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.
Unknown (0:22)
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.
Alison Gill (0:31)
SW hello and welcome to the Daily Beans for Tuesday, November 30, 2021. Today, the January 6th committee will vote Wednesday to refer former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark for criminal contempt of Congress. The Department of Justice has filed to oppose Bannon's request to release evidence to the public. Matthew McConaughey says he will not run for the governor of Texas. And a little bit of schadenfreude for you. I'm Alison Gill.
Dana Goldberg (1:09)
And I'm Dana Goldberg.
Alison Gill (1:12)
I want to keep that schadenfreude a little bit of a surprise until it happens.
Dana Goldberg (1:15)
Not going to say a word. I'm not going to say a word. It's delicious, though, I'll tell you that, people. It is delicious.
Alison Gill (1:21)
It's quite tasty. And there's a lot going on today. I mean, we're not going to be able to have time to cover the thing with Lauren Boebert and the terrible phone call, bullshit apology she made to Ilhan Omar. And Ilhan Omar, she just doubled down and started talking about how Omar should make an apology and just a bunch of absolute bullshit. And so she hung up on her. And I'm glad she did. I'm glad she did, too, and rightfully so. And there's a lot of considerations that I'll be talking about today as far as filings in the Bannon case, what's going on with Meadows and Jeffrey Clark. And I'm going to be going into that in some more depth on Tomorrow's cleanup on L45 pod. But also later in the show with our guest today, who is the author of the book Compromised. My favorite spy hunter, Pete Struck, will join me to discuss what's going on with the Department of Justice. And he can lull you to sleep if you would like to listen to the podcast later. With his delightful voice, I've must have gotten 100 replies to the tweet that he's going to be on the show, that everyone just likes to listen to him talk. He's quite intelligent. He just also has adult, dulcet tones to his voice, I guess people are into it. So he'll be joining us later on for that. So with that in mind, with all of that in mind, let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right, top story today, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol moved on Monday to begin contempt of Congress proceedings against Jeffrey Clark. Sort of leapfrogged over Mark Meadows. We were all waiting to hear about that. First, Jeffrey Clark is a former Justice Department official involved in the, you know, Trump effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He's the guy who wrote the seven letters to the seven states saying we found corruption and you're voting. You should send a different slate of electors for Trump to, you know, for the certification on January 6th. That was part of, you know, Eastman and Ellis six point coup attempt that was like step three or something like that. And so he was trying to overturn the election. And they're setting a vote this week on recommending criminal charges for his refusal to cooperate with a subpoena from the panel. This vote would be the second such confrontation between the committee and an ally of Donald since Congress began investigating the circumstances surrounding the Capitol riot, including the former president's attempts to subvert the election. The House voted in October to recommend that another Trump associate, Steve Bannon, recommend he be charged with criminal contempt to Congress for stonewalling the inquiry. And a federal grand jury subsequently indicted him on two counts that could carry up to two years behind bars in total, with a minimum of two months. The House committee issued a subpoena in October seeking testimony and records from Mr. Clark. In early November, he appeared before the panel, but he just handed them a letter saying he wasn't going to say anything. That was a letter from his. His lawyer, Harry McDougald, saying that Clark was not going to answer any substantive questions. The letter cited attorney client privilege protecting Mr. Clark's conversations with Donald and argued the former Justice Department official was duty bound not to provide any testimony to your committee covering information protected by the former president's assertion of executive privilege, which doesn't exist. At the same time, the committee is considering what to do about a third potential witness. As I said, Mr. Meadows, that's Trump's former chief of staff, who has also refused to comply with the subpoena. The committee said that Mr. Meadows has refused to answer even basic questions, such as two plus two. No. Such as whether he was using a private cell phone to communicate on January 6th or private Gmail account and the location of his text messages from that day. Hmm. I imagine the committee may be waiting on Meadows to make a decision on Meadows for a couple of reasons, either maybe to see what happens with the appeals court decision or a hearing today in the Trump case against the National Archives and the Department of Justice and the executive branch and or one of yes, this and or possibly there are more executive privilege considerations for Meadows than there are for Clark because Merrick Garland waived privile for former DOJ officials. And of course, Meadows was the chief of staff. And as Ellie Hoenig just said to Wolf Blitzer, if executive privilege was created for anyone, it's created for the chief of staff. But Ellie went on to say, I don't think he's got any good privilege claims here, but there are definitely more considerations and it's more complicated. And while it's true that Biden waived privilege over Meadow's documents because of his proximity to the president, the executive branch, like I said, there's just going to be more hurdles to prepare for in case the Department of Justice indicts and goes to trial. The January 6 committee has said it will make a decision on Meadows later in the week.