Jack - The Scope of Mueller’s Investigation

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

This week on “Mueller, She Wrote,” we are joined by fellow comedian and lawyer Jordan Parker to discuss Mueller’s ‘Can and Cannot Do’ List. We also cover Trump/Russia news from the past week, analyze Pappadoplous’s Greece/Russia connections, and discuss the many reasons Trump’s egomanic tendancies should be terrifying to everyone. Enjoy!

Season 4 of How We Win Is Here For the past four years, we've been making history in critical elections all over the country. And last year, we made history again by expanding our majority in the Senate, eating election denying Republicans and crucial state house races, and fighting back a non-existent red wave. But the Maga Republicans who plotted and pardoned the attempted overthrow of our government now control the house. Thanks to gerrymandered maps and repressive anti-voter laws. And the chaotic spectacle we've already seen shows us just how far they will go to seize

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So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn't have, not have, communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have nothing to do with Putin.

I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother, then he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So it is political. You're a communist. No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hey welcome to Mueller. She wrote this is A.G. This is episode seven you guys. I'm really excited. Yeah with me as always is Jalice Johnson

Say hi Jalice. Hi. We have Jordan. Cover. Hello. How's the going and our special guest today is Jordan Parker. He's a San Diego attorney. He's got five years of litigation experience. Uh, he got his undergrad from UCLA and English lit and uh, his JD from two lane university. So he's he's also a stand up comic here in San Diego and I've had the pleasure of working with him. Thanks for having me. Welcome. I'm really looking forward to some of your insights because particularly this week, it's just kismet that you're here with all this backlash against the investigation, understanding exactly the scope and jurisdiction of what Mueller can do and and just you know all those kind of legal questions that a lot of people we've been getting questions on our site and on Twitter,

right, explain it to me because I don't understand these legal ramifications. Like, it's just, it's kind of, for a lot of people for us, we're like in it every day, but for a lot of people, this is just kind of a story that's humming along in the background since Shalai. Yeah, so I like it's brand new for me.

So I really, I love that you're here to give us some legal insights. You know what I can. Sweet, so I'm going to start with just the facts. This week was actually not too crammed with news. It's the first week. I kind of feel like we can breathe a little bit because I'm not trying to jam 900 things in to the podcast. That's something good is swimming in. Yeah, it's the call before the storm. So we'll start Sunday. Nothing really happened. Monday, we learned that the Mueller investigation is looking closely at the 18 days between Trump

learning that Flynn lied to the FBI, or at least McGahn saying that he told Trump when we presume Trump found out that that Flynn was lying to the FBI and for the 18 days later when he was fired. So Mueller's really honing in on those 18 days. Like what took you so long, bro? That's probably going to be the movie right there. 18 days. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be a Christmas movie. So that's like from what I understand what they were with the story they were going over Monday is that he's really interested in those 18 days, the communications that happened, what did he know and when, which is it's really you know and Jordan's gonna talk about

this a little bit later is some of the parallels between this and Watergate. And that's kind of one of them. The big question was, what did Nick's and Noah and when did he know it? And that's a lot that we're trying to answer with Trump because that goes towards collusion. And I wanted to talk about the word collusion too, in that it was kind of clarified to me that Collusion is not a crime, but it is a colloquialism we use for conspiracy, which is a crime So collusion conspiracy can go either way. They're pretty close

You can't be charged with collusion, but right to be clear collusion if we're using it in the term of conspiracy You cannot conspire to commit a legal act You can only conspire to commit an illegal act So it's only a problem if they everything they say is true that oh, we just talked with them then that and we didn't do any In proper exchanges they arguably you could say well, there's no conspiracy to commit anything because there's nothing that happened What happens here is if they're conspiring to commit campaign violence violations or they are conspiring Arguably to violate the Logan act to the extent that they communicated in light about it. Or what they call an in-kind campaign contribution from a foreign

national. I think it's also a crime. Yes, a lot of this is vague and we've been gutting our campaign finance regulations for some time, but to the extent that they claim that all of this is legal, they're correct in saying collusion itself is in a crime, but you have to conspire to commit an illegal act, and that's what all of this is looking into. And if you try to obstruct the investigation, here's the thing, if they didn't commit a crime, but they obstruct the probe of it, then it doesn't matter. They have committed obstruction of justice, even if the original crime was not actually

a crime at all. Yeah, that's kind of, isn't that what Clinton went down for? Yes, exactly. They were, we can talk about this more later. No, jobs are a crime. It would happen, well, I won't go into that, but essentially, they kept investigating, investigating, investigating, and everything turned up, nothing,

until they found he asked for approval to investigate Lewinsky. Yeah. And that's what led, and then he testified in a civil case with Paul Jones, that led to perjury. Yeah, And that's what led and then he testified in a civil case with Paul Jones that led to perjury. Yeah. Yep. There you go. So we're going to be talking in detail a lot more about that later. I'm really excited. Hi, I'm too. Another thing Monday we learned, Connoway says he'll continue to run the house investigation despite Nunez being cleared and Nunez

saying, I never left. I've been running it the whole time. But Connoways like, no. But what seems like it's happening is now we've just got these factions within the Intel and Justice or Judicial Committees within the Senate and the House, where the majority, the Republicans, when they turn in requests to Rod Rosenstein or yeah particularly Department of Justice their requests are prioritized over the minorities but

the minorities are like we aren't getting any answers so they're just kind of enroading around the Republicans to get to to subpoena and get not subpoena but to get letters and requests for documents or you know, it's for testimony or whatever. So yeah, that's happening. But yeah, Conway's like, no, I'm not, it's just this weird little king of the mountain thing where they both think they're in charge and is anyone really. So anyway, I think, I think, Bro, Rosenstein has basically, it's out works. It's whatever he decides to answer. On Tuesday, I found out, and I can't remember if this was a new story that came out or if it's just when I found it out. It was like this could have been something

everybody knew for a while, but Trump can't pardon Maniford. I mean, he can pardon him of federal crimes, but Schneiderman and Vance in New York Attorney General, have filed charges against Gates and Manafort, and you can't have parallel investigations going on, but they've backburned these investigations in the New York court while Mueller's investigation is going on. And if something happens to Mueller's investigation, investigation back on and file the charges or continue pursuing the charges with the New York Attorney General. That's pretty dope.

Yeah, that's nice. Yeah. Rod Rosenstein, Rosenstein, testified in an open session to the House Judiciary Thursday. I'll go, oh, that was Wednesday. I'll go over that. That was my homework assignment. On Thursday, the FCC voted along party lines to Mnet neutrality.

And the only reason the reason this touches Russia, and usually there's so many, you know, body politic things we could talk about in this. And I try to keep it narrowed down to the scope of the Russia probe and the Mueller investigation. But the reason that NET neutrality vote touches the Russia probe is because the FCC put up a website where they said please public leave us your comments. And there were thousands of illegitimate comments

left from people who have died and a lot of them came from Russian email addresses. So beg the question, how much are you helping? Always come from Russia, servers, and emails, and we just never realized it until now, or it's just like a reason. It was like Facebook with the ads. Like, we didn't know. It's like they paid you in Ruples.

Let's stop it. I think the way it looks kind of happened, and I've not to go too far off track, but read an article a couple months ago, they said, and the Cold War at the United States stopped fighting, but Russia never stopped. They've been putting 30 years of infrastructure into disinformation campaigns and meddling like exactly like this. So while we shuttered our office and kind of tried to work on it Big 10,000 foot level with how we could cooperate with Russia. Russia never stopped seeing us as the enemy. If you remember Putin being the head of the KGB, and that's exactly how

he operates. That's how all of this operates. It's meant to so chaos. It doesn't even matter if Trump doesn't have a... under the theory, it doesn't matter if Trump accomplishes anything for Putin directly. What it just means is they think that the reports are they think it's successful because we're chaotic right now. You've got entire segments of the population who will not believe, 33% that will not believe anything contradictory to what Trump says, and that's an incredible success on their behalf. Yeah, yeah, but it's a terrible American president's success, but it's a real great success if you're a foreign country trying to run our government or at least interfere with with its operation and the democracy of, you know, how we should create

a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it.

We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. We should create a lot of it. reasons that, but I didn't think you could get dumber. I thought like, like, the joke I like to tell is like, I hate how we're looking at Bush fondly, you know, like, oh, I'm

you're in a style. It's like, it's like, well, it doesn't Trump make you nostalgic for Bush, like, I guess sort of in the same way being engulfed in flames makes me nostalgic for drowning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Drowning her cake is for you in a reference. I like that. Well, I didn't realize exactly. Yeah. Well, do you guys. Can you believe how badly Obama handled Katrina? I was that Kenyan Marxist time machine. He went back and he tricked George Bush into having birthday cake with John McCain instead of formulating a response. Oh, John McCain.

How far you've gone. I don't know how he's going to get back on Tuesday to vote. Oh, he's my get back on Tuesday to vote They want everyone else to retire at 70 but they're working until they die they die. And a job that gives me a lot of money. Yeah. Benefits. Yeah. We have to help you. Oh, that's their argument. That's their argument.

I'm rooting for John McKin. I didn't retire until I was 82. You're like, yeah, okay. But you know, they're going to fit for power. Right? And I took the labor. I'm in between work right now, but I would love to get paid $100,000, $80,000

a year to do nothing. That's the dream. I would get promoted by the worst job I do. The better, I, well, I will I have to run well as a Republican then I don't actually have to believe any of their bullshit and I can just say I am lying to you like yes Yes, I don't care. Yeah, pretty much until they find out I'm a Jew and then it's over. Oh, yeah Don't shoot. Sorry. Sorry guys. We're gonna we'll believe that The FCC vote okay, we got the FCC vote in there.

So that's it. There was some Russian emails in there from the fake comments. And, oh, interestingly, a Schneiderman, the guy of Schneiderman advance that has the charges on the back burner for Manafort and Gates is now the same guy who's filing a multi-state lawsuit against the repeal of net neutrality. So he's heading that up. Then more stonewalling by the GOP majority and the Senate Judiciary Committee, basically by stacking interviews,

they're not sending, like when they're just piling up these witness interviews, so like that so fast and so furious that they can't even get the documents out to the Democrats in time to prepare for these testimonies. So like for example, Felix Sater and Ronograph are going to be testifying next week when I think Sessions out, but the staffers of the House, Judiciary Committee, are going to be answering, or asking them questions, and they're going to be doing it in New York. They're not even doing it on Capitol Hill.

So it's not, so the senators aren't even getting to ask the questions. They're doing it, and they're like, it's like, she's shoving it into this, I don't know. It's just, it seems, Stonewell, and the thing is, is that these guys, they're available to testify when the House is back in session, but they're not doing it.

It just seems like it's another tactic to just kind of, and I believe the idea is that from Democrats in the house is that they think that they really want to end this investigation in the house by the end of the year. Oh yeah, because Trump really is getting for that right. He's still at his Christmas present if he's a good boy. He's such a jerk. So we are really relying on Mueller. You guys are really relying on Mueller.

Yeah, yeah. The Department of Justice released the struck page texts Possibly violating the principal injunction that upset Rosenstein in the first place with the leaking of the Komi memo Remember when Komi wrote a memo about what had happened with the meeting and the where with the president met him and Stuff and they apparently Komi leaked it to the press. Yes. No one demanding your loyalty. Yes And Rosenstein is like you can't do that man, you know, and the Republicans are your loyalty. Yes, and Rosenstein is like, you can't do that man, you know, and the Republicans are like, what the fuck? But now they're doing that same, they're violating that injunction with this release of these text messages. And what's really interesting, these are private text messages, and I'll go into it a little bit later but there's no law

against having a political affiliation and working for the government or working even on a federal investigation. But I don't know, I'm wondering if Jeff Sessions approved the release of these texts because the office of the inspector General did not approve it. And if Jeff Sessions did approve it, is he violating his recusal? I think you are, I think arguably he would be because this is in connection. If you're investigating the investigation, that's sort of standing in its way. Once you've recused yourself, you've said, because remember, the, well, I'll talk about this later, special counsel is not subject to the day-to-day supervision of the AG, but the AG ultimately has the power to get rid of him. Unless, of course, the AG has recused himself, then the deputy AG.

So, yes, anything having to do with this would arguably be a violation of that recusal. But again, this is all speculative. And I also want to make a point that this isn't outside the realm of what Republicans do in the investigate. A big theme of the what was it? 12-year Benghazi investigation. What happened there that was very frequent as Gaudi, he represented himself as this independent prosecutor who just wants to get to the evidence, but his committee was frequently found to leak transcripts with vital pieces missing or alter emails before releasing them. They'd say, well, we didn't realize that happened. You know, again, plausible deniability. That's completely implausible, but the people who should care don't. So this

was, this is the same here. They selectively leaked text messages, critical of Donald Trump, that made it look terrible that they were biased. And but then they, of course, left out that they hate that they were conservative. And but then they, of course, left out that they hate, that they were conservative Democrats who really didn't like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and all kinds of other people. And that was not released. So it seems pretty clear that that's the strategy is to portray them as in a certain light with the DOJ essentially throwing career officials

under the bus for no other reason than they want to stop this. Right. Yeah. I think that's precisely it and that just this whole stonewalling attack a credibility. I 100% guarantee you Moller saw it coming He's not a stupid man It it makes sense that once he started getting close to the bear den that the bears are gonna get mad so I mean I hope he's got exit plan one through 76

and plan BCD all the way to like double three Z's. And then like, like, I'm sure he's like, he seems like one of the most prepared, deliberate and I don't know, detailed deeds that like, ever could have lived. So, yeah, I hope so. He can't, this can't be surprising him, you know? I mean, some of the reasons are like, what? Yeah.

Like, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I mean, I knew this was coming, but I didn't think you're gonna try to pull that, bro. Exactly, it's probably just too crazy at a time. Is it interesting? I think you underestimate the raw cynicism of the right. It really doesn't matter what you tell them.

They do seem to go along with it. There is this weird cultish hero worship that I haven't seen with anyone else. Should have like imagination there. To give a shout to Michael Castleberry, he made this comment like it's weird that they deify Trump. At least they waited till Reagan was dead to deify him. Trump like he's still here. Like it's like yes, we're winning winning what what what what what what if you won Yeah, no nothing Sended into a committee says they have evidence of intent to collude on Donald Trump Jr And more than intent to collude with Flynn so

again collude conspire What illegal what's not illegal moanose it'll all come out in the wash again collusion is the colloquialism I went over that a little bit earlier we learned intel briefers are leaving Russia updates out of the daily intel briefings with the president yeah because he's a fucking cry baby like he doesn't want to hear about Russia and so Because then his win meant he had help

Just like he didn't have help he just inherited $200 million from his dad. He did it all himself. Yeah, right No, no I don't know man I'd have a pretty high time succeeding in life if I started out with $200 million. How we know where he began Paul Ryan is a quote unquote soul searching. So he might need a soul. I understand. Yeah.

He's searching for souls. So if anyone knows any place where you can buy well, it 13 million lose health insurance is going to be a lot of dead people. So I think that's where he can get what? Too soon. No. Too late.

Too late. Too late. Nice. but yeah, so Paul Ryan might be resigned I don't know it seems like a rumor. It seems like he kind of said something and people took it out of context But we'll see fair and thought is gonna resign. No, that's that creepy fat dude. Oh, Ducky Pigeon. Yeah sexual harassment guy. Oh Texas, I think Republican yeah, I think that's him. Man, he's a creepy little fuck face. Just a little, just a little Tony guy with like glasses and he's like, and his excuse was,

I've never worked in the government. I've never worked in the Congress. I didn't know they had rules like that. Wait, you see, he's using the George Costanza defense. I didn't know idea that sexually harassing people was proud upon Congress. If I had known I certainly would have hit it better. It's never run in an office like that. Oh my God you creepy little dick. They lived too long. Um Marosa was fired. Her left. It was

dragged out or something dramatic. I know I know whatever happens to her. All I know is that she's just a lightning rod for drama. So whatever the fuck she she probably like you know what Just it's time to go and she was like okay, and then she now she's like I'm gonna expose everything You couldn't even imagine some things that I've seen Oh, man, okay, you know what bye maybe she'll get her own spin-off in the reality show America She will oh her mother testimony will go like public I don't think Mueller's even gonna interview She'll just be sitting there sad like

She'll be like don't you know on baller's door like I got information and he's like What do you want? I'm important now. You're not a like get out of here. What do you want? I'm important. No, you're not. A fourth call between Putin and Trump took place that we had to find out about from from Russian media. Fourth time. Wow. So we have a whole entire communications department set up in the White House. And we have to learn about these Trump Putin meetings from Russia. I don't know if you also saw that article. It was the WAPO or the New York Times. They were sourcing that internal deliberations with the White House.

One of the things they mentioned was his favorite leaders, I don't know if you heard that. His favorite leaders are Putin, Erdogan and... G, right? Yes, yes, so China. And this is pretty, you know, whatever he wants to be talking about is authoritarian tendencies for some time. He was famously said in a playboy interview that he seemed to like what China did with crushing Tiananmen Square, you know, I mean that, again, there's like 10 million things

he does that are terrible, so it's hard to keep track of all of them. Yeah, he's a person who doesn't list out Philippines guy, you know, he loves that guy too. Oh's hard to keep track of all of them. Yeah, you're right. I'm surprised you didn't list that Philippines guy. You know, he loves that guy too. Oh yeah, but I got some murder. Rugergo do tear tape. So tear tape. Man, that guy's a... See, related to Joe Dirti?

I don't. No big deal. Friday, doubt and succulo are going to meet with the Mueller team next week. Trump's lawyers are meeting with Mueller next week. Yeah. I don't know what it's about, but... They're good at dodging logic, though. Well, but it seems now Mueller's gotten through everyone, and now he's on to the Pence Trump level.

Unless it's just a, it might be a simple thing to settle this discovery dispute. It could be, it could be any number of things, but I'm assuming it's to say, here's what I've got on your guy. Oh, that would be amazing. But again, Jordan's going to talk about the different past Mueller can take. There's three or four different things he can do with the information that he has. He already has it all probably. I'm sure there's really nothing new that can come to light and I mean unless he actually just interviews Trump and Pence and themselves. Yeah and I think DT yeah, Donald

Trump Jr. He's already talked to. Kushner, he's already talked to. Like he's already talked to everybody. Right. I mean, you think about it. He's really close. Yeah, but I mean, there's there's processes in federal court that can take months and months, like discovery, like, I mean, there's just so many things that we, you know, we talk about how many months it took to get, to just simply go through the firing of archipelago cox requesting the tapes, him refusing, him firing, them getting a new special counsel, like that whole thing took so long, a period of time, and there's still a lot left to do. So we don't want to get too excited about that. Yeah, you're right.

Cox started, I believe it was in May of 1973 and Nixon resigned in August of 74. Yeah. Cox was appointed, he said, I think this investigation will take 18 months. So you have to understand that when you have people saying, oh, this investigation needs to be shut down. Well, you look at what are parallel investigations. Watergate took just over literally just around 18 months or so. And then there was stuff that happened afterwards that led to indictments and prosecutions.

But the big fish took 18 months to get there. How many months in is Mueller now? I feel like... July? So... Okay. Oh wait, no. I thought he was appointed in May.

He was... Wasn't he? Yeah, Special Counsel came out in May after Komi was fired. Yes. Two weeks later, Rosenstein said, we need to appoint someone. Yes, but the FBI's been investigating the Russia probe for over a year and a half now. Yes. So, but if from just Mueller start to finish,

we are, Janjala, I guess it's time we're a little more step in months into it. Right, so we're barely, barely into it. But I don't know. God is taking forever, I mean. And what's crazy about all this is like so much of the most salacious stuff has just been people saying that Trump didn't obstruct justice or anything. He's like oh yeah

I totally did this thing for that reason. Well you can't take the words he says literally just because he's on TV. You tricked him into splitting him talk without stopping him. Yeah, you tricked him into letting him talk about stopping him. That's that's we're just kind of entrapment ever. He talked. I've been I've been insisting you could cut this investigation off immediately by being, hey, you obstructed justice didn't you? Because I hear people with large hands do that. Oh, absolutely. I did all of those things. You know, also when Watergate happened, like there wasn't the internet, I think a big part

of why people are so restless about this is because it's like we see all of the evidence and it's not much faster conclusions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think that if you push it out, you'll be back then. Yeah. We're a very, we're a very 10 second culture. We're a very. We're a very. When I'm buying investigations.

Six seconds. Right. And the same. Well, you've also got the problem that your outrage can go away simply because there's so much stuff going on. A lot of people theorized that more was going to win simply because a month was too long for people to be upset about child

molestation. Right? Right? They're like, now if you had told me this two weeks before, I would have been mad. But four weeks, I mean, that's two weeks. Yeah. Same with, same with Komi reopening the the Clinton investigation, which seems like ironically for all the talk about a partisan FBI, it seems like anti-Trump, sorry, anti-Clinton agents basically blackmailed him into reopening it or else they were gonna make him look bad. So and they had done that a month before they likely would have calmed down enough but because it was right before the election that was... 11 days. 11 days, that's right 11 days. So our attention spans are short. But they're super skewed against Trump. Yeah. We all know law enforcement leans liberal everywhere.

Everyone. In fact, some of the biggest proponents of black lives matter are in law enforcement. They're constantly marching and demanding. Super hippies. Come on, you're like hipster hippies. You have to smoke weed to be in the FBI. Hipster hippies, that means they're doing hippies

and ironically. Yes. Yes, hipster, hipbies, that means they're doing hippie, hippie isn't ironically. Yes, yes, they're wearing tie-dye ironically. But they are, oh, and ironically on drugs all the time. And they're in the FBI. They're like, oh, man, yeah. Yeah. On ironically on drugs. Yeah.

Or my memoir. I don't know. Trump left the door open to pardon Flynn. That was, and that just might have been a stupid gaff. He was asked, are you going to pardon Flynn? You're going to pardon Flynn? And he said, we're not going to talk about pardoning Flynn yet. That doesn't even make sense.

He's cooperating with the probe. A pardon won't do anything. He's already given them the information. He would only be able to pardon him from the one count of lying to the FBI that he was charged with. Then they could bring forward other charges. The 76 other charges that they didn't use. Pardon, pardon, pardon.

In his plea agreement, it was left out that he wouldn't be charged with all of any of these other charges. So, Mueller left that door open, and that's something that most people get for proper in a plea agreement. Proffer is, here's what I've got to offer you, and then the plea agreement is like, okay, we're only going to charge you with this one thing, and we have all these other charges we are not going to charge you with these other things, provided that what you give us comes, has a result or has fruition, like something comes to fruition. That language is completely left out, it's like the shittiest plea deal ever for a

Flynn. But I mean what else is he gonna do? He's probably got if if if Manafort and Gates had 12 charges of federal families. How many could Flynn possibly have that he wasn't charged with? Yeah. So Trump could only pardon that one charge. I probably. And he could be charged with other things. We should do like a segment like where we guess who's gonna get pardoned. Oh, it's called like pardon my Russianers.

Pardon my Russian instead of French. I like pardon me for Russian. Yeah. WST. Oh, my handwriting is abysmal. Wall Street Journal. The Deutsche Bank subpoenas that we said happened. Yeah. I'm reporting again. They happened. They've been able to confirm it though, directly, Trump. And Jordan, you're going to talk a little bit about the clause for federal investigators, at least in the statute, I think, or the

Justice Department regulations. Justice Department regulations about subpoenas for financial records and things like that. And not just financial records, any subpoena, really. Well, yeah, we can cover all of those. There are different rules. Kushner today found out he's scrambling to hire a crisis PR firm. That's appropriate. Okay.

Public relations crisis response firm or something like that. What? So it's a cry for help. Maybe he should be a sooner than today, though. Well, what's going to happen? Is something going to go down? Like, what are the reason would you have that? I mean, he's already been tasked as the czar

of literally everything in the government. Why doesn't he just run his own PR campaign if he's the greatest at everything? He should be solving peace in the Middle East. He's admitting he needs help, this has been very hard for him. Yeah. Oh, you guys. He had to speak words and he's only allowed like 10 words a week. Otherwise, he will literally die.

And that's part of the old book, just first. Yeah, well, that's right. That's how we got his Twitter limit. That's how we got his soul. That's the deal. In his soul plea agreement. Rod Rosenstein's testimony. I don't know if you guys watched this. Woo.

I don't think I've ever deviated something off of C-SPAN 3 before, but I don't think anyone has it. Is that third one? I- yeah, no chance. No way. Um, I'll say. You got- you watched the S- sit B-N-3 of Congressional hearings. I did. I watched the ESPN-3 of Congressional hearings.

I don't know what was going on in C-SPAN 1 and 2 that day, but apparently it was more important than the deputy attorney general testifying. So, first of all, there's a lot of things going on with this testimony. It just sounded like one giant commercial for Republicans to discredit the Mueller investigation. They did an open session with the Rosenstein, who is a Trump appointee, on TV for everybody to see. Now I granted, I don't think C-SPAN 3 gets a lot of traffic at 7 in the morning on Wednesday, but still, I guess 10 AM on the East Coast, maybe we waking up and get a big deal or something.

I was supposed to leave to have time to ask this guy. So it's the reason. And you know I would have been up at Southern watching it like a fucking narrative. Oh yeah. I did have to work so definitely. But it was just, Republican after Republican was just like slamming this thing about biased and bias in the Mueller's team and how can you call yourself a fair and impartial investigation and there's these rules about the appearance of bias, the actual bias and the impropriety appearance of impropriety, that's the phrase.

They're in the crisis when they really rally behind an idea. The hypocrisy is so strong but they don't care. It's thick, right? Yeah, they just go straight ahead. Because, and here's the thing, struck and page. Struck was an investigator with the FBI. Page was a lawyer. I don't know if they were dating or whatever,

but they sent texts back and forth to each other. And they were a lot of anti-Trump texts, a lot of anti-Trump voter texts, a lot of, they were anti-Bernie texts, anti-Arakkholder lot of anti-Trump texts a lot of anti-Trump voter texts a lot of there were anti-Bernie texts anti-Aryk Holder texts Right. There were like they just hate everybody. Exactly. But because it seems like the one being investigated. Which seems like a great disposition for a prosecutor. I like it. I'm biased. I'll admit. Because I had this thought I understand you want to keep bias out of an investigation, but wouldn't the fact that you hate the person you're investigating actually make you do a better job?

Like I couldn't, I understand that when you're investigating you look for facts, you find facts and you report facts. There's not like, the only thing that could happen is if you have bias against somebody and you made some shit up, but you can make it up against them probably though, right? So I was talking about someone who like wouldn't it just be bad if you were a prosecutor and your bias was because you liked somebody too much and that prevented you from looking too deeply into anything? Well, I'll cut in on that and say it's of course a really big problem for if you're shown to have bias. For example, you look at places where there's been lots of scandals for DAs or prosecutors declining to

prosecute because of either whether it's campaign finance issues or for example, like when you find racist texts among prosecutors' offices, I think this was out of New York, somewhere. But for example, when stuff like that comes out, or like in San Francisco, you get text messages between officers that are racist. But where are you gonna find 16 brilliant lawyers who don't think Trump's an idiot? Well, you're not supposed to, well, here's the,

well, fair enough, but here's the thing with that. When you show bias, that was a basis for throwing out some of those prosecutions because if you are biased, you're not going to do a better job of it. If you're biased, your goal is to... Really just joking. Of course, but I'm sorry. I, you brought me on, not as my comedian capacity, as a lawyer who shits on everything. And when it comes to bias, a prosecutor is allowed to have political opinions. In fact, I was reading a thread by a conservative prosecutor who was saying, I trashed liberals all the time in text messages.

I just didn't let it affect my job. This is nonsense. Yeah, and it is. And I think, I don't know, and here are some of the questions that came out of this thing, where people were like, how could you let that person on your team? Why would you have that person on your team? I questioned Mueller's integrity because this guy was on his team. He hired this guy and let these people be on his team.

And the fact of the matter was, Rod Rosenstein answered, was, first of all, these people were on the team before I appointed Mueller. So I appointed Mueller into this team and they were on this team before I appointed Mueller. So I appointed Mueller into this team and they were on this team. And the day that Mueller found out about these texts through an IG investigation, that's the Inspector General, he found out about the guy was gone by lunch. He was no longer on the team and that lawyer page had already left the team already at her own accord. Right. But that is a matter of two. So within hours, he was removed. So the hypocrisy, which you were touching on a little bit earlier, about keeping Flynn in office for 18 days after finding out he had lied to the FBI is okay, but waiting

four hours to fire a guy over text messages in his private world. Unacceptable and can never be done. Yeah. Investigation. It's the view of the Republican Party that the only people who do a non-partisan non-biased job are Republicans finding the conclusions they want. Yes. Everyone else is suspect.

One I'm going to cover when I talk about parallels in the past is the kind of stuff that was that Cox, the prosecutor, and then his successor, the things that could have been, that they would have been dragged through the mud had any of this been the case then. I mean Cox was a Democrat, the subsequent, the social prosecutor was a supporter of LBJ, and yes he had donated to, he had voted for Nixon twice, but the kinds of associations these people had would absolutely not fly today We kind of had more respect for law enforcement like sure you're a Democrat, but we trust you to do a good job Yeah, it's getting harder to trust any Democrats, but at least I guess they're Look into this time around. Yeah, I guess I'm in yeah, I'm sorry like Politicians in general used to be more skeptical of like across the board, but

Pretty they were to expect them to the board, but that's kind of a bad idea. They were just expecting to. Yeah, yeah. There's a difference. There's a huge gap. Yeah. Yeah. There's no, what we've had trouble dealing with in this modern landscape is how do you deal with a side that does not operate in good faith and does not actually care?

Like how do you, how do you do that? That means none of your good, good measures or whatever, your, your, being gracious gets you nowhere. They're not, if you can see it a point, then you to them, they won the argument. Even if you're just doing the philosophical, socratic debate thing of, okay, let's have this back and forth. Let's be philosophical about it.

But they're not interested in that. So they're not gonna look at the anti-liberal texts. They're just gonna focus on the anti-Trump texts and comes to the conclusion they might because Hannity told them what to think. And they're just gonna focus on the anti-Trump texts and comes the conclusion they might because Hannity told them what to think and they're like, yeah, that sounds right. Right. Well, the other interesting thing that happened is one of the Senator, one of the reps came on and he did this very dramatic with so much flair, a list of nine of the 16 people on Mueller's team and how much money they donated to Democrats in the past.

And he's like listing naming them a wine tromb. He donated a thousand dollars to Obama's campaign twice. And then this guy donated $3,300 to the clean campaign, zero to Trump. And he listed nine names and with all the stuff they did. And then he's like, how do you expect me to believe these people are without bias? And I'm like, hold on, nine of 16, that means there's seven who did donate to Trump or didn't support Democrats,

and they didn't talk about them at all. I'm like, that's not a bad seven and nine. That's not a bad, maybe he couldn't get eight and eight. Like I said, it's gotta be hard to find super educated brilliant legal minds that would support Donald Trump. That's probably, actually, I didn't really think about that to not.

That's probably why there's so many shitty judicial nominees because what kind of person would wanna be part of that or real piece of shit who doesn't, who's never tried a case. I said that exact same thing when they showed that that what, Kennedy questioning that judge, you ever tried a case? No, jury case, no, civil case, no, small clients court, no, you ever do this?

No, can you tell me what the statute is? No, I don't know. I don't know. And I was having that exact same conversation with my husband saying, are there like smart, sharp legal minds that would want to be a part of this? That would support Trump's, I guess, agenda? But even from the start, there were some that seemed to be willing and then he just like pushes them away.

He like finds a way. I think Trump, in the beginning he did have like some smart people on his side. I feel like my references are pretty fine. I'm thinking like Kanye West. He was like, because he pushed his face aside. He was like, hey guys, I was gonna work with him because he's the president now. We gotta try to get along and I'm like, oh gosh, I guess that's the humble thing to do with it. Even then Trump was like, yeah, it's true black people. So I don't know. I feel like, how do you stuff the best example? Yeah, he had four friends.

They're all gone. Yeah. I feel bad for Omarosa leaving. Now Ben Carson, this is only black friends. Yeah, it's really lonely. Ben Carson, I've got the texts. Okay. So, I have a couple of the texts because these are so funny.

And speaking of Ben Carson Where's the Ben Carson one in one of the text struck called Ben Carson the quote crazy ass grain storage pyramid guy Because he he was the one who said well the pyramids maybe they were filled with grain. That's why we built them Yeah, and like no, no, no, no, no, no It's like you start to have a stroke when you're trying to think about it. I mean, maybe so smart and medicine, and like so dumb otherwise.

I think maybe you compartmentalize. Yeah, or what's the joke? What do they call a guy who graduated at the bottom of his class in medical school? Doctor. Yeah. Trump's a loathsome human being an idiot, awful, a douche. He called his family douche bags

Oh the douche bags are about to come up on stage and referring to my mom's name the One said I just went to a southern Virginia Walmart and you could smell the Trump support. Oh, no It's awful and when they're going through these texts the, and they're reading them to Rod Rosenstein, and they're hammering on how Mueller can't possibly have an investigation team that is now not tainted by bias. Rep Nabler said, a Democrat from Texas, he said, look, these are text messages sent on a private phone in private time to private people.

And these are things most Americans were already thinking about Trump anyway. Pauling down, Pauling down, I would support that. I think idiot is the first word that comes to mind in Americans. Yeah. Let's see. So the IG wasn't notified about the release of those texts. And then a lot of the Republicans were asking for Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the investigation.

And Rod Rosenstein explained to them that there is a process for appointing a special prosecutor. Step one is you have an IG investigate the situation that's in question. And then if there is prejudicial criminal activity or you have to have cause to a point of special prosecutor. And we the reason that Hillary, we didn't have a special prosecutor on Hillary is because not only did the IG but the FBI

investigated and they found no cause. Right. To get that special prosecutor. Yeah, yeah. We are now having an IG investigation into this investigation. That's how Mueller found out about Strux Tech's was through the IG. So we're doing that. And once that plays out, and I can't tell you anything about it because it's an ongoing investigation. Right. and I can't tell you anything about it because it's an ongoing investigation. If there's enough criminal,

besides pointing to criminal activity, I'll go ahead and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the investigation. But until then, shut up. And just to add to that, it's not in order for special counsel to be appointed, either the AG or the acting AG, and this is kind of goes back to Mueller.

The statute says that the only time that you can appoint a special counsel is if it would if the AG investigating it would be a con or if the DOJ investigated it would be a conflict of interest for them or other extraordinary circumstances. And it might not be a conflict of interest in this case. Rather than a David Jepi-Degie to investigate it. The whole point of an independent counsel would be have to admit that, oh, we don't trust the DOJ or the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General to look into this. We want somebody else. And unless they can show that the DOJ or the IG or some other

department wouldn't be able to properly investigate this or check it, that doubt then there wouldn't be any basis. And that seems to be what Ross and Stine has been saying. There's not really any basis for this. It's actually illegal for him to appoint a special counsel. Right, it would be constant. It would be contrary to statute. Mm-hmm. Break into law.

Break into law. Uh. No. Uh, process for a pointy one, uh, predication of criminal wrongdoing. That's what it is. There has to be a predication of criminal wrongdoing to a point. Eagle Mambolgemba. Yes.

Muller's team, one of the Democrats pointed out that Muller's team is part of Falls Under OPM, which is the Office of Personnel Management, which means they are subject to merit promotion rules, which means they can only or they cannot be hired or not hired based on a great number of things listed in the federal government race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, political affiliation. So you aren't allowed by the federal statutes to appoint or not hire or not hire somebody. To give the OPM anything. Marit-based appointment system for their political beliefs. So does it mean we matter? No. They have private messages. And in fact, it's a question, I kind of question.

Him being removed from his position at all, whether that's even legal, because you're allowed to have a political. It's probably the use of sacrifice to get them to have the fear above. You're allowed to have a political use of sacrifice to get them to but Mueller Well, there is no here above You know, yeah, well when it comes to for like Political affiliations and views that's one of those things that most of the time isn't really a protected class like that guy We're like like in California years ago where the guy was from Mozilla was found to donated to propate and

There was pressure and then he was kind of forced out. And there's not, I mean, there's, unless there's a statutory provision, there's not really protection for your political views. It's crappy, it's awful, but I, I, I doesn't seem like they're protected by the... Not in firing, but in hiring. That's correct. So, there you go, there you have it. Interesting. Okay. I thought that was an interesting point that that that representative brought up. If Mueller wanted to add to this scope of the investigation, that was another thing to a lot of these Republican representatives were asking Rosenstein, well, is he looking

outside of what he's supposed to look at? Is he just expanding the scope of his investigation? Did he add? Well, hang on he want. He'll go over that too Yes, but no okay if he wanted to add Follow a trail. Let's say that wasn't Didn't have to do with the Russia probe. He can do that But he has to get Deputy Attorney General approval Every time he wants to do that if he wanted to go further and expand it into something that didn't connect to Rush

it all, again, he has to go through deputy. So they're saying, is he doing this without asking for permission first? No, and while they asked Rod Rosenstein, Tessie ever come to you and ask you to widen the scope of the thing, and he's like, well, that's not really how it works. He'll come in, tell me all the things he's investigating. I decide if they're within the scope of the jurisdiction of the statute, and if there's something on there that isn't, I would say no, but I can tell you that to this date I haven't said no to anything. And so the representative took that to me, so he have approved.

That was something I'm sorry. And he's facing the scope of the him. He's like, no. It's just part of the record. It's subjective too for that position that, you know, it's kind of hard for him to say yes or no Was that it coming off as a comment while you're commenting on an ongoing investigation You are allowed yeah, yeah, and especially given the recusal of the AG it makes it particularly sensitive Yeah, that's true because if you

If he trips up and then has to recuse himself We've got a vacant seat in the Eastern District, US court in Virginia. We're learning from someone saying that right. We're learning from someone saying that right. Dana Bente is old position. There isn't a third in line right now as far as I know. I don't think he's replaced Bente. Dana Bente, remember the guy I told you about him? Yeah. So, and if you don't know him talking about, I'm sorry, go listen to episode four. She makes like a chart Dude, that's how it's supposed to be. String. Yeah, you know there's like criminal. There are any interns out there that like to be a

Fuller Shira. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know if a graph that was really cool. Yeah, and I want to take a video in Comedy show to get so only San Diego maybe last day I mean, A.G. has a poll. Oh, yeah. What the hell? There's that. We're going to blow up. Yeah.

So, guys, if you get a chance to watch that Rod Rosenstein testimony, it's pretty interesting. A lot of it was grandstanding. A lot of it was representative wanting to air their issues on national television to show their constituents that they're concerned about what they want. But most of it was the Republicans attacking Mueller's credibility and the Democrats just basically talking about how amazing Mueller was. Now, I have clips. I've never done this before, I'm so excited. Oh yeah.

To do this. So I'm going to go into my little memos here because there was a guy named Duwich, Ted Duwich, a Florida Democrat, and he gives a pretty good timeline. And it takes a couple minutes, but it's a really nice wrap-up. Cherry on top to what's happened so far So I wanted to play that so that anyone who just for some reason started listening and didn't listen to any previous episodes And if you're just joining us So this will give you kind of a good nice wrap up of

What's been going on so far so here we go. This is Ted Deutsch, Democrat from Florida. That? For some reason, why won't it go on speaker? The benefit of my colleagues just... There we go. Mr. Gowicz, thank you for being here. There's been a lot of talk about dates and timelines. I like to actually just walk through for the benefit of my colleagues just a short timeline

from this year. In January, the FBI, CIA, and NSA concluded the following, and I quote, we assessed Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. Democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability, and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian government

developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. Close quote. Mr. Rosenstein, do you have any reason to dispute that? No. In January, also in January, 24, Michael Flynn denied to the FBI agents that he discussed US sanctions with Russia before he took office. On January 26th, acting Attorney General Sally AIDS, told the White House Council that Flynn

lied about the nature of his calls with Kislyak and his vulnerable to blackmail. On February 13th of this year, Flynn resigned over his conversations with the Vice President. On February 15th, public reports of telephone records that show that members of the Trump 13th of this year, Flynn resigned over his conversations with the vice president on February 15th Public Reports of Telephone Records that show that members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates have repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before in the election. On March 16th, documents released by Representative Cummings show that Flynn received $33,750 from Russia's state-owned TV for a speech that he made in Moscow. On March 20th, the FBI Directorate acknowledged an

investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia on May 9th, the President fire the FBI Director on May 10th, Trump met with Russian diplomats in the White House in Revealed Classlight Information, and told them that he fired the head of the FBI. I called him and not job and said, and I quote, I face brave pressure because of Russia, that's taken information and told them that he fired the head of the FBI. I called him and not job and said and I quote, I face great pressure because of Russia, that's taken off close quote.

On May 11th, the President told NBC News that the Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. On June 7th, we learned President Trump urged Komi to drop the Flynn investigation. On July 8th, we learned of undisclosed and undisclosed Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and interrussian lawyer. The next day five sources stated that Donald Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting on the premise to damaging information. I know we Clinton would be provided. And five days after that, a veteran of the Russian military, we learned also attempted that Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner on October 5th. George Papadon, who is one of five people

that present identified as a policy advisor, pleaded guilty to one countermaking of false statement to the FBI in January 27th about the time the extent and nature of relationships and interactions were certain foreign nationals. In the statement of a fence we learned that he reached out regarding his connections that he could help a range of meeting between Trump and Putin. On October 27th, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign advisor Rick Gates were indicted on multiple counts, including conspiracy against the United States.

In November, the president of the United States met with Vladimir Putin and said, and I quote, he said he didn't medal. He said he didn't medal. I asked him again, you can only ask so many times. Every time he sees me, he says, I didn't do that, and I really believe that. When he tells me that, he means that President went on to say, I mean, give me a break talking about the national security folks who put together that report that I quoted earlier, give me a break, they are political hacks. On December 1st,

former national security adviser Mike Flynn pleaded guilty to one count in making a false statement to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian at best regarding sanctions. This is a little walk through what happened over the past year. I would like to ask you Mr. Rosenstein. I'd like to quote some of my colleagues from this committee. One of them said that the Special Counsel's investigation into whether the Trump campaign assisted in its effort to interfere in the election is actually

an attempt to overthrow the government in the United States. Do you believe that, Mr. Rosenstein? No. He said we're at risk of a coup d'etat in this country. If we allow an unaccountable person is, the special counsel unaccountable here, no, he's not unaccountable. He went on to say with no oversight,

is there no oversight at all with the special counsel? There is oversight. And then he went on to say that if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly elected president of the United States, is pursuing the rule of law undermining the duly elected president of the United States. Mr. Rosenstein, no, it is not.

One of my other colleagues said we have to clean this town up. He talked about firing Mueller. One of our former colleagues on this committee accused Mueller of having a vendetta against President Trump because he fired James Comey. Mr. Rosenstein, do you believe that he is a vendetta against President? No, I do not, I don't know. I would just conclude that this little walk through this one year in American history makes it impossible to understand how it is

that my colleagues on the other side continue to launch attacks not only against reporters, against the FBI, against the special counsel, but they do so to throw dirt on this story to make it try to go away They may want to bury their heads in the sand But Mr. Chairman, I want to make clear that they will not bury the rule of law in the United States of America and I yield back Pretty good Very succinct it was so good because he only had five minutes.

So he had to hurry up. He just wanted to try and give us like roasting. And a little speech out there. And the only other clip that I have, it's a much shorter one, it is just Rod Rosenstein's characterization of Mueller. So I'm going to go ahead and play that one for you. Maybe, if I can figure out how.

You're very difficult, Congressman, for anybody to find somebody better qualified for this job. Director Mueller, as throughout his lifetime, been a dedicated and respected and heroic public servant. After college volunteered to serve as a Marine in Vietnam where he was wounded in combat, he attended law school and then devoted most of his career to serving as a federal prosecutor. With the exception of brief stints and private practice, he served as United States Training

in two districts in Massachusetts, and Northern California. He served in many other positions in the department after he lost his position as the head of the Criminal Division when President Clinton was elected in 1992. Mr. Mueller is briefly went into private practice and then he went back at an entry-level position as a homicide prosecutor trying to help

with the violent crime problem in the District of Columbia in the early 1990s. He then rose once again through the ranks and ultimately was confirmed, I believe unanimously, as FBI director protected this nation after 9-11. And then when his tenure-year term expired, he was so well respected that his term was extended, I believe also almost unanimously for another two years.

So I believe that based upon his reputation, his service, his patriotism and his experience with the department and with the FBI, I believe he was an ideal choice for this task. Be very difficult. with the FBI, I believe he was an ideal choice for this task. Be very different. So, that's Rod Rosenstein, Uber Republican. That's his characterization of Mueller. So, and again, I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone that despite all this Republican backlash and attacks on the credibility

of Mueller, Mueller is a lifelong Republican. He was appointed by a Republican twice. And Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein is a Republican, also appointed by Republicans. I think they were the old-school Republicans. Twice. He's like a new wave of like, what a tear about facts. He's our Trump Republicans. These aren't Trump Republicans. These are Reagan Republicans.

Yeah, yeah. So I don't, and I'm going to hand this over to you guys shortly, but I know that Jordan's going to talk about the nature of the political leanings of some of the folks in the Nixon Watergate. Nixon had a Democratic House in Congress when he was in. And Archibald Cox was a Democrat. So I can you imagine if the Special Counsel were a Democrat?

Not only that, but he was famously a supporter of George McGovern who had been demolished in the 1972 election. I mean this would sort of be like a Hillary Clinton donor being appointed. Like everyone would go fucking apoplectic. And let's not forget how much everyone was racing to, you know, Pat Muller on the back when he was appointed Newt Gengridge everyone else. They were like, this guy is the utmost integrity. And then months later, it's corrupt, it's corrupt. And I mean, but mind you, Gengridge was the same guy who was going after Clinton for an affair while he was having

an affair to which his wife at the time said, how can you possibly say this in public and do this? And do this in private. He's like, well, it doesn't really matter what I do in private. It's what's important. I'm not quoting him correctly, but essentially, it doesn't really matter. What not? You didn This is what's important. I'm not quoting correctly But essentially is it doesn't really matter what I say that Gingrich yes, yeah, yeah, oh Gingrich I'm newt

All right boy, we I for a slow news week. We sure do have a lot of news So I'm gonna hand this over to Jolissa to give us a little bit of a insight. I think you're I think you're assignment this week was I think you're a sign-mit in this week was Papa Dopolis and his Greek connection. Yeah, yeah, which is fine. We can add Greece to another place in the map. I do think it's weird that Papa Dopolis and Greece, like, those things go together. I would have thought it was weird. Yeah, before, but turns out he's in the sign of Greek immigrants. Yeah, I know. Papa Dopolis. Yeah, I know I knew that. Claringly Greek. I don't know. I I use like Euros. I'm not even sure

if it's how you pronounce it. Like yeah I'm not very culturally like distinguished but I do feel like it's interesting that's his only like connection like he his resume as as a foreign anything politically was really light and then he lied about a you in job so it was just okay so it's interesting when it comes down in Greece because Papa Dopolis was pretty much called one of Trump's top five porn porn foreign policy I think you just made up a good a good porn movie yeah yeah yeah one of his top five foreign policy policy. I think he just made up a good porn movie. Yeah, for the political

John. Yeah, one of his top five foreign policy advisors and that was just a weird call for someone who's really young and who doesn't have a lot of experience in that area but that's kind of Trump's thing. So I guess it makes sense in hindsight. He likes the people who are young and inexperienced. Exactly yeah like those are his favorite. So he basically had Papadabla's gone this trip. So Trump said all these things about Papadabla's last year around March, and in May last year, Papadabla's one of the trip to Athens, Greece,

where he was being like wind and done by all these Greece officials, because he was pretty much flaunting his position as Trump's like Connection and like his he was on a secret mission there for Trump apparently. It's what he kept telling people and so he was just really known This is like local celebrity out there and sounds like a douche like a Greek version of a Jersey short Do I'm sure he was loving every like you've heard Nick Crowell do his Bobby bottle service like I'm a producer producer and I'm a musician like like fuck a cranberry like we need more pop with populist impressions but I'm not sure what he sounds like I think Nick Crowl would be a great pop yeah I don't

have you guys ever heard his voice before I don't think I've ever heard his voice yeah I think we need to we can create yeah we need it you know imagination we can we just live in it up out out there in Greece and one of the Greek I don't think I've ever heard his voice. I think we need to. We can create that. Yeah, we need to use our imagination. We can create it. He was just living it up out there in Greece. And one of the Greek political officials, that specifically, like, kind of take interest in him, was how do you pronounce his name?

Camino? Is that Camino? What's the Greek? Yeah, so this guy, he was the Greek defense minister. Yeah. Camino. It's a really, I don't know. It's, it's, oh, Camino's, maybe a really, I don't know, it's, it's, and O'Caminos, maybe.

But yeah, he's the Greek defense minister and I guess he's like their Michael Flynn. He's like the head of the defense of Greece. Not sure he's curated, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and he, he really took Papadopolis under his wing while he was out there and just like this guy, he's pro-Russian. Like Camino's is known as like,

Putin's top gree supporter. Like that's his thing out there. And so it's just weird that all of a sudden when Trump promotes Papadoccalist to this position that, you know, he becomes like public figure out there. And it's just, it's really weird, I guess, considering now how all that has seen to go away, you know, considering the obvious plea deal. And it's just, it's like they kind of built him up as this like guy who was someone, I guess, to look up to when they like, you know, treated him like he was royalty. And now it's like just dead silence.

But he seemed to be the main guy that was using his ties with Greece to connect Trump with Moscow. And that's where he gets kind of fishy. So I guess Muller will sort out the details there, but it's just becoming aware to the public that, even though he was just the Greek immigrant, I guess somehow Pablo Doppler's had enough connections to Greece to kind of smooth over, I guess,

the channels with Moscow, or maybe like Greece was Greece was like a, what do you call it? Like, a little middleman or something? Like, that's where it gets really tricky. It's not hard to be famous in Greece. Maybe, like, the difference between being on America's Got Talent and Greece has Got Talent. Like, it's like, yeah. You know what?

I'm trying out for Greece has Got Talent. How about Dom did, he hosted like a beauty pattern patch in the place. Out there, apparently, yeah. It's just, it must have been nice. I'm sure while it lasted, but um, he was pep daddy out there for a while. Yeah, easy come easy go. Yes, but it might just be another way I see it. It's just more smoke. I'm looking for like this like this thing that really helps them. And I know it's all Russian comes back to Russia.

We're only gonna get the smoke. Muller's got the fire. Yeah, got the fire Any of that stuff until it's out and out right but before this I don't I mean the public wasn't really thinking about Greece and them in the Russia mix So there just might be another little channel there they can look into there. We're relatively non threatening Entity and yeah economically failures right now I don't want to pick so yeah the Portugal Ireland Greece but what were they? Pigs P.I.I.G.S. I've never heard of that. Yeah, yeah, I mean

He said Ireland Italy Portugal Italy Ireland Greece Yeah, yeah, this committee to see like he might possibly a little more shame that pigs is what that spells out They're already heard All right, well thanks a lot to Lisa. Oh, yeah appreciate it and Jordan I gave you the 9 million page Warp OPs Considering we are a little bit. What are we at here? Oh, did mine weren't you good? We're at an hour and five

Okay, yeah, is your still going. Yeah, they're also going you can't see it but I can it's What are we at here? Oh, didn't mind? We're at an hour and five. Okay, is yours still going? Yeah, they're still going. You can't see it, but I can. It's like this is in the way. No, but the time. Yeah, the time we can get this out. But the time went to four minutes.

But it was, it was. Maybe it came with everything. Yeah, it's so weird. It's fine. Yeah, I want to figure it out. It's that for a quarter. And you didn't press anything just it's so weird. It's fun. Yeah, I'll have to figure it out. It's that much important. It's very important. You didn't press anything just now, so I don't know why.

When she's talking, movie is over, so that she can. Oh, just in case something weird happened. Yeah. We might be. I'll just pick it back on there. All right, you got too much. Babe. Yeah.

All right, so Jordan, I wanted you to read this gosh, this amazing Washington Post piece. It had three or four authors, it had 50 different sources. Miller was one of the main guys, and I saw him pop up on the Ridge Tomato Show when I said I really want to cover this article, so take it away. Yeah, it was a great article. I think we should we'll link it in the comments to everyone can you know read along But it's entitled Dating Intelligence Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked. So this was a really great article by the Washington Post just about

Essentially what it means that Trump has kind of been denying all of these allegations against Russia and them colluding uh, are not colluding, I'm sorry, I'll buzz word there. I'm interfering in 2016 elections and I'm just gonna go over this, this article covers so much, there's a lot of interesting anecdotes that are in there, um, a lot of really, there are people that contributed to this article that are really big names of people that I did not think. Are you gonna talk about the bathroom? Yes, when he goes in the bathroom. Because that's like my favorite part of the whole.

Yeah, if you want to help me. Oh yeah, it's great. But there's just, what is it about this? What is it about this administration and piss? Yeah, it's a theme. Well, a parent? Yeah, we'll go over it. But yeah, so essentially, nearly a year into his presidency,

Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. And what makes this very peculiar is that they're meddling, largely worked to his favor. So essentially people are coming away from this first year kind of just with the idea that knowing Donald Trump and knowing that he is a super hothead and he's someone that you have to curate how you're delivering information to him and he's very easily offended and his ego is

very easily hurt that his entire basis potentially for denying the truth about Russia meddling in the elections is that it would mean that he would have to impart concede to the idea that it was not just him and his own charisma and intelligence that led to him. Yeah, that's right. The election. Yeah. It's funny until you think about the fact that, you know, this article points out, his own insecurities are now impairing the government's response to a huge national security threat and it's not funny at all. It's

really scary. And this article talks about what you mentioned before, how some of his one of his aid says that this guy's that Donald Trump's top three favorite people is a president in China, a president of Turkey and Putin. And he has this like reverence for authoritarian figures that is really scary and it doesn't even make he's just yeah I'll just continue here but basically that's the moral of this entire article so let's see here okay um before he was Wally's was uh while this information was coming out that there was evidence that Russia had been involving themselves in the 2016 elections in ways that were, you know, not okay, and essentially undermining our democracy as a whole.

AIDS in his inner circle were saying that they tried to get him to admit this fact publicly, but that he became agitated and scoffed at the idea that his candidacy was a result of anything but his own strategy and personality every time they would try to get him to do it. So these are people in his inner circle that have admitted in this article that he has not convened a single cabinet level meeting yet to even talk about this. It is an issue that he just refuses to a drink. He doesn't want to see it, he doesn't want to talk about it and it really there's- This is how his ego could be a great danger to- Oh yeah. Not just national security.

Yes, and I think I'm glad you said ego, because that's largely what I'd like to point out are just instances of his ego just being so. If you at all question legitimacy of his election, which admitting Russian interference existed would do, he flips the fuck out. Yeah, and for the people that listen to our podcast too that are very conservative and maybe you're not the ones that are on there being very aggressive and scary. They've made a such a mistake with your comments. So how awful would you come on, John's like this.

Wait, wait, wait, are you telling me there are people on the right who lead misogynistic sexist homicides, progressive liberal, progressive, liberal, people? They disagree. Oh yeah. I don't know why I was going to do that. Yes, it's a mystery. So for fuck you in the heart. Yeah.

Wow. Well, at least they said hearts. That could have gone way more than that. You should make T-shirts as they were. Yeah. But for all the people that are listening that are still conservative and still for some reason are a support and don't want to trump, just like I would like you all to just focus on this fact that he is literally letting something as just fickle as his ego and conception of himself as being right

period Allow him to affect our national strategy or national security strategy And that's terrifying. It doesn't matter what ideology it falls, you know, what side it falls on. It's terrifying. And I would just think you would have some sort of investment in the legitimacy of our government before you would blindly support this guy. But whatever you're like, no, whatever you're saying.

I said, Chris. Yeah. I'll buy checked. He's got an R next to his name. That's the end of my answer. Exactly, and that's very sad. OK, so whenever I argue with Republicans, I like to say, but you digress.

You digress. The demon rats. I thought it was a typo. Oh, no, no, that's their thing. It's just dad jokes that they think are really clever. Democrats, more like demon crats. No, no, no, no, no. Liberals, more like liberal retar-

Livedar, I did it! I'm the greatest intellectual in the modern conservative era. Yeah, it's a smart word. So just last month, Trump has said that it's an asset to the world and to our country to have Russia as a friend. So he's sticking with this narrative a lot. People are just like, dude, there's so much coming out that they're saying, dude, that's just like, this is a big thing. Yeah, there's so much coming out that they clearly have acted in ways that are unfavorable

to the very fabric of our entire democracy. And he just keeps it. Yeah, and there's multiple reasons. So this article points out how there's some people on his Team for example that thought it would be a good idea for us to be close with Russia and remain close with Russia Because when the impending resource my name is let's see here Michael Sorry, I'm getting lost. I'll find his

Yeah, basically saying we should rush us over resource dense that when the world runs out of resources, we should be close with Russia. So that's one reason. As one conceivable reason, I guess, why people are saying that we should stick with them. Right, and if I'll cut in, if you talk to Obama administration officials, they're typical what about is,

and it's like, oh, so when the liberals do it, it's the great but when we do it well as Ben Rhodes and other national security affiliated Obama officials said when we did it our focus was American interests first not what you're doing which is basically surrendering everything including American sovereignty for the fact that he might cooperate on something you like. Right it's terrifying it's really scary to me. What's the bathroom thing?

Yeah, but okay, so we'll get to it. What Trump officials are saying, they defend Trump's approach and say their policies have been tougher than Obama's when it comes to dealing with Russia. They're saying that they're like, yeah, just look at, you know, how we're treating what's going on in Ukraine. We're being so much tougher than Obama was and which is ironic because right now there did like

Trump is pretty much refusing to talk about this idea of sending arms to Ukraine to which madness is saying we should absolutely Back anybody that's an enemy to a potential enemy for us, which would be Russia, but Trump refuses to just have a fucking opinion on that so not to mention all controversy that went on during the campaign about, again, this is part of Mueller's possible investigation, because they might come up with changing the platform at the RNC. At the RNC to be much softer and more like a cring. Yeah. So this is something, it's crazy that all of this is really out in the open, and you don't

even have to look very hard to find it. It's really, the denial of this being a thing is either one or two things, ignoring pretty much all the evidence are going, it doesn't matter. It's all in the name of Trump making America's work. Exactly. It's just whatever he did to them, that there are defenses kind of come down to the point of,

well, it doesn't matter if he did because it stopped Hillary Clinton from the beginning. Exactly, I think that's just about a man. It's about some mysterious things. And that's what's so great about this article is that you have names coming out that are big names that are pro-Trump people that are saying things that are very, like, it's everybody.

There are so many people that are just like, this is ridiculous. For example, what you were saying before, A.G., they're like, when they're giving him his briefings, they literally leave out like really important national security information. Some of these people are saying this article because they need to, they need to curate how he's gonna react because they know he freaks out at things. They leave it out of the verbal.

They put it in the eye. Exactly, exactly. So, also there was the article earlier this year that said they put his name to route the document because that will make him read it. I mean, it's basically like how I get my dog to take medicine. They put his name, The name is the peanut butter that they- The name is the peanut butter they put on the pills for him to swallow.

Trouble. Yeah, yeah, it's awful. And it's like there's so many, the message that this is sending to the Kremlin is very dangerous because essentially this has been a huge success for Russia. If they're going completely, you know, any sanctions that the Obama era has brought on, Trump and his team are largely trying to, you know, diminish those they're talking about. Um, just, you know, trying to pull away from like, right now we didn't, we, what have I, how does it pronounce DACA's, DACA, the two buildings that are Russian officials and politicians were allowed to be in, the Russian embassy, the two embassies. Yeah, they call them, there's like some word in Russian, that's, that means like,

country house. Yeah, it means like country house is like a fond word for a place where they can be. And the Trump theme is saying, you know, like kind of just give them back. And people are like, no, we're not gonna give them back unless Putin, like does these things that will ensure that they're not going to be getting, you know, intelligence against the US and committing espionage in those buildings.

Yeah, they wanna give those back. They haven't imposed the sanctions that Trump reluctantly signed. They have to be approved by January. Yeah, it took two four days to sign. Yeah, that's what they talked about imposed the sanctions that Trump reluctantly signed. They have to be forced by January 8th. It took two or four days to sign. They talked about that in the sorrow. It took four days to sign the sanctions that were so incredibly backed by the entirety of Congress and what got him to sign essentially was one of his aides being like, if you don't

sign this, Congress will 100% overrule you and you're going to look weak. He's like, oh, I'm not going to look weak. He signs it. He's so weird coming under Yeah, he's like, oh, I'm not gonna look weak. And he signs it. He's so weird coming under him because he's promised this. Yes. And now he can't, and it's like, it's like, I'm scared.

I'm scared I guess. Yeah, so things Russia has not gotten from meddling in the 2016 elections yet. So while the annexation of Crimea for Ukraine remains unrecognized and sanctions regarding Ukraine are still in place, and more penalties have been dulled out to them in more sanctions. Here's what Russia did get for an operation to metal in the United States election that costs them less than $500,000 or some people are estimating. Russia has one completely destabilized US democracy essentially.

It's a good investment, man. There's America must have been having it going out of business sale to get it. Yeah. 33% must go. No, it's the... Yeah. Yeah, the White House is turning into like a big lots for fucking...

Yeah. Just take out the Ellen. Yeah, you're right. No. Yeah. Not my joke. Care remember what I heard. Care remember what I heard that.

Oh, okay. That's okay. It's a San Diego comic. Care remember who, but they're clever. I get one in the other. I'm just saying, yeah, they won't be upset. Please tweet at us. She wrote if you wrote that joke.

Yes. And then number two, they prevented Hillary Clinton from getting in the office who could have absolutely despised her. Yeah, he really doesn't like her. Pretty good investment for them, and it looks like they're not going to have to face much. At least nothing that Trump is going to do. And his and Putin isn't being investigated. Well, I guess the cyber terrorism or counter-terrorism. Well, there are two things. There's a Mueller investigation to the Senate, it's a

criminal investigation, and then there's the House Investigation, House and Senate investigations, which are the way Susan Collins differentiated it is Mueller's looking into criminality, we're looking into intelligence. We're looking to how this affected the country and what we do to prevent it in the future. I mean, that's what they say. What they're doing is totally different. But that's the... So Putin should have consequences?

Well, yeah, but if the intelligence committee finds things, they can put up more sanctions and then the president can just choose to not enforce them because that's hard and inconvenient. Yeah, and in the beginning of his presidency, he's surrounding himself with AIDS and advisors that reinforce his support for Russia. And then as Flynn gets taken down

and he starts getting more flack and press around his obsession with Putin, he starts putting in more people or in that are a little bit more skeptical of Russia. So for example, Flynn's replaced by HR McMaster. McMaster? Yup, right. Okay.

My handwriting on the stand. So, and so then McMaster, later on, finds a little bit of a friend in Fiona Hill, who A.G. mentioned, who is the top advisor on Russia for the National Security Council. Right, that's one of those. Foreign policy? No, National Security Security Council. Right. That's one of those. Foreign policy? No, National Security. Yeah.

Okay. And this is Fion Apple. Yes. That's a funny name. It's like Strakker something. Yeah. Fion and Hill. So Fion and Hill is in there with Trump and his team.

And the first interaction Fion and Hill has with Donald Trump. They're in the Oval Office about to go in a call with Poo in about Syria I believe it was in Fiona's trying she hands or Donald Trump hands Fiona a memo that he had marked up and asked her to re-type it up thinking that she's a member of the clerical staff. And Fiona apparently looked at him with like a blank stare. Yeah just a confused like, are you fucking kidding me right now? Yeah. Walks out of the office and then Trump taking that as an action of insubordination makes McMaster go out and he tells him to scold. Yeah, to scold her.

Wow. And he does. Yeah. And he does. He goes out and he scolds her. And then now, after those interactions and a a couple other ones have heard dissenting, I suppose, now people are thinking that they're just willing to work with each other

because he has this, you know, just issue with her just on an ego level. So it's all ego, basically, is what I've learned from this article and everything. Yeah. That wasn't the bathroom story I was thinking of this article. And it seems. Yeah. Yeah. People wasn't the bathroom story I was thinking of. Oh yeah, sorry.

OK, the bathroom, the bathroom story. So they're talking, this is with Merkel, when they're talking about Merkel is going to come over and they're briefing Trump on some issues that she's likely going to bring up. And one of them was to pressure him, not even pressure, just be like, hey, you should support NATO probably. Just a little bit more. But you need to support NATO. Yeah. Like all the other past presidents. Yeah. It's scary that you have

to pressure a American president to support NATO. Yes. And also Trump has been like flipping back and forth really on, you know, public support for NATO and Bannon was a big part of training and to audit a country's NATO and Bates NATO. NATO involves cooperation that's answering several silly stuff. They'll sit there and they're breathing them and he gets up from his desk trunk gets up from his desk and goes there's a bathroom adjacent there's a bathroom in the Oval Office like you know and he leaves the door open and he's pissing and he says out of the door He's like keep talking and listening just raise your voice. Yeah, who's he talking to?

Everybody that's breathing him on an ongoing workout. Yeah, he's like talk over my piss. I like raise your voice Yeah, I would do see I get really mad when I see commonalities between me and Trump, but I also shouldn't have a president. You know what? I mean, I think what the takeaway from that is, it's a perhaps, this is me overextending my feminism here, but he has his reverence for the president of China, the president of Turkey, Putin, and the second they're talking about someone, I'm not even saying it's because he's a woman.

He was going to tell her, you know, to tell him the support NATO and being, talk about issues he just didn't want to talk about. And he gets agitated. These AIDS report in this article, he got agitated just at what they were talking about. And he just literally stands up in the middle of the briefing and goes and pisses in a fucking bathroom and tells them to raise their voice talking. Yeah, and it's just, I don't need to give this my full attention. Exactly. And it's scary. It's all just so scary and I think might take away really from reading this article which has so much more information just about why he refuses to admit publicly that Russia did this and much more is it would ultimately mean he would have to concede that he didn't win the election

all in his own and that it just doesn't mean and it's just so dumb that he thinks that like well he said them yeah that's just such a childish it really is well thanks Jordan and yeah I would I would highly recommend anybody read that yeah very long but very worth Very worth the read I came away with a different understanding I think of Donald Trump and what motivates him a little bit after reading that article It's all winning for him right? It's all in that is that what you go protection. Yeah, in easily swayed very very very easily

Swade by people around him. There was an article in the 2016 election It says his opinion will be the last person who talked to him. Wow. I want to talk to him. All right. Well, guys, we're getting close here at the end. And I want to hand this over to Jordan Parker, who I invited on specifically to talk about Mueller's investigation.

A scope is jurisdiction. What statute he is under as special counsel, and just, you know, all those sorts of legal things. So because we had a lot of questions on our page about, you know, the legalities and people weren't sure. So I guess maybe we could start by talking about what Mueller can't do. Do you want to start there? Sure.

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity to look into this. What I was most surprised with was how, despite following this pretty obsessively, how little, how so much more of there is to know about this, because a lot of this goes under the radar, journalists are not attorneys. They don't brief you on these kind of things, but this is all very interesting, very relevant. So let's go to the primary source material. The original DOJ order issued in May of this year titled Appointment of Special Counsel to Investigate Russian Interference with the 2016 presidential election in related matters. And as the order says, Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then FBI Director James Comey and test bounty before the House Permanence Select Committee on Intelligence on March

2017, including, and this, this is the scope of his investigation. One, any links and or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump. Two, any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation. That's very key. So that means that doesn't matter if he's looking into the Russian government interference and he finds something else out of that, that like say money laundering or who knows, something that's not directly related, he can investigate

that based on the language here. And number three, any matters within the scope of 28 CFR that's code of federal regulations subsection 600.4A. Now what is that? Well, that means- You know, I do that. I do that. I do that. I do that. I do that. There's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's a- there's and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of and with intent to interfere with the special counsel's investigation,

such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witness, and to conduct appeals arising out of the matter investigated and or prosecuted. It's like a trying to do list. And finally, if the special counsel believes that is necessary and appropriate, the special counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters. So what does this mean? One of the challenges in researching this is the special counsel statute

is relatively new. There was a whole regime beforehand, which I'll go through a little later, but this was a law that came into effect during the Clinton administration and replaced the old laws. Now under that, there are certain rules for governing when you can have a special counsel, what they can do, and so forth. So under the law, the Attorney General, or in case this case, acting Attorney General, since he was recused, may appoint a special counsel only in specific situations.

And that must be that one, that investigation or prosecution of that person, or matter by US Attorney's office, or litigating division of the Department of Justice, would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances and under the circumstances it'd be in the public interest to appoint a special counsel, outside special counsel, to assume responsibility for the matter.

That means that sessions had to recuse themselves for what was a conflict of interest. That was his contradictory statements. So Rosenstein determined it was in the public interest. That was his contradictory statements. So Rosenstein determined it was in the public interest because this is a national security matter and possibly other criminal matter to appoint an outside special counsel. That was his basis for doing that. Now when you're going into the powers of him, Mueller, his Mueller, sorry, just learned it's Mueller, not Mueller. Mueller, he is empowered with all the power of a U.S. attorney who has the power to investigate criminal activity. Now in his job, Mueller and his staff can interview witnesses, subpoena documents, and if the evidence merits it, work with the bureau to bring criminal charges.

He cannot bring civil charges, and this is also key. If he wants to expand the scope of his investigation, he must get approval from the acting attorney general. That's what was being questioned at the hearing, has he had to ask anything that was not already in the scope here? So that's important there. So he, like, as they're saying, he has the typical powers of the U.S. attorney. Now this is sort of key to what we're going to talk about later, which is can the president be indicted?

It's, well, it depends. So when it comes to a special counsel, he is governed by the rules, regulations, procedures, practices of the DOJ, meaning US attorney. He's governed by the laws that govern the Department of Justice and the US attorney. And this is also key. Special counsel shall not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the department. However, the Attorney General may ask for updates,

and they may have exchanged information. And if, for example, central counsel wants to take a path that the Attorney General believes is outside the scope of it, he can overrule him and stop him from doing that. And those have to be brought to him before they're investigated. They have to be brought to the deputy

or acting attorney general. That's right. In fact, special counsel and his staff may be disciplined for misconduct or breach of ethical duties. Same rules as DOJ. Increase for all of those matters must be brought to the attorney general. So he is technically under the AG, but the AG is not supposed to be micromanaging, only coming in when it matters. Now, a lot of people ask, what is the basis for removal? Why, how can Muller be removed? That's very clearly mentioned in the statute. Special counsel may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal by personal action of the Attorney General. So only

Rosenstein can fire him. And if he keeps getting... Does that like he's gone too? But if Trump fired him, then the next person in line would be the acting attorney general and so forth and so forth. So the Attorney General may remove a special counsel for, and this is key, misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause, including violation of departmental policies. The Attorney General shall inform the special counsel in writing of the specific reason for his or her removal.

And if you list look to that, you'll understand why the text messages are being leaked the way they are. They understand why there's all this conversation that he can't be trusted. And that's why they are using the words conflicts of interest, even like the Hewz, the FBI Director during their uranium deal that we all, that is anyone who isn't a partisan Republican

knows his nonsense. And they are building up that case. So then the person who will fire him, if they do, which I think they will, will be able to say conflict of interest and psych this. Now, lastly on all this, yeah, conflict of interest is kind of broad and vague. It is very broad and vague.

It is very broad and vague. And that it'll be up to the acting AG to decide. But I would assume that they would hire another, because you do have to replace that special counsel. The investigation doesn't just stop, and then you would have reason to investigate that firing as an obstruction of justice. Right, but a lot of this, our political remedy

is that requires usually either the Department of Justice or the Congress actually stand up, and there's a question to what extent they will. And lastly, and this is important, the Attorney General, and this plays into can the President be indicted and what is Mueller's likely course of action. So Attorney General must notify the chairman and ranking minority member of the judiciary committees of each Congress upon the occurrence of each of these actions. Appointing a special counsel, which was at order we talked about, upon removing any special counsel, and upon conclusion of the investigation, including description and explanations of

instances about proposed action, meaning anything, and if they want to go further, then that's their recommendations to Congress. That's where that goes. So with that, I also want to go into things that are important about a U.S. attorney's power, which is what he has. Now, I'm a civil litigator when I was, well, I'm not practicing at the moment, but when I have five years of practice, and when I was, there are certain rules about civil that are completely different from criminals.

So to the extent that there are some differences, there may be some gaps, but this is my understanding based on reading some of the DOJ internal regulations and US attorney powers. So we talked about Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank, the president's lawyer said, they didn't subpoena my records or anything related to me. They are lying. And a lot of people will go, oh, well, he denied it. So that's all I need to do.

But this is where it's important, this is where it's different, civil between civil and criminal cases. If I've subpoenaed bank records before in many cases, when I do that, California has strong constitutional privacy laws. I have to give is my job, not just the job of the bank to regulate it, but and notify their customers, but I have to notify them that I'm getting their records. They have to have an opportunity to oppose. They have to have an opportunity to kill the subpoena.

They have to have an opportunity to modify it to make it or demand that it is redacted all their personal information so forth. They have not subjected that though, right? He is not. This is the difference with criminal law. When it's a criminal investigation under a U.S. code, a 12 U.S code, 3413i, for anyone who cares to look this up, one financial record. Yeah, they call it an i, they call them, they have a nickname for them, i-forms, I think.

I can't remember about that, so when financial records are subpoenaed by a grand jury subpoena, which, as we know, Mueller has been handled in a grand jury. So he has a right to ask them to indict. That's where Maniforten and indictment came from. So when you are in a criminal investigation, you've subpoena documents pursuant to a grand jury's subpoena, a court may in its discretion order the financial institution not to tell the customer his records have been subpoenaed. And they have to show good cause for that. Now that refers to another statute where,

so a court may, on a revolving 90-day period, granted the late notice, if they can show there's good cause that you should not tell the customer's records are being taken, or being sought. And good cause is defined as follows. There's a reason to believe that such notice will result in a, a, endadering the life or physical safety of any person, like from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence,

intimidation of potential witnesses, or otherwise seriously jeopardizing an investigation or official proceeding or unduly delaying a trial or ongoing official proceeding to the same extent as the circumstances described above. Well, it seems simple, then. He did subpoena Deutsche Bank's records. He ordered the Deutsche Bank not to reveal

he had subpoenaed the records. And because there was a danger of him finding out about it and just destroying evidence. So, I mean, that seems kind of straightforward to me. And this is sort of the problem we have with they're not legal journalists out there. So I got this from a tip from an email, a lawyer sent to a blog that I followed up on it.

So most people wouldn't really look into this, this kind of thing. And they'll just say, well, he said they didn't hear. So what reason do we have to doubt them? And this is where it matters. Not just for a criminal subpoena and what it's differences, but a grand jury subpoena. Now, if I subpoena not just for criminal subpoena and what its difference is, but a grand jury subpoena. Now, if I subpoena, A.G. Vice subpoena,

your bank records, I would have to tell you ahead of time and give you a right to challenge it. The difference with criminal subpoenas from a grand jury, a grand jury subpoena, is you have no standing to challenge that subpoena. Standing is you have a right to go to court and demand a remedy. You have zero standing to challenge a criminal subpoena

by a grand jury. The reason is is that, legislatively, the history of grand jury subpoenas is they are sacrosecting their secrecy. You're supposed to look at these confidential information to decide whether you're going to indict somebody. That's the whole point. You're protecting them from being influenced, you're protecting them for all kinds of things. Certain things that may not come to you as a final jury, you get to see Zyner Sand in the grand jury. That's why you have no right to challenge it. You may, if they sought that later in trial, that might be different. But when you're getting the grounds for indictment, they

have no basis to challenge that. And that's because otherwise everyone would do that to inhibit criminal investigations. Great. So this is different from what we were chatting about, which is this week sabotaged, by the way. It has just come out that roughly 10,000 emails were obtained by the Mueller investigation. Every pretty much every single email, when somebody's elected President and they formed their presidential transition team. The, what was it, the OGA, GSA, General Services Commission, administration sets up and hosts an email server for your team because you're not White House.gov yet, because you're not elected. So they set up a PPT.gov or PTT,

presidentialtransitionteam.gov email for and for everyone and there were I think 12 people on this transition team in the Trump administration and Mueller obtained all their emails. And so now how this is different with the Deutsche Bank subpoenas because they are you you said they can't appeal they don't get a chance We aren't really clear maybe on the rules about him molarobtaining these 10,000 emails, the legality of it, and if this is just a discovery issue, that's something that they can maybe, you know, challenge or redact or appeal versus these Deutsche Bank subpoenas, which you don't get to know about and tough shit.

Right. A lot of this, a lot of the challenge here is you can't really buy what's coming out of the White House. This is, you know, ironically enough, there's a lot of similarities between Nixon's lawyers and Trump's lawyers in terms of what they said. They both of them believe they have the right to shut down a special counsel, in their case, special prosecutor's office. This is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer. He can do whatever he wants besides national security. And therefore, if they can't be obstructionists, they can't commit obstruction of justice, right? They've thought that too.

Right. Now, kind of up learning about separation of powers and checks and balances, like, what happened to that? We learned it's the honor system. And the honor system, nobody follows. That's the thing. All of our norms that have been degraded are honor system. Simply, presidents had shame that said, let's not do this.

And Trump does not. He has no shame. He doesn't have the basic sense of duty or loyalty or honor that most presidents have. He didn't come in with an understanding of the gravity of the office or that he serves the people he didn't elect. So I know we've been going on a little bit, so let me...

I can try to shorten some of the discussion on other issues. I assume you probably want to know, can the President be indicted? Yeah, and my understanding, and we've talked about this in previous weeks, is that there's a couple different things Mueller can do. He can either indict the president, or he can prepare a report and give it to Congress and leave it up to Congress, or he can wait until the president is no longer the president and then indict him. And those are kind of his options. And then the question came up, can you indict a sitting president once, never been indicted before? And I think the answer is that he can, and we would just have to litigate that for the first time and see how

it turned out, because it would probably end up in the Supreme Court, and then it would be up to them. And then we would have precedent, but we just don't write now. Right. What the majority view is, no, he cannot be indicted. And this is the rationale behind it. Is the only place that impeachment is really referred to in the, or with this issue is referred to in the Constitution article one section three clause seven, which says judgment and cases of impeachment shall not extend further than the removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States? But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law.

Now constitutional scholars are repining on this, and their view of it is that's implicit. You're implying that you have to be impeached convicted before you can be indicted because you enjoy certain immunities. Impeachment first? Impeachment first or lay leave office first. And that's the view, that's the view of Yale Law professor Akhil Amar. He says that read that, read that immunity implicitly,

then you're not supposed to be able to get after the president until he's gone, or the sole remedy is impeachment first. And his basis for that is on two occasions, 1973 and 2000, Justice Department OLC, Office Legal Counsel, adopted the position that, no, you cannot indict a sitting president, and that the only remedy is impeachment. And this is another point that Professor Amar makes about this is, presidents, they're just different

from, say, other people like judges or consmen who are indicted. He says, quote, if you're going to undo a national election, the body that does that should have a national mandate. Even a federal prosecution would follow only from an indictment from a grand jury sitting in one locality. To give this a meta kind of example of how this might work, if live to why it could be problematic to let a single district indicted president. Imagine in 2012 in 2013, an Alabama grand jury was gathered and said that Obama's birth certificate was fake and that the election should be overturned. You could probably find somebody there who would invite in-dite him and believe that,

and that could create an enormous amount of chaos. And I know that's sort of looking at it from the other end, but when you look at the law, you have to look at what would happen if someone with the worst faith, you have to imagine what the worst faith person do. How could this disrupt things? And that's, so yeah, even when in Nixon, Vice President Agno, he was facing a federal grand jury investigation that he eventually led to his resignation in 1973, his position was, you can't indict me, I'm immune from prosecution while in office.

That was never tested, he resigned. And this is pretty much the majority view. But if you want to talk about the actual special counsel, law, this is the big difference to why I unfortunately agree you cannot indict the president because special counsel is governed by statute that says you are governed by department regulations. Department regulations are LLC. OLC said you can't indict the president. In a memo. In a memo but that's controlling. These are controlling. Now you could try you could try and say that that's nonsense.

Litigated. You can litigate. All law all law is in flux until somebody litigates it. That's that'sate it. All law is in flux until somebody litigates it. That's the truth. But the big difference, the big difference is when you look back at the people who said, yes, you can indict the president, the second Watergate prosecutor argued in court that, yes, you can indict the president. And so did Ken Star. The big difference, though, is Star was operating under a different statue.

And the Watergate prosecutor, that was a deal made with the Attorney General of what the scope of your investigation. And with the old statute, it was called Ethics and Government Act, it was in response to Watergate, and it was very explicit that this Attorney General has not only a, he has a duty to investigate potential crimes of the President, Vice President, and other executive officers, and so forth. So there was a very specific mandate that you're supposed to look into this, and that's where some people were citing, like Ken Star, that that's your basis for being able to indict. However, that log spired. So now we've got the Special Counsel Statute,

which makes very clear, you're governed by Department regulations, and if Department regulations say, you can indict indict the president impeachment as first. That's right. That's right. But impeachment is up to the House of Representatives, which is right now Republican majority. Right. So that's what I found based on looking into. The minority view is that the president can be indicted. It's just never been tested in court. That one. Because I'm afraid if Mueller puts together a report and gives it indicted, it's just never been tested in court. When you're... I like that one. Because I'm afraid if Mueller puts together a report and gives it to Congress, it's gonna go nowhere. Right, but it sounds like the only viable legal remedy here

is that somebody fires Mueller and that leads to impeachment. Yeah. Which would just be history repeating. Well, we get enough people in the house next year that It's hard to be hard to flip the house. We're like 67 seats down man. It's gonna be really hard No, you have to take up 30 seats because remember you add 30 then subtract 30 so it's a it's a so they need a swing of about I think 35 seats last I counted okay something around there it just looks

Bigger when you're really hard though because of redistricting in Project Red Map that happened in 2010 after the census. For example, the huge swing in a 32-point swing in Alabama for Senate that elected Doug Jones would have only elected same votes, same districts, would have elected one out of seven Congressmen, Congressmen people. Right. So that getting the house, I think the Senate's within reach, but the house is really hard. The house is where impeachment happens. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know where this is going, but just putting a report together and giving it to Congress. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's what the statute seems to call for. That's, as I mentioned, you have to give a special counsel's report You have to brief them the whole point is this is it's meant to cover that and I know we've been going on a bit But I that actually is a good transition to what what happens if he fire what happens if he gets fired

I was gonna say because there's a rumor out right now that that Trump is going to fire a muller on December 22nd and that Trump is going to fire a Mueller on December 22nd, and can the President fire the Special Counsel? The President himself cannot. He must find a department, the highest law enforcement officer, Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, whoever is leading this, in this case, Rosenstein. Everyone below him, he must order him to fire to fire Mueller. But it also must be based on the reasons we describe,

like conflict of interest interest or so forth. And it's interesting because there's a lot of... I looked into this and there's a lot of more parallels with Watergate than you would expect. It's way too long to go into all of it, but to just give it a very, very short. What happened was Nixon's Attorney General resigned in disgrace in connection to Water Great. His secretary of defense was made attorney general. He promised to appoint a special prosecutor as a condition for confirmation. Cox, a Democrat who supported Meg MacGovern, was brought in.

Nixon pretended this was fine and his memoir, he said, if he was looking for someone for the man I trusted, at least he could hardly have done better. And in that case, he can only be removed for extraordinary improprieties. And what it happened was as this was going on, they got closer and closer to we got closer and closer to Nixon. It was bound out through the Senate that Nixon had private tapes. So Cox battled him for months to try to get those tapes. And you had Nixon, and this is where the parallels come in. You have Nixon's attorney arguing before a judge that executive privileges affid absolute. Nixon's the only person can

decide which tapes to release national security Trump's disclosure. He's the president. He can shut down the press special prosecutor's office. Have all this dismissed. Judge said, fuck off. Nixon said, I will not comply. They appealed, Nixon lost, and then shortly thereafter White House counsel John Dean pled guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and agree to cooperate. It was getting very close to the president So October 20th. He's the Mike Flynn. He's the Mike Flynn. So what happened was Saturn and Nightmare October 20th 1973 He president ordered Nixon Nixon ordered Richardson his AG to fire Cox Nixon ordered Richardson, his AG to fire Cox. Nurturtson said, no, I promise Congress I wouldn't.

So he resigned. Deputy, second in line, guy with an unpronounceable last name. William Ruckleshawse ordered him, deputy. He said, no, I promise not to interfere. So he resigned. Third in command. So let's do general, Robert Bork, famous for Borking. If any of you followed judicial confirmation hearings.

That's right. He was going, he promised to fire him, but was going to resign. AG said, please stay. We need you to hold on, to hold the fort. So he carried out the final order, and that was a Saturday night massacre. It gets even more fucked up. What happened was the president ordered the AG's office and the deputy AG's office sealed, and the special counsel's office sealed. Literally sealed. They sent federal agents to close the doors. And the press secretary said the office of the special prosecution force has been abolished as of approximately 8

pm tonight. Now, this is where it's relevant to now that at the time, there was no political support for impeachment on the Hill. Democrats were saying, no, no, no, let's not talk about this. There's nowhere near enough. And the public was pretty evenly divided thinking, this isn't really a big deal. This is they would if there was conservative media They would have called it a witch hunt or a bin board What happened was it'll white house overplayed their hand

They were huge protests massive calls from peach mint outside the White House and from what I've read about fit Somewhere between 50,000 to 450,000 telegrams and cables to the White House again Did a bunch of research before I got here, so it's hard to keep track based on newspapers of the time. But at that time, Congress began to openly discuss impeachment for the first time. Nixon under pressure ordered Bork to appoint Leon Jaworski to lead the probe, who was a conservative Democrat, but was a Nixon supporter. And the kind of crap that the kind of stuff that was just fine back then would never fly today.

Cox being a Democrat, Jaworski being friends with LBJ, or being a Trump voter. He was, secret, he was the treasurer of Democrats for Reagan later in 1980. I mean, it's insane. Even with all of that possible partisanship, he was still able to do the job.

He brought another subpoena for the tapes, and he's the one who argued United States being Nixon. Now, that's a Supreme Court case that came out in July 74 that held, you cannot claim executive privilege to hide criminal activity. So at that point, he was forced to turn off his tapes 15 days later, he announced his resignation, and that's what happened here. And that's super relevant today because those 10,000 emails, Trump is saying and Trump's lawyers are arguing that that violates executive privilege and Fourth Amendment search and seizure,

illegal search and seizure, and they're actually questioning Mueller's how he attained these emails. Right, like he lost a broken in there and stole this. Like he'd make a mistake like that. Like right, so, but you can't claim executive privilege to cover up criminal activity. It's hard to keep track of what they're saying. They've said attorney-client privilege. I've heard some circles trying to claim executive privilege.

The big thing is that they're claiming you should have got these documents from us. We didn't know about this subpoena. But when you're talking, at least from a civil perspective, if I get documents, I'm not supposed to have that, or privileged, what the offended party can do is ask the court for what's called a clawback, which is this should have never been it disclosed, this is privileged information, we need them to return everything they've gotten, and none of this that they've learned can be used in evidence.

And a judge would decide. And a judge would decide, this isn't one of those things like he broke in there and took all these documents. This is, this is, this sounds like a discovery dispute. And but of course, when you're not a lawyer, you can easily, and you're, you know, on the right and you're angry all the time, it sounds, it's, it's one of those things. Again, it always sounds worse, but this is the typical stuff that happens. And discovery disputes, I've had to demand documents. This is what I do when I had to demand documents from a very stubborn person. I would ask them and when I believe they were lying to me that these are not all the documents. I would go to the source and demand those documents.

That way I could show if they were lying and by saying, oh well actually you were supposed to give me these documents. Why didn't you give me these? Oh yeah, sorry. So that's how you can get sanctions against people and there's something in litigation called Terminating sanctions, which is pretty hard to get, but what it terminating sanctions is is when you have for example, obstructed discoveries so much on a particular issue that there's no other conclusion that you're guilty There otherwise, why would you be obstructing this? And then you lose by default. That's how it works in civil I don't believe that's how it works in criminal, but to understand the parallels of this is that that's important. But without going on too far, I want to make a quick reference to Clinton and Cox and Clinton both, sorry, Cox and the special

independent council under the Clinton administration. They both had very broad powers to make a star. Ken Star. Ken Star. That's right. It wasn't Star first. It was this guy, Robert Fisk, a Attorney General, Janet Reno appointed him to investigate Whitewater, and the death of Whitehouse Council, Vincent Foster, Guy, killed himself in the park. Whitewater, really long, hard to explain, basically it was a failed land deal in the 70s and 80s that someone alleged that Bill Clinton illegally pressured somebody to make an illegal loan to this to this mention. That was essentially it and they took that and they

looked into everything under the sun. Every kind of gate you can imagine, vial gate, travel gate, all kinds of gates that are not worth going into. So at a certain point, the special this independent council law was reauthorized and it destroyed the special prosecutor's office for place of independent council and then they reauthorized this ethics and government act, which all of a sudden now created a conflict of interest for the independent council, which was a moderate Republican named Robert Fisk. He was removed and then star was appointed by a three-judge panel. So, at that point, he decided to broaden his investigation pretty far. He was getting everything under the sun. He even, he could do the

same thing. He could subpoena witnesses, who had information, he could do interview people, he could bring charges. He had the power to do... Sounds like the scope was much broader than what? Yes, it was much broader. And it was operating under the Statute Ethics and Government Act, which did allow a compel you to investigate the President and Vice President. And the best I could understand is that's the difference when we talk about in his memos, in memos that were written for him that, yes, you can indict the President.

So what ended up happening with Star is he requested his power to be broadened to include allegations that the president had an affair with an inter with Monica Winsky, which in turn led eventually he was being sued by Paula Jones. He gave civil testimony in that case saying he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky as he was defined by the court. What ended up happening was they found that was false after the famous blue dress for anyone to remember that. Monica Lewinsky held on to address what the president's jizz. Sorry I just just remind us that there's still work crazy things back then. So what ended up happening? What ended up happening with

all of this is, will we know Clinton was impeached, but then you could not get the two-thirds, which means you get put on trial by the Senate, the Senate voted to acquit because they did not get two-thirds vote. And after that, Star left and Star was replaced by some third guy who cares and then the probe was closed. So that's the path of impeachment is the house has an impeachment trial and then the Senate has to vote two thirds. Yes, the house says we want to trial. The Chief Justice is the presiding judicial officer and then one side acts as a prosecution, the other side acts as defense

argument, so-so-called defense and you go from there. Okay. Well, I don't know what's gonna end up happening, but Trump's lawyers are meeting with Mueller's team next week, so I don't know. We'll see how that goes. The rumor is that somebody's gonna fire Mueller on December 22nd. I don't know why they've picked that day, but that's what they're saying. We can before Christmas. Friday is what's called the slowest news day of the year. Well Friday is always where you put the unpleasant information. You don't want other people to know about. That's what they call the Friday News Dump and you have December 22nd, which is the weekend before Christmas. Congress has gone and everyone's celebrating Christmas. So

if you're gonna do it that day, that's the day they're gonna do it. To hide it. That would be, that would be. That would be as they can. Yes. Well, we'll talk more next week about the push to protect Mueller from the White House. We have Jesse Egan back next week. He was such a giant hit on the last time. There's like the most downloads we ever had.

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