Jack - Zero Intelligence

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

President Trump says he’ll nominate Todd Blanche as Attorney General, and has named Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence. A federal judge has re-opened the case that led to the slush fund settlement to investigate possible collusion and a fraud on the court as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testifies he’ll drop the fund but not the Trump family tax immunity. John Bolton takes a plea deal for one felony count of mishandling national defense information. Amid personnel changes at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, 2020 Election Denier Kurt Olsen joins the US Attorneys Office in the Southern District of Florida. The lead prosecutor in the seashells case leaves.  A January 6th rioter gets a sensitive counterterrorism job. Plus listener questions. Do you have questions for the pod or something for HITMEINTHEHEADWITHABAT? Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/ Follow AGMueller, She Wrote SubstackMueller She Wrote on Blueskyhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodMore from Andrew McCabeThe Real McCabe on [e-mail] on BlueskyThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump This Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you Subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-S-W Media. President Trump says he'll nominate Todd Blanche as Attorney General and has named Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence. A federal judge has reopened the case that led to the slush fund settlement to investigate possible collusion and a fraud on the court, as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testifies that he'll drop the fund, but not the Trump family tax immunity. John Bolton takes a plea deal for one felony count of mishandling national defense information.

And amid personnel changes at the Justice Department in the Pentagon, 2020 election denier Kurt Olson joins the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida. The lead prosecutor in the Seychelles case leaves, and a January 6th rider gets a sensitive counterterrorism job. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 72 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, June 7th, 2026. I'm Allison Gill. And I am Andy McCabe. I don't know how we're going to do this today, Alice,

because there's a lot to cover. So let's dive right in. Let's start off with Todd Blanche and Bill Pulte, two of our faves. From MS Now, we get President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will nominate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve in the role permanently. Quote, we are going to make him permanent attorney general, Trump said, during an event in the Rose Garden. A video of the announcement was posted to social media by a White House aide. MS now reported the planned nomination earlier Wednesday, citing a senior administration official. CNN was first to report the news. Now, Blanche's road to confirmation, according to MS now, could be a rough one,

following intense bipartisan blowback to Trump's IRS settlement, which I'm putting in air quotes, which initially included a $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund that was expected to compensate participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, along with other Trump allies. Now, two senior administration officials told MS. Now that Blanche has developed good relationships with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill that might help allay some confirmation issues he will inevitably face. But ultimately, they said, his confirmation may hinge on whether or not the weaponization fund is actually dropped. Earlier this week, Blanche testified before a House Appropriations Committee panel that the Trump administration is, quote, not moving forward with the fund, period, close quote. However, the rest of the Trump IRS settlement remains intact, Blanche said, including the addendum granting Trump, his family, and his businesses, immunity from all existing IRS tax audits. Yeah, and criminal investigations that could arise from tax audits into perpetuity, I believe. The order says at least that's my understanding of the reading that Representative DeLauro gave during that hearing in which, you know, at first, Representative Meng was like, are you going to drop the slush fund?

He's like, I'm going to drop the slush fund. She's like, can I get it in writing or rescission? And he's like, no, you don't need it in writing. And then DeLauro was like, all right, what about this tax immunity? He's like, it's not immunity. And she's like, yes, it is. He's like, no, it's not. And then she reads it to him.

And then he's like, well, that order number two, that we're not, we're just getting rid of the fund. And it's still kind of all up in the air. And today on Friday, as we record this, Andy, the DOJ has responded to that former January 6th prosecutor's case in Virginia that actually put the fund on hold. And the DOJ is saying, this is moot now because Todd Blanche has said the fund isn't going forward. and since there's no actual case or controversy, there's no justiciability under Article 3 of the Constitution. But he won't put it in writing. There was no declaration from Todd Blanche filed along with that brief.

And by the way, mootness requires like a higher standard than just a voluntary walking away. Right? You can't. That's not generally a thing. But it's very interesting to me that the DOJ is fighting against an injunction that over a dead fund. Like, why are you fighting to keep it alive if you've killed it? It's just a very weird scenario. It's super weird.

And I can't sit here and say that I have any sort of clarity as to how this is going to play out. But I will tell you this, I don't buy it. I don't buy it for a second. If you think about the statements that he made in the hearing and the things that, that the administration has said since then, it's always in this wording of not moving forward with the fund. Like, that's not the same as saying, we're never going to do this again. We're not going to repurpose it as something else. We're not going to search for some way to try to spend DOJ appropriated funds in ways that the president directs that are completely

outside the scope of a lawsuit. Like, I don't buy this for one second. I don't think they abandoned the idea of throwing money at people they like, I just think they're backing away from this way of trying to do it. But we'll see. Maybe I'm just, you know, maybe, maybe I'm just an old crumudge and trying to see the bad news. But I don't think you are because Stanley Woodward posted on Twitter, oh, we'll find a way, you know, like, and then deleted that immediately, which to me, you know, if they come and try to moot my lawsuit against this fund, you can bet that tweet will show up in a response. But anyway, we're going to keep an eye on all of that. But Reuters is reporting that Trump appointed federal housing regulator Bill Pulte is going to be

the acting director of national intelligence. And you did this on Tuesday, elevating a political loyalist with zero national security experience to lead the sprawling U.S. intelligence community at a time of war on global tensions. Pulte, who's 38 years old, and no shade to 38-year-olds, just seems a little young to run the national intelligence apparatus, has used his position as head of a low-profile mortgage regulatory agency to push for investigations of several Trump's perceived enemies for alleged mortgage fraud. None have yet resulted in criminal charges. Now, Pulte replaces the departing Tulsi Gabbard in the intelligence post.

And again, age really has nothing to do with it. Andy, this guy has zero intelligence background. None. Yeah, I mean, it's preposterous. First of all, forget about who he is and what he's done to try to advance the president's politicization of government and attacking his enemies and all that kind of stuff. Put all that aside and just look at the experience issue. None. There isn't any. Zero. I mean, how easy would it be for a guy like Bill Pulte to go in and fire every analyst that's essential to U.S. national security? Fire them all because why not? He doesn't know what they do anyway. He's never had any... Well, he has tracked home experience. Yeah, there you go.

That translates, right? Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So it's amazing. It's just unreal. But Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has asked Pulte to begin firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community.

Of course he has. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump said he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or ODNI, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, was, quote, unnecessary and or too big. The president named Pulte, director of national intelligence on an acting basis, a temporary role that does not require Senate confirmation.

He can serve in the role for 210 days, that's under the Vacancies Act, which puts his time at the ODNI past the midterm elections. Yeah, and that's important because Donald Trump has suggested. His controversial ally Bill Pulte will investigate, quote, rigged elections while serving as the country's top intelligence official as the U.S. President continues to make unfounded allegations about voting. He's attacking California right now because, I don't know, we're counting votes. Like this is new. Like this is the first time a Republican election denier has complained about there being some sort of fraud because California takes a long time to count votes. Now, earlier in the day in a social media post at 1248 in the morning, 1 a.m., Trump alleged without evidence that Democrats were cheating in the California primaries.

And he also claimed the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles is investigating. Now, the U.S. Attorney's Office says that it has no comment on that. That's certainly not saying they're not. But in any case, Pulte's selection for the acting intelligence role has sparked bipartisan criticism in recent days with John Thune, the Senate. its Republican majority leader, saying that, quote, we don't need a weaponized national intelligence director, adding that Pulte would have, quote, a lengthy road ahead of him if nominated for the role permanently.

Thune stated, we need professionals here. Meanwhile, the Republican Senator Mitch McConnell indirectly expresses disapproval, which why am I not surprised by that at all? Holy, does this guy ever do anything directly? expressed disapproval of Pulte's nomination saying, Anyone performing this role of such immense public trust must have the extensive national security experience required by statute,

and no nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote. Even John Fetterman says he would not vote to confirm Pulte if it came to that. Right, but like you said, since he's just the acting DNI, he doesn't need Senate confirmation. But there is other leverage out there to prevent him from taking the job. PBS is now reporting that the Senate blocked an extension early Friday of a key surveillance program used by U.S. intelligence agencies as concerns mounted over Trump's selection of federal housing finance regulator Bill Palti to serve as the DNI. Some Republicans join Democrats

in the 47 to 52 vote against a procedural motion that would have set up the final vote on the extension next week. This is FISA section 702. And that's complicating efforts to extend the critical program before it expires. June 12th. Wow. This vote came after an overnight session on separate legislation funding for immigration, customs enforcement, and customs and border protection. The vote marked the latest setback for Trump and intelligence officials who have spent months pushing to extend a key provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

that allows agencies such as the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI to collect communications from foreign targets without a warrant, and that is FISA section 702. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had worked to negotiate the bill, voted against it. He said earlier Thursday that he and committee chair Senator Tom Cotton had reached what he described as a, quote, compromise on a strong bill, but that the complete irresponsibility of putting forward Pulte had changed the equation. Yeah. Yeah.

And Marcy Wheeler actually brought that up. Once we learned about Pulte, like the day Pulte was named Acting DNI, empty will is like, just withhold the votes on the FISA 702. Yeah. To get him out of there. Now, the Senate is expected to revisit the legislation when they return next week. Any agreement would still need to clear the chamber's 60 vote threshold before heading to the House, where lawmakers have yet to resolve differences over a provision restricting a

central bank digital currency that House Republican leaders added to secure support for the bill. So this thing has all kinds of problems and it needs 60 votes. Yeah. And really with, and I think the Pulte announcement is a perfect example of this, this White House does not do the Hill very well. No. They're constantly doing things that kneecap their own desires and agenda up on the Hill. So stand by for that.

one meantime Ryan Goodman posted on social media a reminder that the title 50 US code section 3023 states that quote there is a director of national intelligence who shall not might maybe would have could have but actually shall be appointed by the president any individual nominated for appointment as director of national intelligence shall have extensive national security experience of course bill pulte has zero So it is in the law creating the job that you must have extensive experience. Extensive experience, too. So it's not like a little experience. Not like you went and had the tour one day over at the DNI or somebody brought you to the CIA to buy a hat. Have an FBI mug. Exactly. And on Friday, 28 former service secretaries and retired general and flag officers who collectively served under every president from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden.

wrote a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that appointing Bill Pulte is a threat to national security. And I can tell you from having been in that crowd for a long time, they don't make statements like that flippantly. They went to paper, Andy. They did. They did exactly that. Quote, the appointment, get to get a national security person to go to paper as a feat. Quote, the appointment of an ill-suited acting director could materially harm U.S. national security. Any prioritization of political considerations over strategic.

imperatives seeds advantage to our adversaries. So do errors of judgment arising from insufficient expertise. That's putting it very nicely. Our men and women in uniform rely upon the quality and integrity of intelligence gathered and analyzed by the 18 agencies under the director's jurisdiction. With U.S. forces engaged in active operations abroad, there is no margin for error. That's what they said in their letter. So that's pretty important. JFK. Going all the way back to JFK. It's really kind of interesting. You know, I've been part of the 702 reauthorization fight many times.

And I know people have very different opinions about this. But one of the interesting pieces of this is that under the law, the government gets one year from the last certification. So the program has to be certified every year to the FISA court. It was last done in March. So even if this whole thing, if they fail to renew the authorization because of this battle on the hill, the administration could technically continue collecting intelligence through 702 until March of 2027. So it's possible that they just say, you know, heck with it. We'll try this again six months from now.

Now, how do you feel about 702? How pivotal was it, for example, in Crossfire Hurricane, investigating. the Trump campaign's ties to Russian assets? Probably not as pivotal to a case like that as it is to cases like your general kind of CT investigations. CT actually and cyber are the two places where I feel like it's the most important. And it is absolutely critical to that work because what it enables you to do is collect the metadata or actual content of communications of people who are who have,

foreign people who are located in foreign places for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence. So it's the three foreigns. That's what I used to tell my class. That's the easiest way to remember it. You can do that without a warrant because foreign people overseas don't enjoy the benefits of the Fourth Amendment and the rest of our constitutional protection. So it's not, you know, they don't get the benefit of the warrant requirement. It's highly controversial because in doing that collection, you could incidentally collect the, communications of Americans who call those foreign people.

And that's really where the controversy rises. Right. And that's where a lot of people are like, oh, it surveils Americans. This is why Trump hated it for a minute. It's why Lindsay Graham hated it for a minute. But of course, continues to vote for to reauthorize it. That's right. But that's sort of like that whole unmasking of Americans, right? Like, for example, Mike Flynn.

Yeah. I have always been a huge proponent of maintaining 702 authority. but here's where it's different this time. It's different now because all of a sudden, Trump and of course his entire administration have woken up to, oh, 702 is great, we must have 702. And this is the same administration

that is now declaring everyone they don't like to be a terrorist or a terrorist organization. And so they have really opened up, I think, the distinct possibility that under their very different views of what constitutes a foreign intelligence, a foreign terrorist organization, they could use those more expansive definitions to start intentionally,

not incidentally, but intentionally collecting the communications of, let's just say, disfavored Americans and people here in the United States. So it's, I think the concerns about 702 have always been valid. I think they are particularly heightened

in this environment. Could it also be abused to, you know, I don't know, look into foreign interference in our elections. Of course. Where none might exist,

which is why it's, I think, crucial that Bill Pulte, if allowed to stay in this job, would be staying on through the midterm elections. And, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, who was the previous DNI,

was already in tow down stealing election ballots from Fulton County and investigating in Puerto Rico saying that Maduro somehow had, Venezuela had interfered in our elections.

and that kind of intelligence gathering would fall under the purview of 702 as well. It certainly could under their bizarre and totally expansive definitions of what constitutes a foreign actor, right? And... Not Russia, though. Of course. No, we're not interested in the actual enemies. We're only interested in the political enemies. So, yeah, I think it's really concerning, especially when you look at the way they're trying to criminalize, for instance, groups that support Democratic politicians, groups like Act Blue and others.

I think they've opened the door to this by making these presidential directives that just declare without any evidence or level of proof that a group you've never heard of before is now a foreign terrorist organization and an enemy of the United States and their boats can be can be nuked in the ocean without any evidence of what's going on. they're like, it's crazy what they've been doing. And I think adding the power of 702 to that kind of approach is really, really concerning. Should be concerning to a lot of people. And, you know, we've long known that whether you've got bad guys in office or good guys in office is how they interpret these laws. That's right. You know, like when we look at the interrogation techniques, when you've got stuff like people like Bush interpreting the law versus somebody like, Mueller interpreting the law

they you know different different ways of looking at it of what torture is for example I think and you know I think there are some Republicans on the hill who this

this has kind of occurred to them they're thinking like hold on a second if we give ourselves or we give the Republican administration this sort of authority inevitably it could be used against them by the next

Democratic administration so it's it's something that needs to be we need to be really careful about. We don't want to kneecap the intelligence community's ability to collect the intelligence we need to stay safe. But it's very powerful collection. It needs to be regulated for sure.

Yeah, define where you can go outside of those boundaries. All right, everybody. We are going to be right back. And after this break, we're going to talk about the reanimation of Trump v. the Internal Revenue Service by Judge Williams in Miami, which, again, And that story dropped. The minute we shut off our microphones recording last week's episode, I sent it to Andy. And he's like, figures.

So we're going to cover that a little bit, but also some additional things that have happened in that vein over the past week. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. So, as I said, right as we finished recording last week's show, we got some breaking news from the New York Times that says a federal judge in Miami has reopened President Trump's

$10 billion case against the IRS in a striking turnabout. saying she wants to investigate grievous allegations that the hasty deal to resolve it was premised on deception. The ruling is by Judge Kathleen Williams. That was on Friday, as, you know, a week ago Friday, to revive the case shortly after closing it. It was a significant blow to Trump, both Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit himself last week, and the Justice Department. After the president withdrew the suit, senior department officials released a pair of extraordinary agreements that settled the case by establishing the $1.8 billion slush fund to compensate people who claim they were victims of weaponization by Democrats. But the deal also conferred lucrative tax benefits on Trump,

his family, and his businesses. Judge Williams' decision came in response to court papers filed on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who urged her to bring the case back to life and to dig into the details of the agreement to settle it. Former judges said that Mr. Trump's settlement agreement raised serious questions about his candor towards the court and manipulation of the judicial system. In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump's efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders

who signed the agreements to settle the suit, chief among them, Todd Blanche, the Acting Attorney General and Stanley Woodward, the number three official in the department. In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was, quote, empowered to investigate serious misconduct in any case before her. It ordered Mr. Trump's lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because, quote, the court was the victim of fraud. Man, empowered to investigate serious misconduct seems like a bit of foreshadowing there, doesn't it? Go get them. She also wanted Trump's lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case to avoid judicial scrutiny. Judge Williams pointed to reporting by the Times that described how the IRS had prepared a 25-page memorandum outlying defenses against Trump's lawsuit that the Justice Department did not take up in court.

Now, in a footnote, Judge Williams questioned the provision granting Mr. Trump, his family and their businesses, immunity from IRS scrutiny of tax returns. had already filed. She wrote that the audit protection may run afoul of Justice Department rules requiring legal settlements to directly relate to the issues in the suit. She also noted that only Mr. Blanche signed the audit provision. There you go, buddy. The separate nine-page agreement laying out the $1.8 billion fund was signed by Mr. Woodward and Frank Bisignano. Am I saying that correctly? I think so. Okay. Who is serving as the chief executive officer of the IRS. The six. By the way. Right.

Newly created and newly filled role that is not subject to Senate confirmation. Oh, that's right. He's had six IRS commissioners. So he was like, well, I'm just going to make the IRS czar go, Frank Bezignano. Yeah. So that was on Friday. Then on Tuesday, Todd Blanche testified before the House Appropriation Subcommittee that he was abandoning the $1.8 billion slash fund. Not so for the sweeping protections from the IRS audits that Mr. Blanche also ordered up for Mr.

Trump and his family. On that front, Republican reaction has been much more muted. Mr. Blanche said the audit shield would stay in place. A Democratic effort to cancel the audit protection failed on a voice vote. And you just know that like Thune and the Republicans are going to be like, well, he dropped the fund so we're satisfied, even though he's leaving the even more corrupt. I mean, maybe this whole thing was just a Trojan horse to get tax immunity. Maybe that was the end goal in the first place. And the fact that he canceled the fund but kept his tax immunity seems even more corrupt to me.

I mean, first of, first of all, I'd have so much more respect for Todd Blanche if he simply said, I'm sorry, I can't take that away from him. He'll kill me. Yeah. If you're like trying to take a, you know, take a raw steak out of a rabid dog's mouth. Like there's no way. He's letting go of that. Yeah, I would, I would appreciate it if Todd Blanche said, well, that was the whole reason

we did this in the first place. so I can't get rid of that. I'm sorry. I just can't do it. I can't do it. January 6ers, by the way, are really, really mad. They're having like these live Twitter events, and they are like, I can't believe he abandoned us and got rid of our fund, but he's keeping his tax immunity.

They're not. You can't? You can't believe this guy didn't follow through on something that he said he was going to do for someone else? Oh, my gosh. Now, the result is that an apparently unprecedented and enormously valuable public benefit for the president has so far flown under the radar in Congress and passed into Trump's hands without much protest from members of his own party. Blanche did not want to directly pay Mr. Trump money out of the Treasury, the Times reported.

Instead, DOJ created the $1.8 billion fund now seemingly dead and offered Trump and his family members and their businesses the sweeping protections from audits of tax returns they've already filed. In return, Trump dropped his suit, an arrangement that the judge who was originally assigned. to the case, like we said, is now investigating. The audit that was potentially worth more than $100 million stemmed from how Mr. Trump claimed losses on his Chicago Tower. But there are several other known audits of Mr. Trump that the IRS started in recent years. It's unclear whether any of those are still pending,

just as it is uncertain whether the IRS has enacted Mr. Blanche's order. The IRS and the Treasury have not responded to questions about whether they are doing so. So I've got a question for you, Alison. And I'm thinking of this because, as we talked about earlier in the show, he kind of non-denied, denied that it was an actual grant of immunity, which, of course, it is. If you read the order, you can't be investigated for anything related to his taxes,

nor can his family or any of his businesses. So my question is, doesn't this basically grant him and his family, and all of its businesses, immunity from ever paying taxes ever again. It's not just getting off the hook of this audit. They could just say, not doing it. I'm not filling out a return. And no one can investigate them for that. And DOJ can never charge them with a crime for that.

So this group of political royals has been granted immunity from the tax code entirely for the rest of their lives. Yep. Yeah, that's basically how it goes. Yeah. Well, that's why I couldn't believe people weren't making a bigger deal. I was sitting there screaming at my television and putting it out on the, you know, on social media making videos. I was like, they're letting him go forward with the tax thing. The day before Todd Blanche testified, Dana and I recorded a show.

And I was like, man, what if they get rid of the fund but keep the tax immunity? They're like, that would be even more corrupt. And we were laughing. We were joking. Mr. Acting Attorney General, we were joking. Well, we live in the era when jokes are real. Yeah, nothing is parody anymore. Yep.

All right, we've got a lot of comings and goings. People getting hired, people getting moved around, people getting fired, people getting fired, people leaving. And we're going to talk about all of that after we take this quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. All right. Lots of personnel movement at the Justice Department and the Pentagon this week.

So first up, from the post. A convicted January 6th rioter who later said that he regretted his participation in the U.S. Capitol attack has been hired by the Trump administration to work inside a Pentagon office that manages highly classified military operations, according to four people familiar with the matter. The appointment of Elias Irizari, who was 19 years old at the time of the riot in 2021, to a post in the Defense Department's special operations and low-intensity conflict office, has raised alarm internally among staff who questioned how anyone convicted in the assault on the American democracy could be trusted for such a sensitive role in the U.S. government, these people said. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retaliation.

Good decision there. Erzari is assigned to the office's irregular warfare and counterterrorism section, the people familiar with the matter said. The team comprises about 40 people, and its portfolio includes operations such as embassy, security, personnel recovery, and hostage rescue. Now, two people characterize the work as among the most delicate that the Pentagon performs. All positions, they said, require a top secret security clearance. I will tell you, Allison, that this is the group that basically oversees how special forces are deployed to do some of the most unique, incredibly sensitive operations in foreign countries when people's lives are at stake. Like the rescue of downpilots or the capture of Osama bin Laden?

Or the capture of a terrorist in a foreign country for the purpose of bringing them back here to face justice in American courts, all kinds of like super high speed, very dangerous, and very sensitive operations. That's frightening. All right. Yep. Next up from Reuters, Kurt Olson, our good friend, Kurt Olson. White House official who aided Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election has joined the Justice Department as a senior attorney, reporting to a prosecutor seeking to build a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy case against the president's enemies. Olson joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida on Monday, according to a Justice Department spokesperson.

Among the matters being overseen by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Redding-Kinionez, a group of prosecutors is examining whether past investigations of Trump amounted to a criminal conspiracy against him. The effort is being supervised by Joe de Genova, another Trump co-conspirator, now serving as a counselor to acting attorney general Todd Blanche and the leader of a new civil rights unit under the Miami office. Olson has been leading the Trump administration's election intent. integrity effort. Oh, interesting, including reexamining Trump's 2020 defeat and investigating disproven vote rigging theories as a special government employee at the White House. Olson's work has included probing potential foreign intervention in U.S. elections and

seizing voting machines and materials in Puerto Rico, Georgia, Arizona, et cetera, to aid his investigation. He's focused primarily on the disproven theory that the government of former Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro was able to penetrate Dominion voting machines and flip votes to Biden by exploiting Venezuelan origin code. So that guy is now working on that case in Miami, which you have some idea about? I do. I do. This is my case that I very intentionally don't talk about, But, yeah, so that's basically all I can say. I know you got crackerjacks like Kurt Olson. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

It doesn't seem like the talent level is going up in that side of the, that side of the conflict. But I don't know. We'll see. Who knows? We'll have to just keep following the news on that one. Right. For everybody, that's the case against former CIA chief John Brennan.

and about 40 other people wrapping in the investigation into classified documents at Mar-a-Lago so that they could overcome the fact that the statute of limitations on cross-fire hurricane has been expired for a really long time, not that there were any crimes committed in cross-fire hurricane. Yeah, and that... Intensely scrutinized in Trump 1.0

and by the Senate Intelligence Committee. And by... Anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that, all that is actually correct. And, of course, that's the one where I have received two subpoenas. now. And so that's why I don't talk about that case because of, you know, my potential

inclusion in it, it's not a good idea for me to talk about it, but something we'll continue tracking here. In addition to a story we just got from NBC, who states, a rookie federal prosecutor who brought a case accusing former FBI director James Comey of threatening President Donald Trump's life by posting a photo of seashells on Instagram. Yep, just read that it's, that's what the story says. This prosecutor has stepped off the case. Matthew Petraca, who had recently been hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina, is no longer on the Comey case, according to a court filing.

Petrake also dropped off other criminal cases in the Eastern District of North Carolina in recent days, according to court filings. Petrake is a former Republican county committeeman in New Jersey, whom, W. Ellis Boyle, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, hired months ago, NBC News has reported. Boyle oversaw the highly criticized case, which will go to trial in October if it manages to survive many legal challenges. Petroca had contemplated leaving the Justice Department altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter, but instead remained a Justice Department employee after taking a week off. So, well, vacation time, he thought better about his leaving and,

figured he could just stop working on any cases and continue collecting the salary. Petroka had not responded to a previous request for comment on his status at the Justice Department and did not respond to an additional request for comment on Friday. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Severo is now heading the Comey case. Congratulations, Mr. Severeaux. Congratulations. You are the winner.

of maybe the worst case in the Justice Department right now. There's always possible we get a worse one next week. I wish we had like an address where we could just send him seashells and beach-themed stuff and little plastic buckets and shovels, you know. My parents went to the beach and all I got with this crappy picture of seashells and letters and numbers. All I got was this lousy indictment. Exactly.

Good luck, Severo, defending that one. All right. Yeah, and trying to do it without getting hit in the head with a bat, which is what we're going to talk about next. That is not easy. No, it's not in this particular administration. So we're going to do that. We've got one other quick story, but we have to take one last quick break. So stick around.

We'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. All right, we've got a quick story before hit me in the head with a bat. This is from CNN. John Bolton, President Trump's former national security advisor turned adversary, has reached a plea deal over mishandling sensitive national security information, according to three sources familiar. He intends to plead guilty to one felony count of illegal retention of sensitive national security information, according to one of the sources.

He has also agreed to pay more than a $2 million fine, according to one of the sources. Now, I just want to remind everyone, illegal retention of sensitive national security information, one count. Donald Trump was brought up on over 40 counts of the same felony. Ah, good point. A conviction on one case. count of illegal retention could come with a sentence between zero and 60 months in prison. The Justice Department declined to comment and referred CNN to the court docket, which indicates

a hearing was set for June 26. I should say, I find that the chances that Bolton will actually get jail time for this plea are almost zero as a guy with no prior criminal history, long distinguished history of serving the country, and all that kind of stuff, I think. It's like Petraeus, right? Exactly. And, you know, it's kind of important to remember that when you and I first found out about this case and read the indictment, we're like, this is actually a pretty legitimate indictment. And career prosecutors kept this one, right? This isn't like a Seychelles case or a footlong subway guide case or a, you know, whatever, any other number of cases that you need, Piero doesn't care.

if she gets a no trial on go get to all the cases bring all the crimes thank you it's not it wasn't anything close to that and you and i said well of all these retribution cases this one might actually stick because it's still being it's career prosecutors and and this indictment actually looks pretty tight john bolton could be in some trouble so i'm not i'm i'm actually kind of surprised that trumps letting his doj go with a no jail plea deal yeah for bolton instead of trying to throw the book at him, but, you know, these are still, again, career prosecutors on this case, not, you know, Petraka or Right. Whoever the heck else.

And this, it sounds like a lot of them, they're giving it away to him for one felony count. That's not, this is actually a pretty standard resolution to a case like this. Let's remember that he had no documents. I'm not minimizing what he did, but from the legal perspective of how this turns into a prosecution, he didn't actually, they didn't ever accuse him of having documents. What he did was he took notes, the content of those notes were classified or they were national defense information. And then he emailed himself those notes and used those notes to write his book.

So I think all total, this sounds like a pretty reasonable resolution. It's also important to remember that this case started not in this administration, it started under the Biden administration. After they spent so much time in the first administration going after Bolton about his book and trying to keep him from publishing it and all that stuff. And they lost all those efforts. The book came out at some point after Bolton was hacked and his lawyers had to notify DOJ that his emails had been stolen by a foreign government,

which they believed to be Iran. That's what prompted the investigation. And when they started looking into it, they saw that he had really done some things he should not have done. Yeah. And you got to remember, the Biden administration was investigating Trump for retention of national. national defense information and kind of to clean up everything.

They appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Biden for the same thing, to investigate Pence for the same thing. So they were really trying to make sure that they were not just going after Trump for this particular thing, but to make sure that everyone had their hands clean. And so I think, you know, when we talk about when this case originated, that may have something to do with it as well. All right, everybody, it's time to 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. Hit me in the head with a bat. Nice. Today's rebuke of the DOJ comes from Trump-appointed

Rhode Island Judge Mary McElroy. And we've talked about this case before because of some of the things Judge McElroy has said in the past about this Rhode Island case. And it's over transgender medical records in Rhode Island, a case that was filed in Texas. Of course. Of course, CBS reports a federal judge in Rhode Island. She has now referred Justice Department lawyers for possible discipline on Friday over their handling of an investigation into transgender youth care at a hospital in the state after previously finding that the lawyers misled the court and withheld information. So in a previous episode of Hit Me in the Head with a Bat, we talked about that, you know, misleading the court withholding information and acting totally outside the bounds of. any kind of presumption of regularity that would normally be afforded. And now what we're reporting today is she's actually filed a referral for discipline.

It came after Judge McElroy quashed an administrative subpoena that the Justice Department issued to the hospital seeking years of sensitive medical information for every minor transgender patient who received medical care at a Rhode Island hospital as part of a sprawling investigation into gender transition treatments. McElroy, who was appointed by President Trump in 2019, Wampo. Sorry. Wrote in a decision last month that the subpoena lacked a congressionally authorized purpose

and was issued, quote, for an improper purpose in bad faith. Wow. She also lambasted the Justice Department in her ruling, calling the difference between the honorable conduct expected of prosecutors and the department's tactics in the case unsettling. The Justice Department, she wrote in her May 14 opinion, quote, possesses immense prosecutorial authority and discretion. As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against the state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary. DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.

That's what we had discussed last month here. Now, Malko Roy went on to accuse Justice Department lawyers of misrepresenting facts, as we call that lying where I live, under oath and withholding information from her court and a federal court in the Northern District of Texas. She accused government lawyers of doing so in an obvious effort to shield its recent investigative tactics previously rejected by every other court to review them from this court's review in favor of a distant forum. that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. That's why they file in Texas. The judge was referring to the Justice Department's decision to seek an order from a judge in Fort Worth that would compel Rhode Island,

a hospital in Rhode Island, to turn over the documents sought by the administrative subpoena last year. In its effort to obtain the order from the Texas court, a Justice Department lawyer named Lisa, help me with this one, Allison. Is it Seattle? Hesau. Hesau?

Okay. Justice Department lawyer named Lisa Hissau said in a declaration that Rhode Island Hospital failed to comply with the subpoena and stopped communicating with the department in February. But McElroy, the Rhode Island judge, said that claim was, quote, clearly misleading, if not utterly false. Because representatives from Rhode Island Hospital had responded to an email from Justice Department lawyers about search terms for compliance with the subpoena. Quote, this reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is a public. appalling McElroy wrote. Ouch, outchy. It's, she had some harsh, this Trump appointee had some really harsh language for these

Department of Justice lawyers, and rightfully so. So now she's referred to DOJ lawyers to the disciplinary committee. We'll keep an eye on this referral. We know, we know Pam Bondi before she was fired, tried to file a memo saying that, you know, state bar associations have no jurisdiction here. The DOJ will investigate itself, thank you very much. last time I checked, DOJ doesn't run their own bar. Well, Janine Piro does.

Hey, oh, okay, wait a moment. Thanks, couldn't resist. That was a little low-hanging fruit there. I'm sorry to the audience for setting that up in such an obvious way. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But yeah, I bet we're going to see some sort of response to say, no, we have a new memo here at the DOJ signed by the office. Office of Legal Counsel, who's a 19-year-old Doge Bro or whatever, that says, you can't do it,

you can't touch us, we do our own investigation. It'll come up in this referral, and we'll keep an eye on it for you. All right. We have a couple minutes for some listener questions. If you have a question, we have a link in the show notes that you can click on to fill out a form and submit one to both of us. So, Andy, what do we have in the way of listener questions this week? Yeah, so we have Two really good ones. First one is about, you know, the topic we've talked about the most today, which is the slush fund. This one comes to us from Pedro. Pedro says, hi, Allison, I have a question for the unjustified pod regarding an aspect of the slush fund case.

If Trump filed the lawsuit in his personal capacity against the IRS and now the judge might reopen the case to check fraud and collusion, doesn't this mean the SCOTUS immunity ruling would not protect Trump from criminal liability if the judge ultimately finds that fraud was committed against the court. That's a really good question. I think that, I don't think that, I mean, I guess when the judicial branch finds some sort of contempt, they do it civilly, not criminally. So it wouldn't even apply. Immunity wouldn't even apply, right?

Yeah, I agree. First of all, I absolutely love that our listeners are like going this, deep and cross-referencing different legal issues and for trying to figure out how can we use these things. But you're right. But that doesn't mean that a future attorney general appointed by a Democrat couldn't investigate Donald Trump and his personal capacity for some sort of fraud and collusion. I'm not sure what laws that breaks or what that would even look like. But if somebody were to try to bring criminal charges, I'm certain that Donald Trump would assert his immunity, and then this question might come up.

Yes, I agree. So the question, the interesting thing about the question to me is that it really kind of gets at the core of the issue here is like, what is the result of this inquiry? Even if she finds that Justice Department lawyers intentionally misrepresented things to the court in an effort to perpetuate a fraud, there's not much. can do with that. Like you said, you could impose sanctions on the lawyers who were engaged in that, but ultimately to pursue some sort of criminal accountability, the most that the court could do is make a referral to DOJ, basically. And then DOJ is not going to pick that up. And it would usually

be against the lawyers and not necessarily the defendant or the parties. But I see where you're going with this, because you'll recall Trump, filed to intervene in a 2020 election lawsuit in his personal capacity. And Jack Smith picked that up and said, this cannot be an official act because in your personal capacity is a candidate for office, not an occupant of that office. And that had a lot to do with how Jack Smith parsed out official acts that may or may not be covered by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling. Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's not, I like the idea that, And I wouldn't write off any sort of accountability because through the personal action sort of theory, that could be available.

But I'm not sure that there's a potential kind of pathway to criminal accountability here, particularly for the president. Yeah. Okay. So thank you, Pedro. That's a great question. So the next one comes to us from Chris C., who sends this in from Colchester in the UK. He says, Dear Allison and Andy, thanks so much for your clear reporting and deep insights into the challenging U.S. legal landscape. Please can I ask a simple question and apologies if you've covered it already when looking to charge someone? The process of getting an indictment from a grand jury seems somewhat fraught at the moment. Given how well supervised, I would say, yes. Given how well supervised, the rest of the court system seems to be beyond this point, why is no judge overseeing the indictment process?

Is it down to the old-time days when judges only visiting remote settlements occasionally and everything needed to be done in preparation for the visit? Or what would it take to fix this problem going forward? Could the judicial branch unilaterally require judges to be present to observe the indictment process? Well, this is a great question too. And let me give you some examples of how judges have been overseeing the grand jury process that is currently fraught with problems. First, we had Comey 1.0, where the judge in that case asked to see the grand jury transcripts and found out that Lindsay Halligan had done the little grand jury malfeasance, right? She had got a no-true bill, but then just sort of X'd out one of the three charges

and then had the foreman sign it without taking another vote. And had the case gone past the fact that she was simply disqualified, I'm sure that that would have come up again in a vindictive and selective prosecution motion. Then we had the Broadview Six, where Boutros' underling, was doing ex parte communications with grand jury members in the hallway and one other guy was handing his business cards

out to people in a separate case and how they were actually removing no people who voted no on the true bill or no on the indictment, kicked them out and brought people back in. They did that three times until they got a thing, until they got their true bill.

And then we had Judge Boseberg in D.C. who's actually put an order into the court saying, you must now tell me when a grand jury returns a no true bill every single time. So he's monitoring it kind of that way. So those are just a couple of ways. And I think we're going to continue to see it again, especially if we get an indictment of what's Butros investigating now? some, oh, E. Gene Carroll and Reed Hoffman. And if I'm E. Jean Carroll and Robbie Kaplan's lawyer and somehow a true bill comes back, I'm going to be asking for those grand jury materials because they have shown themselves to be dishonest and disfavorable in front of a grand jury.

So I think that's kind of where we're at right now. So the system works like this. There's what? About 100 judicial districts in the country, give or take. I don't know what the exact number is, but each one has a federal court for that district, and each federal court has one presiding judge. One of them, maybe there's five, 10, 15, 20, 50 judges in the district. One of them is appointed the presiding judge.

And one of the presiding judges of responsibilities is to oversee the grand jury process. That's only the part of the process before a case is indicted. Once a case actually gets indicted and it's assigned to a judge for trial and, you know, pre-trial and all that other stuff, then that individual judge is responsible for looking into any skull duggery that's alleged to have occurred in the grand jury. So if a prosecutor is in front of a grand jury and he's going to the grand jury and conducting an investigation and sending out subpoenas, if you get a subpoena and you think that that subpoena is baseless or improper for some reason, you can file to quash it, that would go before the presiding judge because the case has not been indicted yet. If you wanted to challenge something that happened in front of the grand jury after you'd been indicted, you would bring that challenge to the district court judge that's in charge of that case. So Chris goes on to ask like, he's like, isn't it a bad thing that it's easy,

you know, it's as easy as indicting criminal cases like indicting a ham sandwich? Not really. The system is set up that way. At that early juncture, The prosecutors have a very low threshold of what's necessary to get an indictment. It's probable cause. And that is because the indictment is not a conviction. It's not a jail sentence. It's just the next step in the process to holding somebody accountable. So, yeah, we do rely on prosecutors and U.S. attorneys and their assistant U.S. attorneys to do the right thing and not to abuse the grand jury process.

And up until this point, that's been satisfactory. But now all that has been drawn into question by this failure of the presumption of regularity, which is why we covered every week. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, we can take someone like Juni Nipiro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who, and that office, by the way, prior to Trump 2.0 had enjoyed a 99.6 rate of getting a true bill from a grand jury. That has dropped to 79% under Gene Amiro. So even though you can indict a ham sandwich, sometimes you still can't if it's if it's such a bad case. So the system, you know, this was brought up in the immunity arguments by Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan. When asked like, how come the president can't have immunity, they said there's already checks.

Right. Because Trump's argument was rogue prosecutors in the future could just come and indict any president. She's like, that's not how our system works. You have to go through the grand jury. You have to go through pre-trial motions. You have to go through vindictive and select motions to dismiss, which is part of pretrial motions. Then you have to get to motions in limine, to eliminate evidence from for certain reasons or whatever because it might violate your constitutional rights. Then you've got to face a pedigree, a jury of 12 people who have to unanimously agree to convict you. Then you have the entire appeals process. So to say that

the president needs some kind of immunity that he doesn't already enjoy for his official acts is absolutely ridiculous and antithetical to history. That's right. And so that's what we're seeing come to fruition here when you actually do have rogue prosecutors going after political enemies and they're not being able, they aren't able to get these, to get these convictions, let alone sometimes even a true bill from a federal grand jury. So that's why those protections are in place. We're making fun of it because that's what we do here.

But the Lindsay Halliganness of many assistant U.S. attorneys now. But it's a new thing. This is not, you know, the fact that they're failing to get indictments is just a evidence of how far this DOJ has fallen. Agreed. Great questions, everybody. Please continue to send them to us. You can do that by clicking clicking. I'm already like having a glass of champagne in my head later tonight.

Clink away. You can do that by clicking the link in the show notes and then clinking us. Cheers for sending in your question. So it's a form you fill out. Your question will get to us and we really appreciate. These are such great questions. You guys seriously, very in-depth, very considerate of all the things we've been reporting going back to the Jack podcast.

For real, yeah. So thanks for your very thoughtful questions and please continue to send them to us. That is our show. I can't believe we did it in an hour. Woo. Uh, hoo. Hi-five to us. That was a lot of news that we had to get through. I'm just going to check one more time.

Uh-oh. Because as we record this on Friday, the judge in the oathkeeper's case, Judge Amit Mehta, had asked the Department of Justice to give him a reason to dismiss the case because Janine Piro is in the interest of justice. was insufficient for him to guard against prosecutorial misconduct. And that was due June 5th, but it is still not on the docket. So I guess it's going to post on the docket as soon as we stop recording this episode, Andy. We'll save it like a tasty little treat for next week.

Because she's, you know, I'll bring all the crimes except seditious conspiracy against the oathkeepers, which should be dismissed with prejudice. for no other reason than I said so. I'll bring all the crimes, except the ones that the president's friends commit and then I'll let them off. The actual crimes, yeah. All right, everybody.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you next week. 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 podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.