Jack - Presumption of Regularity

Episode Date: August 10, 2025

The Department of Justice ratchets up Trump's revenge tour by launching investigations into Leticia James, Adam Schiff, Jack Smith, and the 2016 Russia investigation.Several former justice department attorneys are seeking elected office.CIA officials worried that the release of a House report on 2016 Russian election meddling could reveal top-secret spying techniques and sources, but the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard authorized a lightly redacted version with President Trump’s blessing. The political purge of FBI personnel continues with the ouster of Steven Jensen and Brian Driscoll. Plus listener questions…Do you have questions for the pod? Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at  MINTMOBILE.com/UNJUST 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

M.S.W. Media. The Department of Justice ratchets up Trump's revenge tour by launching investigations into Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Jack Smith, and the 2016 Russia investigation. Several former Justice Department attorneys are seeking elected office. CIA officials worried that the release of a House report on 2016 Russian election meddling could reveal top secret spying techniques and sources. But the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, authorized a lightly redacted version

with President Trump's blessing. And the political purge of the FBI continues with the ouster of Stephen Jensen and Brian Driscoll. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 20, of Unjustified. It is Sunday, August 10th, 2025. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And oh my gosh, we have a lot to cover today, as always. But we're also happy to announce that on next week's episode, we're going to be talking with ousted member of the Merit Systems Protection

Board, Kathy Harris, about her lawsuit against the Trump administration for wrongful termination and more broadly about the impact of the Trump administration's dismantling of the federal government. Yes. And full disclosure, everybody, Kathy Harris, who was a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, was initially my attorney in my wrongful termination case against the first Trump administration. Small world. Wow. And yeah, and I was languishing, waiting for a quorum after the Trump, first Trump administration on the Merit Systems Protection Board, because that's one of the key tactics of the Trump administration is to just not have anybody there. So nobody. can get any work done on people suing him for wrongful termination.

That's right. And so Joe Biden reached down and took Kathy Harris and elevated her to the Merit Systems Protection Board, depriving me of a really wonderful attorney. But I got another great attorney. And I just wanted to give full disclosure that I was at one point represented legally by Kathy Harris. So it will be really interesting to speak with her. especially a lot of the cases that, you know, she took on when she was at the Merit Systems Protection Board.

And she's going to have a really solid understanding of the wrongful termination reductions in force and everything that's going on and the purging here in the second Trump administration. Yeah, I mean, she's got a totally unique perspective, having seen it as a board member, and now, of course, as someone who has appealed to the board. So I'm interested to see how those two things come together. It should be a good discussion. Yeah, and I look forward to talking to her about some of the referrals that the former special counsel at the office of special counsel, Hampton Dallinger, made to the Merit Systems Protection Board. And now that special counsel is someone else because Hampton Dallinger has been fired by this administration. And that kind of ties in to our first discussion today, Andy, which is about this revenge tour of Donald Trump using the Department of weaponizing the Department of Justice and, you know, other agencies to go after, you know, what he considers his enemies, his political enemies. And let's start with that intensification of the weaponization because the Department of Justice just authorized a series of new investments.

investigations. And that let's go with the one that started on August 2nd, with the special counsel office. Again, that was where Hampton Delinger used to be. They've launched an investigation into Jack Smith, who was a special counsel, but a different out, you know, not part of the office of special counsel, just a different special counsel, special appointment. And von Hilliard at NBC is reporting that federal officials are investigating former special counsel, Jack Smith, after Trump and other prominent Republicans have alleged that his investigations into then-candidate Trump amounted to illegal political activity. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel and Independent Federal Agency confirmed to NBC News on Saturday it is investigating

Jack Smith for alleged violations of the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits certain political activities by government officials. Trump and his allies have not presented specific evidence of wrongdoing, of course. The OSC, or Office of Special Counsel, is different from the type of special counsel's office formerly headed by Smith, who was appointed by the Department of Justice. This independent agency lacks the authority to bring criminal charges and prosecute individuals who violate the Hatch Act, but it may seek disciplinary action for a federal government employee, such as removal from the civil workforce, or refer its findings of Hatch Act violations to the DOJ for investigation. On Wednesday, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas,

requested that the OSC investigates Smith for, quote, unprecedented interference in the 2024 election. A source familiar with the matter says the OSC affirmed to Cotton that it is proceeding with its inquiry following his request. Now, this is just the Hatch Act. Okay, so punishment for violations of the Hatch Act is the government comes out and says you violated it. That's about it now you can be fired you can be removed from civil service um jacksmith no longer works with the civil service so yeah i don't really i maybe they're trying to get a referral to the department of justice but there's no crime there's no like criminal investigation that can happen uh from violations of the hatch act i i think this will probably escalate to a violation

of his rights as a candidate for president maybe election interference something like that But the courts over and over and over again have rejected the argument that investigating a candidate for crimes is not political interference or election interference. Of course. Of course it's not. And obviously the process protects the prosecutor, right? You collected evidence. You presented that evidence of a grand jury.

They returned an indictment. Of course, in this case, twice. But let's not get too down to the details. that's that pretty much clears you as a independent, unbiased finding of probable cause that a crime has been committed. So, yeah, I don't know where this is going. Well, I guess cynically, I do know where this is going. Whatever the OSC comes up with, they will hand off to the Department of Justice.

And DOJ will use that as an excuse to open some sort of a criminal investigation. Right. Why Cotton chose to start it this way, I'm not really sure, but that's where it'll end up. Yeah, and it seems like Tom Cotton is alleging that Jack Smith, the fact that he pushed for a rushed trial was to mess him up in the, to basically have a trial go before the election. But I think it's very important to say that Jack Smith never said we have to get this done before election. It was actually very careful not to say that, right? I mean, he was very specific about, hey, no, this is what the law says and let's do it at the right timeline. And, you know, Trump was trying to slow it down. That's the election. That's the election interference. If you want to get down to it. But, you know, we'll see where this ends up. But Trump's nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel is right now it's stalled in the Senate. A White House official told NBC News, his name is Paul Ingrossia. He's a former podcast host. Look out. You can't trust those people.

Yeah, those crazy podcast hosts. He's got a history of incendiary commentary. He's meeting with senators in one-on-one meetings over the next month before a confirmation vote takes place. But that's who Trump has nominated to replace the amazing Hampton Delinger. So we'll keep an eye on that for you. For sure. Also from the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department has tapped a federal grand jury to reinvestigate the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's efforts in the 2016 election,

according to people familiar, underscoring the lengths to which Trump's second term administration is determined to go to avenge the central grievance of his first. Very good opening paragraph. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday signed an order directing a U.S. attorney to present evidence to the grand jury.

I've never seen an order from an attorney general instructing a U.S. attorney to open an investigation, but okay, and gave that person broad authority to also investigate outside of the office's jurisdiction. So the official declined to say which federal prosecutor Bondi was tapping, but said one grand jury investigation has been opened in D.C., which would be Janine Piro. So no targets have been named in the probe, which, as an aside, I'm taking it as a good sign, but nevertheless, the grand jury is expected to hear testimony from witnesses in the coming weeks. The Justice Department spokesman didn't return calls seeking comment. The development is the most serious escalation in recent weeks in Trump's longtime effort to portray the 2016 investigation as a criminal plot by Democrats to undermine his presidency.

Investigators, intelligence officials, and lawmakers ultimately concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016. election to benefit Trump over Hillary Clinton. Can I go through that one one more time? Investigators, intelligence officials, and lawmakers, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Marco Rubio, ultimately concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump over Hillary Clinton. Special counsel Robert Mueller didn't establish that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign knowingly conspired with Russia's efforts. Yes, conspired is the key term there, legal

term of art, not colluded. There was a ton of collusion. There's colluding all over the place. They've all been colluded upon. Their booties off, the booty colluters. Now, another special counsel and the Justice Department's Inspector General later spent, we're talking about John Durham now, and Mike Horowitz spent years examining those investigations and faulted the FBI in particular for a couple of errors on its approach but did not prove any criminal scheme to undermine Trump and they were trying really hard. Bill Barr was flying around the world trying to get dirt on the Mueller investigation.

They were indicting people that ultimately all got acquitted. I mean, it was a whole thing. Except for the one dude that pled guilty, right? right, Clyde Smith? Who Horowitz found for him. Yeah. I mean, Durham didn't even find that case, but whatever. Now, the recent developments originate with Trump's intelligence director,

Tulsi Gabbard, and we talked about this. We'll talk about this later in the show, too, because on July 23rd, she said she had new information, she didn't, indicating that then-President Barack Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence assessment that they knew was false. That didn't happen. To undermine Trump's win.

No. and accused the former president of treason. Also, no. She referred the matter to the DOJ for potential criminal prosecution. The disclosures come as the Trump administration has faced intense bipartisan criticism over its refusal to provide more information about the FBI investigation into convicted sex offender, your friend in mine, Jeffrey Epstein. Now, I think it's important that we left that particular paragraph from the Wall

Street Journal, because pretty much every single story, whether it's from the Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, that I read about the investigation into the Russia investigation includes a paragraph of, this is a seeming distraction from the Epstein files. Like, they all mention that. They all say, this comes at a time when the Trump administration has faced criticism over the Epstein files. So I thought, I thought, you know, know, we should include that paragraph from the Wall Street Journal in this show. Because I agree with it. I think that this is all of this stuff. You know, you and I talked about this last week, that he's got a hopper full of investigations. And he's throwing them all out right now

because of what's going on with the, with the Epstein files. And I think he's going to, you know, at some point, I think he's like front-loading his four-year revenge tour in order to, you know, to push back against the headlines that are consistently about the Epstein files. This man needs an enemy. He needs someone to be in conflict with at all times because those conflicts provide exactly that.

Distractions, provides a platform from which he can project this narrative of everyone's out to get me, but I'm foiling all my foes anyway. And so he just reaches back into that well-worn sack every time one of these things comes up and you know the the narrative he's gotten the most play out of in the last eight years or whatever it's been has been this one so it's like not a surprise to anyone who's been associated with this stuff before that you know when in desperate

times he always goes back to what he calls the Russia hoax so here we are again for the 15th time being reinvestigated yeah and it's specifically targeted I has MAGA base, the same MAGA base that wants the Epstein files is also the same MAGA base that constantly talks about conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation. So it gives them something else to chew on according to my personal, I guess, understanding of how the, you know, how the internet works. So that's kind of, I think, what's going on here. Yeah. I mean, he's, you know, to some extent it works. He does it because it works. right i saw this um i was reading in an article this week that they went and looked at mentions

of uh of obama versus mentions of geoffrey epstein by like right wing media and podcasters it's just this massive graph of mentions of epstein going down last week and mentions of obama skyrocketing now Obama has not been in the news there's only the only reason that people are thinking about him or talking about him is because of these ridiculous claims. So, you know, he says it. And in that kind of hardcore right-wing community, they immediately jump in line and start to fan the flames for him. Yeah, they sure do. But we're not done with this week's retribution tour from NBC. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has appointed a special attorney, not a special counsel, to probe mortgage fraud allegations against Adam Schiff and Letitia James, New York Attorney General.

The Justice Department is also in the initial stages of an investigation of Tish James over her successful civil fraud case against Trump. And that's according to three people familiar. Bondi tapped Ed Martin, a conservative activist and former interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., as special attorney to investigate Schiff and James, both prominent Democratic opponents of the president, the two administration officials said. A senior law enforcement official said a grand jury seated in the east. Eastern District of Virginia will investigate the James Mortgage Fraud allegations, and a grand jury in Maryland will investigate the allegations against Schiff. Now, the U.S. Attorney Probe of James is focused on whether her office used its authority to violate Trump's legal rights through civil lawsuits against the president and his businesses. That's according to three people familiar.

That investigation is also looking at whether the National Rifle Association's rights were violated by her civil suits. It is being run out of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York. And I think that, isn't that where they put that Sarkone guy that they made his own assistant in order to be able to be the interim U.S. attorney in the Northern District?

I think you're onto something there. Yeah, for sure. Seems interesting. So another interesting thing is, you know, my first thought, of course, and I'm sure a lot of people's first thought is, hey, you can't appoint a special counsel Ed Martin because he wasn't confirmed by the Senate.

At least that's what Trump spent a zillion years arguing to Eileen Cannon about. And Eileen Cannon and Clarence Thomas and Trump all agreed that you can't have a special counsel that wasn't approved with advice and consent of the Senate.

However, the astute Anna Bauer points out that there was a back and forth in the oral arguments in the hearings in Judge Cannon's courtroom about Jack Smith's appointment. and it's appropriateness. And she wrote for lawfare,

Judge Cannon piped up to ask what Bovi, Emil Bovi, thinks the term special attorney means in Section 515. Does it have the same meaning as the term that is used elsewhere in Title 28? And Bovi said, Special attorney in Section 515 is consistent with how the term is used in 28 U.S. Code 543, which provides that the Attorney General may appoint attorneys to assist United States attorneys when the public interest so requires. It follows, Bovi argues, that these statutory provisions don't authorize the appointment of a special

counsel who operates with the degree of independence that Jack Smith does. He clearly wasn't appointed to assist a U.S. attorney, Bovi says. If it were otherwise, then the attorney general would be able to set up a shadow government that would allow a special counsel to wield extraordinary power with little oversight. So they've already argued that these kind of special attorneys that assist U.S. attorneys are okay, but a special counsel that has the independence that Jack Smith did do not. They're not okay. And so that is what they're going for here. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I'm sure we'll be hearing that argument repeated in a courtroom near you soon. But it's just so obvious. The whole thing is so ridiculous. special attorneys are not permitted when they are Jack Smith investigating Donald Trump, but they are okay when there are anybody else investigating someone from the Russia investigation in 2016. Okay, got it.

Let me write that down. Yeah, or particularly Trump's civil rights being violated by Jack Smith and his wanting a speedy trial, which the law says. All right. So lots of retribution and. revenge going on, even though they have sworn up and down that they are against weaponization of the Justice Department. This is what we're seeing across the, you know, not just the Justice Department, but Office of Special Counsel and everywhere else. So we'll keep an eye on all of this for you. And after this break, we're going to talk about the ongoing problem of

the credibility of the Department of Justice in the eyes of the judiciary. It's been an ongoing problem. We've been talking about it for a while. And there's a new piece out in the New York Times about it. And we want to discuss that after this quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Wireless service should be dependable and budget friendly. And Mint Mobile understands that. And they've built their plans around exactly those principles. So if you're spending the summer traveling, hosting, or just managing your everyday routine doing adulting, Mint Mobile makes staying connected easy and affordable. Mint Mobile offers high-speed data with unlimited talk and text all in the nation's largest 5G network, which means excellent

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lying around within days he had a new second number set up and running thanks to mince quick sim delivery and simple instructions for 15 bucks a month he says he's never had more budget friendly fun and even the quality is better than his last provider so he's glad he made the switch So this year, skip breaking a sweat and skip breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash unjust. That's mintmobile.com slash unjust. A prep payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month. Limited new time customer offer for three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan, taxes and fees extras. See Mint Mobile for details. Hey everybody. Welcome back. All right. We're going to shift gears. We're going to talk about the ongoing problem of Department of Justice lawyers' credibility with the courts. Alan Foyer at the New York Times writes that Justice Department lawyers have long enjoyed a professional benefit when they appear in court. As a general rule, judges tend to take them at their

word and assume they're telling the truth. But in the past several months, as members of President Trump's Justice Department have repeatedly misled the courts, violated their orders, and demonized judges who have ruled against them, some jurists have started to show an angry loss of faith in the people and the institution they once believed in most. The dissolution of these traditional bonds of trust, known in legal circles as the presumption of regularity, goes well beyond judges' use of blunt words, egregious, brazen, lawless, to describe the various parts of Mr. Trump's power-grabbing policy agenda. Ultimately, legal experts say, the actions that cause such doubts among the judges about the department and those

who represent it could have a more systemic effect and erode the healthy functioning of the courts. Right. So we've been talking about this as just eroding the trust that people have in the Department of Justice, but it's, you know, this is also from a perspective of how it impacts the judiciary. That's right. So while it is impossible to know for sure how deeply the distrust has set in among judges across the country, a number of judges in recent weeks have openly questioned the fundamental honesty and credibility of Justice Department lawyers in ways that would have been unthinkable just months ago. In June, for instance, an order was unsealed in federal district court in Washington

showing magistrate judge Zia Faruqi ripping into prosecutors after they tried to convince him that he needed to be, quote, highly deferential to their request to keep sealed a search warrant in an ordinary criminal case. Quote, blind deference to the government? That's what Judge Faruqi wrote. That is no longer a thing. Trust that has been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.

Oof. Yeah, ouch. Wow. After all, as the judge pointed out, Justice Department lawyers under Mr. Trump have done much to destroy the confidence normally afforded them in court. They have fired prosecutors

who worked on Mr. Trump, Trump's two criminal cases, he said. They have attacked the charges brought against the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 as a witch hunt. And they have violated judicial orders in cases stemming from Mr. Trump's deportation policies and from his efforts to freeze federal grants. Quote, these norms being broken must have consequences, Judge Faruqi concluded. High deference is out. Trust but verify is in. Now, all of this echoed the explosive remarks made from the bench last month by Judge Policini's, and we talked about this. She lashed out at the Justice Department during a hearing in the case of Mr. Obrego, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March.

We covered, like I said, those remarks here on unjustified when she made them, and she said, this has been the process from day one. You have taken the presumption of regularity, and you've destroyed it, in my view. In a similar fashion, a federal judge on Long Island refused last month to take the department's word after prosecutors asked her to dismiss an indictment against Vladimir Aravalo Chavez, a leader of the violent street gang MS-13 in preparation for sending him back to El Salvador. Instead of simply accepting the government's assertion that the case against Mr. Arvallo-Shavez needed to be tossed out because of, quote, national security concerns, The judge, Joan Azrak, ordered the government to tell her more about the politics behind the case.

By that, she was referring to a deal reached between the Trump administration and President Nayyib Buckele of El Salvador to hold immigrants deported from the United States in a Salvador in prison in exchange for the return of MS-13 leaders in U.S. custody. Yeah, so she was even like, because you pointed that out when it happened when that press conference happened. We're going to indict this dangerous MS-13 leader, and then, like, two days later, we're going to drop the charges. Gone. Yeah, yeah. In yet another case, a judge in Los Angeles handling a request to drop fraud charges against Andrew Weiderhorn, who is a Trump donor and former chief executive of the restaurant chain Fatburger, asked the Justice Department to further outline its reasons for wanting to drop those fraud charges. Late last week, the judge, R. Gary Klausner, said in an order that judges should, quote, grant considerable deference to prosecutors seeking to dismiss charges, but still insisted on an explanation for the dismissal by Friday. Barbara McQuaid, a former U.S. attorney in Detroit, who teaches at the University of Michigan Law School, said that if judges continued to lose faith in the Justice Department, its lawyers would have to spend enormous time and energy backing up,

what are now considered to be routine courtroom assertions with witnesses or written submissions. Quote, if government lawyers have to prove up every statement they make at every level in every case, every time they go to court, it would grind the justice system to a halt, she said. Sounds like a feature and not a bug for this administration. Judges are not the only players in the legal system who have shown a measure of distrust in the Justice Department. Alison Gill and Andrew McCabe of the Unjustified podcast. No, I'm just kidding. In an almost unheard-of move, federal grand juries in Los Angeles have been refusing to indict many defendants whom prosecutors have sought to charge in connection with immigration protests. We talked about that here on this show, too. That situation underscored how the courts can work successfully only if people outside of government, jurors and witnesses, for instance, believe that the Justice Department is acting honestly. That's what Daniel C. Richmond said. He's a law professor at Columbia, who recently wrote in the New York Times about the credibility crisis. that the Department of Justice is facing.

Quote, when the government loses credibility, you see it clearly in the reactions of other players in the legal system. That's the road we're on for now unless something changes soon. And Politico reported this week that when federal judges pressed for details about Stephen Miller's deportation quota

of 3,000 people per day, the administration denied that any such quota existed. The contradiction came in a lawsuit that alleged the intense pressure to rack up arrests had led ICE to conduct illegal sweeps in Los Angeles. It's not the only case that has featured the 3,000 arrests per day target as a crucial piece of evidence that the administration's single-minded drive to rack up arrests

may have prompted immigration authorities to cut corners or break the law. Washington-based Judge Gia Cobb, a Biden appointee, cited the figure when she ruled Friday that the administration's dramatic expansion of, quote, expedited deportation proceedings violated the law. And Judge Trina Thompson, a Biden appointee in San Francisco, pointed to the purported goal Thursday when she blocked the administration's bid to end temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Nicaraguan, Honduran, and Nepali immigrants. But on Wednesday, the Justice Department said no such orders had ever been given.

Oh. So it's another instance of what they tell the public versus what they tell the court. Now, this discrepancy is the latest example of the gulf between what the White House advisors say in public and what the Justice Department says in court. Good job, Politico. In this instance, the chasm may be undermining the DOJ's already strained credibility with judges. So it's continuing and it's getting worse. I'm not sure how much worse it could get. But I thought that that was a really interesting and astute observation that it doesn't just impact the credibility of the Department of Justice, but it impacts the judiciary and kind of peripheral people with sort of jobs or that touch the judiciary like a grand jury, like what we see in Los Angeles happening.

Like, no, we just don't trust anything that you say anymore because the concept of regularity has been destroyed, as Judge Sinus has said. as well as a couple other judges that we just cited, or that the Times, I should say, just cited in that story that we read. So I think that that's, you know, because we were trying to, not trying, we were discussing last week or the week before, I can't remember they're all kind of mushing together about the federal grand jury in Los Angeles and how you were saying, well, there's such a thing as jury nullification

that Angelinos don't like what's going on in their neighborhoods. but also this reservoir of trust that we've always had in the Department of Justice and prosecutions is so gone now that people sitting in a grand jury room and that's why I'm interested to see what happens in all of the cases that we brought up in the A block when they get to a federal grand jury how they turn out right because if the grand jury no longer trust the Department of Justice then that speaks to how many criminal cases can be brought And what if you're talking about an actual criminal case, not some rogue political BS, where someone has actually had something wrong done and the grand jury's like, yeah, but this Department of Justice, ooh, you know, I don't trust them. That could negatively impact the actual victims of actual crimes, you would think.

Yeah, no question. I mean, this is a house that was built over, you know, more than a century of thousands of attorneys going into hundreds upon hundreds of courtrooms around the country every single day and conducting themselves, you know, scrupulously focused on things like accuracy, honesty, explaining to the court, you know, revealing to the court. what you actually know about a situation, giving the right answer, a candid answer, even when it doesn't help your case. And it's in those thousands of ways and all those courts and all those cases

and all those hearings, that builds that trust that you're talking about over years and years and years. But it can be obliterated in the blink of an eye. And the more these notorious examples of falsifications, of attorneys avoiding answering the question because they know they'll get in trouble with their bosses back at the office if they tell the court the truth,

conversations about we're going to have to just ignore court orders when they don't go our way. That has an absolutely quantifiable, you know, deleterious effect on the administration of justice. And that's trust that's not going to come back anytime soon. Yeah. As Judge Faruqi said, trust that has been our, earned over generations has been lost in weeks. Yeah, there you go. All right, we've got more to get to. And the next block is a little bit sad.

We're going to talk about Brian Driscoll and a few other people at the FBI that are being purged for, again, political reasons. You'll remember him as St. Drizz. We talked about him pretty extensively early on in the Trump administration when he was trying when Donald Trump and Emil Bovi were trying to get lists of agents that had worked on January 6th, cases, for example. And Brian Driscoll stood up for the FBI and for the agents as as you're supposed to, right? He didn't just walk away from the responsibility like Christopher Ray did in December before the inauguration. But we're going to talk about that because they have now, he and others in the FBI have been purged by Cosh Patric. So we're going to talk about that after the break.

Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, in keeping with this week's theme of the house is burning to the ground, the political purge at the FBI continues. The New York Times reports this week that the FBI is forcing out senior agents, including the former acting head of the Bureau,

and another top official whose assent angered Trump supporters. Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as the acting director in the early days of the Trump administration, was among those being forced out and told to leave by Friday, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personnel decisions that have not yet been made public. And Stephen J. Jensen, head of the FBI's Washington Field Office, was also ousted this week, these people said.

Mr. Jensen had been a targeted, conservatives because in overseeing the Bureau's domestic terrorism operations section at the time, he played a key role in responding to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Mr. Driscoll, a charismatic FBI veteran with great hair, an extensive experience. He does have good hair. He had extensive experience in domestic and international investigations, became an unlikely champion, an unlikely hero of the Bureau after being accidentally catapulted. Remember, it was an administrative error that he was even made acting director through an administrative foul up to the director's chair on inauguration day. He resisted demands to turn over the names of FBI agents who had worked on the investigation

into the capital attack, fighting off what was seen as a possible purge. Those actions earned him folk hero status among the rank and file and the enmity of President Trump's former enforcer at the Justice Department, Emil Bovey III, which ultimately sealed his fate. His continued reluctance to exceed to requests contributed to his dismissal, according to people familiar with the decision. The removals are likely to deal another blow to the morale of the agency, which has faced intense scrutiny after conducting investigations that Mr. Trump's supporters have denounced. Mr. Jensen's ouster, in particular, is an embarrassing chapter in Cash Patel's tenure as director,

given that he had promoted Mr. Jensen and defended the decision on national television. Sure did. Let's talk about the morale for a second before we continue with the story because I had heard from people I know at the FBI how upset everybody was at this. I didn't hear that kind of backlash when Chris Ray walked out of the organization saying, everybody, do your job, put your heads down, except for me, bye. I love this place so much That I have to leave Yeah So did you hear

I know that you've You know I never worked at the I wasn't the I'm not the former acting director of the FBI Have you heard anything about Everybody's people's response to You know Driscoll specifically Yeah I've been talking to people Since this news came out

Yesterday of course we're recording on Friday So Yesterday Thursday People started tent sending me the article and then had a bunch of conversations with folks who, all of whom said the same thing was that this one really, this was a gut punch to the rank and file,

to the agents and analysts and everyone who works at the FBI and appreciated the fact that this guy took a stand to try to protect them in a very dark time, right? In the beginning of the administration, and everybody had a lot of concerns. Like, is it going to be the revenge tour?

what's going to happen to us? Am I going to get fired or sidelined or or transferred for simply showing up and doing the job I was asked to do? The lawful, proper job I was asked to do. And Driscoll stood up and took a, you know, gave DOJ a response that I think everybody knew at some point was not going to go well for him. And that day came today. So they've lost so much talent in the FBI, particularly at the upper levels, losing all those EADs and a number of really significant assistant director positions. You've got, you've already got a crew in there, good people, but people who maybe don't have quite the same level of experience and time in that EADs and ADs formerly had. So you got folks that are really doing their best to try to

keep things on an even keel. But this was a loss that I think, everyone experienced on some level, and it's a heavy hit for the organization. Yeah, let's talk about some of the others, too, that we learned about this week. Other agents being forced out, Walter Jardina and Christopher Meyer, both of whom had worked on cases involving Trump. In addition, Spencer Evans, a senior agent who had already been pushed out of his post overseeing a field office in Las Vegas and forced to take a new position in Huntsville, Alabama, was also dismissed. Now, Mr. Jardina had worked on a number of Trump-related investigations, including a case that sent the trade advisor, Pete Navarro, to prison. The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, has criticized Mr. Jardina for what whistleblowers have claimed is anti-Trump bias.

Mr. Look, if you put away a criminal, it doesn't mean you have bias against that person. Yeah, and if I remember correctly, Peter Navarro ended up in jail because he gave Congress the middle finger over. over a subpoena. Yeah. So whatever. Now, Mr. Jardina, a former Marine who deployed to Iraq after the September 11th attacks lost his wife last month to cancer. So, you know, I think a lot of times we talk about these dismissals and we do it without

an understanding of the totality of the life of that person. Like it's somebody's entire life being to working at the bureau, you know, as you know. Yeah, it is. It absolutely is, and it's coping with the loss of that identity is one of the hardest things to get through in these situations. I know that from personal experience, and I know that these folks are suffering with that right now, and they will for a while. I had someone asked me recently, like, when does that stop? when when will i not you know feel so weird and bad and uh off you know betrayed about this about the loss of this thing that i was and i said well when it stops from me i'll let you know

yeah so yeah uh mr mire an fbi pilot had recently been singled out on social media by a former agent who outlined his work on a Trump case. Mr. Evans angered Trump supporters who accused him of denying religious exemptions for the coronavirus vaccine when he worked as Deputy Assistant Director for Human Resources at FBI headquarters. In a message informing his colleagues of his departure, Mr. Driscoll acknowledged that he had received little explanation. Quote, last night, I was informed that tomorrow will be my last day in the FBI, the message dread. I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I

currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time. So that was Driscoll's email. And on Thursday, Jensen notified his employees in an email that his employment had been terminated and that he intended to meet his challenge like any other I have faced in this organization with professionalism, integrity, and dignity. Jensen was scheduled to appear at a news conference on Thursday morning with the U.S. attorney for Washington, but he did not appear, and a deputy spoke in his place. asked about his absence. U.S. attorney Janine Piro declined to answer whether he'd been fired. I'm not going to talk about politics today. I'm talking about crime, she said. U.S. attorney, Janine Piro. Yes. Piro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, was confirmed last

Saturday in a 50 to 45 vote. She's been in the job as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia on an acting basis since May. Before then, she co-hosted the Five on Fox News on weekday evenings. The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is a powerful position with a huge staff, budget, and portfolio. Her confirmation came days after the Senate approved the nomination of Emil Bovey, Mr. Trump's former defense lawyer, to serve on a U.S. appeals court. We're in the upside down, Andy. I guess if you drink and you're on Fox News, you get a nice job in the administration.

That seems to be the trend. That seems to be it. Well, we're going to keep an eye on all of this and the Ed Martin investigation, you know, the Wackadagpa, who now is also, we can add special counsel, Wackadagpask. I guess he wasn't whack-a-dag bang much. He has a time to also be the special counsel.

Three jobs now this. Yeah. Yeah, it shows that they just don't have anybody left, which again, I think, is by design. All right, we just have a couple more stories. We'll get to listener questions, but we have to take one last quick break, so everybody stick around.

We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Like I said, just a couple more stories before we get to listener questions. And if you have a listener question, there's a link in the show notes that you can click on that will take you to a form where you can submit your questions to us. Now, this first story comes from the post. The Trump administration pushed to unveil a highly classified document on Russia's interference in the 2016 election after an intense behind-the-scenes struggle over secrecy, which ended in late July when DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, released a minimally redacted version of the report. now this is going back to what we were speaking to a little bit earlier she had released these files and made a criminal referral and that's what the doubt the pan bondi has ordered a grand jury to investigate is based on this but now we're going to talk about the behind the scenes struggle that happened because there were a lot of folks who didn't want this released gabbered with the blessing of trump overrode arguments from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that more of the documents should should remain classified to obscure U.S. spy agencies, sources, and methods.

The document Gabbard ordered released on July 23rd is a 46-page report stemming from a review began in 2017 by majority Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. It takes issue with U.S. intelligence agencies finding earlier that year that Russian President Vladimir Putin developed a preference for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton and aspired to help him win the election. Multiple independent reviews, including an exhaustive bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee, have found that Putin intervened in part to help Trump. Two former CIA officials who led the intelligence agency's assessment told the Washington Post they stood by their sourcing and analysis. So the CIA said, please don't release these documents because you could give away our secrets.

That's right. Yeah, so this is all getting very confusing because people are getting these documents from 2016 thrown at them again. This is not the intelligence community assessment. That's the document that the CIA and FBI and NSA produced in December of 2016 at the request of President Obama to say, here's everything we know about what the Russians did during the election. This is the House Intel Committee who prepared. their report with the purpose of concluding that we were all wrong and Putin doesn't really like Trump. This was a Devin Nunes and Cash Patel production. The problem is they, because it was not

written by, you know, the professionals at the CIA, they referred to the sources, to CIA sources and information in ways that didn't adequately protect those sources. And so naturally you would expect if this thing ever got released, which it should never have been, you would have had to redact a lot of that stuff out to avoid compromising the sources. But of course, the director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, decided, no, let's just let it all out. Very lightly redacted. And who knew President Trump agreed with her side on this one. Yeah, right. Well, I mean, we know who Tulsi Gabbard likes to hang out with and which world leader she admires. And like, honestly, does President Trump care at all about the CIA sources or intelligence generally or the CIA for that matter?

No. And neither does Tulsi Gabbard. What she cares about is President Trump's approval, which has been kind of thin for her in the last couple of months. So anything she can do to work herself back into... The lowest ever, actually, except for one other president. And that was actually Donald Trump in the first term. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. I'm not surprised at all, and I've always been very worried about what kind of spycraft and sources and methods Tulsi Gabbard would let slip. And here we are. Yep. So let's go on to some brighter news. This is from CBS. Ryan Crosswell's campaign for a U.S. House seat features the hallmarks of many traditional political operations. His website shows him in shirt sleeves talking about his military service and growing up in a coal mining town. His campaign video features images of

nearby Pennsylvania community of Pottsville, festooned in red, white, and blue bunting. His campaign advisors circulate copies of a political advocacy group endorsement. Crosswell talks about knocking on doors and meeting voters, one of whom Crosswell said is struggling and may need to sell her house. But unlike many congressional candidates, Crosswell has no campaign experience and has never worked in politics. He's just one of several former Justice Department attorneys and officials seeking public office after resigning from an agency, they say, has been contaminated by politics. Among the wave of resignations and firings of Justice Department prosecutors, administrators, and

career staffers who have resigned or been fired in the first six months of President Trump's second term, some want to resume public service, and now they're exploring different avenues to achieve that. Crosswell's race is also uniquely important. He's running for the Democratic nomination in one of the most competitive and high-impact House races in the country, Pennsylvania's 7th District, which flipped from Democrat to Republican in 2024. Now, he's not the only one. Some of his former colleagues are also seeking elected office, and like Crosswell, none have elected experience or political background, but all of them are openly criticizing recent changes in the Justice Department and talking about why they chose to exit their

careers as career prosecutors. Erica Evans quit her Justice Department position in March, leaving what she said was her dream job, and she's now seeking the Democratic nomination for the Office of City Attorney in Seattle. She's the granddaughter of civil rights figure Lee Evans. who was among the 1968 Olympians who raised their fist in the air during a medal presentation. Evans told CBS News the Trump administration's dismantling of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division was among her motives for leaving the department.

The Seattle primaries are Tuesday, and if Evans wins enough votes, she would proceed to the general election in November. Hattal Doshi rose through the ranks of the Justice Department over more than a decade of service, including as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. She left in January when Mr. Trump was sworn in and is now seeking her first elected office as a candidate in next year's election for Colorado Attorney General. Yeah, and we have Victor Saldago. He decided on election night last year he would prepare to leave his job as an attorney

in the Public Integrity Division, the pin of the Department of Justice. And he soon began pursuing the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor of Virginia. And his campaign effort and his effort won just about 5% of the vote in the June primary, which was not enough to advance to the November general election, but he still did better than he had expected. So I just think it's fascinating that all of these former federal government employees, particularly from the Department of Justice, are now running for office. I think shaking the idea of public service, that's a hard habit to break.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can't stop good people. from trying to do good things. Right. Right. And that's what you have here. Yeah, I agree. All right, it's time for some listener questions.

Again, if you have a question, there's a link in the show notes. You can click on to submit a question to us. Andy, what do we have this week? So we got a lot of questions this week about Galane Maxwell. That's not surprising. So I pulled out two. They're both kind of quick that I thought we could cover briefly here. First one from Mike.

And Mike says, in your episode for August 3rd, you discussed the transfer of Maxwell to a minimum security facility in Texas. Assuming Trump does not pardon her or change her status in any way, if there is a new Democratic administration from the 28 elections, can they move her back to the Florida prison? If you have any thoughts on this, I would appreciate hearing them. I look forward to the podcast every week and have been listening since the start of the Jack Smith Investigations and Prosecutions. Well, thank you, Mike, for listening and for the question. Yeah. I think, you, So I pick this one because it opens the door to this thing that I think most people don't understand.

And that is the role of the prosecutors and therefore kind of, you know, the government in deciding or impacting where people or prisoners are held in the federal system. The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecutes the case. They don't decide where the person is housed. They participate in the pre-sentencing report, which assesses the dangerousness of the person. And that's factored in by the Bureau of Prisons in terms of what. sort of facility that person needs to be in. They can also do things by called putting in separation orders. So if you're a prisoner and you are, let's say you cooperated against a gang member, the U.S. Attorney can say they don't want you held in any facility where there are those gang members

because they might present some sort of danger to you. But they can't really pick where you go. That's kind of an exclusive function within the Bureau of Prisons. So I find, find it kind of unlikely that for political reasons, for kind of retribution-looking reasons, a new Democratic administration would demand that she moved back. But, of course, it's possible she loses the privilege of being in the less secure facility if she engages in some sort of misconduct and is disciplined for that while she's serving her sentence. I don't know. I kind of think that if a new administration comes in, new Bureau of Prisons person comes in, that they may see that the downgrading was inappropriate.

Was inappropriate. Yeah, that's possible. That's possible. And remove the waiver that allowed her to be transferred in the first place. But again, I don't know. Sometimes it is difficult to take things away from someone once you've given them to them. but personally, if it were me, I would do it. I would put her back into maximum security and say, sue me.

Yeah, I mean, she doesn't deserve to be in a minimum security prison. If you're a sex offender, you aren't supposed to be there. And if there was no good reason to waive her status as a sex offender to get her moved there, I don't know that I could continue to justify her being there. Maybe at the very least you could get. all of the complaints from the other prisoners there and the other prisoners who weren't given that consideration and do it based on that.

But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think if an effort like that is initiated from within the BOP, then it could certainly end up that way. I also think that a democratic, the return of a Democrat to the White House would be less likely to result in direction

coming from the White House. house, like, we don't like this person, move them to a worse jail. Like, let's hope that that's the place we get to, right? You know, maybe survivors of Epstein and Maxwell file a complaint with the new attorney general in the Department of Justice. And the Department of Justice refers it to the Bureau of Prisons to take a look at. There are X, Y, and Z good reasons to move her back, and then she gets moved. Yeah, or people in the community in Bryan, Texas, like, we don't feel safe with no walls around this person. That's right. But yeah, I think it would be not necessarily from the White House, but it would be some sort of through a formal complaint process or a review of, if you

were going to review everyone who was in the minimum security prisons, like do just a, hey, we're going to start to review everybody's file who's in a minimum security prison. And then she gets caught up in that, right? And that sort of quality control effort. Do we have all these people in the right places or not. Yeah, and you may want to do that after you take over, you know, from a previous administration, particularly this one, hey, we want to look at all those prisoners that are in minimum security facilities. I think she's going to get a pardon, but, you know, which would erase everything, but that's just my speculation. Well, that's a good question. And it leads us into the next Maxwell related question that we received. This one comes to us from Michelle, who

identifies herself as Michelle, exhausted, but still fighting. So thank you for continuing to fight, Michelle. She says, hi, do you think that the DAG specifically did not ask Maxwell about Donald Trump or any GOP operatives or donors and only asked about Democrats on that list so that he could claim that she did not accuse Republicans of anything and that they are innocent of any wrongdoing? But really, the truth is they just never asked. Well, I think the reason they fired Maury and Comey and didn't have any FBI agents present was so that they could have a little pre-talk with Gillene before they hit the record button and say, here's what you're going to say, and here's what we're offering. And they had that kind of back. And this is just, again, total speculation. And then they made an agreement and then they hit the record button and you heard what you heard or you hear what you're here if they release it. When we talked about this, see, the last week or the week before, before the meeting took place, we talked.

we talked a lot about like how this happens in normal cases where somebody's been convicted, they get a long sentence, then they decide they want to cooperate. It's actually you can do that. It's under the federal rules. And kind of the queen for a day, the proffer agreement, immunity for that one day and the things you say in that room. And I'm sorry that I wasted everyone's time with that. Because what actually happened in this case has nothing to do with that normal lawful process. this was not an effort to actually assess someone who wants to become a cooperator for the United States government. This was a political intelligence gathering mission, period. And now that we know how it happened, there are so many facts that substantiate that opinion of mine,

the fact that there's no FBI agents there. You never ever interview a prisoner without an FBI agent present. One of the many reasons you wouldn't is because if something has said in that proffer that then becomes, you know, the center of a legal issue later, the agent is the witness. If there's no agent there, then one of the prosecutors has to get on the stand and testify as a witness in their own case. And DOJ doesn't ever, ever, ever want that to happen. So I can't even describe to you how out of the ordinary, that is. Speaking of out of the ordinary, the deputy attorney general goes and conducts

almost like a solo conversation with a notorious prisoner. Never, ever happens in any way. It's like the U.S. attorney showing up that the detention hearing of Mr. Abrato. It's bizarre. How about the fact that they're assessing this person to be a cooperator and this person

is someone who cannot possibly be a cooperator because she has no credibility. None, zero. So in order to be a cooperator, you have to be truthful and have, you have to be able to, like, rehabilitate credibility in front of the jury. It's not possible with her. So there's no purpose to this other than finding out what she knows so you can protect the president or maybe go after some of his enemies. And the fact that she got a significant benefit that on paper she absolutely does not deserve, that being the transfer, that tells you everything and, you know, she's already receiving a benefit just for having sat down and talked to this person. And then this week, not that I needed another reason, but they announced that they're going to think about revealing either a transcript or an audio tape of some parts of the conversation.

If they had any, any hope whatsoever of using her as a cooperator, you would never, ever, ever, ever put a statement by the cooperator out before the trial because they could. can be then cross-examined against it. It's just, this is, uh, this is as off base and bizarre and suspicious as it comes. Well, they're banking on not a lot of people knowing what the normal process is supposed to be. And then I think what, Todd Blanche or somebody is, is thinking about going on the Joe Rogan pot because we were like, well, oh yeah, she's not going to be testifying in court. She's not going to testify in front of Congress because they're not going to give her immunity. So how is she going to get her story out there? Apparently Todd Blanche is going to go on Joe Rogan is how the story

Todd Blanche is going to be the mouthpiece of Galane Maxwell on Joe Rogan's part of me like what where do we live in Disneyland? What happened to the world like nothing about this makes sense. That's true that's true. This is not fun

this is we lost the fun one time ago. Look for a fulsome prison blues style presentation of Joe Rogan at the facility in Brian interviewing Gillane Maxwell for an exclusive that will exonerate Donald Trump and, of course, implicate people like Bill Clinton or somebody else that Donald Trump doesn't like. And he might throw a couple of other sort of, you know, obscure bones, red meat to his base by like, I don't know, the Bear Stearns guy or Waxnell or, you know, somebody in Brunel.

else who, you know, maybe people who have passed away so they can't say anything. A good target. Yeah, a good target. Is somebody who they would like to smear. Yep. That won't hurt them or their donors. Yeah. All right.

That's what I see happening. And I do think a pardon is imminent. I really do. Or at least, I think, discussions are underway. And mostly, I think, what they met at the White House for recently. They were supposed to meet at J.D. Vance's house, but I don't think anybody wanted to sit on his couch. they went to the White House and had a discussion. And I think that discussion is about how they're going to smooth over any backlash for a pardon.

That's just my, I have no sourcing on that. That's just my speculation. Let's go roll clock back to the Obama administration, or even I would say the Bush administration, any administration. If it became known in the press that the vice president of the United States convened a dinner or meeting at his with the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI and a few other people for the purpose of discussing the strategy going forward in a criminal investigation that is currently being undertaken by the Department of Justice, people would have been howling such a wildly improper incursion of the White House into the criminal investigative process. Yeah, we talked about

Bill Clinton bumping into Loretta Lynch on the time at Phoenix in 2016. when Hillary was under investigation for her use of a private server and everybody. Yeah, how about the Whitewater files suspiciously found in the White House? Like, oh, my God, a DOJ file ended up in the White House. How did that happen? That's a violation of every post-Watergate reform that we've ever put into place. And they were right when they said that then. Yeah, they were.

But now it's out in the open. It's out in the open. Well, that means it's totally fine when you crime out in the open like that. Anyway, we'll keep an eye on all of it for you. And thanks for your questions. If you have questions, again, link in the show notes, takes you to the form to fill out to submit one to us. And we appreciate you listening,

and we're going to be back in yours next week. And like we say every week, who knows what could happen between now and then, but I'm sure it'll be something to talk about. Yeah, for sure, for all my peeps in the FBI, hang in there. These are dark times, but you're good people and you can get through it. Yeah, and for all my peeps at the VA, same zies.

Sorry about the union bargaining contracts all being canceled, especially for nurses. I mean, anybody, but like nursing unions, whoa. That's picking the wrong fight. For real. Anyway, thanks everybody. We will see you next week. I've been Allison 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 Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reader 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.