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The Daily Beans
Refried | Servants of The Damned (feat. David Enrich) | 9/15/2025
00:26:19
Thursday, September 15th, 2022 Today, in the Hot Notes: John Durham appears to be wrapping up his investigation into the oranges of the Trump/Russia investigation, his report is expected by the end of the year; the FBI served a warrant on pillowman, Cyber Symposium organizer, and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell in connection to the charges Tina Peters, the Mesa County, Colorado is facing regarding a scheme that allegedly allowed an unauthorized person to access voting machines; plus an interview with journalist and author David Enrich.
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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.
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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. Daily Beans.
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Daily Beans.
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Daily Beans. Daily Beans.
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Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Thursday, September 15, 2022. Today, Pillow Man Mike Lindell says the FBI seized his phone at a restaurant. Meta Judge Amit Meta Bench slapped Stuart Rhodes again. And the Durham investigation into the oranges of the Trump Russia investigation is winding down. I'm your host, Alison Gill. Hey, y', all, we got a little bit of an abbreviated show today. I'll be traveling back to the left coast, to the best coast, and I'll be in the air most of the day. So I'm just going to give you what headlines we have so far this morning. And, you know, maybe, maybe we'll get another airplane update from me when we're in the air. Who knows, There could be a lot more news still to come today. We'll know later. But for now, oh, by the way, little bit later in this show, I'm going to be talking with the author of the new book Servants of the Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice. So that's David Enrich. You do not want to miss that interview. Okay, now let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. And speaking of servants of the damned, giant law firm's Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice. When John Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019, Bill Barr to examine the oranges, the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign's ties to Russia. Don Trump and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a deep state conspiracy, including top Obama era officials, had worked to sabotage him. And all of the MAGA heads thought for sure Obama and Hillary and all of them would end up in gitmo. Well, now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three year investigation without anything close to the results Trump wanted. The grand jury that Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired. And while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so. Mr. Durham and his team are working to complete a final report by the end of the year, they say. And one of the lead prosecutors on his team is leaving for a job with a prominent law firm. Over the course of his inquiry, Durham has developed a case against two people accused of lying to the FBI in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump Russia ties. But he has not charged any conspiracy, nor put any high level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest the chances of any more indictments are slim to none. After Durham's team completes its report, it will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide whether to make its findings public. The report will be Mr. Durham's opportunity to present any evidence or conclusions that challenged the Justice Department's basis for opening the investigation in 2016 into the links between Trump and Russia. And it will also be full of propaganda and lies, I'm sure, as most of his filings have been. We've covered these. The Justice Department has declined to comment. Durham and his team used a grand jury in Washington to indict Mike Sussman, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Sussmann was indicted last year on a charge of making one false statement to the FBI at a meeting, which he shared a tip about a potential connection between Alpha bank servers and the ones in Trump Tower. Sussmann was acquitted, just like we knew he would be. It was a weak charge. There was no material lie and there was only one witness in his story. He had three different ones anyway. A grand jury based in the Eastern District of Virginia last year indicted a Russian analyst who who worked with Chris Steele, a former British spy who was the author of the dossier. As we know and now, the dossier played no role in the FBI's decision to begin examining the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. It was used as an application to obtain a search warrant to surveil a Trump campaign associate, Carter Page. The analyst, Igor Danchenko, who was accused of lying to federal investigators, goes on trial next month in Alexandria. Probably going to be acquitted, too. He's trying to get Sergei Milian to fly in from Russia and testify, and he's not. It's a shit show of a case. Now, in a third case, Durham's team negotiated a plea deal with an FBI lawyer whom an inspector general had accused of doctoring an email used in preparation for a wiretap renewal application. That's the Carter Page FISA application. The plea deal resulted in no prison time. Mr. Trump and his allies have long hoped that Durham would prosecute former FBI and intelligence officials responsible for the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. Trump has described the investigation as a witch hunt. And accused the FBI of spying on his presidential campaign. And last month, in the days after the FBI obtained a search warrant to seize boxes of classified documents at his house, Trump used social media to amplify the unsubstantiated idea that Durham had uncovered a vast political conspiracy by the Obama administration and the intelligence community to damage him. He even sued Hillary Clinton and Andy McCabe and Pete Strzok, and that lawsuit was thrown out by a Southern District Florida judge. He was actually trying to get Eileen Cannon for that case, but he didn't. Now, at the same time, the former president seemed to acknowledge a lowering of expectations, though, when on his social media, there's a vast criminal underground, deep state conspiracy involving all the people that I sued and everybody and everyone's connected to the Hillary campaign. But he also said the public is, you know, he sort of tamped down expectations because he knows there's fucking nothing there. The public is waiting with bated breath for the Durham report, which should reveal corruption at a level never seen before in our country, he wrote. It's probably not going to do that. And if Garland doesn't release it, they'll say they're covering it up. And if he does release it, they'll say we somehow doctored it or there's missing stuff. It's. Or they'll take what's in there that, you know, Durham has spun and make big deals out of it Anyway, next up Tuesday, the FBI apparently paid a visit, as Peter Navarro puts it, to the Pillow man and served him with a grand jury subpoena for the contents of his phone as part of an investigation into a Colorado election security breach. Lindell shared on social media and conservative media copies of a subpoena he said he was served by the FBI. In an interview with cnn, Lindell said agents asked him questions about Tina Peters, the Mesa County, Colorado, clerk who's facing state charges connected to a scheme that allegedly allowed an unauthorized person to access voting machines. Peters has pled not guilty. And we knew that. I knew that the day was coming for Pillow man here in the Tina Peters case because it was his cyber symposium that those data were put on public screens. Remember when the kid, the hacker guy, as he was talking about this voter, stolen voter data being shown on screen, he had got a call from his lawyer while he was, like, doing the cyber symposium, and his lawyer told him to hang up the phone, get off the video, and leave the thing immediately. That data was stolen, and it was stolen by Tina Peters, who helped. And now we've got, I mean, there's, there's video of the same kind of behavior going on down in Georgia as well. So this is. Lindell was the next obvious step. The FBI is also investigating the security breach episode that CNN has reported. Lindell said the FBI encounter occurred Tuesday afternoon while he was in his car to drive through at a Hardee's restaurant in Minnesota. Blow it out your hair do because you work at Hardee's. On his Internet show, the Lindell Report, he said cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us and behind us. And I said, these are either bad guys or the FBI. Well, it turns out they were the FBI. Lindell told CNN the agents presented him with a subpoena and asked for his phone. On his Internet show, Lindell said he goes, well, I got some bad news. He goes, we're taking your cell phone. We have a warrant for your cell phone. So it wasn' twas it a subpoena or a warrant? I'm confused. Lindell initially objected and consulted his attorney, but then relented and provided the device to agents. I want to say this. They were pretty nice guys. None of them had an attitude, pillow man said. Lindell told CNN he initially believed agents were serving him with a subpoena as part of a large sweep of investigative activity in recent days relating to the 16 investigation. Agents told him it was unrelated. I said, come on, bring me to January 6, he said he told the agents, I want to be a part of that show. Hmm. Lindell said the subpoena warned against disclosure. They thought they were in. They thought they were there to intimidate me. They won't intimidate me is what Lindell said an FBI spokesperson told cnn. Without commenting on specific matters, I can confirm the FBI was at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge. So it was a search warrant. There's your answer. CNN has reached out to Peter's attorney for any comment, but they haven't gotten any. And a federal judge in D.C. found it mystifying that Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes would make a last ditch request for the appointment of a special with trial just a couple weeks away. This is Judge Amit Mehta. He began pretrial conferences Wednesday after 9:30am by saying he hoped to address the motions filed in recent days by Rhodes and to talk about jury selection and courtroom space ahead of the September 27th seditious conspiracy trial. Mehta, who's an Obama appointee, explained that he denied the request to appoint a special master because he had no idea what the purpose would be. He also denied a trial delay, noting the government has consistently been providing discovery. The judge, pushing back on Rhodes contention that there's not been adequate time to prepare for a trial, noted that the issue of the trial date has been settled since May. The request for a Special master filed by Rhodes attorney Edward Tarpley as Rhodes attempted to part ways with his attorney Philip Linder and James Bright, creating a dueling defense lawyer scenario on the docket. Bright confirmed Tarpley is not the lead attorney on the case, but Judge Mehta allowed him to join and can file his own motions. In one such motion, Tarpley insisted there simply hasn't been enough time to prepare the most massively complicated case in history. It would be like a Little League team facing the Yankees. Tarpley further asserted that a special master was needed to help manage discovery, a discovery his client claims has been sorely lacking. But Meta was clear. He said you've been receiving electronic discovery in a way no other defendant has. I reject it out of hand completely, meta said of the notion that Rhodes hasn't had access to discovery. Questioning the good faith of the motion, Mehta said that a special master request filed for no apparent purpose and for no apparent reason a week before trial is mystifying. He also said he didn't know what was meant by the request for a special master to administer digital discovery in the case. And he further suggested it was an odd decision for Rhodes to hire a Louisiana lawyer to assist with a purported discovery access issue. You told me last week you were here in good faith. I'm starting to question that, the judge said. All right, we'll be right back with David Enrich. You don't want to miss it. Stick around after these messages.
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We'll be right back.
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Everybody. Welcome back. I am happy today to be joined by youy remember him. He wrote Dark Towers, David Enrich. His new book, Servants of the Damned Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice. Incredible read. David, welcome.
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Thank you.
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So wow, I am so glad that you did this book and how is it to see sort of a lot of this stuff come to life in recent news, especially with I mean, you know, there's a lot of Jones Day big law firms. We'll be talking about a lot of them that won't touch Donald Trump anymore, but they sure used to and so talk a little bit about how that's sort of evolved now since the book came out.
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Yeah, it's been a really kind of surreal to watch it and there Jones Day, which is one of the World's largest law firms had since 2015, been representing the Trump campaign. It still is representing the Republican Party and some of Trump's political action committees. And it's just been very bizarre to see how the entire legal establishment has gone from being somewhat okay with Trump to being not so okay with Trump. And here's don't stay one of the loan holdouts which as recently as a month or two ago was still receiving money from him and his kind of affiliated political action committees. And you can see the way that those connections are playing out in real time. And I think there is, you know, I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the one of the special master nominees that the Trump's lawyers put forward is a longtime former Jones Day partner. And this is a law firm that has become completely ensconced in the right wing movement at this point. And it's a very reliable firm to turn to.
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Yeah, well, one of the only ones left, right?
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Yeah, that's right.
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And you go into a lot of the inner workings, too, which I think is really fascinating, you know, with all of the alleged misconduct that happens there, the sort of autocratic management style which matches the government that the folks who hire Jones Day these days are trying to look for, are trying to get. And then also, you know, you mentioned the pac, that Save America PAC is now under federal criminal investigation with nearly 40 subpoenas going out last week, not all of them for, you know, in connection, direct connection with that PAC money, but so many lawyers being hired and paid for by Donald. And that sort of is a reflection, I guess, of the obstructive nature, the obstructing justice that he's kind of been doing for a really long time with the help of some of these lawyers.
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Yeah. And I think to me, the fascinating thing about doing this, spending a couple of years reporting and then writing this book is that I had kind of had the legal industry, the legal profession up on a little bit of a pedestal. You know, my dad is a lawyer and taught me about the majesty of the law. And so seeing what it has become and the role that these giant law firms with a particular focus on Jones Day, but in general, the legal industry has really, in many ways, I think, lost its way and has been willing to essentially do whatever it takes to either make as much money as possible or to amass as much power as possible. And that almost by definition necessitates getting in bed with some unsavory characters and also going above and beyond what you or I think would consider to be the normal call of duty for a lawyer doing things that are really borderline, I think, is a safe way to put it.
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Yeah. And let's talk a little bit about some of those borderline tactics because there are a lot of aggressive ones that Jones Day's lawyers have used in the past. Let's talk about some of those examples that you use in the book.
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Yeah. I mean, there's far too many to get into here. But it ranges from representing big tobacco companies, basically threatening people that if they cooperate with authorities who are investigating the tobacco companies, that they could face real issues. Telling plaintiffs in lawsuits against the tobacco companies that their very personal dirty laundry might be aired in public if they go forward with the lawsuits. And one case study involving Abbott Labs, which is the company that makes baby formula, I've come across a lot of what a federal judge told me were very abusive practices as Jones Day tried to steamroll families whose infants had been brain damaged after consuming powdered formula. And the list of that kind of stuff goes on and on and on. To me, though, one of the more remarkable and more current episodes involved the Trump administration when Jones Day, more than any other law firm, I think, in history, was represented by dozens of its lawyers in the upper echelons of both the White House, the Justice Department and other federal agencies. And so that allowed Jones Day, when its corporate clients were facing trouble with the government, they could go Jones. They could go to its very recently departed lawyers who are now ensconced in the upper echelons of the Justice Department, and try to win favor for their clients. We saw that play out a couple of years ago with a case in which Walmart was under criminal and civil investigation for its reckless marketing and sales of opioids. And Jones, they pulled out of a tap, like basically just the best Rolodex imaginable. And it managed to secure meetings at the very top of the Justice Department for its client and managed to delay and derail, in fact, a criminal investigation into the company in part by tapping those connections.
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Yeah. And. Well, we saw that with Rudy being able to get meetings with important people at the top of the Justice Department. Now we've got Jeffrey Berman coming out with his book talking about how a lot of the folks, as you said, ensconced to high up in the Justice Department were able to put their fingers on the scales in a lot of cases to shut them down or start them up. The Gregory Craig case, they wanted to go after Kerry. Right. Which is just because of the Iran nuclear deal that he was trying to hold together at the last minute there.
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What surprises me, and I think is a little bit different, though, about this, is that there is corporate law firms of any size and credibility are really supposed to be playing according to a slightly different and more restrained and refined set of rules. And so part of the reason I was so interested in looking into these big law firms is that I had a hunch, based on my experience covering business for a long time, that these law firms were doing a lot of pretty aggressive things behind the scenes. And so it's been really interesting to see how, to me, it's maybe not that surprising that Rudy Giuliani is doing things that you and I would think are pretty bonkers. I was a lot more surprised to see a reputable international law firm who is, you know, a multibillion dollar institution with thousands of lawyers.
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Oh, we know. That's who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people inside the Justice Department who formerly worked for Jones Day that were able to get him and his meeting and, you know, move these pieces behind the scenes at the Justice Department on behalf of these criminal. I wasn't talking about Rudy as a lawyer. I was talking about him as a criminal. But you that it's hard to keep.
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All these things straight.
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And it's not Jones Day now. But you know, the lawyer at the firm where Jim Trustee comes from or, you know, we try to, we like to on, on some of our shows, expose those big law firms, those big white shoe law firms that are actually doing this because, you know, while we agree everybody, you know, deserves, you know, a really robust and great defense attorney, a lot of these are civil cases that we're talking about.
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Yes.
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You know, and a lot of them.
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Aren'T even cases at all. Right. I mean, one of the things that these are issues where the law firm is trying to water down or avoid regulations or trying to evade taxes or help its client evade taxes or trying to kind of bully potential whistleblowers or plaintiffs or witnesses into submission. And so. Right. We can have like an intellectual argument. Not you and me, but lawyers at a White 2 firm. And I can have an intellectual argument about what exactly is a lawyer's ethical obligation to represent people who are under siege by the government or private parties. But that's not even what we're talking about here for the most part. This is stuff that's really ethical, extra judicial in that sense.
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Yeah. And now let's talk about something that's extremely judicial with Jones Day, Don McGahn and the once in a generation reshaping of the federal judiciary, which we are again seeing the impact of as we watch what Judge Eileen Cannon and her absolutely lawless rulings are doing down in Southern District of Florida. We've got the now the Supreme Court and then a lot of these cases are going to, this case is going to go to the 11th Circuit, which has six Trump nominees on it. Let's talk a little bit about the reshaping of the federal judiciary because that is something that is, you know, while these cases are one off cases, when we talk about Abbott Laboratories or the tobacco companies or anything that's going on with some of the stuff that you bring up in the book, that judiciary is generations.
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Yeah, it's generations. And it's in large part the handiwork of Don McGahn and his hand picked band of brothers from Jones Day. And even before Trump won the election, Jones Day, along with the Federalist Society, was playing this pivotal role in betting and selecting a group of high powered judicial nominees that would really appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party. And once Trump got elected, McGahn was named his White House counsel. Obviously, he brought into the White House with him about 10 or 12 of his colleagues from Jones Day, and he had secured basically a promise from Trump that Unlike past presidencies, McGahn would have virtually unfettered authority to be the one selecting who the White House nominated for not only the Supreme Court, but for the scores of appeals court and district court openings of the federal bench. And lo and behold, a number of Doanes Day lawyers got named to those courts. And Doanes Day has now more than ever been itself arguing cases before the Supreme Court. And they were, they brought the case last year that led the Supreme Court to knock down the Biden administration's moratorium on evictions during the pandemic. They had a role just recently in the recent term on the big EPA case, which essentially tied the hands of federal regulators to oversee things like carbon emissions. And these are cases that are being decided by a Supreme Court where two of the justices were literally selected by Don McGahn. And the third, Amy Coney Barrett, was someone who McGahn, while he was White House counsel, was plucked out of academic obscurity onto an appeals court with the pretty clear understanding that she would one day be nominated to the Supreme Court. And all the while, a number of the Jones Day lawyers are kind of socially interacting with justices like Barrett. And I captured a really interesting scene just the day after Roe was overturned, actually, where Amy Coney Barrett went up to New York for the 50th birthday of one of the most senior lawyers at Jones Day and was there mingling with Noel Francisco, who was the former Trump administration Solicitor general himself of Jones Day partner, who was overseeing a group of lawyers who literally at that moment had a case pending before the Supreme Court. So is that ethically or legally improper? Probably not. Does it raise cause my eyebrows to kind of go up? Yes, it does. And I think for a court that's trying to maintain the appearance of neutrality and even handedness, that's maybe not the best.
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Look, before I let you go, what do you think the motive here is? Is it just straight money or does it have to do with a little bit of this Christo fascist sort of nation building that seems to be going on behind the scenes at Jones Day?
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Well, I would describe it slightly differently. I don't think it's about money mostly. I mean, I think money's part of it. You know, they're representing big corporate companies that want lawyers to have access to the highest levels of power. But I think more than that, it's ideology. And Jones Day's leader, and for the very most part, the people surrounding him at the top of the law firm are conservative Catholics who have a very clear worldview. And it's a worldview that aligns almost perfectly with those of the justices and the federal judges that were selected and are now going to be with us for generations to come.
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Gross. Thanks for that. No, but, you know, I mean, you know, now we're working very hard to expand the court, expand the bench, put people that never worked at Jones Day on the bench. Well, we don't want to completely block anyone out, but it's very interesting and I'm glad that you said that because I think that the ideology has a lot to do with it. And it's interesting that these conservative Catholics would use someone like a Donald Trump or just a completely non Catholic, non religious, disgusting, evil human being to help advance their agenda. And then their agenda includes things that hurt people. It's just absolutely beyond me how they square that circle, you know?
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Yeah, I'm not going to go there, but I definitely understand what you're saying. And I do think it's really fascinating and quite unusual, probably unprecedented for a single law firm and its leaders to have exerted nearly as much influence, not only over one presidential administration, but over the entire, kind of the entire federal judicial system.
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Yeah, 100%. I appreciate your time today. The book is called servants of the giant law firms, Donald Trump and the corruption of justice. It's more relevant now than ever before. Grab your copy. And I appreciate your time today. And while you're at it, get Dark Towers. Really, really incredible book. David Enrich, thank you for your time. Thanks for having me, everybody. Thank you for tuning in today. I'll be back with Dana tomorrow in your ears with the good news on the beans. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, and vote blue over Q. I've been ag and them's the beans.
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Refried beans.
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I like refried beans.