Jack - Otherwise Known as Lies

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

Convicted sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, was granted limited immunity for her interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. A week later, her sex offender status was waived and she was moved to a minimum security prison in Texas.Judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals press Department of Justice lawyers on deportation quotas as the Attorney General files a judicial complaint against Chief Judge Boesberg.A criminal defendant is challenging the appointment of Alina Habba as the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey, citing Judge Eileen Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump in their complaint.The Senate has confirmed Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Emil Bove, to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as a whistleblower complaint languished in the Department of Justice Inspector General's office for months. 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

MSW Media. Convicted sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, was granted limited immunity for her interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch. And a week later, she was moved to a minimum security prison in Texas on a waiver of her sex offender status. Judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals press Department of Justice lawyers on deportation quotas as the attorney general files a judicial complaint against Chief Judge Boesberg.

A criminal defendant is challenging the appointment of Alina Habba as the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey, citing Judge Eileen Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump in their complaint. And the Senate has confirmed Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Emil Bovi, to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as a whistleblower complaint languished in the Department of Justice Inspector General's office for months. This is Unjustified. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 28 of Unjustified. It is Sunday, August 3rd, and we have a lot going on this week.

As we were recording last week's episode, Todd Blanche was meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell with no line prosecutor present because she was fired. Of course. And no FBI agents, so no 302s. And we learned shortly after we recorded the show that she was actually given limited immunity. And Andy, you had mentioned that generally when you have a conversation with somebody like that, it's called a queen for the day interview, right? Yeah, that's right. And it's done legally. The term is a proffer agreement. It's like a contract that you sign with the person and their attorney

before the interview starts. And it basically gives them that limited immunity. It says, we will not prosecute you for anything you tell us within the scope of this interview, but we can use what you tell us to go out and do further investigation, things like that. And so that's the grounds that people have to be able to come in and talk about the bad things they've done without facing additional charges for those things.

Doesn't mean they would never be charged for that activity. It just means you cannot use the statements they give you in the interview as evidence. And by the way, this kind of came as a shock to me. I talked about this a little bit on the Daily Beans this week. Galaine Maxwell's lawyers told Congress, right, the House that she would come in and testify only if she was given immunity for her testimony. And Jim Comer told her no. This whole thing is so strange. First of all, on the congressional side,

of course she asked for immunity. She has a lawyer. She's not going to come in and raise her hand and swear to tell the truth and then be asked questions about bad things that she did and face potentially additional criminal liability for the comments that she makes pursuant to that request to testify. So it's one of two things. They can either, she'll come in and take the fifth and not answer any questions, or they can give her immunity and ensure that she's not prosecuted for those

statements. Now, who wants to give immunity to the convicted sex offender? No one, for good reason. She keeps her in her sentence. She's a liar. We know this. She was going to get charged with perjury during her own prosecution. She's steadfastly said she never did anything wrong and she's not aware of Jeffrey Epstein ever done anything wrong. So that's clearly false. So the whole thing is bizarre. And the interview, which was conducted by Todd Blanch without a US attorney or an FBI agent, which, again, stunning.

I've never, ever seen a deputy attorney general conduct an interview. It's not something that the DAG, as we say, usually does. Attorneys never, any attorney, US attorney, does not conduct an interview without an FBI agent present because if there's some sort of legal fight later over what the person said, you need a witness. And that's what the FBI agent is there for. If you don't have an agent in the room, then one of the attorneys ends up becoming a witness, which means they basically can't work the prosecution.

It's such an obvious complication. You would never cause that sort of problem by excluding an agent from the room, which brings me to my point. This was not a proffer. This was not an effort to find out what Ghislaine Maxwell knows. There's no scenario in which Ghislaine Maxwell would ever be a cooperator in a federal prosecution. She's a known liar. Her credibility is terrible. And you would have to give her some benefit for cooperating, right? Which would be a reduction in sentence. Why you would reduce her sentence to convict

anyone else of anything? I mean, that's a hard argument to make. So this was, and in fact, I didn't have an agent there, seals the deal. What this was, was a political intelligence gathering mission. This was the administration's effort to find out what she could say that would hurt Donald Trump and what she could potentially say that might hurt high profile Democrats. One of those things they very much want to avoid and the other thing they'd love to have. Hmm. Yeah. We talk about, unless she was getting something in return, we'll talk about that in a second

because she may have gotten something in return. Yeah'll talk about that in a second because she may have gotten in something in return. Yeah, already. Right. And we'll talk about that. But first, let's talk a little bit about what Rolling Stone is reporting, right? Because there are statements coming out from the survivors now, right? Yeah, for sure. So Rolling Stone has reported that the family of Virginia Jeffrey, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide earlier this year,

has released a statement responding to President Donald Trump claiming this week that he had a falling out with Epstein because Epstein, quote, stole Jeffrey and other women employed at Mar-a-Lago Spa. Quote, it was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been stolen from Mar-a-Lago. It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey, quote, likes women on the younger side, no doubt about it. Jeffrey's family said in a statement provided to The

Atlantic. Quote, if our sister could speak today, she would be most angered by the fact that the government is listening to a known perjurer, a woman who repeatedly lied under oath and will continue to do so as long as it benefits her position, the family added. Referring to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice. The Justice Department met with Maxwell last week, and Trump has not ruled out pardoning the convicted sex offender. Yeah, he actually said, I'm allowed, I'm allowed to do it.

And to get back to your point about what she might have been given in return, on Friday, we learned that Ghislaine Maxwell had been transferred to a minimum security club-fed facility in Bryan, Texas. It's one of the top five nicest facilities you can be put in. And this was just a week after meeting with Todd Blanch. And I had reported Andy on my sub stack, mulishero.com that was just free by the way, if you want to go, no pay walls there. That they were actually you have to get a waiver if you're

going to move a sex offender to a minimum security facility. And sources showed me the documents. I've seen the waiver. And they waived her sex offender status, which is called a public safety factor, a PSF. Because you can't put, the Bureau of Prisons doesn't put sex offenders in minimum security facilities.

So they had to waive that. And so they did that. And again, they did not contact. Now policy for Bureau of Prisons is you don't actually have to contact the victims or the survivors if you're gonna move somebody to a minimum security facility, but they did not. They did not contact anyone. And I know that Jufri's family, as well as some other survivors, including like Stacey and Annie Farmer and a couple

of other folks put out a joint statement saying that they were absolutely stunned by this move. And several people say it seems like a normal step in the process of granting clemency or some sort of a pardon. So there may be discussions going on with ideas for that as well. But that at the very least is a benefit for Ghislian Maxwell based on what you called the political intelligence sharing meeting between her and Todd Blanch. So now my question then becomes, if Trump wants her to say something, but Comer won't even give her immunity, how does she get that statement out? Or was the agreement to just not say anything about anyone?

It's really hard to speculate on that. There's so many bizarre options here. What we do know is she desperately wants to get out of that facility. She was in, right? It was actually one of the four things that she requested in order to comply with the congressional request for testimony. She wanted the questioning to Comer, I guess, and suggested that they would actually go to the facility and meet with her where she was being held

and conduct the interview there. And in her response, she said, no, if I'm going to be interviewed, I want to be taken to some other place to conduct the interview. And that's people in jail want to get out of jail. They want to go somewhere else for the day or for a couple of days or whatever that would take.

So this is something she wants. And now we know she's getting it, like, on at least a semi-permanent basis. It tells you something, that this process, which is a kind of a quid pro quo of the government requesting information and the convict agreeing to provide it. You start to try to build that relationship by granting the requests that you can. It's kind of like you're building trust. So if the person actually comes in and tells the truth in a way that you can corroborate, then you, you know, maybe next time you go see him, you bring him a pack

of cigarettes so they can smoke during the interview. I just have silence of the lambs in my head. While you're at that facility, you can walk on the beach. You can, you know, like I just have that in my head. So, you know, but to wave the, like that, like the folks I spoke to at the Bureau were like, never seen that in my entire time as a career official. Ever once has anybody been given a downgrade from sex offender status or have it had it waived to move to minimum security. And you don't do this under code 308, which is what I was told this was a lesser offense

thing. At the beginning of somebody's sentence, that's something for the end of somebody's sentence. which is what I was told this was a lesser offense thing, at the beginning of somebody's sentence, that's something for the end of somebody's sentence. Yeah, so it's a really intriguing turn of events and it raises all kinds of questions. One of them obviously being, what did she do to curry such a benefit from the government already at this very early stage of figuring out whether

or not she's ever going to provide information in some kind of forum, whatever that would be. I mean, the whole thing is bizarre. Or to give them their intelligence that they want. I mean, she holds all the cards. She might be like, I'll tell you what I know if you put move me to this nice place. Who knows? Who knows? And we probably aren't ever going to know. Likely. Yeah. So that's basically the long and short of what's going on. By the way, NBC, uh, Kendall Anian and Lisa Rubin have confirmed, uh, my reporting that she was given a waiver. Um,

and so we know that to be true. But right now, my, just my heart and all my thoughts are with the victims, the survivors of this that have to put keep putting up with this and They've been left out of every single step of this process from from the first non-prosecution agreement Yeah, the very first investigation. Yeah, you're right. Yeah All right, everybody we have more to get to But we do have to take a quick break. So everyone stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back.

So we have some other news from the Department of Justice on Unjustified This Week. Pam Bondi, attorney general, has filed a judicial misconduct complaint against DC District Chief Judge James Boesberg. You'll remember Boesberg handled the JGG case. He was the one who told them to turn the planes around, which prompted, according to whistleblower reports that languished for a couple months, we'll get to in a second, said, tell the courts F you as far as turning the planes around goes. That's him.

He's the chief judge on the DC Circuit, or excuse me, the DC District Court. And Steve Vladeck writes for One First, I wanted to put out a quick issue today to cover the misconduct complaint that the Department of Justice has filed against DC District Court Chief Judge Jeb Boesberg. Based on comments that Boesberg apparently

made at a March meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States, I'll say more about the background below, but the gravamen of the complaint is that Boasberg's comments reflect bias against the Trump administration and should subject him to censure by the Judicial Council of the DC Circuit. Vladek continues, the complaint is almost laughably preposterous. First, Boesberg's comments weren't public. Okay, there you go. Second is comments were apparently nothing more than relaying to the chief justice concerns

that had been raised by his colleagues on the federal bench in DC. Third, it turns out that those concerns were, well, they were well taken, well grounded. And fourth, even if none of the first three things were true, and they all are, the comments don't come anywhere close to crossing the line of what judges can and can't say in public with respect to systemic issues facing the federal courts. Whether the DC Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan gives the complaint the back of his hand or because it's coming from DOJ takes it at least somewhat seriously, meaning by referring it to the DC Circuit Judicial Council for full consideration, there's just no question that at the end

of the day this complaint is going to be dismissed. Yeah and my first thought when I saw that she had filed this judicial complaint and reading it was just how embarrassing this is to the Department of Justice and the damage it could do to the already beleaguered department. And Steve Lattic seemed to share that concern. He writes, but the bigger issue is that the Department of Justice and the attorney general specifically filed this nonsense and then tweeted about it in the first place. I very much doubt that Judge Boasberg is the kind of jurist who will be at all intimidated or in any way cowed by such a maneuver. But there are two other audiences for this charade.

The first other federal judges who may be now less willing to speak out or raise concerns about the Justice Department's behavior going forward, lest they too find themselves the subject of a misconduct complaint. And the second audience is the current administration's supporters, for whom the complaint can be pointed to as yet further evidence that the lower federal courts are out to get President Trump, since no one will still be paying attention when, not if, it gets rejected. Yet again, the executive branch is actively seeking to discredit the federal judiciary Since no one will still be paying attention when not if it gets rejected yet again the executive branch is actively seeking to discredit the federal judiciary and Far too many people who ought to be speaking out against this nonsense will just quietly

Tisk at the Justice Department and shake their head. Yes, and Adam class fell that all rise news points out Like a naked Emperor spared a taboo observation about his fine attire, the Trump Justice Department has largely escaped an objective assessment about its misconduct complaint against chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. It is based on lies. That is to say the complaint is not merely false or deeply misleading. It is premised on a doctored quotation of what Boasberg allegedly said in a closed door meeting and a misrepresentation of the circumstances

in which the federal judge reportedly said it. And this gets into a little bit of the detail about what Steve Vladeck was talking about, as does Steve Vladeck's one first. Adam Klossfeld continues, zealously mindful of our credibility and reputations, reporters tend to hesitate before calling a false claim a lie, which presumes knowledge of the intent of the speaker to deceive. Journalists are not clairvoyant, but evidence of intent rarely becomes clearer than Mizzell's selective quotation.

Mizzell wrote this along with Pam Bondi. Mizzell wrote the complaint that was filed against Boasberg, OK? And here's the full quotation with Mizzell's edit highlighted in bold. And I'll give you, I'll let you know when that's coming. Quote, district of the District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg next raised his colleagues' concerns

that the administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis. With surgical precision, Mazzell's misconduct complaint omits any mention of Boesberg's colleagues, a word that does not appear anywhere in the document, in the complaint filed against Boesberg. So, the quote that I gave you, Boesberg's next raised his colleagues' concerns. That's from the original reporting about this closed door non-public meeting. But Mazzell's quote and the quote in this particular complaint, judicial complaint,

doesn't mention the word colleagues at all. It was omitted. Yeah. So let's sort this out a little bit. First of all, they claim he made these comments in public. The judicial conference is not actually a conference, like a conference that the public goes to. It's a meeting between the judges and the chief justice. And it's convened in private. The conversations are private. And it's for this purpose so that judges can have a frank discussion with the chief justice and let him know how things are going. Okay. So there's that.

He also was not, he's been accused of exhibiting bias in public. We've handled the public part. Bias would be his impression. What he relayed was what his colleagues were concerned about. So that's not his opinion. And the whole thing is just, it's, you know, there's always that line between incompetence and deliberate misrepresentation that we struggle with sometimes in trying to interpret what the department is doing.

This one is, I agree with Adam, it seems absolutely deliberate how they're misrepresenting this. Yeah, it's a lie. That's precisely what it is. And I'm glad that Adam Klaasfeld explained that, why journalists are not want to use the word lie because they don't know the intent. But it's so clear here. Yeah, there's really no other reasonable possibility. No.

All right. So elsewhere in the Department of Justice credibility news, Politico has the following story. A federal appeals court is demanding answers about the Trump White House's effort to set numerical goals for its mass deportation campaign, including the accuracy of news reports suggesting that the administration is seeking to carry out 3,000 deportations per day. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel hearing arguments on Monday on a lower court order barring roving immigration arrests repeatedly pressed the Justice Department attorney to

confirm whether immigration officials have been ordered to carry out 3000 deportations or arrests per day. So continually pressed a Justice Department lawyer. We've heard this phrase how many times in the last six months? Because courts can't get straight answers from government attorneys anymore. I know that's bizarre. That's part of the problem. Here's a quote, is it a policy of the administration at this time to deport 3000 persons per day?

That's Judge Ronald Gould, a Clinton appointee. Quote, not to my knowledge, your honor, replied DOJ attorney Yakov Roth, who urged the court to lift the order focused on surprise immigration enforcement at places like home improvement store parking lots and car washes. Judge Gould suggested that pressure from superiors to fulfill arbitrary quotas could be prompting immigration and customs enforcement personnel to sweep up throngs of people based on very general conclusions about where undocumented immigrants are likely to gather. Quote, I'm just trying to understand what would motivate the officers who did the roundup

of aliens, that's as the quote from the judge, to grab such a large number of people so quickly and without marshaling reasonable suspicion to detain. That's what the judge said. The answer to the question posed by the panel could carry enormous significance as they weigh whether to maintain a lower court judge's decision to bar the administration from resuming large scale immigration sweeps in the Los Angeles area. US district judge Frimpong, a Biden appointee, ruled that the sweeps relied exclusively on factors such as race, ethnicity, language skills, and job type to justify arrests rather than individualized

details that a person was in the country illegally. Yeah. So we're going to see what the Ninth Circuit says here. But the lower court judge, as you said, Judge Frimpong was like, look, this is you, you're targeting people based on race and their job and where they gather. And so the fact that after multiple rounds of asking the Department of Justice lawyers if this is in fact a policy, to not have that answer in this particular argument, considering it came up in the lower court, is just either flat out avoidance or being ill prepared.

Yeah. And it's super relevant. You know, on the surface, it seems like these two issues are not connected, but they actually are. So the judge is trying to get at is, is the burden to hit this 3000 number every day driving the arrests, or are the arrests being made lawfully based on individualized suspicion. And the fact that he can't answer that question, it's weird. The government attorneys could actually

parse this out a little bit. It's a little too cute by half. But nevertheless, I doubt there is an official policy on the 3,000 number. The 3,000 number is just what the White House is barking at them about. And so he could have come out and said, no. the 3000 number. The 3000 number is just what the White House is barking at them about. And so he could have come out and said, no, if it's not like a written officially communicated

policy. But the fact that he didn't say that, he just dodged it with the, not to my knowledge, I think it really tells you a lot. This is an uncomfortable place for the attorney because he knows it's a legit question and he doesn't want to get into the actual answer. Yeah, right. And it reminds me of the Wells Fargo case a while back where Wells Fargo said in order to get your bonuses and get paid properly, you have to sign up a thousand new accounts a month or whatever. So people were faking setting up fake accounts, right?

And the burden came off of those workers because they were given those ridiculous quotas. And so it does actually, I think, make a difference whether these ICE officers have been told that in order to get paid or get their bonus or get their new $50,000 signing bonus or whatever that has been budgeted in the billionaire bailout bill, you have to, your unit has to have a certain amount of arrests or deportations every month. And so that can actually ease the burden on the officers themselves, but then the burden gets shifted to the government for making

that quote in the first place. So if you're the DOJ lawyer, you're definitely like, I don't know anything about that. I really don't know anything about that. I would need to confer with some other individuals before I found that out. It's a little bit different in my opinion than, for example, Drew Ensign straight up telling Judge Boesberg, who now has a complaint filed against him by Pam Bondi that no, the planes aren't taking off. No one's told us anything about it. I don't know about any planes. And the Erez-Riveni's text messages clearly show the opposite. So we'll see what happens, what the Ninth Circuit decides here.

I imagine they'll hold up the lower courts ruling, but this will eventually, if they do, get to the Supreme Court and we'll see what happens. Like everything does. Yep. All right. And Andy, you'll recall last Court and we'll see what happens. Like everything does. Yep. All right. And Andy, you'll recall last week when we discussed the US attorney in Los Angeles losing an auspicious amount of arguments before federal grand juries, couldn't get any true bills. Out of 38, I think he got five or seven or something.

And this is about LA protesters that they've arrested. We have a follow-up from the Guardian that also goes to the credibility of not only the Department of Justice, but US immigration officers providing testimony. And again, if they are being pressured to get rid of 3000 people a day, that could be a factor in this. And Guardian says US immigration officers made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during the massive demonstrations that rocked the city in June, and that's according to federal law enforcement files obtained by the Guardian.

The Justice Department has also dismissed at least three felony assault cases it brought against Angelenos accused of interfering with arrests during recent immigration raids. The rapid felony dismissals are a major embarrassment for the Trump-appointed US attorney for Southern California, Bill Esailey, and appeared to be the result of an unusual series of missteps by the Justice Department, former federal prosecutor said.

The Guardian's review of records found, out of nine assault and impeding felony cases, so those are people who are arrested for assault and impeding felony cases. So those are people who are arrested for assault and impeding a federal official and the execution of his duty. The Justice Department filed immediately after the start of the protest and promoted by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecutors dismissed seven of them soon after filing the charges.

So seven of nine were dismissed. Right. In reports that led to the detention and prosecution of at least five demonstrators, Department of Homeland Security agents made false statements about the sequence of events and misrepresented incidents captured on video. Bad move, guys. Bad move. One DHS agent accused a protester of shoving an officer when footage appeared

to show the opposite. The officer forcefully pushed the protester. One indictment named the wrong defendant, a stunning error that has jeopardized one of the government's most high profile cases. Oh my. All right. So there's some more details from the Guardian about these prosecutions of protesters in Los Angeles. Holy moly. That's a really bad look, not just for these officers who are lying, but the Department

of Justice for bringing these cases based on false testimony. Wow. Yeah. We talked about this a little bit last week in the context of, you know, many people last weekend and this week as well have asked questions about like, what happens with so many people leaving the department, so many lawyers leaving the department and answering the question. One of the things I pointed out to is one of the things you're going to see is that

the work, the quality of the work will decline because you have fewer people, you lose a lot of experience, and you're putting all this pressure on them to do all these, some of them very questionable cases at high volumes. And these things are going to start to fall apart. These cases are not going to stand up to the sort of rigor that they used to because you have fewer people with less experience trying to do more work in the same amount of time, and it's just a prescription for a mess. Yeah, you can no longer indict a ham sandwich. Well, that's such, I mean, shocking, not surprising news

that, especially when you have video footage of an officer pushing a protester and the officer says that the protester pushed them, I mean, you've got the video right there. You would think that the charges would have never been brought if that had been reviewed properly. Yeah, that's exactly right. So you start cutting corners on that sort of stuff. You don't ask the right questions. You don't take the time to really figure out what the foundation is for the evidence you're

going to rely on in the prosecution and how you might interrogate that evidence effectively and really figure out whether or not it's as strong as you think it is or what the claims that you're getting from the agents are as strong as they think they are, this is what you get. Yeah, it is. And also what you get is Emil Bovi on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

We're going to talk about that and whistleblowers and the Department of Justice Inspector General, but we have to take another break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Okay, since the last episode, Emile Boevi was confirmed by the Senate to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. But the day of the vote, a few important news articles broke. First, from the Associated Press, Democrats have also cited evidence from

whistleblowers, a fire department lawyer who said last month that Bovi had suggested that the Trump administration may need to ignore judicial commands, a claim that Bovi denies, and new evidence from a whistleblower who did not go public. That whistleblower recently provided an audio recording of Bovi that runs contrary to some of his testimony at his confirmation hearing last month, according to two people familiar with the recording. Audio, audio recording of the meeting. Yeah. The audio is from a private video conference call at the Department of Justice in February in which Bovi, a top official

at the department, discussed his handling of the dismissed case against Eric Adams, according to transcribed notes from the audio reviewed by the Associated Press. Okay, like time out here, one second. I sat in on a thousand, what we used to call civets, secure video teleconference. These are just, you know, now people have called them zooms or whatever. And the idea that somebody would have been making an audio recording of a meeting with the pay dag, right? The principal associate deputy attorney general. I mean, that's because lawyers on these calls know that sus things, as my daughter would say,

are about to happen. And so they're literally collecting evidence on their bosses at work. That's just stunning. Yeah, that's a CYA lawyer move, like to, that there's anybody having to record that thing because they know something could go sideways. It's like Raffensperger hitting the record button

on the call with Donald Trump. Exactly. Right? Okay. Back to the AP. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the whistleblower has not made the recording public. The whistleblower's claims were first reported by the Washington Post.

None of that evidence has so far been enough to sway Senate Republicans, all but two of them voted to confirm Bovi as GOP senators have deferred to Trump on virtually all of his picks. Yeah. Wow. An audio recording of that meeting. And yeah, I think you're so right. First of all, that there's audio evidence in a whistleblower complaint is pretty massive

that shows that Bovi was, I'll say, lying during his congressional confirmation hearing on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But like you said, the fact that the lawyers felt it necessary to record it. But I'm not surprised given what went on with Danielle Sassoon and the dismissal of the Eric Adams case, the quid pro quo, and all of that. I mean, I would be doing the same thing. I'd be hitting record on every one of those conference calls as well.

It reminds me of Jim Comey's memos, his meetings with Donald Trump. And I remember getting asked, I think, by Senate committee after Jim got fired. They were asking about the memos and they were like well did you write did he write memos after he met with other people I was like no just wrong well I mean you know you thought weird things were likely to happen and you should keep a record of it. Right. And it is what it is. Yeah.

I mean, when I was at the, you know, who the FMI, right? But when I was being terminated from my job and my podcast was being investigated during the first Trump term, I wrote all that stuff. I took contemporaneous notes too. I was like, Comey taught me a lesson, take contemporaneous notes. Exactly. So, but hey, Andy, that is not all. That is not all about with this whistleblower. This comes from Whistleblower Aid. That's the organization representing one of these whistleblowers. This is the Eric Adams whistleblower. The Department of Justice says it lost a key whistleblower

complaint during Emil Bovi's contempt for the rule of law and found it again just yesterday. That was the day, by the way, that they confirmed Bovey. A period of more than two months in which Bovey was nominated to serve as a federal appeals judge and cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee pending a final vote. The Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General, responsible for conducting internal investigations, received an online copy of the complaint from whistleblower aid on May 2nd and signed in a couriered copy three days later. The disclosure provided documentary evidence that Boevi and other senior DOJ officials instructed department lawyers to violate court orders relating to the Trump administration's immigration deportation

policies. Okay, so this isn't the Eric Adams audio whistleblower. This is the tell the court to F you whistleblower, but different from a rez Ravenny. Correct. This is a third whistleblower who had, I know there were documents associated with this complaint that they sent in with the letter to the IG. And then they, they, in addition to that, they probably emailed it to him initially. And then they sent a physical hard copy that had been signed over to DOJ, which, of course, the courier gets a record, gets a receipt

of having delivered that thing. So there's no question that it got over there. OK, so it goes on to say, they also directed DOJ lawyers to commit perjury in federal court to cover up the violation, the evidence shows. Yet the office now says the documents were lost and refound only after whistleblower aid presented proof of submission and receipt.

Evidence relevant to the Senate's final vote on the Boevi nomination has thus sat unacknowledged for almost three months foreclosing the possibility of any meaningful investigation into a lifetime judicial appointment. Quote, we are finding this out now on the day of Mr. Boevi's confirmation vote said whistleblower aide, chief legal counsel Andrew Bacaj. And that begs the question, what does it take for the inspector general to do its job and investigate claims as pertinent and timely as the one that we submitted?

Hmm. It goes on to say, our client, a former attorney in the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Department of Justice, blew the whistle on the DOJ leadership after Judge James Boesberg ordered the administration to stop sending deportees to a notorious El Salvadoran prison. Our client is one of three whistleblowers who have accused the administration of unethical and illegal actions to undermine Judge Boesberg's authority. The client went to the Inspector General's office in part because of their professional obligation to ensure that no attorney client information goes outside of the Department of Justice. Quote, we filed our clients evidence with the DOJ OIG because unlike our client, they have the ability to investigate.

That's the lawyer Bacaj. The fact that our client's evidence has gone unacknowledged, let alone uninvestigated, from May to the eve of Boeve's confirmation vote stands in stark contrast with the unusual speed with which this confirmation is being pushed through. It is difficult not to see this as anything other than a duck and cover maneuver to prevent other potential whistleblowers from coming forward and speaking the truth. Bakaj himself used to work in an inspector general's office at the Department of Defense and said he knew from personal experience that mislaying a complaint is very far from normal procedure.

The expectation is that every whistleblower complaint is investigated with speed and due diligence, he said. Evidence doesn't just go missing. Those responsible need to be held to the highest standards of accountability. The evidence shows Bovi revealing contempt for the office he is being nominated to, and the evidence was effectively buried.

Just makes me think of, remember when Engel, the Office of Legal Counsel, makes me think of, remember when Engel, the Office of Legal Counsel, at, I think the DNI didn't refer what the inspector general thought was pertinent to send to Congress and he failed to do so under the first Trump administration. It's like that. But this is the actual inspector general. Which is frightening. So many questions about this DOJ Office of Inspector General. But this is the actual inspector general, which is frightening. So many questions about this DOJ office of inspector general.

And all this is happening at the same time that the long time, much vaunted inspector general himself, I should say former Michael Horowitz, who was, as we know, the only inspector general not fired by Donald Trump at the beginning of this term. Well, there was one more. Kufari was also not fired. The guy who lost the emails, the Secret Service text messages from January 6th, that guy. So the two most reliably Trump-following IGs got to stay? Well, we learned about a month or so ago that Mr. Horowitz

decided to leave the IG office at DOJ and is now the IG at the CFPB and also the Fed. Now these are like much lower intensity, much lower status positions. For now. Yeah. For now, because that's coming. Right? It was kind of, I mean, you can't, you gotta think that Michael Horowitz knew that DOJ, OIG was going to start receiving a flood of very uncomfortable letters and complaints from DOJ lawyers about things that political people and DOJ were doing. And he got out of there to avoid having to get caught up in overseeing investigations

of Trump appointees. Or did he go where he was needed in order to look at Jerome Powell? We know Trump wants to fire, but the Supreme Court has said he specifically can't. In another case, I think the Consumer Financial Protection Board or the Commission or Product Safety Commission or MSPB or some other case, they had said, yeah, the president can fire members of multi-member boards, but not the Fed. They just threw it in there.

Yeah. And so now like, like that whole video that came out this week of Trump visiting a building with Jerome Powell. And Trump's like, this is very, Sure. Waste and fraud, 3.1 billion. And Jerome Powell's like, where'd you get that number? He's like, here it's in my pocket.

And he hands it to him. He's like, dude, that's a building that you're added that third building. He's like, yeah, it's brand new. It just came out. He's like, no, it's in my pocket. And he hands it to him. He's like, dude, that's a building that you're added that third building. He's like, yeah, it's brand new. It just came out. He's like, no, it got finished five years ago, man. Like I think Trump is trying to set him up so that he can fire him with cause because he knows the Supreme Court isn't going to let him to fire him without cause. That's just total speculation. But I think Horowitz might be able to help in that respect. Hey, it's speculation that I agree with.

So also speculation from this side. But if Horowitz wanted the move to what he thought might be a quieter post, and if he asked for that, and if that was granted to him, like Don Vito Corleone said to the Sicilian Undertaker and to Godfather, someday and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. And that service is coming up.

Look out Mike, here it comes. Nice impression. Yeah, yeah, right. I need to, you know, you're going to have to take out that Fed chairman for me. So we'll see. You've been brushing up on that. I feel like you worked on that. That was good. That was really good. We got to go to the mattresses. That's right. That's right.

Wow. So that's just fat, you know, and by the way, Horowitz also the guy who put out the Epstein jail video report in 2023, which CBS News has come out with a bunch of inconsistencies in. So just fascinating. If you want a story to go away, like the Epstein files, they're doing it all wrong. This isn't how you make something go away. Yeah, it's not looking good. It's not a lesson in crisis management here.

Right. As I told Wajahat Ali on his Substack Live earlier, they need to take a lesson from Tylenol in the 80s. That was like one of the greatest PR comebacks in history. Was there like cyanide or something in Tylenol bottles and they got a great PR from them and they fit? Now we still take Tylenol. Yeah. Or what about the, what was that, that Audi that was like driving itself through

people's garages and killing everybody. And Audi was like, how about free service? People were like, okay, yeah, no problem. Right. Or the Volkswagen where they're like, oh, your diesel isn't as great as we thought. All right. Well, free, free upgrades, right? Free trade-ins. We'll take the trade-in. There you go. Anyway.

All right, everybody, we have listener questions to get to, but we have a couple more quick stories first. And also, if you have a question, there's a link in the show notes you can click on to fill out a form and send us a question. And we'll be right back with those questions along with just a couple more quick stories right after this quick break. Stick around And we'll be right back with those questions, along with just a couple more quick stories right after this quick break. Stick around, we'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back.

Just a couple more stories before we get to listener questions. First, this is from Politico. A criminal defendant seeking to torpedo President Trump's top federal prosecutor in New Jersey is drawing inspiration from an unusual source, U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon. The defendant, Julian Gerard Jr., argues that the Trump appointee's bombshell ruling last summer, dismissing a federal criminal case against Trump by finding that special counsel Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional, that that applies equally to Trump's temporary

U.S. attorney pick, Alina Habba. Gerard's attorney says the workaround Trump used to keep Habba in place after a 120-day interim appointment expired directly conflicts with Cannon's ruling. Quote, as Judge Cannon explained in Trump, when executive officials deliberately engineer an appointment in violation of statutory and constitutional mandates, the only effective remedy is dismissal, or at the very least, disqualification

of the unconstitutionally appointed officer and her subordinates. Wow. Well, this is a long shot. First of all, because Eileen Cannon is wrong. But also what's interesting is I read this filing by this particular criminal defendant and they don't cite any of the four statutes or how her appointment violates them. And these are statutes for appointments of special counsel specifically. They don't talk about how there wasn't, you know, one of the

arguments was there wasn't an office created to appoint Jack Smith to, like had, you and I talked about it, had Merrick Garland created an office real quick and then two seconds later appointed him to it, everything would have been fine in this case. But the attorney general has broad discretion to appoint special attorneys to do special things. And the Vacancies Act is pretty vaguely written. And we have a Supreme Court that thinks that the president can kind of do what he wants. Do whatever he wants. Under Article II.

So I think this is a super long shot. New York Times says federal court proceedings throughout New Jersey, though, have been abruptly canceled. And they were all canceled on Monday because of the uncertainty over whether Alina Haba has the authority to serve as an acting U.S. attorney. So this does have steam. Folks are reacting to the fact that this does violate the intent and the spirit of the Vacancies

Act. I'm not sure it'll hold, but there have been consequences. For sure. And you know what? Defendants take advantage of any weakness in a charging document that they can find. And right now, people have been charged in federal court with criminal allegations by an office that is being run by a US attorney who may not have the statutory authority to occupy that position. So like every complaint is filed essentially under the authority of the US attorney, even

though it's signed by the line prosecutor, it's essentially the line prosecutors are able to file these documents because they are acting on behalf of the US attorney. So if there's not a valid and lawfully appointed US attorney, that's a weakness in the charging document that the defendants will attack. I don't want to say it's a strong argument, but there is one argument that the statute says, once you have been nominated to be the permanent US attorney, you can no longer serve as the acting. Right. And so the administration is saying, well, we withdrew the nomination,

so now it's okay for her to be the acting. And others say, well, no, the statute doesn't say anything about withdrawal. It just says once you're nominated, you can no longer be the acting. And like you're saying, it's not perfectly clear how the courts will interpret that, but I fully expect that this thing will have to be, there's going to have to be some sort of a judicial resolution to this. Sure. There's a colorable legal argument here. For sure.

For sure. And last week, Andy, if you remember, if anybody goes back and listens, I said, I can't believe they're just slapdash throwing her in there after all the arguments they made against Jack Smith. I didn't know that a defendant would put this in a filing, and I certainly don't blame them for doing so. I would as well. But other consequences here, pretrial conferences and hearings set for defendants to enter pleas in the district were all called off, according to four lawyers who received word that their clients scheduled court appearances had been

canceled. A grand jury that was expected to meet to consider indicting defendants on new criminal charges, that was put on hold. A drug trial that was set to start August 4th in Camden, New Jersey was moved to Pennsylvania after a lawyer representing one of the defendants filed a motion arguing that Habba's prosecutorial authority was unconstitutional. So they just moved the case. So this has consequences. It's a mess. It's a mess. It's not going to get solved quickly. Yeah. And Andy, you know, I couldn't let the show go by without talking about this story from the New York Times. The Trump era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation, the oranges for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans

that Hillary Clinton's campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election. This is an information declassified by Ratcliffe this past Thursday. The information is a 29 page annex to the special counsel's 2023 report. And while I really want to see what that crime in Italy that was committed is, that's not this. This is a 29 page annex from Durham's report that reveals that a foundational document for the theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies.

The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server. The release of the annex adds new details to the public's understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans.

It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise. The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein. And by the way, I read a lot of news and pretty much every news report that has nothing to

do with the Epstein files contains a line about the Trump administration trying to distract from the release of the Epstein files contains a line about the Trump administration trying to distract from the release of the Epstein files. It goes on to say that the release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, I hate to say that, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump's presidency, unquote. That's very different from what he said about this email in 2020, by the way. Did he not read the annex he was declassifying?

Because apparently it doesn't say that, but okay. He read it in 2020 because he summarized it. And I'll talk about that in a second. But Kash Patel, FBI director, who has a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation, declared on social media that the annex revealed evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax. But in reality, the Times reports, this annex that Ratcliffe just released shows the opposite, indicating that the key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Clinton approved the plan to tie Trump to Russia is not credible.

Mr. Durham himself concluded that the email from July 27th, 2016 and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured by the Russians. So, so sad. Um, you know, I remember when that alleged Clinton, the report from CIA that spoke about this alleged Clinton email about their plans to tie Trump to Russia, that came out in 2020. And I got later got excoriated over it in my Senate testimony at the end of 2020. I'd never seen the thing. But the thing that always drove me crazy about it was like, at the time, certainly what the senators who were all over me that day in my Zoom testimony wanted to know is like why it was so unfair

that we had opened an investigation of Donald Trump and we hadn't opened an investigation of Hillary Clinton, even though we got this email from her campaign that said that they were going to intentionally try to sort of like paint Trump as being supported by Putin. And it's like, that's not a crime. That's politics. First of all, not a crime, but also didn't happen. It didn't happen.

It turns out now it was a Russian, piece of Russian propaganda, but even if it had, it's not a crime. Campaigns plan to tar their enemies with stories, either false or real all the time. That's called politics. And from the very people who are screaming and yelling about the FBI constantly inserting themselves in 2016

into political context, like, so now you wanted us who were screaming and yelling about the FBI constantly inserting themselves in 2016 into political context. So now you wanted us to investigate another politician for engaging in politics, whereas the Trump case was predicated on knowledge that the foreign government of Russia was actually aiding him. And then we found out that they knew they were doing it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so Ratcliffe declassified this. Okay.

So in 2020, Ratcliffe saw this email and declassified a summary of it ahead of the 2020 election. And he said at the time, quote, officials do not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication. Ratcliffe himself said that, so he can read. He read it and he said it was fabricated. And I have to ask how many times the Republicans are going to rely on Russian spycraft as evidence against their political enemies. We have Rudy Giuliani and the Shokin files. Remember the Manila envelope he sent to Congress, Ron Johnson laundered into a thing. We have Nunes on his midnight run with an Uber to the White House.

We have Alexander Smirnov, who's in jail right now for lying to his FBI handler about the $5 million Biden-Burisma bribe or whatever, Hunter's laptop. I mean, the list goes on and on. Every single piece of evidence they have against the Democrats seems to be made by Russia. Yeah. Check your sources, guys. Bad source will do you in every time.

They have resources for this. Anyway, for a really good deep dive on this, you want to check out Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel.net. She does a really good job of getting into all of the details. She has such a vast knowledge of all of this, just right there, ready in her head, ready to pull up. I don't know how she does it. It's amazing. So, all right, we've got time for a listener question or two.

What do we have this week? All right, so here's my big reveal for the week. This is not actually a question, but it's more of a reflection of a massive outpouring of support into the question bucket, as I like to call it. Support for the impressions. Now, yes, you will remember that last week I made a somewhat offhanded comment that I should stop making impressions

and we should get out of the impression business because a few people had mentioned in the question bucket that we shouldn't do impressions. They thought it was beneath us or something like that. So in respite, they very well might be, I felt like they had probably a pretty good argument, but boy, the, the will of the people has been heard because man, today we got so many comments from people and they were really, they were really awesome. It was like, a lot of people commented on the fact that, you know, the news is kind of bad these days.

I don't know if you've noticed that, Alison, but the news is not happy. And they like the impressions because it injects a little bit of humor and fun into what otherwise could be a pretty, you know, pretty down reporting of all of this craziness. And some of them, of course, because it's our loyal listeners, so they are funny, they are creative, they're smart. So a lot of them were pretty funny.

This one, I'm only going to read one, but I had to read this because it made me laugh for like several minutes. So this one comes to us, this is just an example and it comes to us from Mel. Mel said, I support your Trump impressions. And then he begins in quotes, many people are saying they're great. Just the other day, someone walked right up to me and said, sir, those vocal impressions by Alison Gill and Andy McCabe are great. They're the best. They're the best impressions. They're the best impressioners. They're impressionistic. He came to me with tears in his eyes. Yeah. I mean, I love, I love it. It's like, I've always been obsessed with the many people are saying, you know, the general rules, like anytime you hear many people are saying,

you know no one is saying. And anytime it begins with sir, anything that follows the invocation of sir, never happened. That's just my theory. That's just my theory. So yeah, I think it's green light on the impressions as I showed with my very bad Marlon Brando impression earlier in this show.

That was very good, actually, I thought. So there you go. All right. So now we have a real question and it comes to us from Barbara. And Barbara says, can a confirmed judge who has a life appointment lose their job for anything? How about a criminal conviction? He, and I think she means Emil Bovi, lied to Congress and I believe that's illegal. Thanks so much.

Well, if he was going to be convicted of lying to Congress, that's something that Pam Bondi has to do and that's not going to happen. But there is a five-year statute of limitations. If we get a new attorney general, he could be convicted of that. But I don't think that that necessarily stops you from being a judge. I think the only way to get rid of a judge is impeachment unless somebody actually goes to prison. I'm not sure. You are correct.

I think the only way to be removed from the position is through impeachment. And it's super, super rare. I don't think we've ever had a federal judge get convicted of a criminal offense and sent to jail. Yeah, I don't know. I'll have to look that up. But I think it's also important to note a lifetime appointment. Anna Bauer asked on Blue Sky, does a lifetime appointment count if they're undead?

Which really was a good laugh that I needed. She actually texted that to me. I'm like, you have to post that. That's the best joke I've heard in a long time. Yeah. That's a good one. So, hats off to Hannah Bauer. But yeah, unfortunately, I think it's just impeachment.

And as you know, it's not just a majority or even a super majority in the Senate to remove someone who's been impeached. You need 67 votes to do that. It's not just a majority or even a super majority in the Senate to remove someone who's been impeached. You need 67 votes to do that. And if he, I swear to God, if he were convicted of lying on a 1001 charge, probably wouldn't serve any time for that. If any would be very limited. But I imagine that the Republicans in the Senate, if they still held the Senate, would

be like, it was a witch hunt. We're not impeaching him. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, it's fake news. They're being mean to us. It's all the same stuff that we heard, you know, all of last year in the two Trump federal cases. And no reason to believe that would happen any differently. No. And also, you know, a lot of people are, what if we disbarred him? Oddly enough, you don't have to be a barred attorney to have a lifetime appointment on the courts. No one ever imagined that that would happen.

But now, here we are. Also, same with an attorney general. Sure, you can disbar Pam Bondi, but you don't have to actually be a lawyer or a barred attorney to be the attorney general. Again, something we would just assume would be. Although to be clear, under those circumstances, you are officially the non attorney general. Huh?

That's what we should call her if that does ever happen because Jeffrey Clark was recommended for disbarment this week, which is why those questions came up. Very nice. very nice. Very nice. So I took that as an opportunity to post the photo of him out front of his house and his underwear again, because that just brings me joy. Awesome. And I assume the DC Circuit Court of Appeals who makes this final decision will probably

agree and disbar him. His license has been suspended for several years pending this investigation, which is abnormal. They did it to Giuliani too. It's so bad what he did that they suspended his license pending the outcome of this investigation. So I'm assuming that disbarment will go through. But it also tells us how long it takes to get any of that done. It's years.

It's years. Totally. Well, thank you so much for the questions. If you have any questions, again, there's a link in the show notes. We really appreciate them. Thanks for the kind words about our impressions. We also appreciate that. That's our show for the week. And again, who knows what's going

to happen between this week and next week, but I'm sure it'll be something. And we'll talk about it on the next Unjustified. Do you have any final thoughts? No, I'm looking forward to all the craziness that we get to go through next week with a couple of impressions, salted in there just for good measure. Cause yeah, if we don't laugh, we'll cry.

That's right. Everybody, we'll see you next time. 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 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.