Transcript
Alison Gill (0:00)
MSW Media. Hey, everybody, it's ag. And welcome to Refried Beans, where we play an episode of the Daily Beans podcast from the same week either one, two or three years ago so we can see how far we've come. So please enjoy this episode from days gone by and note the date in the intro. Refried beans. I like refried beans. That's why I want to try fried beans because maybe they're just as good and we're wasting time. Is wearing Daily beans. Daily Beans. Jelly beans. Daily beans. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Thursday, August 4, 2022. Today, Alex Jones's attorney accidentally hands over the entire contents of his phone to the Sandy hook lawyers. The January 6th committee is prepping to subpoena the Sandy Hook lawyers for that phone. The Department of Justice has subpoenaed White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin. The Department of Justice has sued Pete Navarro to hand over all communications he sent and received using a private email account. And President Biden has signed an executive order for Medicaid to pay for out of state abortions. I'm your host, Alison Gill. Holy news day, Batman. This was an incredible day. I said yesterday it's going to get, it's going to start to get pretty ramped up. And today did not disappoint. First of all, before I get into the news, I want to let you know that later on in the show, I'm going to be having a discussion with the author of Run for Something and the co founder of runforsomething.net Amanda Littman. She is awesome. You do not want to miss that conversation. We will have a lot of stuff you can do to help save democracy in that conversation. And as I noted at the top of the show, we do have a lot of news to get to. I actually penned this entire script because there's so much I did not want you to miss. And there's a lot that mainstream media is not telling you. And I think it's just because they, they didn't notice, but I did. So let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right. So today was the gift that kept on giving. So much so that I do not even know where to start. So I put all the headlines in a hat and I just picked it randomly. And we're going to start here with this story from abc. A federal grand jury has subpoenaed former Trump White House counsel Patsy Baloney. That's Pat Cipollone. In its investigation into the January 6th assault on the US Capitol and its investigations and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That's according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Speaking to ABC News, the sources told ABC that attorneys for Cipollone, like they did with the House select committee investigating January 6, are expected to engage in negotiations around any appearance while weighing concerns regarding potential claims of executive privilege. Now, it's been shown and decided by the appellate court that attorney client privilege does not apply to White House counsels when the person they're counseling is committing crime. So the crime fraud exception is a little bit different. Normally, a crime fraud exception would be that the attorney and the client are together communicating to further a conspiracy. But for White House counsel, it only has to be one sided, one guy criming. So that's in play. And I want you to remember that the move to subpoena Cipollone signals even a more dramatic escalation in the Justice Department's investigation, following appearances by senior members of Pence's staff before the grand jury a couple of weeks ago. And the former deputy counsel to President Trump has been subpoenaed as well. That's the deputy White House counsel in the criminal probe on January 6th. That's according to two sources familiar speaking to CNN. This is Pat Philbin. He was subpoenaed for testimony and documents, according to one of the sources. Philbin worked in the White House counsel's office under Pat Cipollone, as I said, who was also subpoenaed for documents and testimony. Executive privilege will play a role in the discussion over Philbin's grand jury testimony, as it has with recent grand jury testimony of Cipollone and vice presidential advisors Mark Short and Greg Jacob. But as usual, the media has failed to mention a story we covered last week that the Justice Department prosecutors are already prepping to fight in court to force former White House officials to testify about Trump's conversations and actions around January 6th. Confronting the privilege issue reflects the care with which the Justice Department is taking as it faces the unusual situation of investigating a former president. And it could bring about one of the first major court fights over the separation of powers in the January 6th criminal investigation. Philbin and Cipollone were both key witnesses to Trump's actions in the final days of his presidency. Cipollone repeatedly pushed back on efforts to overturn the election. That's according to Senate Judiciary Committee reports. He and Philbin opposed a proposal to replace the attorney general with someone willing to look into false claims of election fraud. We know that from his testimony to the January 6th select committee. The report said that both Philbin and Cipollone indicated that they would resign should such a plan be executed. Now, there was also some interesting testimony from Cipollone during a hearing that also, the media isn't mentioning this either. And this is where he was asked whether it was the president that disallowed Cipollone from joining a meeting. That meeting on January 4th between Eastman Pence, Trump and Jacob and Marc Short. He said, quote, I did walk to that meeting, but ultimately I did not attend. The reasons for that are privileged. Now, Philbin has already testified about the Capitol attack in a separate probe. Earlier this year, he appeared before the House select committee investigating January 6th. And during Cipollone's own testimony before the committee, he told investigators that on January 6, he was joined by a number of top Trump advisers, including Philbin, in pushing the former president to issue a strong condemnation of the attack. Now, according to Rolling Stone. And I want to point this out, too, Trump's prepping a defense to say, hey, my advisors told me to do this. I was taking their advice. I'm not culpable, much. Like in his tax thing, he was like, my accountants told me to do this. It's not me, it's them. However, the fact that he continually shut out these advisors, Hirschman, Justin Clark, Cipollone, Philbin shut them out from these meetings, including that Jan. 4 meeting, shows that he was kind of selecting his advisors and only allowing the ones who were giving him the illegal advice to continue to advise him. That is an overt act of willful blindness, in my opinion. I am not a lawyer, but that would be my argument to his defense, that he was being advised and he was only following advice. No, you weren't. Lots of reasonable people were giving you the opposite advice, and then you didn't like it, so you started to shut them out of meetings. Now, CNN reported last October that Philbin was at the time among a cadre of attorneys from the Trump White House, her campaign still at work for the former president and now focused on more narrow tasks, such as handling executive privilege discussions with the National Archives or communicating with potential ex White House witnesses called to Capitol Hill. And speaking of the National Archives, put a pin in this, because the Department of Justice has just sued Peter Navarro today to compel him to hand over emails he sent and received using a private email address. And the reason I'm connecting this to the National Archives is that the reason the Department of Justice knows that Navarro failed to hand over these private emails to the National Archives under the Presidential Records act is that the National Archives has emails from other administration officials showing Navarro's emails sent and received from ProtonMail and that Navarro failed to hand over his portions of those emails pursuant to the Presidential Records Act. The lawsuit has a lot of really important details in it that per usual, no one is mentioning. But I'm going to tell you about them. First example is what I just told you that the Department of Justice tells the court they know Navarro has emails because they have them from other people. But also the Department of Justice says in the filing that after months of trying to get these emails from Navarro, he asked for immunity. And the Department of Justice denied that request. That's why they're suing for the emails. Like we offered you a plea deal and you told us to off and now you want immunity. That's a no for me, dog. I'm paraphrasing now. The lawsuit opens with a brief intro that Navarro worked at the White House so he's, he's subject to the Presidential Records act and that his communications are also subject to the Presidential Records act, which I'm going to call the PRA from now on. And then they lay out the PRA and show that all of his communications and he fall under it. So that is the intro there. While serving in the White House, Mr. Navarro used at least one non official email account, an account hosted by the non official service protonmail, to send and receive messages constituting presidential records. Next, they tell the court that in 2017, White House counsel Don McGahn reminded everybody at the White House about the PRA. So Navarro can't claim he didn't know. In February 2017, they say the White House Counsel's office issued a memo to the White House personnel regarding the use of non official email accounts to conduct official business writing. If you ever send or receive an email that qualifies as a presidential record using any other account, for example, any other than the official government account given to you, you must preserve that email by copying it to your official EOP email or by forwarding it to your official email account within 20 days. Memorandum for all personnel through the White house counsel Don McGahn, and that's attached in Exhibit 1. Also in 2019, after new White House counsel was appointed, substantively identical guidance was reissued under the new Council's name. Then the DOJ outlines their due diligence. One of the reasons these investigations take so long is this due diligence part. Quote. Prior to filing this lawsuit, in an effort to avoid litigation, the Department of Justice counsel contacted Pete Navarro by email, official email, and United States mail to secure the presidential records that Mr. Navarro had not copied to his government email account. Discussions with Mr. Navarro's counsel to secure the return of presidential records ultimately proved unsuccessful. Mr. Navarro has refused to return any presidential records that he retained absent a grant of immunity for the act of returning such documents. And that's the second buried lead in this filing that no one seems to be mentioning. Navarro asked for immunity. Next we get to how the National Archives knew Navarro failed to hand his shit over. Quote, While serving in the White House, Navarro used at least one non official email account to send and receive messages that constitute presidential records. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis obtained copies of electronic messages from individuals other than Mr. Navarro as part of its investigation into the government's response to the Coronavirus pandemic. And those Messages reflect that Mr. Navarro used a non official email account, namely a ProtonMail account, to send and receive presidential records. Further, NARA's general counsel wrote to Pete and said, send us your shit. And they ignored that letter. Then we get to some interesting timeline shit, something else the media is not talking about. On June 1, 2022, Department of Justice counsel wrote Mr. Navarro a letter in an effort to secure the return of the presidential records without litigation. That letter is attached to this lawsuit. That June 1st date is interesting because Department of Justice subpoenaed Navarro on May 26. May 26, for all of his communications with Trump and Trump's lawyers and representatives. Department of justice does not mention their subpoena in this lawsuit, but they did give him till June 2 to comply with that subpoena and he refused. And they indicted him for contempt of Congress the next day, June 3rd. That the subpoena didn't come up in this lawsuit strengthens my take that the DOJ subpoena for his comms with Donald was targeting Donald and not him. This lawsuit is targeting him. On June 16, a couple weeks later, counsel from Mr. Navarro contacted the Department of Justice to advise that we just, you know, we were just retained by Navarro as counsel. That's when he got a lawyer. June 16th, Navarro's counsel represented. They retained a document review and analysis firm to aid them in evaluating the extent to which Mr. Navarro had PRA records in his possession, custody or control. So, hi, it's two weeks later. I'm the lawyer now. I've hired a firm to look through these documents to tell me if any of this shit is subject to the Presidential Records Act. I'll get back to you. DOJ says over the Next several weeks, Navarro's council provided periodic updates on the status of their search and analysis process. And in order to assist and expedite the search on July 18, a month later, NARA's general counsel provided Mr. Navarro's lawyer with a list of search terms. We have all the emails, bro. Let us help you out. Look for hydroxychloroquine. Look for this, look for that. That will help you find these emails that are subject to the Presidential Records act. And this is NARA's general counsel, their lawyer. They know what's subject to the Presidential Records Act. Now, NARA requested Navarro prioritize the return of any PRA records responsive to those search terms. They don't list the search terms here. Then a couple days later, in an email July 22, Navarro's lawyer represented that their application of the search parameters that NARA provided had generated about 1700 documents. Three days later, on July 25, Navarro's lawyer estimated that based on their review of these documents, there's about 200 to 250 that were PRA records, Presidential Records act records. And then another four days later, Mr. Navarro's lawyer refused to produce any of them to the National Archives unless y' all granted him immunity for the act of returning such records. So. Oh, yep, we have them. Yes. We have Presidential Records act records. Yep. We didn't turn them over. Yep. We failed to, you know, send them to the official email account in less than 20 days. We'll give them to you if you give us immunity. No, no. Nope. But that's the background. Then there's the counts. Count one, Navarro has possession, custody, control of presidential records which belong to the United states and under D.C. law, including the law of Rep. Levin, should be recovered and delivered to the United States. Count two, Navarro has in his possession custody and control records which belong to the United States. Under federal common law, they should be recovered and provided to the United States, and the United States should be awarded damages. And then there's the request for relief. First, issue a writ of replevin authorizing the recovery of any presidential records in the possession, custody or control of Mr. Navarro. B, issue an order requiring Navarro to cooperate with one, the official serving and implementing of the writ of replovin or two other similar order to ensure the return of the records to the United States. C, award damages to the United States as appropriate. D, award plaintiff costs and reasonable attorneys fees incurred in this action. Pay back the taxpayers for this fucking waste of time, you piece of shit. And E, award other relief as you deem just your honor. Then of Course, DOJ actually attached some of the emails. It has to show Navarro used a private account. There are back and forth emails between him and a guy named Steve Hatfill. And it's all about COVID response. Most of it is about hyping hydroxychloroquine. I'm kind of admitting that it doesn't work, but we should go with it. Interesting emails. I imagine the Department of Justice will win this suit, though. It seems they have enough now to charge Navarro with violating the Presidential Records Act. But they're suing him instead. Usually a lawsuit like this is in lieu of charges. I could be wrong, but that's what I've been told by experts. That's not my opinion. We'll see. We'll see what happens. And in other news about idiots refusing to hand over communications. Alex Jones is fucked. In an absolutely bizarre turn of events during his Sandy Hook defamation trial today, it was revealed to Alex Jones while he was on the stand that the entire contents of his phone for the past two to three years was accidentally sent to the Sandy Hook lawyers by Jones's incompetent lawyer. And that the contents of his phone prove that Alex had perjured himself. Let's listen to that incredible moment when Jones realizes that not only is he fucked, but so is anyone he communicated with in the past two to three years.