Jack - Vindictive and Selective

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

The FBI searched former National Security Adviser John Bolton's home in Maryland on Friday in search of classified records.More details have emerged about the purge of top officials at the FBI as the agency lowers recruiting standards and the Trump Administration appoints a Co-Deputy Director to assist Dan Bongino.The Department of Justice misses the deadline to hand over Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee.A federal judge calls Alina Habba’s appointment as US Attorney in New Jersey unlawful.Kilmar Abrego files a motion to dismiss the criminal charges against him citing selective and vindictive prosecution.Plus listener questions…Do you have questions for the pod? Thank you CB Distillery!Use promo code UNJUST at CBDistillery.com for 25% off your purchase. Specific product availability depends on individual state regulations.Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at  MINTMOBILE.com/UNJUST Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

MSW Media. The FBI searched former national security advisor John Bolton's home in Maryland on Friday as a part of a national security investigation in search of classified records. More details emerge about the purge of top officials at the FBI as the agency lowers recruiting standards and the Trump administration appoints a co-depity director to assist Dan Bond. Gino. And more trouble for the Department of Justice as they miss the deadline to hand over Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee. And a federal judge calls Alina Haba's appointment as U.S. attorney in New Jersey unlawful. And Kilmar Abrago files a motion to

dismiss the criminal charges against him, citing selective and vindictive prosecution. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 31 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, August 24th, 2025, super quiet week, hardly anything going on, Andy. Oh, my God. It was busy, but today jacked it right through the roof. I mean, I've been running on all this craziness all day, just from very early this morning. And I got a couple more shows to do today. And it just seems like every minute there's. there's another piece of like really significant breaking news. Yeah, and we got a couple of those today. First of all, Abrago Garcia is free. The DOJ, he's been released.

Magistrate judge has released him from, you know, he was in criminal prison, not ICE detention. He has to check in with ICE on Monday, but he's free. He's on his way home to Maryland. And he's filed that motion for vindictive and selective prosecution. We're going to go over that in a little bit. And then we get DOJ.

is starting to trickle down some Epstein files to Congress, to the oversight committee in the House. And we got the Gailene Maxwell interview transcripts and audio, which are weird. That's one way to put it. In multiple ways. I've put a little bit of a post. I've read through the first day's transcripts. It's all ridiculous. She's completely lying her face off.

And it's not one continuous recording. There are like seven parts of the first day, six hours worth of testimony or a proffer session. And then we also get to hear the proffer agreement signed in the very first few minutes. And of course, we haven't seen that proffer agreement, nor have we seen the agreement for transfer to FPC Bryan in Texas, minimum security camp. But it's just, I don't know. seems scripted. Seems like there's a lot of stuff missing from this. She just doesn't seem to remember anybody getting any massages anywhere or anyone being at any island. It's just, I don't know, it's kind of ridiculous. I'm not done reading through it yet, but the whole thing seems very

improper. Although there was an FBI agent present during the interview, special agent in charge from the New York field office at the DOJ. They weren't doing the interview at the field office. his name is Spencer. Spencer, what's his last name? Horn. Spencer Horn. There was also a U.S. Marshall there and, of course, all of Gilling's attorneys

and an ADAG named Mark Beard. So there were a couple other people in the room, but just very odd. Yeah, the whole thing is weird. And then the results are immediately, I think, raise a lot of questions. I mean, basically there's no client list. at all ever anytime never saw one no wouldn't even know what that is and Donald Trump never did

anything wrong so probably the two most significant gets were gotten by DOJ and were given by this witness who has a horrific uh history of of lying and disassembling so you know draw you got to draw your own conclusions there yeah interesting I she didn't know anything about anyone who submitted any letters to a birthday book that she herself put together didn't remember Trump, didn't remember anything, just didn't recall

most of the things that were asked. She did say she doesn't think Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. But she doesn't think it was to keep him quiet. She said it, she thought it was some beef that he had with another prisoner.

Which seems to be like the least likely possibility, just from the existence of the not perfect. I'll grant you but the video record from the view of the door leading into a cell. And she had nothing to add to that. She had no real theory about it, didn't really know anything about it, just was happy to hold on to the belief that he couldn't possibly have killed himself. So I don't know. Yeah. And I have to ask you an FBI question. Do they use those 1976 Sony

cassette tape recorders to record these interviews because, I mean, it's 2025. Not to be, you know, I don't know, a little high and mighty about sound quality, but it was real hard to hear. Yeah, I mean, no. Typically, so

when I was EAD for national security, the FBI first time in its history created a policy that required recording making audio recordings of some interviews. It's basically people who had been detained and brought back to the office

to be questioned and processed before they were going to be presented in court. And it's like got so many requirements in it. You have to be in an FBI field office in a particular room that's been set up by FBI engineers and sound people and there's like all kinds of specifics about the equipment that's used.

And so no, it would never sound like that. But this recording took place, I don't know. I don't even think we know where in the courthouse, maybe. It was not in the prison facility where she's being held. It just says Department of Justice interview is all it says. It's like not even really a thing, right? Because they don't record interviews. But this is different.

This was special. So who knows what gear they used. Yeah. Well, anyway. Let's talk about the other breaking story. This right out of the gate Friday, this is from NBC. The FBI searched former national security advisor John Bolton's home, half man, half mustache, in Maryland on Friday, as part of a national security investigation in search of classified records. That's according to a source familiar.

An FBI official said in a statement that the agency was, quote, conducting court authorized activity in the area and there's no threat to public safety. The agency declined to comment further on the search. Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, did not immediately respond to NBC News request for comment. In a post on X early Friday, FBI director Cash Patel wrote, quote, no one in all caps is above the law, at FBI agents on mission. Except Donald Trump. Yeah, apparently except him. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI deputy director and BFF of Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, also appeared to refer to the search in their posts on X.

Bondi's said, America's safety isn't negotiable. Justice will be pursued, always, Bondi wrote early Friday. Public corruption will not be tolerated, Bongino wrote. So Bondi said America's safety isn't negotiable, but they also said, said there's no threat to public safety. Okay. Yeah, and this is from the team that just interviewed and negotiated with a convicted sex offender. But I digress, totally. And gave her a queen for a day.

Yeah. NBC says the New York Post was the first to report the news, but that's not true. Benjamin Wittes from Lawfare was the first on the scene. And it's important that we recognize independent media in these instances. That's right. The search began around 7 a.m. and the investigation was looking into the handle of classified materials and potential instances of such documents being used in leaks to the news media. That's according to a source familiar who requested anonymity for obvious reasons.

The search was related to a criminal investigation that began during the Biden administration that did not go any further at that time. An FBI official said an address on M Street in Washington, D.C. was also being searched. U.S. intelligence agencies have chosen in the past not to pursue criminal leak prosecutions, because the information involved is so sensitive that the agencies do not want it made public in court. It was not clear if that played a role in the Biden administration's decision.

Probably not. I think probably not. It's probably like the Pence classified documents investigation. Yeah, I mean, the underlying issue here is you think the guy published this stuff in his book, so it's already out there. So, yeah, why that does happen sometimes, Like if you have like an insider that steals a bunch of T.S. material from the office,

sometimes the actual owner of that T.S. information will be reluctant about going into court and having it aired out, you know, in a way that it hasn't been exposed to the general public. But I don't think that was the case here. That's where Brian Greer comes in. Yeah, that's right. That tells us all about the Sissa, right? Yes. Yes. SIPA.

SEPA, not Sessa. Sissa is the Krebs. That's right. Right. SEPA. That's right. Bolton served during two Republican administrations, first as ambassador to the United Nations during George W. Bush's administration and later as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump for about a year and a half during his first term.

Trump and Bolton did not part ways amicably. Does anyone part? Does anyone really? Did not part ways. Well, him and him and Gillane Max. well, I guess. Yeah, I mean, they've, I'm going to stop. I wish her, I wish her well.

I don't know why. Okay, did not part ways amicably with the president in 2019 claiming he had fired Bolton and Bolton claiming that he had offered to resign after a disagreement. I'm dumping you. No, I'm dumping you. Yeah. No, I'm dumping you. Right.

Now, despite his work in the first Trump administration, Bolton has emerged as a fierce critic of Trump after he left to office the first time in 2021. even writing a 2020 memoir about his time in the administration. During the first Trump administration, DOJ investigated Bolton over classified information and had unsuccessfully pursued legal action to stop the publication of his memoir to keep him from getting any money from it. But in 2021, during the Biden administration, the Justice Department and Bolton's attorney informed a federal judge the government was dropping its civil case against Bolton over his book. NBC News also reported at the time that the department had closed a criminal investigation. into Bolton. And this is going to be interesting. Because once the Department of Justice

declines to prosecute you, regardless of who the attorney general is, it's real hard to bring that back up again. Let's, I mean, we can look at the obstruction of justice in the second volume of the Mueller report. Bill Barr wrote that memo, had the Office of Legal Counsel, write that memo saying there's no obstruction here. You have to have an underlying crime. And even if he weren't the president, if he weren't the sitting president. So we can't indict him. But even if he weren't the sitting president, we would not indict him. We clear him. We're closing this case. That's something, unfortunately, that the Mueller investigation allowed to happen was for Bill Barr to come in and park a semi-truck of innocence in the space left behind because

Mueller said, well, I can't prosecute him because I can't indict him. And if I can't indict him, he can't face his accuser in court. So I'd be robbing him of his constitutional right to face his accuser in court. So he didn't come to any conclusion on obstruction. And that allowed Bill Barr to come in and come to a conclusion on obstruction. And that is pretty much what made it impossible for Merrick Garland to file obstruction charges because Trump would just come in with his, you know, declination to prosecute from Bill Barr and say, DOJ declined to prosecute. You have to dismiss this. And probably pretty much, you know, 99 out of 100, if not 100 out of 100 judges would dismiss the case. It's going to be interesting to see if they try to bring charges.

against him against Bolton because the previous attorney general closed the case and declined to prosecute. We'll see. Yeah, it's, it definitely presents all kinds of problems for any potential prosecution of Bolton. And we don't know yet if Bolton's going to be charged with anything. Maybe they got no evidence out of his house. Who knows? But we'll find out as time goes on. But if they do, then all of the workings of the first grand jury that did not indict him become relevant and accessible to the defense. And so the defense can file a motion to dismiss and put in front of the judge or later in front of a jury.

All of the things, the reasons that were that the likely the first grand jury didn't indict, right? Anything that went in front of that grand jury that went Bolton's way the first time can be essentially brought into the new prosecution and that can certainly be grounds for reasonable doubt. prosecution after a prior declination is super problematic, you never see it happen because prosecutors are just like, forget it. This is just no way. Too problematic. Yeah, and it's too bad for Bolton

that he doesn't live in the Southern District of Florida because then he might get Judge Eileen Cannon on a classified documents case. We know she doesn't like those. Oh, man. A former Justice Department official with knowledge of the Garland DOJ's decision to drop the case on the book, said that it was based on the facts of the case and the likelihood of it prevailing in court. Probably what he meant there was the likelihood of it not prevailing in court. They said politics played no role in the decision and noted that the Garland DOJ appointed a special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents and prosecuted Biden's son Hunter on tax and gun charges.

Prior to the publication, the Trump-era Justice Department sued Bolton, arguing that he had violated pre-publication review requirements by moving ahead without final written clearance, a process meant to ensure that no classified information was disclosed. Initially, the department sought to block the book's release entirely. Do you know anything about that review, that kind of book review? Oh, my God, do I. Yikes, pre-publication review. It's the bane of your existence if you try to write a book and you once had a classified access, you know, I got, I waited until the paper came, so I didn't have any problems. But Bolton's situation was weird because he spent

months and months going back and forth with them on it. The staff level person, or the last name is Knight, I forget her first name, ultimately told Bolton, okay, we're done. It's all good. There's nothing classified in here. And he kind of, move forward based on that representation. This is what I heard. Before we got that final piece of paper. Yeah. And so before that comes out, the supervisor to the woman who ran the process with Bolton came back and said, oh, no, no, can't clear him yet. I'm going to do my own special review. And it punted the thing into further delays and everything else. And that's when

Bolton went forward. Yeah. So they sued Bolton, the Trump administration. And when that failed, the administration continued its legal campaign, attempting to recover all profits that Bolton earned from the book, claiming he'd breached contractual obligations related to security clearance. And that effort also failed in court. Now, Bolton maintained that he had fulfilled his legal obligations and obtained a letter from the National Security Council in September 2020, which said the book contained no classified material. That would be very good evidence on his side. I was going to be putting that letter in my first motion to dismiss if he could get this past a grand jury. Now, Trump told reporters during a visit to a museum in D.C. that he didn't know about the search beforehand of Bolton's house and would, he might be briefed on the matter. But did he though? Because his word salad was weird. Yeah. He was like, I didn't know anything about it. But I could. I could totally know everything about it. But I don't. But I haven't. But I'll probably be briefed. But I don't know anything. Like it's like, come on, man. Oh, man. If you watch the sequence of the salad, he starts, they ask him if he's been briefed on it.

And he says, no, but I will be. I will be later. I'm sure. I'm sure I'll be getting briefed on it just a little bit later. And then you can see his mind turning. He realizes, I shouldn't have said that because I'm not supposed to be briefed on criminal cases. And then he goes, but I tell them all that I don't want to know. Yeah. Well, you just said you're going to get a brief where you tell them you don't want to know anything? I mean, what does that even mean? Yeah, well, Bongino is just very excited to tell me about it, and I'm going to tell them no. It's just, it was a ridiculous response. Crazy. Earlier this year, just several days into the second Trump administration, the president canceled Bolton's Secret Service detail, despite the fact that Bolton was the target of an alleged murder for higher plot by a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Interesting.

So, Andy, real quick, I know you've made a lot of appearances and have probably said this a million times on the bolt and stuff, but remind us of the process required to obtain a search warrant? Sure. So a search warrant is issued by a federal judge on a finding of probable cause. So basically what happens is the agents who are already conducting an investigation. They decide they need to get into that residence to see, like in this case, if the question or the offense that you're investigating is the retention of classified documents, you would think we think that there are some classified documents in there. So they would have to go in front of a federal judge and show that judge evidence. evidence that there is a likelihood, probable cause, to believe that there is actually evidence, classified material, in that location. They apparently satisfied that requirement because the judge signed the warrant and that is how they got into Mr. Bolton's residence. Now, because what they would be looking for here is simply information and documents, that's going to give them the most expansive search authority possible because that could be anything. It could be pieces of paper, envelopes, notebooks, it could be computer media, storage devices, anything that could hold

information. And technically, they are lawfully allowed to go into any room, container, compartment, closet, whatever, that could potentially conceal the thing that's described in the warrant. So that would basically get you everywhere. Like if you had a warrant to go find a stolen car at a house, you really could only look in the garage and the driveway. But this is not where they are. I was under the impression if you just locked the closet that they couldn't go in there. That's only for the province of Mar-a-Lago. Oh, that's right.

Darn. You know, I'm thinking back to Bolton refusing to testify in the first impeachment for the Ukraine stuff. and I'm wondering if he's regretting that now. I've often thought that. I mean, I see him commenting. He comments on CNN fairly often. He's on other channels as well. He really lets it fly about Trump.

I mean, he's very forward-leaning in his disdain for Trump's actions as president, particularly this term. So I wonder, like, yeah, what do you think, John? Maybe you should have, like, rethought that a little bit? Yeah, maybe testified, maybe gone around, called your buddies in the Republican Senate to get a vote. Complied with the subpoena? I don't know. Because they could have written up a thing if after removing him from office saying that he couldn't hold office again.

Yeah, if he hasn't had second thoughts about that before today, today might be the day he does. I'm just saying. That would be my question if I were a reporter. But anyway, that's just me. All right, lots going on at the FBI, including new details about the purge of senior officials like Driscoll and Jensen and the lowering of standards for new hires. I can't wait to get your input on this, Andy. Plus, Dan Bongino gets a babysitter. We're going to have all of that.

Now, I'm not to say that the deputy director of the FBI doesn't deserve a co-director, deputy director of the FBI. It's just the timing is interesting. We're going to talk about all of that after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Let's talk about the FBI for a minute. You'll recall after years of stoking conspiracy theories about the Epstein files to his right-wing podcast listeners,

Deputy Director Dan Bongino got into a shouting match with other top officials in the Trump administration over Pam Bondi backtracking on her promise to release the Epstein files. Now, Bongino learned pretty quickly that podcasting doesn't, necessarily prepare you to be the deputy director of the FBI. And he also got so emotional over losing his podcast fans that he just didn't show up to work the next day. So this week, per the Washington Post, the Trump administration is named Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as the FBI's co-depity director installing the MAGA Republican alongside the former conservative podcast host, Dan Bongino. The appointment is the latest unusual personnel move at the FBI as the Trump administration aims to dramatically reshape the Bureau.

Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department explained the rationale for the appointment. There has traditionally been just one deputy director at the FBI who serves under the politically appointed director, and the deputy director has long been a career position that runs the day-to-day operations and is typically a respected veteran with deep experiences at the FBI.

But President Donald Trump upended that norm when he selected Bongino, former Secret Service official and popular podcaster who had never worked at the FBI before the appointment. Yeah, yep. Bailey, a Trump loyalist, this is the new guy, who supported debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen, also has no known experience, none at the FBI. Now, Marcy Wheeler, who I love, she writes for Empty Wheel, now on the one hand, it's easy to laugh your ass off at this move, which is tacit confirmation that Bonino is nowhere near as competent as, say, Andrew McCabe. Thank you, Monsino. You owe, you owe Marcia, thank you, Card. I do.

Bongino has wailed about how hard his job is, so now I guess he has a job share, the kind of accommodation you might make for someone with inadequate qualifications for the job. On the other hand, Marcy says, I have suspicions that this is not so much about the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up and Bongino's manifest incompetence, because the move comes shortly after Kosh Patel fired two senior officials, along with the agent who had been flying his own plane, not his own, but Kosh Patel's plane, who also played a role in the Mar-a-Lago search and the Peter Navarro arrest. Marcy goes on to say, the firing of Driscoll and Jensen, and we'll talk more about that in a second, would already have required a new organizational structure from the reorganization that Cash pushed

through in March. but I can't help but think about the number of sensitive investigative steps at the FBI that require high-level approval, most famously FISA warrants. Everything at the FBI runs according to the domestic investigations and operations guide, we call it the diog because we're very creative, a big unwieldy guide meant to prevent the abuses of J. Edgar Hoover. Not only do certain sensitive investigations, say of journalists or members of Congress require high-level approval in some cases from the deputy, but the deputy owns the document. Hmm. And Marcy notes that the appointment of Bailey, the babysitter, comes the day after the Department of Justice appeal to judges ruling that the FTC's investigation of media matters repeats past attempts to infringe on their First Amendment rights, a ruling in which Bailey's own politicized

investigation of media matters figured prominently. here comes Bailey, who headed up the Media Matters investigation, which he's losing, and he's stepping in as the deputy who to approve high-level investigations of people in the media, journalists, members of Congress, etc. So that's, I think, what Marcy is getting at here. And I think that she has a good point. And Andy, I'm sure that there had been previous discussions with rational, reasonable people about having a second. deputy director of the FBI because the massive amount of responsibility that the deputy director has, right? I mean, this isn't a new concept, but it's just an unusual piece of timing

and an unusual co-deady director. Yeah. So I participated in several rounds of thought and discussions, some of which were facilitated by outside consultants about how we could possibly restructure the deputy's responsibilities. This is even before I was deputy. So just as a example, most business school professors will tell you what's the optimal number of direct reports for any leader? It's probably like 8, 10, maybe 12 is kind of like pushing the limit there. So I had 70 as deputy director. 56 of them ran entire field offices. that's a lot of people with a ton of responsibility

and even just getting through the mid-year evaluations and the end-of-year evaluations and the climate surveys and the mentoring conversations and sessions and developing those leaders, many of whom were brand new, people who I'd put in those jobs. It just took, it was like a job in and of itself.

It took me half the year to get through the evaluations. Yeah. So, yeah, it's unwheels. and it's a ridiculous amount of responsibility. That being said, we didn't ever actually do it successfully, which is maybe our fault and lack of creativity or something. But one of the reasons was that these SACs wouldn't stand for it. There's only one deputy in the organization,

and that is the guy that holds the fate of the SACs, the field office commanders, in his or her hand. And they didn't want any obstacle between, them and their ability to pick up the phone and go direct with the deputy director about an operational matter or a policy matter or about their own personal kind of how they're doing and whatever help they might need. So we saw it as being too destabilizing to kind of the status quo and the culture around supervision at that very high level in the FBI. Whether or not Cash Patel and Dan Bongino had like long informed conversations about this in which they appreciated the nuances and the history of FBI people and how they're developed and how they get into SAC positions.

Oh, I'm sure they put together a committee and a blue ribbon commission and got the input from all the people who would report to the deputy director. I'm sure they went through all of the standard operations that you would go through if you were going to make a personnel decision like that. I'm sure they did. Right. They must have or not. So yeah. I mean, I can. cannot even imagine how this works. It doesn't work. So there's two, right? The deputy director is the court of last resort for everything. Like every case, every major operation, questionable, you know, the hard cases, the things that are not perfectly clear, ultimately get resolved at the deputy's desk. So if you have two of them, you allow, that's, you've opened up the opportunity for

forum shopping and you don't like the answer the first guy gave you, go to the second guy, or maybe they just disagree on how to do things, which all means that these problems are now more problems that are going to wash up on the director's desk. We're going to get the director more involved in day-to-day operational stuff, which is bad because it takes the director off target and the things that he should be doing.

So bottom line is it's a total departure from over 100 years of history, and it's hard for me to understand how this would work. Partially, it's hard to understand because they've given us zero details about how they intend to kind of divide up those responsibilities. It reminds me of an old Stephen Wright bit. Do you remember Stephen Wright, the comedian, talked like this couch guy in the movie.

He said, I went to my mom and I asked for a dollar and she said, go ask your father. So I went to my dad and I asked for a dollar and he said, go ask your mother. And as I was running back to ask my mom, I tripped over the coffee table and heard my dad say, 30 love, your serve again. So just how do you even decide who you're going to ask? But, you know, if you want some specific FISA warrants to investigate journalists against their First Amendment rights, you'd probably go to Bailey. If you had off, there's many days when I wanted to clone myself. So I had double my chances of actually getting the work done.

If you'd offered me a co-de deputy on one of those days, I might have been attracted to it until you told me it was Bailey. Then I'd be like, you know, I'm fine. No, I'm good. Just go. I'm all right. Close the door behind you. All right. So just a minute ago, we put a pin in the firing of top FBI officials like Driscoll and Jensen.

And when we reported on that purge, the reasons for the dismissals were only speculative. But Daniel Kladman at CBS has uncovered more details. He writes, Driscoll, a highly decorated agent who took part in numerous daring counterterrorism operations, began his short stint as acting director. with what many agents viewed as a singular act of bravery, resisting calls from a top Trump appointee at the Justice Department to turn over the names of FBI employees

who had participated in the January 6th investigation. Nevertheless, Patel kept Driscoll on after his Senate confirmation, putting him in the high-profile post as head of the Bureau's critical incident response group, which oversees the FBI's elite hostage rescue team and its aviation unit. The hostage rescue team, by the way, H.R.T. That's what Driscoll was assigned to when he was doing those daring counterterrorism operations. Yeah, yeah. And Jensen, the veteran agent, he's one of the veteran agents who helped oversee the January 6th investigation from his position as chief of the FBI's domestic terrorism section.

He was given a significant promotion by Kosh Patel to be the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office. Patel relied on both of them, Driscoll and Jensen, and particularly. particularly admired Driscoll, whom he viewed as a swash-buckling tactical operator. Another person said the FBI director opposed some of the firings. Quote, I think Kosh tried to save these people, honestly. That's what a source told CBS. So if Patel liked them, what happened? How'd they get fired?

Enter the suspendables. The suspendables are a small band of right-leaning former agents who clashed with FBI leadership under directors James Comey and Christopher Ray. Among them is Kyle Serafin, one of several former FBI agents and whistleblowers who were suspended or had their security clearances revoked for alleged misconduct during the Biden administration. Serafin has publicly claimed some of the credit for last week's purge.

Oh, interesting. So Serafin, get this. Serafyn told Patel to fire Patel's pilot, Christopher Meyer, because Meyer worked on the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. Then on August 4th, Patel told Driscoll to fire Christopher Meyer. Now, Driscoll refused because Patel wouldn't give him a reason. And then two days later, Driscoll was terminated. Anasource told CBS News that Jensen was also fired because he refused to fire a subordinate.

Although CBS doesn't know who, I suspect it was Giardino since they both worked at the Washington Field Office. or excuse me, Jardina. Is it Jardina? I think it's Gardina, yeah. Gardina. He worked on cases against Trump allies, including Pete Navarro. And the fifth guy that was fired, Spencer Evans, Serafin went after him publicly for enforcing the FBI's COVID policies.

Now, after the August firing, Serafin told CBS News that a colleague in the FBI said to him, you have four scalps hanging off your belt this week. Now, Serafin excluded Driscoll from the count, because he referred to him as, quote, collateral damage and said he probably didn't actually deserve to be fired. Wow. So that's what happened.

That's the timeline with these top purges. It seems like this guy, Serafin, wanted to fire some people, and Driscoll and Jensen said no, and they got fired for that. So it's fascinated to me that this guy, Serafin, who I do not know at all, is like playing this role of whisperer to Cash Patel. He's like the Laura Lumer of the FBI. That's who I first thought of was Laura Lumer.

Yeah, and kind of gloating over his ability to get some of his former colleagues fired. After he had been suspended and had his clearance yanked for misconduct during the Biden administration. During the Biden administration, yeah. So that's really troubling. Yeah, well, it's ridiculous draw. which yeah yeah and good people the the bottom line is the FBI continues to lose good people

experienced people in significant leadership positions and every time you do that you know someone else has to fill that job and as you fire more and more and more this is like Stalin right as you fire more and more people who are senior and who are leaders you have to keep reaching down further and further and putting more junior less experienced people in those jobs and they don't have, they don't bring to the job the same level of, of appreciation for nuance and history and experience and that their predecessors had. And so you run the risk. They're good people trying to do the best they can. But yeah, you're kind of hobbling the organization from the inside to some extent. Yeah. And now that they're going to lose 5,000 amazingly, wonderfully experienced

agents, we've got, you've got a story about them lowering the standards for hiring. Yeah, that's right. So this week, the Times reports that the Trump administration is preparing to lower the recruitment standards for FBI agents, eliciting alarm from many agents. Under a plan pushed by the director, Cash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, the FBI will start welcoming new classes of recruits who will receive less training and no longer be required to have a college degree. Instead of spending about 18 weeks training at the Academy in Quantico, the group of agents, tentatively scheduled to start in October, will receive eight weeks, according to the people. And the agents will no longer need to fulfill a longstanding requisite for joining the Bureau a bachelor's degree.

I mean, my heart is breaking. This is just the worst. To me, in a show filled with terrible news, every personal level, this one really hurts. Yeah, I thought my 18 weeks to eight weeks. Yeah, I mean... Less than half. You should see, like,

the Quantico instructors have knife fights over who gets an extra five minutes in front of those classes to teach them one more thing that they think is absolutely essential to know before you send them out on the streets of America to protect us all. I imagine they're cutting a lot of the woke stuff like history of the Bureau. Oh, yeah.

How about legal instruction completely? I mean, like, that would be, if you didn't want people telling you, hey, boss, I think what you just asked me to do is illegal, maybe you start by not giving them any legal training. Don't tell them about the Fourth Amendment and what it takes, what rights people have. Don't tell them about due process and the elements of the Constitution. that were written specifically, basically to protect Americans from us. Yeah, I don't know. That's just horrible news and can only end one way,

which is filling the ranks with people who are absolutely not qualified to be there and shouldn't be carrying that badge. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Can't be good. We're seeing it across government too. I got an email recruiting me to ICE. I saw that on your on your substack man saying hey you're a veteran why don't you come work for

you've got severe PTSD why don't you come work for ICE why don't you come work for a law enforcement agency and we'll give you free college and a $50,000 signing bonus, a bunch of great benefits and the hiring process we've cut it down to two weeks now so I'm assuming I wouldn't go through a background check of any kind if that's true I think I could get through let's do it let's join

We should just throw an application to see what happens. I just put a target for sandwiches right on our chest. A sandwich target. Throw a sandwich. Let me, please. All right. Well, thanks for that. And I'm sorry to, you know, that's got to be.

It's a downer. Heartbreaking. Well, next up, we also have some trouble at Department of Justice, including Alina Haba's appointment has been ruled unlawful. And they blew the deadline to hand over the full unredacted Epstein files to Congress. I know we're never going to do that anyway. But we're going to talk about all that after this quick break. Stick around.

We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, let's shift gears from the FBI to the Department of Justice. ABC News reports that a federal judge in New Jersey on Thursday ruled that Alina Haba is not lawfully serving as the U.S. attorney overseeing federal prosecutions in the state. dealing a blow to efforts by the Trump administration to maneuver its hand-picked appointees into acting roles at prosecuting offices around the country. Quote, after reviewing several issues of first impression, the court concludes that Ms. Haba has exercised the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney

for the District of New Jersey without lawful authority since July 1st, 2025, said Judge Matthew Brand, the chief district judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in a 77-page order on Thursday. Brand's order followed a legal challenge brought against Hobba's appointment by three separate criminal defendants who have been charged in the District of New Jersey. Yes, and the judge, though, said Judge Brand declined to grant these defendants the request to dismiss their cases outright because of Hobba's unlawful service in the office. but he said Haba is disqualified from participating in any of their cases moving forward, as well as any ongoing cases in the office, which would include, I think, Representative La Monica McIvor. McIvor, yeah.

Who was arrested outside that ICE detention center with Mayor Raz Baraka. Quote, the executive branch has perpetuated Alina Haba's appointment to act as the United States Attorney General for the District of New Jersey through a novel series of legal and personnel moves. That's what the judge said and went on to say, along the way, it has disagreed with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and criminal defendants in that district about who should or may lead the office. Faced with the question of whether Ms. Haba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not. Period. That's what the judge wrote in his hearing. So we'll see what happens with that job. But they're not going to do.

dismiss any of the cases that have happened under her watch, but she can't participate in any of them. Hey, you know, maybe she's okay with it. She's like, this is great. I get to keep the title and the pay, but I don't actually have to, in fact, I can't get involved in any of the actual casework. I don't have to do any work. Which might actually be the best result for the citizens of New Jersey, but I don't know. Might be. Yeah, you've gotten her off the stick there. Okay, and from the post, the Justice Department is expected to send a first trove of documents from its investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the House Oversight Committee on Friday. The committee, chaired by James Comer, said earlier this week it would publicly release

redacted versions of the documents but did not specify when that would happen. It was not immediately clear how many documents officials intended to turn over to the committee or what information they will contain, nor is it known how many batches of documents the House could get after Friday. Committee members from both sides of the aisle are expected to receive the documents. Yeah, now the records are being released to the committee in response to a broad subpoena that Jim Comer submitted on August 5th that requested all Justice Department documents and communications from Epstein's case file, alongside those from the case file of Galane

Maxwell, Epstein's former associate. it. And more specifically, the subpoena said the full unredacted Epstein files. And the DOJ blew the deadline by three days, as we know. And also, as we know, there are roughly 100,000 documents totaling about 300,000 pages. Department of Justice went to the courts to get grand jury transcripts in these cases. And the judges denied those requests, first of all, because they left the survivors out of the whole process. But they added, there's nothing new in this 76 page transcript from an FBI. official during grand jury testimony. And the judge said, I think it was Judge Engelmeyer, said the DOJ asking for them for these grand jury files is just a diversion from the fact that the administration has 100,000 documents that it itself could release. So get out, like, get off my bench. Like the judge was like, GTFO, man.

Like you give us the 76 inane innocuous already publicly reported transcripts from one guy that works for the FBI. Or you got 100,000 documents, 300,000 pages in your possession of the Department of Justice that you could release. To which the administration said, judge, come on, we're just asking so you'll tell us no. Right. All we need is you to say, no, you may not. And we're good. And one of the judges was even like, the only way I would even release these files is to prove that your Department of Justice request to release them is disingenuous.

because that's actually happened before but I'm not going to because they're so innocuous they're so inane that there's no purpose to release them and you know it would just it would be an exercise and futility

so yeah anyway okay so in another story from the post this week federal prosecutors in D.C. have been instructed not to seek felony charges against people who are carrying

rifles or shotguns in the nation's Capitol, regardless of the strength of the evidence, according to U.S. attorney Janine Piro and an email reviewed by the Washington Post. The new policy, which Piro said was crafted by the Justice Department and its Solicitor General, marks a break with past practice. And sure, I mean, past practice being, that's against the law. Stop people from carrying shotguns and rifles through the Capitol. Oh, my God. Prosecutors have used the D.C. law at issue, which prohibits carrying shotguns or rifles with the narrow exceptions for permit holders

to charge defendants in several high-profile incidents, including a 2019 shotgun attack in northeast Washington and the Pizza Gate shooter who targeted a restaurant in the city's Chevy Chase neighborhood with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun in 2016. Yeah, he could be arrested for the handgun, but not the AR-15. Yeah, you know. Now, this shift comes at an unexpected time.

That's putting it mildly, Washington. post because the Trump administration is ramping up federal law enforcement to unprecedented levels on the streets of D.C. in a bid to decrease crime. And it complicates the White House's boasts of seizing dozens of guns as part of Trump's surge. The White House has said the enhanced law enforcement teams have seized 68 firearms as of Tuesday morning. So another aspect of this that I think isn't immediately clear, if it's illegal to carry a weapon like that, that's that's what gives you as a police officer the predication to stop someone who is carrying it and do some investigating. Of course, you can cite them for violating that law if we were still

actually enforcing that law, which apparently were not. And you could also find out more about who they are, where they're going. What do they intend to do? Now that they can't enforce that law, you can see somebody marching down the street with an AR-15 and what? You can't even stop them and say, hey, where are you going? And what's the gun for? my thing. I was like, you don't have the predicate to stop me just because I'm carrying an AR-15. I thought immediately back to the photo of the Black Panthers on the Lincoln Memorial

carrying long guns. I guess that would be fine now. Apparently, yeah. I cannot even fathom what the motivation is, what the motivation behind this one is. I can kind of fathom it. People like Kyle Rittenhouse and the PizzaGate guy

tend to carry long guns. Yeah. And there's something about the amount of melanin in their skin that separates them from other people, but just might, I don't know, it seems either that or it's an effort to ramp up crime, so they have a reason to be there in the first place. They want to just provoke a massive shootout between the military and people with long guns. I mean, I don't know.

It's crazy. Yeah, it's bizarre to say the least, and we'll keep an eye on what happens because of it. All right, we have a couple more quick stories about weaponization of the Department of Justice and the government in general, followed by your questions. Listener questions, there is a link in the show notes that you can click on to submit your questions to me and Andy. But we do have to take one last quick break. So everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back.

All right, let's focus on one more weaponization from the Trump administration. First up, Mr. O'Brien. Abrago, Kilmer Abrago, has filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him, the criminal charges for human smuggling, on the grounds that the administration conducted a vindictive and selective prosecution. In a 35-page filing, Mr. Abrego's lawyer, Sean Hecker, writes, Kilmer-Abrigo-Garcia has been singled out by the United States government. It is obvious why. And it is not because of the seriousness of his alleged conduct, nor is it because he poses some unique threat to his country. Instead, Mr. Abrago is charged because he refuse to acquiesce in the government's violation of his due process rights. The government unlawfully removed him to El Salvador, an action it subsequently admitted was a mistake. Predictably, once in El Salvador, Mr. Obrego was incarcerated at the notorious terrorism confinement center, Seacoat, where he was beaten and otherwise subject to inhumane conditions.

Mr. Obrego responded to the government's shocking illegal conduct by filing a lawsuit. And rather than fix its mistake and return Mr. Obrigo to the United States, the government fought back at every level of the federal court system, and at every level, Mr. Abrago won. This case results from the government's concerted effort to punish him for having the audacity to fight back rather than accept a brutal injustice. In November 2022, Mr. Abrago was pulled over, allegedly for speeding, while driving an SUV with nine passengers through Putnam County, Tennessee. Federal authorities were informed of the relevant facts and declined to investigate or prosecute Mr. Obrego. He was sent on his way

without so much as a traffic ticket. Even as government officials recognized both publicly and privately that Mr. Obrigo's removal to El Salvador had been a serious mistake, the government responded not with contrition or with any effort to fix its mistake, but with defiance. A group of the most senior officials in the United States sought vengeance. They began a public campaign to punish Mr. Ibrego for daring to fight back, culminating in the criminal investigation that led to the charges in this case. It goes on to say federal rule of criminal procedure 12B, 3A4, authorizes motions to dismiss an indictment for selective or vindictive prosecution. And this is the money quote. Those motions

are infrequently made and rarely succeed, but if there has ever been a case for dismissal on those grounds, this is that case. And I tend to agree with Mr. Hecker here. I think he's got really strong ground to stand on. The facts of this case are horrific and totally unique. We'd never seen anything quite like this. So yeah, lots of these motions get brought. Very few of them are ever sustained. This one might make its way over the hurdle. Yeah, they have a ton of evidence that this was vindictive and selective. And, you know, he goes through, the lawyer goes through what you have to, you know, the kind of things you have to meet in order to be considered vindictive and selective. They've got statements against Mr. Obrego from J.D. Vance, Christy Noem,

Tom Homan, Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, Naip Buckele, Marco Rubio, Caroline Leavitt. Like, they have all of this and lying, too. Like, they've said he's been, he's a human trafficker, he takes drugs, he has guns, he had minors involved, like all sorts of lies. Yeah. You know, it's a lethal combination for the government here because they have all those statements you just referenced. So all that is evidence of kind of the vindictive purpose of this and the intent of the decision makers involved. And on the other side of the equation, the government has no evidence of really any of the things that it's accused him of doing. Being an MS-13 member.

Being an MS-13 member. That has kind of fallen apart. All the details around this, as my daughter says, suss, traffic stop, really, really raise a lot of questions about the credibility of the assertions the government has made throughout the course of this litigation. And that's the kind of thing that judges really respond negatively to. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Again, very rare. but it's hard to see a case like this is this is that case i i see that i think it's a really good argument um and as we said at the top of the show he has been freed from prison he's on his way home to his family in maryland while he awaits trial i'm unsure if dhs will detain him he does have a meeting with ice uh next week but there are some limited orders in place from judge seeny's giving him a little bit of a protection meaning they can't just ship a off to a, the detain him, ship them off to a third country without giving notice, without telling the lawyers, they have to give them 72 hours. And so there is, uh, some due process

ordered here. Because if there weren't, that due process would just be completely flouted by this Department of Justice and by this Department of Homeland Security, as they have shown multiple times in the past. And the Supreme Court lets them, even though they came for looking for equitable jurisdictions with a jurisdiction with unclean hands as justice Sotomayor said like how can how can we even help here he violated these court orders twice and now you want to let it happen like just absolutely unbelievable stuff coming from the supreme court but we're going to keep an eye on this case for you and i'm very very glad i'm heartened to hear that he is out of prison and he's at least going to get to go home with his family yeah for sure for sure all right one last story the trump

administration said tuesday it was revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former security officials in its latest act of retribution targeting public servants from the federal government's intelligence community. A memo from Director of National Intelligence, Telsie Gabbard, who accuses the singled out individuals of having engaged in the politicization or weaponization of intelligence to advance personal or partisan goals, failing to safeguard classified information, failing to adhere to professional analytic tradecraft standards like she knows anything about that. All she knows is what Putin's told her. And that's, sorry, that's speculation. Another unspecified detrimental conduct. Now, the memo did not offer any evidence to back up those

accusations. I've looked through the list. I've only recognized one name. I think Sam Vinaigrad is one of the names I recognize. But these are mostly Biden national security folks. Yeah, there's a couple of legacy people in there, too. I recognize a bunch of the names. but, you know, it's just an effort to, like, inflict some more pain on people in a way that's easy. You don't have to go through a hard process or anything. They can do this. You can really have a right to a security clearance. Many of these people in the work that they now do, that they're no longer in government.

They do private sector, legal work or consulting or whatever, and a lot of that sometimes requires a clearance. And so, you know, they're hoping that it'll cost some people, job opportunities and income and things like that. You know, because as always with this group, the process is the punishment. Yeah. So, yeah, more, well, I'm sure we'll see more of that. All right. Well, we got a couple minutes here. So maybe we can hit a question or two.

If you have a question for us, you can send it to us by clicking on the link in the show notes and using the form to submit your questions. What do we have today, Andy? So I got two for you today. One is a question. The other one's a comment. We'll do the question first. This one comes from Robin. Robin's really kind of hitting on like a bigger picture issue here, which I thought was interesting. She says, hello, I admire your podcast show and listen to it quite often. My question is this. Over the past few years, while battling a host of political villains, it seems that the U.S. law is incomplete when it comes to prosecuting major actors in the area of governmental crimes. Robin, what on earth gave you that idea. I've heard lawyers say the Constitution doesn't completely prescribe how to punish the criminal meaningfully. This crime didn't exist back then, or even we've watched the Supreme Court. Justice has subvert the law. When will lawyers correct all this? Well, Robin, you've asked a lot there.

I guess the short answer is we can't really rely on lawyers to correct these things here. we are kind of stuck when the Supreme Court makes a big decision, for instance, like they did in the McDonald case a few years ago, McDonald's the former governor of Virginia, and was indicted and tried and convicted of public corruption. By whom? By one Jack Smith and his crew at DOJ. And then he appealed and ultimately made it to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the former governor.

And in doing so, they basically gutted the law, the public corruption law. And they essentially raised the threshold of what evidence and proof you need. You've got to absolutely prove an explicit quid pro quo before you could hold somebody responsible under that statute. So like decisions like that by this Supreme Court really put us in a tough spot. They make it harder to hold particularly high-level political people responsible for wrongdoing. You know, Congress could pass new laws to bring back some of these powers to bolster the Justice Department's ability to go after things like political corruption. They don't seem to have any interest in that. But that could also be gutted by the Supreme Court.

It could. It could. Depends on the issue and how they approach it. Could try to amend the Constitution to address some of these things, like the fact that they've given presidents basically completely. and total immunity from everything. But that process is super hard and kind of impossible to imagine ever happening successfully. So we're stuck with this for a while. We're going to have to just work our way through it and hope that at some point, when we have a slightly different court, they get their collective act together and walk away from some of these decisions that they've been making.

Yeah, I can tell you, step one is taking the house back in 2026. Heck yeah. That's step one. And step one of that step one is what Governor Gavin Newsom just signed is the bill putting it to the voters on California ballot Proposition 50 to redraw our maps to counteract what Texas has done to steal the votes from millions of marginalized voters. So I'm kind of really proud to be a Californian right now. There you go. It should be. That's a good move. It is a good move. I wish he was go for all nine seats. I wish it wasn't a tit for tat sitch, but I'll take what I can get. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I'm also worried about them doing this in Indiana and Missouri and other red states. Florida. And we can't really counter with that. Maybe Illinois can. New York can't because they can't change their maps

until 2028, but we'll see how it goes. But these are the small steps. That's right. That's right. Got to do what you can do. All right. So that was our question. Now we have a comment.

This one comes to us from Jordan, and Jordan says, I wish there was a way to tell the good men and women of the FBI that there are Americans who support them, respect them, and will always be in their corner as they defend our nation. These times are not normal, and we cannot treat them as such. Persevering as a country and not as a de facto Russian oligarchy will require new ways of thinking as we strive to stop the erosion of freedom. Many hands make light the labor. But steady hands survived the storm. So we'll look to the steady hands to lead the way. That's a very nice comment from Jordan. I thought so too. I thought she put it really well. And I know that my friends in the Bureau would appreciate it. So thank you, Jordan, and well said.

Yeah. And your comment is one way to tell the good people of the FBI that we support them. Because I know that every single awesome FBI agent listens to the unjustified pocket. Of course. Of course they do. Are you kidding me? I'll tell you something. Every single FBI agent didn't listen to me when I was their boss. So I doubt that that's the case now. But we can still hope. I got my fingers crossed. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for that. Jordan. Thanks for that kind comment. Maybe we can put together a letter or some sort of a signature thing. I'll think about it. But thank you so much for that. And thank you for your questions. Please submit them by clicking on the link in the show notes. That is our show this way. I can't believe we got it in around an hour. Yeah, that was amazing. With all of the breaking news that's happening currently.

I'm actually going to go check right now to make sure we didn't miss anything. Have you heard anything? No. No, I think we're caught up at least at the time of this recording. To this minute, maybe. But everything could change five minutes from now. It's been a crazy day, as everyone knows, we record on Fridays, but yeah, the pace is picking up. This stuff is not going to tail off, the purges, the suspicious moves, the crazy personnel stuff, the targeting of the enemies, you know, how many people are all of a sudden being investigated for mortgage fraud?

I mean, all this stuff, it's just, it's more blatant every day. and so more reason week after week after week to be here to check in get a reality check from sources that you trust about like what's really going on here just to kind of keep track of it all so look forward to going through

all the developments next week yeah we will keep you informed thank you so much for listening thanks for supporting us if you want to become a patron you can do so at patreon.com slash molars she wrote I really appreciate you listening to Unjustified and we will be back in your ears next week. So thank you very much and we'll see you then. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by

Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcast dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.