Jack - Trump Says He's Above the Law (feat. Asha Rangappa)

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

MAIN - This week, Jaleesa explains how Trey Gowdy completely debunked Trump's Spygate claims, Jordan covers Russian journalist Babchenko's "murder", and AG talks about Trump's efforts to get Jeff Sessions to un-recuse himself. Also, we get a call-in from former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa! Enjoy!

Hi, I'm Harry Lickman, host of Talking Feds. Around table, the brings together prominent figures from government law and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day. Each Monday, I'm joined by a slate of Feds favorites at new voices to break down the headlines and give the insider's view of what's going on in Washington and beyond. Plus, sidebar is explaining important legal concepts read by your favorite celebrities. Find Talking Feds where ever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to Muller She Wrote. The She in Muller She Wrote is no accident.

Did you know we are 100% women owned and operated? Every single person that helps make this podcast possible identifies as a woman. Our creative and web design, our engineer and producers, our editors and digital media manager, our agent, our ad execs, our merchandising manager, and even the Postal Service Clerk that helps me with shipping in our PO Box, all women and all LGBTQ plus allies. We will continue to employ and partner with women as our podcast grows, but we could use your help. Please support women in podcasting by visiting mullershearote.com and become a patron today.

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 what I said. That's obviously what the opposition 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 than 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. or drawing the ire of Trump and getting fired, I keep my identity ambiguous at best. Most of you probably know who I am, but I just need to keep my name and my title out of my politics. And when I say I'm smashing the Crotch Act, by the way, that's an inside joke from a time I tried to unsuccessfully say that I was crushing the Hatch Act. So, another about me, with me as always,

are comedians, Julie Sojonson, and Jordan Coburn. Hello. How was your Memorial Day weekend? Good. Dude is dope. We hung out with you. I know. I'm surprised I asked.

But it's in the script, so I have to say it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, no, it was fun. We had a good time. All right, this week Jolissa, you're going to talk about Trey Gowdy and how he completely debunked Trump's Spiggate claims this week on Fox News. Jordan, you're going to be covering a guy named Babchenko. Yeah, he was a Russian journalist, shot dead in the Ukraine, but there's a twist.

Some movie shit. We're going to have Night Shyamalanu. I'm going to talk about Jeff Sessions and Trump's efforts to get him to unrequse himself. This week we also have four bonus episodes, you guys, including a free best of season one, plus our MSW Book Club that comes out on Wednesday. So patrons will get something from us every day this week. If you're not a patron, please rate us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe, and we hope you enjoy the best of episode.

But for now, oh, and I did want to mention this too. And I think I, I think I brought this up in the pre-roll, but we have a contest on Twitter where once we hit 10,000 followers, I'm going to buy one of them, a randomly selected, uh, follower, a PlayStation 4. And a lot of people are not telling the friends about it because they don't want to lower their chances, but it, but that's not mathematically correct. I can't buy the thing unless we hit 10,000. Your chances are one in 10,000, no matter what. So if you want us to reach 10,000 faster and see if you win the PlayStation sooner, it behooves you to tell all your friends to follow us on Twitter. It's actually not working against you because of math. Okay. So anyway, let's get into the week's news with just the facts.

All right, first you guys, I have a correction from last week on the Taxi King roll-up story, right? Michael Gregory shared with us on Facebook that when I said his fine drop from 5 million to $50,000 that was incorrect. It wasn't the fine that was dropped. It was the tax scheme amount he'd been charged with. He still has to pay $1 million in back taxes and fees or the deal is off. So thanks to Michael for pointing that out. We always welcome your corrections. So tweet at us at Muller She Wrote or find us on Facebook and send me a message or you can tweet at Julie. So what's your Twitter handles you guys? Tweet Jelisa. And Jordans confused right?

Yeah Jordans confused. I love it. The newsweek believe it or not started off pretty slow. Might have been because of the holiday. It didn't really pick up till Tuesday but it was nice to have a little rest from the insanity honestly. But Tuesday Trump decided it was a good idea to tweet out that Mueller is going to medal in the midterm elections. Not Russia, not UAE, not Saudi Arabia, Bob Mueller.

It's got a medal in the elections. This is so offensive on so many levels, particularly since we reported a couple weeks ago that Tennessee's recent election was hacked by propoten Ukrainians already, and that Trump's complete denial of Russian interference is going to make the midterms very susceptible to hacking and attacks from foreign actors. Then, to turn that around and blame it on an American hero and a decorated war veteran, Muller is pretty disgusting, especially coming from a guy who dodged the draft five times. Yeah, and this office is narrative of having an FBI informant in his campaign.

Yeah, buggy. Well, you're going to tell us a little bit about spygate later on, really, so with what Tray Gowdy said. Mueller filed a pre-sentencing court documents in the Pignato case. I don't know if it's Pignato or Pignato. We've got a lot of no-tiltes. I was going to say, yeah, no-tilted Pignato. It could be Pignato.

If his name sounds familiar, it should. We reported on his indictment. This is another guy, American, who's been indicted in the Mueller investigation in our sweet 16 episode. And basically, he was the guy who, he was a California guy who put all the fake identities together for the Russians who came over and to act like Trump campaigners. Yeah And there was also another indictment of an American named Pineda Pignetto no tilled a Pineda the one from California He might also be Portuguese. I don't know

No tilled a pinnetto. The one from California. He might also be Portuguese, I don't know. A California, right, who apparently got the fake IDs for these Russians. So they could open bank accounts to fund the banks. I think you could go clubbing on this. Yeah, clubbing seals. Sorry, it's not.

I'm kidding. What are you talking about? Jesse. Yeah. I like to pride our podcast on being thorough and not missing much. I've got a picture of the court filing that I'll send out in this week's newsletter too, the pre-sentencing court document. Don't worry, we will update you on when sentencing occurs or if another filing on this

guide drops so you don't have to do any of the work. Hey! About a fit of this podcast. I followed all for you. But yeah, we don't we don't we don't miss too much. So that's I'm happy about that. Like usually when this stuff comes out, I can point back to it in a past episode and it's there. So that's fun for me. I don't know. I'm weird. Office Depot is like porn to me. I'm just I'm an odd person. So anyway.

Being in the store physically? Yeah. All the organizations. Yeah. All the office supplies? It's so hot. Yeah. I can't get enough of... It gives me anxiety.

Oh! Too many options. Yeah. Oh. I just like big piles of things. You're not really an organizer? Yeah. Marley.

You should start a business. Like, have me come and de-organize your closet. Yeah, you just take everything apart and put it in piles. That'd be great. Or I'll have a store that caters to hoarders and everything is just in big separate piles everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if people would buy that. Yeah. Like, I'm going to go the opposite way. Like, it starts some weird fad. Yeah, like the thrift store, except it's not reused. It's new. You just pay full price. Yeah, like the third story, except it's not reused. It's new.

You just pay full price. That's funny. It was reported Tuesday that Arcadia Babchenko, he's a prominent Ukrainian journalist. Actually, he's a Russian journalist living in the Ukraine, a Putin critic. He was shot at the age of 41 and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. But like I said, the story has a little bit of a Lazarus element to it. And Jordan's going to go over that a little bit later on the show. Do you see?

I guess very juicy. The big news Tuesday came out late when the New York Times good old Mike Schmidt from our sexy justice calendar, which we have in hand. Oh yeah. And we're sending out this week. I'm so excited. We've got a lot to send out, so bear with us, but we'll get them to you. And thank you for being patient on that, but they look so good. I love them. I can't wait. Yeah, Get a little Moxie design

studios really hooked us up with that. Anyway, Mike Schmidt reported new information on Jeff Sessions. And I'm going to go over this and the implications a little later in the show. Big, big story. Previously on reported. It's kind of rare these days that we get new chunks of news, you know, everything's kind of a part of a stringing thing. Yeah, that was something we're already following. We learned Tuesday that the Taxi King, F. Gennie Friedman, who we mentioned earlier in a correction at the top of the news here, we reported last week he pleaded guilty to tax evasion in Larsonia with a high, he usually reduced sentence, but he was actually offered a deal before the Cohen raid that he turned down. Apparently, he was offered two to six years in prison and a $1 million fine.

And he said no to that. Then a few days later, FBI raided Cohen, and a month later, he accepted this new deal with no jail time and a fine. It's important because there's no actual direct link between the Cohen raid and the sweetheart deal that Freeman was offered. There's no actual direct evidence that he's flipped on Cohen. But the timing is such that it's pretty obvious to me at least. And now adding a rejected first deal the week before the Cohen raid just kind of bolster bolsters that conjecture. So funny. I like the irony of his last name. But if you went to jail. But if you went to jail. Oh, Friedman.

Friedman? Like, if Gennie? Oh, no. Oh, gosh. It is interesting that he's, anyway. Yeah. More clues drop this week that Manafort will be indicted sometime in the future.

More indictments, superseding indictments. We all remember last week when Mueller said in a filing that Manafort is only currently charged for a subset of his conduct. So that's one clue from last week. And now this week, a judge denied Manafort's motion to get redacted information from two search warrants on him. And the judge said, quote, there isn't anything in the redacted parts that has anything to do with current investigations or current charges. To me, that means he's under investigation for other stuff.

We learned that he's been rated as recently as March and they took 12 of his phones or something. I can't remember a lot of more than one phone. This is straight jacket of Erwin Trent. What is that called? Trench coat. A watch guy. A coat does he wear?

I think a coat that is. A harmonic a vest of cell phones. Anyway, yeah, it's clear to me that he's under investigations for crimes of collusion. And I say crimes of collusion, although many of you might say collusion is not a crime, but the Justice Department calls them crimes of collusion. So whether that comes out in some crime of collusion

that we don't know exists or some crime of collusion that we don't know exists, or if crimes of collusion mean conspiracy, computer fraud, racketeer, you know, any number of other charges, but crimes of collusion is something, is a thing. According to that four-page, mostly redacted Rosenstein memo, that the one that Nunez has the boner for. Yeah. Yeah, he's not going to get it. Um, but yeah. So he, now all seven of my clues, I have a lot. I've been tracing these clues for a

while now. I did a mini-sode on it. I think we're either a hot note or a mini-sode, a while back, but I've put them all together in a mini-sode this week. So check that out. All seven clues. I also did a whole Twitter thread on it if you want to find that on Twitter. So anyway, the clues are there. Conjecture is real. Yeah, follow us at Muller She Road. Wednesday morning, Tray Gowdy went on Fox News and debunk Trump's spy gate. But went on to say he thinks Trump is innocent. Jolice is gonna go over that and and more on Trey Gowdy a little bit later in the show. One of our listeners asked us, he's time for a chunk on Gowdy.

Maybe. Nice. We'll give you one. We also learned that there's another theory going around again about what kicked off the FBI investigation into Trump Russia. And it's not pop it up, Alyssa. Now, apparently there were multiple signals in signals intelligence alerts Those are called SIG-INTS

S-I-G-I-N-T That's funny Fucking government Um, SIG-INTS? SIG-INTS SIG-INTS SIG-INTS SIG-INTS

SIG-INTS You have to say it like like that too Like how I have to say lasers Laser I have to whisper a s that too. Like how I have to say lasers. Laser. Or I have to whisper a sizzler. Like I can't. There's no other way to say Siggins.

I have to do it that way. Laser. Lasers. Uh, anyway, it's these Siggins that sparked the FBI's interest. Um, there were multiple of them for many countries, mostly Britain. And that's actually how most investigations get kicked off. And we have a whole many so this week about Siegans and the Guardian article from a year ago, by the way, that reported this initially, this theory about how the FBI investigation started. Different theory from New York Times and different theory from

New Ness memo, like everyone's got all these theories about how. That's interesting. About how the investigation started. For me, it's like, who gives an F? If you broke the law, you broke the law. I mean, I understand like fourth amendment shit. Like if you, you know, you can't start if like, if they based in an investigation on some faulty information, okay, but they didn't.

It's not. Yeah, I guess as long as it went through the proper court procedures to get the warrants they needed to actually start the investigation, then yeah, it shouldn't matter at all. Yeah, and we know for a fact that anything close to the president is gonna have extra scrutiny. Nobody's going to just rubber stamp these things.

They all had to probably go through sessions or Rosenstein, and it all has to be top level like probably multiple judges have to sign off on it. It's got to go probably through a couple other the legal council of Department of Justice has to look at it probably. I mean it's I can't imagine it's an easy thing. We had that one question right of the process that you had to go through to get the, what was that? The FISA warrant.

The FISA warrant. That's right. Yeah. That was the most extensive thing I've ever heard. Yeah. Remember that, yeah. Yeah. And then even just the process to get a warrant

to raid Cohen's office, any warrant to raid a lawyer's office has given extra scrutiny. And especially if it's the president's lawyer, it's gonna be given like, it's not like you can't fuck that up, you know? And to sit here and be like, man, this is wrong, it was illegal. I highly doubt it, dude.

They're not gonna go through this exercise if it won't hold up in court, which sounds like it might go there. So, I don't know, we'll see. Trump tweeted out Wednesday, actually, that he wished he'd picked another attorney general. Just piling on to the corrupt intent needed for obstruction of justice.

He's really made no bones about it. He wanted an attorney general that would shield him from the Russian investigation. What did the tweet say? Oh, what did it say? It just, it was basically, I had to read it to get it to you exactly, but it said I wouldn't have hired Jeff Sessions.

I was a mistake. It was repeating his old stuff about how, if he knew he was going to recuse himself, he wouldn't have put him in the job. Yeah. The armchair thoughts he probably has in a damp corner with the fireplace on. It's like what he's just tweeting out from the whole world to say like man, I really shouldn't have done that. Like shower thoughts. I fucked up. Yeah, it's like, why are you telling me?

No filter, doesn't run away anyone. It's amazing to me. Oh, get this, I'm my boyfriend. Andrew McCabe is in the news this week. A new McCabe memo surfaced on Wednesday. Brand new, never seen before. As reported by the New York Times, Schmidt again, showing concern about Rosenstein's memo, a letter, Rosenstein's letter that he wrote saying Komi was fired for handling the his poor handling of the

Hillary email investigation. Rosenstein told McCabe in a Justice Department meeting that Trump originally wanted him to put Russia in the memo, but didn't say why he wanted to leave Russia out. So McCabe wrote a memo about that meeting, and now Mueller has that memo. He has the original letter that Trump wrote about why he wanted to fire Komi, and then he has, we've all seen the letter Rosenstein wrote to justify the firing of Komi, but Rosenstein had that Trump's letter with him when he was composing his letter and he Trump had Russia in there and he decided not to put Russia because he knew. He was like, if you put Russia in here, you're kind of striking just as dumb as I know,

but he gave but but McCabe wrote all that shit down and gave it all to Mueller like a long time ago probably. So, haha, just more evidence that McCabe is a target for Trump because he's a witness in the Special Counsel's obstruction case. So anyway, that's my baby. Also Wednesday, there was a hearing in the Cohen case. This was a pretty cool hearing. The judge ruled Cohen's team has till June 15th to review the documents given to them by the special master Barbara Jones. That's not a lot of time. Perfect. But yeah, but she said they were begging for more time. They're like, we have 20 guys working on it. 24 all Memorial Day, 24 hours a day, seven days. We looked over a million

things and and apparently there's two blackberries that haven't even been broken into yet, the FBI, they're at Quantico. And there's, when they rated Cohen, they got a bunch of shredded documents, and they're putting them back together at Quantico right now. I saw that.

And so the lawyers, we don't even know how much stuff that's gonna be, and we can't finally get into it. We just need more time, and they're just like, nope, June 15th, want, want. So then she's just like, nope, June 15th. Want, want. So the prosecution said it would be ready by June 15th. They're like, we're good, including the piecing together

with our shredded documents. And so we'll co-en in Trump or trying to basically slow roll this investigation to push it closer to the midterms. So they can say that Mueller's meddling in the election. But we've already done a story on this that he's probably going to go dark during that time. So I wonder what the cutoff data is.

Like what he's going to pick, like September 1st or October 1st? Like I don't know. Yeah. I'm a big confused on what documents exactly they're given by the special master. It's only because they have to retain, I imagine, the ones that, well, I guess not, all of them. They gave them literally all of them. Yeah, they were doing a rolling release

from the special master. So instead of going through everything and then dumping everything on them all at once, they've been, as soon as she finds something, she's determined that it's not protected by attorney client privilege, she hands it over. And she's determined that it's not protected by attorney client privilege, she hands it over. And she's been doing that and they've gotten up to like three million documents, but

they're almost, she's almost done. She just has these two blackberries she needs to break into and then she needs to get that shredded shit. And that's the end of it. And so based on that, based on when the prosecution says the FBI will have all that hacked and pieced together, the judge gave him till June 15th to review it all. Wow, that's just crazy thinking about how the prosecution has, you know, they know exactly

what documents they're going to use and how it fits into their narrative and then the defense, they have to find a bunch of needles in a haystack and connect the dots basically and try to create a solid defense. That's nuts. I would not want to be his fun attorney. No, to have till June 15th to file all your motions for that you want to against any of the evidence that you've gone through, that's basically what they have to do. Yeah.

They're expected to review all of these documents and then file motions to exclude them, to not allow them as evidence. Right. That is crazy. And they have a huge law firm working on this, though. So I mean, I don't know. He just rented out a whole firm.

Yeah, pretty much. Literally everyone's amazing. Yeah, can you do that? Yeah, I think so. Can you do that? I guess so. Yeah. Everyone, drop what you're doing.

We have to help this a douchebag. Yeah, that was a joint scaband, but instead, he should have joined the scaband. The judge also told Avenatti, he has to chill out. You know, he was there in the courtroom like, I'm Michael Avalotti. I want these documents. And the judge is like, fuck out of here.

This bunch of clowns, this guy. And after the hearing, Avinati comes right out of the courtroom and says, based on what he learned in the courtroom, there are tapes of Cohen's phone calls and at least one of them has Donald Trump on it. And he knows that for a fact. And the Trump tapes are gonna come out

and he's gonna be famous. Yeah, that's pretty much how it sounded. And then he immediately filed a motion to withdraw himself from the case. So, or to like, you know, stay out of much how it sounded. And then he immediately filed a motion to withdraw himself from the case. Or to stay out of the courtroom. Because the judge kind of told him. Tell him. Yeah.

Why are you even here? Yeah. You have nothing to do with any of this. My client. Yeah. So funny. Oh, that is really funny. So the prosecution will get everything on June 15th.

Yeah. Woohoo. Excuse me. We also learned that, oh, Quantico, who is busy piecing together the shredded documents, is also trying to break into two of Cohen's blackberries. I've said that, I think they're his wife's blackberries. Why she has two blackberries, I don't know. Like, can you hold this for me, honey? Why anyone has blackberry? I don't know. But, uh I still got that old AOL address. And his website up on Angel Fire. Angel Fire.

I remember that icon. Do you know what I mean? So bad. The worst font ever. Wednesday, someone opened a legal defense fund for Manafort online. I think Matt outtraced it back to his wife. And that summer breeze LLC, he set up, you know,

one of the names for paint that we thought we could paint. Yeah, yeah, the same shell. Horizon surf, horizon, yeah, this one summer breeze helps set that up. But what's interesting is what Maddo is claiming is that this could be a front for someone like, I don't know, Trump to dump a bunch of money.

Yeah, totally. As a quote unquote, keep the faith. The first one's done. Yeah, Roger Stone. No, you know, they'll keep the faith thing from the Watergate era when, I don't actually. Nixon said to Halterman, I'm gonna to get you a pardon. Keep the faith. Keep the faith. And Halterman's like, don't say that. You don't

even, and they recorded it. I don't understand. I'm going to get you a pardon. Like it dangled a pardon, right? So this could be a way for Trump to throw a bunch of money in at a Manafort Legal Defense Fund to quote, keep the faith. So, I don't know, like he's still holding out, he hasn't flipped. He's the not guilty plea. He's the only guy who hasn't put guilty. Yeah, I still think it's because of what Russia could do to him physically.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Could be. He definitely could endanger. I mean, we saw what happened to the script ball in all these journalists. And then, a spain, Browder, Bill Browder was picked up in Spain this week. I rested on an inner pole, Russian inner pole.

Right, I read that. Warren. And then after talking to the Spanish police for like a minute, they're like, oh yeah, okay, you're free to go. He's like, please don't honor this warrant. They're trying to kill me. And they've been after him for a while. Yeah, it's nuts. Anyway, I don't know.

Anyway, we'll see what happens with that legal defense fund and how much money goes into it and where from. Matt also did a whole long story on the corrupt, corrupt ability of legal defense funds. Like none of them have ever been good. There's always like somebody who tries to set up legal defense when it gets in more trouble because of the corruption that happens for the money that comes into legal defense funds. So we'll see if Trump falls for it. I'm here to tell you, Donald Trump, if you do that,

everyone will find out and it will be bad for you. So please go ahead. Then Thursday, and Thursday, Trump pardoned Dinesh D'Souza and Obama-era, GOP author, asshole, all-round jerk, and floated the idea of pardoning Martha Stewart and Rob Blagoiavich. Asha Rangapa tweeted that someone gave Trump, basically gave him a list of all the possible charges against him and he used it to find celebrities convicted of those charges to pardon. And also they all were prosecuted by Comey or his best friend Fitzgerald who we talk about

in the Comey book who's in Chicago. It's just it's clear to me that there's like a he's just this is a signal right? Why would he's really gonna pardon Martha Stewart? That would be so fucking stupid. I hope she refuses it She's already done her time and paid the fine. That'd be hardcore. She's just like fuck you bro. No, I want your shitty pardon Insider trading that's not even relevant to what he's getting investigated for. It's a white collar crime. Yeah, and that's and call me prosecuted it. That's where the real key is. Yeah. And and Asha also reported that Barbara Underwood, who took over for AG Schneiderman, is reopening his request to close New York's pardon loophole. We've been

following that on the show, so we'll keep you updated on that. But don't take my word for it. Here's actually a bit of an interview. I had with former FBI agent under Mueller and CNN contributor, Asha Rangapa. Hello, do you want me to answer you with video? Is that better? I don't know. I don't think that it'll make a difference. I'm just not sure what like this has never happened before. So I'm not sure. Yeah, I do Skype with that it'll make a difference. I'm just not sure what, like this has never happened before. So I'm not sure. Yeah, I do Skype with CNN all the time. So maybe the Russians are trying to like,

work this. I think they are. That's a very nice point. Did you, Ivan, let us please have this interview. Did you get the question that I, that I threw out that looked like you? I did. I did. And I started out that looked like you? I did. I did.

And I started to answer it. And then I heard you saying, hello, hello. So, OK, I'm going to try to dive right back in. All right, let me ask it again so I can give it all of the same recording. So, anyway, thank you so much for talking to us. And I've been dying to ask you about something you tweeted recently that someone had given a list, maybe, of crimes

that Trump or his minions could be charged with and he was using that to look for people to pardon. Yes, so I just found it noteworthy, this pattern where the people that he, you know, are pardon, he's pardoning, are convicted or were convicted of really almost the exact crimes that he could potentially be on the hook for. So we have Scooter Libby who is convicted of false statements. And we know that Giuliani has stated that he's very concerned that the president might lie to Mueller, he sits down for an interview.

We have Martha Stewart who was convicted for false statements and obstruction of justice. And obviously we know that he is being investigated for obstruction of justice. Then you have these crimes like campaign finance violations, which D'Souza was convicted of. We have public corruption and bribery that Rod Blagoivitch was convicted of. We have public corruption and bribery that Rod Blugoyvich was convicted of and he's considering them and I should clarify, I think he's considering pardoning Martha

Stewart. So I don't know if there's some weird psychological projection going on or this is kind of an abstract way that he's trying to pardon himself by like finding people that have been convicted of this and he's convinced himself that it's trying to pardon himself by like finding people that have been convicted of this and he's convinced himself that it's completely unfair or if it's more strategic, but either way, you know, he is, he's not finding the people who are unjustly convicted of murder or drug crimes or whatever. These are, these seem to be very personal. Yeah, and it seems like, well, he is circumventing the entire justice department process that folks usually go through when they want to use their presidential part. And is that right?

That's right, but it's important to understand that this is where the idea of norms comes into play, right? So the president has a very broad, expansive pardon power that is laid out in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton argued, when they were creating the Constitution, that there should be a pardon power that's centralized in one person, just like it was in the king.

And there was opposition to this, because obviously the whole idea of the revolution and creating a constitution was to prevent the tyranny of the monarchy, but he argued that this was really important for a number of reasons that putting it in the hands of one person could correct situations where there's unfortunate guilt, for example, or promote national healing.

And so that he felt that it was important for one person to be able to do this as opposed to a check, you know, or having Congress decide or whatever. The office of the pardon attorney is really something that has been created to allow for some systemization and fairness in the process, but it's not constitutionally required. So what we have is the president really pronouncing as a king would that he is pardoning certain people. He's doing it via tweet and those will hold just as much weight as if they had gone through this other process which is actually super superfluous when

it comes to his actual power. Okay, that makes sense. It's just, yeah, it was just seem to odd to me also. It seemed a lot like a signal to, you know, Maniforick, Cohen, Flynn, anybody else who may have already been indicted or pled guilty or not guilty, that, you know, hey, I'm not afraid to use my pardon power. That's right. So, you know, I think that there are so many levels that you can read these pardons are.

So one is what we just talked about in terms of the actual crimes and how he perceives them or how he's trying to thumb his nose at those kinds of crimes. But there is a potential signal that's going to his associates in cohorts. And here's where some of these pardons really make a difference because things like false statements and obstruction. They're denigrated in the way that some people talk about them as mere process crimes. But we have to remember that things like obstruction of justice, false statements, witness tampering, contempt of court. These are the fundamental pillars of the rule of law because what they do is they protect the process.

And rule of law is all about process. It's only when you have a legitimate and fair process that the outcome is legitimate as well. And what he's signaling to these people in pardoning those particular kinds of crimes is, hey, you can lie. You can basically do whatever you want. You can thumb your nose at the court. And I don't care.

That doesn't matter to me. I don't believe that those are actually fair things to prosecute people for. So he's really thumbing his nose at the rule of law and telling his associates at some level that they can too. Yeah. Hey, Asha, let mean, do me a huge favor. I need, for some reason, it looks like I can't see my little recording app for this call. So is it okay if I only have a couple more questions for you? If I hang up and call you right back to ensure that this has actually been recording? Yep.

Go ahead. Call you right back. Okay. I think. Hello. Hello. How are you? We did it. We thwarted the Russians. It worked. Everything's worked. Finally on Friday, we learned that Mueller is looking at a new guy. I never even heard of him. I'm sure he's looking at a ton of people we've never heard of, but this is a guy named Gerson, who is a hedge fund manager, and he's been at like a pal of cushioners for like 10 years. The story is that Gerson was in contact with Imbiza, and in the Seychelles right before

that meeting went down with Nader, Prinsen, Dmitriev to open the Secure Back channel for Russia and UAE. This guy was also at a mid-December meeting at the four seasons in New York. Now we've got another four seasons. That's three four seasons. So 12 seasons. Anyhow, Gerson was there with Kushner, Imbeza, Nadir Flynn, and Banan at Trump Tower

and mid, excuse me, at the four seasons in mid-December. NBC reports that Mueller's looking into all of this, according to people familiar with the matter. So now we have to add Gerson to the fantasy indictment. We'll do that a little bit later and I'll put him in the guilty plea column. He looks like such a bro. I know. Like a pro MLB player or something. Yeah, like him and Matt Gates hanging out in their Mitsubishi eclipse and drink tours, ice or whatever. I like a Gerson. He sounds like the villain in Beauty and the Beast.

Yeah. Oh yeah. He's a little like that. Yeah, exactly. Well, Gaston. Yeah. I know I was thinking Leplasson from Little Mermaid.

Is that what that's for? That's for him. He does. He does. Sigint and I took French in high school because I thought that'd be useful in America. I took German because I also thought too that that would be useful in Southern, on the border, yeah, thought it'd be good for.

If I had any idea, I'd be living in San Diego. You'd have taken America, makes some Spanish makes more sense. You just took to us really. I could take Canadian. Yeah. And then I wouldn't have took to us really. I could take Canadian. Yeah. And then I wouldn't have to worry about it. Yeah, take Canadian.

I'm pretty good at Canadian. Yeah. Anyway, that's the week's news, you guys. So we'll be right back. in San Diego for the week of the Fourth of July, because on July 3rd, we're hosting Muller She Wrote Live at the Comedy Store in La Jolla. Patrons will get a discount code for both regular and VIP tickets, and the VIP tickets get you access to our exclusive post-show meet and greet cocktail mixer, where you can meet and hang out with Jordan, Jolissa, our past guests and business partners, and of course yours truly.

Patrons not only get discounts to our live events, but you get membership in the MSW Book Club, access to our entire archive of bonus episodes, a weekly newsletter created by Jordan that includes all the week's articles and my personal research notes, and an array of great gifts, including free VIP tickets, T-shirts, laptop stickers, limited edition, loose leaf Earl Grey Polonium T for my friends at joystispoon.com, access to our closed Facebook group, and of course our sexy Justice calendar, which is out this month. So head over to mullershirope.com today and click subscribe to become a patron, and then head over to thecomodestore.com slash lohoya. There's a hyphen between love and hoia.

For your MSW live Q&A panel meet and greet tickets. You'll be glad you did. All right, welcome back. Hot notes. Today, Jordan has a story for us about a murdered Russian journalist with a plot twist, but first, Jolisa has a report on Trey Gowdy. Yes, so this is from the Huffington Post. It's basically about how Treyigowdy contradicts Trump's Informant claims so on Tuesday during a Fox News interview Traigowdy the Republican chairman of the House

Oversight Committee said the FBI acted appropriately when it used an informant to gather information about Donald Trump campaign advisers Who allegedly had suspicious contacts linked to Russia prior to the 2016 election. He said, oh yeah, quote, I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got and that it had nothing to do with Donald Trump. So last week, Gaudi attended a classified DOJ briefing alongside other top lawmakers. I don't know if I call Devon a top lawmaker.

Yeah, you know this article is just a top. Yeah, the bottom lawmaker. I'm gonna say I shut up think he said top law. Yeah, definitely a bottom lawmaker. So last week Gaudi attended a classified DOJ briefing alongside other lawmakers regarding the informant and the tactics the FBI used during the 2016 election. And perhaps because he's retiring this year, Gaudi was the first GOP lawmaker who was briefed on the informant to directly object Trump's claims regarding the FBI surveillance.

Since then, Trump has doubled down on his attacks against the Russian investigation, the Justice Department and the FBI. He claimed the agency infiltrated and spied on his campaign under the orders of President Obama, and he demanded that the Justice Department investigate the accusations and turn over any relevant documents to Congress. So actually at a Nashville rally on Tuesday, Trump attacked the FBI again, reiterating that his campaign had been infiltrated by his political opponents.

And he said to the crowd, can you imagine, and they all booed? That was a pretty fucked up rally, too. There's a one point where he says, and MS-13, what do I call them? And everyone goes, animals. Oh, yeah. It's like the worst concert ever. Yeah. Terrible.

Spoken word. But Gaudi insists that the FBI was simply following Trump's orders when it investigated his campaign's ties to Russia. Gaudi said, quote, President Trump himself and the Komi memo said, if anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it. Oh, that's right. He did tell him to do that. So Gaudi said, sounds to me like that was exactly what the FBI did.

However, Gaudi did fault Democrats for not specifying that Trump isn't the target of the investigation. He said, this had nothing to do with Trump. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. They actually wouldn't come out and say he wasn't a target. They did.

And also, who gives a fuck? It's not their job to come out and say, just bruises on target, just bruises on target. Right. Right. Right. It's like people can figure that out for themselves. I think the main points definitely get out. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what a little bit about Tray Gowdy, like where's he from? Who's he? What's he do? He's a Republican. Yeah. I mentioned earlier, he was the chairman of the House over site committee Mm-hmm. He's a congressman. Yeah congressman. He works. He's representative. Yeah, he's in that bitch. Yeah

Yeah, and in fact, he's he's newness as handler. They send him everywhere with newness handler I that's what I find yeah, yeah, like they send him in there to keep newness under control Oh, interesting back leaf thing furry backpack. Yeah Yeah, yeah, like they send them in there to keep Nunez under control. With the free backpack leech thing. Free backpack leech. Yeah, he seems adorable. Like a teddy bear. I'm sure if somebody make that for us, please find a picture of Gowdy and Nunez walking where Nunez might be a little bit affront in front and Gowdy has them on a leash

because it's with the backpack, like a cute animal backpack. Not some sort of sexy top-law maker leash. They're like a five-year-old and dizzy-old. Yeah, like the stumbling around. The San Diego Zoo gorilla backpack. It's like the monkey on your back and then you get the leash. Oh god, please make it for me, please. All right, Julie said thank you so much. That was an awesome report.

Of course. And thanks to a listener who recommended we do a little bit on Gaudi. We wanted to be in cover. We wanted to cover him for a while, and we just, we didn't have a reason. But we had one this week, because he came out. And he basically sent Trump your full of shit.

I didn't even realize that whole Trump asked to, if anybody was involved in Russia, I want you to investigate it. He told Komi that. Yeah, he's so silly. And why Komi didn't say, uh, we're already on that, sir. He's probably holding back. Yeah, maybe a little bit. Uh, so Jordan, you have, uh, some information for us about a guy named Bebchenko, right? I do, yeah. This is a pretty crazy story. It's nuts. It is.

I was telling my boyfriend about it today and he was like, oh my God. It's like he was watching the board identity or something. Your boyfriend, Devon Nunes? Oh no, Ryan. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. I'm my real boyfriend. David is a close second though.

Oh my God, Devon. Why do I keep saying, David instead of Devon units? Is this absurd? Because Devon's a little got a little flare to it. Yeah, it's just such a plain dude. My uncle David. That must be what it is. Who is also a ridiculously right person in the wrong way. Yeah, right in the wrong right person. Okay, so anyway on Tuesday, former soldier who had actually fought in the Chechen war Yeah, the Chechen war and he is a well-known critic of Putin also a journalist his name is Arcadee Bebchenko

He was reported to have died by gunshot wounds outside of his apartment in Kiev Ukraine He was found by his wife and it was a really gruesome scene and announced dead, pronounced dead on Tuesday and then. Yeah, and wasn't he like laying in a pool of blood? Oh yeah. So he found him shot like four times. Yeah, gruesome blood everywhere like, pull it apart. Terrible shirt because he was shot in no way.

And so, a colorful gruesome scene, he, it's like he goes to the morgue, everything, right? Next day, Wednesday, he turns up alive at a press conference because he had been working with the Ukrainian officials, Ukrainian police, to essentially stage his murder in an attempt to get leads on assassination attempts from Russia in Ukraine. Yeah, so he walks into this press conference and everyone's like, what? That's intense. How crazy is that?

That's someone faints like in the movies. Oh my god. Yeah, it's a miracle. Well, it's not even clear yet if his wife knew it was... His wife knew, his wife wasn't in on it. Right. Okay, so So that he was dead Well, she had moved on had to awkward Like oh no

One day I'm warned you oh god, but but yeah, cuz he had used the swine blood I read Yeah, he had fruit that the trumps blood just kidding Um, he had happy grip. I was just gonna say if we fuck is a good thing. We're not He had Yeah, he had he had bullet holes in his shirt and everything it was just labyrinth. Yeah completely elaborate and The nice day shows up at this press conference. And we learned that in working with Ukrainian authorities, they had helped them fake his own death. And this is a kind of coordinated attempt to protect

a critic of Putin. That's virtually unprecedented also. I don't think this has really happened. This is a new thing. And it was the face of faking of the death, the faking of the death, yeah, working with Ukrainian officials and authorities to fake it, to fake a death, to find, to get information and also protect him. To get, yeah, and to protect him. Yeah, because he was like, because he's very well aware that he had a count on his head.

He knew. Oh, yeah. If you were, if you were his wife, do you think he'd bring that up all the time? Oh, definitely. I need you to go, I need you to, like, you know, you were his wife, do you think he'd bring that up all the time? Oh, definitely. I need you to go. I need you to, like, you know, you need to shut up about this. Well, you need, you, I thought you were dead one day.

So fuck off. Like, they just never let him live it down. Seriously. Like, that would be it forever and ever. Yeah. Oh, God, that poor wife too. And I wonder if he told her that he has an assassination hit on his head just because he for real does, you know. And yeah, what did you get?

What you're trying that would be as a wife. Did you get the story I said about the. I did. Yeah. The list. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, basically, sorry, I'm just going to go through my, you know, I've written my note, but I was going to do that. And then I'll get to, um, that list of 47. But so the head of Ukraine security services services, Vassal Koritsek, told reporters on Wednesday that they arranged the made up murder in an effort to catch criminals intended to kill Babchenko. One person has actually been detained a Ukrainian citizen who has allegedly paid $40,000 to kill the reporter.

And then get this, this guy, how reporter and then get this this guy How they did it basically was this guy that got paid 40,000 paid a hitman 15,000 the hitman Was the one that went and told the authorities hey, I got this call from a guy That's how they got the lead. Yeah, and that's how they started doing it And then now this is what's so fucking about it, though, and this is kind of why Ukraine and BubChank are getting criticized, is Russia is now saying that every time that there's any reported violence to someone in Ukraine

on behalf of Russia, it's just a staged plot. Oh. And it's not real. And so this guy who got paid the $40,000 to orchestrate it is saying, I knew he wasn't gonna die I was in on it and that's and that's his excuse right now. Oh really yeah $40,000. Yeah, so the guy that's detained and I have his name really quick So they have the $40,000 guy. They have a $40,000 guy and $40,000 it doesn't seem like a lot to me to kill another human being

Exactly. That's a forest herman is the guy's name herman $40,000 it doesn't seem like a lot to me to kill another human being exactly Boris Herman is the guy's name Herman. Yeah, Boris Mr. Herman Hey, King mr. Herman mr. Herman. You have a telephone call at the front desk So this guy mr. Herman he he now his is just, yeah, he's just saying, yeah, I know. I was with them. And then the other authorities and Bob Chico, they're like, no, you fucking work. You're definitely trying to kill me. You were definitely not in on this.

No, yeah, I was. Absolutely. And so now, that's why we're here. Oh my god. Yeah, and so what, Mr. Putin? What a messy, yeah, what a messy, exactly. Oh god, yeah, I can't, oh my god. Seriously, this is crazy.

It's just so crazy. And Russia is now retaliating by saying that this is all merely propaganda. And in my opinion, that is sort of an unintended consequence of this is it's like, okay, will you look back at all the other deaths and you ask how much of it was, you know, I don't look on it like that, but it's conceivable that someone could. And it's the counterargument to that would be though,

we came right out with it the next day. Mm-hmm. So we'll tell you if we tricked you. Yeah, exactly. We would be bragging. And it's reported everywhere that it's like an unprecedented move. And this isn't something that happens, yeah.

So exactly. But yeah, it does just kind of suck because it's a conceivable point to make. Yeah, it sucks. I've seen it here. I watch Cold Case Files or whatever that ID channel is all the time. That's because that's what 40-year-old white ladies watch. I call it bitch in a basement

because it's always this woman hosting it. He's got like superimposed on this digital background of a basement. Oh, that's funny. So I thought you were referring to the person that could die. I was like, no, that's also funny. Just the lives living host. And there was a woman who put out a hit on her husband,

and they all found out about it somehow. And the husband, they faked his death and brought her into the police station, and she was crying, ooh, ooh, ooh, and then he walks in. And she's all, oh, oh, my God. And he's like, I know what you fucking did. And she's like, fuck, oh, you're alive, oh. what you fucking did. And she's like, oh, you're alive. Like she's the worst actress ever.

Yeah, so I've seen it here. I've seen it done here in bitch in a basement, but I've never seen it done in a governmental, because that's like their CIA. And wasn't Jose Grinda, the guy in charge of that department, he's also the guy who sent Mueller all of the recorded intercepted phone conversations. Remember last week we reported that Spain intercepted all those phone calls, sent him over

to Mueller. Yeah, I didn't even get a connection. Yeah, same dude. Yeah, and now too, so the party. It's actually Spanish, just as well. And now, so after this happens and it all gets staged, you're creating authorities, they say that they can count at least 30 people, that they're fairly certain now are going to have a hit on their heads from

Russia because of this plot and successful, I was going to say detonation, that's a detaining of detention, painted different picture. Which will look as detention. Thank you. Painting different picture which you'll look at as detention. Thank you Successful detonation of people Man you go to college and it's like for what? I don't know I use algebra every day. I do But uh, but now they they have it's been reported that the Ukrainian officials have found a list of 47 names not 30 47 I was gonna ask I thought I because I had heard a bigger number, but yeah, yeah, it is so

Hopefully they don't get assassinated, but it is yes They get invited to the same party coincidentally Yeah, oh my god, this is also dark. I hope I really, really, really hope that they can continue to do efforts like this if it was effective in a way that I guess I don't know. Maybe it shouldn't be national news or something if it's gonna give Russia a platform to say they always do this Yeah, but they're gonna say that anyway I'd be I wouldn't be surprised if they never even revealed this and Russia said that again anyway. You know, I mean, Russia's got a lot of dirty tricks. Oh, yeah.

We see him played out here by Trump quite a bit. For sure. God, it's terrifying. Have they always been killing people like this? Yeah, I think so. I think that's common. I know that we've reported on live Venyanco. Yeah, definitely over time, just the case.

It seems like it's amping up though, doesn't it? It seems like it. I haven't been to an inter-russian assassin. I feel like the Asians were paying a lot more attention and also maybe Putin is like, you know, he's ready. And then there were like two guys that died that were hooked up with the dossier that we read about in Russian roulette

right, blown up in his car, right? Yeah, they referenced that in a lot of articles about this story. And then the lit Venyango and then the script Paul's and then there was also a reporter that was shot outside of the Kremlin in the Russian roulette book that we that we talked about and now this guy made it out. Yeah, that's the good news, part of this news, is that he didn't die. So I did not know we were... And they tricked Russia. Yeah, seriously, how amazing is that?

And how are they gonna find that person not guilty of knowing? They're just gonna have to, the Hermann guy, they're just gonna have to get a bunch of warrants, I guess, and find communications that link it back to Russia or something. Wait, is that going to accidentally bring Spain into this? No, no, no. The last segment before. Okay, so yeah, yeah, the thing about Prouder. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say that it's crazy to me how they can arrest somebody with an international group coming in and saying we have it worn out for that person, like how

easy it is, and then for them to then just dis- this such little throw to the side after a couple questions, that's just crazy. But didn't I just like maybe like not five minutes ago say something about Jose Grinda and he was the guy who got all the taped conversations from Spain. Yeah, yeah, I remember you mentioned that. Did this? Yeah. And was I, I think I was incorrectly attributing it to this Ukrainian plot. Oh, got it. I didn't even catch that. I was just thinking of what I was going to say.

So you guys just pretty much believe whatever I tell you. Hey, I'm open to everyone's thoughts. And I go, well, that was a definite mistake So before you before you send me an email Spain had nothing to do. So what were you saying that he what? Well, Spain has nothing to do with no this fake death. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no I mean, what was I talking about Spain for? Why did I bring up Spain? I don't know. I remember you mentioning it. Did you bring up Spain? You did. You brought up and I said, Jose Grinda, just in this conversation.

His name I do not know. He's the head of the Spanish CIA. Ah, yes. He's the one who got all the, he's also the, I said, he's also the one who got all of the taped recordings of intercept recordings and sent them to Mueller. Yeah. And you said, oh, I didn't even make that connection.

You said sexy Spanish justice. And the reason you didn't make that connection is because he has nothing to do with the story. I don't know why I brought him up. I was just, I'm really into this. The way your brain went. I'm just really into this band. The way you presented it seemed so cool.

It really did seem so correct. I was like, yeah. Oops. I didn't even think about that. Well, then. All right. Well, I lied. And then I was like, yeah. Oops, I didn't even think about that. Well then. All right, well, I lied. And then I caught myself. Yeah.

And I just went with it the whole time. All right. I'm just here for the rag, guys. Yeah, I hope you guys out there were like, what is she talking about? Yeah, probably. All right. I think we're not drinking wine.

That's the problem. We're not drinking wine. That is so true. Yeah, I think that's, I think it's definitely affecting with drones. The show quality. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I got the DTs because I don't have any wine,

that's exactly right. We need a wine sponsor, so I have this problem. I'm a commercial. I'm attributing Ukrainian criminal prosecuting success to the Spaniards. There you go. Yeah, I thought you were talking about their intelligence agencies talking to one another. I could have sworn it made sense. Yeah, it sounded really good. Yeah, I thought you were talking about their intelligence agencies talking to one another.

I could have sworn it made sense. Yeah, it sounded really good. Yeah, I guess we'd call it a listen back. Yeah, we'll definitely get a leave that in there and then the correction. And I want to see how smooth that went. I'm going to see how smooth that went. How did I even pull that off? Ukraine, Spain, maybe they rhyme? I don't know.

We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. This is how I get through most of my social interactions. This is the place. Just yeah. Yeah. It's crazy, man. Whoa.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, independent of Spain, this story only involves you, Korean and Russian as of now, except it actually doesn't, because there's a lot of world leaders that are commenting on this. And then they seem pretty split. A lot of them are like, yeah, fuck you Russia. Good on you, Ukraine and Bob Chanko, and then the others are like, no, this opens up and, you know, it undermines your authority basically now yeah fucking nuts. I know and good on the hitman Was it a real hit man if he if he got the 40,000 guy or the Yeah, the 15,000 guy

Yeah, right. It's like how is he in the yellow pages? Yeah, yeah, it's on the dark web 80% success rate 88% dead. Yeah, I guess that's what an undercover cop the whole concept is. That's what you get for for not doing your own work, man Yeah, you got it. That's why I have a hard time delegating. I got a fiber for all my Spittball fiber And you think now this guy is only getting 25,000 after the 15,000 He's getting here for this dude. That is hardly any money. Yeah for a human life. No, right? 25,000 dollars to Make a couple phone calls and it's pretty good. Yeah, you're right.

Pay is everything you don't have to get your actual hands dirty. No literally Yeah, yeah, yeah, blood Yeah, sweat blood of sweat. Where do you even get that? Yeah, yeah, pigs blood. Yeah, blood of swine. Where do you even get that? Oh, that pigs. Michael's. Trump's not a hobby lobby. Hobby lobby. Next year, it's a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge tax bane. So this week there was some new reporting that helped us make some sense of some of the 49 questions that leaked to the New York Times from

Trump's legal team. Remember we did an emergency episode on that? Yeah that was crazy. We called it 48 questions because when it when the news was breaking they reported it as 48 and then later on it to found out we were 49. So we're in a good last question. That's why it's called 48 on our episode list there. Yeah, so we have, take a listen to that if you want and then check out this clip from our free bonus episode on the 49 questions because eight of them had to do a session. So here, listen to this question. Another one here, they get into Jeff Sessions a little bit. What did you think and do, Atama too? What did you think and do regarding the recuse of Mr. Sessions, right?

What efforts did you make to try to get him to change his mind? Like how far did you go to try to get Sessions to recuse himself or not recuse himself? Did you discuss whether Mr. Sessions would protect you and reference past attorneys general. Here at MSW, we've reported extensively on the obstruction of justice involving Jeff Sessions, and that he was pressured by Trump via Don McGann, not to recuse himself, and we all know Sessions has been the target of a lot of Trump tweets since he recused. We know pre-biss, he told pre don't prebus to make sessions not recuse himself. We know that Trump has said he wouldn't have hired sessions if he knew he was going

to recuse himself. And he's talked about needing to have him protect him from the Russian investigation, like the way Eric Holder protected Obama from Tansuits. Aside from all that, what I consider to be pretty obvious obstruction, there's a new twist aside from all that. After sessions recused himself, Trump went to Mar-a-Lago that weekend, pissed, pouting, pout golfing. The problem was that there was a big pending case on his Muslim ban and new changes had to be signed quickly because of an upcoming court ruling. But Trump is such a baby, he's such a fucking bitch that he wasn't taking session's phone

calls. I'm not new to him. So Justice decided they had to fly sessions down to Mar-a-Lago to physically locate the president and get his signature on this fucking thing. It was during that meeting over dinner that Trump pushed sessions to unrequse himself. Sessions refused. And until this week, this confrontation had not been reported anywhere publicly,

except there was a hint added in that question that we played you from the 40-a questions where they said, you know, what did you do after Jeff Sessions recused to get him to reverse his recusal? Tell us about that. And those are questions written by Trump's lawyers. So Trump knew that he did it.

Trump's lawyers knew that he did it. And MSW listeners will have already known Mueller was looking into the obstruction surrounding sessions because of that 48 question episode. So yeah, I ate those 49 questions about sessions. And one of them asked what efforts did you make to try to get him to reverse his recusal? That's the wording that I was looking for. So Mueller has known, we have known, MSW has known, but this reporting by Schmidt at the New York Times gives us the story behind it, like what actually happened. Every day something happens that changes the disposition of the quotes in our opening sequence. Like they have a life of their own.

They're like a wine, they're a living thing, right? So like, so remember, okay, so let's just go through them. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs to which Manafort goes, that's what he said, that's what I said, that's what our position is. Like he just stumbles through that Meanwhile, he's up shit Creek with judges denying all sorts of motions to dismiss and suppress evidence

Not to mention I know and you know he's facing superseding indictments on crimes of collusion So so that's where that quote is I know I don't know that's our position I'm not aware of any of those activities. I've been called a surrogate at a time of two in that campaign. I did not have contact with the Russians. This is a lie, and it's the lie that Sessions told Congress that led to his recusal. And as we all know, Trump is facing serious obstruction of justice charges for his behavior before and after the recusal of Jeff Sessions. So what do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have nothing to do with Putin.

I don't know anything about Putin, other than he will respect me. That's been clearly just proven and reports going back to 2013 corroborating the Steele Dossie Asa Sertian that Putin and the Cremlin have been courting and grooming Trump for years, five to eight years. So that's what you have to get involved with Putin for. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you find the 30,000 emails that are missing. We know, and the rest of the world will know,

that the search for Hillary emails went directly up the ranks of the whole Trump campaign. And we'll find out when Stone and WikiLeaks are indicted, and Cohen's slush fund payments will be found to have gone to Russian and Israeli and Saudi internet troll farms. So anyway, how far we've come? Keep all that in mind every time you hear our opening sequence.

It's kind of fun to think about where we were and where we are now. Oh yeah. All right, you guys, we'll be right back. Hey, Mullerites, what are those locked episodes? Those are bonus content episodes exclusively for our patrons. You can join us for as little as $1 per month. And in addition to unlocking all of our bonus episodes, you get ad-free full-length episodes. Our weekly newsletter, which includes photos and infographics and my personal research notes. We also have gifts like t-shirts, reusable bags for going to the store or the farmers market. We have, and our forthcoming sexy Justice calendar featuring 12 photos of key figures in the Mueller investigation.

We hope you join us and support Women in Podcasting by visiting mullershoewrote.com and clicking subscribe. Happy listening! indictment league. Oh yes. Okay, so this week the story about sealed indictments on Trump made the rounds again. This story goes, I see it about every three months, it gets a rebirth. If you guys ever want to write a media article, do it on this subject because they just keep pumping it out on vice or whatever, half post. So many are speculating that there may already be a sealed indictment for President Trump or that Mueller will file one in the near future.

And the reason behind that would be a lot like the Deadman Switch concept we talked about last week in our interview with Chris Cluey, the Deadman Switch being a bunch of sealed indictments that will live on even if Mueller is fired or the entire Justice Department is raptured or whatever. So the sealed, the sealed Trump indictment theory posits that Mueller could indict Trump and keep it under seal, so that Trump would never know,

but it could be unsealed either if Mueller's fired or Rosenstein's fired or after the president leaves office. Like he could file this sealed indictment and do a report recommendation for impeachment to Congress and that indictment can just sit there. And meanwhile, that stops the statute of limitations clock ticking. So it's good. Interesting. Yeah. So that would mean, again, like I just said, the statute of limitations would not apply because the indictment is what kicks that clock off according to some legal experts that I've spoken to. So please tweet us if that's not the case. If you happen

to know differently, that's just the information I got. It also helps Mueller get around the whole justice department policy that says you can't indict a sitting president. However, we've done a mini-sode that that's not necessarily the case as opined by the guy who wrote the policy, but could Mueller have his cake and eat it too? Could he indict Trump, put it under seal, and submit the recommendation for impeachment? That's a new way he could go in this investigation. And because I've seen this report on the sealed indictments, option a few times now, I figured it was time to bring it up on the show. So what do you guys think? Do you think, uh,

I don't know, I think ever since, he's, I feel like there just so much has been coming out. He's so close to publicly inditing him. Yeah, I mean, just needs permission. Yeah, I feel like 2018, we mentioned before that I could go into 2019, but something tells me that it's this year at some point at least. Yeah, well, that's also just for Trump. There's probably a hundred other dudes that they got to put're right. Yeah. But case is out for you know.

You can go on for the rest. But it's the midterm. It's very long. Because we're going to find out if we're going to flip it this year. I can't imagine Muller won't be influenced by that and decide if you know that's the case. Like well, I better get these out so they can impeach him or whatever. Oh, that's what Giuliani is saying. He's like, you better hurry up finish your your investigation by September 1st. That's totally yeah. I see what his fear is saying. He's like, you better hurry up finish your your investigation by September 1st.

Totally. Yeah, I see what his fear would be. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, we've already reported on this. Mueller would just go dark during the midterms. If he is not going to stop investigating. Exactly. Because Giuliani wants him to. I don't know what Giuliani is thinking. But anyway, you guys ready for some sabotage?

Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, but a couple days ago for y'all. But a team from the New York Times published a 20-page letter that Trump wrote to Mueller back in January. Trump's lawyers, I should say, doubt and succulo, wrote to Mueller's team back in January. And the basic message is that Trump is above the law.

That's their whole theme. We're going to go over this memo in detail in a bonus episode, so keep your eye out for that this week. But basically, Dowden Seculo wrote this letter saying that Trump does not have to respond to a subpoena because he's busy being president. And that he can't obstruct justice because he's in charge of justice. Well, okay, I'll be damned. Law students in an intro to constitutional law class would know that that's incorrect.

I know that that's incorrect. I've never even taken a law class. But what is stunning about this memo is that Trump's legal team admits that Trump crafted the statement on Air Force One dictated it for the press on behalf of Trump Jr. about the Trump tower meeting, being about adoptions. Remember that whole thing? What's one of the four areas of obstruction of justice that Mueller's looking into? Just come out and says, we did that. Totally. So, it's, and, and, hope, it's was there for that, right? Yeah. So that's an admission of obstruction, and it implicates his son, hope, it's in anyone else that was in on it. And,

witness obstruction and, and hide it. If you witness obstruction and you hide it, that's misprison, right? So then Trump tweeted that the Democrats leaked the memo. You should look at the Democrats leaking the memo. This letter, how the fuck did they get a copy of it? Did you some shit you wrote? Did you give it to him? Like I've been talking about. Right. Or is it the 13 hard and Democrats and the Mueller team that leaked it? Fuck off. You leaked it. You know you leaked it because it matches everything that Juliani's been trying to kick up shit about for the last three weeks.

It alludes that Trump can pardon himself. Am I reading it? Yeah, I just tweeted about this. It's interesting because first, okay, so how many problems are there with this letter? Let me count the ways. So, you know, we're doing a whole bonus episode on it. There's at least a good 15 obvious low hanging fruit points that we, you know, that we discuss.

Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, they're so desperate at this point. So here's the, okay, so here's the good news. The good news is that to some degree, they are trying to make legal arguments. And I would say that, hey, at least that's keeping it in some realm of acknowledgement that there is a law that exists. It's better than him going on a firing spree and just firing Mueller or Rod Rosenstein

because these are questions that actually can be answered. We have institutions, we have courts and the Supreme Court that are there to interpret the Constitution and the presidential, Article 2 of the Constitution, which outlines presidential powers. So we can arrive at an answer. It's not necessarily a great thing to have to go there, but it can be answered. It's his argument. Collusion isn't... So what, if the emails were a gift, it was like a gift. Collusion isn't a crime.

Yeah, it totally aligns. Yeah, we met with Russians a whole bunch, but that's not illegal. They were waiting for the public to be ready for the... Yeah, you can't... you can't, yeah. You can't obstruct justice. President can't obstruct justice because he's in charge of justice. But even chief John Roberts,

the chief chief justice in the Supreme Court, he's even said that the Podas is the commander in chief of the military, not the commander in chief of America. That's, that would be a king. He's not a king. He's not my chief. He might be a taxi king or a condo king,

but he's not a king king. He's not above the law. Some other key points, and that and that they were shouting that from the rooftops when Clinton was oh totally Being impeached and I agree Clinton's not above a law. I love listening to those clips by the way I know even Giuliani yeah himself That member they played that back for him in an interview and he's like that's not fair Yeah, so man you can't save what I said. Moon. So great.

God, it was so funny. It's so offensive to our democracy to think that such an outsider can come in and think he can just get all the privileges of the United States presidency that he doesn't even understand. Yeah. No, and he doesn't. And they claim executive privilege in this. It's funny because I'm watching all the legal experts go over this and they're all like,

these are really dumb lawyers these are bad lawyers yeah they think there's the smartest people in the room that they cited nineteen eighty two case law that has since been changed that loophole was closed she's a google come on guy being something bad lawyer yeah being at least

that's I figure like, Trump would use Bing. Yeah, yeah. But I'll Bing. Remember the Bing Bing plan or the Bing Bing act? He wanted to make that a thing. I don't know. Or you know what? No, I know what that was a tweet that I made. He wanted to do.

I get him confused. I get him so confused. Oh, wait, no, I made that up. I'll tell you this. He wanted something similar enough that I can't remember what it was. Well, the bill is called the Sarbanes Oxley bill. Close that loophole. Anyway, the memo is nuts.

We're going to go over it in detail in a minute. So check that out this week if you're a patron. If you're not a patron, you can become a patron at... You can go to moshirot.com or Patreon, however you want to do it. Otherwise... I'm so sorry. No, go ahead. What were you going to say?

Do you think that they can use that letter as evidence against him? Yeah. And I want to go over that. I want to touch on that. And then in the mini-store, yeah, it's fucking dumb. Yeah. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And I know he leaked it.

And I even tweeted that out of him. He's like, oh, this leaked by the dumb. I'm like, you leaked this. You know it. You fucking moron. He thinks we're idiots. Oh, I remember, it was the Cut Cut Cut Act. He wanted to make that a thing. And it never made it. It fucking moron. Oh, I remember it was the cut cut cut act. He wanted to make

that a thing and it never made it never became a bill, but he wanted it to be called the cut cut act for a time. Oh, no, yeah. That was the regulations. Yeah, yeah. Cutting all the regular. He's so basic. He's so basic bitch. Bing. Yeah. Oh, God. All right. You bitch in the basement. Basic bitch in the basement. Oh, no, that's probably me Like I want to get a I'm gonna get a job hosting cold case files from this podcast. Oh, I would love you You'll see me with my Starbucks and my ugly boots and my Louvoo lemon with in a backdrop I'd be so great. I'll be basic bitch in a basement. I'm for hire All right, you guys you ready for some Q&A. Yes. All right instead of Q&A this week, because we didn't really, I didn't really put out a call

for questions. And we've addressed a couple of things that people wanted to hear about. We pulled it into the main episode there. But I wanted to talk about something else. 4,625. That's the number of people estimated to have died in Puerto Rico. Wow. Yeah. Trump's number is 64. So this is shocking to me. A true accounting, I think, is needed. Now, this is a Harvard study that came out that shows almost 5,000 people are dead because

of the hurricane. And they're sitting ducks right now for the next one. Hurricane season started Friday. Oh my gosh, you're so right. At midnight. 18,000 people are still without power. They're. That's so unsanitary.

They don't have water. These are Americans. I'm willing to bet Trump doesn't see them as Americans. Right. And the people that vote for him, they also don't see them as Americans. It definitely comes down to this nationalist bullshit, you know. And the dehumanization of people makes it easier to treat them like that.

Totally. Yeah. 4,625 versus 64. And he bragged about it in a news conference, too. You remember how many dead? How many? 64. That's great. God yeah. He doesn't even know how to do that. What a great low number.

And then throws out paper towels. Yeah, and then throws paper towels at them dehumanizing them So here's here's what I want to know And I'm hoping when we flip the Congress blue. It's please fucking vote. I swear to God I'll be in California next week. Yeah Tuesday. I'm voting And I'm not worried about California, but I still vote. Right. And I do want to put more progressive candidates in. But anyway, there needs to be an investigation in Congress. I don't think there will be one until we flip it. But I mean, four in Puerto Rico, yeah, into Puerto Rico, five thousand people died. Four people died in Benghazi.

Oh my goodness. you're so right. Four Americans. And they lost their own. And we investigated it for four years. Not that they were wrong to be upset, but you're right, the hypocrisy is so clear. Four Americans, four years, zero indictments. 4,600 Americans, 4,625 Americans are dead.

And if this Congress doesn't do something, the new Congress we elect in November will. So remember, we are not just fighting Republicans, you guys. We are fighting the Russians in this election. And not all Russians, but the corrupt government. I keep finding myself sometimes thinking like, yeah, not everyone of Russian percent. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that's just me. I got to check myself sometimes.

Yeah. I don't want to be whatever you call having. A nationalist, yeah, yeah. Like it's, I don't want to love you call having. A nationalist, yeah, yeah, like it's, I don't wanna love that. Be guilty of McCarthyism. Right, yeah. He would love to point to us and say,

see, they hate us, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, anyway. The dichotomy of their foreign policy versus their domestic policy, too, is insane. It's like, they're not perfect by any means, domestically, you know, right? They suck a lot especially in their media freedom

laws, but just the shit that they're doing on a national on a global scale is insane. It's crazy Yeah, and our president's helping so almost letting it happen. Yeah, yeah I'm hoping our intelligence agencies have put together their multi-agency task force that that Christopher Ray was talking about when he testified to Congress. I haven't seen it. I haven't heard about it. We've been hacked already. I mean months away from probably being hacked again. No, well, I mean, not months away, it's primary season right now. You think it just could be happening right now? It's gonna happen a couple of months ago, two months ago, a month ago in Tennessee. Oh, that's crazy. They're here. Wow. It could happen here

Tuesday. It could be happening. Putsch is like sitting behind this like cyborg, but fortunately we have paper ballots here. Oh, good point. Yeah. Because California is thinking. I'm volunteering as a, I forget my title, something. I take people's ballots. Poe worker. Very cool. Yes, yeah. Open them polls.

Assistant inspector. Yeah, you listen to that guy from the open mind. Who opened my account? An inspector, Jordan. Yeah, it's scary though. Honestly, I know sometimes the conservatives are like, oh, liberal, I'm saying it's scary. Like, it is.

That our votes can be hacked. Our votes can be hacked. Our votes can be hacked. They want to be a little bit. We can be psychologically swayed. And I just want to have everyone remember, it's not just Republicans we're running against, we're running against the Cremlin. So get out there, register, join a phone bank, knock on doors,

do everything you can. We will help you. I can't reiterate how important this election is. So anyway, thank you guys for listening. I've been AG. I've been Julie Sajonson. I've been Jordan Coburn. And this is Muller She wrote. Muller She wrote is produced and engineered by AG with editing and logo design by Jolissa Johnson, market consulting by Amanda Rita at Unicorn Creative. Our digital media director and subscriber managers are Jordan Coburn and Sarah Hirschberger Valencia. Our partners are fastgrass.org and Joyce Teespoon.com.

Fact checking and research by AG is support from Jolissa Johnson and Jordan Coburn. Muller She wrote staff includes AG, Jolissa Johnson, Jordan Coburn, Sarah Hershberger, Valencia, Jesse Egan, and Sarah Lee Steiner. Our web design and branding are by Joel Reader with Moxie Design Studios, and our website is MollershyRote.com. Hi, I'm Dan Dunn, host of What We're Drinking With Dan Dunn, the most wildly entertaining adult beverage-themed podcast in the history of the medium. That's right, the boozy best of the best, baby. And we have the cool celebrity promos to prove it. Check this out.

Hi, I'm Allison Janney, and you're here with me on What We're Drinking with Dan Dunn. And that's my sexy voice. Boom. Boom is right Academy Award winner, Allison Janney. As you can see, celebrities just love this show. How cool is that? Hey, this is Scottie Pippin and you're listening to the Dan Dunn Show and wait, hold on. The name of the show is what? Alright, sure.

Scottie Pippin momentarily forgot the show's name but there's a first time for everything. Hey everyone, this is Scoot McNary. I'm here with Dan Dunn on What Are You Drinking? What's it called again? Fine, twice. But famous people really do love this show. Hi, this is Will4K and you're, for some reason, listening to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn.

What do you mean for some reason, Will4K? What's going on? Hi, this is Kurt Russell. Listen, I escaped from New York, but I couldn't get the hell out of Dan Dunn's happy hour. Please send help. Send help. Oh, come on, Kurt Russell. Can somebody out there please help me?

I'm Deed of Aunties and you're listening to What We're Drinking with Dan Dunn. Let me try one more time. Come on. Is it right? What we're drinking? It's amazing. Is it right? Ah, that's better.

So be like Deedevantiste friends and listen to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn, available wherever you get your podcasts. M-S-O-W-Media. you