Jack - Spy Thriller

Episode Date: October 25, 2026

A Jared Kushner phone hack has revealed hundreds of millions of dollars in slush funds in banks in the Middle East provided by the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.Representative Ilhan Omar’s lawyers claim law enforcement violated judge-ordered restrictions placed on the warrant used to search her DC home.Jack Smith has been subpoenaed in Trump’s defamation case against the BBC. Two former FBI agents have been charged on information for lying to Congress about the Hunter Biden laptop investigation.Plus listener questions.Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT?    Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AGMueller, She Wrote SubstackMueller She Wrote on Blueskyhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodMore from Andrew McCabeThe Real McCabe on [e-mail] on BlueskyThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump This Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you Subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M.SW. Media. A Jared Kushner phone hack has revealed hundreds of millions of dollars in slush funds and banks in the Middle East, provided by the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Representative Ilhan Omar's lawyers claim law enforcement violated judge-ordered restrictions placed on the warrant used to search her D.C. home. Jack Smith has been subpoenaed in Trump's defamation case against the BBC. And two former FBI agents have been charged on information for lying to Congress about the Hunter Biden laptop investigation. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 92 of Unjustified. Woohoo, class of 92. That's me.

Oh, wow. It's Sunday, October 25th, 26, Andy. but with Hunter Biden's laptop and Kushner getting money from MBZ, it feels like 2020 again. Yeah, it's a throwback in the absolute worst way. I love your class of 92 throwback way way than Hunter Biden's laptop, which I kind of felt like, God, if I never hear about this stupid laptop again, it'll be too soon. But unfortunately, it's reared, its ugly head in a particularly vindictive way. I am Andy McCabe, as you know, AG. And man, it just seems. like the crazy factor is just like ramping up as we get closer and closer to this election.

I don't know what's going on in this country, but holy cow. Yeah. I mean, we've got here in California, we've got people being arrested, you know, doors banged down, being taken into custody, handcuffed, bruised up, you know, like roughed up a little bit because they were registered to vote and allegedly aren't citizens, which is not. doesn't seem to be the case in a lot of these cases. So, you know, like at first in Nevada, when they said you have 17,000 non-citizens on your voter rolls. And Nevada's like, well, let's look through the list. And they narrowed it down, DHS narrowed it down to 185 and gave it to Nevada. Nevada looked at the 185, didn't find any. Here in California, rather than go through the list and verify anything, they just started breaking down doors and arresting people.

Yeah, that just reeks of desperation, right? Desperation to please one. person. And I mean, we've seen this time and time again. I think maybe it was New Jersey where they figured out there was some sort of glitch in their system and people were automatically being registered to vote anytime they went in and got a driver's license. And so you have people who are maybe registered and they never actually did anything to get registered. Right. It could have been the person at the DMV making the error. And apparently, you know, I spoke with a retired judge, Diane Wood, and she says, it happens all the time. People are accidentally registered to vote. Have any of these people actually voted, do they have any evidence? Like most of these people have told the,

you know, reporters, I had no idea I was even registered to vote. You'd think I'd be voting all this time if I could. Yeah. There's no chance. A criminal prosecution survives in cases like that. So, God, it's just so sad that people have to deal with it. And then we also have the Alaska lawsuit, right? You know, the two Dan Sullivan's? Yes. Well, all of a sudden, what, a week and a half before the end of the midterm elections, an election day, Donald Trump told, by the way, he told reporters, hell yeah, I ordered the code red. Yeah, he said he told the DOJ to sue Alaska over this. Yeah, of course he did. And once again, his own worst enemy, right?

Trump scores the own goal time and time and time again by saying the quiet part out loud, which is actually helpful for the rest of us to keep track. of what's going on with him. But all right, let's jump into this blockbuster story. Honestly, this one is just unbelievable. And this one's the story about Jared Kushner. It's in variety with a story from CBS on how Kushner is responding. So Jared Kushner is pushing back on a report involving a hacked iPhone, international spies, and billion, not million, billion dollars transfers from foreign governments.

An upcoming book by journalist Matthew Cole claims Kushner, who is President Trump's son-in-law, had access to more than $2 billion in slush money funds from Middle Eastern leaders in an attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy. Wow. I mean, this is. Is Hunter Biden just like cackling right now? I mean, like, come on. He actually tweeted.

He quote tweeted this story and said, but my paintings. It was really good. Now, an excerpt from the book released Thursday details allegations encompassing Kushner's time as a senior White House advisor during the first Trump administration working inside the White House, which included a lead role in U.S. policy in the Middle East. Now, Kushner had a major hand in negotiating key foreign policy deals that involved Israel, the Gulf states, China, and Russia during that period.

And Kushner and his legal team released fiery statements Thursday, night categorically denying all accusations against him. Kushner said the allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened. His attorney called them false and defamatory. Great, sue us. And said they intended to pursue legal action against those responsible, but didn't specify whom and failed to tell anyone that they would immediately drop the case as soon as it got to discovery. That's not part of the article. I added that. It's also important to know that one of the bank account was set up by through, he had to go through Bibi Netanyahu at the Bank of Israel. So it wasn't just UAE of Saudi Arabia.

It was also Israel and Bibi. Nice. The new book, Princes and Thieves, Jared Kushner and Muhammad bin Zayyad's secret plot to remake the Middle East, alleges Kushner had access to billions of dollars in undisclosed foreign bank accounts intended to pay for, quote, influence within the U.S. government. An excerpt from the book that was published in Vanity Fair, but not independent. verified by CBS News, says Dutch intelligence agents learned the Russians had hacked Kushner's phone in 2017 after flipping a Russian spy and subsequently gaining access to Kushner's phone as well.

According to the report, when Kushner used the phone, they could see his screen. Almost as soon as they got inside, the intelligence service began capturing every image of Kushner's screen as he used it. Now, at the time, Kushner served as a senior White House advisor to President Trump, including on Middle Eastern diplomacy. He also had a hard time getting a security clearance. Gee, wonder why. The report alleges Dutch spies witnessed him log into a United Arab Emirates account that had allegedly received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan and claims the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE put at least $2 billion into multiple bank accounts linked to Kushner. including an account with Israel's central bank.

Keep in mind, this is separate from the $2 billion invested in the Saudi investment fund into affinity partners. So we're up to almost $5 billion now. Now, according to the book excerpt, the owners and managers of the accounts were often disguised as official government entities or charities, but the funds were actually intended for, quote, off the book's diplomatic objectives, such as striking a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The report also claims Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman put roughly one billion into at least one account for Kushner, citing a, quote, person with knowledge of the money, saying

its allocation was for Kushner's personal benefit. Kushner forcefully denied the accusations leveled in the Vanity Fair excerpt, writing in part, quote, the allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened. We deny every claim on. On the record, yet the author provided not a single shred of verifiable evidence to substantiate them, he said. No bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, transaction dates, or other verifiable details were provided to support these extraordinary accusations. You know what this reminds me of? Remember when the Intercept reported in 2018 that Mohamed bin Salman boasted to his friends saying, I have Jared Kushner in my pocket.

Hmm. That's what I'm thinking of. Gee, that kind of fits now. But CBS News reached out to the White House. This is great, which referred CBS to statements from Stephen Chung, who is assistant to the president, White House director of communications. Okay. This is the official White House statement. Yeah, here we go.

The bullshit Vanity Fair article comes from a book. that's complete fiction and was fabricated from the warped mind of a failed spy thriller writer. That's the official White House statement. Yeah. I mean, he's perfect. He's perfect for that job at this time, really. Oh, my God. So, yeah, this is unbelievable.

Amazing to me, though, is the whole Russian spy aspect and reverse engineering part of this. this is nuts right first of all it's just a blockbuster story that russia had images and hacked kushner's phone in 2017 yeah although that's not remarkable right we know that the russians and particularly the chinese have been incredibly um productive and successful in penetrating the phones of government leaders even people who follow the government's instructions and use agency phones or what have you and follow the right protocols, the fact that Kushner would have been targeted by the Russians is like so obvious. Like anyone would have known that.

And certainly Kushner should have been aware of that. So like the mechanics behind this absolutely makes sense. And from a counterintelligence perspective. They got the Russian, the Russian spy was coming. to Britain. So they detained him and the Dutch said, you can spend a bunch of years here in Britain in prison or you can flip and be a double spy for us. And then he agreed to that and then went in and gave him like access to the GRU's like super secret. One of its like greatest assets is all of it's the crap that it's hacked from important figures around the world. And in there was Jared Kushner

stuff. And then they used that, the Dutch, used that to river. diverse engineer so they themselves could hack Kushner's phone in 2018. Yeah. I have to be honest with you. Like, even talking about this makes me so uncomfortable because I have to be so careful here. I got to be very, I mean,

I cannot make any mistakes about things like this. But I will tell you that I don't know about the details in this story. We're simply reading the reporting that is publicly available out there. That is what I'm basing this segment on. But I will tell you from my experience, they are, the Dutch service is one of the most forward-leaning, effective, highly capable intelligence services in the world, and particularly in the area of cyber.

Yeah. And I'm really afraid that we've totally pissed them off to the point where they aren't sharing any kind of important information with us anymore. Entirely possible at this point. And what a crime because we had a great relationship with that service that was very, very important to the United States. Yeah. I mean, when we reported, when I was doing the Mueller, she wrote podcast, there was a lot of cooperation with Dutch intelligence in the Mueller investigation and in Crossfire Hurricane and others, which, which we should probably move on and not talk about right now.

She weren't me to miss more shows for a long time. That kind of stuff is just really intriguing to me. Like I loved Pete Strach's first half of his whole book about ghost stories, which turned into the Americans, right? Yeah. Like that kind of stuff. And it's just, it's so sad that it's all just been thrown in the garbage now because nobody trusts us globally.

Yeah, yeah. But the world goes on. And those, those, those, those teams and services that we relied upon and did great work with years ago. They continued to do that, whether they include us or not, is the question. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

All right, well, next up, law enforcement appears to have, just like we thought it might, ignored some judge's orders about the warrant to search Ilhan Omar's house. We'll be right back to talk about that. Stick around. All right, everybody, welcome back.

We have an update on the Ilhan Omar investigation. This is from the Washington Post. lawyers for Representative O'Han Omar, Democrat of Minnesota on Friday, accused federal authorities of ignoring key restrictions that a judge placed on the search of the lawmakers' D.C. residents this week and demanded the immediate return of all the property that was seized from the home. So this is a little different from Donald Trump demanding all his class stolen classified documents be returned, right? Because these items actually belong to the Congresswoman. And the letter sent to Justice Department prosecutors, attorneys Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz condemned the investigation

into Omar's immigration history as a politically motivated attack on one of President Trump's chief critics, saying, quote, it violates Representative Omar's constitutional rights and threatens the separation of powers. They have also alleged that investigators did not follow specific instructions that a U.S. magistrate judge imposed on how the search should be carried out as they descended upon Omar's residents in Northeast Washington on Monday, according to a copy of their letter obtained by the Washington Post. Among the restrictions the attorneys said agents did not follow were provisions requiring investigators to provide Omar's lawyers with a copy of the warrant

and to contact the House Office of General Counsel before carrying out the search. That would have given Omar the chance to consult with congressional attorneys on any legislative work product that might have been exempt from federal seizure. her lawyers said. Now the Post is reported that Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the U.S. immigration and customs enforcement, is investigating whether Omar, 44 years old, or members of her family may have lied on decades-old immigration paperwork to secure legal status and eventually U.S. citizenship. Well, before signing off on the warrant, a federal magistrate judge expressed concerns that the agent's actions could run afoul of constitutional

protections shielding members of Congress from unwarranted executive branch intrusion. The warrant remains under court seal. Several news organizations, including the post, have petitioned U.S. magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh to make it public, and multiple people familiar with the document have told the post that the limits imposed appeared intended to ensure that the warrant fell in line with the D.C. court's interpretation of the speech or debate clause in the Constitution. That's the thing that protects lawmakers' legislative work product from unfounded scrutiny from federal prosecutors. Yes. In their letter Friday, Omar's attorney said the warrant required federal prosecutors to advise the congresswoman of those, quote, speech and debate protections and ask her to waive them.

The lawyers maintain that that did not happen, and that agents executing the search prevented Omar from contacting legal counsel for more than an hour after the search had begun. Wow. Yeah. So they and I, you know, if you watch that kind of, relatively long form interview with Elhan Omar and Chris Hayes, he asked her about that. And she said, yeah, they presented me with a piece of paper asking me if I wanted to waive

my speech or debate clause privilege. And I refused to sign that, even though she didn't get to speak to her lawyer for about an hour into the search. They didn't inform Congress. So they violated all sorts of. it sounds to me this is a pretty cut and dry case of fruit of the poisonous tree. Like if you find any evidence and you circumvented a judge's restrictions on the search warrant, even if what you got doesn't fall under the speech or debate clause,

you still didn't do it right in the first place. Does that make sense? It does. It does. I mean, the problem here, well, there's so many problems here. You can look at it different ways, right? if the judge sees this primarily as a violation of the judge's direction, then that likely would not lead to a complete suppression of all of the evidence that was collected. But if the judge sees it as a fundamental violation of Omar's constitutional rights, then it could, as you've invoked the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, says everything you got in a search that was unconstitutional. all gets suppressed. So yeah, I mean, this is a problem. And it's so easily avoided with a basic level of competence and professionalism and ethics on the part of the agents who were there and the prosecutors who were directing them. And it just comes, I mean, from these reports, it just seems

like none of the most basic things were done. And these are HSI agents. I don't imagine there's too many members of Congress be that are generally investigated by HSI. I can't think of a single one. I mean, these investigations of members of Congress are so rare, and I can't think of a single time. It's always the FBI. Always. Always the FBI.

In concert with somebody pretty high up at Maine Justice if you're investigating a member of Congress. It's incredibly rare for the FBI to do it. And to do a search warrant at a congressperson's, a member of Congress's house, you would have like no question the deputy attorney general would be down in the weeds on exactly how that was going to happen when it was going to happen how the tank teams were structured who was going to go who's going to oversee it who's going to answer questions that come up on the scene because that happens a lot as well like you this thing would have been up and down the chain a hundred times

and approved by some very high ranking people it doesn't look like any of that happened here which is just shocking not surprising Or maybe not shocking. Not shocking at all, I guess. That was dumb. Well, you know, I mean, it's all of the stuff that makes a really good investigation take a really long time. Yeah. You know, you have to make sure that especially if you're going after high-level people, like a member of Congress or an ex-president, you know, or a governor or something.

You have to, there's a million things that have to be in place and you can't screw it up or you risk the case. And that's why I don't think this case will go anywhere. You're absolutely right. You know that as an agent. You know this thing is going to get challenged in every possible direction. If you do one thing wrong, they're going to find it and they're going to use that to throw the whole thing out. And like to go into this without having that level of care and scrutiny and it's just it's just incredibly stupid. Yeah, it's pretty bonkers. Also, there's a couple other investigations going on. We covered them a little bit on the Daily Beard. this week. We've got Corey Lewandowski, who's apparently under investigation. I think it probably has something to do with his consulting firm he set up in the Department of Homeland Security, where you had to pay him like $15 million in order to have your government contract renewed or to get a new government contract. You had to hire his firm as a consultancy. And of course, Donald Trump, when asked about it, he was like, well, you know,

He almost said, like, you can't take, remember in, what was the movie where the guys were skimming off the top in Kansas over in Vegas? Was it, it was some guest. What's the one, Joe Pesci in Vegas? Casino, maybe? Yeah, Casino. Maybe Casino. So he was basically like Lewandowski's grifting off my grift and we can't have that now, can we? That's like, it's almost that.

He's wet in his beak. Yes. He was like, well, don't take. He didn't say don't steal from the American people. He said, don't steal from me. Isn't that insane? Because the American people don't exist for him. It's only him that matters.

It's our tax dollars that pay those contracts. Yeah. It's bonkers. And his girlfriend is also tied to an investigation. Remember when Christy Noam real quick, the final hour she was as secretary. of Homeland Security, bought like five shitty planes at like three times market price from a bunch of her donor rich friends?

Who does that? With our tax dollars? Yeah. Only one person does that on the way out the door. The person who needs to make sure that that contract happens before they are there, the clock runs out for them. Why would you need that to happen? I don't know, maybe because some massive percentage of the contract was coming back to you.

I don't know. I'm not saying she did that. You're going to get a kickback. Like, you bought a $20 million jet for $100 million using government money on your way out the door. And you're not going to get a dime? Probably not. I mean, come on. It's such the obvious possibility. I don't know what it happened. I'm not saying it did.

So again, she's wet in her beak. She's wet in her beak at Trump's grift. So she's under investigation. I mean, I think one of my biggest surprises in this story, was that it came from a referral from Joseph Kafari. Right. The really corrupt guy who shouldn't be an inspector general. The guy who basically said, okay, to the Secret Service.

And they're like, we don't have any text message records from January 6. Okay. No problem there. And then failed to tell Congress for eight months until after the Records Act expired. Yeah. That's that guy. This thing has got to be awful in such an obvious way. that he was like, I'm sorry.

Even I have to refer this. Like, are you kidding? You're supposed to at least create a shell company for your shenanigans, sir. Try Wyoming. Like, anyway. He's like, this is embarrassing, okay? But, wow. Yeah, when Kufari thinks you've gone too fary.

All right. Sorry, that was really. The Kufari Safari. I mean, this could go on all day. And also the. Department of Justice Inspector General, who is no longer Horowitz, because Horowitz moved to the Federal Reserve, probably to try to get Jerome Powell in trouble. Yeah, exactly. But the IG, you know, Normaizen and Davy Hearn's attorneys, Olympia Davey Hearn, the reflecting pool guy, who's got all of his charge dismissed with prejudice, which is pretty rare because they were so stupid.

And there's such a huge threat of them to bring them again, even though there's no evidence. in fact, contra evidence, exculpatory evidence. And so the lawyers for Davy asked the Department of Justice IG, could you look into the why this all went down the way that it did? Possible corruption looks horrible. We would like you to look into that. And the DOJIG is refusing to do that. So if we want an investigation of that, we'll have to wait until 2029 or see if maybe Congress

can do it. But they're not going to get any documents from this Congress will not get any documents from this government. No. No. Only from whistleblowers. Yeah. Yes. All right.

Coming up next, Donald Trump is big, big mad. He's big mad that Jack Smith is going to be deposed in his defamation lawsuit against the BBC. He sued the BBC. This is his lawsuit. Okay. He's really mad. Jack Smith is going to be deposed. over his actions, over what Trump did on January 6th.

Do you think Jack Smith might have I know a thing or two about Trump on January 6th? He knows a thing or two, or I should say, everything or two. A thing or two terabytes. Yeah. Let's go. Anyway, we're going to talk about that right after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back.

All right, everybody, welcome back. This story is glorious. It's from law and crime. the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, and Donald Trump's lawyers are clashing again in the president's defamation lawsuit, this time over whether to subpoena Jack Smith for a deposition. The former special counsel who prosecuted then candidate Trump in the January 6th and Mara Lago classified documents cases, only for those cases to be tossed out both before and after Trump's 2024 election win has only, quote, irrelevant testimony to offer the BBC. That's what court documents detailing. Trump's position said on Monday. All of his testimony is irrelevant. His testimony might be a lot of things, but irrelevant is not one of them. All right. The BBC last week urged the Southern District of

Florida to set a discovery hearing to force the president to provide possible dates to sit for a deposition himself before discovery closes. Now, months of requests to the Trump's lawyers to set a deposition date have proved fruitless, making the motion to compel a matter of necessity for a robust defense, the BBC said. The BBC added that the president's participation in this case, or lack thereof, resembled what happened in his breach of contract lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, in New York, which ultimately settled. And on Monday, the BBC's attorneys separately filed a notice describing the, quote, matters of national importance that Trump cited to support his unavailability for an October 16 deposition in his own $10 billion lawsuit, which nobody forced him to file.

As the BBC now knows, on October 16th, the plaintiff attended and addressed a campaign rally in Dalton, Georgia, alongside plaintiff's favored candidates in Georgia's upcoming Senate and gubernatorial election. A notice said. Plaintiff subsequently traveled to his resort club and residence at Marlago for a Republican National Committee fundraising event. So that's the BBC's lawyers describing the, quote, matters of national importance that Trump cited to dodge the deposition date of October 16th. Nationally important to go to Marlago and eat well-done steak with ketchup with your Republican donor friends. Yeah, sounds delicious. Now, according to Trump's attorneys, the BBC admitted its out-of-order edit of certain portions of his January 6th speech in the panorama documentary, Trump, a second chance, gave the, quote, mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action that day, making Smith's testimony entirely irrelevant. Quote, although the court's prior orders state that the defendant is entitled to discover the contours of the message and impressions behind Trump.

speech, the defendant is not entitled to relitigate and discover every aspect of the events of January 6, 2021. Yes, you can. You filed a lawsuit. It's got nothing to do with the criminal case, my friend. Yeah, full on. So you have no right to discover every aspect of the events of January 6th and seek discovery from any and all individuals who might have knowledge regarding the day's events. Yeah, you actually can if you're the defendant. Yeah. Civil court, very different from criminal court. I can pick whatever witnesses I need to defend my case, sir. Civil discovery is huge. You can go anywhere. And when you're in a deposition, like he's trying to desperately avoid being in one, you get asked tons of questions.

And the most you can do is object to a question that you think is irrelevant or off topic or whatever. But after you object, then you have to answer it. That's how it works. Your objection preserves your objection for the record, and you can litigate the issue later to keep that thing out of the trial or what have you. But you got to sit there and answer every question first. And here's the funny part. Trump's lawyer said, quote, because Jack Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding Trump's speech or his state of mind. Put a pin in that. What?

That's all Jack Smith knows, I think. That's like 90% of what's in his brain right now. is Caitlin Clark and Trump's state of mind on January 6th. It was his whole case. I mean, could you argue that there's anyone who knows more than Jack Smith knows about what Trump said, did, thought, tried to do on January 6th? No.

Who would know more than that? Besides Trump, no. And Trump probably doesn't even know. The guy who indicted him for it twice? Yeah. The only evidence that Smith would be able to offer through his testimony. would likely be inadmissible. Inadmissible evidence in a civil,

what are you talking about? It ain't inadmissible in a deposition. It's all admits. You can argue that other inadmissible, nonsensical thing later at the actual trial that you'll have to sit through. Oh, that'll be funny. It won't get there. All right.

So the BBC frustrated that it still has not been able to depose and does not even have a schedule to depose the most central figure in the case. answered that, quote, none of Trump's arguments for blocking the deposition of Mr. Smith can possibly withstand scrutiny. Quote, plaintiff cannot seriously dispute the injustice of blocking Mr. Smith's testimony, the filing went on,

adding that it is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source on these issues than Mr. Smith, who spent years gathering evidence on those topics with the force of the Justice Department and the power of the grand jury behind him. Just like you said, is there anyone with more knowledge? This is like the perfect, like, defense witness. If there's someone who knows more than Jack Smith, I want that person on our pod.

Yeah, for real. Geez. Next, it says, given that Trump chose to file the case and the obligations of civil litigation still applied to him, the BBC said, he cannot commit the fundamental injustice of preventing the BBC from obtaining the evidence it needs to robustly defend itself on every element of his claim, including the plaintiff's burden to prove falsity. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lett last week set a discovery hearing at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, also warning that a continued lack of participation or failure to maintain strict

compliance with existing discovery orders will lead to sanctions. Let's hope. sanctioned because he refuses to sit. So the judge did order him to sit for a deposition, Donald Trump, in his own lawsuit by December 11th because he's been pushing back against having to do it. But after they filed that, you know, you read a little piece of that where they were like, oh, you had your big Mar-a-Lago dinner and a Georgia rally. Ooh, okay, super busy, huh? Doing president stuff. Yeah. I think he's going to pull the plug on the whole thing.

Oh, of course he will. I can't possibly go through with this. He made a mistake. Like, the BBC doesn't care about currying favor with him, unlike networks here and law firms here and everybody else here who has to live with his mendacity. The BBC is like, no, we're not folding. So they're going to push this thing as hard as they can. And, I mean, they're getting great press out of it, which is terrific for them.

They're a news network. So, yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't see. see a good ending for our for our boy trump here no and why would he want to go through discovery on january 6th that would uh anyway um we have a another story coming up about hunter biden's laptop super sorry this is happening again but it looks like uh jeanine piero has um not yet gotten an indictment from a grand jury but is certainly charged on information a couple of former FBI agents who testified to Congress in the matter. And it seems like a pretty bunk set of charges to me. We'll talk about it after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back.

Okay, next up from NPR, the Justice Department has charged two former FBI employees with making false statements to Congress in connection with the Bureau's investigations into Hunter Biden and his laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Now, full disclosure, Allison, I know. these people. I know Nikki Flores very well, and I also know Bradley Benevides. So just wanted to throw that out there. So the NPR story continues. Bradley Benavides and Nikki Flores each face a single criminal count stemming from testimony before lawmakers in 2023. The pair who held senior positions on the FBI's now defunct Foreign Influence Task Force both turned themselves in and made their initial court appearance on Friday morning in Washington, D.C.

The new prosecution is the latest politically fraught case to be brought by the Justice Department since Trump returned to the White House. It dredges back up the bizarre saga surrounding former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his various legal troubles that featured throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, many of which were manufactured. Hunter Biden's laptop was the subject of intense scrutiny after the New York Post, ladies and gentlemen, the New York Post reported weeks before the 2020 presidential election that a device was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in 2019

and then obtained by Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Republicans have long accused the FBI of mishandling the laptop. The fake laptop that the Russians helped them put together. Oh my goodness. The laptop of the investigations into the younger Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was convicted on federal gun charges. and later pled guilty to separate tax offenses, Joe Biden signed a full and unconditional pardon for his son in December of 2024.

In a statement on X, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Janine Piro, said Flores and Benevides, quote, allegedly lied to Congress about their roles in the FBI's Hunter Biden investigations, with one claiming they only learned about it from Wikipedia, despite evidence showing their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden's laptop right before the election. prosecutors charge Benevides and Flores by criminal complaint, which means prosecutors have yet to secure an indictment from a grand jury. Good luck with that. Under the second Trump administration, grand juries in the nation's capital and other cities have refused on several occasions to return indictments in high-profile politically charged cases.

Yeah, and at a court hearing Friday morning, magistrate Judge Zia Faruqi noted that both of the defendants have, quote, sparkling backgrounds in federal law enforcement. and were longtime dedicated public servants, he also noted that charging them by criminal complaint for conduct that is quite old is unusual. Benevides, 56, Flores, 46 are due back in court for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday. In a statement, Flores' attorney called her a patriot who served as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the attorney went on, the Justice Department has accused her fault. falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts. It's no coincidence.

The government is filing these nonsense charges now years later on the eve of an election. Yeah, I got to say here, I mean, Nikki Flores worked with me for years in counterterrorism. And during that time, I came to rely on her more heavily than just about any other person. any other analyst in our wildly overworked, stressed, essential team that was trying to keep Al-Qaeda and ISIS and other groups from attacking us in the homeland and overseas. And Nikki became, was so important to that effort because of her integrity, her work ethic, her dedication, she became an absolute expert on the actors, the operators,

the terrorists, who we were desperately looking for and building cases against to protect the American people. And the idea that Nikki Flores would have made some sort of intentional misrepresentation of Congress is absolutely unthinkable to me. I don't know what they're talking about. I've read the complaint and the nonsense about Hunter Biden's laptop. It's like, this thing is back again. It's just crazy. I read that complaint too, and I can't really make sense of what they're even saying. It goes on and on and on about meetings people had about what they clearly thought was Russian misinformation. That's what the foreign influence task force was supposed to do. Find foreign governments that were sending false intelligence in our direction for the

purpose of influencing our elections. And I don't know all the details about what happened here, but I would point out that that laptop and everything around it and everyone who touched it or heard about it or thought about it in the FBI, this stuff was investigated for years, right? And let's remind ourselves what Hunter Biden was charged with in relation to that laptop. The answer is nothing. Right. There's never. Because it was a Russian disinformation campaign.

And Alexander Smyranov fabricated that $5 million bribe thing. he went to prison, but I think he's out now walking around. I don't even know where he is. They had to prosecute their own source. I think the official statement by Director Ray in testimony on the Hill eventually was like, we know that the laptop had some of Hunter Biden's legitimate his material or data on it, but it also had other material and data on it that we can't. Well, that's what you do to make it look like Hunter Biden's laptop as you hack his stuff

and put some of his stuff on there. make your own laptop. It's just got crayon drawing on the screen that says that belongs to Hunter Biden. And they're not being charged with having been deep state operatives trying to rig an election. She and Bradley are not being charged with anything like that. It's another one of these asinine perjury traps. They're going back to some testimony that they made in 2023 and saying, oh, it was wrong. Now we're going to like, again,

I say this to any person who worked in those days and anything you think is sensitive, do not help. Don't say anything. Don't be interviewed. Don't be interviewed. Don't be interviewed. Don't testify. You cannot trust the Department of Justice to do their work these days with dignity and clarity and in full faith consistently with the law. That is that very sad conclusion that we've had to come to.

And they are going to try to trap you in one of these stupid cases, do whatever you can to protect yourself. Agreed. So the post-reported Hunter Biden's laptop showed wrongdoing by then Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who subsequently won the election. Some of the data, as you said, was later ascertained to belong to Hunter Biden. House Republicans subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry into President Biden that went absolutely nowhere in a Republican. in a Republican-controlled Congress, focus on Hunter Biden's business dealings at the time his father was vice president,

but no evidence has ever been presented that Joe Biden financially gained from his son's business activities, or vice versa. The complaint alleges that Benavides and Flores both had real-time knowledge of the Hunter Biden investigation, including into his laptop,

in their top posts on the Foreign Influence Task Force. But in interviews with the House Judiciary Committee, in 2023, both of them allegedly lied about their knowledge and involvement in those investigations. Those purported false statements were material to the committee's investigation. The complaint says because they allowed both Benavides and Flores to, quote, escape further questioning about Hunter Biden, which hindered the panel's investigation, which was going nowhere. Yeah. So I don't know how they get over the materiality requirement. That is just lame. I don't know where at this, but like, Come on, DOJ. Let's see the proof.

Like, this is absurd. Yeah, for reals. All right. Well, I wanted to make sure we got to that story before we got to hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. That's right, everybody. It's your favorite segment. Hit me in the head with a bat.

And today it's brought to you by Judge Reyes. Or rather, a complaint filed by the Justice Department about Judge Reyes being really, really mean in the East Potomac Golf Course case. Now, as you know, I mean, it's kind of been back and forth, right? There was a hearing in which she pretty, she excoriated the Department of Justice lawyers for felling 400 trees in violation of her temporary restraining order saying you can't continue with work on the golf course. And there was then the DOJ filing to have her recuse herself because she's clearly biased against, you know, these DOJ lawyers. She's biased against our malfeasance. Because she's so yelly. She's just so mean. And she comes into court in the next hearing that morning and says, no, it's denied. Your motion is denied. I'm not recusing myself. And she brought up, I listened to the hearing. She brought up in several places in the hearing. Have I erased my voice? Have I yelled at all today? Anyone? You know, like she was like being really interesting about it. And so they filed a complaint. They say appendix A, this is the Department of Justice. To this court's.

local civil rules. Incorporate the DC Bar's principles of general applicability, lawyers duties to other council parties and the judiciary, local civil rule appendix A. Those principles also set forth judges' duties to lawyers, including we will be courteous, respectful, and civil to lawyers, parties, and witnesses. We will maintain control of the proceedings, recognize that judges have both the obligation and the authority

to ensure that judicial proceedings are controlled. with dignity, decorum, and courtesy. And then they cite a bunch of news stories about how she yelled at him for, you know, defying their court order. But I just thought I was like, man, you really got a file a notice to a judge who won't recuse herself just saying, stop being mean. Like, wow. Stop pointing out all the bad things we did.

Oh, geez, Louise. Yeah. Unbelievable. unbelievable. That is, yeah, please hit me in the head with a bat. All right, everybody, it's time for listener questions. If you have any questions, there is a link in the show notes. You can click on and fill out a little form and submit your questions to Andy and me. And we love to go through them and just always super thoughtful questions. So what do we have today, Andy? All right. So this one comes to us from sure. Another person who answered the

question, would you like to include your name by saying essentially yes? So Sure says, did not like put their name, but that's okay. Sure, I get it. It confuses me too. Okay, so sure says, love the podcast. You and Andy always provide such good insight. You do always mention how the DOJ brings suits against Trump's enemies to cause them financial and time hardships. The question is, can defendants against these bogus DOJ suits request, that the government reimburse them for lawyers fees, etc. I know it would be us, the people paying for it, but it might dissuade some of these government attorneys from filing these aggressive actions. Thanks for all you both do. It's a great question. It's not quite as easy as it seems.

The first thing that defendants can do, like, first of all, you have to win, right? You have to get the case dismissed or, or you You have to defeat them in court, and then you can apply for sanctions against the attorneys and the party. In this case, it would be the government, obviously. But those are very— Do sanctions include, like, reasonable attorney's fees, like you were saying? It can. It can. It's obviously a—it's a finance—you know, it's kind of—they're issued in a one number, right?

But the way judges figure out what are they going to award you sanctions for can be based on an assessment of how much your legal fees costs and all that, those sort of things. It's not specifically typically like stated in the order that you're getting this much for attorney's fees and this much for like damages or what have you. But it could certainly compensate for attorney's fees. But it's a tough thing to prove judges are really. as we've seen a million cases, right, on this pod where you feel like, wow, this person should get sanctions against these prosecutors or against this plaintiff or whoever it is. And it very rarely ever happens. I think that's a testament to how conservative judges are about not being irresponsible with sanctions, because when you go too far in that direction, you start to

chill people's desire and willingness to go to court and stand up for themselves. So there's a real balance there that the judiciary is usually pretty sensitive about trying to maintain. Yeah, that makes sense. That would, yeah, same answer. Because I remember a recent case criminally where the DOJ didn't argue. You know, every time somebody asks for attorney's fees from the Department of Justice, the Department of Justice always argues against having to pay those attorney's fees,

but they didn't argue in, I think it was the Hearn case, maybe because it was so egregious. They were just like, do you remember what case it was, Andrew? I don't. I can't, but it was like, that's the first time we've seen them, the DOJ just roll over and say, yeah, we'll pay the fees. Yeah, yeah. I mean, get used to it. You start practicing law the way they do get used to it.

All right, I got one more quick one for you. if you have a second. This one comes to us from Jackie. And Jackie says, this is questions for Andrew, but I want to hear what you think about it, AG. She says it's 2029. There's a Democratic president in the White House and you're now placed in charge of the FBI.

What are your immediate priorities and actions you'll need to take to return the FBI to the agency at what once was? I spent so much time thinking about this, Jackie, I got to tell you, it's a major issue for me. First of all, I don't think there's, there's no going back. There's no becoming the agency you were. The agency has gone through this experience, and what they need to do is learn from it

and be better and stronger and more independent as they go forward. So I think that's the goal. I think you cannot, the next leader of the FBI has got to address this problem of the people who were hired during this administration. People who came in with prior law enforcement experience and basically hardly went to Quantico for any FBI training. People who spent their developmental years walking a footbeat with cops in D.C. Instead of actually doing federal investigations, I think those employees have to be evaluated on an individual level and subjected when necessary to things like retraining or removed from the roles, if that is called for. I know that's controversial.

No FBI director wants to do that. But this time has got to be accounted for and you got to make sure that you're moving forward with the workforce you need, not the one you got stuck with. Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. I say every single person that was hired during the administration just gets re-evaled, okay?

Yeah. And every political appointee out. Gone. Out. There are very few in the FBI. That's easy there. director. Generally, you don't fire a director of the FBI when you come in to office. Generally, you leave them there for 10 years. Sometimes you leave them there for 14 or 12 if you get approval,

special approval to do it. If you're the first one. But he's got to go. He's got to go. I know the institutionalist. Oh, that's, you know, you're further eroding. No, we're beyond that now. This is a cancer. You got to remove it. You can't further erode the, trust in the Department of the FBI from where it is right now in my opinion. Totally. And plus, I want it also to be done loudly and with vigor. Yeah, and it's got to be individual. It's got to be careful.

There may be people who are fine. Oh, sure. They stay or people who just need a little bit of what the organization never gave them. The experience is training. Eight weeks of Quantico training that they took away. Yeah, exactly. But others who will say, I'm not going to subject myself to that. Okay.

You go? All right. All we're doing is like making sure you got a actual background check and that you were vetted. Yeah, yeah, for real. Per the usual standards. Yeah. All right. That's a good question.

Yeah. It feels good to think about, honestly. Yeah. I think there are people already think, I hope. that there are smart people already thinking about these things and discussing ways to do it. Brennan Center doing some tabletop stuff. It's fraught with all sorts of legal peril. And so I'm not saying that it's easy or uncontroversial or anything like that,

but I think it's got to happen. Well, fortunately, the appointees can easily be removed. That's not a problem. It's the civil servants, although a lot of protections against civil service under this administration have been ignored. no one in a new in a 2029 OMB is going to be trying to traumatize anyone. They're just going to be letting people. That's all. Yeah.

you know, three and a half, that's fucking, the last decade, that it's hard to say, this is a really standout story, but this is a really standout. This is a big one. It is. And it's crazy because, you know, we both track these things closely all week. And I'm always kind of thinking like, oh, that might be a good one. That might be a good one. And then all of a sudden, at the end of the week, it's slammed with like, oh, my God,

we have to talk about this. So, yeah, another bonkers week. And, you know, it's not going to get any less bonkers as we're. get closer to election day. So stay tuned. Yeah, I had big stories on Trump's election fraud task force that found no election fraud, that they turned into the weaponization arm of the Department of Justice. We didn't get a chance to get to that. The race is on for Trump staffers to hire lawyers because they are, you know, they know that Congress is going to flip. So now everybody's making attorneys, get attorneys, MAGA, everybody's lawyering up. You know, I wanted to talk about that.

But then we got hit with this Kushner thing and the two FBI, you know, your pals at the FBI that are charged on information. They haven't even been able to get a grand jury to indict. And it's like, man, it's getting to the point where it's been an extraordinarily busy last news week or new two weeks. But it's getting to the point where we got a stuff ends up on the cutting room floor. Yep, it does. It does. It does. Unavoidable. But we catch most of it.

covered somewhere. They'll get covered on the beans. They'll get covered. You'll hear it on one of my 15 shows, I promise. Just keep tuning in. It never ends. Anyway, thank you so much, my friend, and thanks to all the listeners. I can't wait to see some of our patrons on election night. I know, Andy, you can't make it. You have a little bit of a travel restriction going on, but I'm going to be a lot. Not a legal one.

They took his passport and they put an ankle monitor on him. No comment. No comment. But I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of the patrons. Harry Dunn will be there, and we've got a lot of other special guests that are going to be joining us too. Nice. Yeah, very cool. All right, everybody.

We'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to Unjustified. I'm 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.