know, that punch straight in the nose. And Garland may not be comfortable doing that. He may feel like he needs to, you know, defend the department to some degree. However, any defense of this activity

on the part of the William Barr Justice Department, puts him in a very tough spot. I'm going to guess that he probably doesn't want to do that. He clearly feels very differently about many issues. It seems to be absolutely committed to transparency and the rule of law. He's been very open about many issues. It seems to be absolutely committed to transparency and the rule of law. He's been very open about what his priorities are

for the Justice Department. And I'm sure that on some level, he is trying to kind of write the ship and restore Americans' faith in the department and also restore what is likely very low morale within the department among the career professionals that have been there for a long time. So he's in a tough spot. You know, I don't know that he can completely say, okay, you're right.

We give and just walk away. But he'll have to mount an artful defense of the department that doesn't defend kind of clearly bad things that Judge Jackson pointed out. He might, I mean, Amy Berman-Jackson's order there is so well written. I mean, Garland could respond with the importance of the deliberative process privilege and reiterate how sacrosanct that is, but then say, this doesn't fall under that. And I can't in good conscience uphold, you know,

he knows what's in that memo. Yeah, he does. He does. And if it's as bad as Judge Jackson has put in her order, he's going to have a hard time. Like there's, in order to move forward with an appeal, he has to present an issue that is, you know, eligible for decision on appeal.

And so if he just comes out and makes kind of blanket statements about the importance of the privilege, but doesn't actually kind of fight her on an issue or a finding, then there's no appeal there. So it's really, he's either got to go all in or stay all out. Kind of, so it'll be interesting to see how he handles it. He's smarter than I am. So I think of something that I have not thought of.

That's for sure. Yeah. And I have a feeling it's going to be like a, it's going to be, he's going to em night Shyamalanas. He's going to, he's going to give a whole bunch of reasons to why he shouldn't hand it over, but then hand it over. Yeah, that could be. Let's just hope he doesn't give us Bobby Ewing and Dallas. I go, it never happens from the beginning. You're in the shower the whole time. Han shot first. No. Yeah, so, but the other thing here is that if there's an investigation into this, because,

you know, I don't know if this act that Barr did rises to the level of obstruction of justice or anything like that, lying to Congress about this memo specifically a couple times, 2001, I don't know if there's an investigation going on and releasing this could, you know, as always, harm any open and ongoing investigations. If it's part of an open and ongoing investigation, that could be another reason. It's not released. And he can't hand it over to the court under seal because, like I said, she already has it.

This is for crew. Yeah. You know, maybe he can come up with, okay, you're right, we failed on the deliberative privilege, but it qualifies under exception number, whatever. Maybe they switch horses midstream and go with a different FOIA exception. It'd be kind of hard to do that

this late in the litigation. And I think that the federal courts, particularly in DC, have been taking a much more, kind of, I don't want to say activist, because that misrepresents it, but a more aggressive position against the government and FOIA matters, which I'm very grateful for, because it was just such a position with respect to a different crew foyer case that was asking for records of my termination that really got bound up in the criminal investigation of me enforced the government to, you know, to ultimately publicly state that they had closed the investigation of me. So yeah, I'm glad they've been enforcing the FOIA law and the way that they have been

and really holding the government's feet to the fire. Yeah, that's a really good point. What are some of the other stand out parts of this decision to you? Because I know you've got your redacted copy there in front of you I've read it like five times and you annotated so I'm excited to know what your favorite parts are here. Yeah, I mean so geeky Right, I'm sitting here like I haven't had this much fun giggling over a court filing since John Gleason Gleason wrote his amicus whatever that was brief and then Michael Flynn case which I thought was Gleason wrote his amicus, whatever that was, brief in the Michael Flynn case, which I thought was. Gleason's was so good.

This is entertainment to me. I mean, it's, but also very informative. So well written, like I said, it's just laid out perfectly, but she's got some zingers in there. She really does. I love where she's talking about the summary judgment standard and she says summary judgment may be granted on the basis of the agency affidavits. In FOIA cases when they when quote they are not called into question by

contradictory evidence in the record or by evidence of agency bad faith, which is clearly exciting. Then the next well, the next paragraph begins with but here we have both. Yeah, I mean that is calling them out. Yeah, she's like, yeah, yeah, this applies except when it's bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Which it is here in this case. Like that's the, that's the judicial equivalent

of like a street fight. You know, that's like coming right up at you. Yeah, we call it bench slap. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, and I, you know, on the next page where she claims, where she says the affidavits are so inconsistent with the evidence and the record,

they are not worthy of credence. If you are one of the two DOJ attorneys who've filed affidavits in this matter, you have to be seriously questioning your continued employment there. I don't know. That's a direct hit that is embarrassing. It really undermines, I think, your reputation as a professional and as a attorney. I imagine that the two of them are, or took that pretty hard and are

maybe doing some kind of deep thought about, you know, what that means going forward. Yeah. And I mean, it sucks for a lot of these DOJ lawyers under bar who were forced to do absolutely ridiculous, non-candid things with the court like I'm thinking of the census decision. That's right. Where they had to get on a conference call with these Department of Justice lawyers on the weekend to tell the judge, WTF, are you doing? And they're like, we honestly don't know. We thought your decision was final

and now we're hearing something else and we have to do this thing. We're so sorry. It was embarrassing. I know so many people, I had so many good relationships with people who I worked so many good relationships with people who I worked with at the department, prosecutors who I think so much of, particularly the folks

that I worked really closely with in the National Security Division. And I still think of them all the time on that in contact with any of those people. But I can only imagine that they have really suffered in the last few years. I'm sure that many of them have really spent a lot of time wondering like, what's the better thing for them to do?

To continue to toiling under really adverse circumstances, working for people who they probably and rightfully lost faith and confidence in, but to stay and do as good a job as they could for the American people, or do you kind of walk out in a protest vote against what's going on? I don't know, that's a really hard choice

for people to make, and everybody has to do that in their own way, but I feel bad for them, and I think about them often, and hope they're doing well. And I'm glad they have very different leadership right now that I'm sure they can be proud of. Yeah, I remember when Marik Garland arrived

at the Department of Justice, the streets were lined with DOJ employees applauding and welcoming him like, oh, thank you for being here. Yeah. It was emotional. Yeah, probably not the same as when Matt Whitaker left. Just like that. Matthew fucking Whitaker. Yeah

We call him big dick toilet wine. Yeah It's just the weirdest guy So what what are some of the other standout moments in this in this in this decision for you? No, I mean, it's just it's hard to say There's there's so much here. There's so many riches in the bowl here. I think just generally her approach to it, her if this is the only court order you ever read or you know, judges opinion you ever read, you're really going to be spoiled because her writing style is so simple, it's so direct.

You know, of course, there's lots of big footnotes and sites to legal cases and that's necessary in any legal writing, but she just calls it for what it is. And I've always been so impressed with her. I never met her. I never had a case. And I never had to appear in a case in front of her. But I remember when she was presiding over, I think it was the had a case. I never had to appear in a case in front of her. But I remember when she was presiding over, I think it was the Manafort case, and Trump was tweeting about her.

I mean, the president of the United States, like literally putting his thumb on the scale of justice in a case, a high profile, media-worthy case that she was in the middle of trying to keep some semblance of normalcy on. And for all intents and purposes, she just charged right along and disregarded it and did her job, did it well. I think that's incredibly admirable. But that same spirit I think comes out in this order. It's very clearly written. She pulls no punches. It's, you know, there are chuckle moments here for anyone who's looking for, you know, humor. But yeah, it's, you know, there are chuckle moments here for anyone's looking for, you know, humor, but yeah, it's really impressive. Yeah, and, you know, having been studying the Mueller, the Mueller investigation very closely since the beginning for the last three years, I've read a

lot of her writing. And then you get something like a Sydney Powell briefing or a Rudy Giuliani briefing. And it's just a different world. It's not even the same sport. No, it's hard to follow. You can't just ridiculously unsupported, conclusory statements about nonsense. Even judges have been like, I think what you're trying to say is this and if that's the case Your heart your birth you know exactly. It's just Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say

I don't distinguish themselves As lawyers when they file that nonsense. Yeah, and before I let you go speaking to Rudy all this impeachment volume one is coming up to bubbling up to the surface here with his connections in Ukraine and his business dealings. And people are like, oh, Aruti's being investigated for a crime having to do with Ukraine.

And when you can say, oh, which one? Yeah. Which crime? That speaks volumes. But I think in this particular case, it was the ouster of Marie Yvonnevich. And so now we're really reliving that whole era again. And again, it's because I don't know

if there was new evidence that allowed for the raid or what, but you know, Merrick Garland is the one who's who's allowed this warrant to go forward where before under the bar, DOJ, it was blocked. Or I think it was Jeffrey Rosen actually. Yeah, I mean, this thing is amazing. And I think you're right, it seems they are focused pretty intently on his machinations behind the ouster of Maria Ivanovich. But that's really just the beginning.

I mean, that's that's where they probably have the the most obvious Farrakase. So there's your kind of first federal charge against you started, it gets you your it gets you your grand jury, it gets you your search warrant, and then from there, it's off to the races. Even with all of the material that they took from his residence in his office, there's probably a lot of that that's going to be privileged that the investigators will not see. with all of the material that they took from his residents in his office, there's probably a lot of that that's going to be privileged that the investigators will not see. And that's fine. That's the way our system works. Yeah. And generally, if they're privileged, if they fall under attorney client privilege, that means it wasn't crime related.

So we don't need to see that. That's exactly right. So you're not going to see probably a lot of communications between Rudy and Trump. But what you will see are communications between Rudy and many other people, like these shady Ukrainians, who he was basically extorting for or working with, conspiring with to try to get opposition research on Joe Biden. And there's all kinds of things that could come of that.

There's just possible campaign finance issues. There are possible corruption issues. And when you have that stuff on the table, you look into the possibility of just even simple mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering type of cases. So who knows? I'm not saying I have any information that suggests that those things will be charged. I certainly don't, but my point is the search warrant gets you into a universe of materials

and potential evidence, documents, and communications records that could take you in a lot of different directions. I think this thing is really only just in its initial phases. I wouldn't expect to see any sort of charging activity too quickly, but even once, they could, maybe they make a fairer case, pretty in short order, and they decide to charge in with that,

and then keep going from there. So there's a lot of ways that this could develop badly for Rudy. Yeah, and they've already asked, I think prosecutors have already asked for the court to appoint a special master who is in charge of the Taint Team to look through these, you know, this tranche of documents to determine what is covered by Attorney Client Privilege and what isn't. So we should be looking, that's, I mean, this is going to take a long time. If we think about the time it took from the Cohen raid to his indictment, I think we are looking at at least that.

Right. Right. Yeah. So even just like you say, the document sorting with the filter team and now with likely the special master, that's going to take a while. And then the investigation has to get done. And some of that might involve talking to people in Ukraine or other places.

There is an FBI legal adage office in the US Embassy in Kiev. So I would expect those folks would assist with whatever efforts need to happen over there. But you know what, I just looking forward to hearing more about what really happened. Yeah, me too. We'll keep an eye on what happens with this OLC memo decision by May 17th. He doesn't have to wait until May 17th, right?

He can do this whenever he's ready. Yeah, he could, although lawyers don't typically do things before they're due. So I would expect, you know, we'll be waiting until the 17th and all likelihood. And if he decides not to do, not to hand it over, does he actually have to tell us why or do you think he's just likely to? Yeah, I know he's got a, he can't just not hand it over.

He's gonna have to file some action with the court, either, you know, a notice of appeal or some other motion that might delay it or at least request a delay. So they can do something else or talk to someone else or something like that. So we'll know something. You're not going to just get lights out and nobody's home. Well, he could file that under seal if it contains information that can't be seen by

the public. I doubt it. But I mean, he could. We'd still see there was a filing, so at least to give us something to talk about. We'll always have something to talk about. Andy, I appreciate it. Everybody, get your hands on the threat. It's a really, really great book all about Crossfire Hurricane. Although, I don't think you were allowed to call it Crossfire Hurricane when you wrote it. Oh, it wasn't. I was happily say now it's about crossfire. They're Russia case.

I think it's what I call it. So yeah, yeah, crossfire it is. So that's why in case you're wondering, but it's really, really informative book. And I think you're going to want to read up because I with this new stuff coming out, it'll be good to have that primer. So thank you so much. Thank you, AJ. I really appreciate it. It's great to be back. And thanks for keeping everybody tuned in to these stories that we can't seem to get away from because they're important.

No problem. I will keep doing it. And we'll talk again soon. So you have you have yourself a good weekend. Thanks you too. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. I'm Greg Oliar. Four years ago, I stopped writing novels to report on the crimes of Donald Trump and his associates. In 2018, I wrote a best-selling book about it, Dirty Rubles. In 2019, I launched Proveil, a bi-weekly column about Trump and Putin. President Putin was extremely strong and powerful. Spies. Active measures, routinely in a piazza, the language of how to protect your people.

mobsters and Donald Trump obviously does a lot of construction. and so many traders over the last two years that I've been here, I've been accused of all different types of things and all those things that have turned out to be false. alternative facts I drank beer with my friends, almost everyone did. sometimes I had too many beers.

Sometimes others did. I liked beer. Trump may be gone, but the damage he wrote will take years to fully understand. The best is yet to come! Join me in a revolving crew of contributors and guests as we try to make sense of it all. This is Preve. Everybody welcome back it's time for the fantasy indictment league. I can't, I'm going to be dead. So Joyce Vance, former guest and friend, penned an op-ed this week for MSNBC called

Judge Amy Berman Jackson's bar rebuke opens the door to DOJ accountability. And in it, she outlines four possibilities for holding an attorney general accountable if evidence proves he abused his office to protect a president. She says, quote, accountability for a cabinet secretary should come at the hands of the president who appoints them, losing their position. The problem here is the former president wasn't looking for honesty in public service from his appointees, but for loyalty. He expected Barr to help him stay in power.

That's the role Barr played throughout his tenure as Attorney General, and that's why it's important to learn the truth, and Jackson has opened the door to that possibility. So we've gone over the Jackson opinion in depth with McCabe, so we know it's in it, and Joyce says here that it reminded her of the rebuke that Judge Reggie Walton gave to Barr about being disingenuous and his disingenuous muller report redactions. And when he said that bar lacked candor, we've also covered the deliberative and attorney client privileges that bar cited as his reasons for not handing over the memo and how the deliberative process

is something Marik Garland might want to defend in this case. But Vance says that the memo could suggest there was professional or even criminal misconduct. She says, quote, we already know Barr's characterization of the evidence and findings contained in the Mueller report when he spoke to the American people and later to Congress was deceptive. In fact, Vance says, Jackson noted that Barr hardly had the time to skim much less study closely, Mueller's hundreds of pages of

investigative work before summarizing it, in quotes for Congress. Meanwhile, Barr's claim that the evidence didn't support inditing Trump, even as he withheld the report from the public for several weeks, allowed Trump to proclaim he was fully exonerated. All of which is to say it would be fair to presume the memo that Jackson has ordered the DOJ to disclose portrays Barr in a less than favorable light. Joyce argues that in this case the Department of Justice should hand over the memo. I agree. We all agree. McCabe did bring up the point that Garland might feel like releasing it could give a black

eye to the Department of Justice. I say it's already trashed and Vance in this op-ed says accountability is essential to rebuilding our confidence in the Department of Justice. Not only do I agree, but I feel that no plan to restore the reservoir of trust can be without accountability and acknowledgement. This reminds me of the time Joyce Vance quoted one of our tweets in her time magazine article

about the loss of public confidence in the Justice Department. I had tweeted whether you believe there are nefarious forces within the Department of Justice that assisted with or turned a blind eye to the Epstein death. The bigger point is no one trusts the Department of Justice, no one. And she said we are in a dangerous place if people no longer trust that the justice department is doing justice. So accountability is the way and there are four possibilities of holding bar accountable. The first is the OPR. That's the Office of Professional Responsibilities inside the Justice Department, though.

The OPR is tasked with reviewing alleged misconduct during an investigation prosecution or in the provision of legal advice, which is pretty much exactly this case. But the OPR doesn't have a lot of teeth, right? All they can do is recommend you fire the person, and bars are already gone, although they could, you know, refer the misconduct to a state bar association for disciplinary action. Option two is referring this to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. They're more independent, but like the OPR, they don't have prosecutorial powers. If the Inspector General and OPR find crimes, they typically refer those to the Public Integrity

Unit of the Department of Justice. But in this situation, Vance says the third option is the appointment of a special counsel because that would almost inevitably be required in this case. And that's where we'll run into this administration's appetite for accountability. Because if Garland did appoint a special counsel to investigate, it would most definitely be seen as a political hit job, witch hunt, etc. So they'd have to be willing to deal with that bullshit if they go that route. The fourth option is to have him disbarred, which would actually be really bad for him.

We may find that any or all of those may be rolled out. Any of these four options could be rolled out. I find it really interesting that any kind of criminal indictment of bar in this case would really need to have to come from a special counsel. So that's my choice, obviously. If you're gonna have to, if you're to get, if there's criminal behavior, it should be referred to a special council. Personally, I hope that special council is Joyce Vance. And so, for my fantasy indictment, LeaguePix, it's a little early in these investigations. I know some of them have been going on for a while, but I imagine we could see an indictment of Bill Barr out of this Office of Luke Council memo,

but again, we would have to, you know, as Joyce said, it would have to be referred to the public integrity unit, the Department of Justice, and then probably a special council would be appointed, so we're away as away from that, but that would be wonderful. I think're we're a way is away from that but that would be wonderful. I think Giuliani will be indicted but again maybe not until the end of

the summer because we have to get the special master and the taint team to go through all of the stuff that was seized from the raids on his home and his office and of course I'm gonna put Victoria tonzing in there. I think she'll, you know, they seized her phone. And I definitely know she, I mean, she was a lawyer for, for fraud guarantee with, uh, partisan, fruman, uh, and also degenerate, right? The other lawyer. There's going to be, I, I'm putting all my beans on there being criminal communications between bar and degenneventonzeg, or not bar, excuse me, Giuliani and tonzeg and degenneva. And then for my fifth choice here, I'm going to say Derek Harvey, because as we know, one

of those warrants, or the warrant, said that one of the communications, it was searching for that the FBI wanted to get prosecutors wanted to get out of Rudy's electronic devices, were communications between Rudy and Derek Harvey. And those communications, again, between him and Tonzeig and him and Harvey, are related to, from our understanding of this investigation, they're related to his work to Oost, to smear and oust Yavanovich on behalf of Russian-backed Ukrainian officials. And so, as we've spoken before, kind of like how in, I think Andrew McCabe mentioned this kind of how in the insurrection, we get them on trespassing and then we do the

deep investigation and to get them on conspiracy. That's sort of what Pharah could do in this case of a Pharah indictment and then superseding indictments. So we'll see what happens, but those are my choices. Bar Giuliani, Tonzig, DeGenerda and Derek Harvey. Again, it's early in these investigations, but got picked somebody for the fantasy indictment leaks, or those are my choices. Everyone, thanks for listening. I'll be back next Sunday with more Mueller news. Until then, I've been AG, and this is Mueller She Wrote.

["Molors She Wrote"] ["Molors She Wrote"] Mueller She Wrote is written and produced by Allison Gill, an engineer by Mackenzie Mazzell, logo branding and web design by Joa Reader at Moxie Design Studios, our network is MSW Media Inc on our website is MullerSheerot.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 Maga Republicans who plotted and pardoned the attempted overthrow of our government now control the House. Thanks to Jerry-Mandered 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 and inspiration from progressive change makers all over the country. And we'll dig deep into the weekly news that matters most and what you can do about it, with messaging and communications expert, co-founder of Way to Win,

and our new co-host, Jennifer Fernandez-Ancona. So join Steve and I every Wednesday for your weekly dose of inspiration, action, and hope. I'm Steve Pearson. And I'm Jennifer Fernandez-Ancona. And this is How We Win. This is How We Win. This is How We Win.

This is How We Win. This is How We Win. This is How We Win. This is How We Win. This is How We Win. M-S-O-W-Media. you