Jack - NCIS: DOGE

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

US Intelligence shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees.The head of the FBI New York Field Office James Dennehy has been forced out as the GSA shutters FBI, DOJ and CIA facilities.The American Bar Association has received a request to open a disciplinary investigation into Emil Bove from Judiciary Committee Democrats.The Trump Administration goes after the law firm Perkins Coie and Georgetown law.Plus listener questions.Questions for the pod? Questions from Listeners Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

MSW Media. U.S. intelligence shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees. The head of the FBI New York field office, James Dennehy, has been forced out as the GSA shutters Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and CIA facilities. Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and CIA facilities. The American Bar Association has received a request to open a disciplinary investigation into Emile Beauvais from Judiciary Democrats. And the Trump administration goes after the law firm Perkins Cooey and Georgetown Law. This is Unjustified. Hey everybody, it is Sunday, March 9th, 2025. This is the Unjustified podcast. I'm Alison

Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And wow, we have another full week of somewhat insane news stories to cover about the wreckage of the US government and particularly that at DOJ. Yeah. And a lot of ways how vulnerable this is making us. And that's kind of what we're going to talk about in our first story. And then of course, we've got several other things going on, as you could tell from the intro there. And then we'll get to listener questions at the end. But

this first story is actually from your colleagues and from somebody I've known for many years, Natasha Bertrand. Yeah, that's right. So this is from, as you mentioned, Natasha and also Katie Bo-Lillis and Zach Cohen at CNN. Foreign adversaries, including Russia and China, have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of U.S. federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired

or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent U.S. intelligence on the issue and a document reviewed by CNN. The intelligence indicates that foreign adversaries are eager to exploit the Trump administration's efforts to conduct mass layoffs across the federal workforce, a plan laid out by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this week. Yeah, and this takes me back to my time in the government, Andy, when we had to take the insider threat training every year.

About who could be vulnerable to outside intelligence influencers, foreign adversaries. It's usually like you look for signs like people who complain about the government, people who are going through a divorce, people who have money issues or financial problems. And then you're supposed to report that to someone, you know, if you think that somebody could be an insider threat. And here we now have built in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, soon to be at least through reduction in force or risk, disgruntled federal employees who have a lot

of national security knowledge, and that leaves us vulnerable. And that's what this report is about. It goes on to say Russia and China are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and probationary employees at risk of being terminated, who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy. That's according to two sources. At least two countries have already set up recruitment websites and begun aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn, and that's according to two of the sources.

A document produced by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, NCIS, said the intelligence community assessed with high confidence that foreign adversaries were trying to recruit federal employees and capitalize on the Trump administration's plans for mass layoffs. That's according to a partly redacted copy reviewed by CNN. And I want to take a break here and ask you Andy to talk about the intelligence community assessing something with high confidence without without, it seems like, any dissent. Sure, so every piece of finished intelligence product that is published to the community comes with basically a confidence scoring, if you will,

and high confidence indicates the absolute highest level of belief and confidence that the authors, and by extrapolation, the agency that wrote the piece has in the analytical conclusions presented therein. Oftentimes you see medium confidence that's kind of like, yeah, we think we're onto something, but we might be wrong. And then sometimes you actually see things published at the low confidence and that's you know, if a report comes out that it's It's a really unlikely threat. Let's say but it's a such a significant one if it happens You know the community feels they need to put that out

But they put it out with a little confidence because they don't have a lot of facts or raw Intelligence backing up the conclusions are making here the exact opposite. They are making these statements based upon raw intelligence collection. This could be overhears, could be conversations with informants, could be cyber collection, who knows, but they have real data that they have a lot of faith in that's leading them to draw this conclusion.

Yeah, and we heard a lot about the confidence levels when we talked about, you know, a long time ago, the intelligence community's assessment ordered by President Obama on the, you know, Trump campaign Russia stuff. And when that assessment came out, which Donald Trump wanted to use in both of the cases against him by Jack Smith, Everybody was high confidence. I think somebody else was medium confidence. And then Trump took that to mean, oh, look, they disagree. And therefore the whole thing is bogus. And that was kind of his talking point on that. So I thought it was important to bring up the fact that the entire intelligence

community here is saying this with high confidence. No, but on a joint product, it's not unreasonable or uncommon to see, you know, a joint product is multiple agencies contributing to a unified one piece, and it's not uncommon to see them having different confidence levels about different specific factual assertions in the piece. In that case, the FBI and CIA were very confident about the conclusions we were drawing about what was happening inside the Kremlin. The NSA was a little bit less confident. And the reason was because the sourcing that our confidence was based upon was not an NSA source. So they felt like, well, we can't go all the way to high confidence. Let's just keep it at medium. So

it was not a disagreement really in any sense of the word. Yeah, and this copy of this document from NCIS added that foreign intelligence officers were being directed to look for potential sources on LinkedIn, TikTok, Red Note, and Reddit. And at least one foreign intelligence officer directed an asset to create a company profile on LinkedIn

and post a job advertisement and to actively pursue federal employees who indicate they're open to work. That's according to that document from the NCIS. Now, the adversaries think the employees, quote, are at their most vulnerable right now. That's according to another source. They're, quote, out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc. Yeah, I mean, come on, it makes perfect sense, right? So a third source familiar with recent US assessments told CNN, it doesn't take a lot of imagination

to see that these cast aside federal workers with a wealth of institutional knowledge represent staggeringly attractive targets to the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries. The intelligence seems to confirm what was previously a hypothetical fear targets to the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries. The intelligence seems to confirm what was previously a hypothetical fear for current and former US officials, that the mass firings could offer a rich recruitment opportunity for foreign intelligence services

that might seek to exploit financially vulnerable or resentful former employees. The Justice Department has charged multiple former military and intelligence officials for providing US intelligence to China in recent years. Quote, China has always been committed to developing relations with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. That will not surprise you was a quote from the Chinese embassy spokesperson, Liu Peng Yu. He went on to say, we oppose groundless speculation on China without a factual basis. Of course, he said that.

Of course. Now, career officials at the CIA have been quietly discussing that risk and how to mitigate it in recent weeks. That's according to current and former intelligence officials. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this week suggested that those discussions represented a threat made by disloyal government employees rather than a clinical warning of the potential risks posed by President Donald Trump's aggressive cost cutting strategies and that those involved should be penalized. Quote, I am curious about how they think this is a good tactic to keep their job. And that's what Gabbard told Fox News' Jesse Waters on Tuesday. Went on to say they're exposing

themselves essentially by making this indirect threat using their propaganda arm through CNN that they've used over and over and over again to reveal their hand that their loyalty is not at all to America. It is not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves. So Gabbard is, even though this high confidence report came out of the intelligence community, is saying that it's, I guess, essentially BS and that the problem is these workers and they're not loyal, they're disloyal, deep state Marxists who are going to turn on the United States.

That's the answer to everything, right? Any inconvenient fact, you dismiss it as some sort of a deep state conspiracy against the dear leader. And clearly that's what she's doing here. The irony is that what she's doing is exposing her complete lack of intelligence background or really interest. Um, anyone, any, anywhere you are on the political spectrum, if you are a, someone who's had any experience in the intelligence community, you understand the, the significance and the

seriousness of the insider threat and a situation like we have that we're dealing with now with all these, uh, suddenly terminated employees is just generating a bumper crop of potential insider threats. Yeah. So multiple current officials across national security agencies who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity expressed frustration at the administration's response to what they see as a very real warning, not a partisan swiping. Quote, employees that feel they have been mistreated by an employer have historically

been much more likely to disclose sensitive information, said Holden Triplett, who served as director of counterintelligence at the National Security Council in the first Trump administration and as a former FBI legal adagé at the US embassy in Moscow and also at the embassy in Beijing. We may be creating, albeit somewhat unintentionally, the perfect recruitment environment. And I have to say I know Holden well, he's a good friend and he is one of the very few people on this planet who I would go to if I thought I had an insider threat problem because this guy knows what he's talking about. Yeah and I have to wonder, albeit somewhat unintentionally,

that's an interesting turn of phrase. Yeah. I went on to say this isn't reality TV. Oh, this is a different former intelligence official. This isn't reality TV. There are consequences. The CIA and Defense Department are weighing significant staff cuts. The Pentagon said in a memo last week over 5,000 probationary employees, who in most cases have been in their job a year or less, could be fired in the short term. And the CIA has already fired more than 20 officers for their work on diversity issues, many of whom are now challenging that dismissal in court. The CIA also aggressively seeks to recruit disaffected government employees in adversarial

countries all the time, noted a former intelligence official using similar tactics. The agency has released a series of public recruitment videos aimed at persuading disgruntled Russian government employees to spy for the United States, videos that detailed ways to securely contact the agency. Yeah, of course they did. So the CIA may have already inadvertently put some American secrets within the grasp of foreign spies and hackers. In an effort to comply with the executive order to downsize the federal workforce, the CIA earlier this month sent the White House an extraordinarily unusual

email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less. A list that included CIA officers who were preparing to operate undercover. And this was apparently sent over an unclassified email server. Some of those officers who have had access to classified information about the agency's operations and tradecraft may now be terminated as a part of the layoffs. And in fact, AGO was reading yesterday that we, the CIA has already made some notifications that they've begun the process of firing some of these probationary employees. These are case officers who were hired in the last two years.

Some of them have now been summoned to off-site facilities and just out of the blue told that they were being fired. These folks, they wouldn't even have that conversation on CIA property because of the significant risk that recently fired people present to an organization, potentially. And this list of CIA officers who were going to go undercover was sent on an unclassified email server. Where have I heard problems with this on the right side before? Yeah, yeah. That use of an unclassified server used to be something that really riled a lot of people

up. Apparently not anymore. So there you go. No, I guess not. All right. So this whole piece here, Andy, is about the vulnerabilities presented to foreign adversaries through the mass firings of federal employees. And I think that this kind of dovetails with what we should talk about next, which is some other things that this particular administration

is doing with regard to intelligence agencies, Department of Justice, et cetera, that also add to the vulnerabilities that are presented here, like with the disgruntled federal employees. So I want to talk about some more of those vulnerabilities that could lend to this increased recruiting from, say, Russia and China, for example. But we do have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back.

So in the previous segment, we were talking about vulnerabilities to our intelligence community with respect to the disgruntled former federal employees who had been fired and how foreign adversaries are trying to take advantage of what the Trump administration is doing to weaken our institutions. Well, there's more. This is from Ryan Reilly at all at NBC. The head of the FBI's New York field office was forced out Monday, a month after he urged his employees to dig in after the Trump administration removed senior FBI leaders and requested the names of all agents

who worked on January 6th cases. This is according with five sources familiar. In an email to FBI staff members in New York on Monday, James Dennehy confirmed that he had been ordered to leave. And you remember he was the dig in guy from New York. We were talking about him alongside Driscoll, right? Who was like, I'm not going to give the names of all of these agents to you. You can have their private employee identification numbers instead.

Yeah, that's right. And I mean, I'm going to have to call him Jim because I know him and that's how I know him. He is a terrific leader and had a great career in the bureau, but his email started with, quote, late Friday, I was informed that I needed to put my retirement papers in today, which I just did, Dennehy wrote.

I was not given a reason for this decision. Two of the sources said Dennehy was given a choice to resign or be fired. Last month, Dennehy wrote an email to his staff after the Trump Justice Department, led by acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Beauvais, demanded a list of all Bureau employees who had worked on criminal cases against Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Quote, today we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own as good people are being walked out of the FBI, Dennehy wrote. And others are being targeted because they did their jobs

in accordance with the law at FBI policy. Time for me to dig in, Dennehy said. Yeah, and he was referring to the ouster of eight veteran FBI leaders that we talked about, including the head of the Washington field office, who played roles in the criminal investigations of Trump while he was out of office. Now, Trump administration officials also requested the names of all agents who had worked on any January 6th case in or around the Capitol and also the Hamas terrorism case. And we still haven't figured out why. But it's widely believed inside the FBI that the resistance by Dennehy, along with the acting director, Brian Driscoll,

St. Dries, and the acting deputy director, Rob Kassein, who by the way, they were supposed to have those roles reversed, but they just went with it because of a White House administrative error. They prevented a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on the January 6 cases. Dennehy's removal is likely to reignite fears of that mass retaliation. Dennehy also praised the federal corruption investigation of New York Mayor Eric Adams. After Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges last year, Dennehy said at a news conference that corruption by public officials

was particularly corrosive because it undermines the public trust in government. Last month, Trump administration officials ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the corruption charges against Adams. In a stunning public rebuke, seven federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned and refused to follow the order. They accused the new administration of agreeing to a quid pro quo whereby the charges against Adams would be dropped if he agreed to

support Trump's immigration policies. Trump Justice Department officials and Adams lawyer denied that any such agreement had been reached. Yeah and we do do have some breaking news as we're recording this, as we knew and as we were expecting. It's March 7th when we record this episode and we knew that amicus curi appointed by Judge Dale Ho in the Eric Adams case has submitted his brief to argue against the dismissal. But he was actually asked, what would you do in this case, right? And so what he has done, and we'll go over this more in depth next week

after we figure out how Judge Dale Ho is going to respond to Paul Clement's amicus curiae brief here. But it's a short brief, 30 pages, unlike the 80 something pages that Gleason wrote in the Flynn dismissal situation where he was the amicus curiae. But he is recommending that the charges be dismissed by Judge Hobe, but with prejudice. And we talked about this, Andy, quite a bit. We said, you know, you could argue against dismissing these charges like they did in Flynn, but then you end up with the question of, well, what happens now since you don't

have a Department of Justice that's willing to prosecute the case or go forward? And he contemplated that in his brief. And that is why he's recommending the charges be dismissed with prejudice to remove that quid pro quo, to remove that sort of Damocles that the Trump administration can hold over Eric Adams' head until and unless he goes along with whatever their immigration policies are. I'm assuming that Judge Ho will dismiss these charges with prejudice. I think he'll take Paul Clements recommendations here. Although I am a little bit not baffled because he's such a conservative dude, but curious as to why this doesn't go, what they're trying to do doesn't go against a Rule 48 dismissal,

you know, on its face. So it's an interesting brief and we will cover it on next week's show in more detail. But that is just some quick breaking news I wanted to tell you about Andy. Yeah, I mean, again, you and I are not surprised by this. I think I obviously I'll sort through the brief before we discuss it next week, but it sounds like it's a recommendation of practicality, not kind of blazing legal resistance to a clearly corrupt decision and effort by a DOJ. It's acknowledging that there's really nothing to do

with a case that DOJ will then refuse to prosecute. You're calling their bluff a little bit and backing them into a corner whereby they might ask the president then to pardon Adams in the same way that Mike Flynn was pardoned when that happened in that case. But the practicality of it, I think, is you dismiss it with prejudice and the whole thing is over. Yep, because that kind of alleviates one of the biggest problems with this pro quo. So yeah, we'll talk about that next week. But back to Jim Dennehy, in his farewell email he urged FBI employees to act with integrity, maintain the

independence of the FBI, and to not allow politics to play a role in criminal investigations. He said, as I leave today, I have an immense feeling of pride to have represented an office of professionals who will always do the right thing for the right reasons, who will always seek truth while upholding the rule of law, who will always handle cases and evidence with an overabundance of caution and care for the innocent, the victims, and the process first, and who will always remain independent. So, Denny spent six years in the Marine Corps before he joined the FBI after 9-11. At the Bureau, he specialized in weapons counterproliferation and spent time in management roles in both the Washington and New York field offices before he took over the FBI's field office

in Newark, New Jersey back in 2022. And then he was promoted to lead the New York office last year. At the conclusion of his farewell message, Dennehy vowed to continue to fight for the FBI's independence saying, quote, I will never stop defending this joint. He wrote, I will just I will just do it willingly and proudly from outside the wire. Jim is a solid guy, very highly respected, had an extraordinary career. He's a true counterintelligence professional, I'll add. And I think in the last few years of his career has really been recognized as one of our strongest leaders.

And of course, now he's gone. And that field office and the rest of the FBI, to some extent, will suffer as a result of losing his talent, his experience, and his proven ability to lead that office in a fair and effective, lawful way. And I think it's in a way that it's kind of a microcosm of what we see happening across the FBI and across all of government right now. We are hemorrhaging experience, institutional knowledge, judgment, and letting these very good people walk away or kicking them out. We're not letting them walk away.

They're being pushed out. And we are going to suffer the ill effects of losing their loyal and highly expert service. Yeah, and just like, you know, creating a large swath of disgruntled former federal employees through giant, you know, reductions in force and firing with probationary employees, I think this also continues to further weaken our intelligence community, makes us more vulnerable, not in the sense that any of these like somebody like Jim Dennehy would be able to be recruited easily by anybody in Russia and China, but that they're not there to see that happening and to try to prevent that from happening.

And not only that, but creating more chaos at the heads of these agencies by moving out all of these eight, nine, ten top officials in the FBI, for example, and pulling these guys out of the Washington field office and the New York field office just really leaves the FBI in a lurch, I think. And it makes us more vulnerable. It adds on to it it amplifies the vulnerability that we're going to see from all of these other disgruntled federal employees being fired and the recruitment efforts for them.

Bad things are gonna keep happening. And when they do, that's when you want the smartest, most experienced people with the best leadership ability, the best vision, the best operational skills. And if they're not there when those bad things happen, you're gonna handle the bad thing and not as good away. So it's just pretty elementary. Okay, so continuing on this theme, we have one now from the Independent. The Trump administration has designated the headquarters

of multiple cabinet departments and federal courthouses across the country as non-essential properties that can be sold off. Yes, that's right, you heard this correct. Non-essential properties. They go on to say a website for the General Services Administration, the agency responsible for managing

the government's office space, detailing quote, buildings and facilities Services Administration, the agency responsible for managing the government's office space, detailing quote, buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations, now includes the headquarters of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles, America's second largest city. Yeah, non-core to government operations, Department of Justice, FBI, federal courthouses, non-essential, they're saying. And the GSA also says a large swath of prime real estate near the White House, including Office of Personnel Management's Theodore

Roosevelt building headquarters, the building used to house offices, the United States trade representative, the headquarters, the American Red Cross, the old post office building, national historic landmark, by the way, that was formerly leased by Trump for his hotel. All of those they're saying are non-core and therefore ripe for disposal. In addition, the agency has also designed its own headquarters as well as the headquarters for the Department of Labor, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Transportation as unnecessary and potentially for sale.

Outside of Washington, GSA is marked for sale the headquarters of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, Maryland, the headquarters of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Rockville, Maryland, and buildings used by the FDA, Food and Drug Administration in nearby

Silver Spring, Maryland. That's right. All non-core, non-government buildings. What is a core government building? Mar-a-Lago? Clearly. I read a Washington Post article on the same story and they had a quote from someone who

said, what do you do when you sell the Los Angeles County courthouse? Like cases still have to go to court. Where does that happen now if not in the courthouse? Do you buy a new courthouse? Do you build a new courthouse? Because none of that's going to be less expensive than what you currently have. But in any case, it's insanity. All right. So we have another article now from Wired.

And before I get into this one, I'm gonna make it very clear. This, I am simply reading this open source media article. I am not commenting on the facts declared therein. Okay, and you will understand why as we get into this. So from Wired, a now deleted list containing hundreds of US government properties that the General Services Administration plans to sell includes most of a sprawling highly

sensitive federal complex in Springfield, Virginia that also houses a secretive CIA facility. Since Tuesday, GSA sources have been wondering about the possible inclusion of CIA buildings on the list that was posted and then deleted. One source with knowledge of CIA operations, when asked about concerns that the GSA might have listed at least one of the agency's facilities as being for sale, immediately acknowledged quote the Springfield building. So I probably can't ask any questions about that. So, I would like to bring up that Wired magazine has pointed out that that was kind of, I think, the facility where they were thinking about moving the FBI headquarters for a really long

time. But anyway, I thought that when I saw that article from Wired, I wanted to bring it in here because it has to do with the wholesale sell-off of government facilities, which again, I think, increases our vulnerability to foreign adversaries and their intelligence operations to recruit former disgruntled employees, to sow chaos within our institutions, particularly the intelligence community, to further like open us up to these kinds of attacks from like Russia or China, for example. Yeah.

I mean, yes, Springfield, there is a big plot of land in Springfield that the FBI was looking at as one of three potential places to relocate headquarters. And that whole project is such a mess. I won't even go into it. But what really gets me about this and first of all wired props to wired because I feel like they've been doing like super cutting-edge reporting particularly on the Doge stuff like the most really relevant and kind of breaking news that we seem to be getting is consistently from wired the thing that concerns me

about this story is as you're're saying, trying to point these things out as vulnerabilities, we create vulnerabilities when we begin identifying places as being affiliated with the national security complex, if you will, and places where national security activity goes on. Whether the place gets sold or not, we are now alerting our adversaries to locations where potentially we do some kind of work that we're concerned about. And that is not a good idea for the home team. The other thing is selling off all these facilities, whether they're of Intel agencies or DOJ and FBI or whatever. Or V.A. or anything.

Yeah. I feel like people need to start getting their heads around the idea that this all means that the government is going to be able to do way, way less. And I know that people are frustrated with government and people think it's like so bureaucratic and it's a, you know, waste a lot of money and all these people and they don't work hard. I don't agree with those conclusions, but people maintain them. Really what's frustrating to people is they don't get the service they want out of government. Not that government does too much and we should do less.

Right. The reason it takes you a minute to get a VA appointment isn't because we have 83,000, too many 83,000 workers that are helping. It's the opposite. It's a lot to do. It's very busy. They have a lot of people that take it. You better get yourself used to the idea that your government is going to be able to perform at a much diminished level. They're going to be able to do and know less. They're going to be able to prevent fewer problems, fewer crisis, fewer terrorist attacks. They're going to catch fewer foreign spies. They're going to protect less of our intelligence national secrets

and national defense information that we rely on to stay safe because they're getting rid of people Because they're getting rid of people, they're getting rid of facilities, they're cutting back money. That is at its heart creating a vulnerability, a delta difference between what we need and what we're capable of doing. Yeah, 100%, been saying it.

I worked at VA for a really long time. We were always woefully understaffed and now they want to cut it even more. And expect people to then when the service gets really bad and they complain, the Trump administration will be like, see the government's terrible. We should privatize all this. Yeah, exactly. That's how it's going. And in privatization, line all the pockets, give all the contracts to Elon Musk and his pals, and all of the money that we are not spending on these facilities and for example, veterans benefits or social security or staff at the IRS, all that money we're not spending goes toward more tax cuts for the wealthy. That's been the plan. It's

always been the plan. And it's going to be devastating. And so we're going to keep an eye on this. And you know, if you don't follow Natasha Bertrand at all, I highly recommend you do. And if you get a chance to subscribe to Wired, they are doing some really, really great reporting. I want to talk a little bit about some pushback that's happening against good old Deputy Attorney General acting, Emil Bovay, and the interim and or acting US attorney for DC, who is Ed Martin, who we've talked quite a bit about, but we have to take another quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back.

Okay, let's talk about the pushback against decisions being made by the interim US attorney in DC, Ed Martin, and the acting Deputy Attorney General, Emile Beauvais. First up from the Associated Press, Georgetown Law School's Dean on Thursday rebuffed an unusual warning from the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C. that his office won't hire the private school students if it doesn't eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Dean William Traynor told acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin that the First Amendment prohibits the government from dictating what Georgetown's faculty teach

or how to teach it. That's interesting. Especially when the dean over at Georgetown says, hey, we're a Jesuit institution. So if you're all about religious freedoms, diversity, equity, inclusion for religious freedoms, you're about to trample all over them. He says, given the First Amendment protection of a university's freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear as it is the attack on the university's mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution. Now, Ed Martin's quote unquote, letter of inquiry to Georgetown also dovetails with the Trump agenda. On his first day back in the White House, Trump

signed an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government. In a letter dated February 17th, but emailed to the dean on March 3rd, so he sat on it for 16 days, Martin said a whistleblower had informed him that Georgetown Law School, quote, continues to promote and teach DEI. This is unacceptable," he wrote. And Martin warned the Dean that his office would not consider any Georgetown Law students for jobs, summer internships, or fellowships until his letter of inquiry about the DEI programs was resolved. And I, you know, like none of us want to work for you, bro. Like, I wanna work for you, bro. Like.

Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Good point. Traynor said. Oh no, we can't work for Ed Martin. Oh, oh the humanity. He's calling his assistant right now,

saying bring me in all the applications. And he's like, where are they? Where are all the applications? There's no applications. Oh God. Okay, so Tray said Georgetown was, quote, founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs

promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding. For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution. Georgetown University also prohibits discrimination and harassment in its programs and activities and takes seriously its obligations to comply with all federal and local laws. Your letter challenges Georgetown's ability to define our mission as an educational institution."

He wrote. Traynor closed the letter by writing, "'We look forward to your confirming that any Georgetown-affiliated candidates for employment with your office will receive full and fair consideration.'" Yeah, it was a good letter. So that's what Ed Martin is doing. And this is part of, you know, Pam Bondi,

remember when we read her flurry of 14 different memos or directives and one of them was to go after private institutions for practicing diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility programs. This is part of that effort and the Dean's not having it. I would have said, nobody wants to work for you, bro, and just left it at that, but it was a good letter nonetheless. Now, also on Thursday, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Office of Disciplinary Counsel in Washington to investigate their grave concern that Ed Martin may have engaged in professional misconduct since taking office.

In a letter to the office, the senators accused Martin of repeatedly abusing his position, including by using the threat of prosecution to intimidate government employees and chill the speech of private citizens. Quote, Mr. Martin's conduct not only speaks to his fitness as a lawyer, his activities are part of a broader course of conduct by President Trump and his allies to undermine the traditional independence of the Department of Justice and their investigations and prosecutions and rule of law. So, you know, this is I'm sure has a lot to do with Eric Adams, it has a lot to do with chilling the free speech of private

citizens, but they have written to the disciplinary, like, it looks like the bar, right? To ask for this investigation. Well, that's not all the Senate judiciary Democrats have done because they've also penned a letter to the New York Attorney Grievance Committee regarding the acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Beauvais calling for an investigation into his actions in the Eric Adams case. Quote, due to the serious nature of Mr. Beauvais' misconduct, we request that the Departmental Disciplinary Committee for the First Judicial Department opened an investigation to determine whether Mr. Beauvais, who is a member of the New York State Bar, violated applicable New York State Unified Court

System rules of professional conduct and should be subject to disciplinary action. Since the DOJ is not going to investigate him or the FBI isn't going to investigate him, go to the bar. Yeah, heck yeah. They go on to say, Mr. Bovet has explicitly premised the dismissal of charges against Mayor Eric L. Adams upon the extraction of a political favor from Mayor Adams to benefit President Trump. Notably, the dismissal is inherently coercive

because it was without prejudice, therefore allowing Mr. Bovet to use the threat of again charging Mayor Adams to ensure the political favor is fulfilled. There is substantial documentary proof of his misconduct and reportedly dozens of witnesses to verify the public reporting of Mr. Beauvais misconduct in this matter. And I want to point out that however the Eric Adams thing gets resolved and we see a resolution likely right around the corner, that will not affect this complaint to the grievance committee because simply the fact that he made these statements during his involvement in this case is what's important to the grievance committee.

It doesn't matter how the case actually resolved. If he ends up winning in the end, it doesn't absolve him from having done bad things along the way, if that makes sense. Yeah, and I haven't gone fully through what Paul Clement wrote as the amicus curiae and the Eric Adams thing, but I know Judge Ho asked him to address

the possibility of looking at other documents outside the four corners of the 48A motion to dismiss. For example, the memo that Beauvais sent to Danielle Sassoon, which she responded to, the notes that he collected during that meeting where the quid pro quo was discussed, all of that stuff, it doesn't have to be barred from the consideration of this particular body while investigating what happened in the Eric Adams case. So more stuff can come in. And you know, next week when we go over this, I'll let

you know whether Paul Clement said that those things could be considered or not. He might have said it's kind of moot because we can't not dismiss these charges because the DOJ won't argue them. But again, I'm guessing, I'm putting words in the man's mouth so we'll go over it in more detail next week. But for sure, all of those documents and notes and evidence can be taken into consideration if an investigation is opened

by the New York disciplinary committee. They went on to say, when a government lawyer, particularly one entrusted with leadership roles in the nation's foremost law enforcement agency, commits serious violations of professional conduct such as actions that undermine the integrity of our justice system and erode public confidence in it, public confidence is further eroded when such serious misconduct is met with no consequences. Therefore, we submit this letter complaint to respectfully request that the departmental disciplinary committee for the first department initiate an investigation

and take appropriate disciplinary proceedings. So maybe we'll see that. Maybe we'll get to see an investigation into this like we saw by the California bar for John Eastman, for example, which we went over in detail on the old Jack podcast. Yeah, these things are not quick. They tend to drag on a bit, but they can have really wreaked some significant consequences on the attorney's career and future prospects. So we'll see what happens there. Also, on March 3, the American Bar Association

issued a statement rejecting attacks on the court system and the legal profession after repeated calls from Elon Musk to impeach certain judges for their rulings against the Trump administration. Now, Ryan Reilly at NBC writes, the ABA said in a statement that it would, quote, not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something

that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not. Calling for an end to efforts meant to cow our country's judges, our country's courts, and our legal profession, and saying that such attempts at intimidation cannot be sanctioned or normalized. The nonpartisan ABA did not explicitly name Musk in its statement, instead broadly noting, quote, high ranking government officials appointed and elected have made repeated calls for the impeachment of judges who issue opinions with which the government does not agree. The ABA cited two phrases, quote, corrupt judges and, quote, corruption that were used by or reposted by Musk and noted that these criticisms had been aimed only

at judges who ruled against the government. Quote, we may disagree with the interpretation of case law, but it is unacceptable to personally target judges just because we disagree with their ruling, the ABA statement read. We cannot have a judicial system where the government seeks to remove judges simply because they do not rule as the government desires. Considering the increasing physical

threats to judges, these are clearly efforts to intimidate judges and our courts. And what was interesting with the Musk posts on Twitter is that one of the judges he went after actually ruled in their favor at one point, allowing, you know, not issuing a temporary restraining order against Doge and the Treasury Department, for example. But he continued to make these threats anyway. And we've seen this from Trump and his allies for years now. So it's nothing new, but I'm glad to see the American Bar Association speaking out against it. I feel like they're kind of yelling into the void, but,

American Bar Association speaking out against it. I feel like they're kind of yelling into the void, but these particular disciplinary bar committees in specific states can certainly launch investigations. And I definitely hope that they do. Yep. All right. We have one more quick story, Ben, before we take listener questions, but we have to take one more quick break. So stick around.

We'll be right back. Hey everybody welcome back. All right like I said one more quick story before we get to listener questions. In an Oval Office Ceremony the President signed an executive order hitting the large international law firm Perkins Cey, with a sweeping directive that bans the federal government from hiring it or from using contractors who work with it, except in limited circumstances. The order also bars Perkins Cooey employees from entering federal buildings and suspends their security clearances.

This is because Perkins Cooey represented Fusion GPS in the Steele dossier matter. It's like the third line in Trump's executive order, in the dossier Christopher Steele, I didn't pee. In a statement, a spokesperson for the firm said, we've reviewed your executive order. It's patently unlawful and we intend to challenge it. Now the Associated Press says the punishment arises from the hiring by Perkins-Cooey of Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm to conduct opposition research on then candidate Trump's potential ties to Russia. The arrangement was brokered by Mark Elias, a name that should be familiar to you, who

at the time was a well-connected partner at Perkins-Cooey and a top lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, but who has since left the firm and started his own practice, Democracy Docket. The Perkins-Cooey Executive Order also alleges that the firm engages in what the Trump administration describes as unlawful diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. So they threw that DEI in there for good measure. And Perkins-Cooey is probably going to sue. And we'll talk about that with you when it happens.

Because they said, yeah, we intend to challenge this. Yeah. I mean, as they should, it is, it is absolutely unlawful and they've got, they certainly have the legal firepower to go back to go back. Let's do a group of the best and most powerful lawyers in the world. Or let's do it. Let's take an unlawful action against a group of the most powerful and intelligent, smart lawyers on the planet. That'll be interesting. They're having arm wrestling matches in the very well appointed conference room to see who gets the case. So yeah, exactly. We'll follow that one closely.

All right. We have some listener questions. Again, there's going to be a link in the show notes as there is every week for you to click on if you have a question that you want to submit to Andy and me. What do we have this week for questions? Okay, so I have two. One let's do Robert's first because it's really kind of tails onto what we the story we just covered. And it also represents we've had a number of questions this week on the same theme. So this comes from Robert, but I should also mention that Lois sent one in that was very

similar. Robert says, love the new program, longtime listener and second time question. And his question is, if the Covington and Burling attorneys representing Jack Smith have their access denied by lack of security clearance How do they prepare to represent him without that clearance? Do they use another firm and hope that firm's clearance is not canceled? And of course unless that firm also offers to perform the services pro bono Smith will incur hefty costs So it's kind of as I said a lot of people have asked questions about how they will continue to effectively represent Jack Smith.

So I thought just to kind of clear up a couple of basic things. First, we don't know, there's no criminal prosecution or litigation currently filed against Jack Smith. So there's really not a lot for them to do in terms of getting access to government documents that might be used as evidence in a prosecution, that sort of thing. So right now, it's not quite at a boiling over level. But let's say hypothetically, if Jack Smith gets indicted, I have every belief that Covington will continue to represent him and they will make very aggressive demands for discovery right off the bat. And that will prompt this legal issue. If the government comes back and says, no, we're not going to give you this stuff because you don't have a clearance anymore. That is going to be one of the first big legal fights in that case

will be Covington going after the government for this ridiculous presidential order or decision. Yeah, and they could file motions to dismiss for not being able to be granted access to discovery. Right, to counsel. There's all kinds of ways. You remember in the classified documents case and even in the January 6th case brought by Jack Smith, how they had to wait for Trump's lawyers and Nauta's lawyers and Dale Lavera's lawyers to get clearance and then go to a skiff and then have a CISA officer there to follow all the rules of the CISA thing. We had Brian Greer on a bunch to talk about it. Jack Smith and the Department of

Justice were bent over, yes, here is your clearance. Here it is in triplicate. I've laminated it for you. Wear it around your neck. We've got seven skiffs in your area. Here's a laptop. Here's an extra laptop. They like bent over backwards to get all this access. And if, and if Jack Smith on the other, if the, you know, when the shoe's on the other foot, if he's denied that access, it's not going to be up to Trump's Department of Justice. It'll be up to the courts to determine, well, we're going to dismiss this case. I don't think they'll even be able to bring a successful case, but maybe, maybe in some sort of civil litigation, perhaps.

But, you know, they'll ask the court. Same thing would happen on the civil side, right? They'll ask the court to be like, hey, you need to enter an order that we have to have these clearances to help our client. Otherwise, you got to dismiss this case. And you know, then we'll see whether or not the Trump Department of Justice complies with those orders. Right. And they have another thing going for them here.

The presidential order was very clear, it's explicit that they're going after Covington because they represent Jack Smith. So if they find themselves in court fighting this out in the context of a criminal case or a civil case, they can say, this is blatantly denying this man his right to counsel because you have no reason to believe that, okay, if we have to step out of the case because we don't have clearances, whatever lawyer steps in behind us is also going to be denied clearance. So it's so blatantly an effort to deny Smith his access to the council that he wants.

And I can't see any court putting up with that, but you know, we see new, new horrible things every day. And I can also see there being a selective prosecution, good selective prosecution argument because they are representing Jack Smith, you know, in any case that may or may not come. So anyway, thanks for that question. That was really good, Robert. All right. So one more quick one here. This one comes from Donna and Donna says, I keep hearing that Republican lawmakers have no choice but to vote for Trump's nominees and

for his agenda because of threats to them and their families. Is it not possible to protect lawmakers who are under threat? Would that be the FBI or would an FBI headed by Cash Patel just not do it? I love the podcast. Well, thank you, Donna, for the question and for loving the podcast. There is absolutely ways that we protect lawmakers from threats. And we're talking about threats from members of the public, right? Not like Trump is threatening these people, but the fact that they go against him, if they should go against him on any particular issue,

then they get threats from their constituents or other people who are Trump supporters theoretically. So yes, they are protected first and foremost by the Capitol police. That's like the purpose of the Capitol police department is to protect the lawmakers, ensure they're safe and can conduct their business as they need to. If there was a threat and the Capitol PD investigated it and they substantiated it, now you get to a problem because they would then take it to the Department of Justice and say, we

want this person prosecuted. And now the question becomes, what does DOJ do with those potential prosecutions that would likely provoke the ire of President Trump? So it's not really so much an FBI cash Patel thing, but I do think that if cases are brought against people who are cases are brought against people who are strong Trump supporters and who, according to this fact pattern, have threatened legislators, I think it's a fair question as to how those would be handled in a bondage justice department. I also think that Republican lawmakers could team up with Democratic lawmakers to fund bigger security details through the Secret Service. That doesn't necessarily mean that good old Kristi Noem would execute those laws. There's a lot of laws passed by Congress right now that this particular administration

is ignoring. But I think it would be an interesting exercise for Democrats to reach out to Republicans on the Hill and say, hey, why don't we fund some more security for members of Congress and see how they react to it? Yeah, I mean, I have to fund it, not to the service, but to Capital PD, but another institution that's woefully behind in funding and resources and everything else. But yeah, they're going to come out and say, yeah, we need this because our own people are coming after us. I doubt it. Yeah, right. No, because then you admit that you're being threatened and that's why you're kowtowing to the administration. But it would be interesting to get an emphatic no on the record from Republican lawmakers to increase security on Capitol Hill. Because I'm pretty sure they are super big into backing the blue, Andy, right?

Oh yeah, according to them, but then not really. Well anyway, great questions. Did you want to read this last one from Douglas? You know, I just put it in there to remind myself to say thank you, Douglas, for sending in your story. It's a bit long and we're getting close to the end here. I just wanted to say, I really appreciate your relating your, how you ended up in law enforcement, how much you love that job and the reasons that you felt like you needed to take a principled

stand and step away from it. It's what we talked about a few weeks ago, A.G., like what people should think about doing and if they find themselves and because of everything that's going on now and the politics around them, that even a job that they love is something that they feel like is no longer consistent with what they're being asked to do is not consistent with their values and their view of the law and their responsibility, that sometimes the right thing to do is to walk away. And that really hurts. And so I'm sorry that you had to experience that Douglas, but hang in there, dude. You did the right thing. And you know what? Things will turn around and you'll find a new and

better place for yourself. I'm sure. Yeah. After all that, he says, you know, I resigned. And he said, the reason I'm writing is due to hearing Andy explain why people resign rather than being fired or to fight on and He he Douglas says you're correct Andy It's what you have to do when you can't stomach what you're ordered to do You resign when you're ordered to go against your oath or your orders conflict with your convictions and your conscience so and then he's had some very kind words about the podcast and us. And thank you, Douglas.

I appreciate you writing in with your story and your kind words. Yes, absolutely. Keep the faith, bro. All right, everybody. That is our show that is unjustified for this week. We're pretty much everything is unjustified these days. So I think we picked a good name for the show. I wish we had been wrong, but no, we're right. We were going to go with main justice, but that was taken.

And so we wanted to try to maintain some positivity, but I think it's hard to find at the moment, but we're going to keep looking and we'll bring it to you if we find any. We will. And so next week, look for us to go in depth on Paul Clement's amicus curiae brief in the Eric Adams case. We'll talk about what Judge Dale Ho decides to do after the recommendations made by Paul Clement and whatever else happens between now and then with Ed Martin, Emile Beauvais and the rest here on Unjustified Island.

Well done. Holy cow. All right. If you're a Mr. Science Theater 3000 fan, what's this and the rest crap will resonate with you? Appreciate you all listening. Do you have any final thoughts, my friend? No, just hang in there everybody. It's like a fire hose every minute, but you know what? Just hold on to something bigger than you and you'll be able to endure it and we'll walk through all of it again with you next week. Yes, it's a fire hose inside of a shit show inside of a cluster F and it's the turducken of treason. All upon all of us. But we really appreciate you listening. And hey, if you want to become

a patron of this show and get the shows ad free, get them a day early before they come out. You'll also get to be a patron of the Daily Beans daily news podcast news was swearing with me and Dana Goldberg, you can have both shows, early ad free and access to our happy hours and VIP meet and greets and pre-sale stuff and our in-person galas that we host for just five bucks a month for both shows. Bargain. Yeah, total bargain. You can do it at patreon.com slash Mueller, she wrote. M-U-E-L-L-E-R, she wrote. We appreciate you. We'll be back in your ears next week. I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe.

Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hockey with art and web design by Joel Reeder at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds. And the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator owned independent podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.