← UnJustified
UnJustified
Fascism in Action
01:10:12
The FBI executed a search warrant on the Fulton County Georgia Election Offices with Director of National Intelligence Tusli Gabbard in tow. Four journalists including Don Lemon were arrested by the Justice Department and charged with conspiracy against rights and threat of force to impede religious freedom The US Attorney’s office in Minneapolis is in crisis over concerns that they were being asked to execute orders that went against the department’s mission and best practices. AG: and members of the Pulitzer Prize Board have sued Donald Trump for documents and communications surrounding the Mueller investigation that are still being kept secret. Plus listener questions…
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- [00:02]
A
It's no surprise that newsmakers try to manipulate the audience. They want you to believe that they are the one holding the line, and they'll use any trick they can to get you there. But don't let them fool you. Get Unspun I'm Amanda Sturgel. I've been a reporter, and today I teach future reporters to cut the spin and think critically about what newsmakers say. My podcast, Unspun, shows you how to know when you're being manipulated by the news, learn to spot the tricks, and how to make up your own mind about what's true. So if you're tired of being fooled by the news, subscribe to UNSPUN today. Unspun because you deserve the truth. MSW Media.
- [00:46]
B
The FBI executed a search warrant on the Fulton County, Georgia, election offices with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in tow.
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A
Four journalists, including Don Lemon, were arrested by the Justice Department and charged with conspiracy against rights and threat of force to impede religious freedom.
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B
The U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis is in a crisis over concerns that they were being asked to execute orders that went against the department's mission and best practices.
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A
And members of the Pulitzer Prize board have sued Donald Trump for documents and communications surrounding the Mueller investigation that are still being kept. This is unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 54 of Unjustified. It's Sunday, February 1st, 2026. I'm Alison Gill.
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B
And I'm Andy McCabe. Holy crap, Allison. What a week. Geez. Since our last episode, I mean. Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Preddy was shot, gunned down, killed by law enforcement. I could say murdered, although no one's been accused or convicted of murder yet. But it sure as heck looked like that from the video coverage that we saw. Gunned down by two Customs and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, the first DOJ Civil Rights Division said it would not be opening an investigation into the shooting. But on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch said they had opened a civil rights investigation. However, according to the New York times, the Minneapolis U.S. attorney's office is in a spiraling crisis.
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A
Yeah, again, as it was after the murder of Renee Goode, Alan Foyer and Glenn Thrush write for the Times. The two fatal shootings in Minneapolis this month, captured on video, have shocked the country and spurred a backlash from Mr. Trump's habitually acquiescent allies in Congress. So far, however, the department has largely stuck to the playbook it has learned from the president, issuing procedures embraced by recent administrations that are intended to foster accountability in favor of the tactical bellicosity pressed by Mr. Trump and his top aide, Stephen Miller, who's the real president, let's be honest, and the architect of his hardline immigration policy.
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B
Attorney General Pam Bondi and her chief deputy, Todd Blanche, have resisted calls to authorize civil rights investigations into the immigration agent who killed Renee Good, a mother of three shot in early January behind the wheel of her car. They have yet to make any final determination about whether prosecutors now will investigate the killing of Alex Preddy, an intensive care nurse who died on Saturday in a hail of bullets as he came to the aid of a fellow protester. They are awaiting the results of two internal inquiries by Homeland Security investigators with the FBI, according to senior federal law enforcement officials.
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A
Well, that's interesting because the first reporting that we got was that DHS was icing out the FBI in this particular case. Now, in the interim, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanch have tried to refocus public attention on the aggressive tactics of demonstrators. They have also pushed prosecutors and the FBI to turn up the heat on critics of the immigration crackdown, like politicians, protesters, journalists, and even relatives of the victims. This strategy has left the U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis, one of the most respected in the nation, in crisis. On Tuesday, prosecutors in the office's criminal division confronted The Trump appointed U.S. attorney, Daniel Rosen, an aide to Todd Blanche. They confronted him over concerns that they were being asked to execute orders that went against the department's mission and best practices. And that's according to four people briefed on the exchange.
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B
Some of the prosecutors suggested they were considering resigning in protest, those people said, days after six others had quit over similar concerns. Their departures would exacerbate a staffing shortfall that has already forced the department to shift prosecutors from other jurisdictions to bolster the depleted ranks in Minnesota.
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A
Yeah, and I have to say, Andy, somebody put let me see if I can find this. I know Joyce Vance posted about it over on the social media app bluesky. She I guess it was Chad Meisel and Steven Miller reposted it and he said if you're a lawyer and you're interested being a U.S. attorney and support Trump, DM me. We need good prosecutors and DOJs hiring across the country. And Joyce is like DM me. We used to get hundreds of highly qualified applicants for a single job posting. Good prosecutors are increasingly hesitant to work for this Department of Justice, so they are putting posts on Twitter to see if they can get DMS to Meiselle to be a US Attorney.
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B
Unbelievable.
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A
Unthinkable yeah, that's just banana.
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B
Unthinkable.
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A
Now, at the same time, the department opened a separate inquiry targeting elected Democrats in the state, as we know, Tim Walls, Jacob Fry of Mayor of Minneapolis, to investigate whether they had taken actions to impede immigration agents. They also moved aggressively to charge the journalist Don Lemon in connection with a demonstration at a Church in St. Paul, even though a federal judge later determined that there was no evidence that he committed any crimes and put a pin in that. We're going to talk about those journalists in a moment. But few, if any, of these actions have been taken without the knowledge of the White House. Trump aides participated in the drafting of a threatening letter that Ms. Bondi sent to local officials last week, saying the administration would wind down its immigration enforcement efforts, but only in exchange for concessions, including handing over state voter rolls. That's according to a person familiar. So the news there, kind of a buried lead, is that Trump aides in the White House helped Pam Bondi write that ransom note.
- [06:50]
B
Of course. Of course they did. The attorney General has focused much of her attention on a protest at the church service in St Paul this month, which Mr. Lemon and his producer documented. The Justice Department brought charges against three of the demonstrators, but failed to get warrants to arrest five more, including Mr. Lemon, a frequent target of Mr. Trump's ire. And I should say there, Allison, that Don Lemon was actually not there as a protester, the way that that's. That paragraph kind of suggests he was here simply performing his journalistic function of documenting what was happening. The case has badly soured relations between the department and the chief federal judge in Minnesota, gentleman named Patrick J. Schlitz, a staunch Republican who once clerked for Antonin Scalia. In an extraordinary rebuke last week, Judge Schlitz fought back as the department sought to force him to issue arrest warrants for Mr. Lemon and his producer, calling the effort frivolous and rejecting the idea that either one had committed crimes.
- [07:55]
A
Yeah, and Harmeet Dhillon, who's the head of the Civil Rights Division, and I put that in air quotes. She's also a former Trump election lawyer, has also weighed in on the church case, despite saying little about the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Preddy, incidents that her unit would typically investigate. She said, we're going to pursue this, the church thing, we're going to pursue this to the ends of the earth. And she said this in an interview with podcaster Megyn Kelly. I like how they stick podcaster right in front of her name. Almost as if it's an insult like Y in New York Times. In her remarks, Ms. Dylan, who went after the federal judge who first refused to issue an arrest warrant for Mr. Lemon, noting he was married to someone who works for Keith Ellison, the Democratic state attorney general under scrutiny in a different department inquiry. Ms. Bondi was back in Minnesota on Wednesday. Last Wednesday, to oversee the filing of charges against 16 protesters accused of interfering with law enforcement officers, even as Mr. Rosen grappled with a potential staff revolt. And she celebrated the move on social media by posting photos of the defendants. 16 people who went into the city's church, as opposed to the 1500 violent, armed with flag poles and riot shields and bear spray protesters who went into the Capitol on January.
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B
The United States Capitol.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Yeah. Now, I don't think that anyone in the city's church smeared feces on the walls, but I think we're still waiting for some follow up reporting on that. Yeah, no, we're not.
- [09:33]
B
Since they put the reporter in jail, we might be waiting a while. Okay. So last weekend, state investigators concerned that the Trump administration might destroy evidence of Mr. Preddy's killing, obtained an extraordinary court order forcing federal officials to preserve the scene of Mr. Perddy's death. And I mean, like, I don't even know what to say here. We had a listener question last week asking about how state prosecutors would go about obtaining evidence from the federal government. It seems as though a court order to preserve that evidence is the first step in that process. And Allison, I gotta say, like, I didn't suggest that in response to the question last week because it is so unthinkable, unthinkable that any person or entity in this country would have to go in front of a federal judge and ask for that judge to order the Department of Justice to not destroy evidence is. Is like, right. Is crazy. I mean, because that's their job. Anyway.
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A
I had asked you if the FBI had ever gotten a warrant or from a judge to hand over evidence. And you're like, no, that has never happened ever in the entirety of my career, in decades long career in the FBI. But it seems that, and you know, we were talking about the Renee Good case last week, but now we're talking about the Alex Preddy murder. But it seems like if you are going to issue a warrant to get evidence from the federal government, step one is a preservation order, which it seems that they've gotten.
- [11:08]
B
So apparently it is. And honestly, this is so insulting to any federal agent, anybody, certainly in the FBI or the Department of Justice, that you would have that a judge would think it necessary to tell you, department of justice, you are hereby ordered to not violate the law. I mean, it's just like it's upside down world, but that's where we live now. So, yeah, that's crazy.
- [11:32]
A
Especially given all of the court orders that aren't being followed right now in Minneapolis. I know a judge, it was actually Judge Schlitz who you just mentioned when he, he was, he was going to hold a contempt hearing against Todd Lyons for not following one of his court orders by releasing somebody that was ordered released from ICE detention. And he said, you, you can cure this contempt if you release this person. So they did release the person. And Judge Schlitz could have just issued an order saying, contempt cured. No hearing on Friday, because there was a Friday hearing scheduled. A contempt hearing scheduled for, for Todd Lyons, the, the ICE chief. He could have just issued a one sentence thing. Oh, contempt cured by. But no, he wrote like four pages. And in it he said, I asked all these really incredibly busy judges to tell me all the court orders that have been defied. And there's probably tons missing from this list. But since January 1, 2026, this month, one month, we have 96 orders that were failed to be followed in 74 cases. And I think he said, you know, ICE is not a law in, you know, unto itself. But then he said that there were more court orders defied by this agency in one month than many agencies have in the entire existence of the agency. Like he laid it out. And this is again, staunch conservative, clerked for Scalia, GW Bush appointee. So that's where we're at.
- [13:04]
B
I was going to say, as you were going through the stats there, I was going to say, like, if you had told me 10 years ago that any government agency violated 96 court orders in a 10 year period, I would have been stunned. I'm like, oh my God, how are those people not in jail yet? It is unbelievable. But it's, you know, we've had so much hope and faith in the courts to be kind of the final bulwark of holding people accountable and demanding on adherence to the rule of law. And in so many ways that's true, but in other ways that's not being reported about, people aren't thinking about, it's cracking. The whole system is cracking. We hear and talk about these bold decisions by Republican judges to go against the administration or democratically appointed judges to go against the administration. But if you look at the numbers, the Times published an article on this, a Couple weeks ago, Trump appointed federal judges rule with the Trump administration something like 80 something percent of the time. There's lots and lots of rulings that are going that way. And now of the ones that go against the administration, if you see from this point, many of them are just ignored.
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A
Right? Laws are only as good as the people who follow them. The court system holds up because we follow what they say, we're supposed to do what they say. And but that presumption of regularity is, is gone. And we've been talking about that here on this show for months now. Check this out, Andy. An aide to Todd Blanche named Colin McDonald has emerged as a central player in the department's counterattack against Minnesota officials and peaceful protesters. Colin McDonald, who is close to Stephen Miller, has taken on a supervisory role, coordinating with top officials at the FBI and hsi, that's Homeland Security Department's investigative arm, to streamline and speed up prosecutions of protesters. Now, on Wednesday, Trump tapped him to run a White House controlled investigation into Minnesota daycare facilities because all of the white collar prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office bailed. They were, they left. Now he has worked this Colin guy. Colin McDonald has worked closely with a guy named Akash Singh who oversees the operations of U.S. attorney's offices across the country to find evidence sufficient to justify issuing grand jury subpoenas to Walls Fry, Keith Ellison Moriarty at the the Hennepin County DA's office and others. And that's according to people familiar with the situation. And if Akash Singh sounds familiar, he's about to get his patootie handed to him in court in Judge Crenshaw's court in the Middle District of Tennessee. Because Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice in the Kilmer Abrego case have said over and over again that it was Maguire, the US Attorney in Tennessee, who made the sole decision, all by himself, no one else involved, to charge Mr. Abrego with these two counts of human smuggling from a traffic stop in 2022 where he didn't get as much as a ticket. Now they actually have emails which they found through discovery in a vindictive and selective prosecution subsection of this trial. That, that Mr. Singh, who is a deputy to, to Todd Blanche in the D in the DAG office, the deputy Attorney General office email saying we got to, you know, I can't remember them word for word off the top of my head. But the got to coordinate with Mr. Maguire. This is a top priority for the Deputy Attorney General's office is to charge Kilmar AG when they have those emails. Now, that vindictive and selective prosecution hearing that was supposed to take place this past Friday, January 28, was cancelled due to inclement weather. But I'm assuming it will go forward at some point when the storm passes. And I mean that literally. It sounds foreboding, but when the weather gets better. So that's just an interesting tidbit about Mr. Singh, who is now working closely with US attorneys offices across the country to help get these grand jury subpoenas for Walls and Fry and Ellison and Moriarty.
- [17:30]
B
Yeah, and here's what I have to say about that. I get it with people in Minnesota, the US Assistant US Attorneys considering resigning and have always supported people who have made the decision to do that. If you hit your red line, you can't stomach what's being asked of you.
- [17:46]
A
Because you should generally, they come at you and say, do this illegal thing or I'll fire you. And then they resign.
- [17:50]
B
They resign. So it's been the practice of this administration to then reach out to far flung jurisdictions and other places and bring Assistant ADAs or Assistant US Attorneys in. Here's what I have to say to those people who got the request and are thinking about coming in and filling in for people who had to resign and protest. If you do that, there should be a chorus of former DOJ people saying, making the same comment right now. If you do that, you should go down in infamy as one of the collaborators. If you come in and try to fill the gaps, to try to. You are willing to comply with this administration's illegal, immoral, anti. Rule of law demands you should go down in infamy with the collaborators that history has, you know, has shown. You know, like Vichy France. Right. You are complicit in what is happening and that should be remembered. The decision you made to participate, to do these things. And it should hang over your career for the rest of your life as a cloud. The same way that Robert Bork was. Right. Bork is infamously the guy who stood up to stick around and pilot the ship after the Saturday Night Massacre in the Nixon administration. He was the one guy at DOJ who was high enough up who said, I'll do it. I don't care that you fired everybody who stood up for law and morality and doing the right thing. I'll be the guy who stays and does the bad thing. That's what these imported assistant U.S. attorneys. That's the imprimatur that they should carry around. It's disgusting.
- [19:32]
A
Right? And I think that that kind of thing is what leads to Meisel putting a post on Twitter saying, DM me if you want to be in a usa. Because all of the lawyers we have have been disbarred or, you know, have we fired the good ones? And the. And the ones that would be willing to do everything that we wanted to do have been, like, disbarred.
- [19:51]
B
People's argument is, well, you know, if all the good ones leave, then no one will be there to do good work. Well, you know what? Let them hire a bunch of morons who are out there looking for their U.S. attorney job on Twitter. Let them bring in a bunch of Lindsey Halligans who don't know how to even stand in front of a grand jury and present a case. Let them fail. Let them fail.
- [20:11]
A
Yeah. And in response to the. They should stay and fight. They don't really have a choice in all of these situations. Like I said, they are told, you must issue a warrant for the arrest of a journalist for black journalists in Minneapolis, or we will fire you. And so they opt to resign because they aren't going to do that thing. And then they would just be fired. So it's not a situation where they're just leaving, obeying in advance, as it were. Right. They've come to the red line. And you can't really expect a good lawyer with ethics and their obligation to the bar to step over that line. And I wouldn't expect anyone to do it either.
- [20:51]
B
It would be awesome if all of them or some of them or just one of them would then speak out publicly and say, here's why I left. I couldn't possibly do this thing that was asked of me. And I know that's asking a lot. I mean, that is turning yourself into, like, the symbol of all of this. And it could have really negative implications on your ability to find a job for yourself, which you need. I get all that. I've been that guy. I've been that guy for years. So I'm not. I would never demand that of anyone. But, man, at some point, it would be good to see some of these resigners stand up and say, here's why.
- [21:31]
A
We saw Danielle Sassoon in New York. And.
- [21:37]
B
Yeah, so there's, there's, there's examples. And I think that's where it becomes really painful for, for the administration in the first term. Like Trump famously or maybe infamously didn't put Jeffrey Clark in as acting U.S. attorney because he was actually moved when Rosen and his deputy said, if you do this, every attorney in the Justice Department will walk out like he didn't want that to happen then. Now, I don't know if those things mean anything to him now because he's by all appearances even worse now. But, like, it's still a very powerful message.
- [22:12]
A
Yeah, I agree. All right, everybody, we're going to talk about those four journalists and others arrested in the city's church demonstration after this quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right. So how long has it been since you woke up feeling actually rested? It's been a while for me. You're in good company. So over 50% of adults say that more sleep would improve how they feel and that stress is often the biggest hurdle. So CBD from CB Distillery helps support both sleep and stress breaking that cycle. Their products are premium third party, tested free from artificial dyes and fillers, trusted by 2 million customers. And I want to thank CB Distillery for sponsoring this episode. They're offering a deal for you. Get 25% off your entire purchase@cbdistillery.com and use promo code UNJUST now. I started with CB Distillery because I wanted support for recovery and sleep without adding extra steps. The first product that won me over was the relief stick. After a workout or spending all day at a keyboard, I swipe it on tight calves or my carpal tunnel areas, sore shoulders and I'm not sore the next day. I also keep their CBD sleep gummies for nights when my brain will not shut off and I'm unable to fall asleep. They help me slide into bedtime instead of hovering half awake for hours. I tend to do that so I fall asleep faster and wake up rested and ready to go. It's a brand I genuinely Trust with over 2 million happy customers and 100% money back guarantee. So you're not taking any risks. If you want support for sleep, stress, mood or post workout pain, CB Distillery has what you're looking for. So if you're ready to start the year off right, go to cbdistillery.com and use our code UNJUST for 25% off. That's cbdistillery.com code unjust one more time. Cbdistillery.com Code unjust specific product availability depends on individual state regulation. History is messy. It's weird, wild and anything but boring. Rainy Day Rabbit Holes is a history podcast about unhinged stories that make you stop and ask, wait, is this real life? From crazy disasters and tasty scandals to enlightening and surprising heartwarming tales, we explore the moments where people behave badly and sometimes beautifully. We've got naughty politicians, cultural chaos and a deep love for the Pacific Northwest, including Bigfoot. It's thoughtful, irreverent, occasionally serious and always entertaining. Let's fall down the rabbit hole. MSW Media. All right, everybody, welcome back. Before the break, we had mentioned the case against Don Lemon and others, and we have an update on that from NBC. They say former CNN anchor Don Lemon was released by a federal judge on Friday after he was charged by the Trump administration with violating the freedom of religion of worshippers at Minnesota church where he was covering a protest earlier this month. I'd like to also remind everyone that they were charged with. I've looked at the indictment. They were charged with conspiracy against rights, which is Title 18, United States Code Section 241. If that sounds familiar, that's one of the four charges Jack Smith brought against Donald Trump for conspiring to take away our right to vote when he tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power and called Georgia to ask them to find 11,780 votes. Now, Don Lemon was released on a personal recognizance bond and appeared outside a downtown federal courthouse several minutes later saying the prosecution will not stop him from his work reporting the news. Quote, I will not stop ever. He added, the First Amendment of the Constitution protects that work for me and for countless other journalists. I will not be silenced. The journalist's LA area lawyer, Marilyn. Let's see. Bednarsky. I hope I'm saying that properly. Said that he plans to plead not guilty.
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B
Lemon was indicted alongside eight co defendants more than a week after a federal magistrate judge found the Trump administration lacked probable cause to arrest him and several others under a federal statute that a top Justice Department official conceded had never been used in the context of a protest at a church before. Lemon, 59 years old, and three other black journalists, Trehearn Jean Cruz, Georgia Fort and Jamel Lidell Lundy, were arrested Friday in what Attorney General Pam Bondi described in a post on X as, quote, a coordinated attack on city's church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
- [26:45]
A
The first word in both of Those laws, Title 18, U.S. code 241 and 248, one from the face act and one from the Ku Klux Klan Act. The first word is forcibly. So I just don't get it. A federal grand jury seated in Minnesota returned the indictment on Thursday against Lemon and eight co defendants. The indictment charges Lemon with, like I said, conspiracy against the rights of religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship. The Trump administration attempted to keep three of Lemon's co defendants detained. They actually asked them to hold these journalists and peaceful protesters in prison pending trial. That's what the Department of Justice said. Now, what's interesting also is that when Trump was indicted, for example, or any of his co conspirators down in Fulton county or in the federal system, they let them turn themselves in. These guys sent heavily armed camouflage DEA agents to surround these people's houses, to drag them out of their houses.
- [27:54]
B
Yeah, and I think Lemon was in the middle of reporting. He was like, working the Grammy Awards or something, and they showed up there and arrested him in the middle of his job.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. Now, the Trump administration attempted to keep, like I said, these. These folks, three of them detained until the trial, but a federal magistrate judge in Minnesota rejected their request for a detention hearing. You don't even get a detention hearing. I'm releasing these people on recognizance. Lemon's main defense attorney, Abby Lowell, said in an earlier statement that he was taken into custody by federal agents in la, where he was covering, like you said, the lead up to Sunday's Grammys. Quote, instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention, and resources to this arrest. And that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case. Lowell went on to say, this unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.
- [28:52]
B
The group Human Rights Campaign organized a rally outside the Edward R. Reubel Federal Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, where proceedings for Lemon took place on Friday. Speaking outside the court, board member Todd Hawkins decried Lemon's arrest and prosecution. Quote, when journalists can be detained for covering protests, none of us are safe, he said. Punish the press, ignore the dead, dare the public to look away. We will not look away. The arrest of one of the country's most recognizable journalists is the latest development in the federal government's unprecedented immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in which two US Citizens have been shot and killed. So, Allison, I gotta say, this thing is just like, so, so disturbing to me. And full disclosure, I know Don Lemonade. I had the privilege of working with him when he was at cnn. And so I have immense respect for him and empathy for what he's going through right now. I also know him to be an incredibly strong person. And if there's anyone who's going to Fight this. It's him. So wishing him all support and good vibes here. But seriously, they are going after these journalists, right, and prosecuting them criminally for performing journalism around a protest in a church. This is the same administration that departed from years of legal opinion and training and direction to their agents and said now, in this day and age, it's okay to go into churches to arrest migrants, go into schools to detain children. So when we're in a period here where it's not okay to do journalism, but it is okay to send armed agents into church and arrest people. Like, if you are looking for evidence of our persistent slide into authoritarianism, I don't know that you're going to ever get better evidence than that.
- [30:54]
A
No. And it's not lost on me, and as I'm sure it's not lost on many people, that these four journalists happen to be black people. Donald Trump and his Attorney General, Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dillon over there at the Civil Rights Division have a penchant for this. Lisa Cook Lamonica McIver, New York Attorney General Letitia James. These journalists, it's a pattern worth noting. And I also think it's very important for all corporate and independent white journalists to speak up very loudly against this because as the poem goes, they came for. And I said nothing, and then they came for me. So, yeah, this was a, a stunner. I almost had to take the whole day off. The shooting of Alex Preddy, the shooting of Nicole Good. And then the, this arrest of independent journalists. It's like, like you said, if there's any sign that we've slid into authoritarianism, that's it. This is what they do in Russia to journalists.
- [32:07]
B
They will not allow free and fair and unbiased journalism to take place. And then they're going to hold themselves up as the defenders of your right to pray uninterrupted in your choice of church. But it's okay for their armed agents to go into that church and drag out the people they don't like? I mean, it's just, it is just. I mean, we're not talking about just like, typical, like, pointing out political hypocrisy. I mean, this is really freaking dangerous.
- [32:37]
A
Yeah. Yeah, I agree, my friend. Something else really dangerous that happened in the last couple of days. The FBI went down and broke into some election offices and stole all their ballots. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Stick around. We'll be right back. Foreign. Hi, I'm Frances Collier. And I'm Angela V. Shelton. And we're Frangela, you know what you need in your life? The Final Word podcast. Yes, you do. That's right. It is the final word on all things political and pop cultural, where we make real news, real funny, where we inspire you so you can hashtag resist, subscribe and get a new episode of the Final Word podcast each week. It's the news we think you need to hear. That's right. We think you need to hear it. Okay. Yeah. It's what we say. So. That's right. And because all we do is give every Thursday, you can listen to our hysterical podcast, Idiot of the Week. We round up the stupid. Because you know what? Somebody has to. Okay. All we do is give.
- [33:46]
B
Welcome back. Okay, next up from NBC. When President Donald Trump watched a live feed of the US Military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was not in the room. That she appeared to be on vacation in the run up to such a high stakes, ultra sensitive military operation seemed to underscore the extent to which she has been sidelined by the administration.
- [34:15]
A
Yep. But there she was on Wednesday at an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, as FBI agents conducted a raid seeking ballots from the 2020 presidential election, which Trump has falsely claimed he won. Gabbard's presence baffled national security experts. I just want to say it didn't baffle me and I'll tell you why in a minute. But it also raised questions about whether she is seeking new relevancy in in the eyes of a president who may have soured on her, quote. Even if there was some criminal activity in the 2020 election in Georgia, despite repeated investigations that show there was none, it's still a purely domestic problem, not one involving foreign nations. That's what a former national security official said he went on to say. Or she went on to say, the director of national intelligence has nothing to do with this. I think I have some ideas, but let's go on with the story.
- [35:07]
B
We're getting there, but let's go all the way around the Rosie. Accompanying FBI agents on a raid is unprecedented for the chief of US Intelligence, whose job is to track threats from foreign adversaries. In her role overseeing the country's spy agencies, Gabbard is prohibited by law from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Her predecessors took pains to keep their distance from the Justice Department cases or partisan politics. Now, asked about the rationale for her visit to Georgia, a senior administration official said, quote, director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure. And to that senior official, I say, no, actually, she does not. She doesn't at all. And you saying she does does not make it that she does. But.
- [36:01]
A
Okay, well, she's going to make it that she does. Watch. Look, that whole sentence right there. Election security against interference. Operations targeting voting systems, that is Voting machines and databases. Just wait. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, Mark Warner, Democrat from Virginia, vice chair of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, sharply criticized Gabbard's decision to travel to Fulton county for the FBI search. Warner said there were only two explanations for the National Intelligence Director's trip. Either one, Gabbard believed this case had a link to foreign intelligence and she failed to abide by her legal obligation to inform congressional committees about it. Or she was tarnishing the nonpartisan reputation of the intelligence agencies with a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy. Either scenario, he said, represents a serious breach of trust and a dereliction of duty to the solemn office which she holds. So keep that in mind. If she believes, or if this administration believes there's some sort of foreign intelligence election interference issue she has, she is duly obligated under law to report that to Congress.
- [37:14]
B
Yeah, that's not going to happen.
- [37:16]
A
Okay, well, because she has to. She has to fabricate it first. Andy. We'll get there. We'll get there.
- [37:20]
B
We'll get there. We'll get there. We're getting there. Over the past year, Gabbard has clashed with two of her counterparts in the administration, FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, in what officials describe as a struggle for influence inside the administration. Quote, it is unclear what the foreign intelligence nexus is to the service of an FBI search warrant on a board of elections in Atlanta, said Kevin Carroll, a former CIA officer and now a lawyer handling national security cases. Absent Such a nexus, ODNI's involvement in the matter is wrong and potentially even illegal if she took part in the search.
- [37:58]
A
All right, so let me tell you what I think is going on, okay? Corporate media hasn't quite connected these dots. Andy, do you remember volume one of Jack Smith's final report all those years ago, that one of Trump's conspiracies to overturn the election, he tried, like, five things, and when they all failed, he sent the mob to the Capitol, right?
- [38:19]
B
That's right, yeah.
- [38:21]
A
One of those things included foreign election interference. He was demanding documents surrounding a briefing that he set up between Jeffrey Clark and the DNI Ratcliffe. This is why Ratcliffe is clashing with Tulsi Gabbard, by the way. Trump made Jeffrey Clark, the guy who he wanted to install at the as Attorney general, and everyone said, you'll be Attorney General for a graveyard. We're all going to quit that guy. And DNI Ratcliffe made him sit down on January 2nd to have a briefing about foreign election interference. Now, Jack Smith said in his final report that he has text messages between Representative Congressman Scott Perry and Jeffrey Clark, admitting that after that briefing, Ratcliffe told Clark that there was no foreign election interference that would have altered the outcome of the 2020 election. But Trump was adamant about this. So do you remember an Oval Office meeting, very contentious oval office meeting, December 18, 2020? This was the meeting in which Trump, at the behest of Sidney Powell, who he called crazy, by the way, when he put her on hold one time that's also in Jack Smith's report, was asking the Pentagon if he could seize Dominion voting machines in seven swing states. Now, first of all, he wanted to have the Department of Justice seize the voting machines. And Bill Barr was like, no, you're insane. We're not doing that. You can't have him. Then dhs, he wanted dhs, ice, right, Customs and Border Protection to seize the voting machines, Dominion voting machines. And they're like, no, we can't do that. So then he wanted to ask the Pentagon, the military, to seize voting machines. But Rudy, Rudy Giuliani was the voice of reason in that meeting.
- [40:02]
B
In a rare moment of sobriety, yes.
- [40:05]
A
Rudy said, in order to get the Pentagon involved, you have to have foreign election interference. And that's when Flynn, Mike Flynn and Sidney Powell started working up these executive orders and cooking up weird foreign election interference allegations, like Hugo Chavez stol election for Biden or China did it, or the bad guys hacked Italian satellites and sent Jewish space lasers down to our ballot counting machines or whatever it was. They were desperately trying to say that there was foreign election interference. And Ratcliffe was like, no. Krebs, who's in charge of CISA at the time under dhs, was like, it's. There's none. And he got fired for that. And in fact, after Trump became president again, he put out an executive order saying Krebs and Miles Taylor are dangerous and going to be investigating them. I don't know why you need an executive order for that, but he, he did that. But Trump has been trying to fabricate foreign election interference since 2020. And Jack Smith had the Evidence to prove there was none, even with the meeting he tried to set up. So what I think here is that Tulsi Gabbard is involved in order to probably fabricate some sort of foreign election interference so that it will justify Donald Trump telling Pete Hegseth, we don't have Esper at Department of Defense anymore. We have Hegseth to order the military to go and seize voting machines. If you think about everything that was taken in Georgia, the ballots, the voting machine, Dominion voting machine, tape, tabulators, the tabulator machines, tapes, they seized those. They went in with giant saws and bolt cutters and stole this stuff. And now the chain of custody on these old 20, 20 ballots is broken and destroyed. Add to that that the statute of limitations if there was a crime is way past. So this is all sort of connected with, like the EO against Krebs and Taylor trying to discredit Jack Smith's testimony, because Jack Smith has the evidence that, you know, Ratcliffe and told Jeffrey Clark that there's no foreign election interference. Not that you need that confirmation, but it's there. The probe into ex CIA Director John Brennan, where they've tried to go to Virginia and then Pennsylvania and then Florida and now finally Judge Cannon's district to try to get a grand jury to indict him for that. What you and I talk about seems ad nauseam, that intelligence community assessment from 2017. I know that you had. I know that you know something about that. And Trump was. Trump was demanding it in the, in the January 6 case with Jack Smith. He's like, I want that. I want the real documents around the Jeffrey Clark. Remember when he wanted all the real documents around the Jeffrey Clark and Ratcliffe meeting? And they're like that you would they. We have them. And they say that there was none. So that's what I think is going on here. Because if they have some sort of national security argument, they think that that gives them, as the executive branch, the role to oversee elections, because the states do that, not the executive government. But, you know, ever since the Supreme Court in the Kilmar Abrego case said that the president has due deference for national security issues, they've been clinging onto that. Everything is national security. Venezuelan boat strikes, national security. And now I think they'll try to do this, too, and try to say there's foreign election interference so that they can maybe try to seize voting machines in 2026, 2028, beyond.
- [43:46]
B
I mean, you can't say it's not possible, right? We don't know, because, look, this stuff has never happened before. We're watching the FBI drag voting. The. The relics of voting records out of Fulton County. Never happened before. What could possibly be the investigation? So we're left with nothing other than looking at the know and trying to figure it out. Right, so it's speculation, but still two things we know that he needs if this is. If this theory is correct. One is you got to discredit everyone who could say otherwise. That's his classic move. I mean, literally, you're looking as you are connected right now recording this. You're looking at someone who suffered from that same calculation. You always go after the people who are going to disagree with your schemes. That explains Krebs. That explains Miles Taylor. That explains discrediting Jack Smith. That explains going after John Brennan. And all that's happening to me and my former colleagues now. So that's one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is you need someone to go along with it. You need someone in a position to go along with it. That's the role to be played by Tulsi Gabbard. Right? She's desperate. She's been sidelined. She gets no respect, fighting with these other administration cabinet secretaries and getting nowhere. She goes out and does something on her own, releases this absurd video about Hiroshima and gets, like, scorned for it. So is she gonna jump on the train and support this thing? Of course. All right, so that's the setup. And I'll now I'll go one step further. Do you think it's a coincidence that this thing is really getting steam a few weeks after we grab Nicholas Maduro?
- [45:26]
A
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
- [45:28]
B
I mean, come on, you need someone to go along with the theory. You need someone to step up and say, yeah, yeah, we did that, or this happens, or, here's how you undermine these machines or whatever. We were doing it for years. Chavez taught me how. Whatever, whatever.
- [45:42]
A
Yeah. I'll give you a pardon. And I'll give you a pardon and some of your oil back if you confess to stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
- [45:49]
B
I mean, I don't know, Maduro. I can't sit here and opine on the man's character. But just from what I've seen in the news, I feel like it's probably pretty low. So is Maduro in a position to say whatever somebody tells him to say? Of course he is.
- [46:03]
A
How much money is he going to get? Right?
- [46:05]
B
He's facing the rest of his life in prison. I mean, he's facing a very serious case. He's in federal custody now. You say, well, people cooperate who are in cases every single day. Should we not believe anything they say? Well, no, that's a little different. Because the way cooperation works is you cooperate, but you don't actually get any benefit from cooperation until you take the stand in the case in which you are implicated. And by taking the stand, you subject yourself to withering cross examination. And if you're lying about the allegations you're supporting for the government that will be exposed publicly for the world to see. And if you're exposed as lying, you lose all the benefit of the cooperation. That's how it works here. Imagine it if Nicolas Maduro comes in and signs an affidavit that makes all kinds of crazy voting manipulation claims that's never going to be heard in any case, Maduro gets a sweetheart deal, gets a very comfortable exile in a third party country with lots of money in an untraceable account, never to be seen or heard from again. And then it is just the affidavit that entitles the administration to say, see, we've been saying all along it's voter fraud, election was stolen, therefore we can't ever let that happen again. Now, I know this is very fanciful. We don't have like, we can't make a case approval. We're speculating about this in court. It's totally speculative. It seems a little crazy. I'm not usually in on this, on the conspiracy theories. Like, it's not where I'm from. I'm a guy, like, I like to see the evidence first before I'll believe anything. But there are really concerning signs that are starting to line up in a particular direction here. And I think it's worth paying attention to.
- [47:55]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Because when Donald Trump finds this evidence of foreign interference, however he finds it.
- [48:01]
B
Yeah. Evidence in air quotes, right?
- [48:02]
A
Yes. And orders voting machines seized in swing states. Then I think that's when groups like Mark Elias and maybe voters, maybe using Jack Smith's new law firm, wasu.
- [48:23]
B
Yeah, quite not, frankly. That's when groups like, I don't know, our elected representatives should get together and bring articles of impeachment. Like, come on, if that, if that's not gonna. Like, where's the Rusty Bowers in you?
- [48:36]
A
Yeah.
- [48:37]
B
Like, at what point do you say, yeah, at what point do you say, you know what? I'm not gonna be involved in cheating to win. I'm not gonna be involved in undermining the laws that I wrote and passed and I'M constitutionally obligated to support.
- [48:52]
A
Yeah, well, that's just it. There's no more Esper, there's no more Hirschman, there's no more Cuccinelli. There are no more Pats, Cipollone, and there's no more Rosen and Donahue. Even Bill Barr. Now we've got absolute sycophant. Yes. People in these positions. Exactly. Collaborators do this. So we'll keep an eye on that for you. I'm glad you also, Asha Rangappa was recently on, on Chris Hayes. All in with Chris Hayes. And she's like, hey, did you notice, you know, we just have Maduro in custody and all this stuff. And you could see Chris Hayes, his eyes got really big and he's like, I didn't think of that. And then you could see him like, oh, God. And then. Oh, God. Yeah. So it's not. These are rational people talking about potent. There's a non 0 chance that that happens. And that is wild. But not, not for the times we're living in. So we all have to.
- [49:49]
B
Yeah, look, it's what he, it's what he lacked the last time. Like I said, you need to absolutely destroy the credibility, the lives, the careers of people who are standing up and telling the truth and objecting to what you're doing. And then you need others who, who will prop up your nonsense.
- [50:06]
A
Yeah. And he's also signaled the others that he will pardon them when he just pardoned all the people from 2020.
- [50:13]
B
He couldn't line all that up in 2020. It didn't work. But now it's a very different deck of cards.
- [50:20]
A
Yeah, agreed. All right, we have one more quick story and listener questions, but we have to take a one last quick break. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. Before we get to listener questions this week, and again, there's a link in the show notes if you want to submit a question for us. We have one more story from Alex Ebert at Bloomberg Law. An unredacted copy of Robert Mueller's report into Russian election interference. Internal communications between the Trump White House and Russians, details of Trump's abandoned Moscow Tower deal, those and other confidential records at the heart of Trump's ties to one of America's biggest international adversaries were demanded this past Friday morning by the Pulitzer Prize board. That filing, submitted in Florida state court, could test the powers of the chief executive over disclosure when a sitting president uses the courts to battle the media. The crux of Trump's case is a claim that Journalism's premier award committee defamed him when it stood by awards given to reporting on connections between Trump and Russia in 2016 in the presidential campaign. So Trump suing the Pulitzer Prize board over their reporting on Trump Russia, and this is a filing in response to that. To win, Donald Trump must prove the underlying reporting was false to keep his lawsuit alive, while also controlling federal offices, holding onto the records and wielding the singular authority to declassify the documents and hand them over.
- [51:55]
B
After declaring those Russia connected reports fake news and a phony witch hunt and a big hoax, he's now presented with a catch 22 either disclose these things classified as national secrets or drop his claim, said Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Falsity of the statement involved is the first element of a defamation claim, quote, that raises questions about Donald Trump's judgment and priorities, said Stern, a First Amendment litigator who before joining the press advocacy and training organization, he called the lawsuit frivolous. Quote, he's the President of the United States. He should be putting the national interest above his personal efforts to recover monetary damages in litigation when he's already a billionaire.
- [52:44]
A
But that's not the route that Trump chose, even with the Pulitzer board pushing for it. Because once Trump won the election, the board urged a trial, appellate and Supreme Court in Florida to stay the case out of concerns that Trump could create a constitutional crisis by refus to obey court rules and orders when it came time for discovery into the factual issues of the case. You know, if you're saying we lied when we reported on your Trump Russia connections, you have to produce the documents to show that we're lying. So, yeah, this is going to be interesting. Trump's legal team pushed on leading a Florida appeals judge to say, quote, when the president is a willing participant, courts do not risk improperly interfering with the essential functioning of government. A spokesperson for Trump's legal team issued a statement saying, quote, president Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in fake news, lies and smears, including Russia, Russia, Russia to account, and he will see this powerhouse lawsuit through to a winning conclusion. No, he won't.
- [53:45]
B
The case has the potential to upend state secrets litigation if the Department of Justice doesn't move to protect the confidentiality of the records, said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Councilors, quote, if they don't invoke the state secrets privilege here, they are just selling the national security apparatus down the river to make Donald Trump happy in a state court suit because someone was mean to him, McClanahan said that would be a dereliction of their duty. Yeah, and when has that fact stopped anyone from this administration from doing something stupid?
- [54:18]
A
No. Right, exactly. Full disclosure. Kel McClanahan is my lawyer in multiple Freedom of Information act request cases against the government. The request includes high profile documents. This is what they want for discovery. From March 2019, that report issued by Special Counsel Mueller examining Trump's role in Russian election interference tactics to joint assessments on those Russian activities to U.S. house and Senate reports on the issue, as well as assessments by spy agencies. None of these have been released in complete unredacted forms. Now, the Mueller report's mostly unredacted, but there are still some redaction bars in there. The board is also seeking communications between Trump's inner circle and Russia. The board demands letters, emails, text messages and social media direct messages of a who's who of Trump campaign and administration staff, including Stephen Miller, Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Jeff Sessions.
- [55:17]
B
Further, the board is demanding records regarding Trump's investigations and firing decisions. Documents related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and any communications around the potential firing of Mueller. A demand for records into the reason the Trump administration switched an investigation into the Russian interference investigation from U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, David Metcalfe to Southern District of Florida U.S. attorney Jason A. Redding Quinones document. Demands like these are novel. However, a sitting president serially filing defamation lawsuits against the media in response to news reporting demands that have thus far reached roughly $65 billion over reporting into elections he's mostly won. Has also never happened before, Stern said.
- [56:06]
A
Yep. A national security attorney, Mark Zaid, said he routinely handles defamation matters. And the introduction of classified information into these cases, that makes the stakes important and complicated. That's what happens when you have to introduce classified materials into discovery. As we know, quote, as the current president, Mr. Trump outright controls his own evidence, classified or not, and the defendants are entitled to it as part of routine discovery. Ironically, given this litigation is being pursued in state court, it is likely the convening judge doesn't even hold the required security clearance to review the relevant records being sought.
- [56:43]
B
So, I mean, it's discovery time.
- [56:47]
A
It's, it's reckoning time. It's, it's, we, we printed stories and the Pulitzer Prize. You sued us for defamation, saying we lied about your connections to Russia, and now it's time for you to put up or shut up.
- [56:59]
B
Yeah. And there's two things that are absurd here. First of all, like, I think what they're what. They're really the. The Pulitzer's role or. Or liability. The theory of liability here isn't even so much that they publish this stuff. It's that they gave awards to the. To the outlets that published it. So once again, this guy is showing. He's absolutely obsessed by, like, who gets awards for things, be they Nobel Peace Prizes or anything else. So, like, if your kid gets the award for, like, most improved batter on the softball team, look out, because Donald Trump might be coming after. But the other thing is, it seems like the headlong result here is going to be dismissing the case. So as the plaintiff, if he then steps in and uses his big president hat to try to say no to obstruct discovery, there's only one solution. The court should step in and dismiss the case and say, and I think that's what Pulitzer and whoever else is in this case are doing. They're going to make this as uncomfortable as possible for the government. And then at some point, the government's gonna say, no, we're not doing that. And that would theoretically give the state court judge the authority to say, well, okay, fine. Claim dismissed.
- [58:11]
A
Right? Yeah, exactly. If you're not gonna hand over the proof that they lied about you or that they lied about you, sort of when they awarded Pulitzer Prizes to people you say they lied about, I mean, it's so weird.
- [58:24]
B
It's so crazy.
- [58:26]
A
If you can't prove it, then you don't have a defamation claim. Bye. And that's what I imagine is going to happen here. All right, we've got one or two listener questions here. Again, there's a link in the show notes if you want to submit a question. What do we have this week, Andy?
- [58:41]
B
So two really good ones. The first one is, I think we can do pretty quickly. And it comes to us from Marzipan Rat, who says, longtime listener since you began, Jack, I never can think of a question nearly as intelligent as the ones you feature. But today I have a straightforward question about FBI procedure. Marzipan. You know, there's nothing I love more than a straightforward question about FBI procedure. Because that. I mean, I can do that with my sleep.
- [59:04]
A
Yeah. And the answer, by the way, about straightforward FBI procedure questions from Andy is usually, it depends. So let's see what happens.
- [59:11]
B
Oh, come on. That was a direct shot at my lawyerly background, which is entirely appropriate and much.
- [59:17]
A
Hey, after reading court things and talking to lawyers for the last eight years, I've turned into an it depends person as well.
- [59:25]
B
You know, the big suit very Equivocal human being. But. All right, back to the question. Here it comes. Why did some agents serving the search warrant on the Fulton county elections office wear tactical gear? I did see videos of agents wearing only Evidence Recovery Team windbreakers for the Mar A Lago search. They wore polos. This feels more like Cash Patel theater. It's disheartening, for sure. All right, the answer is, you're right. It's casual theater. No, it depends here.
- [59:56]
A
Well, there's a little bit of their evidence windbreakers. They were supposed to wear them to Mar a Lago, but they, like, made a deal a softer, kinder search of Mar A Lago.
- [60:05]
B
Yeah. Now here's the. Here's the background. I'm not going to say it depends just the background context. It is very normal for when you're executing a search warrant to figure you. It's a very intentional decision how you want the people who are working that warrant to appear while they're doing it. And there's a bunch of different factors. If it's someplace that you could be facing danger, like let's say you have a warrant for a drug stash house, well, you're going in full tactical gear because you never know what you're going to meet on the other side of that door. If you're going to a business or a law firm to seize boxes of documents, you're probably going to go in suits. You're going to tell your agents you should have business, professional appearances until you see people in suits. Maybe occasionally someone will throw, like, a race jacket on over the suit, and then there's everything in between. Someplace like Mar a Lago. They were trying to be deliberately, like, low profile because they were trying to create less problems for themselves. They wanted to. They wanted to go in with the appearance of, like, the most sensitivity to this situation. And so that's what they went with here. Unless they had some direct evidence that they might encounter a threat at the Fulton county elections office, which I can't even imagine that's the case. But if they did, that would make, you know, getting. Having guys geared up for a higher security environment rational. But my guess is this was a directive because no one loves publicity more than a Trump administration official, and no one more than Kash Patel. So when he's going out doing something he wants people to focus on, you can count on seeing people in camo, full ballistic vests carrying M4s, even though that shit is just in the way.
- [61:51]
A
Yeah. It's also propaganda. Right. When they say Maduro just admitted to foreign election interference. I really won 2020. They could show the videos of people rolling in in tactical gear to get those ballots down in Georgia.
- [62:04]
B
Some of it's retribution. You did it to Roger Stone, so you can't complain about it now. Like that kind of nonsensical crap. We see a lot of that with this administration, so.
- [62:15]
A
And to get back at Fulton county, the attorney down there, right? Fani Willis. Yeah. Yeah.
- [62:22]
B
Okay, next up, we have a question from Anne, which I thought was really interesting, and takes us back to Minneapolis. So she says, hi, Allison and Andy living in Minneapolis. My feeds are filled with videos that don't often make the news. Some of the new videos show ICE and Border Patrol walking around cars they have stopped and taking photos or videos of those in the cars. Then gleefully, they tell the car's occupants that they are now on the, quote, domestic terrorist list. They're also using license plate data to drive to the homes of the car owners. The message, we know who you are and where you live, but that's a whole other issue. I have a couple of questions about the domestic terrorist threat. What is the domestic terrorist list? In my career, I was the BSA officer at several financial institutions, and I am very aware of the OFAC list. Is the domestic terrorist list similar. Okay, so let's pause there. So in rational times, and when I say that, I mean, when I was working, there is no domestic terrorist list. You cannot list domestic people as domestic terrorists or organizations as domestic terrorist organizations because of the First Amendment, freedom of political speech. All domestic terrorist issues weave inextric, you know, inevitably back and forth over the line of First Amendment protected activity. So they're very sensitive investigations. They're only done by. In the United In. When I was there in the FBI, we had a domestic terrorism section, and they oversaw all of the. What we call DT cases around the country. And those cases are only done under criminal authorities because you don't use national security authorities and powers and investigative techniques against domestic targets. It's this. This, you know, division of authority because you have to go to further lengths to protect the rights of the people you're. You're investigating on the domestic side because they are covered by the First Amendment. Whereas, like, some dude in Pakistan who's an operative for Al Qaeda does not enjoy those same rights. It's a different set of authorities. Now, do they still not have a domestic terrorism list? I don't know. Because this administration will pretty much do whatever the hell they want. What I think is happening with the photography that you Reference here. There have been some good articles on this. About two days ago, there's one in the Times. DHS has invested heavily in biometric identification, AI driven tools. And they have two of them that they've deployed onto the cell phones of the agents you're seeing. One of them is a company called Clearview AI And I can't remember the other company. They are taking photographs of people, entering them into those databases and identifying who those people are, and then they're taking action against them. Like, they had one woman who they interviewed in this article who said that she was following a d. A car of border patrol guys. They stopped, came out, approached her, used her first name. They said, hi, Nicole. But she had never met any of them before. Had never met any of them, you know, DHS people. And they said, you know, AI, we got you. We got your photograph. You're in our database now. Three days later, she lost her TSA PreCheck privileges.
- [65:42]
A
Yep.
- [65:43]
B
So they are doing something with this investigation. We know they're using AI driven tools and facial recognition tools to identify people, and they're holding that information in ways that the government never did before. I think this is a well of problems that we have only scratched the surface of.
- [66:01]
A
Yeah, and the Don't Tread on me crowd is nowhere. We can't have a. We can't have a national registry of guns, but we can have a national registry of people who don't, like Donald Trump and Sue. You know, we. We see, like Will Stancil, for example. They got his license plate and kept parking outside of his house, following him around the block and harassing him because they knew where he lived and they wanted. And then you could see them as they're following him, and he's driving kind of past his house because he doesn't want to stop at his house. And you can see the agents pointing out their windows at his house as if to say, we know you live here. It's. It's happening all over the place. And I'm sure Paler is in on it. And J.D. vance and his tech.
- [66:42]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, where are those. Where are those congressmen and a few senators who are so outraged by the offense of having had their telephone metadata collected by the FBI with a grand jury subpoena. Well, that's entirely law. Hijacked an entire hearing that we watched a week ago talking, ripping Jack Smith again and again and again for. Oh, how dare you? How dare you. How dare you. Yeah, those are the people that are standing by and saying, this is totally Fine, Totally fine. To collect information about Americans who commit the offense of using their First Amendment rights.
- [67:22]
A
Yeah, but Andy, those are just the unwashed masses who don't have speech or debate protection.
- [67:26]
B
Exactly, exactly.
- [67:27]
A
Yeah, that's how they view it. So fortunately, every single Democrat in the Senate voted to defund ICE, that $75 billion slush fund, from the big beautiful bill this past July. I didn't. I was hoping they would do that. I didn't expect them to do that. They separated out DHS separately from the funding package and then they voted on a Bernie Sanders amendment to claw back that slush fund, defund ice, and all Democrats and two Republicans, Collins and Murkowski, voted for that. But not a single other Republican is willing to stand up for the American people having all of their personal information put in a database. Right. That's just pretty, pretty astounding. And even when you know, you think like, oh, the government has our stuff, right? But like, let's talk about the IRS or the Social Security Administration. The reason that there were, there are and were and are so many lawsuits about Doge going in and installing boxes and uploading that to the cloud is because the whole of government doesn't have access to that information. Only very specific high level officers have access to those data. And it's against the law, the Privacy act and multiple other laws for anyone else to have access to those data. So it's not like, you know, when the government has your stuff, you just, anyone can run in and get it. It's not supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be siloed and protected to protect your privacy, your First Amendment rights and everything else. But now we've got these mass databases with no protection run by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and people like Bovino, well, Tom Homan now.
- [69:06]
B
And they're not even calling DHS up to the Hill to talk about it. There should be hearings on this. People should have to go up and explain. Explain. Like we might not hear those conversations because some of them might be classified or whatever, but where's the oversight?
- [69:21]
A
Like, yeah, you care so much about your toll records. Why don't you Republicans bring people in and question them about our toll records?
- [69:28]
B
The American people, these very hard right wing and libertarian oriented Republicans who every two years or whatever it is, when the reauthorization of FISA section 702 comes up, they scream and yell about. It's a horrific. The idea that the FBI could search a database of telephone information that's collected about people who are overseas terrorists the fact that it incidentally picks up also the records of Americans who happen to call these known and suspected terrorists. It's like you're searching that without a warrant. How dare you? That's terrible, terrible, terrible. And I get it. There's legitimate concerns there. But the idea that this is happening in our country by our own agencies and agents and nobody cares. No one is asking ICE except the New York Times, apparently. What tools are you using? What information are you collecting? What are you doing with it? Yeah, and if they tell you, well, it's only for immigrants and they don't have the same rights or people who are in the system, that's bullshit. They're doing it with protesters, everyday American citizens.
- [70:38]
A
The fact that Rand Paul didn't vote for this. Sanders, where are you?
- [70:42]
B
Rand Paul? I mean, come on, Tillis. Yeah.
- [70:45]
A
You know, these guys, these, these. How dare the FBI search through databases, you know, in. In pursuit of actual criminals. It's just. It shows you where they're. I think they're just scared. I think they're just cowards, Andy. I don't have any other. I don't have any other word for them. They're weakless cowards.
- [71:07]
B
Weak.
- [71:08]
A
Yeah. As most bullies are. All right, everybody, we have run way over time this week, but we wanted to get to those questions again. Send your questions to us by clicking, clicking on the link in the show notes. And thank you so much for your thoughtful questions. We really appreciate them. Andy, do you have any. I mean, there's so much we covered today. It's like. I think we got all of our thoughts out in the show, but is there any last. Do you have any last words?
- [71:31]
B
I mean, I need to. I need to calm down. I feel like I'm just so, like, overheated all the time now. Sorry if it's coming off that way, but, man, there's a huge snowstorm happening where I am right now, so I'm gonna go walk my dog in the snow.
- [71:47]
A
All right, stay warm, my friend, everybody. We'll see you next week on Unjustified. I'm Alison Gill.
- [71:51]
B
And I'm Andy McCabe.
- [71:54]
A
Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill, with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hockey 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.