Jack - The Grand Conspiracy

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

European prosecutors investigating Epstein coconspirators say the US Department of Justice has ignored requests for assistance.Joe DiGenova abruptly resigned from his post at the US Attorney's office in Miami where he was investigating the non-existent grand conspiracy against Donald Trump. The contractor that renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has told the Trump administration that errors in its own work and flaws in the repair plan, not vandalism, caused the pool’s new blue liner to peel and break loose.The chief of the Civil Rights Division at Main Justice has sent 29 letters to secretaries of state ordering them to preserve 2024 election materials and informing them that they’re under investigation. Plus listener questions.Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT? Shop Mint Unlimited Plans at MINTMOBILE.com/UNJUST   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. European prosecutors investigating Epstein co-conspirators say the U.S. Department of Justice has ignored requests for assistance. Joe de Genova abruptly resigned from his post at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, where he was investigating the non-existent grand conspiracy against Donald Trump. The contractor that renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has told the Trump administration that errors in its own work and flaws in the repair plan, not vandalism, caused the pool's new blue liner to peel and break loose. And the chief of the Civil Rights Division at Maine Justice has sent 29 letters to secretaries of state, ordering them to preserve 2024 election materials and informing them that they're under investigation. This is unjustified.

Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 86 of Unjustified. Uh-oh, 86. Do you think we're going to get indicted? It clearly means kill that. podcast. Yeah. It's Sunday, September 13th, 2026. I'm Allison Gill. Oh, we're off to a good start already, and I'm Andy McCabe. All right. So we're going to dive right in here. We're still waiting on a ruling from the judge in the Davy Hearn case after the hearing last week that Adam Klausfeld told us about. That was awesome having Adam on. Thank you again, Adam. Now, the judge is deciding whether or not to dismiss the charges against herne with or without prejudice.

And we're keeping an eye on the docket as we're recording this. But new documents have emerged in the case. Now, A.G., this one comes from New York Times. They reported just this past Friday that the contractor that renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has told the Trump administration that errors in its own work and flaws in the repair plan, not vandalism, caused the pool's new blue liner to peel and break loose according to government documents. Now, I know that this sounds like we've heard this before, but this is actually new.

I think we were all just assuming. But I think those came, those revelations came from internal documents from the Department of the Interior. This is coming from the actual contractor. President Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals, wielding dives at box gutters, cutting 300-foot slits, violence slits, which was my new punk band name, for damage to the pool's American flag blue liner, even after the Justice Department dropped the charges that it had brought against the people accused of vandalizing the national landmark. But the documents, these documents, which have not been previously reported, make clear that the contractor,

Atlantic industrial coatings found problems in both the design and the execution of the renovation. The documents include Atlantic's reports on the government, as well as daily progress updates from the National Park Service over the past two months. Atlantic blames its own errors in a report dated August 14 and then provided more details on September 2nd, the documents show. Now, the Justice Department, which had charged several people with vandalizing the pool in early July, began moving to dismiss the cases on July 31st. Because of, quote, human oversight, workers in some areas did not spray enough of the primer that made the layers of the liner stick together, Atlantic said, in the documents. But the bigger problem, the company said, was that the repair plan laid out in the contract called for the layers of liner to include two chemicals that turned out to be incompatible. I hate it when that happens with your liners. Especially when that's your one job.

I didn't. The chemical on top reached a temperature hotter than what the compound underneath could withstand. And the heat caused the bottom layer to blister and come loose. That's shown by the documents, apparently. The contractor said it had not expected that outcome because it was very uncommon to mix the two products in that way. It sounds like any bad relationship I've ever heard about before. Why would you do it then? And do you have any scientists that work?

So first time, I guess, using these compounds together. Maybe you should have tried it in a slightly smaller place. I don't know. Just guessing. I mean, was this your first time? Coding a pool? Anyway, the failure illustrates the consequences of the Trump administration's rushed effort to renovate the pool this spring.

In a hurry to finish the work before the nation's 250th birthday on the 4th of July, the government bypassed competition and gave Atlantic a no-big contract to carry out an untested approach designed in part by the general manager of one of Mr. Trump's golf clubs. And I have to wonder, remember when they drained the pool at Mara Lago and it flooded the server room where the evidence was? Was that because the lining of the pool was coming up? Allegedly, yes. Yes, I'm going to say it was the pool liner's fault. Yes, that's why we did that. Man, I was so sad that case got to. I really wanted to find out if they tried to drain the pool into that server room on purpose.

The government has agreed to pay Atlantic $14.7 million for its work. The contractor said it will repair the pool, which is under warranty. Again, hopefully at no cost. I mean, how much does that company wish it had never answered the phone the day the administration called and asked about a pool? Do you do that? Do you guys do pool work? Well, they got $15 million for something that probably is a $2 million job. So, you know, they're probably laughing all the way to the bank right now.

Even if you have to do it twice, it's still not worth $15 million. It's still they blow through $13 million on the repair. I don't know. But the pool is still drained, and repairs appear to be ongoing. On Thursday, the pool was full of workers. And by full of workers, we don't mean full of workers swimming and frolicing in a pool, as you would normally imagine. Some were seen tearing up large strips of blue lining, while another sprayed a new layer of coating,

as a man in a shirt reading, Atlantic Coast inspection watched. The documents show that to redo the repairs, Atlantic said it would use a smaller team of workers that would be closely supervised. That was a good idea. And that it would consult an advisor from the manufacturer of the compounds used in the liner. The manufacturer, rhino linings, and I know I did not make that up, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its chief executive Pierre Gagnon said in a June statement that the peeling liner was, quote, limited to isolated areas of the pool. Rhino linings, Republican in name only linings.

There you go. Okay, very cool. The documents also show that Atlantic did blame vandals for cuts in the cocking around the pool's edge that the National Park Service workers had previously reported to the police. But the company didn't link those cuts to the peeling of the blue liner on the pool's floor. Yeah, because there are several feet away in a totally different material and weren't even in the water, which Trump repeatedly blames on, quote, sick people wielding knives or razors. Federal prosecutors acted on the president's claims on July 2nd when they announced the indictment of Davy Hearn, former Olympic canoeist accused of pulling up a piece of the liner on a felony vandalism charge.

But in a remarkable reversal a few weeks later, prosecutors sought to dismiss the charges against Mr. Hearn and three others accused of vandalizing the landowners. Mark. Janine Piro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, wrote that the Interior Department had misled her staff about the extent to which the damage had stemmed from vandalism rather than, quote, a botched installation. Mr. Trump continued to blame vandals for the damage even after that, though he conceded in a social media post on August 9th that, quote, there is no video or proof. Also earlier this month, the contractor identified a new potential culprit. Sweat. Oh.

It said a worker wearing a protective suit under the hot Washington sun was leaving droplets of sweat on the coating, which were then trapped when the new layers were sprayed on top. To try to solve that problem, the man then opened the top part of his protected suit and wrapped cloth around his head and wrists to contain the sweat. The documents reviewed by the Times do not say if that stopped the blistering. So we have this whole new report from the coding people themselves saying it was not vandals. we screwed up. Two chemicals we don't use together. Usually we did. They caused blistering. And then, of course, we have the whole algae problem that happened after that when Trump removed the four giant bubblers because he thought they were an eyesore ahead of the way in for the UFC fight that took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Yeah, everybody knows. You know, UFC fighters hate bubblers. So you can't

have those on the same event or even in the same city. It's just does not. work out. Yeah, I don't know. I guess the pro here is that the company has now corroborated Janine Piro's comments and position that, yeah, she didn't have all the evidence. Yeah. Even after her invitation to people, come to her trial, say what's on the crimes. Yeah, I guess none is the answer there.

Yeah, she was having a press conference a little earlier this week where somebody asked her about the reflecting pool and she flipped out. She said, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about that. No, no, no, no. Like, it was just... I can't tell you how many people sent me that GIF. And it was remarkable to me is she delivered the nose in like three entirely different ways.

It's just, that woman's got range. I got to just give her credit for that. Yeah, for sure. All right, I just checked the docket. No updates yet on the dismissal of these charges with or without prejudice. us, so we'll keep an eye on it for you. All right, we're going to move, hit me on the head with a bat up to the B block today, and we're going to get to that right after this break.

Stick around. We'll be right back. So summer used to mean freedom from homework. No more teachers, no more books, no more principles, dirty looks, no more alarm clocks. But as an adult, I'll take freedom from an overpriced wireless bill any day. Mint Mobile Summer Sale has every plan at just $15 a month, even unlimited plans. You still get high speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile. 5G network just without the usual big wireless gimmicks and surprise charges. And one of our producers made the switch from his old carrier to Mint Mobile, and he was able

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Cut your wireless bill to just $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash unjust. That's it. There's no catch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extras, initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy includes up to a 20 gigabyte hotspot, capable device required. Availability Speed and Coverage VARIES. CementMobile.com for details. All right, everybody, welcome back today. We're moving our Hit Me in the Head with a Bat segment up to the B block because it's really big news. Now hit me in the head with a bat. Now hit me in the head with a bat is a segment where we identify shenanigans that chip away at the already decimated deference that the DOJ generally enjoys. It's just gone. And I've got to fly solo on this one because my intrepid co-host is wrapped up in this story. I can't comment. No comment. No comment. With that in mind, I have this report from

ABC, Trump loyalists, a Trump loyalist who had been tapped to oversee a sprawling and controversial DOJ conspiracy investigation targeting political foes of President Donald Trump, abruptly resigned Thursday, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to ABC News. Joe DeGeneva submitted his resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche amid what sources describe as growing frustrations from Trump and senior Justice Department officials regarding his work on the so-called grand conspiracy investigation based out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida. sources said that Joe DeGeneva had pitched himself to the president as someone who could potentially ramp up the conspiracy investigation, which thus far has resulted in zero criminal prosecutions, despite dozens of subpoenas, issued over the past year to various officials, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, involved in the past investigations of Trump.

No comment. Quote, I resigned by a letter today at three o'clock. That's what DeGeneva told ABC on Thursday. It was an honor and a privilege to serve the president and the department. I'm not going to say anything further. I wish them well. That's what he said. But according to reporters, DeGeneva always says something further.

So here we have Ryan Riley at NBC reporting. He spoke to DeGeneva Friday. He said that the clash with the department leadership is what prompted his abrupt resignation. Quote, everyone was in their lane and then some lanes got crossed. and then I decided to leave. That's what DeGeneva told NBC. But a person familiar with the investigation offered a different account saying

Justice Department leaders lost confidence in DeGeneba because they believed he was unfocused, moving too slowly, and pursuing a path unlikely to succeed? Do you mean the entire thing? The 81-year-old lawyer. The 81-year-old lawyer who had been the top federal prosecutor in Washington during the Reagan administration and later joined Trump's failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That's him. But he was also a lawyer for fraud guarantee. Remember that company owned by Parnas and Fruman?

And he helped Rudy Giuliani get bogus dirt on Hunter Biden over there in Ukraine. The investigation that he headed for this was run out of the office, a U.S. attorney for Southern District of Florida named Jason A. Redding-Kinjones and had been focused on the 2016 Russia investigation, but more recently on the Mar-a-Lago search. Washington leadership had recently assembled prosecutors to work alongside DeGeneva in his effort. So it sounds like he was going slow and was scattered, and so DOJ sent some folks down there,

and maybe that's what upset him? I'm not sure I'm guessing. But DeGeneva mentioned, he actually maintained that things were, quote, going along smoothly. He said, I want to underscore, this is him not commenting further. He says, I want to underscore that we were following the principles of federal prosecution all along the way.

And we did that. We were moving smartly. No comment. And I underscore we were moving smartly. And then things, you know, got where they got. No, we don't know, Joe. Tell us what you mean. Calling the team of the Southern District of Florida superb, DeGeneva said, if they were allowed to do.

do their jobs, they will succeed supremely. Hmm. Quote, the people in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Florida who are running this case have done a phenomenal job under the worst of circumstances, to Geneva said. Oh, like, no evidence? Okay. Quote, there's just no doubt there weren't sufficient resources. So I think he's basically saying justice stymied him, blocked him, kept him from doing stuff,

didn't give him enough money that sounds like. like what he's getting at, but he's not saying it directly. And I'm, I'm just speculating. Now, asked whether he'd sideline anyone who was sent in from DOJ headquarters, DeGneva said, as a courtesy to the department, and let me underscore, as a courtesy to the department, I'm not going to discuss that. He will. So there's a lot of underscoring going on in this interview. Like, it's, he keeps underscoring, but nothing gets any clearer. Yeah, I think what he's trying to say is the department sucks. But I'm not going to say that as a courtesy to the department.

I think that's kind of what he's getting at. He should have just thrown in a little reference that hit me in the head with a bat. I mean, that would have covered it. We would have all known what he meant. We know he listens to it. Now, he acknowledged there was a specific event in recent days that sparked his resignation, but said that it's not something he would discuss. He keeps not discussing it and discussing it.

Yeah, it's a little closer to telling it all. I didn't sideline anyone as a courtesy to the department. I won't discuss that. I'm not going to comment further. There was a specific event that sparked this, but I'm not going to comment on it any further. And then he goes on to say, the days leading up to my resignation are shrouded in the secrecy of administrative behavior and they will remain so. What? And he added that arguments made between Justice Department headquarters, known as Maine Justice, and the U.S. Attorney's Office, happen all the time about resources and the direction of an investigation, who to indict, when to indict.

Okay, so you are going to comment on this further. All of that stuff is normal fodder for a relationship between a U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice. Everybody was in their lane and then some lanes got crossed and I decided to leave. Okay, so we're getting closer, warmer. Yeah, yeah. He then said he wasn't going to comment further, but said, I wasn't asked to resign. I decided I was going to resign because having been a U.S. attorney, having been an assistant U.S. attorney, having been a special counsel of the United States, States, having been a counselor to an attorney general, I know when it's time to leave.

His wife, who's 84 years old, her name is Victoria Tonzig. She was also a representative of fraud guarantee, is also leaving the Justice Department, according to Joe. She'd been part of a broader team that included several proponents of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Good for her. Yeah, she's going too. The investigation, according to three people familiar with the details had more recently focused on the 2020, August 22 FBI search. And I'm going to put search in quotation marks here. They kind of searched Mar-a-Lago, which turned up classified documents and led to one of two now dismissed federal criminal cases against Donald Trump. The Mar-a-Lago search had been a particular focus of Trump's ire last year. Trump referred to the FBI employees who conducted the court

authorized search as animals and thugs who made a mess of my wife's delegates or whatever. In February, the Trump administration fired at least half a dozen agents tied to that search. Most federal crimes have a five-year statute of limitations, and the fifth anniversary of the Mara Lago search is August 2027. It's less than a year away. DeGeneva's investigation is also focused on events that took place nearly a decade ago around the 2016 election, which legal experts said would pose a major hurdle, given that DeGeneva's team would have to prove that those actions were part of an ongoing grand conspiracy, which is why we call it. call it the grand conspiracy case, which continued up until much more recently, even though it's all different people involved, but okay. Without getting into details of the prosecution's

theory, Joe DeGeneva insisted, they would have been able to overcome the statute of limitations hurdles. Quote, suffice it to say, we would not have proceeded had we not thought those legal questions could be answered in our favor. Now DeGeneva said his team didn't have a skiff, which is a sensitive compartmented information facility. He said that was very, very important conducting a case with classified information, but that they had been proceeding nonetheless. Maybe that's one of the resources he was mad about not getting. Soldering on. Look at them.

Quote, I have no doubt that I was going to be able to take every one of these cases across the finish line because we had put them in the perfect posture to proceed. No comment. Hmm. Another reporter from the New York Post, and I consider, consider this T because it's the New York Post, but this guy spoke to DeGeneva as well and asked him about this reporting that the Justice Department had lost faith in him, that he was going slow, right? That he had lost focus.

And when he asked that, this reporter said to Geneva shot back, saying, if you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem. Whoa. Hmm. Wow, that's the first very clear statement that we've heard from the master of elliptical phrases. It's also the very first thing I agree with. You're correct. If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem.

So we'll keep an eye on this because as many reporters have said to Geneva can't help himself. He loves to talk, talk, talk, Anna Bauer also posted about it. She's like, the thing is when he says he's not going to discuss anything further, he totally discusses things further. So I think we'll get the full story here and we'll share it with you once we have it. Oh, I'm sure we'll get the full story eventually. You know, obviously I have no comment about this case, this investigation or any of that stuff. But I do think it's interesting to Geneva on a personal level. If you think about the number of people who were either serving as U.S. attorneys or very high-ranking, assistant U.S. attorneys or special counsel, things like that,

who've been basically punted in the last however many years. Let's go all the way back to the first term. There's a lot. I mean, I could probably sit down and write the names of a dozen off the top of my head. None of them talk. None of them talk. They don't, even people like, I don't know, John Huber, who did his little investigation and came in and said,

apparently nothing to see here, I'm sure that's not whatever they wanted to hear and he just walked away and kept his mouth shut. Like, Degenova is never going to be one of those guys because he's somebody who he lives for this kind of attention. So it does not surprise me at all that he is saying he will not discuss this and then going on to discuss it in a pretty fairly detailed way.

Kind of reminds me of nobody ever getting between a camera and Rudy Giuliani. Exactly. Same guy. Same personality. Right. It's the same. vibe. I'm getting the same vibes of Rudy vibes from Degener. They worked together quite a bit. And what we called over on the other podcast, we called it the Ukraine clown posse when they were all over there.

Thank you. All over there trying to dig up dirt, manufacture Biden laptop hard drives, send manila envelopes to Ron Johnson in the Senate so they could launder this BS Russian asset aided information into our actual Congress. And that was what he was doing. He was working with Dimitri Firtosh, you know, like one of like, no, numerous uno bad guys over in Ukraine for Russia, like a Russian-backed separatists, right? Yeah. Who were trying to take down Joe Biden on behalf of Donald Trump. And they were trying to do it through. Remember, we had that one guy, Alexander Smyranov, who completely fabricated a $5 million bribe through Burisma and was arrested and indicted, put in charge. jail and he's out now.

I don't even know where he is these days because, you know, he was working for the Trump administration. This thing is, I mean, okay, forget it. I'm not going to comment on this thing. I will say in my experience as an investigator, quite a few years doing that, it's well known among good investigators, which is not everybody. When you go into an investigation with a preconceived notion of, what you wish to prove.

You got to have the common sense to know when the thing that you thought was there is not there, it's time to go home. So you can keep looking. That's what I liked about Jack Smith. Yeah. You know, instead of, you know, when he, they were trying to go down early on.

You know, I know everyone says Merrick Garland wasn't investigating Trump. He was the month they got there. Actually, he was actually, what's her name? The deputy was investigating it before Merrick Garland. and got there, right? Like by opening up and re-submitting a warrant for the stuff they had seized from Rudy Giuliani in the Ukraine clown posse investigation, by doing an additional warrant to also look for stuff that was related to January 6th. Because remember, as we learned in that first Comey case that was unsuccessful, you can't just go rifling through stuff in a new case that you've seized

for other purposes. You have to get a new warrant. And she did. And so they started investigating ties between Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, Oathkeepers, proud boys, Willard War Room and the White House. And they just kept running into dead ends. Of course, there were people at the FBI who refused to subpoena the Willard War Room records and things like that.

And that's kind of... Privilege battles and everything else. At some point, you know, because you're going to rely on Bannon and Roger Stone as witnesses, no. So they scuffled that. So that's a nowhere road. Let's go down this, you know, conspiracy against rights road. Let's go down this road.

Let's go down that road. I mean, you got to do it sometimes. You got to have a theory, right? There's got to be some reason you open an investigation. You believe something happened. Standard being you have information to believe that a violation of the criminal law has occurred. So you need some like facts to back that up. But once you get into it, you keep looking for something that doesn't exist. you know, it's not, you're not going to find it. Fail fast is the lesson. Yeah. And you can, the first person who doesn't find it and gets fired can get replaced by the second person. When he doesn't find it, that person gets fired and then comes a third person. This could go on for, oh, I don't know, two and a half more years. But, you know, none of this is surprising to me.

Well, if anyone's really interested in what it takes to open an investigation at the FBI, There's this great book out there called The Threat, Written by Andrew. No way. It's got all sorts of really interesting details about how to predicate opening an investigation. So I learned a lot from that book. If you know anybody who maybe knows the author, maybe can give me a signed copy, that'd be cool. I mean, I know some people connected to that book. Some people.

I think I can work something out for you. No comment. All good. The next story you can totally take part in. This is about the Epstein investigations that are happening everywhere but the United States and how the United States and Todd Blancher refusing to help because, in my opinion, he's part of a conspiracy to cover it up. So we're going to talk about that story after this quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. And I'm back. Okay. The next story is from the Washington Post. European law enforcement agencies chasing leads from the U.S. investigative files on deceased, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, say that one year after the first batch of files was released, the Justice Department has yet to respond to their requests for help. In the United States, no charges have resulted from the release of the Epstein files. But the documents exposed the financier's relationships with influential people around the world, both before and after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges and have sparked a slew of

international investigations. Several European law enforcement officials said in interviews that DOJ has not responded to their requests for mutual legal assistance, which could permit foreign investigators to obtain evidence, information, and testimony from the United States. And AG, before we go forward here, this is something that's super important. to FBI investigators. You have to enter into a treaty called an MLAT treaty, mutual legal assistance treaty with foreign countries to establish like the ground rules of how and what sort of information you'll share with each other in the context of a criminal investigation.

And do you do that through the International Affairs Office? Yep. And on international affairs and, you know, your league ads, those are the FBI agents who serve in embassies around the world. They're really responsive. They're the pointy edge of the spear there. They're interacting with those foreign criminal investigative colleagues in foreign countries all the time. This is so important because if you don't respond quickly and thoroughly to their MLAT requests,

you know, investigations that they're doing of their own people but rely to some extent on information here in the United States, then they don't respond to yours. It's like everything in diplomacy, right? it's got to be 50-50. So if we are, if we're freezing them out on Epstein requests, our terrorism requests, our, you know, foreign parental kidnapping cases, our crimes against children, money laundering, all that stuff is also sitting in their mailbox because they're like, let's wait until the Americans start answering our stuff first.

Jeez. Well, maybe, you know, that was the important work Cash Patel was doing in Italy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought it was slamming beers, but maybe not. Making sure the communications were open with our leagueats and in the, no, no, that's not what that was. The Justice Department said it doesn't comment on the status of mutual legal assistance requests with foreign law enforcement partners. Last month, a DOJ spokesperson told the telegraph, quote, the Department of Justice says,

we haven't refused to assist any jurisdiction investigating potential criminal conduct related to Jeffrey Epstein. The department remains committed to cooperating with all jurisdictions pursuing political potential crimes, and we will continue to do so in accordance with federal law and longstanding practice. The lie detector test said that was a lie. Like, they're telling you, they haven't heard a peep from you in a year. Poland says it's continuing to pursue an investigation related to the Epstein files. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in February that his country would open an investigation that included a focus on possible links between Epstein and Russian intelligence. Let's see.

Presummi law, no whack, a spokesperson for the national prosecutor's office of Poland, said in a statement that his office had sought, quote, among other things, the disclosure of unredacted documents from the so-called Epstein files relating to any Polish aspects of the case. And the Justice Department has not responded to Warsaw's request in April for mutual legal assistance. In Norway, three prominent figures face corruption charges related to their relationship with Epstein. Okay, here we go. Please Grace here on the name's pronunciation. Former Norwegian diplomats Terhae Rod Larson and Mona Jewell and former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbin Jagland. All say they are innocent of wrongdoing. In Britain, the Times newspaper reported in May that London had submitted a formal

request to the United States asking for access to unredacted copies of some Epstein files. Police in February investigated Lord Peter Mandelson, a former British ambassador to the United States, on suspicion of misconduct in public office related to Epstein. These are three really important foreign partners, and they are three of our most reliable foreign partners, right? Norway, the UK, probably our closest. ally in the world. And Poland has become like, you know, Poland is so important to this country in terms of their position vis-à-vis Ukraine.

So intelligence sharing on things having to do with Ukraine, the visibility that they have on like Russian nonsense going on in that region. I mean, we really depend on that information. Got to hope it's not slowing down in our direction now as a result of this. Yeah. There's Germany as well. federal police officials say they remain in contact with American authorities about the possibility of crimes by Germans that might be suggested by the files, the Epstein files, to Green Party lawmakers. Constantine von Knott's and Irene Mahalik have pressed the German government to open investigations of potential links between Epstein and German nationals. In response, the government says the criminal police office has no information regarding any criminality, criminally relevant links to Germany, but they said that they're in contact, but the federal criminal police have been in touch with the FBI and requested that they

involve German authorities in any cases relevant, with relevant connections to Germany. So it seems like Germany has sort of told the U.S., hey, you let us know if you find any Germans, and I guess that's where that sits. Yeah. Yeah, this is, this one, this is a big deal. It's a bigger deal than it sounds like in terms of the day. to day challenges of getting work done in international investigations. That could totally run the gamut of, you know, basically anything the FBI does, but particularly a lot of national security work.

Yeah. And I mean, I'm sure a lot of our intelligence agencies, communications were hampered by what was found at Mar-a-Lago and the mishandling of just classified information in general by the Trump administration 1.0 and 2.0. And, you know, I think a lot about the FBI, what Kosh Patel is doing. doing right now that's destroying relationships with local law enforcement by refusing to cooperate with like the Prettian good murders or the Charlie Kirk investigation. You know, they kind of swung in there with this, you know, medium ladies FBI jacket and kind of told the local police force to, you know, GFY. So all these super important legal relationships, international, local. And, you know, when we talk about

with state governments are just completely crumbling before our eyes. I think it makes us less safe. We know it does. And I'll just end my comments with this. We're recording this on September 11th. And that was the moment.

That was the crisis in which we realized we have to be better and more integrated with our foreign partners. If we're going to be able to see the threats coming rather than just opening our eyes when they show up on our doorstep. And it was after 9-11 that the FBI poured resources, time and effort into building up many of the LEGAAT offices that are still running well to this day. So the idea that 25 years later we're allowing those relationships to atrophy,

maybe to fall apart entirely, to slow down, to become less effective, it's really a disgrace to the memory of 9-11 and the heroes we lost on that day and all the work that we did in the aftermath of 9-11 to be better, to be more efficient and more effective in protecting this country. Yeah, no, instead they're taking all of their billions of dollars, pouring it into ice to snatch up our neighbors who have been here for 35 years without committing crimes. That's their focus. And it makes us less safe.

And, you know, we can go on. the National Security Council. I mean, they've put reckless and unreliable people in charge of our alphabet agencies. It's just, it's a never-ending list of horrors, the parade of parade of horribles that we tried to warn everybody about in 2020. And we continue to every week, every Sunday. But yeah, now that's what we had to change our whole show about from a show about prosecuting Donald Trump to a show. about following the downfall of the Justice Department. So that's where we're here.

And we've got more of that. Right after this quick break that we have to take, we're going to talk about a story about the Justice Department now, aiding Donald Trump and trying to hamper midterm elections and, you know, continue with his never-ending, completely fruitless search for voter fraud. And we'll talk about that after this break. We'll be right back.

All right, everybody, welcome back. Our final story today comes from the Associated Press. The Trump administration is ordering officials in more than two dozen states to preserve records and materials from the 2024 election as part of a campaign to force states to turn over detailed voter records despite repeated court losses. The Justice Department sent letters to 29 states and the District of Columbia instructing election officials not to destroy the records. those are places the Trump administration has sued in a bid to gain access to voter registration information that contains addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial social security numbers. You know, they've sued these 39 states in D.C. They've lost 23 to nothing so far in those cases, including a couple of red states like Utah and West Virginia. But now they're sending letters to these folks saying,

preserve your 2024 election records or else. In one letter obtained by the Associated Press, a Justice Department official told Utah lieutenant governor Deidre Henderson, a Republican, that she is, quote, under investigation and subject to ongoing litigation over the state's failure to turn over statewide voter registration lists. The Justice Department declined to elaborate Thursday on the nature of the investigation.

Quote, the purpose of this letter is to notify you of your obligations to take reasonable steps to conduct a litigation hold and preserve and retain all hard copy documents and electronically stored information, wrote Eric Neff, acting chief of the Civil Rights Division's voting section. Yep, the letter warns election officials that their failure to preserve relevant data may constitute spoilation of evidence, which could subject them to civil and criminal sanctions. In a social media post Thursday, Hermit Dillon, the head of the Civil Rights Division, said the justice to Department sent the letters to ensure states do not destroy election records related to the lawsuits that seek to compel election officials to hand over voter registration lists.

Quote, this is standard litigation practice, not a threat. That's what Dylan said in a post on Twitter. Just, you know, because posting on Twitter is also standard litigation practice. I just, I can't. Yeah. Sending a letter that says you are the subject of an investigation, that's not a threat? Come on. Right.

And for what? Right, exactly. You're just asking me to preserve the records. They're real big on roping you into an investigation and not telling you what it is. I mean, I've heard. How do you know? Okay. Other people have told me.

What makes you so smart? Boy, no comment. Henderson, Utah's top elections official, said in an interview that her office received the letter Friday. Quote, no letter, and we've gotten lots of letters from the Department of Justice over the past year. Not a single one of them said that we were under investigation for anything, Henderson said. It was a little bit alarming at first to see those words. I bet it was. Henderson said her office understands the need to hold onto records during litigation. Quote, what's not helpful is the constant barrage of attacks and harassment and accusations, baseless accusations that do

nothing to help secure our elections, she said. Yeah, her office also received a letter from the DOJ last July, asserting that election officials could be prosecuted if votes from non-citizens are counted in their vote tallies. Remember those letters? Other election officials included the Secretary's State for Arizona in Minnesota. They confirmed they also received the letter. Quote, Our office will follow the law, said Callie Jones, spokesperson for the Arizona office. Any implication from this letter or others that implies we're not following the law is disrespectful to the work that election administrators do across Arizona and the country. Minnesota Secretary of State spokesperson Cassandra Knudson said that the office will comply with

the Justice Department's request, but noted that it goes beyond the federal requirement of maintaining records for 22 months following an election. So the letter actually is a bit of overreach from what federal law and likely state law requires. I would actually asked the judge in those cases, hey, it's been 22 months. Are we allowed to destroy these records? Yeah. I mean, are you requiring, Judge, do you require us to preserve these records? Judge, if you require us to preserve these records, we will. That's kind of the way that I would look at it. I'd also like to say that I know that the Associated Press here said that they also got Secretaries of State for Arizona and Minnesota. I actually broke a story that the Nevada Secretary of State,

Cisco Aguilar, got his letter. And he came on the Daily Beans this past week to talk about that letter and that he was under investigation. And I asked him also about the mail ballot portal at the post office. We've got the whistleblower complaint that came out about it. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get communications ordering the post office to resume building the portal even when I. a court order was in place, an injunction was in place to not move forward with that.

But I asked him because the judge, Talwani, Indira Talwani, she blocked, she issued a preliminary injunction, but she didn't block the post office from doing anything. She blocked the post. She says, you can go forward and continue to do what you're doing, but she just can't make it mandatory. And so then I was like, well, now we need to ask all the secretaries of state if they're going. forward with this. And I asked the Secretary of State in Nevada, I said, Secretary Aguilar, are you going to be voluntarily participating in the chaotic shit show that is, and I'm quoting, that's a quote from the whistleblower, the chaotic shit show that is the mail portal ballot,

ballot portal, the mail ballot portal. And he said, hell no, no. And he's like, I don't know anybody who is. So it was a really interesting conversation that I had with him. But yeah, he's like, I don't care. I'm not afraid. Under investigation for what? He's like, we're going to go ahead and preserve these records because they're part of a lawsuit. But what am I under investigation for? Yeah. I mean, look, these guys do this every day. They follow state law. That's what they do. And okay, yeah, this is the way that DOJ is going about it with these threatening letters and you're under investigation, but we won't tell you what is complete bullshit. But the concept of a litigation hold is a real thing. When you're involved in a lawsuit, the subject matter of that suit is generally preserved until the suit is, you know, no longer exists. So that, I would guess that most secretaries of state would react the same way. Like, okay, well, as long as it's not a violation of state law, in which case they should go in front of a judge and say, we need some sort of a ruling here. Right.

Well, because they're allowed to destroy their records after 22 months. And so if I were in one of these remaining seven lawsuits that hasn't been, you know, tossed out or, you know, dismissed against the Department of Justice, I might notice the court and say, hey, we have one law here that says we can destroy our records at 22 months. We have the Department of Justice telling us this. Can you, you give us some direction, judge, on whether or not you think we should reserve these records, because they're asking for voter rolls. Not sure what that has to do with this, you know, why you would need all 2024 or election. materials, that seems broad. Right. So tell us, do we need to maintain them? If so, can you narrow the scope of what we have to keep or whatever? That's what I would be looking for is some clarification. And let's remember, this stuff is sensitive, right?

This is like personally identifying information, voter information, all that stuff. And that's why you have record destruction rules and laws in these states. That's why you don't keep this stuff around. forever because the longer you have it, it imposes a burden upon the state to like secure it properly and warehouse it. If it's hard copy stuff, which pretty much every state has hard copy ballots or at least records of hard copy ballots. So yeah, you don't want to just sit around forever. It could be, you know, however lost. If it fell into the wrong hands, it's a bad thing. So yeah, it's a little bit more complicated, I think, that it seems from the surface. But these poor state

elections officials, man. They're really getting just dragged through the knothole. Yeah. And he also confirmed as, you know, when I spoke to Jocelyn Benson, Secretary of State up in Michigan, she's now the nominee for governor, Democratic nominee for governor in that state to replace the term-limited big Gretchen. Gretchen, I asked her, I think it was in January, what are you guys doing to prepare? Like if he sends ICE in or the feds or National Guard to seize your voting machines or your ballots or your tabulators or anything. And she's like, well, I can't tell you specifically, but what I can tell you is that all of the Association of Secretaries of State, by the way, Cisco Aguilar is the chair of the Democratic Association of Secretary's Estate, they've been doing tabletop war games. They've been tabletoping that stuff out for at least a year. That's how you got to do it. They're doing everything they can to prepare. I'm worried about us the stuff that we can't see coming.

You know, they've got lawsuits pretty much ready to go. just, you know, he's he talked about how he liked to play Madlibs when he was a kid, and it's like, we just leave certain things blank. We've got the lawsuit ready to go. We'll fill in the blanks when it happens because we know there's going to be shenanigans after these elections and during them as well. So they're ready. They're doing everything they can to prepare.

And I think that people walked away from hearing that interview, feeling a little better. That's great. That's great. It's good to hear. All right. It's time for listener questions. If you have a question, there's a link in the show notes. You can click that link and it'll take you to a form to fill out.

You can send us your questions. Andy, what do we have this week in questions? All right. Yeah, we got some great ones, as always. We have one question that I'm going to get to in a second. But first, I wanted to go through two little minor corrections, I guess, you could call them, that we received after our story last week about the newly changing, shifting, I don't know, lessening of standards at the FBI in terms of hiring, being able to hire people.

who have had or engaged in prostitution in the past. So this one comes to us from someone who I'll call Fanoon, Lanu, because they did not identify themselves. They say, hi guys, love the pod. Since I know you aim to be as accurate as possible, I want to let you know that prostitution is not legal in Thailand and hasn't been since the 90s. Admittedly, it gets confusing because enforcement is really sporadic

and the industry continues to thrive as an open secret. So I think I said I probably use Thailand an example or something? I think I might have because in my head, USS Abraham Lincoln was stopping in one of those very well-known areas for prostitution in Thailand. And I assumed that it was. My bad.

There you go. Thank you. Thank you for the correction. And again, I wasn't, I'm not trying to imply that the soldiers on the Abraham Lincoln were doing that there. I just, it was on my mind, like that area was on my mind. And I think that's, I think that's why I. brought it up because I was also thinking of Amsterdam where it is.

Yeah, yeah, got it. Understood. Okay, so we also got one from someone who identified themselves as master sergeant, retired U.S. Army. Now, Allison, this is going to bring back a little memory to you. Listen to the way that this correction starts. It starts ref colon FBI standards. I read that. I was like, oh, yes.

Totally master sergeant. You can take the master sergeant out of the army, but you cannot take the army out of the master sergeant. Okay, so ref FBI standards. It doesn't matter if a member of the military is stationed somewhere where prostitution is legal. It is still illegal per the UCMJ. That's the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

So also a very good point. And, you know, just raises more. questions about why is the FBI doing this? But unfortunately, we can't answer that. I think we were, I was seriously just trying to find loopholes for people, you know, if I'm, if I'm being honest. But I, you know, the more that these corrections come in, the fewer, there's just no way around it. Like. Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah. I, I don't know. You know, we covered it. I don't want to beat the drum again. But I just feel like it's a reasonable thing. I think that requirement has always been reasonable. You know, it was never challenged to my knowledge when I was in the bureau.

So it just raises all kinds of questions of me as to why this is the focus of their recruitment efforts right now. But anyway, all right, on to the question. And the question comes to us from Margaret. It's a very short, simple question that really requires a pretty thoughtful answer. And I'm interested to hear what you think about this. So Margaret says, something I've been wondering about for years now is why didn't the Obama or the Biden administration release the complete Epstein files? And, AG, I think this is something that a lot of people say in the conversation around the Epstein files and what DOJ is doing or not doing. And it's a question, I think, that hovers in people's minds, people who have very different, you know, opinions about the Epstein files and what should be done with all that.

but it's kind of a good question. Yeah, no, I agree. I can tell you, I think one of the reasons the Biden administration didn't release any of the Epstein files is because there were open and ongoing investigations into Epstein co-conspirators. We got a letter from, it was a senator, I want to say Dick Durbin perhaps,

or, no, I think it was Jamie Raskin now that I think about it. To the Department of Justice, earlier this year that where a whistleblower came and told the congressional office there that there had been a sprawling open investigation in the Southern District of New York that had been going on for a long time into co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein and that Donald Trump, when he got there in January of 2025, shut down that investigation, fired the prosecutors that were involved in it, including Maureen Comey. according to the whistleblower, there were at least 50 witnesses, victims, I should say, more witnesses than that.

And then took those 300,000 pages, approximately 100,000 documents from the Southern District of New York, sent them over to Maine Justice and then had the FBI. That's when they took those. That was that set of documents where they locked 1,500 FBI agents from IMD in a building for 24 or 48-hour shift. and had them go through and log Trump's name and remove things and stuff like that. So for the Biden administration, I would imagine that is why they didn't release those documents because you don't do that during an actual open and ongoing investigation. Of course. And of course, they had the prosecution of Gawaine Maxwell.

So there's a lot, there were things going on. And I think it's important to note that while you are even just considering, you're doing an investigation to consider prosecution of whoever, you're not going to start calling pieces of information out of an investigative file and releasing them while there is anything going on, even if it's just of one person who maybe only touches upon 1% or 10% of the documents that you have. You never know when there are going to be connections to other people or other documents or you may need other witnesses. And so everything remains kind of locked down as long as the cases are ongoing. I also think that on the other to the other half of the question, the Obama side, there is a question of timing here, right?

So Obama gets elected in 2008, gets inaugurated in 2009. This is right after essentially the Southern District of Florida gave away the ongoing investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and allowed him to plead guilty under a non-prose agreement to that sweetheart deal. So in the immediate aftermath of that, there's not going to be any government activity of him. They're not going to continue to investigate him because they've already agreed not to. And those files kind of are sitting in, you know, sitting in limbo while he serves out his sentence and you see what happens after that. The perspective of what people thought, people in the Obama administration thought about Jeffrey Epstein and the case that was a, that point resolved against him, that isn't entirely, the world looks very different than it does now with everything that we know due in large part to the amazing journalism work

that was done by Julie Brown and others on this. So yeah, I think there, when you look at the timing of what was happening around those years when Obama and Biden were in office, this very different set of circumstances that would have made releasing files from that investigation a very different and harder thing to do. Right. Plus if you've got a non-prosecution agreement and you don't know, you specifically know, I think the four people that were involved in that, you certainly can't release anything about them.

Because even if that previous U.S. attorney was corrupt AF, you know, you know, you still can't, it's the non-pro, it's done. The die is cast. Right. And you can't. The opportunity to do that has only come in the last few years because Epstein died, Maxwell was convicted, and the Southern District came out and said, there are no other cases to bring.

We've looked at the whole thing. We don't see another viable prosecution here. And so at that point, the whole thing is done. And now you can start talking about releasing information in files. we were not in that position under either of those administrations. Right. And neither of them campaigned on releasing the Epstein files and bragging about how they're going to do it. Yeah, that's a good point.

I mean, that's a good point. Generally, these things just don't get released. They might get investigated, like the Nassar case, for example. Yeah, exactly. But there's also that whole very thick wall that's supposed to exist between the Department of Justice and the White House. Which does not exist anymore. It would have been unheard of at that time for a president to go to the DOJ and instruct them to release things. Yeah.

That would be, that's something that happens all the time now, but it was unheard of back in the day. day. It's really, it's crazy to think about how many self-inflicted, politically anyway, how many self-inflicted errors this administration has stumbled into. And this is definitely one of them. Trump and all of his acolytes, one of them who's now running the FBI, turned the Epstein files into a political issue while they were out of power. And so when they came into power, the option was there in a way that the option to release was there in a way that it wasn't before. We talked about that.

But yeah, they were hell bent on it at first. And then they got a look at them. They're like, well, maybe not. Maybe we don't want this stuff out. So, yeah, that's an own goal. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I concur. I'm checking the docket one more time here for Davy Hearn.

I see a Forbes article that Janine Piro found after an investigation. last month that the renovation indicated rushed and flawed installation and the and that the story that we went over earlier backs that up that's the latest that's here so we do not yet have a decision from been a little over a week but we still don't have a decision from the judge on whether they're going to dismiss that with or without prejudice we'll let you know as soon as we know and thank you for your questions by the way again there's a link in the show notes you can submit your questions to us. We really appreciate it. Very thoughtful questions all the time. So thank you so much. And we'll see you next week. Do you have any final thoughts? No, I think we covered it. A lot of

great ground we covered today. We're right where we should be on time. So yeah, looking forward to it again next week. All right, everybody. We'll see you then. 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 Hawkey, 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.