Jack - No Bill Prizes

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton has been indicted on 18 felony counts of transmitting and retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act.The judge in Comey’s case has denied the government’s motion to restrict the sharing discovery with Comey himself and other witnesses, and sets a blisteringly fast classified materials process.Jack Smith speaks out about his Trump prosecutions, and is called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in a letter from Jim Jordan. Jeanine Pirro chalks up her first acquittal in the District of Columbia in an embarrassing loss in the case of Sidney Reid.Plus listener questions…Do you have questions for the pod?  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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-S-W Media. Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, has been indicted on 18 felony counts of transmitting and retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act. The judge in Comey's case has denied the government's motion to restrict the sharing of discovery with Comey himself and other witnesses and has set a blisteringly fast-classified materials process. Jack Smith speaks at.

out about the Trump cases and is called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in a letter from Jim Jordan. And Janine Piro chocks up her first acquittal in the District of Columbia in an embarrassing loss in the case against Sidney Reed. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 39 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, October 19th. 2025. October, it's trying to get out of here really fast. It's going. Wow. It definitely is. It's going very, very quickly. But welcome to Unjustified. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And as you know, Allison, I was traveling a little bit the last two weeks. And so I got home and, like, it feels like the half of the month is gone already. I just showed up. It's already half gone. It doesn't help that every day is filled with like a thousand stories, 90% of which are horrible.

I mean, it's head spinning. The number of stories that are coming out, the volume and the intensity, they're mostly horrible. It's tough to keep up with. But we're here. I'm going to go through the most important ones for us this week. What do we got first? Yeah.

First, let's talk about the indictment of former national security advisor, John Bolton. And, Andy, as I was reading through the indictment, I went in assuming it was going to be ridiculous. Yes. I was looking through it. I was scrolling through it. I was like, where's the dumb stuff? there wasn't really any dumb stuff. And the first thing I did was I scrolled to the last page to see who signed the indictment, right? Expecting it to be a single signature from an inexperienced political appointee. But that's not the case here. As Politico points out, unlike the bare bones indictments against Comey and Letitia James, which Halligan alone signed, the slew of charges against

Bolton were obtained by a veteran national security prosecutor in Maryland, Thomas Sullivan. The case was also endorsed by the career federal prosecutor that the Trump administration named earlier this year as the interim U.S. Attorney for Maryland, Kelly O. Hayes. The backing of career prosecutors for this case against Bolton was underscored by the optics of the brief late afternoon court session Thursday, where the indictment was handed up to the federal magistrate judge. So this is, I couldn't, I was really looking for stupid. in this indictment. It's not in there. It's not in there. Now, there's plenty of stupid around this issue, right?

And that's kind of one of the second or third order impacts that I think Donald Trump's statements and conduct, one of the effects that we don't think about immediately, which is his obliteration of the independence of the Department of Justice, his demands that people be investigated and prosecuted, he's constant talking about it. in addition to creating using the department for vengeance and all those horrible things it also injects this question of politics into the work of the justice department in a way that now you can never really believe it's getting you kind of go into these things thinking like but was this political and that's not something that you thought two years ago year and a half ago, whatever. So, yeah, I agree with you. This is, this, you know, there is still questions around this, but the document itself is

very, very capably written, crafty in some ways, and we'll go over that. So it's, this is a serious case and John Bolton is facing serious charges that are based on what appears to be a lot of pretty significant evidence. Right. It's like, okay, why did they start to? look at John Bolton again. And I say again, because they looked at this previously and decided not to bring charges. Well, why did they look at him again? That's clearly, in my view, politically motivated. But if there are actual crimes committed, it's like when the Trump administration

says what Jack Smith or what you did in Crossfire Hurricane to begin to start it was politically motivated, it wasn't. But there were actual crimes there. That's the argument. Like there's actual bad stuff going on here. And if what is in this indictment is accurate, and we'll get into the details here, he broke the law. Yeah, yeah, in a pretty bold and, you know, irresponsible kind of reckless way. Again, it's an allegation. We don't know that yet. I'm sure Mr. Bolton will mount a lot of defenses.

But, yeah, you know, and it puts us in this weird position where, and this is kind of how the courts will look at this, when the issue comes before them in the form of, of a vindictive prosecution memo or a selective prosecution memo or something like that, if the case itself, if putting that allegation aside, if the case itself is sound and built on unimpeachable evidence and is clearly enough there to establish probable cause for the indictment, those motions become very hard to succeed on. You know, compare it to the Jim Comey case, which the indictment there is very, very different. there's nothing to it. Yeah, you don't even know what he said, who he said it to. The allegations are very shady. And then, of course, the background of the case, the prosecutor quitting, other prosecutors recommending not to bring this forward. We don't have that same sort of record here. So I'm not saying there isn't a political element. But even if there is a whiff of retribution, even if Donald Trump is very happy to see John Bolton being dragged through this, not whole, if the case itself is legitimate, then those concerns typically in our justice system kind of fall away.

Judges look at the evidence in the law, and if what they see is significant, important, based on evidence, not on, you know, political screeds, and then the thing pretty much goes forward. But we'll see. I mean, that'll all play out in front of us. Yeah, it will. And I think a large part of this case is going to rest on intent. that's right that's right willful retention and transmission right always the hardest thing to prove and um you know the perfect example uh the investigation of president biden the investigation of vice president pence the reason those didn't go forward as prosecutions is because those uh investigations

did not uncover any evidence of intentional retention or transmission of doc of classified or national defense information. Typically what you see in a case where you can't really prove intent, the size or the amount of the sensitive documents that are found is not significant. And typically it's contained in a location where it's commingled with other stuff that's not classified. That's clearly personal information, whatever. Oftentimes the person, we know about it because the person who had it notifies the government of what they have. And then they consent. They cooperate with the search of their residence or office or whatever it is. None of those elements are present here. You're talking about the allegation is over thousands of pages of national

defense information, a lot of which is classified up to the TSSC level. And there's also evidence of that that could speak to intent, the fact that he created this group text, that he engaged with individual one and individual two, who CNN is reporting is his wife and his daughter, neither of whom had authorization to possess a classified information. He's like actively writing things every day, almost every day, and then sending them these long documents. He's cautioning them not to talk to other people about it. So there's some pretty strong evidence that speaks to intentional acts here. Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, Pence and Biden, those investigations. There were even documents in the Trump investigation that weren't brought as charges because

the intent wasn't there. Remember when they found some classified documents in a storage shed co-mingled with some other things? And Jack Smith was rightfully, like, he probably didn't know those were there. And we're not going to charge those documents. Here are our 8 million other documents we're going to charge. But, you know, why bother trying to? to prove intent on those documents. He didn't need them. He didn't need them. I've been involved in many

espionage act investigations, you know, unlawful retention, transmission, people who have stuff at their homes, you go in, you do a search warrant, you find some things. I'm not going to say most, but a good number of those investigations never result in an indictment

or a charge for this reason, because it's not clear that the person were they just sloppy, they brought home some stuff, didn't know what they had. It's not clear that they, they intentionally took it knowing what it was and intending to keep it. So, yeah, that's, but boy, there are definitely some factors here that point in the other

direction. But something that's clearly missing from this case that occurred in the Trump case was nobody really said, hey, these documents, we want them back and Bolton refused to give them back. That didn't occur. That's right. Now there is. We'll get in, let's get into the indictment because there is a point where,

He's told he can no longer have stuff because they've dismembered, disassembled the skiff that was in his home. Yeah, that's right. And he didn't tell them that he had these things and turned them over. I'll tell you, it's one of the moments from reading this indictment that really rang out to me as like, this is well written. This thing was well constructed, crafty, thoughtful. They threw in some elements here that were purposely included to cut off. off potential defenses in the future. So I'll point those out as we go. But let's look at the charges first. So this is a quote from the indictment. It says from on or about April 9, 2018 through at least

on or about August 22, 2025, Bolton abused his position as national security advisor by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the national Security Advisor, including information relating to the national defense, which was classified up to the top secret SCI level, with two unauthorized individuals, namely individuals one and two. Bolton also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TSSC level in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland. Individual one, whose identity is known to the grand jury, was related to Bolton, and that person resided in the District of Maryland, never held a U.S. security

clearance, and was not authorized to access, receive, or maintain the classified information that Bolton shared related to his work as the National Security Advisor. Yep, an individual two whose identity is known to the grand jury was related to Bolton, never held a U.S. security clearance and was not authorized to access, receive, or maintain the classified information that Bolton shared related to his work as the national security advisor. Now, you're saying person one and person two are his wife and his daughter. Do they consider your wife being related to you? Yes. Yeah. And that CNN has, they've reported that a couple of times yesterday. They have a source that they're confident in. So I'm, I feel comfortable saying

that. Okay. Now, it goes on to say from my honor about April 9th, 2018 through September 15th, 2019, on a regular basis, Bolton sent diary-like entries to individuals one and two that contained information classified up to the top secret SCI level. Bolton wrote many of these diary-like entries by transcribing his handwritten notes from his day's activities into word processing documents, which he then electronically sent to individuals one and two through a commercial, non-governmental messaging application. So that's the transmission of the classified, right? Yes.

And then there's the retention. Yes, that's correct. So on that count, the indictment says, at some unknown time, but no later than August 22nd, 2025, many of the diary-like entries from Bolton's time as the National Security Advisor, including entries that contained national defense information classified up to the TSSC level, were printed and stored in Bolton's personal residence in Montgomery County, Maryland. Digital copies of some of the diary-like entries that contain national defense information

were also stored on a personal electronic devices used by Bolton and others located in Bolton's personal residence in Montgomery County, Maryland on August 22, 2025. On or about September 10, 2019, and that, by the way, is shortly after the date, he stopped serving as National Security Advisor. U.S. government personnel retrieved all classified equipment and marked classified documents. that were stored in Bolton's home skiff. So just an aside here, a skiff is a secure compartmentalized information facility. That's a room or a closet or whatever that has been authorized to be a storage space for top secret level documents, documents classified all the way up to that level. You had a skiff at your home?

I actually didn't. I had a safe at my home that was authorized to store. documents up to the secret level, but I did not have a full skiff. Jim Comey had a full skiff in his basement. Many top level national security people do. The government literally has to come in and build a room in your house in which the walls and the wiring and the communications lines and everything meet particular standards that are set by the DNI for the accreditation of a skiff. So apparently...

Did Trump have a skiff in his bathroom? I'm going to guess no. Okay. Because the gold toilet does not comply with the DNI rigs. Doesn't the gold toilet interfere with signals to... I'm sorry. Please continue. So Bolton apparently had a skiff.

I'm presuming no gold toilet in his house. So back to the indictment. On September 10th, the government comes to take the skiff down. because he's no longer the NSA, and that while you're taking that down, you collect whatever classified stuff that he has there in the skiff or wherever. So they go on to say, during that visit, Bolton was told that he could no longer store classified information at his home. At no point during Bolton's time as the National Security Advisor or afterwards, including

when his home skiff was decommissioned in or about September 2019, did Bolton tell the U.S. personnel that he had sent national defense and classified information to individuals one and two over commercial email and messaging services, or that such information was stored on personal electronic devices and in personal electronic accounts belonging to or accessible by himself and or individuals one and two. So that's the part where he was told. You got to give us all your classified information, and they're presuming that he knew he had a thousand pages of classified stuff in his diaries at that time.

Hand them over. Yeah, that's right. So the indictment actually begins early, early on in the intro where they lay out how when he got the job, he signed all these NDAs agreeing to not do any of this stuff. And then at the end of the job, they go to his house, they break down the skis. They go, you know, that's the moment where the government says, okay, we now need everything you have here. Give us all the classified, all the NDI, you know, national defense information, because this is our moment to collect all that.

And at no point then did he say, oh, yeah, there's this other thousand pages. And because it was summaries of classified documents, that doesn't matter. It's because we talked about this a lot in the Trump thing. It didn't matter if they're marked classified. In the Espionage Act, national defense information is national defense information. It doesn't have to be marked classified, which is why Donald Trump never used the I declassified everything with my mind defense. Right. Right. Because there's exactly right. And it's a great question. It's one that's being, I think, misinterpreted by a lot of people on air right now. The standard in the Espionage Act is national defense information. Now, if something's classified, that goes a long way to proving that it's national defense information. But it doesn't have to be classified. National defense information is a broader category than just classified. The other thing that people are getting wrong is they are saying that the government is going to have to,

it's going to be hard for the government because at trial they're going to have to prove, they're going to have to show the actual classified document that these summaries were based upon. That is not true. As a person with TSC clearance, Bolton is expected to know that even when you write something, something in a personal diary only for yourself. If the content qualifies as national defense information or classified information, it has to be handled as classified information. It doesn't matter that you didn't put a little stamp on it or portion mark the paragraphs or any of the other things that you see on properly labeled classified material. So all they have to do at trial

is get experts, government people, to come in and say, yes, this content that you just read to me, no matter where it appears, is the property of the Defense Department and we consider it to be classified. That will not be hard to do. Yeah. Otherwise, you could just write an email to your wife saying, hey, I checked out the JFK files, and it turns out it was a big conspiracy by the CIA and send that away and everything would be fine. You can't do it that way. You could rewrite things in your own hand and be like, it's not classified anymore. It came from my hand. By the way, I think there was just a single shooter.

Anyway, I was just giving an example. There was also another point when Bolton had an opportunity to disclose the classified information. And the indictment says at some point between when Bolton left the government in September 2019 and July of 2021, a cyber actor, believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran, hacked Bolton's personal email account and gained unauthorized access to the classified in national defense information in that account, which Bolton had previously emailed to individuals one and two when he was the NSA. A representative for Bolton notified the government of the

hack in July of 2021, but did not tell the government that the account contained national defense information, including classified, and that Bolton had placed in the account that information from his time as NSA. Nor did Bolton's representative tell the government that Bolton had shared some of that national defense information, including classified, with individuals one and two via personal email and non-governmental messaging applications. So that was a second time he had an opportunity to say, oh, and by the way, my summaries of a bunch of classified stuff, top secret, SCI stuff, was in those accounts. This is absolutely crazy.

In all the cases I have dealt with, I don't know that I've ever seen something like this. most cases you have someone maybe dead to rights on a violation of the espionage act and what you're trying to convince the jury is the reason we have the espionage act is because it's so important to keep to protect this information to keep it out of the hands of our enemies well in this case it actually ended up in the hands of the enemy so this concept of damage to the national security which is an important part of the government's case it's actually in this one it's not a theoretical construct. It's not, be careful, be careful because one day maybe something bad will happen. The bad thing happened here. The Iranians got in. They have this stuff. And according to

the indictment, the second communication from the Iranians to Bolton and his representative basically was trying to extort him saying you wouldn't want this released or you wouldn't want people to know we have this or something like that you go to the indictment itself for the actual language it's chilling this is a very this is another one of those things that lawyers call a bad fact right when you're getting ready to go to trial lawyers are like okay we have good facts and we have bad facts we now highlight the good and explain away the bad ones this is a bad fact for john bolton right right now abby lull who i am assuming is representing john bolton yes put out the following statement. This was investigated and resolved years ago. Bolton, like many public

officials, kept diaries. That's not a crime. They were unclassified records that were shared only with his immediate family and known to the FBI as far back as 2021. So that's something that the government here is going to have to explain as to why this was looked at and known to the FBI and they didn't bring charges. And why didn't, you know, if this was known to the FBI in 2021, that seems to be when the hack happened, why, again, why this wasn't charged, but why those documents weren't turned over or something to that effect. That is something that the government is going to have to address, right, at trial. Because I'm assuming this is going to go to trial because it's a well-written indictment. There's probable cause here, I think, unlike Comey's or Leticia James is.

Yeah. And Bolton has pled not guilty. They didn't perp-walk him or anything. no yeah i don't you know definitely the government is going to have to um bolton and lowell are going to use the fact that the government investigated this for a while and then seemed to walk away from it and then it was it came back essentially you know the argument will be under the trump revenge tour that's the government's going to have to answer for that the real answer to that might be yeah it came back because political they this this doj knew that this was an outcome that that the president wanted. But there are other possible explanations, all right?

The government might say, well, we became aware of new evidence that added additional, you know, weight to the charges or change the way we thought about the prospects of bringing this thing to trial. Yeah, maybe the government didn't know about these diaries. And then when they learned about them after 2021, and when new evidence comes to light, old declinations to prosecute go out the window. That's right. And, you know, and that's perfect. That's my, that was my next point. Like, prosecutorial discretion. It could simply be a new group of prosecutors came in and they looked at the case and assessed it differently.

And that is within the scope of a prosecutor's discretion. They can't, you know, and courts are not going to get in and relitigate that. I do think the government's going to need to explain that a little bit. bit more than they would in a normal case. There's not a lot normal about this case just for jury appeal reasons, but there's a lot of ways they could potentially answer that question. Yeah, and we'll see how it goes because we will follow this case along with Comey and Letitia James. And speaking of Comey, we're going to talk about that in a second. But first, we have to take a quick break. So everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody, when you're sore after a workout or you're stressed or you're dragging through

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That is cbdistillery.com and use promo code unjust. Cbdistillery.com. Specific product availability depends on individual state regulation. All right, everybody, welcome back. A couple of big losses for the Department of Justice this week. Starting with a motion in the Comey case. This is from MSNBC. It's early yet in the James Comey case,

but the former FBI director got a quick win on a procedural issue that reinforces the presiding judge. judge's refusal to allow needless delay in the criminal case against the Donald Trump critic brought by a Trump installed prosecutor. That reinforcement came from U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, who rejected the Justice Department's motion for a protective order that would have limited Comey's access to discovery. That's hilarious to me. The judge wrote, they're like, he can't see that, witnesses can't see that. Jim Comey can't see that. And Pat Fitzgerald is like, He was the director of the FBI. He can see it, right? And like, what is it? It's just like

his statement? I mean, come on. What are you even talking about? And they wanted just everything to be under a protective order. It was super broad. The judge wrote that the DOJ proposal would unnecessarily hinder and delay the defendant's ability to adequately prepare for trial. In a two-page order, explaining his decision Monday, knockman off, a Biden appointee sitting in the Eastern District of Virginia, noted that prior high-profile false statement cases didn't have the sort of limitations the government proposed here. The judge added that the DOJ proposal didn't sufficiently detail the information purportedly needed protection, thus making the request overbroad. Right. Normally you say, normally you're like, we want a protective order of this kind of

information for this reason or for this kind of information for this reason. We don't want the medical records. We, you know, if there's medical records or classified or whatever, and they didn't do that. They were just like, keep it all protected and don't let Comey see it. Like, it's just ridiculous. But in their defense, Lindsay Halligan probably hadn't made it to that page in the basics of trial advocacy book. So, you know, maybe next time she'll have a little more detail. There's a trial advocacy book. Do you know, I just totally made that up? I totally. I'm sure there probably is, but truth, you know, full, full confession, I made that up. Okay. It's like the, it's like the book that Marissa Tomey reads in my cousin Vinnie.

Exactly. And pardon my French, but she's like, it's called disclosure, you dickhead. He can't have any surprises. And she's read this book. I just watched that again very recently. I was like, this is a classic. It holds up, man. She earned that Oscar.

All right, anyway, please continue. Okay. Though the decision on this one discreet issue doesn't dictate how the case will end, hefty or pretrial motions to dismiss or do later this month, Its on-task tone is in keeping with the one Gnachmanov set at Comey's arraignment last week, where the former lawman pleaded not guilty to the two-count indictment secured by former Trump personal lawyer, Lindsay Halligan, over the objection of career prosecutors, one count for allegedly lying to Congress, and another for allegedly obstructing Congress.

And congratulations MSNBC on writing the longest sentence so far in this show. Okay. At the arraignment, Knockmanoff, approved a swift litigation schedule featuring a January 5th trial date, which the judge said he had been prepared to set even sooner had the defense requested a December start date. So whatever Halligan's plan for the case is, to the extent she has one, not having prosecuted a case before ever, delay shouldn't be a part of it. Just before Comey's arraignment, she brought in two DOJ lawyers from North Carolina, who have prosecuted cases before. She similarly secured an indictment last week against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

whose prosecution Trump also called for like he did Comey's. James is due to appear in court October 24th. Additionally, Andy, the judge set a SEPA schedule. And before, this is the opposite. If you want to see the opposite of Judge Cannon in action, look to the rocket docket of Eastern Virginia and Judge Nachman off specifically. But first, before we get into that, Can you briefly tell us what SEPA is?

We talked about this a ton during the Jock podcast, but we might have new listeners. Yeah, okay. This is a point where I say, Brian Greer stop listening for a second because you're going to have all kinds of complaints with my explanation. But basically, the situation before SEPA was that was something prosecutors would call gray mail. They'd bring a case like this against somebody who had mishandled important information. And the defendant would think, you know what, I'm just going to go to trial because I know that the government at the last. minute, the government has to expose all this highly sensitive information at trial and they're not going to want to do that and they'll have to dismiss the case. And that actually

happened a lot. So hence we got the Classified Information Procedures Act. And what it basically does is it establishes a process by which each side, the prosecution and the defense, submit a series of motions to basically define what classified information is going to be used in the trial and how it's going to be used. So how it gets disclosed, who can see it. But more importantly, sometimes they use things like substitutions for a piece of particularly sensitive information. So it allows both parties to make a pitch as to what the substitution should be, and then the judge's side. So there's different sections to SEPA, and those sections set up this, basically this course of sub-litigation that happens within the prosecution.

Yeah. And I'm sitting here racking my brain. There's statements that he made about stuff that was disclosed to the press and printed publicly. So I'm really trying to figure out what's classified. But anyway. The heck if I know. I mean, like... I don't think there's anything relevant classified. And I think the government is just throwing that in there to delay this trial. That's what I think. It could be. We can't say definitively because there's so little information in the indictment that we have no idea. what this case is about beyond, you know, the speculation. So we'll see. Yeah, but we're going to find out. So again, as I read this schedule to you for this SEPA process, I want you to remember the SEPA schedule in the Trump case before Judge Cannon, okay? So by November 4th, the judge wants the government's SEPA Section 4 motion, if they are going to file one to delete or substitute specified items of classified information. Then the defendant to file SEPA Section 5 notice regarding the

classified information the defense reasonably intends to disclose or cause the disclosure of at trial. That's November 4th, okay? That's in a couple weeks. Then one week later, November 11th, the government has to respond to Comey's SEPA Section 5 notice and file motions pursuant to SEPA Section 6A regarding the use, relevance, or admissibility of classified information at trial. Then six days later on November 17th, the judge wants the defendant to respond to the government's Section 6A motions or reply to the government's response to their SEPA Section 5 notice. Four days later, they're going to have a hearing on SEPA section 5 and SEPA Section 6A. Then December 1st, the government is supposed to file motions under SEPA Section 6C for their

substitutions and summaries. A week later, December 8th, Coma gets to respond to the government's motion under SEPA 6C. Then December 17th, there will be a hearing on Section 6C. see and those motions. And as previously ordered trial, she'll commence January 5th at 9 a.m. He throws that in there as a reminder. So we're looking at November 4th to December 17th, a month and a half for an entire seat of process.

Section 4, section 5, section 6. And I bet you, I'd be willing to put a wager down that at that December 17th hearing, the judge gives you an order from the bench, which is another thing you never ever saw, And we and Cannon, do she, not a chance. This is the true rocket docket right here playing out in front of you. That's amazing. Months and months and months in Cannon's courtroom.

But do I will see, but do we have a skiff? I don't understand videos. Well, let's build you a skiff. Okay, we'll send you an IT guy and we'll give you a whole laptop. Yeah, but I don't understand a laptop. How do I open the laptop? Can you give me instructions on how to spell laptop? It just went on and on and on.

And she let it. And it happened on her super secret. secret docket, too, via email, because she wouldn't let anything be filed on the regular docket. Right, right. It was basically the delay docket masquerading as a SEPA process. That's what that was, because every one of those, we don't have a laptop. Okay, here's a laptop.

We don't know how to turn a laptop on. Every one of those things, Todd Blanche and Emil Bovi, we're sitting back there going, nice. We just got another week, another two weeks, another week. Yeah. Well, not in this courtroom, thankfully. So we're going to keep an eye on that. And this week, those motions, those first motions are coming that we're going to talk about next week.

And that's going to be the motion for vindictive and selective and the motion to disqualify Lindsey Halligan, which if she's disqualified, I think this whole case goes bye-bye. Bye-bye. So we'll talk about that. Let's get it on. I'm sad because I really want this to go to try. I really want to see Pat Fitzgerald go up against Lindsay Halligan, but I don't know that we're going to get to anyway. Somebody was, I won't reveal who it was, but they were making jokes about that matchup with

me last night. I was like, that's like Mike Tyson fighting my golden retriever. I mean, like, it's not the same thing there. That's an insult to your golden retriever. It really is, actually. If he was here, he'd be mad at me, but he's out walking now. All right. We have another prestigious U.S.

attorney who went down to defeat this week. Heck, yeah. Let's head over to D.C. Where your favorite of mine, Jeannie Piro, in her office, suffered an embarrassing loss in court. So this is from W. USA 9, one of the local DC TV stations, a jury found a woman not guilty Thursday of assaulting an FBI agent during an ICE arrest outside of a D.C. jail. Now, before we go on, I am not here, and I would never make. light of an assault on an FBI agent or any law enforcement officer. But as we get deeper in the

story, you will see the question of the assault and whether it actually happened and what evidence there is of it is particularly relevant. It's worse than the sandwich. I mean, it's less of an assault than the sandwich. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So they go on to say, the verdict comes after less than two hours of deliberation on the third day of the trial of Sydney, Lori Reed, which had been marred by several issues with prosecutor's evidence. Reed smiled and hugged her attorneys as cheers came from the gallery when the verdict was announced. Oof. What they did. Ye. Yeah. So Reed was accused of assaulting an FBI agent named Eugenia Bates back in July while being detained. She was outside of D.C. jail filming Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who were waiting to arrest two

people. As she was filming, ICE officer Vincent Liang grabbed her arms and began to detain her against a wall. And that's according to surveillance video shown during the trial. While he was struggling with Reed, Bates got involved, Eugenia Bates, and prosecutors argued that though there was no contact, a jerk movement that Reed made with her knee near Bates's groin during the struggle constitutes assault. During closing arguments, Assistant Federal Public Defender Tizira Abe painted the group of ICE officers and FBI agents as a, quote, goon squad that thinks. there above the law, quote, you should be livid that the government brought this case,

Abe told the jury. Now, a felony version of the charge was rejected three times by grand juries before U.S. attorney for D.C. Jeannie Piro's office moved to bring this lesser misdemeanor charged. During grand jury testimony, Liang claimed that Reed was the one who made first contact. Yeah. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sukhnanin said Wednesday that the video evidence showed that that was not true. Now, Liang was not called as a witness during the trial, something Abe questioned in closing, and you should question it too. This is the guy that actually had contact with the defendant, and according to the judge, he lied about it to the grand jury.

So of course he couldn't testify at trial, right? Now, Bates was the sole witness, Eugenia Bates, called by prosecutors. And she spent more than five hours on the stand. That's the only reason this trial lasted more than a day, by the way, because they were on the stand for five hours over two days. Much of the questioning centered on her text messages following the incident, where she downplayed it and disparaged Reed as a libtard. She didn't turn over additional text messages evidence until early Wednesday morning in the

middle of the trial and in the middle of cross-examination. And Abe, the public defender, by the way, this isn't like Abby Lowell or Pat Fitzgerald. This is the public defender. And God bless public defenders. And that's what Abe discovered that one message was missing from what she turned over. Quote, conveniently, the most damaging one wasn't there, Abbe said. Agent Bates' story is riddled with holes. The missing message was just one of many issues with the evidence.

Just the night before trial, surveillance footage from a camera that was previously said to be inoperable also turned up. Sucnan grew increasingly frustrated with prosecutors chastising assistant U.S. attorney Travis Wolf multiple times for playing games in her courtroom. After the verdict, Sucanin thanked jurors for being especially patient after they had to wait and leave the courtroom various times so she could discuss the evidentiary issues with the attorneys. Hmm. The rare case was possibly the first time a defendant had been charged federally in D.C. with a misdemeanor assault on a federal officer. That's what the judge said. Judge Signanon.

Assistant federal public defender Eugene Ome said Wednesday he believed the government was stuck with the case after Leang claimed Reed initiated contact to the grand jury and didn't want the embarrassment of dropping it. Quote, they overplayed their hand on this one. That's what Abe said. Now, that video, that video. by the way, was viewed by Reed when she was detained in the back of a car as Officer Leang received it. It was an Instagram video and showed it to the other officer in the front of the car. And she saw it and she said, look, my knee didn't even hit anyone. And by the way, that whole interaction of her watching the video and commenting on it, she recorded on her phone. So there was that evidence. And then the prosecution was like, we don't know what, there's no video. There's no video of that.

Here's a video that we have from the Potomac Press, which doesn't show the knee jerk. And Abe argued, she specifically talks about the knee jerk. This is a video. We need this in discovery. They tried to compel discovery before the trial, and they were like, we don't know where it is. It just doesn't exist.

Turned up somehow in the middle of trial. I'll tell you two things. And maybe I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this. But a few years ago, certainly, when I was working, certainly when I was running the Washington Field Office. And earlier than that, when I used to work there, if an agent had done these issues, the text messages with the disparagement and the terminology, the showing up with evidence in the middle of cross-examination, messages missing from the evidence, that would result

in a OPR, an internal investigation for potential misconduct. Because there's three different serious things are happening there. And maybe that's happened now. But, you know, with the current leadership, you wonder if agents are referring to people as libtards, if that's even seen as something that's negative. But I tend to think that most agents, almost all agents, are not doing that. But every now and then, you know, you see something and the appropriate response is to have that investigated. The other thing I would say here is that I've worked with many, many U.S. attorneys as an agent, as a supervisor, as a leader of the FBI.

And I cannot think of a single U.S. attorney or assistant U.S. attorney who would have brought this leaky bag of, you know what, to any kind of a charge. there are so many terrible problems with the evidence in this case. You got your primary witness, Liang, who disqualifies himself by getting caught, lying by the judge, and you still go forward with this case, they crucified themselves here, and they deserve exactly what they got, which was an acquittal. Yeah, and that they're hiding or destroying or not handing over evidence under Brady or jenks or, you know, exculpatory evidence is something that you're right

should be investigated, but it probably won't be. Right. Because I think that's how they go in Jeannie Piro's office. All right. We've got a couple more quick stories and then obviously we're going to get to listener questions at the end of the show. If you have a question, there's a link in the show notes

that you can click on to submit your question to us. And we'll be right back after this quick break. Stick around. Welcome back. Okay, this week we saw more removals of career prosecutors in both the eastern and western districts of Virginia. CBS reports prosecutor Maggie Cleary has been removed from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, a source confirmed to CBS News, the latest sign of upheaval in a high-profile Justice Department outpost that is overseeing charges against two Trump foes. A former state prosecutor, Cleary, briefly led the Eastern District of Virginia last month, shortly after former acting U.S. attorney Eric Seabert resigned.

Cleary told staff that she was Siebert's replacement, but days later, former White House aide and Trump personal lawyer, Lindsay Halligan, was sworn in as interim U.S. attorney, effectively taking over control of the office. It's unclear if Cleary was removed from the DOJ altogether, or if she was reassigned to different role. She served as first assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District and worked as senior counsel in the Justice Department's criminal division. I wonder if this is some sort of a way to get her out of the first assistant so that Lindsay Halligan can appoint herself first assistant and still run the office, like that guy in New York did. I'm wondering. Stand by. You never know.

Cleary is the latest prosecutor to leave the EDVA. The office is one of the largest federal prosecutor's offices in the country. It's known for handling a unique mix of national security. cases. But in recent weeks, it's also drawn attention because of the indictment of Jim Comey and the indictment of Letitia James. Two other high-level prosecutors were also fired from the office in recent weeks. That's Michael Ben Ari, who I talked about, we talked about last week, and Maya Song. So lots of firings and shufflings going on, and I would not be surprised if you hear us next week talking about Lindsay Halligan appointing herself as first assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The brain drain continues as to try to save the Comey case, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay, so and from the times we have career prosecutors at the Justice Department do not believe criminal charges are warranted from an investigation seeking to discredit an earlier FBI inquiry into Russia's attempt to tilt the 2016 election in President Trump's favor, according to people familiar with the matter. It leaves unclear what political appointees at the Justice Department might do. given the breath of Mr. Trump's demands that it pursue people he perceives as enemies.

Already, the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia overseeing the case, Todd Gilbert, was forced to resign in August because he refused to sideline a high-ranking career prosecutor who found the evidence flimsy, the people familiar with the matter said. That's a lot of what's going on at the FBI and the DOJ, people who are told to fire other people and don't, and then those people get fired. Senior Justice Department officials had ordered Gilbert to open a grand jury investigation into whether anyone at the FBI headquarters during and after Biden's administration had mishandled classified documents relating to the Russia investigation that Trump has long decried

as a witch hunt and a hoax. Mr. Gilbert was a longtime Republican legislator. Let me repeat that. Mr. Gilbert was a longtime Republican legislator in Virginia until he was sworn in as the top prosecutor in July. He was quickly ordered to take up a case championed by Kosh Beto. and his deputy, Dan Bongino, after they learned that classified documents had been found in burn bags at FBI headquarters. For decades, not recently, but for decades, classified documents have been retained on computer servers, Dan, Cash.

When printouts are made of sensitive documents, officials often dispose of them by burning the papers as a security measure. It's actually required. It's one of the required ways that you're supposed to dispose of national security information and classified information. I could ask John Bolton. I'm sure he's aware of that as well. Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino are among the Trump loyalists who have pressed for an investigation to determine whether senior FBI officials at the time had conspired to protect former FBI and CIA officials by hiding or destroying such documents. Federal prosecutors in Western Virginia rather than Washington were assigned the document investigation on the legal theory that jurisdiction was there because the FBI has a classified document storage facility in Winchester, which is in that part of the state, according to people familiar with the case. No, they sent the case there because they didn't want to do it in D.C.

Because they didn't want to bring it in D.C. knowing that juries are not going their way in D.C. And they could cobble together some. excuse for venue in the Western District of Virginia. So that's what they did. Sorry. Maybe Janine Piro turned it down. How embarrassing would that be? You know, from our last story about her, I'm thinking she doesn't turn down anything.

But that's just my guess. True. Since the investigation began, there has been little indication of any grand jury activity, though a host of former FBI officials voluntarily sat for interviews according to people familiar the matter. Yep. Defense lawyers who have clients.

caught up in this case have expressed bafflement. That's a great word, at what possible crime could have been committed. And one witness approached earlier this year was told the investigation was being conducted at the specific direction of Kosh Patel. Shortly after Mr. Yeah, right, shortly after Gilbert took over a U.S. Attorney's Office there, Senior Justice Department officials instructed him to open an investigation in the handling of secret documents related to Russian intelligence reports. After reviewing the evidence, Gilbert said he told his superiors that he didn't believe there was sufficient evidence to justify a grand jury investigation. Frustrated by that answer, aides to Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, blamed a senior career attorney

in the office who they believed had swayed Mr. Gilbert, Zachary Lee, a veteran prosecutor with more than two decades of experience involving public corruption and narcotics, among other issues. Justice Department officials ordered Mr. Gilbert to replace Mr. Lee with Robert Tracy as his deputy, these people said. After Mr. Lee was demoted, senior department officials suspected that Mr. Gilbert was still primarily consulting Mr. Lee, whom they came to view as a holdover from the Biden administration, though he had been hired during the George W. Bush administration and promoted during the first administration of Donald Trump. These people added, not with the dramatic flare that I just gave you, but these people added that. Okay. At one point, Mr. Blanche spoke directly to

Mr. Gilbert and offered him more resources to pursue the case, according to one person familiar with the events. Press to further sideline or remove Mr. Lee, Mr. Gilbert refused, these people said. Department officials then informed Mr. Gilbert that he would be fired, and he resigned shortly afterward, posting a GI, I'm sorry, showing my age here, posting a GIF on social media with a joke from the movie Anchorman in which the lead character exclaims, boy, that escalated quickly. I love that. Oh, my gosh, I'm such an Anchorman fan and that this guy was able to reference Anchorman

in this time of like career destruction. I don't know him, but mad props to you, sir. Yeah. Stay sexy San Diego, okay? Mr. Tracy has since stepped in as the acting U.S. attorney. Mr. Lee, who left the office this month, declined to comment. The Justice Department spokesman declined to comment about the case. It's just ridiculous.

Just ridiculous. So, DOJ is telling them what to do because Patel wants it done. And the guy's like, no, there's nothing here. These are burn bags of printed out stuff that's stored on a thing. You can go look. Oh, man. Yeah. Newsflash, the original is the one on the system of record.

Did you remember when there was a shredding truck parked near the Department of Justice? And Cox-Betel was like, what are they doing? It's like, oh, my gosh, dude. Okay. Yeah, we don't ever shred or burn documents in the government. That never happens. All right. We have another quick story to get to and listen to your questions.

We're going to take one last quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. We have one more story before we get to listener questions. Again, there's a link in the show notes if you want to submit a question to us. ABC says the House Judiciary Committee wants former special counsel, Jack Smith, to testify before the panel behind closed doors about his investigation into President Donald Trump. Yeah, behind closed doors, I bet you do not want Jack Smith.

They want him in the vault with a sock in his mouth. They don't want anyone hearing any of this, no. Yeah, all of a sudden, he disappears from sight. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Tuesday requested the interview by October 28th. He's demanding documents and communications as well. And he accused Smith of conducting politically motivated investigations. Oh, my God. Referring to the FBI's release of a letter showing Smith obtained phone toll records of several GOP lawmakers,

who were suspected of breaking the law. He also accused him of planting evidence, and he tried to tie him to the Mar-a-Lago search. But Jack Smith wasn't appointed until months after Merrick Garland green-lit the search on Mar-a-Lago. In fact, he was on trial at the Hague in the Netherlands. He was nowhere. He got in that bike accident. It wasn't a bike accident. That's what it was, Andy.

It wasn't a bike accident. He was out sick a couple of days from the Hague. He flew over. He planted some evidence in Mar-A-Lago and said, go get him, Merck, Garland. And then make me, and then make me the special prosecutor will get him. Yeah, okay. I imagine that Jim Jordan wrote this letter with, like, letters that he cut out of magazines, like a ransom note.

A kidnappers ransom note. Okay. Jack Smith, of course, sat for an extensive interview with former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissman. And that came out, I think, in this last week, you know. I love it that he's getting out there and he's talking about things. I think it's the voice that needs to be heard. I didn't expect that. And unlike what we covered when he spoke at George Mason, Schar School,

he actually answered questions from at Weissman about the Trump cases. So I highly recommend everybody listen to that. The first half hour or so is stuff about the Hague and his work at the Hague and his life. But he gets into it afterwards. and it's a pretty good interview. So, you know, and it's nothing unexpected. There wasn't any bombshell news. The bombshell news is that he's speaking out.

Yes, yeah. So props to you, Mr. Smith, keep it up. Indeed. All right, shall we rocket into some questions here as we run out of time? Yes, the rocket docket of questions. Let's do it Eastern District of Virginia style. Heck yeah. All right, here we go.

You ready? The first one is really quick. It's a comment. a question. I guess it is a question. It comes from Nick, and Nick says, when are you going to start awarding Nobel Prizes? I'm sorry. I know I'm becoming an old man. I'm a dad. So I get a dad joke things that they are appealing to me. I cannot, I can't deny it. The Nobel Prize, of course, being awarded to the best grand jury refusal to indict a case. And I think that we should start, you know, as we as we talk about these things each week,

we should start designating each week a new Nobel Nobel Prize winner. All right. Well, I think that the prosecutors in Sydney Reed's case when they went to three separate grand juries and couldn't get an indictment, I think should be our first Nobel Prize. I am 100% with you. I feel like the prosecutors in the DC,

district are like the Alfred Nobel of the Nobel Prize. Alfred Nobel being the guy who they named the Nobel Prize after because he invented dynamite. He was the founder of this entire idea. So I feel like D.C. is kind of carrying that mantle right now doing so very effectively as the center of all Nobel activity. Yeah. Or a salee, the guy over in L.A., he's pretty, I think he's a good,

nominee for for the no bill prize he's an up and comer and i expect big things from him as we go forward i'm going to keep an eye on him and i feel like we're going to be giving him a no bill prize at some point in the near future so nick this is a brilliant idea i'm i'm all for awarding no bill prizes heck yeah i love it thank you nick okay um i'm going to go right to one now from um checking in with my fbi peeps this one comes to me from from gale who i don't have any to believe is an FBI person, but you'll see as this, does he get through this? Gail says, while the FBI is supposed to be nonpartisan, it has appeared, it has historically appeared that it leans, the agents lean Republican, or lean towards the Republican Party.

Now with the firings of so many FBI agents for following the assignments given to them by their supervisors, i.e. the recent firings of the two agents who had been on the federal corruption unit and who had subpoenaed the phone records of some congressman, I wonder what you think is the climate at the FBI now, especially in light of the incompetence of Kash Patel, the indictment of James Comey, and the turmoil in the country, are the newly hired agents just fine with Donald? Well, two things here, Gail. One, I can't tell you that, because honestly, of all the people I worked with in the FBI and the people who I know are still there, like, even though generally law enforcement, people drawn to law enforcement tend to be

a little, maybe more conservative than the average American. Honestly, don't know how anybody I worked with voted in any election. And so it's not something that FBI people talk about. But I will say I had a long conversation with a very good friend who's a former. And we were talking about all the people who we are now in contact with at the FBI. And how many people reach out to my friend, me, others like us. Because they are living in fear that they will get fired. These are people who haven't come under specific pressure yet,

but they know that the time might come when they're asked to do something that they can't possibly do. That's a red line for them, ethically, legally, what have you. And they are preparing for that moment when they have to resign rather than do something illegal, inappropriate, or unethical that they've been asked to do. And so they're calling to ask for advice about what should they be thinking about in terms of trying to build some, you know, outreach to opportunities after their FBI careers are cut short. And I have to say, like, in the entirety of my 21 years, I never, ever thought of that. I never had to worry that the people I worked for were going to ask me to do something illegal, unconstitutional, or immoral. And the idea that so many FBI people are thinking through these alternatives and this, this future, the darkness that may be hovering over their future is just, it's heartbreaking to me. And it's troubling, too, because these are people who you really want to be focused on the job, 100%.

Yeah, and that's how Trump shapes the law enforcement that he wants, right, is by asking them to do on toward things and seeing who resigns and then firing people who won't do it. He's also lowered the FBI standards. We talked about that eight weeks at Quantico instead of 18. That's how he's building his ice army, right? It's by lowering the standards and offering massive amounts of money. And he's doing it to the military as well to weed out the people who are disloyal to him. He's been having people issue polygraph tests. He's been doing loyalty asks.

At USA jobs, who did you vote for? Tell us how you support the trumpet. administration. He's doing this to build the kind of law enforcement that supports him and him alone, that while they raise their hand and take the oath to the Constitution, they're actually taking an oath to Donald Trump and the Trump administration. And he's, that's deep in the works in multiple agencies. And if you don't go along, you're out. And so that is what is happening. I think at places like the FBI. And it's, it's harder for him. him, I think, at places like the NSA and the CIA, though he just installed Michael Ellis

as a general counsel so he could get a dubious legal opinion that allows him to do covert CIA operations in Venezuela to circumvent Congress on the War Powers Act. But that's what he's doing. And that is, I mean, it makes total sense that your colleagues are concerned for whether or not they're going to be able to stay. Yeah, I have these conversations with the students that I teach at George Mason who are trying to get into government service and now they're questioning it in ways that students have, you know, young people have never questioned it before. And I tell them, look, you should do it. You should go in and serve your country, but go into it knowing what those red lines are for you. And when you hit those and somebody

asks you to do something that's beyond what you know you can or should do, then that's when you know you have to leave. It's sad, but that's where we are. But I thank you, Gail, for asking that question and giving us an opportunity to reflect on what people are really struggling with in government service right now in the midst of a shutdown while they're all working and not getting paid. Yeah. And I think I can speak for both of us as former government employees that are the thoughts and our hearts are with everybody who, former and current federal workers who are having to navigate this. Yeah, 100% regime. So, 100%. Thank you so much for your questions. Please continue to send them in. There's a link in the show notes where you can

submit your questions to us. And thanks for listening today. We really appreciate. I know we went a little bit over an hour. We had a lot to talk about. We're going to have a lot to talk about next week. We'll see if there's even a Comey case left. Again, God, I wish we could cover that trial. I wish that that thing makes it to trial, but I really don't see it getting past the Lindsay Halligan on lawful appointment, only person to sign the indictment and the statute of limitations as expired problem. So we'll definitely talk about those motions. It'll be news next week.

That's right. The whole rocky road begins to unfold. We'll be there for it. Thank you all so much for listening and we'll see you then. And I hope we have a great rest of your week. I'm 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 Hawkey with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. 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.