Jack - Muellerpalooza 2018 Season Finale (feat. everyone ever)

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

Ep #61 - It's the season 2 finale! Joining us this week for our 2018 send-off episode is Greg Proops, Mimi Rocah, Joyce White Vance, Seth Abramson, Andrea Chalupa, Sarah Kendzior, Virginia Heffernan, Renato Mariotti, Scott Dworkin, Elizabeth McLaughlin, Greg Olear, Jack Bryan, David Priess, and Randall (Randall's Animals). Plus, Jordan covers this week's lube the truth tour, Jaleesa goes over the latest revelation about Trump's bone spurs, and A.G. breaks down the first edition of Mueller Madness! Enjoy!

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. Thanks to Noom for supporting Mueller, she wrote, Noom is designed for results. Meet your resolutions by signing up for your trial today

at Noom.noom.com-ag. What do you have to lose? Visit Noom.com-ag now to start your trial today. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities.

I have been called a surrogate at a time, a true in that campaign, and I didn't have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have 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. I'm your host, A.G. all members of the oldest professional capitalist. finale. We're so glad you joined us. I'm hoping you all had a great holiday. Where'd you guys go? I stayed home, but it was nice. I love the holidays because the streets are really quiet, so everything feels really mellow, but I do the same things. Netflix and chill. Nice. Yeah. You just

do it with less annoying people around. Exactly. Honestly, I love it. I went to York, Pennsylvania, to visit my mom. She just moved there. It was great great the outskirts of York very racist the downtown though very liberal it's like a racism donut yeah in the middle it's just nice and not racist we're the donut hole liberals yeah that's good yeah it was good it was really fun it holds beautiful city me too but now that we're part of the new family, gotta watch it. No more donuts or fun. No, you can have treats.

Uh, treat yourself. Um, that is my favorite episode of Parks and Rec. Okay. Now that we've advertised for a bunch of stuff for free that we're not getting paid for, uh, we had a York Pennsylvania. We had our family had a big giant family Christmas Eve dinner in Phoenix, right?

And so my mom's side of the family is small, right? There's only a handful of us. But well, I shouldn't say my dad's side is small. My mom's side, my mom has this sister. But her, my aunt, her husband has 10 brothers and sisters, and they're all in their 60s. So they all have kids and their kids have kids. So there's like 50 people at this dinner

and they're all part of this family. And I'm sitting there with my cousin who I grew up with and she's telling me who everyone is. I'm like, okay, okay, okay. It's like a devil-wrested Protestant with a binder. Yeah. And I'm all over here with like the five of us on our side of the family and I'm all doozy's rule.

Nice. That's our nickname for our family. Anyway, it's awkward at a funeral too, like when the family is like different, like that I've seen that live. It's really tense. And weddings, if you see on the birdcage, that's so great. Anyway, we have a massive show this week. Jordan is going to be covering a daily beast interview with Rudy Giuliani.

He's looving the truth again. And Julie, so you're going to cover a New York Times report about Trump's feet, gross. Oh yeah. I'm going to cover the Mueller madness sweet 16 bracket of top stories of 2018 that I created. And we have a montage of all of our ghosts of guest past including, yeah, you ready? Greg Proop, Seth Abramson, Renato Mariotti, Virginia Heffernand, Sarah Kenzie, or Greg Oliar, Scott Dworkin, Andrea Chalupa, David Priest, Jack Brian, Elizabeth McLaughlin, Randall from Randall's Animals, Joyce Vance, and Mimi Roca. And you can catch that montage at the end of the show, so stick around for that. That's awesome. What a great group of guests we've had.

The best, yeah. Amazing people. And new friends. New friends. Yes, it was funny. I put that all out on Twitter and someone's like, oh, wait, a name drop. Podcasts are name dropping. And I'm like, name dropping.

I'm telling you who's on our show. Yeah. Also, you got to label people and if they're down, yeah, everyone can know what celebrities are down, you know? Yeah. Down for the cause. I can see if they weren't on the show how it would be name dropping, but they're all on it.

It's an amazing lineup. Yeah, I didn't quite say that though. I said, if you were to put out a podcast that had all these people on it, what would you call it? So maybe they didn't realize that all those people were gonna be on it. Oh, I see, I see. They thought you were just like saying names

for the heck of it, like hypothetically. Right. Yeah. Like on late night shows, they're like, and tonight we have some good. Yeah. Stop name-dropping, Fallon. That's great. I'm gonna do that this week next time I have a comedy show. Somebody else is next.

Mm-hmm. You probably saw him somewhere. Yeah. Have fun. Sorry, Guy with new book. I'm humble. Guy with new book. I'm humble. I'm humble. I'm humble.

I'm humble. No good name drop. Anyway, we got a ton of new patrons this week. So thank you for that. Welcome. We're only about 150 more away from being able to record a second episode each week, which will come out as a bonus episode for our patrons. So if you want access to that second episode every week,

head to patreon.com slash mullershee wrote, and for just a few dollars, you can unlock all of the premium content. It's super worth it. You get access to our new second episode, but add free main episodes, all our past bonus and book club episodes, as well as future mini-sodes, unended interviews, our newsletter,

with my research notes, access to our closed Facebook group and the Fantasy Endipment League, and all kinds of thank you gifts, that's patreon.com slash Mueller, she wrote. I think we may just go ahead and start the second episode in the new year. Oh yeah.

We're close enough. Sounds good. I think we can do it. I think we can manage it. Just fining a little budget numbers and make it real. But seriously, we only have like 150 left to go. We got a ton this month and that's super cool. Yeah, it's amazing.

Thank you all for your support. We really appreciate it. Thanks for supporting women and podcasting. We do have some corrections from last week. First of all, the creatures that run Greengots Bank and Harry Potter are goblins. And the head goblins name is Gritpook. Thank you for that. We here at Muller Shee wrote hit the hard topics. And so I wanted to make sure you

guys knew that we knew there were Goblins. I didn't. I didn't think much about it, but some people are hardcore Harry Potter fans and they know their differences in races. So I've seen them all I read the books but you know Goblins, does that make us races for getting the name wrong like it's like calling a his you know Latina person like I don't know Filipino or something. I don't know if it's our goblins of race a species. Yeah, I don't know the fantastical categories Sociologically, no, how you break down yeah and sociologically. How do you break down? Yeah.

It'd be a cool college course. They could be disenfranchised, but they run the banks. Oh, I feel like you know. I feel like they're the Republicans of the Wizarding World. I had a look into this. Yeah. You do a whole breakdown of a sociopolitical and economic breakdown of the creatures in Harry Potter. It's another podcast.

If they wanted to paint them more favorably, maybe they would have made them elves. Yeah. Yeah, right. We all love elves. Dobby? Elves are cutest, but yeah, the house elves. Yeah. Goblins are just like, ah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, not attractive. That's okay. Don't, um, don't body shame the goblins. Sorry, you're right. And now, you know, and I just made fun of bodies. You know what? We're already in a hole. It's okay. Merry Christmas. Uh, we hear it, Mueller, she wrote, love to talk about the issues. And that's why we bring up goblins. I also wanted to clarify another correction. Mark Milley, who I thought Trump would appoint as acting sec-deaf, secretary of defense, he's the current chief of staff

of the army, not the deputy secretary of defense. So thank you for that correction. It wasn't a mistake so much as I don't care. Now I do, I do care. It's the little things, yeah, yeah. Chief of staff of the army is a big deal. Show some respect. I know, right? Respect with a K. We have a lot of news to get to today, so let's kick it off with just the facts. Sunday night, last week, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. stayed the contempt order in the Secret Subpoena Battle that's being waged against Bob Mueller or at least his team at least we think it is We've got really good evidence that it's Mueller This is the first instance of SCOTUS weighing in on a legal proceeding related to the Mueller investigation and Russian collusion first time

SCOTUS Supreme Court of the United States Roberts stayed in order holding an unnamed foreign state-owned entity in contempt for one week, meaning they won't incur any additional financial penalties for each week they refuse to comply with the Mueller subpoena. They were being charged $5,000 a week for not complying. This stiff five-gram, oh, that's real big when you're talking about zillions of dollars. Um, true. The stay gives scotus one week to decide if it's gonna intervene or if it's to leave it to the lower courts and if it decides to leave it to the lower courts, Muller wins. That's, they're going to discuss it and we should know soon. Last week, the DC Circuit Court ruled in favor of Muller, saying that the foreign state

own company would have to comply with the Muller subpoena, which led the entity to ask the SCOTUS to step in. Muller's response, which was due Friday and handed in Friday, was filed under seal, so no new updates have emerged. But you can place your bets in our fantasy and diamond league in the Friends of Justice group. On Facebook, I still got VTB. Oh, yeah.

As who it is. That makes a lot of sense. Somebody said, asked me if the United States Postal Service, if it could be the post office. I was like, I don't think there's a state-owned company. I think there are federal agency. In fact, I'm sure of it. Yeah.

I'm not sure of it. I'm sure of it. The Supreme Court is like the dad of our country. If mom says no, you just like dad. Yeah. And he kicks it back. Can you help? Go ask your mom.

The lower courts. Yeah, the DC circuit courts or the mom. Yeah. Let's make scotus the mom. Yeah, I mean, they're all important. RBG is on it. So yeah, that's mom. Mm-hmm. That's mom. Oh, yeah. Hope she's doing all right. I hear she's back on the bench doing everything. Yeah. Kick in. Kick in it live. Then on to Monday with a Trump tweet, ousting Mattis two months before he was expected to depart. We all know from last week that moderate dog Mattis quit as Secretary of Defense and

told everyone in his scathing resignation letter about how dumb Trump is. He said that he'd be leaving at the end of February. Well, Mr. Idiotpants tweeted that he'd named Shannahan, the new acting secretary of defense, starting January 1st. Effectively telling Mattis he didn't have to stick around thereby making Mattis eligible for unemployment insurance, which I think he should file for. Oh, yeah.

Wouldn't that be fun? Why not? Tuesday was Christmas and it was pretty quiet, except for the horrific story of an eight-year-old Guatemalan boy that died in Border Patrol custody. This is a second child dead as a result of Trump's zero tolerance policy for people seeking asylum in the United States.

And it's just, he apparently had symptoms of a cold, he had a fever, they cleared him, and then apparently he got worse and deteriorated in the past away. The late Christmas Eve. They said he tested positive for influenza, right? What makes it so, yeah? Something that we should be able to treat pretty easily, right?

Yeah, I heard you went and got penicillin or a moxillin. I think penicillin though. And then yeah, like you said, he was released and then he just, his condition worsened really fast. Wow, yeah, I mean, again, children shouldn't be in custody. So there's that. But also, I feel like, like, at least these undocumented kinschen, because there are some kids out there that are murderers,

but not in this case. So I feel like, yeah, it's that issue of they shouldn't be in custody period. And then also, were they not checking them thoroughly enough, or was it like an issue of overpopulation? Well, they found that he had a fever and they gave him medicine, so they knew about it. Right. It's probably, I know for a fact from reports from within the agency that they're very

understaffed, and now, you know, with the government shutdown, a lot of them aren't getting paid or on furlough. So I can't imagine things getting better. And the only good argument, now you're going to say good argument, but the feasible argument is that people die, right? And so sometimes they're in a spot like that when it happens. And my counter argument to that is that child, if they're sick, they should be at home with their family.

They shouldn't be in a cage, on a bus, detained, in a super scary situation. I can't imagine how scary that is. I used to play hide and seek when I was a kid in my super privileged world, and I get scared, shirtless. So I can't even imagine what it's like to be in that environment.

And how sanitary could it be? Like I feel like at this point, they're not really, they don't seem concerned about keeping up with these things. So it's not the part of the migrants if they're in this condition that is not good for when you're sick. It just makes things worse, I would imagine. Especially when Trump is like,

they're bringing leprosy and AIDS and whatever. And yet there are actually children with common colds and influenza that are dying on their watch. So it's, you know, get your priorities straight. Yeah. And stress and trauma, really weak and z immune system. And the nervous system. And yeah, it makes getting better harder. Right. And you would think too, if you were not in that situation, you could have been admitted to a hospital and actually been in a hospital bed, getting fluids consistently.

Mm-hmm. I know the argument then would be, our tax payer dollars have to pay for that. Right. Of course, that's what the argument would be Yeah, how sad goblins Yeah, yeah, and he keeps blaming the parents I hear right like the ideas and he says like don't make the trip It's not worth it. Yeah, Jason chafetz has said that and Trump and the administration Kellyanne Sarah Sanders they'd be like we shouldn't take your child on that journey and I'm like go live in Guatemala for 10 minutes And tell me what you think is safer. Exactly. Yeah, and they're ancestors.

I mean, it's such a fundamental hypocrisy. I'm like, you think it's not worth it to take the trip if you're in that position of desperation. How many of our ancestors, when I say, are I mean, our white European ancestors died on boats coming over from Europe? Right. But it was worth the trip, right? And no one ever was like, see, you shouldn't have made the trip.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, they did a couple times with Italian immigrants and Irish immigrants, but not to the degree. Yeah. Mm-hmm. People just, that's always been the fascist or autocratic argument is that immigrants

will ruin your country. It's ridiculous. And it's, they keep, it it works so they keep using it. Mm-hmm. Yep. I thought you were going to say something. I was. I forgot exactly who it was, but someone said it was King, I think, said that it was like

he's like only two kids have died. Just some awful quote. Oh, yeah. It's deep king. Wow. It sure, it makes me really think about like what it must have been like growing up in Germany during that time when Hitler was in power and people keep saying like don't compare Trump to Hitler. I think it's like if Hitler could ever be so

powerful, then you know, it only makes sense that someone like Trump could become powerful too because I think Hitler was way worse, obviously, but Trump, you know, it's logical that we're in this position and I wonder what people at that time did when one person died or, you know, two people died like when it slowly started happening, like, was it like, oh, you know, it's just here and there. Well, the politics of fear is powerful. And that divisive utilization of fear of the unknown and fear that someone's going to take your job and fear that disease is coming and all just Stoking that fear is a very powerful tool that people like Hitler have used Trump is using it

People right wing government submerging in the EU are using it Yanikovic used it in Ukraine. It's just a really common thing And it's sad that they have to, that they can't win support with ideas. They have to do it with fear. Right. Anyway, Wednesday, the New York Times did a piece about Trump's Vietnam Bonesburg's podiatrist. And Julie, so you have that for us later in the show. Yeah.

You got the foot story. I do. The foot doctor. You have to do it in like a sexy wood. The foot doctor is here. It's impossible to make that sexy. Yeah. It's funny if he were like a witch doctor. Because they're like the witch hunt theme, you know?

That would be great. That would be great. That would be a good one. That would be a good one. That would be good. That would be good. That would be good. That would be good.

That would be good. That would be good. That would be good. That would We also learned Wednesday that Matthew F. Whitaker lied on his resume about being an academic all-american during his football days at Iowa. Good old football days. It's like he's like Al Bundy in that way. Like, he'll never be as good as he was when he was playing football. And he wasn't even an academic all-american because he lied. Not only did he lie on his resume about this, but he put this lie in government documents. And this is according not to the media, but to the organization of that patent marketing firm

where he touted a toilet for dudes with big dicks. No biggs. But in 2010, when he applied for an Iowa judgeship, he included that lie in his paperwork and his government paperwork, not just a resume. When you applied it to be a government employee, you turn a resume in, but then you also have to fill out paperwork. And he put that lie in there as well, telling everyone he was an academic all-American when he left his post as US attorney in Iowa. So it turns out his name does not appear on the list of academic all-Americans on the website of that organization that awards the honor.

Apparently, it was confirmed by the University of Iowa. Somebody called him up and he's there like, no, he would never give him that. He was actually awarded a lower level honor, all district. Yeah, like the second to the All-American. Yeah, it's almost like he's in Iowa. He thought that little lie would give him so much edge. I'm sorry, Iowans. Yeah, no, no, shame to them. I think it's really all Whittaker here.

It's not stolen. It's a dildo. Yeah, he could have chosen something a little more interesting. If you're gonna land your resume for one, don't eventually become AG because like, we're not this AG, you know what I mean? Yeah, turn in general. Yeah, yeah, I just feel like-

This is acting. I'm actually AG. You're the real AG. Oh, there's a hip-hop title there. The real age. Yeah. They stand up. I don't know.

Yeah, man, I would know people that lie. I've told McDonald's a lie or two, I think. It's McDonald's. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so humanizing at the same time. It's like this is the kind of people that Trump wants in the White House or really is close by,

because they shouldn't even be involved. And for the, you know, in the Justice Department, it's sad. I probably actually, he was like, oh, he lied. Great. I'll take him. Yeah. Yeah. Um, then Wednesday, we learned that Trump visited the troops in Iraq. At first, I tweeted, oh, look, he did something right. And I was being tongue in cheek, but I got a lot of backlash on Twitter from folks saying, he'll fuck it up shut up

You're he's not right. Come on think about it Turns out he fucked it up Not only did he pass out Maga hats and Trump flags and shit to the troops Which is against the uniform code of military justice section 4.1.1.1 by the way It's also against the rules for any member of the military to openly support a political candidate But he also lied to the troops right to their face saying they haven't had a raise in years decades and He was gonna give them a 10% raise because he's so awesome And that is just a complete lie our military has gotten a raise every year since forever accepted 1983 and a 10% raise

No last year they got 2.6, like all federal government employees did. It's called a cost of living adjustment raise, basically inflation. And the year before that, it was 2.8%. So those are the two Trump years, 2.8 and 2.6. I'm sure Trump supporters will bend over sideways to justify Trump lying to their faces, though. I can't, like I'll sit and I'll try to think of lying to their faces though. I can't, like, I'll sit and I'll try to think of how I would defend that. I have an idea. Maybe they'll just be like, oh, he's human. They'll pull that one, you know, because it's like appealing to how people make mistakes and it's okay. What's the

big deal? Two percent, ten percent. What's the difference? But I feel like there should be a difference. Eight percent. He sounds like he's running for high school student body president. Right. I'm going to present prison cookies in every breakfast. No more class. I ban homework forever. You can count on me for a hot tub in this cafeteria.

Yeah, whatever. A gilded hot tub with the job of the ins. Whites only. Whites only. You'll be dirty. I had to call it British. I had to call it Flight of the Concords. That was their racism, not mine. Please send them the emails.

Then Thursday, Julian. Julian, Julian, same. It's all just Flight of the Concords. You guys hear me? Then Thursday, Julian, he continued his lube with the truth tour. And Jordan will have that for us in hot notes. If you're not familiar with the phrase, lube the truth, we explained it in last week's episode. Check it out. I thought you thought I was going to tell you

the big story Thursday. All right, I'll tell you. Lube the truth. You want to do it? Sure. Yeah. So lube the truth. You cover the truth, lubeing. Yes. Truth, lubeing. It's a concept where they even expanded it to truth-finger-blasting. To make it all encompassing. So, looming the truth is basically, as we know, these people, Giuliani Trump, that whole caravan of idiots, they lie, withhold the truth. And then when it starts to look like Mueller and company is starting to get the truth out, they try to get ahead of the truth by actually going back on their word, usually on national media appearances, and then dropping little truth bullets. Just of, you know, you're going to hear this. So we're going to tell you now, we,

oh yeah, yeah, you're, we did say that. Yeah, that's what we've always said, even though they didn't always say that at all. It reminds me of a commercial from the 90s. There was this dog treat called Snosages. And this little dog would just poke his head up out of nowhere and just go Snosages and then like, go back down. Yeah, that's Giuliani. Snosages. Right.

Right. And then it's all in this effort to make the the devastating blow of the truth less shocking to the base. Mm-hmm. Thus allowing everyone to carry on collusion as usual. Collusion will. I think it works on a psychological level, right? Even those of us that know the truth and believe the truth, we still find ourselves kind of jaded a little bit. And can you imagine how people I don't even believe the truth would find that this is not a big deal, you know? It's the figurative manifestation of lubing something up. Mm-hmm. Like gears or ball bearings, you guys. Right. It does not have to be...

To be... Right. Okay. Although that nevermind. I'm not gonna go there. Different podcasts, different day. The big story Thursday came from Maclatchee. I love Maclatchee. Some people are like, oh, they're sketchy. But they've not been wrong. None of their stories, they're huge reporting, not been wrong. So this report came from Maclatchee. They reported that cell signals put Michael Cohen outside Prague around the time of the

reported Russian meeting that was reported in the steel dossier, according to four sources. Four sources, Trump, not just one anonymous source. Basically, a cell phone registered to Michael Cohen Cohen pinged towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, leaving an electronic record to support the claims that Cohen met with Russian officials as outlined in the dossier. Cohen continues to deny he was in Prague. He actually, Scott Dworkin and Jennifer Taub both passgasts, like, came out of him on Twitter and they're like,

what have you ever been in Prague ever in your whole life anywhere in the Czech Republic ever and ever? No, it's like, yeah, but you told Corn, David Corn that you've been to Prague 14 years ago. So what, you know, to have your history straight. The phone went on its own. They're called smart phones.

That's what they're traveling now without us. That's great. Well, those are some of the theories that we've talked about in a lot of the interviews that we had today. Those will be coming out in bonus content episodes. But there's two things that could be going on here. First of all, it's the area of Prague. It's not Prague. And this could be a very, to the age old Republican trick

of semantics, right? Where he wasn't in Prague, but he was in Prague minor, right? And he's like, wasn't in Prague. Nope, wasn't me. Prague-ish. Yeah, he would Prague a Jset. And that makes a lot of sense. Like I went back to Phoenix for the holidays.

And my mom lives in Moon Valley, right? Which is in Phoenix. But somebody would be like, should you back to Phoenix for the holidays and my mom lives in Moon Valley, right, which is in Phoenix, but somebody be like, you go to Phoenix? No. Because in my head I'm like, I was in Moon Valley. Yeah. And that would make sense for Cohen to do that. I wasn't in Prague. You know, I just just ride outside. And that's where the triangulation came from. And the other is that his phone was there without him, or a phone registered in his name was there without him because as we know, when Cohen's shit was raided in his hotel, his home, and his offices, by the FBI this past April, I think. I can't remember.

It's been a long time. They confiscated 16 burner phones. That's right. Which leads me to believe Cohen doesn't understand how burner phones work. Like, you're supposed to get rid of them after. He hoards them. So he could have been responsible for the burner phones for the Trump team. And he put them in his name, another smart move.

And maybe it was junior or revonca that was over there. Somebody else was sent to make these payments and had these burner phones with them. But the Russian intelligence, they call it SIGINT and HUMANT, which is signal intelligence and human intelligence, says that Eastern European intelligence agencies picked up and intercepted conversations between Russians, Russian to Russian, that Cohen was in Prague.

And that's what led them to investigate the cell phone tower pinging and all that other stuff. Oh snap. According to these sources, four sources. Well, those are all compelling theories like him being prog. Jason, him not being there, being in charge of the burners. Any of them would make him more complicit. Yeah, but you can put beans on the fact and I put beans on this.

I guess this is conjecture, but you can put beans on the fact, and I put beans on this. I guess this is conjecture, but you can put beans on it. A phone registered to Michael Cohen was in Prague in the summer of 16, 2016. Yeah, that's what it is, bottom line. Well, what was surrounding it? How that happened? We'll find out, I don't know. Yeah, I saw it.

I think he was there. I saw an interesting theory on Twitter that was basically, Mollernos everything, but Cohen isn't, they're not divulging anything explicitly, so they don't throw off the trail of any other investigations that are going on basically.

I like that theory, but I also have an issue in that if Mollern had asked Cohen not to say anything, he wouldn't say no. He would just say nothing. Okay. He wouldn't say, he certainly wouldn't say, I can't just say nothing. Okay. He wouldn't say, he certainly wouldn't say,

I can't confirm or deny my visits or not visits because you went if you said. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see Mueller telling anyone to lie to the public. Right. I think the burner phone being in someone else's hands is most probable. That's what my beans are on. Yeah. And another weird theory I heard too is that in like some sort of weird foldering attempt, where you put a message into a phone, shut it down, send it somewhere, and have it open it up and read the message so that it's not sent through, you know,

interweb radio waves. How is it light traveling? Light travels on the speed of, I don't have no idea. Travels on a beam of light. I'm intrigued. No, but you see, you know. I don't have no idea. Travels on a beam of light. I'm intrigued. No, but you see, you know, it doesn't hit any internet. Towers or whatever.

Or, you know, internet IP addresses. OK. So you can't follow it. Yeah, yeah. But then that would mean that Cohen forgot to put it in airplane mode so that when the phone was opened and turned on, it pinged a cell tower. Like, you're supposed to, if you do that,

you're supposed to put it in airplane mode. Yeah. So it doesn't go Bing Bing. I'm here. Right. Either way, he messed up. But the Russians say and Steele says that he was there. And so I kind of think he was there.

Yeah. I mean, we'll rush again from saying that he was there when he wasn't besides just chaos, which I guess is again, a reason for them. That's the thing they do. Oh, yeah. That's their favorite. That's their favorite. It's my favorite. I'm sure that's the...

I should change airplane mode to... Commanding crimes mode. There you go. It's by mode. Yeah. Don't ping a tower. CC mode. Anyway, let's see what else do we have.

Thursday, a disturbing new report came out of the Mueller investigation in a filing to the court by Concord Management. That's one of the Russian entities and dited by Special Counsel this year. The filing alluded to a nude selfie collected by Mueller and sent to the Russian entity during discovery. And I don't want to think about it. In them, everyone's like, is it bootna? Is it Trump?

I don't want to know. If it's Melania, we already seen that online. Yeah. She wouldn't do that. She just give you a You should give you a link. She would. She's proud in the most recent motion the lawyers for the Russians asked the judge to lift the order banning them from sending the discovery on to Russia So the the the Concord Management wants to get all the discovery they got from Mueller and send it to Russia

But the Thursday filing the Russians opposed Mueller's request to provide classified information to the judge that would justify the restriction. So they wanted to send all the shit to Mueller's shit to Russia. Mueller says, you provide me classified information that would justify this restriction. Mueller's request states that releasing the information to the Kremlin would reveal our surveillance capabilities. So, you know, you can't do that. And that's how the nude selfie came up. The lawyer for the Russian asked in the court filing, how possibly could the methods of

obtaining intelligence capabilities come up with a bunch of spam emails on nude selfies? How would that reveal intelligence secrets? And I'm sure Mueller will win this filing, so put naked beans on that. But for anyone really interested in who this naked photo is, it's probably just a person sending a dick pic to a Russian troll. Guys, there has to be a joke in there somewhere. But like, because these Russian troll, they have accounts on social media, right? And I'm sure that there are women or men who reach, I get dick pics on the daily. And so there have to be, if there's a female Russian, like with a pretty female Russian photo or a dog picture, which they use, and she's posting stuff about Trump, there's

got to be some Trump A-hole send in her dick pics. You know, she got to be some guy in York, Pennsylvania, for example. Right. Sorry, I'm kidding. No, no, it's okay. Sending dick pics to these, they don't know their Russians. Right. Butina, it's like finding a hay and a hay stack.

I like that. Yeah. I found a needle when all there was was a needle sitting in front of me. A needle in the stack of one needles. It's very difficult. But yeah, that's probably all it is guys. It's probably just some, and it doesn't, it could be an American, might not be. It's just somebody who was communicating online with a Russian troll.

We do it all day. We do it all the time. And they're like, oh, I'm sending a dick pick or sending a naked picture of my boobies or something. And that's what happened. Oh, or another Republican that might be caught up in some, you know, situation. It could be a Democrat, but all the Democratic stuff was released. That was hacked.

So I wonder if maybe there's like a Republican. No, Democrats are going to send a Russian troll and they could sell. Oh no, just, does it have to be sent to a Russian troll? Is it? It's from the, all the stuff gathered from the Russian troll farm. Oh, all the documents gathered from the Russian troll.

Unless they hacked a Republican, that was sending nude selfies to someone. It's just so much more like a congressman style. That could be if it's hackers, but these are trolls. These are people who sit at the all research agency and have fake accounts and they're just interacting with people interacting with media. They're not as keen or you know like kusa for it. Yeah. And they're acting like no one's ever sent a nude selfie to somebody they talk to on social media. There's probably a whole grip of fucking grip, a grip

hook. I know. Hey, 2012 wants its word back. It could be like a closeted gay, republican, Christian, congressman, maybe. Could be pants. Sending it to a small boy Russian avatar. Could be pants. I like your style. Chuck out my winner. Yeah, and I wasn't thinking Would be angry as an old word. I forgot that it's an old word. I was thinking just as a dick pick But I think that's a word section You actually probably too young to remember grip Oh gosh anyway dick picks Russian trolls will keep you posted all four wine. Yeah go for it. Okay, oh this is Oh, that is very kind of

you to ask. You didn't want to get the sound in there. I think it adds to the. The ambiance it does. Thank you. Also Thursday, the idea of killing congressional salaries during a government shutdown was floated on social media. Basically, there were people saying, you know, if we have a government shutdown, Congress shouldn't get their paychecks. And I think I'm against this. I haven't. I've asked it. I've put it out there.

I've asked, you know, change my mind. You know, I'm open to arguments. I'm not trying to be a dick about it. Like some people are like, think that you're, you know, how you be like, change my mind. Fight me. So I like, I really, if you have an argument, I'd love to hear. I have one, a quick one if you want in. Yeah, well, let me give you my theory first, which is is with all things. My mind, like I said,

it can be changed with legitimate discourse. But personally, I believe that taking away congressional salaries would dish disproportionately hurt Democrats. And here's why the people Democrats would be trying to punish by not paying Congress during a shutdown Are the rich rich tax dodging bourgeoisie super PAC citizens united assholes and those people would then have leverage Over the newer younger members of Congress who don't have as much money who haven't sold out And who don't have like 12 shell companies in a separate bank account full of laundered money during budget negotiations. And I realize that Ocasio-Cortez is advocating for this too because she's saying it's the principle of a thing, but I personally think and I could be wrong.

Again, change my mind. We need to stop enacting philosophical and principled ideals that hurt Democrats politically. I'm not saying take NRA money, but I'm saying let's not strip congressional salaries from a group of people mostly young Democrats in the name of doing the right thing. And I can be talked out of this. I can. I can be talked off the ledge if you can present an argument. So Jolie, so what's your argument? Yeah, I love the points you made it and never consider that because I just don't have that understanding of government like you do, but I do still feel like people fundamentally would do

more, even if they're on the right side of it, to do more to fix the issue if their paychecks were on hold. I think it's more of like a basic survival thing. Yeah, they would, but the problem is is that the people who don't care if they lose the money are usually Republicans. Yeah, and really rich,

and they have all this money from other places. And that disproportionately affects negatively disenfranchises younger, democratic, congressmen. Right. And what could the Republican to do with this money too? Because that's where money and politics is important to like to to I guess fix right? Like the idea is that they shouldn't be allowed to use that extra money in any way that's effective towards the policy. But that's a whole different issue I guess right? The idea of having so much money as a rich Republican or even a rich Democrat and then using that to influence politics like that's a whole different issue, I guess, right? The idea of having so much money as a rich Republican

or even a rich Democrat and then using that to influence politics. Like that's an issue in itself, right? Well, they aren't using the money they have to influence politics. What they're doing is they're saying, you can take away my congressional salary. I don't care because I'm a zillionaire. That makes sense. You can have my $174,000 a year, $3,300 a paycheck after taxes.

I did GIF. Okay. And that way, the Democrats who do care, because, you know, that's their salary, and they don't have all this money, don't have that leverage. And it would give leverage to rich people who don't care if the government is shut down. Like much like Trump doesn't care if the government is shut down. That makes sense. And so that I'll just say, they seem like they already don't care, right?

Like, they already don't seem to face by the shut down because of that fact, right? Well, you're not taking their salaries away. Right. But it's such a small dent in their income that I think they don't carry their way. It wouldn't sway them. It might just sway the Democrats more, which sucks to think that it would be affecting the people that are on the right side of the issue. The Democrats never want to shut down the government.

They never do. That's the point. But you're only giving leverage to people who don't care and want to shut the government down or don't care if the government gets shut down. Are all the Republicans that rich? There might be a couple of them. I'm hoping at least now I'm just like spitballing, but I feel like there might be some that would be suede to do more, but I see the problem with that.

It's tricky. It's very hypothetical, like you said. No, probably not. However, a disproportionate amount, just like when you try to say that you have to have an ID to vote, there are black people with IDs. But a disproportional amount of Democrats do lose when that happens. It's effective, you're right. So it's not like a, yeah, of course, not all, you know, but enough more than enough probably. And more tipped toward one side that makes it unfair. Yeah, institutionally, the requirement to be in Congress in the beginning

supposed to be a white land-owning man. So I think that's definitely still continuing to prevent. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, I'm pretty on the fence about that. It's interesting thinking, essential government employees are required to work still that are essential to the functioning or dysfunctioning of the government in this case.

So on principle, I can see 100% the argument that especially since people are seeing that it's Congress's fault for the reason that this is being held up because they could just concede to border funding. And obviously, it's much more complicated than that. I get why people would call for that. You said Ocasio Cortez is against or is for not getting paid.

Yeah, she wants to take away salaries. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think the Democrats, because of the principle. Right. The principle, exactly. But I'm PR wise. She feels a little doormatty.

Right. How so? Because I feel like she's be most affected, right? She's already kind of poor going in. Like she's the good example of someone who you think would be effective, but doesn't mind, right? What do you mean by doormatty, I guess? That's what I'm asking. The Democrats are saying, I'm going to make this high philosophical thing for you.

It's going to disproportionately affect Democrats in the American people negatively, but I'm going to do it for good and right reasons when you don't have to. And that is a problem I've had with Democrats for a while now. Yeah. They're not having to, is it good point? I feel like, well, then why are we at this position? Is it Trump? Is it, you know, the Republican, you know, body of Congress? Like, I feel like who's responsible then like for this shut down right yeah yeah Trump's responsible for this so he's the problem and we shouldn't freeze ever you know Congress's paychecks we should get rid of Trump is what you're getting at ultimately like the problem no I'm just saying I don't think you should freeze Congress's paychecks because it there are people who work

in Congress who need those paychecks and those people are the ones who don't want to shut down the government. Right. Yeah. I get to why that's, again, I have no official stance. Normally I love having a substantiated, okay, you know, I'm okay to be on the fence. But like I said, I could be wrong. I can be talked, you know, I can be talked out of this. Right. I'm just curious what the solution would be then, too.

And I'm sorry, Jordan, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but you. You can go ahead and finish your talk. I mean, I think on the principle of it, Democrats do typically attend to appeal to a more higher moral standard in the hopes that that's going to pay off exactly. And this, which like you said, it kind of doesn't sometimes. And when you say doormat, you mean you're handing a, you're basically for a philosophical ideal, you're handing an advantage over to the Republican. Totally. And it's kind of like, yeah, it further works to sort of subordinate their

own power. But I don't know if people PR-wise are smart enough to look at that and see that dynamic. And instead, I think they would more be drawn to the moral appeal sort of. Democrats at least, right? Yeah. Yeah, the people that are against the funding for the border wall. Because then, there's, I mean, moral appeal is something that citizens also have going on their own brain too. So I'm sure there's a lot of government employees that are also like, I'm down to not take pay so that they can keep this at a stalemate until, you know, hopefully this does not come

to a head in the way that Trump wants it to. Here's another example. To sit out on voting because the candidate that has been elected in the primary to represent your party doesn't agree with you 100% on all of the issues. And so you're going to sit out and not vote, and because that's your moral high ground. And meanwhile Trump gets elected, children die, people die in Syria, gay people don't get their rights. You know, it's like, you think of all the point, the money does make a difference when it's

frozen like that. The ultimate solution is to get fucking money out of politics. That's right. And put some term limits in Congress. Those are the two ultimate solutions. That's a way far-fetched idea. Let's not take away government salary until we have a system where everything would still be fair if that were taken away during a shutdown. Yeah. Government shutdown should totally stop happening. I used to think that it was supposed to happen because it happened so frequently as I kind of grew up, but then

I realized it doesn't have to happen. Like you were saying, it's never has to happen. It's a very new trend over the last decade. I feel like we're so young now that like just growing up is like five years ago. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a total, it's a total bluffing tactic that people have just taken to the line over and over again. And Trump came in at the worst goddamn time because this was happening in a, the Obama era.

So now he gets to just come in and do that and see it through. Yeah. And he doesn't understand what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck. Absolutely. Or to be in that kind of situation. In fact, he put out a thing that says, Hey, if you hear a letter to give to creditors, if you can't pay your bills, just talk to your personal lawyer. Oh, man. And everyone's like, my personal lawyer, my public lawyer, we didn't have that. And I borrow Cohen. Like, yeah, that's the only way. What personal lawyer are you talking about?

And he just, it's no concept of it. So he's like, shut it down, I don't care. And then he actually came out and said, these are mostly Democrats affected anyway. Yeah, and at that point, he's not even talking to us anymore. I think he's just like talking to his, his own people and, and I get it, you know, like he, he doesn't care.

Like he said, he's so disconnected from reality. He doesn't even care to be connected. It could even be nefarious, like a killing two birds with one stone thing where he gets a screw over Democrats and blue collar people by doing this. And yeah, that's a very good point. I bet he loves that. Hmm, I think he lives for it.

Anyway, thank you for letting me get that opinion out there. And again, like I said, I formulated this in my head and I could be wrong. I just don't feel like handing an advantage to Republicans for a philosophical high ground is worth it at this point, at this juncture. Maybe when we've got a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president, then yeah, you know, do some philosophical shit. Yeah, yeah. But not right now. Finally Thursday, Bloomberg reported that by naming Whitaker, acting attorney general, Trump's ban on bump stocks is null and void.

Recently, this is an assertion, by the way, it's not the truth. Recently, the Trump administration moved to ban bump stocks. That's a thing you put on your gun to make it fire more rapidly. And Bloomberg's John Steingart says that the Justice Department can't ban bump stocks because Matthew Fucking Whitaker lacks the authority to hold the position.

That's his reporting. This is part of a lawsuit filed December 26th after Christmas, Merry Christmas. And it's one of a bunch of lawsuits challenging Justice Department decisions based on the fact that Whitaker is illegitimate. Oddly, this is coming from a lawsuit filed by the right wing group Fire Arms Policy Coalition. So, how fucking hilarious is this? Gun rights fuck faces are suing to stay the ban on bump stocks because they say Trump's

pick for acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker shouldn't have been put there. It's how ironic would it be if the lawsuit that booted Whitaker was a gun rights organization? I would laugh so hard in Trump's stupid face if this resulted in the removal of Whitaker, knowing the ironic deliciousness of Trump who was beholden to the NRA and gun rights advocacy for funneling Russian money into his inaugural fund. If he lost his anti-muller walking dildo over a lawsuit filed by a gun rights organization, it would be so amazing. I can't wait to see what happens in this case because who knows how long Whitaker will be acting AG. We know he's got a seven month limit. If any of the other courts

in lawsuits he's embroiled in find him fit to be there constitutionally. But even Trump's new pick for AG Bill Barr might not get confirmed unless he recuses himself from the Mueller probe, which would no doubt make Trump's butthole-pucker. Because recusal from Mueller oversight is the entire reason he fired sessions to begin with. Not to mention, the bump-stock ban is the first time since the Brady bill, I think, that anyone came for your guns, and it's a friggin' Republican. I can't get enough of this story. Yeah. I'm sorry

Oh, no, I was just gonna say there's been so many shootings like more and more each year that yeah for Republicans and power in 2018 they're gonna have to answer to that right. I think the NRA's funding it 100% is going down I heard that they're almost going bankrupt whatever the fuck that means for them I can rich ass mother fuckers low on bullets. Yeah. They've only got a billion dollars left. Right. So I wonder if it's one of those things where banning bump stocks, they've calculated to something that they need to do in order

to retain the support that's necessary to keep going forward. And that's why they're going against clever. They're not being able to push that through. Because they're in like dire straits right now. Well, I brought this up a couple weeks ago. I can't remember with somebody. It might not have been on this show,

but they're like, they're banning bump stocks. Yeah, and I'm like, big fucking deal. I'm sorry. Yes, it'll help. No, it's not going to stop mass shootings. It's not enough. You need to ban assault rifles,

and that's just how it goes. Brady Bill, we need that back in action. It lapsed and we need to redo it. So I've always been like, banning bump stocks. I guess it's there. It's like a It's like you're like please stop killing people and they go here have some cake instead and you're like oh cakes good Yeah, and we're supposed to be Sated by this bump stock man And so it might have been a situation where they're like we got a throw them a bone

Like you said either to continue Funding coming into the NRA and donations coming into the NRA because normal people are like, can we just get rid of bump stocks? It's like saying, you know what, we're gonna ban nuclear weapons for purchase at Walmart. And you're like, oh thank you. Thank you, good sir.

Right. And I think the best part, like Jordan was saying was the best part, but the most effective part would be to rally up the base through anger about it, right? Like, you were saying just because they're like, oh, they're taking away our guns, you went in there really not. And then they start donating to the NRA

because they're scared, right? Like the base. With a Republican in office. That's fucking hilarious. Yes, because for eight years, they were like, oh, bomb is gonna come for your guns. And he never did. He never banned a goddamn thing.

And now here we are in the Trump era. He's banning bump stocks, which, by the way, isn't taking away your guns. Right. banning bump stocks, which by the way, isn't taking away your guns. Right. But, you know, now they're like, oh, it's just, it's funny to me. And I feel probably kind of move the goal posts,

Republicans and gun rights activists. Be like, well, they're just bump stocks. They're not actual guns. So, you're like, whatever. It's a testament to how big that organization is too, because typically, people aren't subject to getting pulled more to the left. You know. That's usually something that's reserved for political representatives. Usually lobbyists get to be very pointed and they get to stay on their course, but they're so big now.

They're privy to the entire hundreds and millions and millions of people that are their base. They're losing money. They're going under desperate. millions of people that are their base. They're losing money. They're going under desperate. Desperate. What's it like? Hmm. I don't know. Just makes me happy. Oh yeah, it's the best. It's the best. Then Friday, Politico published a piece saying lawyers for Trump are invoking the government shutdown to delay an emoluments case against Trump in the DC and his DC hotel. The government's brief in this case is due January 22nd, but Department of Justice lawyers have asked to table the case during the shutdown, which gives Trump a really weird incentive to keep the government shutdown for as long as he can. The case is on hold indefinitely. We had Pope Trump on Twitter to remind him

that the shutdown does not affect the Mueller Pro. Remember, we were like, hey, I just want to let you know, Mueller's funded through next year. But knowing the shutdown does not affect the Mueller probe. Remember, we were like, hey, I just want to let you know, Mueller's funded through next year. But knowing the shutdown prevents the emoluments case from moving forward could provide the reasons Trump backed this shutdown in the first place. And how long does he think he can keep this up? The rest of his presidency, that's ridiculous. Like, he must, he's desperate like you're saying.

He's desperate in our eight. And they're all complicit too. Yeah. Well, the shutdown 800,000 employees are either furloughed or not being paid 32%, 31.8% of the workforce, that was two years ago, it's probably more by now, our veterans. So, you know, just another reason he loves veterans.

I'm sure we have listeners to that following those categories. So thank you for still working and doing those essential jobs, even though you're not getting paid because of this fucking idiot. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'd be actually would love to hear those stories. Yeah, I was just gonna say I was reading on Reddit People's testimonies and someone said that they they're a prison guard and their wife is a prison guard too And they're just sick of every year or a few months getting their paychecks frozen and at first they were blaming a whole Congress

You're like screw Democrats and Republicans and then Reddit was like actually it's the Republicans and they were blaming a whole Congress. They were like, screw Democrats and Republicans. And then Reddit was like, actually, it's the Republicans. And they were like, oh my gosh. They had to be informed. But a lot of people are too busy. They're just working their jobs to know exactly who's at fault for this and who's really driving this and who needs to be driven out because of it. I think they're just thinking that politics is like,

they want to be jaded to it all. But just watch the video on December 11 of Trump saying, all own the shutdown. All shut down the government. Mm-hmm. I'm so glad they got that on camera. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Chuck Grassley was like, oh, did you just fucking say that?

It's so important. And I don't even know how important it was at the time I was like, it's just Trump being loud and obnoxious, but I see now that they needed that to be public because it's a big deal. Yeah, and to add insult to injury, Trump signed an executive order this week, freezing raises. Remember that cost of living raise that I talked about 2.6% last year, 2.8% to year before that. Right.

0% this year. January 1st, none of us get raises. What? So to add insult to injury, January 11th, they will stop getting paychecks if they're furloughed or working for no pay and they don't get their raise. What was his justification for that? We can't afford it. Oh my goodness. One trillion dollar deficit because of the tax cuts

for corporations on the rich. But we can't afford a 2.6, 2.5, 2.8% pay raise for federal employees. Which they've usually get every year. Now, Obama froze the pay raise as for a while when he took over as president because the economy was in such a shit show. He had to start, he had to get revenue into the coffers.

He couldn't afford anything. Basically, he was trying to find money anywhere. So we were actually broke then, you're saying. And the government employees were like, it's a recession man, it's cool. We're just happy to have a job. We're happy to basically give that 2% back to the country right now so that we can survive

this recession, the greater recession. We're in a boom right now. Trump touts the economy all the time is super great. The tax cuts they gave to themselves. I'm so pissed off right now. It's really coming home to roost. It's like they thought it would pay for itself by now, right? That was the argument that they had in Paul Ryan's office. Dude, let's go to the Capitol now. What are we talking? I'm so mad. So he shut down the government.

He's not paying 800,000 people sending them home or making them work for free. And he's taking their race away on January 1st, sign that executive order. This was a decision he had actually made last August. And we reported on it, but he signed the executive order this week. It sounds like how he runs his company is probably. Yeah. Seriously, we're going bankrupt because of him and we don't need to. And then finally on Friday, trade gaudy and good luck, bad luck, officially closed closed the investigations into the Mueller investigation

and the Hillary email investigation closed officially. Just so you're aware, the Republicans investigated Hillary for the low, low price a hundred million dollars over the last four years In Benghazi and email probes and they netted zero indictments zero felony charges zero asset forfeiture and zero convictions What the Mueller probe has made money when you factor in the asset forfeiture a net of at least 15 million and that's not if you count if you don't count Malaysia we've got a 250 million dollar yet If you count that and he has a 38 indictments with 200 felony charges and I bet Republicans are tired of all that winning. Oh my god So you guys cheers the email Hillary email investigation is officially closed Ding ding you guys will be right back

Hey, Mueller junkies. I have heard that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So this year, for my new year's resolution, I didn't want to just lose weight. I actually wanted to change my lifestyle. Do you know what I mean? I didn't want to just do a thing because I've done this a million times.

It's easy to just lose weight, right? But it always comes back, right? Keeping it off. Yeah, so I'm trying something to do. You guys should try it too, it's noom. It's like a fitness coach, a food tracker, a step counter, and a nutritionist, all on the palm of your hand, just from the app.

It's not a diet. Like I said, it's a lifestyle change. It's focused on self-care, which would be really big on here. And psychology, so there's no guilt, and there's no shame. Because we all, you know, we make make mistakes but they don't consider them mistakes Absolutely, they give you even little pro tips sometimes day by day they have these cool little exercises and you read articles that are really helpful and they really go into the Psychology of making a sustainable change and they help you

Think of what your ultimate goal is something that's not just I want to lose weight It's why do you wanna be healthier? And yeah, so you have like a super big goal and then like many goals to get there and they teach you how to set realistic goals so that you don't keep letting yourself down, basically. I don't know, it's just really wonderful. I've been using it for about two weeks

and the interface is super friendly. It's amazing, I love the food tracker. They make it really simple to log your food. Definitely, and there's also a step counter integrated into the app so it actually adds the calories back onto your calorie budget for you that you can eat if you've walked a lot that day. Yeah. And there's a little do more where you can add any exercise that you've done that day. So that way, if you, you know, like we say, you know, listen to the pod, get on the

elliptical, you're about 700 calories, you put that in there, you get 700 more calories for the day. Yeah, it's really, I really like it. It's working really well so far. Same, it makes it like a game, it makes it a lot more fun than just, okay, don't eat and exercise a lot. It totally changes the game.

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Yeah, hot notes. Today, Jordan is going to give us the latest on Rudy Giuliani and his Loot The Truth tour about first. Giulies, you have some news. What do the New York Times uncover regarding Trump's feet? Oh, yes. I love that. And very dramatic on Wednesday in a world. Yeah. The footballer nobody wants to buy.

Oh, God. Exactly. Oh, no. So on Wednesday, whenever you're ready, I'm sorry. It's Trump. No, it's hilarious. Oh, all right. On Wednesday, the New York Times published an article called

Did a Queen's Pediatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam? And the short answer is, most likely yes, but here's the article. So we've reported in previous episodes how, after using up all of his four education deferments, Trump was conveniently diagnosed with bone spurs and his heels that's providing him with the medical exemption from the military during the Vietnam War. And for 50 years, the details of this medical exemption have been very mysterious.

Even Trump couldn't remember which foot it was on her, which doctor he went to. But this week, we have a lead on a possible explanation, and it involves a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Trump's dad, Fred Trump, which hints at a possible squid pro quo. So the podiatrist was... I didn't know he rented his office from Fred Trump. Yeah, so he's a white guy. Well, that was a given. Did I say the name yet? Okay, wait.

The podiatrist was Dr. Larry Braunstein. Definitely white. Oh yeah, who died more than 10 years ago? Farmer, yeah. But his daughter's... I feel bad. Yeah, no, it's okay. His daughters are? Bummer, yeah. But his daughters. Feel bad. No, it's okay, his daughters are carrying the legacy on of Trump's lies. Legacy, the foot of sea.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. That was quick, that was so funny. That was so quick. So the daughters now see that they're dead. Kicking, callbacks. I love it. The daughters now see that their dad often told in the story of how he came to quote, a young Mr. Trump's aid during the Vietnam War

as a favor to his father. And one of the daughters, Dr. Elisa Bronstein, said that her father implied that Trump did not actually have a disqualifying foot element. Go figure. She also said that what her dad got in return for helping down. Did you put it in his calendar? Oh, that's a good question.

Right? I bet Mueller has the chance. That's gonna it in his calendar? Oh, that's a good question. We need to get these count. I bet Mueller has to count. That's a good thing. Like when he hung out with Squee. Yeah, foot day. Does he have it in his calendar? That's what I want to know. Yeah, yeah.

She also said that what her dad got in return for helping Donald Trump was access to Fred Trump. She said, quote, if there was anything wrong in the building, my dad would call and Trump would take care of it immediately. That was the small favor that he got. Wow. So he was actually a good landlord? Yeah, definitely.

I mean, you know, illegally. Yeah. He only had to help with a draft for his son. Yeah, scratch my back. So the Bronstein family also suggested that there was some involvement by a second podiatrist named Dr. Manny Weinstein. But unfortunately Weinstein died in 1995, and no paper evidence has been found

to help corroborate the family's versions of events. However, the city directories show that Weinstein did live in two Brooklyn apartments owned by Fred Trump, and it also shows that he moved into the first apartment during the year Donald Trump received his medical exemption. And in 2016 interview, Trump said that a doctor provided, quote, a very strong letter about the bone spurs in his hills,

which was presented to the draft officials. However, in that same interview, Trump failed to mention any connection between his father and the doctors involved. And of course, the White House refused to make Trump available for a follow-up interview or respond to the written questions about his service record. Why is it in Trump-written questions-up interview or respond to the written questions about his service record. Why is it in Trump-written questions?

What are you trying to get? So the interesting thing about the New York Times reporting on this is that they are the ones that seem to be slowly building this case about Fred Trump illegally using his wealth and privilege to assist his son. We've seen it with their article about how Freddie legally helped Trump with the casinos, now with the Vietnam War draft, and a lot of people are speculating on this, you know, or happen for a while, but I just love how the New York Times is like coming really hard with the casinos, now with the Vietnam War draft. And a lot of people are speculating on this, you know, or happen for a while, but I just love how the New York Times is like,

coming really hard with the facts. They just, yeah, they seem to really have the whole picture. Foot facts. Foot facts, yeah. Hashtag. This week on Foot Facts. On Trump TV. So a fellow doctor named Alec Hodgstein, these guys,

are they all related, who worked with Dr. Bronstine. It's New York, you're right. Yeah, yeah So this guy worked with dr. Bronstein in the late 1990s and he said that he quote or Bronstein quote spoke very highly of the trumps because they were very open to Negotiating with him and letting him stay in the space at a rent. He was comfortable with that's good Yeah, I like doctors that negotiate. That's not terrifying at all And then trumps dad like obviously he's not like this kind Harded generous guy. That's just like yeah man whatever works for you The podiatrist have to take the Hippocratic oath

That's funny. That's I don't I don't know if they do probably yes. I would imagine their doctors I I guess you got to go to medical school and then get a podiatry specialty right yeah Do you just like swear to protect them? Maybe he's like, you know, I could swear to do no harm. Maybe he thought, keep it a matter of Vietnam, is the best way. Oh, Tim.

Yeah, they're like, trust me. If my son goes, he's just gonna use everyone like a human shield. It's like when my fat cat gets outside, he's secretly saved the world. He's gonna get his ass kicked. You can't defend yourself buddy. Come on, you weigh 25 pounds.

Stay inside. Oh, that's a good point. So just wrap it all up. Come on buddy, you weigh 239 pounds. Stay inside buddy. You don't wanna go over to Vietnam. Poor thing. So Bronstin and bitch tits.

Bitch tits. That's my cat's name, but we can call Trump that team. Yeah. Bronstin's daughter. But we can call Trump that team. Yeah. Bronstein's daughters said that his role in Trump's military exemption was something their relatives and friends would always discuss because at first her father was proud that he had helped a famous guy.

But later the lifelong Democrat and World War II that grew tired of Donald Trump's reality TV nonsense. So also something interesting from this article is that Bronstein's daughter suggested that a possible explanation for Dr. Weinstein's involvement, the second doctor, and the exemption is that he had some connection to the draft itself. Like maybe he was one of the guys on the board that finalized the exemption. So that's what they're speculating just as there was a podiatrist on the draft board who decided who had who could not go exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. I like that Trump's reality TV was the thing that really set that guy off. It's only was alive for the presidency. Jesus. But it wasn't the draft dodging. World War II veteran. Right.

Yeah. It wasn't the draft. Although I will say that I feel like, but I'm not sure because I wasn't really, I wasn't alive at the time. I was dead at the time The war war two veterans Didn't see Vietnam as like a quote unquote real war, you know So maybe they were like, yeah, I'll help you not go to Vietnam. What a bullshit piece of shit war right or he's seen the The horrors of the war and he's like I'm gonna spare you. Yeah

We go saving his life right like do know how I'm that's his that's maybe the and he's like, I'm gonna spare you. Either way, he would go to my life. I'm saving his life, right? Like, do you know how I'm, that's his, that's maybe the way he saw it. I can see that logic and he also was a Democrat and Trump was a Democrat at the time. So this, you know, the whole camaraderie unfortunately. People forget Trump was a Democrat. I know, yeah, he probably thought this was like a good chap. Back when Democrats kicked black people out of apartment buildings. You know, classic. Those were the days.

Yeah, classic Trump. Camilleian. Oh yeah. So Those were the days. Yeah. Classic Trump. Comeylean. Oh, yeah. So not as majestic. Oh, no. Not with the eyes that go different direction. So the bird box creature is that really creepy. I haven't seen bird boxes. I haven't seen either.

They never show the creature. I thought it was some weird thing that was, we were going to advertise for. Like, oh, yeah, I had a tweet today that was like, today I learned that bird box is not a live bird monthly subscription service. Exactly. I've seen that tweet a million times, I love it. Oh no, I've deleted it.

Now I'm a hack. Oh yeah, that's an old one. Oh no, I didn't know that. That's good week old or so. Oh man. Oh. They're too quick for us. All right, deleting it now.

I will not be a goddamn hack. Well wait, was the person who tweeted, oh wait, I don't know if the person who tweeted was more famous. Oh, definitely someone else. Okay, I'm deleting it. We don't do it by fame. Okay, it's gone now. We do it by who did it for us.

I like it though, Jordan. Hey, great minds thinking like, right? Good joke. Yeah, I mean, it is, I should have known it was too good to be true. Yeah. That when you write a beautiful joke and you're it was too good to be true. Yeah. I hate that when you write a beautiful joke and you're like, that has to be taken.

Yeah. And then you Google it and it is. All right, anyway, let's see. Yeah, I was wondering myself, what does the foot story have to do with Mueller? Right, and I think it's just connecting the lies, the family has been covering up and just their Their behavior it seems because otherwise I don't know what else I do. What do you think?

Mueller didn't dodge the draft. Oh, it's a personal thing Okay, fun fact about my personal something we haven't said on the show I don't think but I heard on the news this week is that Mueller actually did a medical examination I think a year before he actually went to war and they said that he had a knee issue that he had to get healed and he once it healed, he went back to the doctor and said, okay, am I ready for war now? He actually had a legit medical reason to not go. But he still went.

He didn't even drag it out. Nope. That's incredible. I know someone that's such a bad ass, I can't say, because I don't know, maybe it's not smart to say who it is, whatever it is, fucking matter. This person has a peanut allergy. Yeah. And they've been lying the whole time about having a peanut allergy because they want to serve

so badly. Oh, so they've been trying like a pretty bad peanut allergy. Not like they have peanuts and they immediately die, but it's, they have like a whole fucking reaction and they carry an epiphenon and everything. And they've been slowly feeding themselves like peanut butter sandwiches over the course of their life trying to like to sensitize themselves to the peanut allergy because he wants to serve and he does serve he's a fucking bad ass but

anytime there's like peanuts in the MRE and stuff he just has to like not eat it. I'm not hungry. Yeah. If they throw peanuts like the enemies that I didn't know peanut all you could keep you out of the military. Of for what he does. Okay, I think for the enemy that I didn't know peanut all you could keep you out of the military of for what he does Okay, I think it for the job that yeah for some jobs like you can't be colorblind to be a pilot But you can be colorblind and be anything else. I think it's it's like yeah the stuff that he's doing He's on the armor for the military

Yeah, I'm just kidding. He's on like really small teams and stuff and and he's like a yeah essential Okay, I think a lot of the MREs have nut products in them so you have to be real careful and he's like essential basically. To what's happening. And a lot of the MREs have nut products in them, so you have to be real careful. And so they just said, I guess it's just make sense on these small special ops groups to not have anyone with a peanut allergy. Yeah, make sense.

But it's cool that he's still doing his thing though. Oh yeah, he's a fucking badass. It's the opposite of Trump, right? Totally. Yeah, that was the whole four education experiments. And like a bone spur. Yeah, back to back education to Furman's. And then he went with the medical thing after.

I want college football. So yeah, that's that story. That's feet. Foot facts. Yes. If you have a foot fetish, you probably really went to that one for, sorry, I probably shouldn't. They're very torn.

Yeah, they're torn politically, but I hate Trump. I don't want to see Trump's feet. There's so many other feet tiny feet, man. Right. Got to be how do you balance a sequel to happy feet? Minus Robin Williams. That's why it's tiny. Terrible. It's tiny, terrible. Oh, yeah. Jordan, you have why it's tiny. Terrible. It's tiny, terrible.

Oh yeah. Jordan, you have a Giuliani update. Yes. So we learned this week from Giuliani himself in this interview that possible further questioning a Donald Trump by the special counsel's office is still being negotiated. So, they're not only discussing the scope of further questioning, but they're just discussing if further questioning is going to happen at all. So no idea basically what is happening. When asked to confirm if it's his understanding that Mueller might wish to interview Trump over the phone or in person, Giuliani said, quote,

it hasn't been formally closed yet and that loop hasn't been closed. So. All right. So they aren't very open. Moller is not satisfied. Basically, it's what it boils down to. And I didn't think he would be when he got his answers back from the written questions because I knew that those written answers were probably like, maybe I don't recall. Perhaps could be, I don't know, for sure. Good night.

Thank you. So I'm sure that, and even if he did answer something, and the reason anyone would want a face-to-face interview, so you can ask follow-up questions, right? Because that's how you get to something. That's how investigations work, and this is just for collusion, conspiracy-ating and abetting. This is nothing to do with obstruction, right?

Because he's, Mueller said, I can't give you written questions for obstruction. I need to get to the intent, and I have to talk to you to get that. Yep. Yeah, exactly. So no dates have been set for anything officially. But obviously this would be like, have you set a date?

Have you set up the Save the Dates? Oh my god, yes. Save the Dates. Trump is being questioned by a grand jury. That'd be amazing. Obviously it would be a huge deal of Trump was going to be questioned over the phone or in person specifically because he has like a self-destruct timer that goes off after seven seconds of speaking in

the flesh every time. It's like I can't not lie. I have a truth disability. Norman coordinates. This is a tree trip. Smoke comes out of it. Yeah. If only he was a robot, that fucking scientist would be so ashamed of himself. Or just like, this is amazing. He's a Russian scientist. Yeah. Like he made him watch like the blue collar comedy tour. This is the president. You like Larry the K-Way? He's your guy with him or something. $1,000 or something. This is the president you get. You like Larry the K. What guy did you go with him or something? Yeah, Ron White, Larry the K. What guy,

Billingfall, those guys. And then, you know, you remember, have you seen all the things where we watched, we made AI watch a thousand hours of friends and write a friends episode? No way. Like, yeah, this would be it.

This would be a, that's funny. That's a person of that. We sent AI to 17 rodeos. And now, actually I just didn't buy a level of rodeo. So I used to barrel rodeos and now actually I shouldn't buy a lot of rodeos. I used to bear away. I can't think of a good thing. Anyway, yeah. So, oh, watch, we watched thousand hours of Fox News and we came up with a

president robot. Love that. I mean, I hate that. But, love that. Yeah. And so just a reminder that earlier this month is when Giuliani said that Trump would sit for an in-person interview over his dead body Yeah, and yeah, and then added but you know, I could be dead So maybe we're just seeing the ghost of Giuliani now. That's giving him his new nickname Gulliani. Yeah Rudy Gulliani So I was thinking like how likely is it that this interview is going to happen in person or over the phone?

Well CNN earlier this month reported that Mueller definitely wants the questioning to happen. Trub has been telling everyone in his inner circle that he hasn't made a decision yet as if he really has a choice in the end, but Mueller will play for him now I think and keep doing what he's doing. And Trub also said last month that his written answers to Muller would probably be, quote, the end. Huge judge saying, I'll be the judge of it. I'll be the judge of that. Go back to the next week. Yeah, I don't know, man, I feel like

he, I think that if I were Muller, I would subpoena him. And he actually, we did our book club about fear by Bob Woodward, that last chapter or last chapter, too. I think that if I were Muller, I would subpoena him. And he actually did our book club about fear by Bob Woodward, that last chapter or last chapter two. I think it was actually a short chapter 42, where they were talking about, you know, I'm gonna subpoena him. And then, and Dowd just goes off on this weird. Right, he freaks the fuck out.

Yeah, you can't. I'm gonna show you, mark my words. And he's like, calm down. Right, calm down, Dow. Calm down, doubt. Yeah, nice courtroom etiquette. He's like, but I need to talk to him. So I wouldn't be surprised. And we did think that the secret to peanut battle

was Trump for a minute. It's not. It's a foreign entity, own state-owned entity. But I really think that Mueller's not going to be satisfied without a face-to-face interview with the president, particularly on obstruction. Absolutely.

And yeah, just like he said, because Mueller knows, Mueller's been watching him. He knows how he answers questions. This is the ideal environment to get a case. I won't even say to get a case against him because that would imply that Mueller has some sort of ideal outcome in mind. But yeah, Mueller just wants the truth.

Yes. And he's not trying to trap yeah, Mueller just wants the truth. Yes. And he's not trying to trap him. He just wants the truth of it. And I feel like Mueller would let something slip to get to the truth. Like he's not going to be like, oh, got you, got you, 2001, 2001. Right. I feel like he'd be his main motivation. And his number one goal is to get to the truth.

Right. At least for obstruction. Definitely. And you're going to get, and he knows this, you're is to get to the truth of the intent, at least for obstruction. Definitely, and you're gonna get, and he knows this, you're gonna get the most leads and the most information that is consequential when you just let Trump fucking vent therapy, because he says so much shit. That you can investigate. Do this, every time you do a Giuliani update,

you're like, first of all, Stefan Doppler has had an ask him any questions and he just comes out of the gate, like offers it up. It's like, all right, dude. Thanks. Didn't even ask about that. Same thing with Lester Holt when Trump said he fired Komi for the rush of thing.

He's like, didn't ask, but thanks for the info. Yeah, and speaking of Giuliani on Wednesday, he said, quote, negotiations haven't formally ended yet. They haven't ended because it's not just my opinion that matters. There are other lawyers involved and the president of the United States, of course. My opinion is, I don't trust them. I look at how they treated Maniford, Flynn, and Corsi. I love that he just said three criminals. Yeah, he looks out three criminals, two of which have already undergone sentencing proceedings.

Flynn is to come next year. And I guess Corsi is a TBD criminal, but I think we all know how that's gonna turn out. Well, we all know how that's gonna turn out. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't know if he'll go in Numburg or not. Half Numburg, full Numburg.

We need something. We need to, we need Maya Wiley to speak to him. We just do. We need her to talk him off a ledge. Oh, yeah, I'm with Sam number. Yeah, she's an expert at that. We want her little credits now when she gets on the shows. She's so good at that. She must have been so satisfied in that interview with Nunberg. Oh, God, just like this is fucking gold. This is lower gold, we're like, this is comedy gold, she's like, this is legal gold. Yeah. Yeah. So good, legal commentator gold. Yeah.

All right, well thank you. Thank you for that reporting. You're welcome. More loop the truth, I'm sure that we'll be more next week. Yeah. All right, sweet, you guys. For today's hot note, I have created a sweet 16 bracket

for the top news stories of 2018. So it's time for Muller Madness. All right, so I got it in my head on Thursday night that I was gonna put together a bracket of the top like I didn't know how to cover 2018. So I'm like, you know what? I was gonna put together a bracket of the top like I didn't know how to cover 2018 So I'm like, you know what I'm gonna go through I'm gonna find the top stories what I think are the 16 top stories Of 2018 and I did a little research based on data and shit like that to find out what were very popular stories And I came up with the 16 and so we're gonna go through these bracket by bracket And if there's any fans out there who want to draw this bracket out For us because I've got everything down to the winner, which

I haven't looked up yet. I'm just going to pull that up at the very last second. We can find out who the winner was. Nice. And so, and I did it. I seeded them too. So whoever got more votes in the first round went up against the least votes, went up against most, and then secondly, second most, you know, back down the way that the way they do it.

Right. I don't know why. I just, because they make for better games. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, the first bracket was Bhutina. That's the, you know, the Russian red sparrow, basically. Yeah, slash Bhutina. Bhutina.

Bhutin. Uh, that's Erickson's girlfriend. So I want to talk about her indictment and plea agreement, right? And this is outside of the Mueller investigation, but it's part of the Russian investigation, so I included that. And she went up against the Russians being indicted. And to my surprise, Bhutan, I won. Yeah, I'm not surprised, personally, you let the Russians be more important because... Because they laid out in great detail all of the stuff about Russians.

It told the country that Russia did, in fact, steal and hack so that we were aware of that for the midterm election. It laid out, it let us know how detailed and how much information Mueller can get about these guys. They had emails and addresses and home phone numbers and stuff on these guys.

I think that story came out just earlier before everybody was as invested as they are when the boutina news came out They call that a recency bias. Yeah, I like that. I played a lot. I think that played a lot. Yeah, yeah Butina's story was also just more like Hollywood like the spy right so basically she came in infiltrated the NRA Got a bunch like met Paul Erickson Paul Erickson is the one who fucked with Dearborn and Mashburn to get the RFC platform, I fucked with that. I'm trying to be hip. To get the RFC platform changed to change the language on Ukraine, basically to lighten it up on Russia a little bit. I was just laughing at their names. We had a whole riff about it when we did an episode on them. Dearborn and Mashburn. Yeah.

riff about it when we did an episode on them. Dear born and measured. Yeah. There were hard names that sounded like Dear Bogged. There's a born and a burn. So yeah, so she's part of that. She also worked with the NRA. She brought over a group of people, Republicans over to Moscow,

from the NRA, including Sheriff Clark. That's the 18 pieces of flare sheriff. 31, 31 pieces of flare sheriff 31 31 pieces of flare and The guy from the outdoor channel and the current president and the future president and the past president of it sounds like a Charles Dickens story of the NRA Oh, and so that's you know, we all know who bootenay is right? So and then she recently had a gag order lifted on her case And the government's objection was, you shouldn't do that because,

just because Bootna has a plea agreement and she's not gonna have a jury trial. So, I know that you're saying that her future jury can't be tainted by anything that comes out in the public, but she's helping us convict other people, Erickson, who could help us convict many other people, who knows who, Deraborne, Mashburn. Yeah.

And who else, who knows, who else? But do you know they're like, those are future, future jury trials, but the judge lifted the gag order. So, Bootna won that between Bootna and the Russians being indicted. Bootina and the Beast. How is Bootina and the Beast?

Then, Manafort case. And when I say Manafort case, I mean, his conviction, his bail revocation. He had to go back to jail, his plea agreement, his blowing up the plea agreement. That's the last hearing where they're like, we don't know what we're doing. So the Manafort case went up against Trump firing sessions and Manafort won 80% of those. Oh yeah. You're not surprised about that one right?

I don't know, firing sessions for not undercusing himself is pretty obstructiony, but they're both huge. Manafort's pretty big. Yeah, Manafort's like a whole arc of a storyline. The session thing is just like one little part. Yeah, I think it's the proximity of someone to Trump being in jail sitting there currently. That makes it so big. That's true. Yes. And a lot of people after that, the belief in the Mueller or the support of the Mueller investigation skyrocketed after the

Manafort convictions. Totally. Then we had in the next bracket, Fusion GPS went up or the next match. Fusion GPS transcripts being released, went up against the NRA being investigated. And NRA1, 75 to 25. Pretty big. And it sounds like only four people voted because these seem like round numbers, but we had a thousand votes at least. Oh yeah. Then, so an NRA beat Fusion GPS.

Then, the Komi memos released the Komi memos, went up against Trump firing FBI agents. And the Komi memos released the Komi memos one up against Trump firing FBI agents. And the Komi memos won over Trump firing the Komi member, the Komi five, which became the Komi six because of Buente. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So basically, if you don't know I'm talking about, there were five, six officials, high ranking officials in the FBI and the FBI, Officer General Counsel, who Komi shared his contemporaneous memos with, right when they happened after his meetings with Trump, and those guys were gattis, baker,

macaque, I can't, it's been so long. I was just going to say it's been so long since I happened. And these guys were more than I could think of. These guys are systematically fired. Yeah. It's time went out all over. In that testimony too, the Comey testimony. Remember at the gym, it was on every channel. Like, TV's back to back.

Seeing Comey walk in the courtroom, I'll tall and pissed. He's, what was it? Somebody quoted me back to myself on Twitter. Comey doesn't give a fuck and he is pissed and he is tall. That's brilliant. So anyway, the Comey memo's 162 to 38.

I agree with that. Then we had Dems take the house versus the Kavanaugh confirmation. And along with the Kavanaugh confirmation comes the Kennedy resignation and his kid being Deutsche Bank. You have to think of everything that comes with it. That's a good point. But Dems take the house one by staying up to 74. I voted for Kavanaugh.

Really? I did. I thought Kavanaugh was a big thing. I voted for Dems taking the house because it felt like a big event. But as a personal thing, Kavanaugh for sure. Yeah. I guess it's like a temporal thing in a long run. The Kavanaugh thing is way more consequential potentially.

And I shouldn't say that. Not way more consequential. I completely take that back But it's been on them. Yeah, but every the whole the whole lot of it I thought including the fact that it's now a very conservative justice sitting on the court in some really important issues It is true. Yeah, it is big and then when you think about the Deutsche Bank Justin Kennedy son connection. Yeah, was there a thing? Yeah, we still haven't really uncovered that entirely. We're still waiting to figure out a lot more.

We reported on it, but we haven't learned anything else. Right, so that, yeah, Dems taking the house is kind of old news compared to that. I guess I expected the Dems to take the house. I did not expect Cavanaugh to get confirmed. Do it for all of us. That's a good point. That is a good point.

Anyway, Dems take the house 174 in that match. And then we had Flynn, all the Flynn shenanigans, particularly his sentencing memo, and then Mueller sentencing memo, and then his reply, and then Mueller's reply, and then the hearing like this whole drama that just unfolded. Yeah.

That went up against Vandors one, and Flynn kicked Vandors ones at half. Oh, four. So Flynn got 94% of the vote on that one, 94. But it didn't kick as much ass as this next bracket where Cohen implicating 45 in the financial payoff. Yeah, the stormy Daniels. Loot, loot, loot.

Catching release. Yeah, do do do do do do do. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that.

We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that.

We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. We're working on that. A lot of this whole collusion and conspiracy to Adenabat rests with Roger Stone, but Cohen won 95%.

Yeah, I forget this significance of course he and Stone too often. So I think the average person is thinking more about Cohen because it's like flashing in the news. Well, it's a big damn deal too because he basically, this whole, his pleading, copying to this makes Trump an undidied cook and spirit. Oh yeah. that's gigantic. That's where Nixon was right before he left right. An undidied cook and spirit.

Oh yeah, he was undidied cook and spirit and a lot of things. Um, then, oh my dog's barking, what does she want? There's probably a justice. Justice. Justice dog. Then the final match was Cohen Slush Fund, Essential Consulting, Fucking Essential. Went up against Cambridge Analytica,

Cambridge Analytica won, 72%. Yeah, I can see that. I voted for Camman. It just was really shocking because we all... Vote for Camman, bro. Sounds like a commercial error. J. Joe, vote for Camman. Yeah.

What about you, Joko? I agree, Camman. Camman, Joko, Kamen, JJo. Yeah, it was really Kamen. Yeah, we all have letters now. It was just frustrating to realize that we were being so played on something that we thought we were controlling. Like we thought Facebook was our personal little thing just for us and turns out, I mean, people told us for years to watch what you put on the internet, but we didn't know that they would use it for political stuff. That was shocking. Yeah, Patricia Arquette brought this up today. She's like, man, I fell for that Jill Stein recount. Oh, yeah.

And so did I. I don't even do it. I wonder what I fell for. Somebody actually tweeted back at me and they're like, I can't believe you're so fucking stupid. You voted for Jill Stein. I'm like, I didn't vote for Jill Stein. I sent her money for the recount because I was mad Hillary lost.

Like, what are you even? What? Thanks for your mansplain gin. Have a nice day. So we end up now with the eight. I don't, what do they call it, March Madness? There's a sweet 16. The final, there's a final four.

Is it the grade eight? The grade eight. The grade eight. The grade eight. Oh, no, the grade that. I don't know what it is. Great ape. So the first bout here was a boot universe is Flynn and Flynn kicked a kick to butt.

Actually, didn't kick her butt is only 59%. A lot of people think boot is really important. Yeah. So boot universe is Flynn. Flynn wins. All right. And then we had co-in implicating 45 versus the Komi memos. Komi won 95% to 5%. Nice. They're like Komi memos don't even remember those oh, yeah, then

Man is Then Manifort went up against Cambridge Analytica and Manifort won make 63% Agreed to 37 and then finally Dems take the house versus the NRA. Dems take the house. 72%. Cool. So then we have the final four. And we had, which way did I set it up? Let me get my, I'm gonna have to get my phone. So we're gonna have to pause here. We're gonna take a break.

We're gonna go out. We're gonna have a gale time. And then we'll be back. And you won't even notice. It'll be like, it'll be like one of those time capsule, time travel things where we go through a Wormhole and for us it's years, but for you it's just like a second So we're gonna be gone for 10 years, but you only experience like one second so check it out

All right guys, so we've been gone for 10 years and We determined I went on Twitter. I looked at the voting. it's 51.49 right now, between the top two things, which are Dums take the house and Cohen. And so you can vote now, I'm not going to, it's too close, I can't announce a winner yet. Some people don't know about the contest head or the, you know, the Mueller madness competition. So, right, yeah, we'll give them a chance. the Muller Madness competition. So, right. Yeah, we'll give them a chance. So, find, I'll pin the tweet, or find it on Twitter at Muller, she wrote, vote.

And we'll announce the winner next week, so in the new year, in the season premiere. Yes. Next year. Season three premiere. So, yeah, that's it. Are you guys ready for the fantasy and diamond league? Yes. All right, so I think this week, I'm just gonna carry on with sort of the picks that I had before.

Maybe a couple changes here. I still think I want to add Put Kushner back in and Don Jr. Navonka and Stone and Assange. Okay. So those are my five this week. Yeah. I'm keeping the kids myself. Are we still doing that wild card with the. Oh, yeah. And VTB Bank is my pick for who the company A is from their country A, the company, state owned company, and the same thing about all of VTB is still my pick. I had another pick then. Ross Neft. Ross Neft, there we go. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to go with them. And just to be a little snowflake, little butterfly, you're most likely right, AG, about VTB. I just want to try. And then, yeah, all the kids, Kush, Jr., Ivanka. I always say Kush is one of the kids because he's like an honorary.

He's a rock. In law, kid. Do you want Eric, too? I do want Eric, too. So that'll be four kids. So that's your four kids. Yeah, and then my fifth one will be a rando. All right, so you're going to go with the kids.

That's Eric, Ivanka, Jr. Cushner, yes, and a rando. And a rando and Rossnaft. Correct. Okay. I'm doing VTB because I believe the conjecture that you talked about last week. I'm doing Cushner, Ivanka, DTJ, Stone, Assange.

All right, cool. Then we have it. There we go. Tonka, DTJ, Stone, Assange. All right, cool. Then we have it. There we go. Now, starting next year, we're gonna make a change to our fantasy indictment picks. Just us, not you guys, not on the Facebook page, a Friends of Justice, not for patrons. You guys continue to do what you do.

We're gonna make a change where it's gonna be actual fantasy indictment draft, where somebody gets to go first, we decide who gets to go first, who gets to go second, who gets to go third, and then once you pick someone, the other people can't take that person. So it's going to be like a true fantasy and diamond draft because you can't have all the same guy, you know, all the time. I love that.

What do we do to decide who picks at or two? We could rock paper scissors or we could draw straws or pick numbers. Yeah, or read a trivia question The first one I answer right wins. I don't know who would moderate that. That's a lot of work What about like just going in a chronological order like you do the first week George the second week I do a third week and then we just rotate it. Is that too predictable? Oh? Well, well, you have to we have to find out who starts. Oh, well, that's yeah, I guess the question. So I to the death and simple. Yeah.

I to the death. Excellent. Next week, just me. I think I could take you but probably yeah, probably yeah, I give up very easily. Same, same. I roll over and expose my belly. Yeah.

So we're going to we're going gonna change up those rules next time. But anyway, so stick around for that. It's gonna be amazing. Are you guys ready for sabotage? Yes! Yes! Alright, so early this morning, Saturday morning, time, magazine, time, dropped an exclusive story on a month's long investigation they'd been working on.

Recently, on December 19th of this year, the Treasury released its latest sanctions list. And the man at the top of the list is named Victor Boyarkin. He's a former arms dealer and an ex-Russian spy. And he was accused of handling money on behalf of Olegg Darapaska. Boyarkin, that's why he was on the sanctions list. Boyarkin told Time magazine that he was in touch with Paul Manafort, saying, quote, he owed us a lot of money and he was offering to pay it back. Unquote. So Boyarkin said he was approached by Robert Mueller and he told Robert Mueller

to quote, go dig a ditch. Oh, that's a big insult in Russia, I guess. This is some of the clearest evidence of conspiracy and aiding and abetting to date. Because as we all know, Manifort went to work for Trump for free and he promised Oleg Derepaska private briefings in exchange to quote, make whole his $19 million debt to the Russian oligarch for a telecom thing they went in on together and they just, him and Gates just took off without paying him back. If you remember, Manafort wrote a series of emails to Constantin Kolimnik, who he's also

co-indicted with, promising the briefings, and we reported on those a long time ago. And one of the unanswered mysteries in those emails was a reference manifold made to quote our friend V. Unquote and we all thought it was a Vladimir Putin. Turns out no thanks to Time magazine that is Victor Boyarkin. Wow. And this makes me want to add Manifort and Boyarkin to my fantasy and indictment team this week. Super seating for Manifort and but I think Manifort still Boyarkin to my fantasy indictment team this week. Super seating for Manifort. But I think Manifort still has a ways to go. Yeah, I will add this guy.

Victor, you said his first name is Victor. Victor Boyarkin. So I'm gonna go with junior Ivanka Stone, a Sange and Buyarkin. Boyarkin. Boyarkin. I'll just replace my Rando with him. Yeah, because he would be a rando until I just named him.

Exactly. Right, so you were good to go with a rando. So what about you? Do you want to change anything? Definitely. Yeah, that's juicy. I'm going to take off Kushner. You should take Eric off.

I don't have Eric. Oh, it's right. It must have used to have Eric. Right. Yep. Taking off Kushner replacing him with Boy York, Boy Yorkin. Yeah, and I took Kushner off and replaced him with a sange yourkin yeah and I took coach neroff and replaced him with a song I think so yeah so all right we got it boy yourkin boy yourkin boy orkin a man

strict demand of pesticide orkin boy did it here I am to save the day all right well cool one thing we know for sure regardless regardless of whether Maniford is indicted again this week or not, is that Maniford is... Hey, Mueller junkies! You asked for them, and we have them. You can now buy a Keepcom and put some beans on it, t-shirt, at our online store. Or if you become a patron this week at the $15 level, just this week, we'll send you one for free. As a patron, you'll get access to all our premium content, including the back catalog of over 40 bonus episodes.

You'll get our weekly newsletter that includes my research notes that is put together by the wonderful Jordan. You'll get access to our closed Facebook group where you can join in on the fun, playing the fantasy and indictment league. You'll get ad-free episodes and you'll have access to our book club where we review books relevant to the Mueller investigation. So head to patreon.com slash Mueller She wrote and support women in podcasting or shop online at mullershewrote.com and put some beads on it. All right guys and for the interview what we did this week was we got all of our favorite listeners past guests all together and we did this last minute everyone was so kind to do this

and we asked them what they thought the most consequential news story, like in our Mueller Madness bracket, or the weirdest or funniest story of 2018, to see what they thought. And here is a montage of all of their answers. So this is Joyce Fant. The most important development in the Mueller investigation in 2018 is something that's been

hotly debated at my dinner table over the last few nights. But where I come down, I think, is a slightly off-center place from where most people are. I think about Mueller's central charge, figuring out whether the Trump campaign worked with Russians to get him elected. We don't know the answer to that for sure. But Mueller, I think, by now does. And the answer to that question is the most important thing that happened

in the Russia investigation this year. We don't know where Mueller's going. We don't know if he'll be inditing anyone else or not, but this idea that he has evidence that's not yet public, that he's compiled so that he can reach these decisions is I think the most important thing that he's done this year and the most important thing for all of us, and it may even be that some of those important pieces have leaked out into the public, but we don't yet know their significance because

we don't see the uh... full picture and then i think the final thing is important to say is that bob molar is taken on almost missical significance for some folks in this country but we have to remember that he's a prosecutor he's not a night in shining armor he will at the end of the day do a prosecutor's job his his goal is not cannot be to save all of us. It's simply to fulfill his responsibilities as a prosecutor. So he'll use the evidence.

He'll do it in a truthful way, but he's shown us that we can have confidence in him, and that this certainly is not a political operation or a witch hunt. This is a prosecutorial effort to seek the truth and to hold accountable those who are responsible. So I see that as the most important lesson that we've learned this year wrapped up with the most important work that Mueller has done. Hi, this is Sarah Kenzer. I'm the co-host of the podcast Gasolineation.

And I think the most interesting, Trump-Russia story of 2018 is the recent XSA in Buzz Seed about the hijacking of the U.S. Treasury by Russia as early as 2015. I think it's appalling that this wasn't stopped, that it's only being reported now. So kudos to Buzz Seeds for finally breaking that story. And the implications of it are enormous. And, you know, I don't think that we've seen the scope of that play out yet. This is Seth Abramson on the author of Proof of Collusion.

For me, the most important Trump Russia event of 2018 by far with no clear second place is a report that came out in the New York Times on May 19th, 2018, in which the New York Times reported that on August 3rd, 2016, there was a meeting that occurred at Trump Tower, and that meeting at Trump Tower is critically important now, and it will be going forward to the Trump-Russian investigation. So let me give some context to that New York Times reporting. Now, first of all, let me say that there's been no follow-up on that reporting from the New York Times,

but we do know that Robert Mueller is looking into that meeting specifically. The reason I think this meeting, on August 3, 2016 at Trump Tower, could turn out to be the single most important event in the entire Trump-Russia timeline, not just in 2018, but of all the events that we have heard of so far, is because of three things. First of all, who was there?

Second of all, what was discussed at that meeting? And third, the current status of the meeting's participants with respect to the Mueller investigation. So let me start first with who was at that Trump Tower meeting on August 3, 2016, about 90 days before the 2016 election? The first person who was there was Donald Trump Jr. And anytime Donald Trump Jr., who was not officially connected to the campaign, but obviously his father was the Republican candidate in 2016.

Anytime he's at a meeting, that's crucially important because it brings with it everything that that implies. First of all, did he tell his father about the meeting on August 3rd, 2016 before it happened? Did he tell him about it immediately after it happened? Did Donald Trump senior offer any input into how Donald Trump Jr. conducted himself at that meeting? Or even because we know that Donald Trump senior sometimes quote unquote, attended meetings in Trump Tower

through one way speakerphone where people didn't know that he was listening on meeting. There's even a possibility that the candidate himself was aware of what was happening at the meeting while it was happening. The second person who was there, George Nader, an emissary of the Saudi crown prince who we know as MbZ, and also an emissary of the United Arab Emirates,

Emirati, crown prince MbZ. That's how he's known. Muhammad bin Zayed, MbS is Muhammad bin Salman. Nader met with Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and it appears possibly even Donald Trump on many occasions after the election, but this is the first meeting we know of that took place prior to election day that George Nader attended. It's important for people to understand that George Nader was the architect

of what I call the Red Sea Conspiracy. That is a plot that was hatched on a yacht in the Red Sea in November or December of 2015 to have three Middle East nation leaders, MBS, MBC, and the president of Egypt, Al-Sisi, partner with a US politician, and it was decided on that yacht that the politician would be Donald Trump to remake the Middle East dramatically, geopolitically, diplomatically,

militarily, and in every possible sense. The third person who was at that meeting on August 3rd, 2016, was Eric Prince. Trump was a shadow national, excuse me, Eric Prince was a shadow national security advisor for Donald Trump during the campaign. He was involved in the hunt for Hillary's emails. He was involved in covert Trump negotiations with Russia and also with Middle Eastern nations over nuclear technology and the use of American mercenaries in place of American military might in the Middle East in Syria and elsewhere. And then finally, the last person who was there, Joel Zamol, someone who we will be hearing

a lot more about, and Israeli businessman who previously was an Israeli intelligence agent. Who at the time of that August 3rd 2016 meeting was working with two Trump-connected Russian oligarchs. Robola Vlev, who Trump allegedly, we believe, met with twice in the 10 days before the 2016 election and Derrapaska, who was, of course, Paul Manafort's contact in terms of someone who was a Kremlin agent and someone who Manafort had previously worked with. And then briefly, I'll just say, what was discussed there? What was discussed is that NATO representing Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Zamel representing Israeli intelligence interests as well as the Kremlin offered

collusive assistance to the Trump family and here's the key thing the New York Times reports that Donald Trump Jr. said yes. So put aside for a moment that June 2016 meeting where the Russians offered collusive assistance and allegedly the Trumps in the person of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner said no. In this case, the New York Times said that Donald Trump Jr. said yes. And then finally, what's the current status of those meetings participants? Well, Donald Trump Jr. has told friends that he expects to be indicted. We have reports from the New York Times in Washington Post that Eric Prince clearly lied to Congress during his testimony, and therefore we might expect that Eric Prince will at some point be indicted. And then most importantly, George Nader is cooperating with Robert Mueller.

So Robert Mueller knows everything about the lead up to this meeting, and what happened with George Nader, and also Eric Prince afterwards. For instance, one of the reasons we know Eric Prince lied to Congress about his January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles is because George Nader told Robert Mueller that he had set up that meeting so that Prince could be Trump's envoy to Carrild Metriev of the Russian Foreign Investment Direct Fund. And therefore, we know that George Nader can implicate Eric Prince. So I think that what I've referred to as the grand bargain among a large number of nations to offer pre-election, collusive assistance to the Trumps. Essentially crystallized on that date

with all of the key parties, except for Egypt, present in that room in Trump Tower on August 3rd, 2016. And wouldn't you know it two weeks after that meeting, George Papadopoulos orchestrated a meeting between Donald Trump and the president of Egypt, Al-CC and Michael Flynn attended that meeting, just as Michael Flynn attended subsequent meetings with George Nader, with MBZ, with Eric Prince,

with Steve Bannon, with Jared Kushner, as they fleshed out this five nation, illegal, collusive pre-election bargain to offer money and other forms of assistance to the Trump campaign. This is David Priests. I'm the chief operating officer of the Law Fair Institute, known for the Law Fair blog author of how to get rid of a president histories guide to removing unpopular unable or unfit chief executives and Robert Mueller's former daily intelligence brief or from when I was back at CIA. Reflecting back on 2018, the most important moment related to Mueller that

I can think of is the hacking and linking indictment in July of the 12 Russians. In part, because of its specificity, all of us had been saying for a while that Mueller does his homework that he crosses his teeth and he dots his eyes and there wasn't going to be anything sloppy about it. And we had a preview of that in the February indictments of the IRA troll farm, but the July indictment was exquisite in terms of the specific emails, street addresses, and all of those involved in the targeting of the Clinton campaign. But the oddest moment for me came not that far removed from that in time. The oddest moment of 2018 was what I call Mueller gate,

which was on July 27th when Bob Mueller and Junior were seen together at the same airport gate at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. And you would have thought for the next week that this was the second coming because everybody wanted to comment about they were at the same gate. What could they have done? Did they notice just about anything to do with this was headline news. It even got Peter Carr, the spokesman for the special counsel, to actually comment publicly something he was not want to do. He, as I recall, confirmed that Mueller was in the photo and said that he was reading to

board a flight. And those are more words that we got not a Peter Carr in many ways. So the obsession with Mueller date in July is certainly odd, but it is a reflection of the fact that he has not been taking a public stance and that's Bozwell for 2019. Hey, this is Jack Bryan. I'm the co-writer director of the documentary Active Measures. And I think that the biggest, almost consequential story related to Trump and Russia this year has been Rick Gates flipping. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention recently and it feels like it's been overshadowed by other things, but Gates is a character who is, I think, very much

part of the Russian operation with Manafort and kind of takes over from Manafort to some extent. After Manafort leaves, it was on the transition and also knows the sort of backstory in a way with Manifort that the other people in this might not. And so while I think that there is certainly a chance that the talent and flipping could be the biggest deal, or I think it's also possible that some foreign television services helping out, we only have enough of that yet. I think that the Gates thing from my money is likely to be the story that uh... had the most effect and that it allows uh... muller to cross-reference

his uh... interviews after that and i think it has a lot of information high this is gregg oliar the author of dirty rubles and introduction to trump russia and for me the most consequential story for me involving Trump Russia was the murder of the journalist, Jamal Kashoggi. And I guess it wasn't consequential, it was more of a mind-blowing for me personally, because what it brought home for me was how fast the scope of all of this really is.

Trump Russia, it turns out, isn't really just about Russia. It doesn't confine itself to that boundary and those borders, there's other countries involved. And it's not so much the murder of Kishoggi as much as the connections that Jared Kushner had with MBS, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who we know pretty much was behind the assassination, and Trump, in his bizarre response to it, just clinging desperately to any excuse he could to wish it away. I hope that people didn't ask any more questions.

He didn't want to blame MBS. And I think it sort of brought home for me just how corrupt these people are, how much people have on them, how much they owe other people for where they are, and how willing they are to do what the people say and command them to do. to do what the people say and command them to do. So I think one of the questions people constantly ask is what's taking so long? Hurry up, Mueller. Why is it taking so long?

And I think it's taking so long because of the scope of this thing. It's just, we know more than most people, and what we know is the tip of the iceberg, compares to what Mueller knows. And it's just so big that it just takes time. Hi, this is Scott Wurpin and the co-founder of the Democratic Coalition and I'm also the host of the Dworkmer Board Podcast. I think the most important story of 2018 has to be Michael Cohen's indictment and also partial flipping on Trump. It just was so cataclysmic towards his administration and it's been so long and ongoing. And there's

so many facets of it. You have not only the payoff to porn stars that involve FEC violations and felonies directed by Trump, which also makes him an unindicted co-penspirator. But also you have the parts of Russia and the other business deals that they've done over the past 15 years or so. So there's a lot to dig in there. On top of the fact that the common-played guilty, and he started cooperating, at least a little bit with prosecutors. So I think that this is something that will end up being, you know,

the worst part to Trump because he was the the wingman. Hey, it's Elizabeth Cronis McLaughlin from Resistance Live. So my choice for the most significant event of the year with regard to Trump's Russia is actually somewhat unconventional, I think. And it is the Flynn sentencing memorandum that was filed by Robert Mueller. The reason why I think it's so significant is that Flynn had his hands in so much dirty ugly stuff. The attempt to kidnap a Turkish citizen and return him to Erdogan, the negotiations that

we know of right now with the Russian ambassador, the ongoing attempts to get nuclear power into Saudi Arabia and Egypt from the Russians and the Chinese. And he was engaged in all of this during the transition and the time that he was a national security advisor. Long behold, we get to December of this year and Robert Mueller files a sentencing memorandum that recommends that Flynn doesn't do any jail time. And for me, coming out of a white collar legal background, someone who's been engaged in litigation that has had really massive criminal components attached to it, the idea that someone who had engaged in

as much significant dangerous criminal conduct as Mike Flynn would get a recommendation of no jail time from Robert Mueller, I think tells us an awful lot about what Flynn has given up in the context of information with regard to Trump. I find it very hard to believe personally that he could have gotten a sentencing recommendation of no jail time if he had not flipped at bare minimum on the vice president if not the president himself and so to me the reason why this is the most significant event with regard to trump russia and trump muller in twenty eighteen is because

of what it tells us about what's likely coming down the pike for next year my name is renau to mary adi i'm a former federal prosecutor and the host of the on topic podcast. To me, the most consequential thing that happened this year was Michael Cohen going an open court and saying under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime. It was unexpected. And I think it was extremely important because for the first time you had the president of the United States directly implicated in a crime

that was charged and ultimately resulted in a conviction in federal court. It was later confirmed by federal prosecutors, except it as a finding not only by the probation department, but it ultimately adopted by the federal judge in that case. And I believe that we're so focused at times on what's happening on the Russia side of things that we fail to realize that in many ways that is, in my mind, the most challenging and important legal problem that is facing the Trump administration. It's an investigation that is difficult for Trump to stop. It does not have anything to do with this typical rhetoric attacking the Mueller investigation about angry Democrats

or no collusion. It is just a straight-up crime that has fairly strong evidence. It's already resulted in a conviction and there's very good reason to believe that trump may also be guilty of the same crime but i think the untold story of this year i is what i'll call obstruction fatigue and we've gotten to the point where

donald trump will say things that are openly corrupt and we don't even batten i uh... i remember one point this year, Donald Trump tweeted out criticizing his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for failing to quash the investigations and indictments of two Republican congressmen who have been indicted and accused of committing very serious crimes. He said that ultimately he thought it would result in the loss of those seats. And essentially what he was saying is that the Attorney General of the United States should stop prosecutions of people if it benefits their party politically.

It is just straight up corrupt. There is no way to defend that statement. And yet, after a day or so, it was out of the news. More recently, he was directing Matthew Whitaker allegedly but is reported by CNN to control the prosecutors in Manhattan and the Southern District of New York. Once again it was a one day story. That to me is very troubling and it says something about our democracy and I think when this is all said and done

a robber muller's gonna have a lot to say about obstruction of justice and if it is not taken seriously on a bipartisan basis in part that will be do our to do to our own uh... failure to uh... you maintain the outrage that we should have at a president who is openly corrupt and trying to undermine the rule of law. However, Betty, this is Greg Proofs. I'm the host of the smartest men in the world podcast of my wife, Jennifer, and I put together every week and take around the world where we

discuss politics, feminism, history, music, drugs, and the like. I think the most consequential happenstance in the Mueller investigation in the last year is of course all of the indifference and convictions. We're talking dozens now, including Russian nationals. And I think in the last few weeks, having Michael Flynn spilled beans as it were to the special investigators.

And then plead that he didn't know how all that worked and how the judge in Washington actually become furious with him and call him a traitor and then have to re-step on that and retract on that. I think says quite a lot about the character of all the people involved in this giant criminal operation. I also feel like finally the public is getting hip to the fact that there's no such thing as collusion

and meddling. Collusion and meddling are made up terms that the so-called White House uses to obfuscate the fact that what we're talking about is collaboration and treason and an abrogation of about a million election laws and the like. So I think that's what's, and as Jennifer and I were discussing before, I got on this show, the absolute secrecy and complete compact non-leakage of the meal or team,

has been wildly impressive and the fact that they've been able to fund their entire investigation by forfeiture of assets of Manafort and all the villains involved in this. I feel like that's the most important thing that's happened so far. And as a side note, I would say that this is really truly the year of the woman with women taking over 25% of the Congress for the first time. Nancy Pelosi or Mrs. Pelosi, as she's known to the White House, putting the fear of absolute goddess into all of the misogynist predators that run this show. And that, as something like Mueller, she wrote, which is a podcast run by three women

that came hurtling out of obscurity, would run into such a claim and success in this fine year. This is Miroka. I am a former SMAI prosecutor and now an MSNBC legal analyst and a Peace University School of Law. And the most consequential and important, I think, moment in 2018 and the whole Russia investigation was when the Special Counsel Office released two indictments, one up to the other, against the Russians for actually committing crime during the United States by trying to interfere, attack our elections. And I think it was the most important part so far because it actually put into facts and evidence things that we sort of knew, but now really could know for sure, because we knew that Mueller felt he could prove these things in court. So that to me was the most important part so far of the investigation. Hi everyone, Happy New Year. It's Andrea Chalupa from Gaslit Nation and I am thrilled to join Muller She wrote in this fantastic lineup of wonderful guests. And so I think one of the key stories of 2018, a year of so much confirmation, so much that we knew that was finally confirmed, brought out in the open, you know, we knew that they needed conduits on the ground, pollinating their coalition of corruption and of course we got that confirmation with the arrest and of Maria Boutina, a Russian spy and so that was exciting. We

knew that the Trump inauguration was one big Russian money laundering prom night which Maria Boutina attended of course with her so-called lover, Eric Sim. And so, yeah, so now that's being investigated. And so that's all wonderful. And so we'll probably hear more about the big inauguration night and all the crimes that likely were happening out in the open during that night with a record number of influential Russian, Russian oligarchs, attending that inauguration. There's, of course, accusations of missed spent funds and whether favors were being traded in whether foreign policy, American foreign policy was being sold off essentially at that

inauguration. So there's a lot of, there's going to be a lot of interesting developments there to watch, which I'm thrilled about because that was a terrifying night. I just given the guest list alone and just the massive amount of money being spent and just so little to show for it that night. So, but I think the number one story to watch in 2018 where we had a frightening development is of course Ukraine. So what happened at the end of November, Russia openly attacked

Ukraine in international waters. That's a big shift because normally Russia tries to hide it. They had the so-called little green men showing up in annexing Crimea. They had so-called Russian rebels invading East Ukraine. That was of course Russian military in dating Ukraine. And right now you have a big Russian military buildup inside Crimea along the edge of East Ukraine. And the rhetoric is getting increasingly hostile and a propaganda towards Ukraine. It's all the signs are pointing to a very serious escalation in Ukraine in 2019. So what's really significant about that in connection to Trump, Russia not even say

that the more investigation is this, we know that Putin and Trump, we had it confirmed that that Helsinki summit where Trump came out like a chain dancing Russian bear very submissive towards Putin and the Helsinki press conference that was terrifying. There was even a report that it terrified that it shocked people in the CIA. And their experts of course, they're ahead of all of us, but it's still so stunning to see the so-called leader of the free world being submissive, almost admiring this mass-mur

dictator Vladimir Putin. And during that press conference, you had, leading up to it, you had the 12 Russians indicted. You had Maria Bettina shortly after arrested. So you really saw this check, the balances by the more investigation, with Rosenstein coming out and saying, we've got these 12 Russians, by name, here they are, to try to sort of put a damper on Putin's big coming out party with Trump. But of course, there's only so much that our checks and balances in the U.S. can do right now with this Russian mafia asset in the White House.

And I think there's no clear signal of that. Then the fact that the U.S. has not sanctioned Russia for openly attacking Ukraine. The U.S. has not led it with the EU. I think normally we've done under Obama, and convincing the EU to pass further sanctions against Russia for openly attacking Ukraine. And I think that is the scariest sign yet that I don't want to say that Putin may be winning, but that is really where we need to watch to see how this new world order could potentially shifting, which such a power vacuum in the White House and Putin increasingly becoming

more imperialistic, more aggressive. He somehow was able, he and Erdogan were about able to convince Trump to get it. Syria is now fully owned by Russia. That's a huge geopolitical win for Putin. That's a big base for them right there in the Mediterranean. And so is Ukraine next. And a lot of signs are pointing to a big escalation there. And that's going to be dangerous. Because it's going to further destabilize the EU.

You're going to have, it's going to worsen the refugee crisis and Ukraine millions have been displaced by the war in Ukraine. That's, and worsen the refugee crisis, of course, further flood the EU with refugees, and that could lead to rise in the far right rhetoric. You had the NATO commander, of course, in 2016 telling the Senate that Russia was deliberately bombing civilians in Sy inside Syria to create more refugees to flood Europe. Why would he do that? Because the far right parties that Putin can support, that Putin supports, they like to use that anti-repute rhetoric and that's

how they try to create hysteria and further push theirists agenda. So I just think it's going to go deeper inside Ukraine, create far more casualties and who knows maybe take over the country. That is going to really create more chaos and disabilization in fact that we don't have a strong lighthouse standing up against that, standing up to protect against a worsening human rights crisis that's really going to have a very bad ripple effect in geopolitics for many years to come. And so that's what I think everyone should look out for

is Ukraine in 2019 and the lack thereof of sanctions by the US and the EU due to, you know, leaders right now. You even had, so I'm going to keep going on because I just really want to press this point home. You had four days after that attack in international waters. You had an advisor to Frederica Mogreeni who oversees foreign affairs for the EU. You had one of her advisors writing in Politico four days after Russia openly attacks Ukraine, this advisor writes in Politico Europe's sanctions against Russia are not working.

So all of this points to yes, Mueller's investigation can come out with whatever it wants, but it's still a shifting world order towards Putin's world now. And all of that's going to come down to whether the U.S. and the EU will be united in sanctioning Russia because sanctions do work or else Putin would not have gone to all this trouble to elect one of his assets, President United States. And that's my point for 2019. Hello, this is Virginia Heffernen, I am a co-host of Slates Trump Cast and opinion

writer for the LA Times, and I also write a column for Wired. To me, the most consequential part of the Mueller investigation this past year was the conviction, arrest, and imprisonment of Paul Manafort. Manafort embodies, he's like the caricature of the corruption of the Republican Party, which for decades has been sending people abroad, sending, posing people as lobbyists, posing people as PR people to clean up the reputations of murderous dictators, including Yanukovych and Ogg Darapaska, the oligarch, who is a client of Manaforts, who has also had this hand in many, many bloody human rights abuses.

Manafort together with Roger Stone defined these kind of acts for Republicans who seemingly been put out to pasture and set up a network of the United States politics wandering the reputations of dictators abroad and to me he stands for the corruption of the GOP and his imprisonment stands hopefully for the redemption and reform of our political parties. Hey, hey, hey, this is Randall of Randall's Animals. And I think the biggest Trump-Russia story of 2018 was all about that crazy ass honey badger judge Ellis and his rulings in the Manafort trial. You see, Paul Manafort don't care. Paul Manafort don't give a shit.

But you know why? Because he's stupid. You see, a honey badger don't care because it has to in order to live and survive in the wild. But Paul Manafort don't care because he's just so stoopies. If you ask me, Judge Ellis went so hard on him, not because of all the counts of conspiracy or the five countertax fraud or bank fraud. It was because he walked around in ostrich clothing.

Hello? I mean, how can one not expect to face the heat when they walk around like that in ostrich clothes? Now, here are some quick little FYIs about Pauli Manifort. He was born on April Fools' Day. How funny is that? In Connecticut. He's 69 years old and his pop was indicted in a corruption scandal in 1981.

Wasn't convicted, but he was indicted. Okay. It's something tells me that Paul Manafort's grandpa Pa, who immigrated from Italy to the United States in the early 20th century, would have no idea that his grandson would grow up to walk around and ostrich clothes. Am I right? I mean, could you imagine? Geez, little ways! Anyways, if you ask me, Judge Ellis and Paul Manafort are the new Felix Unger and Oscar

Madison. I'm sending big love and hugs to all you listeners out there and wish you have the most fantastic new year. They might be giants that have been on the road for too long. Too long. And they might be giants aren't even sorry. Not even sorry. And audiences like the shows too much. Too much.

And now they might be giants that are playing their breakthrough album, all of it. And they still have time for other songs. They're fooling around. Who can stop? They might be giants and their liberal rocket gender. Who? No one.

Disadvantaged pay for with somebody else's money. So, Renato, do you still have your own podcast? Yeah, it's complicated. What's so complicated about a podcast? That's the name of the podcast, remember? Oh! Will you still be exploring topics that help us understand the week's news? You bet, but we'll have a new name because we're going to be working together to explore complicated issues that are done in the news.

Working together. Yeah, you're hosting it with me, remember? Oh, right. Wait. Does that mean our podcast is going to have a steam op segment? Let's not get carried away. But we'll discuss hot new legal topics, so check out our new episode, coming soon to everywhere you get podcasts as well as YouTube. All right guys, that's our show, our final show of 2018. Join us for season three, starting next week when Dems take the gavels back in the house. We're only about 150 patrons away from adding a second bonus episode each week just for

patrons. I think we're going to do that anyway. That will be available for patrons only. You can get in on that for as little as three bucks, totally worth it. So go to patreon.com slash mola she wrote, we have had an amazing year. This has been so terrifying yet wonderful for me. And your support has been unwavering and immense and out of the blue for me and just completely. I'm super honored that we could put this news together for you every week.

Same. Our lives are changed because of this podcast for sure. So thank you so much everyone that listens all the time. Thank you, Jalisa. Thank you, week. Same. Our lives are changed because of this podcast for sure. So thank you so much everyone that listens all the time. Thank you, Jalisa. Thank you, A.G. I love you guys. Love you, too. Yeah, I like how someone put it in the Facebook group that we have because someone started

a thread. I think it was windy because we're all on the first name basis now. She asked other patrons why they signed up to become a patron, and their responses were incredible. Do you have some of those responses? I read through that, and it was almost like I had to stop reading because it was too complimentary. I felt guilty. You know how you always feel? I'm not worthy of this love.

Right, right. But it was just really a wonderful thing. You guys, if you're not a patron, just being a part of that community, we've got what, 1500, 1600 people in that group. Yeah, I was gonna say, I have a correction from last week. I overstated how much we have, but it's actually about 1,000 less, 1,500,

which means it's a small community. It is. It's a small community. And we're all like-minded individuals, and we all are into this individuals and we all are into this and we all support each other and we all agree that laughter comparably is preferable to crying. So that's why we do what we do. Not just to bring you the news every week so that you can have it in all in one place for the Mueller investigation. But that thread is completely amazing

and thank you guys for putting it together for us. It was the best Christmas gift I could have received. And I set for the necklace my husband got me. Love you, baby. But seriously, truly the support that you guys give us is immeasurable. Yeah, so did you find that thread? I would love to just hear a couple of them.

I did, yeah. So first of all, thank you Wendy Cottrell for starting this. She did an amazing post. She said, I'm curious why all of you chose to be a patron. I listened to several pods. This is the only one I've subscribed to. They wanted me with supporting women and podcasting. Now I can't imagine giving this up. And that's amazing. So Susan Bernard said, I chose to be a patron because these women are smart. They do their research and they present it in a way that we can all understand. And they find a way to make us all laugh in one of the most tragic times in this country. And besides, they are really nice people. Happy new year to you all. Susan came and saw us at the Ohio Store Show.

I'm a dick. Oh yeah. Thank you Susan. Someone else um thank you Susan. Elizabeth Templeton said it feels to me like participating in a movement not just a podcast. Oh I actually got during the interviews today while you look for the next comment. I had so many people tell me how not you know not only are we bringing the news but we actually probably helped the Dems win the house and I thought I don't know if that seems like a stretch or not, but we did a lot. Everyone that did anything helped. Yeah, we all did our part. Any ounce of effort that anyone put into it, it's not just these kinds of things.

It's not just podcasts, it's not just, you know, there's a lot of celebrities on Twitter who are on the left and part of the resistance. But every day normal people who did anything, whether it's a tweet or make a Facebook post or go out in Canvas or contact your senators, make phone calls, voting. So many people told me that they wouldn't vote, which is why I'm like, anyone that does. Oh my gosh, like, that's incredible to me. Just doing that alone. Just voting. Yeah.

Elizabeth Galita said, I listened to a lot of podcasts. This is the only one I've ever subscribed to. Why? Well, because it's fucking essential. That's fucking essential. That's good sort. So many great ones, so many comments, I can't even get through them

all, but yeah, I mean, that's I'm in awe. Yeah, and that's honestly, if this weren't my podcast, I would pay the three bucks a month just to be part of this community because it's so uplifting and positive and optimistic and hopeful and supportive and and everybody in this group. The men and the women alike are just complete and total allies and I'm just I'm honored and flabbergasted and beyond belief at the same time that this kind of thing can happen and it's just we need it in in this era. We really do. Oh yeah. And they're funny. We got a bunch of comedians over. We all these people's friends. Yeah. I feel like we're friends. Every time I engage with

anyone, it's just that kind of connection. And so it's automatic. Just muller junkies. This is really something. You're fundamental there, I think. Yeah. And speaking of friends, I think we're going to put together a tour here pretty soon. I think the cities and these aren't confirmed yet, but we're coming your way. If you're in Minneapolis, we have so many fans of Minneapolis. Yeah. Chicago, New York, DC, Seattle, Portland, maybe Australia, New Zealand, and London. LA?

LA, it's LA in San Francisco. Yeah. So I think those are the main ones that I've hit We're probably gonna add some additional shows to that, but we're gonna have a meet and greet cocktail meet and greet So we can all have a glass of wine. Yeah, we might have some slumber parties We will figure it out. I'm so down, but you know follow us on Twitter if you don't because that's where most of the Tour information is gonna come out is at Mollershi Road on Twitter, also Instagram at Mollershi Road, and then of course, if you're a patron, the closed Facebook page, we'll keep everybody posted on that,

and patrons are going to get discount tickets, codes for discount tickets on our tour, codes for the VIP meet and greets and things like that. So we're really excited to come out and meet you guys. We haven't done that yet, because we're still actually kind of a baby pod even. We met the We met the OG Mueller junkies or quite a few of them but there's been so many sense like it's just yeah our first live show was in July and since then we've tripled our audience so we can't wait to meet you guys. Honestly we couldn't do it without you and I'm so humbled by your support. Yeah it's's been a, all things considered, it's been a good year in that,

finding your family, so to speak, you know, like I kind of feel like that, yeah. Yeah, and the fact that these groups exist and that this support exists in this time is so huge. I think it's essential, it's fucking essential. Yeah, I got high hopes for 2019. I do too, oh man, we're about to get on the offense now. It's about to get crazy.

It's the season finale. We might split into two seasons, like Game of Thrones. Oh yeah. It's going to be, this is it, I think, 2019. We're going to find out a lot and we're going to be there for each other. So thank you guys so much for listening. I've been A.G.

I've been Julie Sedgonson. I've been Jordan Coburn. And this is Muller She wrote. Muller She wrote is produced and engineered by AG with editing and logo design by Jolissa Johnson. Our marketing consultant and social media manager is Sarah Least Diner and our subscriber and communications director is Jordan Coburn. Fact checking and research by AG and research assistants by Jolissa Johnson and Jordan Coburn.

Our merchandising managers are Sarah Least, Diner and Sarah Hershberger, Valencia. Our web design and branding, our by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios, and our website is mullershoewrote.com. Hi, I'm Dan Dunn, host of What We're Drinking With Dan Dunn, the most wildly entertaining adult beverage-themed podcast in the history of the medium. That's right, the boozy best of the best, baby! And we have the cool celebrity promos to prove it. Check this out. Hi, I'm Allison Janney, and you're here with me on What We're Drinking with Dan Dunn.

And that's my sexy voice. Boom. Boom is right Academy Award winner, Allison Janney. As you can see, celebrities just love this show. How cool is that? Hey, this is Scottie Bippin, and you're listening to the Dan Dunn Show and wait, hold on. The name of the show is what? Alright, sure.

Scottie Pippin momentarily forgot the show's name, but there's a first time for everything. Hey everyone, this is Scoot McNary. I'm here with Dan Dunn on What Are You Drinking? What are you calling it? Fine, twice. But famous people really do love this show. Hi, this is Will Forte, and you're, for some reason, listening to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn. Now, what do you mean for some reason, Will Forte? What's going on?

Hi, this is Kurt Russell. Listen, I escaped from New York, but I couldn't get the hell out of Dan Dunn's happy hour. Please send help. Send help? Oh, Oh come on Kurt Russell. Can somebody out there please help me! I'm Deed of Antease and you're listening to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn. Let me try one more time. Come on. Is it right?

It's amazing. Is it amazing? Is it right? Ah, that's better. So be like Deed of Antease friends and listen to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn, available wherever you get your podcasts.