Jack - Volume II Catch-22

Episode Date: September 27, 2026

A high profile hacking group claims it has breached multiple FBI-related services and stolen data “on all FBI employees and applicants.”Lawyers for several FBI agents fired by Kash Patel have filed a motion asking Judge Aileen Cannon how they’re supposed to testify in the “Grand Conspiracy” case without violating her order prohibiting conveyance of anything in Volume II of Jack Smith’s final report.Lawyers for former federal prosecutor Sheri Mecklenburg say she retired Thursday from the Justice Department — a week before a federal judge is expected to hold a crucial hearing over the mishandling of the “Broadview Six” case.The Justice Department argues the recent Supreme Court ruling widening the President’s power to fire certain agency leaders also extends to Maureen Comey.Plus listener questions.Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT? Brady MaterialBrady Rule | US Law |Cornell Law School | Legal Information InstituteJenksJencks Material | Thomson Reuters Practical Law GlossaryGigliohttps://definitions.uslegal.com/g/giglio-information/ Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AGMueller, She Wrote SubstackMueller She Wrote on Blueskyhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodMore from Andrew McCabeThe Real McCabe on [e-mail] on BlueskyThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump This Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you Subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MSW Media. A high-profile hacking group claims it has breached multiple FBI-related services and stolen data, quote, on all FBI employees and applicants. Lawyers for several FBI agents fired by Kosh Patel have filed a motion to intervene with Judge Eileen Cannon, asking how they're supposed to testify in the grand conspiracy case in light of her order prohibiting conveyance of anything in volume two of Jack Smith's final report. Lawyers for former federal prosecutor Sherry Mecklenburg say she retired Thursday from the Justice Department. A week before a federal judge is expected to hold a crucial hearing over the mishandling of the Broadview Six case. And the Justice Department argues the recent Supreme Court ruling, widening the president's power to fire certain agency leaders, also extends to Maureen Comey. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 88. 88 miles per hour of unjustified. Where we're going, we don't need roads. It's Sunday, September 27th, 2026. I'm Alison Gill.

And I am Andy McCabe. Another slow week, Allison. Not much going on here. It's like the weekly FBI report. Geez, where do you want to begin? Well, how about we begin with the thing that you're not allowed to talk about? All right. That works for me. No comment. For me, the top story here is Judge Cannon. It has once again put herself between a rock and a hard place. This time with the grand conspiracy case.

As you know, she is the judge sitting atop the grand jury because they've moved it this case from D.C. to Virginia to Pennsylvania to Miami to now Fort Pierce so that she would be in charge. It found its way to her capable hands. Is that what you're saying? I did. That's what I said. Yeah. And I know you can't talk about the particulars that much, but I did want to go over some of the procedural hurdles that Judge Cannon is facing this week because they please me. As you know, she entered a gag order a while back, barring anyone from releasing Volume 2 of Jack Smith's final report or even talking about what's in it. Another case from the Knight Institute at Columbia to get the volume two report released is working its way through the courts with oral arguments in the 11th Circuit, I think, this November. But she's also the judge presiding over the grand jury in the grand conspiracy case. So she presided over the prosecution of Trump and now the revenge of Donald Trump.

You know, she's a, what do they call in the NFL, a two-way player? I mean, she's got offense, she's got defense, she's got the whole game. She's a switch hitter, yeah. That's right. Now, here's the rub. Prosecutors have subpoenaed several former FBI agents who worked on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. One of them was the affioreeon. for the search warrant from Mar-a-Lago.

Another one is somebody whose job it was to go through the entire volume two, word for word, and check it for correctness. So this guy's read this person has read the entire report, knows it inside out. Now, the reason they're investigating the search of Trump's Florida residence is because in order to rescue their Russia hoax case from the statute of limitations, they have to tie in more recent events. The problem is, is to get that non-public. testimony from agents that participated in the case, they'd have to violate her court order preventing anyone from conveying anything from volume two of Jack Smith's report to people outside of the Justice Department. And just for clarity. Yeah, yeah. That's where I was going. Who are those

people? These people you speak of. Yeah, members of the grand jury are not part of the Department of Justice. And neither are the lawyers defending these folks. So the lawyers of these fired FBI agents have filed a motion to intervene in the case asking Judge Cannon, please clarify or modify your order so that we can testify freely to the grand jury without the threat of contempt for violating the order or the threat of charges for not testifying fully by complying with her order. It's like they're stuck either way. Now, in their filing, the lawyers say they tried to get an answer from DOJ on this, but they couldn't get a clear explanation at all. DOJ simply said, don't worry about it. Testifying won't disturb Judge Cannon's order. And the lawyers are like, yes, it will.

They're like, we get paid to worry. That's literally our job. So you don't worry about it. It don't fly here. Also, how does the Department of Justice know that Judge Cannon is cool with it? Did they talk to Judge Cannon? That would be weird. But the lawyers also asked for the email that the Justice to

Department sent to Jack Smith. Remember before he testified on the Hill? Reportedly, DOJ said, you can't talk about anything in volume two, even pursuant to a subpoena to testify under oath. Nor can you discuss any of what's in the report with your lawyers because not even attorney-client privilege protects you from revealing volume two information to people outside of the Justice Department, like your lawyers. So with no clear answer from DOJ, these former agents filed this motion to intervene with Judge Cannon. And there's a couple of bombshell revelations in this motion, Andy first. We learn what crimes they're investigating.

We've been wondering because it was never listed on any of the subpoenas, what crimes they were investigating. No comment. Yes. So first. I'm just going to say we're all learning things today. That's all I'm saying. That's all we're saying.

Not specifically me, but maybe not, not me. So the crimes are 18 U.S. Code 241 and 242, deprivation of rights under color of law. So we learned that. And there are a couple of problems for the Justice Department here. First, you have to prove intent of callous disregard for Trump's constitutional rights, like his Fourth Amendment rights. But he's already conceded that his rights were not violated. This is from the filing.

Yeah. From the filing, the crimes their testimony will purportedly be evidence of, you know, 241 and 242, require a specific intent to deprive someone of rights. Yet here, not only did both this court and the 11th Circuit agree there was no callous disregard of citizen Trump's constitutional rights, but Trump himself conceded this. See Trump v. United States, noting that not even the plaintiff claims there has been callous disregard for his constitutional rights in the execution of the search warrant. So, as this seems to me like they're teeing up a 11th Circuit smackdown, see. The second problem, one of my favorite problems, the most, this is from the filing,

the most inculpatory evidence against the original defendants, Trump Nauta and Dale Lavera, will become the most exculpatory evidence for law enforcement officers accused of violating their constitutional rights, meaning the stuff that makes Trump and his buddies guilty is the stuff that proves anyone indicted in this grant conspiracy case innocent. So if the DOJ tries to charge these guys, volume two of Jack Smith's report becomes Brady material, which the Justice Department would have to bylaw handover in discovery. Because volume two of the final report proves these agents had no intent to deprive Trump of his rights under color of law. So let me just summarize here. I'm not making, I'm not stating my own opinions or,

knowledge of any facts, because of course I have none. But what you're saying is because what they're claiming is a violation of Trump's civil rights, the FBI agents who've been subpoenaed, their defense that they didn't violate his civil rights would be pointing to the evidence of his guilt in the underlying case. Like, no, we didn't violate his rights because this was a legit case, because look at all the bad things that he did, that we had evidence of. Mm, quite a pickle for the president. Brady material, they would have to be, they would be forced to violate Judge Cannon's order if they charge anyone for the Mar-a-Lago search as part of this grand conspiracy,

which again, they have to tie in to make the statute of limitations work for them. Now, Brady evidence, like I said, exculpatory information, information that casts doubt on the defendant's guilt, right? Yes, that's correct. Yeah. So Brady's really interesting. Generally, there's two interesting categories of disclosure that a defendant and a criminal trial is entitled to.

We talked about one a lot, Giglio, which is material that basically undermines one of the government's witnesses. Like if the government is putting on a witness and that witness previously took a conviction for a fraud, that would have to be disclosed to the defendant. So the defendant could cross-examine them and say, isn't it true, you were convicted of being a fraudster, that sort of thing? Well, Brady is the other one, and it's a little more complicated. It comes from a 1963 Supreme Court case. It's Brady versus Maryland. And basically that case established that if a convicted defendant can prove that the government withheld evidence and that the evidence was favorable to the defendant and that if disclosed it would have had an impact on the outcome of the trial, then the defendant's conviction should be. reversed as a due process violation. I know that's kind of a complicated way of saying it,

but that's what the court actually held in that case. The practical application of that rule is basically Brady creates an obligation on the part of the government that they must turn over any information that they came across in their investigation that could be exculpatory for the defendant. Now, the problem here is that still with this protection, with this requirement, of disclosure to the defendant, the defendant still doesn't know what's going on. It's all entirely up to the government to decide what evidence is favorable or exculpatory. So as a prosecutor, you can't say, hey, disclose to me that piece of evidence because I think it's Brady, because you don't even know it's there. You don't know of its existence until the government determines, yeah, it's

exculpatory, let's turn it over. So there always is this question among defense attorneys, like, is there more there that I would have thought was exculpatory, but that they didn't turn over. But we know for a fact that volume two is no way. By definition, I mean, it seems like there's no way to describe it as anything other because it goes right to the central, the core of this case that they're now trying to prove that these people allegedly acted in some sort of conspiracy to deny rights, which requires that higher level, proof of that higher level of intent. And if I was a defense attorney, I would think, boy, great evidence of the fact that this was a legit investigation based on sound credible evidence is the entire report of all the evidence.

Like, let's see. And the exhibits, right? Yeah. The whole kit. spoken to the grand jury by the guy who reviewed it word for word and the guy who signed the affidavit, wrote the affidavit to get the warrant to conduct the search in the first place. And, you know, an example of Brady, a recent example of Brady is a Katie Fang's Epstein case in which Judge Sullivan, when he's trying to get these underlying handwritten notes, tells a long story about the one time he's held DOJ in contempt. And it was because DOJ hid 33 exculpatory documents violating Brady per a whistleblower. And he had to hold them in contempt until they handed over those Brady documents in a case, I think, in 2011. So you can't not do it.

And especially if the defense attorneys know that the exculpatory information is there, which it is 100% in this case, that's extra fun for, which makes their response to the defense to the defense attorney's requests to DOJ even more absurd like to when they because they didn't start as you related in the story they didn't start this process by running into Judge Cannon's courtroom they started by just saying to DOJ hey our clients and this I read this in the in the in the filing our clients want to testify voluntarily in front of the grand jury which also would mean being interviewed by your agents the day before. That's the way they set it up. That's pretty typical. They want to do that, but they're afraid that if they do that, they're going to get

themselves in trouble. So can you at least get us some clarification from the court that they're not going to be in violation of the order? And DOJ's response was, as you said, like, oh, don't worry about it. Like, oh, I would definitely worry about it. Yeah, they said, go ahead and file your thing and will respond as needed. And they also, the lawyers also brought up immunity, like if, if, if Judge Cannon tries to give them immunity to compel their testimony, that doesn't protect them from contempt of court and violating her order. So why would anybody open themselves up to that? It's a sort of Damocles. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't.

So in order for Cannon to support Trump's revenge investigation, she'd have to let volume two be sent to people outside the DOJ. And that's something the Justice Department has actually indicted someone else for doing. Remember the lady who sent herself cake recipes? and it was volume two? Yes. Chocolate cake or volume two. And it's something they've done mistakenly themselves during discovery in that case.

And when they sent a copy to Jack Smith ahead of his congressional testimony, but I digress. I think my favorite part of this whole filing is footnote eight. It says this, Andy. Many of undersigned counsel's clients were abruptly and unlawfully fired.

by FBI director Kosh Patel in February 2026, following his return from a widely publicized trip to Italy that reportedly placed his status with President Trump in jeopardy. See Ryan Riley's reporting at NBC here. It says then, as a result, if any of the clients are ultimately identified as a subject or a target in this investigation, it is likely that person will be outside of the DOJ. further having been summarily fired by director Patel, the clients testifying as witnesses in this investigation would not be government witnesses bound by federal rules of criminal procedure six ease confidentiality requirements. So not only would volume two become Brady material and

have to be transmitted outside the DOJ, but because these guys were fired and they no longer work for the government, they are free to speak publicly about what they testify to in the grand jury room. and in the government meetings. Yeah. This whole thing is so crazy. And part of the craziness is that their position here, DOJ's position here, I should say, is 180 degrees from the way they treated Jack Smith.

They held Jack Smith to the standard that you just referenced. They're basically like, no, you can't talk about it. You can't tell your lawyer. You can't say anything. And therefore, it made his testimony. very challenging. And now there's no reason why they shouldn't be saying the same thing to these people and prohibiting them from testifying or seeing or accessing the document at all.

That's because if the DOJ tells them they can't testify about volume two non-public information, then they don't have a case. Nothing. Because if you can't tie Mar-a-Lago to this, the Russia thing is way past the statute of limitations. So this is just, I think this is fun. No comment. That footnote eight is really fun for me. And the lawyers here for the fired FBI agents requested the email that the Department of Justice sent to Jack Smith and his lawyers about what he could and couldn't say.

And the DOJ wouldn't give it to him. Wow. Yeah, because they don't want that anymore. I don't walk away from it. So I don't know how Judge Cannon's going to wiggle her way out of this. I'm sure she'll find a way or just set up a series of hearings over the next two years. but whatever that way is will certainly be brought to the 11th Circuit. And here's what Marcy Wheeler says.

So much of this lays the groundwork for an appeal to the 11th Circuit, which has admonished canon before. The most important such instance attacks the very logic of the investigation, which imagines that there was a criminal conspiracy to be mean to Donald Trump by holding him accountable for stealing boxes and boxes of classified documents. So, anyway. Anyway, that's a hell of a story. It's going to make a very interesting 11th circuit. Christmas at the 11th Circuit is going to be interesting this year.

There you go. All right, we've got more to cover, but we have to take a quick break. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, our next story comes from the Washington Post and 404 Media. The FBI said it's investigating a reported breach of its systems by a notorious cybercriminal group that claimed on Tuesday,

to have stolen a trove of very sensitive data on the Bureau's personnel. The group, a digital extortion collective known as shiny hunters, posted an online message claiming that it had breached the FBI's online jobs portal and stolen information on, quote, almost all FBI agents and individuals who filed an application with the FBI for a job. The Bureau's job... So the Beastiality, guys? That could now include people who engage in Beastiality.

I promise there'd be less bestiality this week. I promised I apologize. It's a small group, but, you know, a high profile one nonetheless. No, there are gangs and gangs of people who attracted to beasiality. Or just one small. Anyway, okay. The Bureau's Job website remained offline on Wednesday afternoon. The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that it was aware of the claimed hack, but it said the

quote, point of breach is still undetermined. And I'm going to give you the insider's translation for that little obtuse phrase. And it basically means the FBI still does not know if it was breached. They haven't found it, which is not a good sign. But in any case, investigators were working to identify whether the hackers had compromised the third party system used to administer the job site or breached actual FBI systems. The hack, which was first reported by the online news site, 404 media would represent a significant security failure by a government agency charged with

investigating cyber threats. Yes, it would. Maybe it was a bad idea to assign all your cybersecurity experts to ICE. Here's what 404 media had to say. A representative of the group, shiny hunters, told 404 media the data includes FBI agents' names, home addresses, phone numbers, and information on their spouses. The data breach could be massively significant and may have all sorts of national security and counterintelligence implications, you think? Criminals from the same ecosystem at shiny hunters have previously used hacked data like phone records to track, intimidate, and harass FBI agents investigating them. The highly sensitive data could also be a boon to foreign intelligence agencies who want

to better understand how one of the most important law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States operates. And if the data fell into the hands of more criminals, FBI agents and their spouses could face serious threats to their safety. The representative provided 404 media with a sample appearing to contain the personnel data of 5,000 FBI employees. That data included an alleged address, phone number, date of birth, and in some cases, details on their spouse. 4.4 media put some of the sample phone numbers into the open-source intelligence tool, OSINT Industries, and they found they did correspond

to people with the same name as listed in the sample file. 4-4-Media also searched some of the records through the compromised data tool Darkside made by Cybersecurity Company District 4. That revealed some of the phone numbers are associated with U.S. Department of Justice personnel. Shiny Hunters also defaced the FBI Jobs website on Tuesday. That defacement says, quote, this site has been seized by Shiny Hunters, which is an obvious nod to the seizure notices the FBI and other law enforcement agencies often put on sites after taking them down. The representative said shiny hunters carried out the attack on Monday night.

At the time of writing, the FBI Jobs website, quote, applyfbijobs.gov, and the special agent applicant portal are currently unavailable. The defacement adds, quote, all FBI data was compromised, including PII and PHA, that's personally identifiable information and protected health information, on incumbent and former FBI employees. Uh-oh. And all applicant information. We have a lot more than we claim here. The announcement ended with another obvious jive at the administration, this time mocking President Trump's truth social post style, saying, quote, thank you for your attention to this matter.

Hmm. The representatives of Shiny Hunter said the group used a zero-day exploit in an Oracle product called PeopleSoft, and from there, the group managed to access AWS Gov cloud servers and download the data. The representative said the exfiltrated data totaled between two and three terabytes. That is a lot. Typically, Shiny, that's a lot.

Yeah. Typically, Shiny Hunters hacks targets and then tries to extort them. The group threatens to publicly release more compromised data if the victim organization or company doesn't pay a fee. Obviously, it's unlikely the FBI would ever pay a ransom like this. When asked if Shiny Hunters was going to attempt to extort the FBI, the representative said, quote, what we plan to do is not something I'd call extortion, maybe coercion. News for shiny hunters, the law says that those are the same thing. So I don't know how that's not much of a shelter for you.

The shiny hunters added, this is not financially motivated. In a post on its leak website, shiny hunter said the FBI made, quote, false allegations in a previously published report. Previously, the FBI said that Shiny Hunters exaggerates its claims of access to sensitive data to elicit payment, that the group sends threatening text messages and phone calls to victims and their families, and sometimes performs swattings. In the post, Shiny Hunter said it is, quote, allowing you, meaning of course the FBI, a time of one week to correct or remove the report.

And a little bit extra here from the BBC. they updated the story saying that cybercriminals who hacked the FBI say they have extremely sensitive medical data. That's the PHA for thousands of its agents. BBC News has seen samples of the stolen fitness for work medical exams, which contain information like blood and urine test results, and doctor's notes mentioning conditions such as shellfish and banana allergies, no bestiality allergies listed. The records include agents full names and addresses,

as well as references to medical concerns, including blood, the urine and high cholesterol. Oh, shit, they might have gotten me with that last one, the high cholesterol. I'm just saying. Damn, damn those shiny hunters. And they send you an extortion message and you say, but it's the good cholesterol. It's the good cholesterol. It's the HDL.

It's off the charts. Come on, guys. Go easy on me, for God's sakes. What do you think about this? That's freaking terrible. I mean, anyone engaged in cybersecurity? will tell you that there are two kinds of people, people who've been hacked

and people who don't know they've been hacked, but have also been hacked. So the FBI is a huge target. They do spend a lot of time and money creating a system that they have a lot of confidence in. And something like this shows you that, no matter how careful you are and how much time and effort you spend doing it,

you're still vulnerable. And I think this is a really, a good example of that because it's like you know it's a third party access thing likely right it's probably came in through the zero day exploit in the Oracle software that the FBI uses to access the government cloud and that you know you're kind of stuck like if you're going to do if you're going to be in the modern economy

and using modern technology you kind of are stuck using you know you're not writing every piece of your own software for every function that you perform. You have to use to some extent third-party software. And if it's got a vulnerability in it, you're hosed. So it's frustrating. It's embarrassing for the FBI at a time when they really don't need another embarrassment. But if you're if you're if you're if you have experience in cybersecurity, you know that it's kind of thing that can happen basically to anyone at any time. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you And, yeah, that's right.

And I remember when they breached us at the Department of Veterans Affairs and got a bunch of employee information. Yeah. OPM, the post office. I mean, it's just the list goes on and on. The White House, Senate, House, like, yeah. Now, the Supreme Court is just giving our Social Security numbers over to the federal government today. But I'm sure they'll be protected, right? We're all safe.

Are, is, is shiny hunters work at the DOJ? No, that's tiny hunters. Tiny hunters. Sorry, sorry, I couldn't help it. We got FBI jokes. We got FBI jokes. All right, everybody, we have another story next about another Supreme Court decision that could impact the case that Maureen Comey has brought against the Justice Department for her wrongful termination from the Southern District of New York. So stick around.

We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Our next story is from Politico, who I think has their press passes back. For now, for now. I think they missed the president. She meet and greet or something to that effect. But the Supreme Court's recent decision that widened the president's power to fire certain agency leaders. Apparently also extends to more junior employees, namely former federal prosecutor Maureen Comey. That's what the Justice Department argued in a court filing Friday or in a hearing, I believe. The Supreme Court in June expanded Trump's control over federal agencies, but left open the question of the president's ability to terminate so-called inferior officers. On Friday, Justice Department lawyer Tyler Becker told District Judge Jesse Furman that, quote, employees are inferior officers who exercise conclusive and preclusive executive power must be removable at will. Quote, all of the executive power is vested in a democratically elected president, Becker argued. An accountability for serious prosecutor decisions must not go to bureaucrats and the government who are unaccountable to the people.

Therefore, he said it should go to the president. Comey, a longtime federal prosecutor in Manhattan, and the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, a frequent Trump critic, is suing the Justice Department over her abrupt firing last year. She was terminated without explanation via a letter citing only the Constitution's Article 2, which outlines the powers of the president. at the basis for her firing. Yeah, and we just got noticed, too,

that Jim Comey, her dad's trial and arraignment have been now moved to February of 27 because there are so many pending motions to dismiss that haven't been decided. So there's that bit of news. But Maureen Comey alleged in her lawsuit that she lost her job solely or substantially because her father is the former FBI director, Jim Comey,

or because her perceived political affiliation and beliefs or both. At Friday's hearing, Comy's lawyer, Alan Blaine skewered what she described as the legal contortions offered by the DOJ in defense of its ability to fire civil servant because of her DNA. Quote, Article 2 does not permit anyone to fire a line AUSA without cause, Blaine told Furman and Obama appointee. She added that no court has found that criminal AUSAs or any AUSAs exercise the president's preclusive and conclusive authority, as he has in past hearings in commonplace.

Moby's case, the judge repeatedly questioned the government about its position that under Article 2, the president can legally fire someone on the basis of race or gender. Quote, they could exercise that authority on the basis of race and the court couldn't say otherwise, Furman asked. Quote, Article 2 would not permit inquiry into that matter, Becker replied. That's a very lawyerly way of saying, yes, Judge, the president can fire you because you're black or he can fire you because you're a woman because he can do whatever he wants he's basically the king yeah it was like when john sour argued to the supreme court that yes the president could have

sealed team six assassinate his political rival yeah yes that's that's exactly what we're arguing and they went for it um anyway yeah that was bizarre was that immunity i think that was immunity yeah i think so i think that was the parade of horror and the immunity arguments. Fascinating. All right, here's another story from the Times. Russia, Russia, Russia. It's back in the Russian government.

Oh, jeez. I can't get rid of these guys. Can't shake. They're dragging that country around since 1996. I just, every time I read something like this, I think of when Mueller was testifying on the hill in July, which admittedly was not the best testimony in the world. But when they said,

is Russia interfering in our elections still? And he's like, yes, as I sit here. I take your question. Yes, as I sit here, they are. It's like, did you read? Did you read the report? Did you, or no? Did you just thumb through it?

Next up from the Times, the Russian government has been targeting Americans with covert online disinformation operations seeking to undermine public confidence in November's midterm elections, using a familiar playbook in an attempt to inject chaos into the voting season. And that's according to,

U.S. officials familiar with the matter. And this is a tale as old as time. You'll remember when Russians came in and exploited the wedge between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton or exploited the wedge between Black Lives Matter and everyone else or on abortion rights or on gun rights. They find things that we disagree about and they exploit them and drive a wedge into them. They're doing it again, but with different issues. Agents of chaos. Agents of chaos.

Classified U.S. Intelligence as a sense. assessments from recent months from the Trump administration have determined that the Kremlin has, again, authorized a digital influence campaign to peddle content across social media in hopes of seating or amplifying domestic divisions around election season. The assessments did not find evidence of attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information did not specify the efforts to influence attitudes online. But experts in

Russian disinformation have spotted some social media campaigns in recent weeks that use artificial intelligence to create fake videos of Hollywood celebrities talking about key battleground Senate races. The disinformation campaign appeared to be less extensive or coordinated than at least some of Russia's prior efforts in American elections, some of the officials said. Since 2016, the Kremlin has initiated online influence operations in every American federal election cycle, according to previously declassified assessments. The officials added that U.S. spy agencies see Moscow as less interested in midterm races than in presidential contests, and also they believe they've been distracted by their ongoing grinding war with Ukraine. So doesn't the fact that Trump's intelligence community is saying that Russia is interfering in our elections undermine the grand conspiracy case of violation against his rights or am I way off base? Well, I mean, as a matter of logic, and I'm not speaking from this is not me citing facts here, but I'm just saying the logic of it is yes.

It's either undermines that theory or it continues the abuse. Yeah, and then why aren't you wrapping these guys up in your grand conspiracy? Isaac Koch Patel subpoenaed. Yeah, it'd be a really convenient way to extend that statute of limit, that pesky statute of limitations, which seems to be such a problem lately. Yeah, you got your own folks and all these officials talking about it to the press. Yeah, yeah, seems like more of the same. But yeah, then you wouldn't have to touch the Mar-a-Lago raid, right?

You wouldn't even have to go near it. Nope. You would have this pattern, this practice of the legal activity. I don't know. I don't want to give me any ideas here. I'm just saying. But then again, who am I? How could I possibly have anything to say relevant on any of these matters?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is pretty hilarious. Here's one glaring difference between the intelligence community assessment from 2017 that some folks I know participated in. and what the U.S. intelligence agencies under Trump are saying today. Some of the officials said that the main goal of the Russian influence operation appears to be to so chaos rather than to aid one particular party. Though examples that independent disinformation researchers in recent weeks have attributed to Russia have exclusively attacked Democratic candidates in swing states.

So there's the difference. That's why they're not part of the grand conspiracy is because they haven't concluded that Russia, is there to help Trump. These independent experts are like, God, I hate it when it comes out that way. Now, researchers in Europe and the U.S. who track Russian disinformation campaigns have seen recent signs of Russian activity

in two separate waves over just the past week. A network previously linked to Kremlin trolls posted a series of videos on Twitter and Blue Sky that appeared to rely on AI to churn out baseless claims against Democrats running for Senate in closely contested races. elements of the campaign were reported earlier by MS now. The posts attacked the candidate using

themes, and here's where we get into the themes, because in 2016, it was Bernie Sanders versus Clinton, it was Black Lives Matter, it was gun rights, it was abortion. Their themes now that Mr. Trump and the Republican Party have relied on to disparage Democrats, including accusations of corruption and fraud, anti-Semitism, and support for gay and transgender rights. Mm-hmm. The posts included false or unsubstantiated claims and videos devised to seem as if they came from prominent news organizations,

including CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times. Among those targeted were Senator John Ossoff, who faces re-election in Georgia, and other challengers who have a chance of giving Democrats a majority in the Senate. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Troy Jackson in Maine,

Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, Mary Peltola in Alaska, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, James Tolerigo in Texas, and Joshua Turrick in Iowa. Geez, what... But they're totally not for Trump. Okay, for Republicans.

Add one Republican to that list and then go with the, one of these things is not like the other. I mean, geez. And also, You know, I'm trying to scroll back to the reference to the 2016 stuff, which is still so controversial. Here's a clue, folks. If you want to, you can read what we thought.

You can just go on Google and say, Intelligence Community Assessment 2016 election. It comes right up. It's not classified. You're not committing a crime. If you do that, you will see that the number one conclusion, the most, important conclusion was their prime objective was to soak chaos and division and undermine Americans' confidence in what are very secure elections. And then the rest of the stuff comes after that. But, you know, that was kind of eclipsed by all the concerns about, I guess,

violations of civil rights or something I don't really know. And one of the examples of AI video from somebody in Hollywood going after a Democratic senator was an AI video of Jamie Lee Curtis, who has a trans daughter, who was telling people not to vote for James Talleyico because of one thing or another. And, you know, when reached for comment, Jamie Lee Curtis was like, absolutely, that's not me. No, please vote for James Talarico. What the hell? And so those are, that's kind of what we're seeing. And we actually have this going on in the United States. Ken Paxton is actually running AI generated ads of Tala Rico.

Or is it John Ossoff? It's John Ossoff and Mike Collins, excuse me. So Collins is running the ads? Yeah, well, they'll put a fake video of, Osop in a salon getting his hair highlighted and his nails done and all this other stuff. And because that's what they're attacking everybody on is like, I guess low T. They're anti-self-care.

They're right. They are. So who needs the Russians when you've got Mike Collins in Georgia? Yeah, good point. Good point. Careful. All right. We've got a very, very profound installment of Hit Me in the Head with a Bat this week.

But we have to take a quick break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Everybody, welcome back. It's time for your favorite part of the show. Hit me in the head with a. bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Hit me in the head with a bat. Nice. Today's installment comes from the Chicago Sun Times and it's about the Broadview Six case.

The federal prosecutor at the center of Chicago's Broadview Six scandal broke her silence Thursday, insisting through her attorneys that she owns her mistakes in the tainted case, even as she accused former defendants of trying to smear her with meritless accusations. This is Sherry Mecklenburg. She announced her retirement in a 16-page court filing from her attorneys, who insisted she followed the instructions of U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros and his front office at every turn as she sought to bring the case against six Operation Midway Blitz protesters. Butroses' office warned that Mecklenburg could be disciplined or fired if she filed

that document on the docket. So she decided to end her two-decade career as a federal prosecutor four months after the Broadview Six case collapsed in spectacular fashion. The New York Times got a hold of Mecklenburg's resignation letter entitled, quote, my forced retirement. It reads in part, dear Mr. Butros, pursuant to this letter, I retire under protest from DOJ, effective immediately. To avoid any misunderstanding or misstatements about the reasons for my forced retirement, I set them forth in this letter. Because DOJ required me to sign a confidentiality agreement covering the manual and other materials, by manual, I'm sure she means the manual of prosecution. That's kind of their like process and rules

Bible. I requested authorization to cite it in the motion to intervene. The senior U.S. Attorney's Office official coordinating my access to the materials initially advised my attorney, that he did not believe that there would be any problem with my citing to that provision of the manual. A short time later, however, that same official informed my counsel that he had consulted with the front office, that's the defendants in this case, who advised that as a current DOJ employee, I am prohibited from filing anything to defend myself and I will be disciplined and or terminated if I do so. I therefore am retiring under protest, effective immediately, because retirement is the only way to preserve my continued health care benefits earned over decades of service. This is not a voluntary departure. If you carry through on your threat to terminate me, I will lose those benefits.

If I do not retire now, I cannot defend myself. You have forced me to choose between remaining silent, while my professional reputation is destroyed, and prematurely surrendering my cherished. career. I choose the latter. She goes on to say throughout all of this, I remain silent, but now the defense has leveled additional false and inflammatory accusations against me that the office has not rebutted and apparently has no intention of rebutting. She's basically saying, DOJ is not sticking up for me here. At the same time, you've threatened to terminate me if I attempt to rebut the false allegations and bring additional matters to the court's attention. You remind me that I'm still a DOJ employee when you want to silence me, but you have not treated me as a DOJ employee throughout this matter, including when, in May, you placed me on leave and cut off my devices and credentials without notice. Your adverse actions from the beginning have forced me to retain personal counsel to defend conduct undertaken as part of my employment, yet you have refused to indemnify me for the substantial resulting expense.

despite the adverse impacts on my finances, you cannot buy my silence by dangling continued leave. I still expect a full and fair opportunity to address the allegations against me and restore my reputation. I also would have expected at some point during the past four months that the leaders who directed or approved the prosecution would accept responsibility for their own roles and decisions rather than assigning the consequences to me alone. I have been a public servant for more than 27 years, serving almost the last two decades as a federal prosecutor. I have served well, and I am proud of my public service. Please treat this letter as my notice of retirement under protest effective immediately. Please advise my counsel whom I should contact to arrange for the retrieval of my personal belongings from the office.

Wow, it's sad. I mean, there's a lot here. And I think there's a lot of, I have a lot of questions about. about like the process and like suing your current employer. I'm sure there's all kinds of arguments about that. But it is sad that this person who's been a prosecutor for so many years and presumably gave good service to this nation, sounds like she's really getting stuck with holding the bag of a problem here in an unfair way.

Yeah, I think that what's gone on here is that she followed the orders of Boutros at every turn. going back to the grand jury a second time and a third time, et cetera. She admits to vouching. She admits to speaking to grand jurors out of the room. But she doesn't agree with the accusation that she dismissed grand jurors who didn't vote to indict. But regardless, she's filed a motion to intervene on behalf of the defendants in this case, you know, Kat, Abra-Zela and the other five. And they welcome, they wholeheartedly welcome her intervention.

The former Broadview Six defendants have formally stated they fully support and agree to Sherry Mecklenburg's motion to intervene in the ongoing legal proceeding because now she's going to come out and talk about. Who did what? Expose what people who were involved in making the decisions. Yeah. Yeah. And I have to wonder, because you know, you and I in this final segment last week talked about a different kind of loss of presumption. of regularity, which was when is a good time to take your leave of the Justice Department? And you've talked about it to your students. You've been like, go work for them, but once there's that red line,

don't cross it. Part of me wonders if she waited too long in this case by agreeing to do some things that were outside the purview of good prosecution? It certainly seems like, I mean, look, I don't, I only know, I'm only referring to what we just read, and that's just a small piece of this whole saga. But it certainly seems like she's willing to admit that she had a role in this prosecution, this investigation and prosecution that she believes, you know, she was responsible for making some of the mistakes that happened here. But it's also pretty clear that she didn't do this stuff.

alone. Like, come on. No, and there's some stuff she didn't know at all. Like, for example, when they came in and started handing over the transcripts, but withholding some things, the bad stuff and redacting some things, she wasn't told about that. She wasn't provided a copy of it. She wasn't informed about it. They were just going to throw her under the bus. Yeah. Right? And so they have.

They certainly have. But, you know, maybe don't vouch in the grand jury room. next time. Yeah, life is messier than it seems, right, as you get down in the details. So we'll still, obviously, we're going to watch this one closely because it tells you a lot about what's happening in this U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago and DOJ writ large. Yeah, it's just a tip of the iceberg. I think it's a very good analog for everything else that's happening, kind of like how the reflecting pool is symbolic of what's going on with this administration.

But the press ban. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. All right. It's time for listener questions. If you have a question, we have a link in the show notes. You can click on that link and fill out the form to submit your question to us. We've got time for a couple today.

Andy, what do we have today? I got two for you today. The first one will be quick. I just thought it was such an amazing thing that this listener stumbled across. I thought it'd be interesting for you and everyone else. So this one comes to us from TLC. TLC says, signed up with Indeed, the job service, so I get emails for new available jobs in the area.

Today I got an email with two very interesting job listings. Okay, here you go. One was for an FBI special agent with pay starting at $103,000. Ah, my God, that's three times more than I made when I started. And the other one was for an FBI special agent, national security, criminal intelligence background, starting at $103,3,000, $326 a year. Do they normally list FBI jobs on service signs like Indeed? Or is this unusual?

Is there a shortage of FBI agents now? Well, TLC, I mean, everything is unusual lately. So I don't know how to answer that one. Well, I can say. The FBI jobs page has been hacked and taken over by shiny, happy people or whatever. So now they have to use Indeed and Craigslist. And, you know, yeah, I mean, I will say when I was there, we didn't have to do this. All right?

I'm just saying that. We had our one little site. It worked. There was no happy, shiny people taking it over. And it was just, you know, tons of people applied. Lots of them were looked at. And very few were hired. And we hired only the small number that we needed every year.

The FBI is way down because they fired a ton of people. and a ton more left. I think the prediction for the end of last year, they were down by 5,000, and it's like continued through this year. So, yeah, they're low. They're lower than they should be. And that is a really weird thing in the FBI,

because like you say, we typically hire every year just the number we need to hit our full complement, and that is not the FBI we have anymore. Well, I think maybe indeed has lower standards from if you've stolen from an employer in the past, you can post your job and apply on Indeed. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

That certainly could be. I'm not an Indeed guy, but, you know, maybe there's some... It's pretty good website. It's pretty good. Maybe they have a better, you know, feel for the whole beastiality thing. I don't know. I'll have to see. All right.

Next question comes from Kathy. Kathy says, while Trump is selling pardons, where do those funds go? To the taxpayers, the healthcare, mental health centers, after school programs, SNAP, child care, education? I'm going to guess no to every one of those suggestions.

Or does it go in Trump's pocket? If so, how can a man make legal money selling a product, pardon, which is a power he has only as an elected official and his role as president? That's kind of a good question. Because the Supreme Court has gutted the bribery laws and the Department of Justice has shut down the public corruption unit.

And Ed Martin is in charge of part of it. That's why. And he's immune. And he's immune. DOJ and the FBI, you're really not looking to do anything about this. I mean, just like there's so many reasons. But also, I will say like... Most of these are groups of people who have set up, like,

Pardon consulting firms where you come in and pay your, I know boozy badass paid $600,000 for his pardon and he hasn't gotten it yet. And that's because they're actually going from closer to $3 million. And I'm sure whatever firm is doing that is giving a cut to Donald Trump. But there are rogue people. Remember Michael Cohn set up his essential consulting and had all these big firms coming in? including a guy named Bolvatnik from Russia, given him half a million, a million dollars, two million dollars,

basically for access to the president. And I think maybe part of the fallout between Michael Cohen and the president was that he wasn't given the president a cut of that. But I'm speculating. But that's kind of how it seems to work. It's kind of like Corey Lewandowski's consulting firm for getting your DHS contracts approved.

Yeah. And look, I don't know. I'm speculating as well. is my opinion is that it's not nearly as direct as, as Kathy is kind of thinking or suggesting here. I think everything goes through these consultants, these lawyers, these representatives, I would expect that those people are probably making donations to political action committees and super PACs and things like that. And that's probably, I would guess, how you get noticed, how you're,

request gets on some radar that is significant in the White House. So, you know, that's, but yeah, if it's $3 million to get your request notice, there's a lot of beaks that can get wet with $3 million. So there you go. Yeah. Anyway, great questions, everybody. Thank you so much for sending them in. If you have a question, again, there's a link in the show notes.

You can send it to us, and we look forward to it. Andy, thanks for covering me this past Thursday for our patron happy hour. That was my pleasure. I was not able to walk. So I was sitting upright for the last two or three days has been extremely difficult. It's much better today. I did something to my back. I don't know what.

I think it's just, you know, if I go to the doctor, they'll be like, well, that's just something that happens now. Welcome to your 50s and here's some leave. They love the olive. So, you know, I'm going to try to stretch more and, you know, do more that kind of. Because I, you know, I do physical activities, but I've always bad about stretching. I need to be better about stretching. I'm so tight. Yeah, for sure.

Well, it was great. We had a good. But thanks for covering me. Yeah, sure. We had a good happy hour. I was a little bit worried because I thought maybe they were going to kind of eat me alive there. I wasn't sure what the heck I was doing. but it all went great. Harry Dunn, our friend and compatriot jumped on board for a few minutes at the

beginning and that really kind of got the ball rolling and it was great. It was a good time. Look forward to it next time. Awesome. So fun. All right, everybody, we will see you next week. I'm sure nothing will happen between now and then. And hopefully the entire show next week won't be about stuff you can't talk about. Thank you for listening to Unjustified. It's been wonderful. As usual, I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawkey with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network,

a collection of creator-owned independent podcast dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.