Jack - Episode 41 - Staggering Desperation
Episode Date: September 10, 2023This week: CNN reports that an investigation into voting machine breaches continues as the federal grand jury meets again after a four-week break; DoJ opposes a motion to vacate in the DC case; a part...ial win for Rep. Scott Perry in his fight to keep his phone data from Jack Smith; new reporting on Giuliani aide Kathrine Friess; a cooperation agreement between the DoJ and Yuscil Taveras in the Mar-a-Lago documents case; plus a listener question, and more.Questions for the pod:https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJOr Email us at hello@muellershewrote.com and put “Jack” in the subject lineCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG:Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The Threathttps://www.amazon.com/Threat-Protects-America-Terror-Trump-ebook/dp/B07HFMYQPGWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyhttp://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P
Transcript
Discussion (0)
M.S.W. Media.
I signed in order appointing Jack Smith.
And nobody knows you.
And those who say Jack is a finesse.
Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor.
What law have I grew?
The events leading up to and on January 6th.
Classified documents and other presidential records.
You understand what prison is?
Send me to jail. September 10th and I'm your host, Andy McKibb. Hey, Andy, I'm Alison Gill.
We have lots to cover this week, again, including a CNN exclusive that the investigation into
fundraising, our big thing, and voting machine breaches is continuing with the federal grand
jury meeting again after a four week break.
We also have a motion to vacate and the Department of Justice's opposition, and
that's in the DC case. And then we have a partial win for Rep Scott Perry in his fight to keep
his phone data from Jack Smith. This has been going on for a while.
Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to maybe call it a temporary win because that one's, as
they say, the jury's still out. We haven't, we haven't gotten a final, final, final, final
verdict just yet, but we'll get into that later. We also have new reporting on Giuliani aid, Catherine
Freeze. Now, am I pronouncing that correctly? A. G's it freeze or freeze? I think it's
freeze, but she's so invisible and difficult to find. No one can ask her how to pronounce
it matter. Yeah. So it makes no difference whatsoever. Go was your heart. I'm gonna say Catherine Fries, like, you know,
Fries out sort of thing.
Okay, so new reporting on Giuliani aid,
Catherine Fries and a cooperation agreement
between the DOJ and UCL Tavaris
in the Marlago documents case.
So let's start in DC.
The federal grand jury, right?
They're, we're talking about the grand jury
that indicted Donald Trump for conspiracy
to defraud the United States obstruction
and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
and of course conspiracy against rights.
They met this Thursday after a month long break.
Ooh.
That's interesting to me.
Yeah.
A little, a little summer recess for the grand
jurors, which we know they probably needed. Yeah. And we don't know what that, what that
recess was for or why they took it or we don't, I mean, we really don't know much here
because everything in the, as we know, everything that happens in a grand jury happens secretly.
That's right. That's right. And we also know that prosecutors, you know, they
can't use a grand jury unless they're actively investigating like additional crimes or additional
people and stuff like that. So really tees up the question of what are they meeting about.
We also don't know if they're investigating, if they're continuing to investigate, or if they
were specifically brought back to vote on additional
indictments, that's always a possibility as well.
We know that the special counsel is investigating voting machine breaches in several key swing
states.
We also learned last week that they've been investigating potential crimes related to
Harrison Floyd, our one Georgia defendant who spent a little time in jail before he finally
bonded out.
And of course, what we've been talking about since last year, the investigations into
the fundraising from both Donald Trump and Sydney Powell Pax in the aftermath of the
election.
Yeah.
And I think that that's really, you know, we learned early on, September, actually, of
2021, that they had already for a couple of months
been investigating Sydney Powell's pack.
And that's like, well over, gosh, almost a year,
a little over a year, a year and a couple of months
before Jack Smith was even appointed.
Right.
So, I've been wondering where that investigation would head and now we seem to have a little bit of an insight in it.
And new reporting from, you know, your colleagues over at CNN, Zachary Cohen and Paul Reade,
who are doing a bang up job, by the way. Hannah also and and and Polance, Caitlin Pollance.
Yep. Over at CNN, they say questions. This is Cohen and Reade.
Yeah. Over at CNN, they say questions.
This is Cohen and Reed.
Questions asked of two recent witnesses, indicate Jack Smith is focusing on how money raised
off baseless claims of voter fraud was used to fund attempts to breach voting equipment
in several states, one by Biden.
And prosecutors have focused their questions on the role of Sydney Powell.
I find that very fascinating.
And they have found this out
because according to invoices obtained by CNN,
Powell's nonprofit, defending the Republic,
hired forensics firms that ultimately access voting equipment
in four swing states,
Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona.
Now, Powell has pled not guilty
to similar charges or charges related to illegally accessing voting systems in Georgia.
That's, you know, some of the over acts on her, on her part, you know, she filed for a, a
speedy trial. We know Kenneth cheesebroe was like, get away from me. And, because he also
did, but the judge ruled down in Fountainon County that they have to be tried together and that's coming up in October pending any
Delays, you know typical delays that we tend to see
But Powell has also been identified by CNN as one of Trump's unindicted co-conspirators in Smith's federal election indictment of Trump the one man for account indictment and
Smith's grand jury this grand jury is set to expire next
week, September 15th, which actually this week, but it can be extended beyond then. He
hasn't ended it. Witnesses interviewed by Smith's prosecutors in recent week were also asked
about her role in the hunt for evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, including
her own nonprofit group that, you know, that they provided money to fund those efforts.
So it's not just whether she was spending the cash
on illegal access to voting machines,
but also using it to fund the hunt for voter fraud.
And Andy, this is interesting to me,
because it seems to me,
it's not illegal to raise money to look for voter fraud.
But if you tell your donors you're raising money
for court challenges, that could be problematic.
But it's especially problematic
if you use the funds to pay for illegal activity
like breaching voter data.
That seems to me, like you and I have been talking
about this wire fraud case for a while,
and like funding the big lie and defrauding donors.
But we just
learned from this CNN reporting that these witnesses are being asked whether this money or
these or, you know, been shown invoices that this money funded potentially illegal activity.
That puts this wire fraud case in a whole new light to me, because that seems way more open and shut than fundraising off the big lie.
It does.
It's incredibly powerful evidence
in the underlying theft of voter data case, right?
So if she's charged, let's say she's charged federally
for theft of computer information or specifically for
accessing the voter stuff, proof, like these invoices that she paid, the company that conducted
the theft was paid by her pack is a very powerful evidence that ties her to the allegedly
criminal activity.
So that's one bucket that makes it super, super important.
But the other side of that coin is what you just mentioned.
If she was raising the money under specific assurances to her donors, hey, this is going
to be used, let's say for example, to challenge, you know, the results of state elections in court.
And then she takes that money and uses it to pay for the cyber ninjas or somebody else.
That is entirely different offensive of male fraud or wire fraud based on the myths.
She would have been, and that hypothetical ripping off her donors.
You can't raise for one reason and then spend for a totally different reason.
Therein lies the fraud. Yeah. And not only that, but you know, from the CNN piece, Powell
promoted defending the Republic as a nonprofit focused on funding post election legal challenges.
As it disputed, as Trump's team disputed results in key states, those challenges and fundraising
efforts underpinning them were all based on the premise that evidence
of widespread voter fraud was already in hand.
And that also makes this a fraudulent fundraising,
allegedly, obviously everything is alleged here.
But to say that you already have the voter fraud,
to not have it and to fundraise off of that concept
is almost like a third bucket, you know what I mean?
Because they were using this to expose facto,
desperately look for voter fraud
that they had claimed that they already had,
and they were still unable to find it,
but I don't think it's relevant
that they were able to find it or not,
because they've raised that money under false pretenses.
False pretenses, yeah.
So you can see how these cases can be very,
I don't wanna say tough, but very detailed,
very nuanced for the prosecutors,
because these cases typically turn on
the real specifics of the language in the,
whatever it was, mailings, advertisements, emails.
However they advertised or requested the donations
for the pack, they will have to go into great detail
analyzing the specific language of those statements
and how they characterized what they were gonna do
with the money and all that stuff.
And then there'll be a real drill down on the individual people who drafted those statements
and then who above them approved the release of those statements.
And you got to be able to tie all that back to in this case, Sydney Powell.
So they can be complicated cases, even in instances like this where it seems from the top level
from the 100,000 foot view, it's like, wow, yeah, I mean, this seems crazy.
She took this money and gave it to people that go out and steal information from county
voting systems.
But nevertheless, I think it's a great sign that, hey, Jack Smith's team, they are on this thing,
like a dog with a bone. Teeth are in, they are not letting go, and the grand jury's still working at it.
Absolutely. And it, you know, it could be they're looking at these things separately or together.
You know, a lot of pundits and a lot of experts, Weissmann, Lisa Rubin,
a lot of folks, the talking heads that I see on cable news network are assuming and probably
rightfully so that this is a look into the fundraising and maybe not necessarily a look
into superseding indictments for the six co-conspirators in the Trump DC case,
but they have raised that possibility
because they can bring, Jack Smith can bring
separate indictment, not,
he doesn't have to supersede the Trump indictment.
That's right.
He can bring separate indictments on these,
on these other six.
But again, my worry is that they will file to consolidate
or somehow try to muck up the simplicity of the Trump
indictment, which has been compared to a rifle shot, as opposed to Fulton County's shotgun
blasts.
Yeah.
Wide pattern.
And, you know, I'm not criticizing one over the other, but one is most definitely going
to be done a lot faster.
Yeah.
I think that the sprawling Rico case is necessary.
It's just going to take forever.
And that's fine.
That's just as grind slow.
So, you know, that's, if I were Jack Smith, I wouldn't do anything to threaten the simplicity of my current indictment.
If he does make a move on the co-conspirators, I'm sure he will have gameed all of that
out to prevent that from happening.
Yeah.
I mean, his, the way that he approached in Diting Trump with that kind of rifle shot, small
number of counts, one defendant, it's all so intentional,
it's so clearly strategized to bring the most significant
person to trial before the election.
And I can't imagine that he would do anything at this point
that could possibly jeopardize that strategy.
Like he knows all of this better, even the new and I do.
Sure. That's the main
goal with this simple. Yeah. He's got. Simplifiers. Literally years that he could take
to kind of clean off the rest of the table. Right. The mop up case is as you call that. That's right.
The mop ups could go on for a very long time and his, you know, his remit, his jurisdiction
is broad. It wasn't just to look at Donald Trump.
To look at all of these efforts that could have been intended to overturn the result of the election.
So, yeah, I think those folks who certainly the ones that we know were referenced as unindicted,
unidentified co-conspirators and the Trump indictment and many others, you know, I don't think they're
getting really sound sleep at night for good reason.
No, and you know, some of the folks who we, you know, we found out today were not indicted,
but were recommended for indictment by the special purpose grand jury in Fulton County, including
Lindsey Graham, Cleedham Mitchell, Kelly Leffler and David Perdue, all of those folks, and
there were many.
They were recommending indictments of upwards of 30 people, which, you know, with the complexity
of the case as it is, I can't imagine how complex it would be.
I think it was 39.
The count of that there was special grand jury recommended
was 39. And you know, that's a huge number. We think it's unwieldy at 19. It would have been
complete madness, sort of taking years to get that thing done. But there's all kinds of reasons
that those people may not have been indicted. You know, it's a special grand jury. So it's not a
grand jury that returns in indictments. All they do is make a recommendation to prosecutors.
Prosecutors then still have to make a decision
like how good do we think our evidence is?
Because the special grand jury is investigative, right?
How good do we think the evidence is,
who would we really need as witnesses in a trial
that we do bring?
And maybe we'd be better not to charge those people.
Or some people like Lindsey Graham
just presents a whole host of really complicated constitutional issues that no doubt he would fight all the way to the
Supreme Court. How's that going to impact our prosecutions? Going to really slow things down,
complicated things. So there's all kinds of good reasons for not going forward and enditing
certain folks. But we'll see. I'm sure we'll hear more about that as we go on.
Yeah, but they're also probably not sleeping easy either.
No.
And we also don't know how many of them may be cooperating. We do know that there are at least eight,
or there are, I think, eight electors, fraudulent electors that were offered immunity
in exchange for their testimony. They appear on that list. And that was after
that report came out before those immunity deals were offered. So we don't know how many of
those people are cooperating. Mike Flynn, for example, was recommended for indictment. Why was he
not part of this indictment? And none of the what's in the report gives us any inkling of why they weren't.
But you'd also kind of gives you a little bit
of a potential roadmap of cooperators
in the federal case.
So yeah.
Flynn is amazing.
To me, he's like the ghost of this whole thing.
All of a sudden, he just dropped out of,
you know, contention for anything.
He's not thought of as one of the six
unindicted or unidentified co-conspirators in the Trump indictment.
He really hasn't appeared anywhere, which raises a lot of questions as to whether or not
he might be cooperating.
It's possible.
It's also possible that prosecutors would reject an effort by him to cooperate because
gosh, does he have a terrible witness?
Do you see that in history of being a terrible witness and withdrawing guilty pages and the crazy statements that they
would have to somehow explain away on cross examination before they got shoved right
back at him on when being cross examine.
I mean, it's he would be tough.
It'd be hard.
I think to get people to believe it.
But then again, we don't have a bill bar
to help protect his case.
Yeah, that's true.
But that doesn't mean there won't be one
in, you know, any time in the future.
That's true.
All right, we have, well, one last bit from this story
about Sydney Powell that I just wanted to get out
before we take a break here.
Smith's team has specifically asked witnesses
about certain conspiracy theories pushed by Powell, including that Dominion Voting Systems has ties to
former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and featured software he used to rig his own
election. Since then, Dominion and Smartmatic have said, those tallies were changed after
our machines were used in Venezuela. And also what? So, I don't see that as being a problem on Earth one,
but it is interesting that Jack Smith is asking
about these various conspiracy theories.
And one of the main reasons is, is because, you know,
there was a proposal made by that group, the Mike Flins and the Rudy Giuliani's of the world for the department of defense to seize voting machines.
Cosh Patel had been installed over there, probably to head up that that work.
Of course, it's a good idea. We must do it. Oh, I know.
Especially because he has a dollar sign in his name. That's makes it.
There you go.
especially because he has a dollar sign in his name. That's makes it.
There you go.
But in order to, and it was told to Trump and his team,
in order to do anything with voting machines
for the Pentagon, we have to have evidence
of foreign interference.
And I think maybe that birthed the Italian satellite thing
and the bamboo in the thing and the Venezuela thing,
you know, trying to just whole cloth make up
foreign election interference.
When you got Russia sitting right there,
but they were interfering on behalf of Trump.
Don't look in that direction, whatever you do.
We don't wanna look over there,
but I think that conspiracy theory
is about foreign election interference
might have been so that they could justify
the Department of Defense or the Pentagon,
somehow seizing voting machines and rerunning the election.
Yeah, it's definitely could be that.
It's also could be just great stuff to have
and the off chance that Sydney Powell actually
wants to take the stand someday
because I'd be walking through, you know, showing videos
of every one of these lunatic statements and then asking, or what evidence
did you have of this?
And did you have a fine any proof of that?
And it would be potentially powerful cross-examination material as well.
Yeah.
And on the stand, she says, we're looking for it.
Donate to defend the Republic.
Right.
And we will make it happen.
Yeah.
Who knows what she would have done.
All right. We have more witness testimony
about voting machine breaches in other states
besides coffee county Georgia.
And we will talk about that after this quick break.
Stick around, we'll be right back Continuing with the CNN reporting, special council
prosecutors have also heard from other witnesses, Andy, about efforts to illegally access voting
systems in other states. One witness, who met with Smith's team earlier last month,
that's Bernard Carrick, spoke at length about how Trump allies access voting systems in
Antrim County, Michigan, shortly after election
day. And those sort of, they were trying to get allegations to put into their bogus lawsuit
to look to try to back up these again, bogus election fraud claims. In April, an FBI agent
and a prosecutor from Smith Special Counsel Office interviewed a Pennsylvania resident named
Mike Ryan, who used to work for a wealthy Pennsylvania Republican donor named Bill Bachenberg.
And during his interview, which Ryan described to CNN, he told him about it, Ryan says he
told federal investigators that Bachenberg worked with Sydney Powell and other Trump lawyers
to access voting systems in Pennsylvania and other states after the election in 2020. And Bachenberg, who helped
organize Pennsylvania's fake electors, was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee last year,
but there's no public indication he testified. And then Ryan says he told federal investigators
that after the 2020 election, Bachenberg was in direct contact with Trump. And a host of the
former president's most prominent allies, including Rudy Giuliani
and John Eastman.
So there's this, there's this Bakkenberg fellow now.
And we're now we're talking Pennsylvania.
It's not just coffee county.
We have Antrim County.
We have Fulton County is actually Pennsylvania, Fulton County, Pennsylvania, not Georgia.
And there's more to come.
I'll talk about them in a second.
But what are your thoughts on this Bakenberg guy? This is really fascinating. You know, it's like you were getting a little peek into
the nuts and bolts of the investigation, right? They somehow turn up Ryan. Ryan takes them to
Bachenberg. According to Ryan, Bachenberg has, it could is in a position to provide amazing direct evidence, right?
That's because he was allegedly in direct contact with all these characters, Giuliani, Eastman
and Trump, specifically.
So super important guy to actually talk to.
What do we know about him?
Approximately nothing, right?
There's no record that he talked to the committee. And we don't, we're not
aware of any like subpoena fights or any or a grand jury appearances. It doesn't mean
they didn't happen. It just means we're not aware of them. To me, this smells like a guy
who was who was very covetously protected by the federal prosecutors. So that's what I
feel like too.
Yeah. So he likely talked to the committee, but did so under kind of special agreement.
And, um, you know, you, you, if you thought, if you were on Jack Smith's team and you felt like this guy was going to be a vital, uh, witness to some of your future federal
prosecutions, you really don't want him going on record with the committee months earlier.
So yeah, I think he's someone who would make
probably a pretty respectable, believable,
and therefore a powerful government witness.
I don't know that he is.
I'm just speculating that according to Ryan,
what he had direct access to could be very valuable.
Yeah, and CNN even says it's unclear if Bachenberg's been contacted by Smith's team or the FBI.
And of course, Bachenberg did not reply to requests for comments from CNN.
This sounds like, I'm with you. This sounds like a super protected witness.
And he's a rich dude, so that helps him as well. He's got leagues of lawyers navigating this thing for him.
He's able to kind of stay away from the media.
He's probably hard to find, hard to,
not somebody you can just like walk up
and start asking him questions while he's on his shift
at Starbucks.
So yeah, it has all the stench of a protective witness.
Yeah, that and nobody really has ever heard of this guy.
That helps in a lot of cases.
You don't have to have any kind of preconceived notions
from a jury about a person like if you brought Mike
Flynn up to the stand in DC.
Exactly.
He's done Mike Flynn.
So who's this fellow?
Oh, former general.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, it's not.
All right, let's go to Michigan because the Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, told CNN she's spoken to investigators at both the state and federal level
about the push to access voting systems. Benson says when she met with Smith's team earlier this
spring, this has been going on for a while. She, like Bernie Kerrick, was asked specifically about
efforts related to Antrim County. That's in Michigan, where Powell and a lawyer named Stephanie Lambert
helped fund a team of pro-Trump operatives who accessed voting systems. Now Lambert
has been charged by state prosecutors in Michigan for her alleged involvement in the
conspiracy to access voting machines there. And Lambert is also linked to a breach
in Faulten County, Pennsylvania,
where she provided legal representation for the county
after two Republican county officials
secretly allowed a forensic firm
to copy voting machine data.
So Lambert, you know, while Jack Smith is investigating this,
Michigan was like, we're going.
And they just, they indicted their people
on that voting machine breach,
as Fannie Willis has done.
And so it's gonna be interesting to see
where the line is between what federal prosecutors do
and what state prosecutors do.
And right now the line seems to be
at kind of the national team, the pal, Juliani, free sort of team that went
around to all these different Patrick Burn, you know, that whole group, you know, that
seems to be where the cutoff is, where everybody in the individual states, maybe Jackson Smith
is like, you do, you do them.
I got the top.
It could be, it could be kind of, you know,
prioritizing resources sort of thing.
We know that he's interested in it, right?
It's one of the main themes in the Trump indictment.
I still think that he's coming back around
for these people.
I think they are potentially looking
at some federal criminal liability.
I just think he's kind of not gonna do it now
for the reasons we discussed earlier in the show.
I don't think any of them are safe.
And someone like this, you know, if the state's going to take a run at someone like this lawyer, Lambert, then fine.
Do what you're going to do. He can still come in behind them, separate sovereigns,
he can charge for whatever he thinks he has federally,
or that could be just one more motivation
to get someone like Lambert to cooperate.
So you never know, but it's gonna be...
That's what I was thinking.
I mean, you get these corporations on the state level.
That's gonna filter up to the federal level as well.
So... Yeah, absolutely.
You can't walk into state court and admit everything you did under a cooperation agreement
and then expect to defend yourself against very similar charges at the federal level.
You got to go, if you're cooperating, you got to go all the way.
You got to cooperate everywhere.
Yeah.
Now, get this.
You know, Lambert, as I said, was not only not only charged in Michigan,
but she's linked to a breach in Fountain County, Pennsylvania, and that breach is currently the
subject of an ongoing pro being conducted by a prosecutor selected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Did anybody know about that? There is a special prosecutor in Pennsylvania. That was the one to me.
Yeah, me too. So there are just, you know, Fanny Willis, kind of, Jocelyn Benson, Dana Nestle type investigations
I should say going on in Pennsylvania as well.
And Lambert has also been identified by CNN as an undidied co-conspirator in the Georgia
indictment, which alleges she worked with Cindy Powell to secure voting system data that
was copied from coffee county.
So she's all over the place
So Lambert seems like something that the feds would be interested in as well
Now emails obtained by American oversight indicate Bacchanberg. We'll talk about that guy again was involved in discussions about
funding for the Arizona audit and helped facilitate similar reviews in Pennsylvania
so the this team
Has their fingerprints in most of these key swing states that
Biden won in an effort to steal this voting machine data to try to somehow prove that there was
some sort of election fraud. And Powell was funding it. Yeah, the whole thing, okay, if you're listening to this and you're finding it hard to keep
all these players straight without a scorecard, I am as well.
But I think the message here is like the scope, the array of potentially illegal activity
that this, you know, the A team was involved in the powels the Eastmans the cheese bros the Giuliani's and of course Trump calling the shots and with a high degree of
knowledge and involvement in all of this stuff
It's just it's staggering. It's staggering and they really for a group of lawyers
They they took some unbelievably
irresponsible risks forget about the fact that they're trying to overturn democracy.
Let's try to put that aside for a second.
In terms of just their own self-preservation,
these are lawyers and they're engaging in like illegal, pretty clearly illegal activity
in multiple states at the same time.
It just goes to show you like the level of, I don't know, it must have been like straight up desperation. You know, that have to deliver some sort of result for Trump or just a desire to, right?
To be the person that shows up with a go, you know, the go brass ring or the lucky penny
that they've discovered in Antrim County or coffee county or wherever it was.
It's really a staggering, a staggering array of potentially very serious criminal activity.
Yeah.
And I guess what for a spot in this cabinet?
I mean, you know, I guess to be one of the very best people, you know.
Yeah.
One of the very, yeah, the very best.
Only the very best people.
Be best.
That's right.
That's right. All right. Well, it's good to know Jack Smith is investigating the voting machine
breaches in multiple key swings, swing states. Though many witnesses involved in coffee
county down in Georgia have testified they have not yet been contacted by the special
council's office. So let's real quick talk a little bit about freeze. Yeah. So, you know, this is the mysterious Rudy Giuliani aid who evaded indictment in Fulton County.
And her name is, we've decided Catherine Freeze.
So we have from Betsy Woodruff, Swan and Kyle Cheney at Politico, according to them.
She helped Giuliani woo potential donors to finance Trump's effort to reverse the results of the election.
She helped draft a quote strategic communications plan for a final push to keep Trump in office.
And this is apparently a document that became a focus for the January 6th investigators
and that called for placing ads on radio and TV alleging widespread voter fraud.
At the same time, freeze warned other Trump aides that their claims about dead people voting in Georgia for placing ads on radio and TV, alleging widespread voter fraud.
At the same time, freeze-worn other Trump aides
that their claims about dead people voting in Georgia
were weak, but Trump continued to trumpet those claims anyway.
So it was like, hey, what's with the weak sauce
on the dead Georgia voters?
Come on, bring me some real steps.
Bring me some live dead people.
I need more dead people.
This is a mountain.
I don't have to.
I don't have to.
Dead.
You know, I don't have great confidence in your dead people.
I need better dead people who voted.
A host of emails and documents exchanged by frees and other Julianne aides have been
turned over to the special counsel Jack Smith according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Now, freeze has not been accused of any wrongdoing by prosecutors or by Congress, and she's
not been mentioned in either of the criminal cases charging Trump with conspiring to subvert
the election.
Two Georgia election workers who are suing Giuliani for defamation tried unsuccessfully to
subpoena and depose freeze.
But after searching for her for months, they gave up saying that freeze had vanished.
They also couldn't get discovery at a Bernie Kerrick or Rudy because of Rudy's failure
to produce discovery.
The judge awarded Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss partial summary judgment, leaving only damages
to be determined at trial.
So Rudy's failure to produce discovery and respond to things like that really came back to bite him
in a hard way. But this evasive free seems to have slipped through the net and Dodge service
or something. I don't know how hard they tried to look for her, but apparently they
were not successful. Yeah. Honey, House January 6th select committee sought to deposit, but
never managed to get her testimony. And we'll see if Jackson Smith has more luck. He has a lot more
tools at his disposal than Congress to get her testimony if he needs it. And he, she doesn't feel
Um, and he, she doesn't feel like a, uh, like a secure, secret witness to me. Like the Bach and Berg guy does.
Uh, she feels just like we can't find her.
She hiding in the house with the, with the blinds drawn.
She sees a service guy coming up the path.
She's like, no, no, I'm not here today.
Uh, I'm kidding.
Obviously, but she knows that barrier with terror read something.
I don't know if Jack Smith wants to find her,
he's got the entirety of the FBI behind him.
He can probably find her.
I don't know.
Maybe she's like a super,
she's super human powers of evasion,
but I wouldn't bet on that.
And I would expect we'll see or hear more from her
at some point in the future.
Okay. We are gonna be right back with an update on the Scott Perry phone warrant and a weird motion to vacate filed by Donald Trump and DC, so stay with us. Hey everybody, welcome back.
All right, from MSNBC contributor Lisa Rubin on Twitter, and yes, I still call it Twitter.
I'm glad you do.
She says, how desperate is Donald Trump to slow the federal election interference case down?
Desperate enough to oppose the government's motion to seal an unspecified filing, simply
because he didn't have an opportunity to oppose the ceiling request.
Not the motion itself, just the request.
But in a rapid response, the DOJ, Jackson's office says, it not only followed the procedure
laid out in the protective order, but also suggests its underlying motion is about Trump's
daily extrajudicial statements that threaten
to prejudice the jury pool in this case.
Despite all that, Chuck can granted Trump's motion, vacating her decision to let the government
file its motion under seal.
Instead, she ordered a briefing on the ceiling request that will last through 9.13 and
implies that going forward, there will be briefing on any motions for leave to seal.
That's interesting.
The way that I read it was that she was going to have
this one briefing to resolve any future issues
with motions for leave.
But Lisa Rubin is saying it seems that she's indicating that there will be hearings on motions for leave to file under seal, not for the actual filing itself.
And that to me could be just her cross in the tees and don in the eyes taking away something that could be appealable, though not successfully,, a reason to appeal any decision that comes down.
And I don't know how or if this would necessarily delay things. Every time, if every time the
government wants to file something under seal because of a protective order, they have to have a
hearing about it. It seems like that could slow things down. It could, but it also, I think what she's doing here is really acknowledging the current
antagonistic state between these sides, right?
What she doesn't want is for the government to just request that everything be sealed
and then have to sit around and wait to see which requests the Trump team is going to decide
to drop anchor on and oppose and then demand.
Briefing, she's just setting up a rate, assuming they're going to be on the opposite side
of every issue, she's setting up a regular process that will do two things.
One, it'll cause the government to think twice before they request that things are sealed.
That might cut down on the overall volume of that stuff, which in the long run could make things a little quicker.
And two, it means as soon as they file the motion to seal, they'll file it with a briefing
schedule request. And you just immediately start that process. So you're not like coming back into
court, constantly yelling at each other, pointing the finger, they did the wrong thing, they did the
wrong thing.
You have a process in place now
that governs this going forward.
Yeah, okay, so I see how that could definitely
keep things moving as opposed to slow them down
by setting up that process now.
So that any time the government wants to file something
under seal, there's an immediate hearing
and they get it done.
What it's gonna take.
Now, to be clear, in most cases,
this kind of penny anti-stuff doesn't happen.
Like the government requests to seal something
and usually the other side will agree.
It's typically like information
that could like expose a witness's identity
or something like that.
Yeah, and there's a protective order here too,
over discovery.
But you're not gonna get, you standard, you're not going to get
standard agreement to anything in this case.
They're going to, because they're going to fight,
because that's their, they're going to fight everything.
And, you know, the fight alone is worth the fight
because it delays.
Yep.
Yep.
Well, we'll see what happens.
I'm interested to know what happens in that hearing.
Next up, what do we have about Scott Perry?
Yeah, so this is the infamous Scott Perry phone saga.
Now, everyone will remember that a long time ago,
Tom Windham wanted to see his representative,
Scott Perry's phone, because he had probable cause
to believe there was evidence of a crime on the device.
But as we've later learned, the FBI at the Washington Field
Office refused to sign off on it.
So they basically said, no, we're not going to do it.
We're not going to execute that warrant.
So when them then sent the inspector general
to seize the phone, the IG investigators
imaged the phone, which is the way you do this.
You have a warrant to seize the device, you take it,
and you make a copy of it.
And then the prosecutors have to go back
to get a search warrant to exploit it,
to get the information off of it.
So the image the phone,
and then sought a second search warrant
to get the contents and Perry then sued
to block them under the speech and debate clause
that protects Congress from
having to turn over information like this in certain circumstances.
Okay, so since then that lawsuit by Perry, all the filings and rulings have been under
seal, we do know that Burrell Howell, Judge Burrell Howell, granted DOJ access to the phone,
and then Perry very quickly appealed that decision and the issue has basically
been sitting with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ever since.
So this week we learned the DC Circuit Court has made a decision.
Unfortunately, the full ruling is under seal.
So we can only go off the information in the minute order that we can see on the docket.
And what we know is that the appeals court declined to issue a broad order blocking Jack
Smith from accessing the phone data, but they also didn't endorse Judge Howell's ruling,
and they've remanded the case back to the district court to reconsider its decision about,
quote, individuals outside the federal government communications with members of the executive branch
and communications with other members of Congress regarding alleged election fraud.
So you will recall, I'm sure, AG that those are the groups of information that Barrow
Howell said the prosecutors could access, right?
So she tried to respect some privilege of the speech and debate clause, which basically
says conversations with other legislators about legislative business cannot be reached
by the federal government under subpoena. But she carved out of that, well, his conversations
with individuals outside the federal government would not constitute legislative business, communications with members of the executive branch would not constitute legislative
business, nor would communications with other members of Congress regarding a ledger
fraud.
So that's what the government was thinking they were going to get.
And now it seems that it's being sent back to the district court to kind of rethink barrel
Howell's somewhat broad decision favoring the government.
Yeah.
And there was a big hint in the minute order that CNN had left out of this reporting,
or excuse me, Politico had left out of this reporting.
At the end of that, the communications with members of Congress, executive branch, etc.
It says before or prior to the voting on HB1, House Bill 1, and the certification of the
votes on January 6th.
And what that says to me at least is that this panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals,
which is made up by Henderson, Cotsis,
and Rao, by the way, Reagan and two Trumps.
What they're saying is that it seems like they have determined, and this is just a gas
based on that language, that his communications with those three groups of people are protected
by the speech or debate clause because he was preparing to vote on House Bill 1
and also preparing to deciding whether or not to certify the election on January 6th. This
is the same argument Lindsey Graham used to try to get out a testifying in Fountain County. He failed
in that argument, but he was also not indicted. So, and again, we don't know why, but it might be
because she just wanted to avoid the
whole speech or debate clause mess.
It's a very powerful privilege, and it's very broad.
But honestly, I think that if this gets appealed on Bonk to the full panel of the DC Circuit
Court of Appeals, I think it would be overturned.
And Judge Barrel House ruling allowed to stand.
I don't know what would happen at the Supreme Court level, but I imagine this will go all the way up from one party or another.
There's no question. I mean, if the government wins on an on-bong re-hearing, Scott Perry
knows he's close to winning it, right? Because he almost won it. He basically is in the
winner's chair today. And so there these got every incentive in the world to then
if he, you know, if he suffers at the on-bong reharing, then he would definitely push it to the
Supreme Court. It's also a significant national issue. It's a separation of powers issue. It's,
you know, it goes right to the heart of what is probably the strongest legal privilege that
members of Congress enjoy.
So yeah, there's no question.
There's going to be a ton of interest in the way this thing plays out from people who
aren't normally interested as interested in this case, but they're fast and really zoned
in on these separation of powers type issues.
Yeah.
And if SCOTUS takes up the case, it could take forever to argue and get a ruling there.
But my feeling is that the Supreme Court will not want to make a determination on the
speech or debate clause or answer the separation of powers issue at this time and might just
let an on-bong decision stand if they go on-bk or this decision stand if they go straight to
the Supreme Court, which is why I think Jack Smith will probably file on Bonk or maybe
to the Supreme Court, but I don't see the Supreme Court stepping in here personally.
But if they do, it'll delay the hell out of this and they'll never, you know, we'll be
looking for it another year and a half or two if they, if they win to get access to Scott Perry's communications.
So I get Jackson Smith has to decide how important it is to him to have those communications.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
And, you know, not for nothing as we discussed in a couple of episodes ago, DOJ keeps a very close eye on these things because they're thinking like,
what does a, what, you know,
what will the long-term effects on our investigations
and political corruption cases and other cases
that could involve members of Congress,
do we need to preserve a specific legal position here
for presidential, you know, reasons.
So, yeah, there's a lot swirling around on this one.
I think we certainly haven't heard the end of this story, but we'll see.
Could take a little time to get to the end.
Yeah.
And another option might be that, you know, we might not see an appeal at all from the
Department of Justice because perhaps they have all these communications
from the other parties who Scott Perry was communicating with
that they don't have to deal with speech or debate stuff with.
And so maybe they don't want that decision at all.
I tend to doubt it.
I don't think it would have gotten this far
if there wasn't something on that phone
that they needed specifically
that they might not be able to get elsewhere.
But who knows? If an appeal happens, it'll happen, I think relatively soon, and we'll be able to see whether or not Jack Smith wants to continue to try to get at what is in this particular
electronic device. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see one more at the other.
All right, we're going to head down to Florida and then take listener questions, but we need to take a quick break first, so everybody stick
around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, from Hannah Rabinowitz at CNN, Mar-a-Lago IT worker, Yuseel Tavaris, has struck
a cooperation agreement with the special counsel's office in the federal case over President Donald
Trump's handling of classified documents. And this is according to Tavaris's former defense attorney,
Stanley Woodward. Now Woodward included this in a new court filing. Andy, I saw something on Twitter. Somebody said, you pick Define Time to leave me, you seal.
It's awesome. That's so great. Pardon my horrible singing voice, but I thought that was.
Now I have that in my head every time I see his name. I can't believe I didn't think of that.
Oh, killing myself here. I know. I punched myself in the face when I saw that. my head every time I see his name. I can't believe I didn't think of that. Oh, I'm telling myself there.
I know, I punched myself in the face when I saw that.
I was like, why didn't I think of that?
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
Now, of course, we thought that this was going on
for the last couple of weeks.
So I wasn't super surprised about it.
Right.
We kind of, the writing was on the wall,
but now we have confirmation, right?
Especially through the entire, you know,
conflict process. But in any case, you know, conflict process.
But in any case, we know that Tavarra struck the deal
of prosecutors after he was threatened with prosecution
according to Stanley Woodward, who included that
in his filing as well.
So according to the terms of the deal
explained in the filing, Tavarra's agreed
to testify in the classified documents case
and in exchange will not be prosecuted.
Well, you know, this, this filing marks the first public acknowledgment that Jack Smith
has won the cooperation of a key witness.
Like we said, we kind of had a feeling this whole time.
But you know, this is now it's being telecast.
It's being broadcasted by Stanley Woodward.
And what's interesting is that Stanley Woodward is trying to, he's trying to say in these
conflict of interest hearings and his opposition to have a Garcia hearing about a conflict of
interest for him representing two of these key witnesses, but not anymore.
He's not representing Tveris anymore.
He's saying, well, just don't have Tveris, and we don't have to have this conflict of interest. I
won't have to cross examine him or on the stand, or my second lawyer can do it, or whatever.
He's just saying Tavarice shouldn't testify, but he is also saying that he won immunity.
He has part of this cooperation agreement. He's not going to be indicted because he's
giving testimony.
Yeah, that's how it works. Which, you know, yeah,
if he wasn't giving his testimony,
he would be charged.
So I'm not real sure where Stanley Woodward
is trying to come from here.
It's kind of amazing to me too,
from the perspective of like,
look how quickly this guy Woodward,
who was Tavars' lawyer, has cut and run on him now.
Yeah.
Right?
He's exposing all this stuff in his court filings
for his own purposes to serve his other client,
which is, I've never seen anything like this before,
and I cooperated a lot of people during my years as an agent
and of course oversaw a lot of cases with cooperators, you know, later in my career.
And typically, you know, the lawyer that gets dropped just kind of walks away because lawyers
are, they generally try to be careful about observing the ethical rules and not doing something
or saying something or going on the record with some sort of statement
that's that could really be against the interest of your former client. That's pretty much, you know, baseline
that shout-out not sort of conduct.
Not not wordward, man. He is just like cutting Tavaris off at the neck.
Yeah, it seems like if you are a Trump paid
super PAC lawyer, if somebody flips, they're dead to you like to you are a Trump paid super PAC lawyer,
if somebody flips, they're dead to you.
They're dead to you, that's right.
That's right.
And that's it.
And I mean, that's just further evidence,
aside from the fact that the very second
to the Tavarist talk to a public defender,
he was like, no, okay, I wanna confess,
oh, this is gonna be good, okay.
I'm gonna tell the whole truth,
I'm not gonna get indicted and I fire that guy. You know, like, yeah, all of that.
We'd love to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting where Tavarice is like, wait a minute,
you mean if I testify? I might not get charged because Stanley didn't ever tell me that
me going to jail was that was a possibility here. Yeah. And we have this elector, this fraudulent
elector lawyer not telling her clients about potential immunity deals.
We have a Cassidy Hutchinson's lawyer, Pasantino,
telling her to say I don't recall even when you do like
there I have to believe that Jack Smith is doing a full-throated investigation into obstruction of justice on behalf of some of these
Trump-backed lawyers. We already know he's been asking questions and bringing it up specifically in filings
that, first of all, he wanted to file under seal, but the judge, Eileen, can and denied
him that, you know, to say, oh, by the way, not only was his lawyer paid for by a Trump
pack, but he was recommended by a Trump lawyer.
Like he specifically brought that up.
And that, you, Jack Smith doesn't strike me as the kind of guy
who puts superfluous words in a filing.
No.
And so if he and Mueller was the same way,
or the people who wrote the filings from Mueller,
same whoever's writing these filings for Jack Smith,
or they're signing off on them,
every word is deliberate,
and everything in there is deliberate,
especially if you've tried to
file an under seal and you told you couldn't.
Oh, this is going to be public.
Great.
Let's bring up the fact that Trump is paying for you and was, you know, and that he didn't
find, he didn't just run into you on a billboard and call up and Google search you.
He was, he was directed to have you as an attorney.
That tells me at least, and, and of course, this is just speculation,
but that Jack Smith is looking into whether or not these lawyers for people like Hutchinson,
Tveris, Nauta, you know, that they're being untoward or perhaps, perhaps even potentially obstructing
justice. So we will see that in his final report,
because the special counsel is required to tell Congress what he investigated and where he declined
to prosecute. So if he did investigate these lawyers and how they were getting paid and if they
were subordinate perjury of their very own clients, that'll be in there. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, he kind of has to, right? Whether or not he has any intention
or opportunity later to turn any of this into criminal charges or allegations, you know,
we don't know. It's possible, but it's hard to say. But he has to go through this, this,
these math problems to figure out how he's going to access the witnesses that he needs.
A lot of these people are being represented by this little consortium of Trump-packed
lawyers.
And he's got to figure, this is like chess, right?
You got to play multiple moves out.
And so he is, I think, very strategically using these conflict of interest, Garcia
hearing requests as a way of trying to split off some potentially important witnesses or
cooperators from lawyers who are kind of prohibiting them from cooperating. It's not an
unethical strategy that he's pursuing because these people actually have pretty
significant potential conflicts.
Their clients should be made aware of it and should be given the opportunity to decide
whether or not they're going to wave it.
Of course, that's the job for the judge to make that call in the Garcia hearing.
He's also kind of ringing an alarm bell like, hey, Walnutta and Dale Lavera.
Think about this.
Tveras has not been indicted and you are facing 20 plus years.
That's the excruciating thing though.
I mean, Tveras is a good guy to have on your witness roster,
but he's no Nauta, right?
And he's not even a Dale Lavera.
Like either of those two guys,
if they cooperated, could blow the lid off of the obstruction side of this case.
And not a obstruction and, you know, espionage side of the case.
So, yeah, it's kind of remarkable that neither of them have kind of leaned in that direction yet,
but we don't know what's going on behind the scenes either. Have you ever dealt with a client who was reticent
to cooperate that had a shitty lawyer?
And do you kind of go easy on them?
Like, listen, now to turn around now and said,
okay, I want to cooperate.
Usually because you're the second or third guy to cooperate,
you don't get as good a deal as the first guy
But maybe because you know that you had potentially a lawyer that was not telling you the full story about the benefits of
cooperating as they're supposed to that maybe you are a little easier on them
Maybe you say hey, yeah come on over. We won't charge you
Because I think usually you would still charge them, they
would just plead to a lesser charge or something and do much shorter amounts of time. But maybe
in a case where the lawyer is behaving badly, have you ever seen and worked with any cooperators
like that?
I've definitely worked with cooperators who we were able to split off from their council,
get them other council, and then they didn't start out
cooperating, but then they eventually came on
to the government side with new attorneys.
It comes up pretty frequently in organized crime cases
where the mobsters are very good at joint defense
agreements and using the kind of in-house councils
they always use to keep everybody's mouth shut. And there's a process called Ghost Council
where if a defendant who is represented,
so therefore you can't talk to them, right?
Cause they have a lawyer.
If they somehow contact the government
and say that they feel like they are in danger,
like I can't talk, I wanna talk to the government,
but I can't because my lawyer won't let me
and I'll be killed if I do.
That sort of thing.
You can actually go in front of the judge and in camera, so without the defense present.
And the judge can pull that defendant in and question them to determine whether or not
it's a legitimate request.
And this is something they really want.
Do they really want to get away from their lawyer and as their safety involved. And so you appoint a ghost council to advise
them. I say, can you do it if there's no threat of physical harm? I, you know, I've not seen it done
in that situation. It doesn't mean you can't. This has just been my experience. But in any case,
if you, if we think about it in terms of NADA and Dale Rivera, you
know, they're very different than Tavaris because they're already charged.
Well, there's kind of what happened up in Judge Boasberg's court when they did a Garcia
hearing up there and the judge was like, talk to this public defender.
I mean, that's what happened for Tavaris, right?
Yeah.
But he wasn't charged at the time.
Right.
So the fact that not a endeavor are currently charged, even if they wanted to get on the
government side now, which there's probably still an opportunity to do that, they're not
going to walk away, Scott free like Tavares, because they're already carrying a charge.
And you also have credibility problems with them because they came in and lied.
When you decide to make someone a cooperator,
you have to ignore, you understand that there's a downside.
You're going to put them in front of the jury.
They're going to tell their story of the case
or their whatever evidence they have.
And then on cross examination,
the defense attorneys are going to point out the fact
that they got a benefit for providing testimony. They use that to undermine the credibility of
the witness in the eyes of the jury. So you can't just give a cooperator like the most unbelievable
deal of the, of, in the world, because you're actually contributing to undermining their,
their credibility like that.
The way you, quote unquote, rehabilitate a cooperator is you make them plead to a significant
offense.
They have to tell you the truth about everything they did.
And then they have to plead to something.
It's less than they would have had to plead to if they weren't cooperating, but it's
still a significant thing.
And you make it clear to the jury on direct examination that the
benefit from their cooperation depends upon them providing truthful testimony and court.
It has to be frustrating to have to explain that to a jury every time. Like, yes, our
cooperators are bad guys. Here's why they're doing. You know, the bad dudes and they're
doing this to get
a benefit. But the way the system is structured, they don't get the benefit until after they've
testified in front of you. If we determine that they didn't tell you the truth, they get
no benefit. So the incentive is for them to tell the truth and provide good testimony.
And that in that way, the jurors can rely on what these bad guys who lie all the time.
You can rely on what they say.
Now, I had a case where we had a cooperator who was just a horrible human being.
And he took the stand and testified very well, told a truthful and accurate story.
But the jury just hated him because he had done so many horrendously awful
things in his life. And we got it. Was it Rick Gates? I wish. I wish. The jury hated that guy, too.
But, you know, even the mug up the rural juror was like, it's a document's case. So. Yeah.
So it's hard. You know, it's cooperators are, you know, you get the, the benefit of great testimony,
hopefully, but they come with baggage that you have to kind of, you know, prepare the
jury for.
Yeah.
And in this particular case, he's going to say, yeah, his, his lawyer was a pile of shit.
And, and it was after he spoke to an actual public defender that he went, that the lights
came on.
And that's why he's's why he's cooperating.
That is going to really impact a jury hugely.
It is, and he's a good, he's good in decent witness.
He doesn't really do anything wrong here
other than lying to the government the first time he met.
Well, we don't know because the story
and the indictment ends where he was asked to help delete.
We don't know if he actually did help delete.
I think he did contact one of the calamaries
to see what he could do.
So he may have actually done some bad stuff.
But he pushed back a little,
he pushed back a little,
he said I don't have the rights to do it.
Well, the administrative rights, yeah.
But he was only facing, I think, a purger,
allying a false statements charge.
He wasn't facing a destruction of evidence charge or anything like that.
But that, again, might have just been to get him to cooperate.
We don't know what we will find out.
Comparampton, Nata, right?
Nata was like moving boxes around and taking secret flights to Florida to destroy evidence.
I mean, like, he's in the thick of it.
Like, Nata does not, and then he came in and lied.
So the government now he's facing a thousand on one charge.
So he does not become a cooperator
without pleading guilty to some significant hits,
which he could lower his sentencing exposure on
if he cooperated effectively and truthfully.
There's still an incentive to do it, but it's a longer road.
Significantly.
And I think another news story came out to show that.
We found out that there was a plea agreement offered to the proud boys in their seditious
conspiracy case.
And you know, he was facing, and Riccateria was facing 33 years.
He got 22, but that deal granted him nine years.
And he turned it down.
One was offered six years.
He got 18.
Another six years, he got 17.
Another got four years, four years, he got 12.
Another one was six years, he got 15.
And those are still significantly under the sentence and guidelines.
We may see Merrick Garland also file his intent to appeal these sentences for being so far below the sentencing guidelines, but we now have all this public information first of all from this filing from Jack Smith, the hey, if you know, I might not get, you know, off Scott free, but I would be
facing less than half the time if I if I work with the government here. And I think that that the
these stories are significant. And I'm glad they're being told. So let's let's move on to questions
because I know we are just about out of time, but we want we have some really great listener questions
that have been sent in.
What do we have this week?
We do.
Okay, the first one comes to us from Jane.
And Jane says, what is the statute of limitations
for bringing indictments against other people
in either of Jack's current cases?
And what would the statute of limitations be
on any new cases he might bring?
And then she says, never miss a Sunday update. Thank you.
Thank you, Jane. And I appreciate the question. And I think it's good with a lot of what we've covered
today talking about the possibility of other people getting indicted in the Trump January 6 federal case,
or the, I should say the aftermath of that, because I think it wouldn't happen until after that case is pretty much done. So, generally, federal criminal statutes have a five-year statute of limitations, and that's
under 18 USC 3282.
And that means you have to indict the person within five years after the crime was committed. So in a case like a conspiracy case,
like a 371 case, which we know we have a few of those
we've been talking about, that would be five years
from the last overt act.
So if the conspiracy started months before the election
in 2020, but it continued into January of 2021,
the last overt act takes place. That's when the last overdact takes place.
That's when the five year clock starts ticking.
Now, some, okay, so that's the general rule
for federal criminal offenses,
but there are exceptions, of course.
Some have no statute of limitations.
Like the few ways that the government,
the federal government charges murder.
So that's like capital murder, the federal government charges murder. So that's
like capital murder, genocide stuff like that. They don't have any statute of limitations.
And then other crimes like male fraud and wire fraud, which we were talking about today
and the context of the Pax fund raising, those have a 10 year statute of limitations.
So bottom line, I don't think the statute of limitations is a real problem here since you probably could get
most of this stuff drifted into 2021,
which takes you to January, 2026.
And so, and again, you don't have to have the case completed,
tried sentence, it just means
had the indictment has to have been returned
within the statute. So I think we're probably
on okay grounds there. Yeah, and you can even file indictments under seal to stop that clock
from ticking. But generally, generally, and I think this is probably true for Jack Smith
and mostly the Department of Justice, you indict when you're ready to indict.
You don't like a lot of people were thinking
that Mueller had filed some stuff under seal to get it on, you know, get it under the clock
and then like, we'll bring it out when we win the presidency back. You know, I was like,
I don't really see that as something that would be happening.
You know, that happens in cases like we indicted, the song had been lawden for years, but
had no chance of actually getting him and didn't want him to know, we indicted, if some have been lied for years, but had no chance of actually getting him
and didn't want him to know he was indicted.
So that remained sealed for a while, things like that.
But you, you know, it's really dangerous to do that
in a case involving dangerous people.
Because if it comes out that you had an indictment
against someone and you could have arrested them
and put place them in custody.
And then after that point, they went out
because you didn't execute somebody else.
And killed someone else and then it's like,
hey, you know, you should have stopped that.
So yeah, it's typically we don't sit on those
for any old reason.
No, it makes sense.
Thanks for that question.
We have a forum, a link to a forum you can fill out
to send us a question in the show notes. We appreciate your questions, keep sending them in. We have a form, a link to a form you can fill out to send us a question in the show notes.
We appreciate your questions, keep sending them in. We have so many good ones.
And we appreciate the amount of detail in these questions is so awesome.
It's really remarkable. And it helps me even to just, you know, obviously we can't read all of them on the air,
but it helps to read them to see what people
are thinking about and how the show is impacting the way they see the issues.
It helps me in what I'm preparing for these episodes.
I keep it in the back of my mind.
It's things we should bring up during the show.
It's super helpful and I really appreciate it.
Yeah, absolutely.
We'll be back next week.
Who knows what's going to have spin the wheel of
the special council wheel. What's going to happen next week? You have to do it in a dawn part of voice.
What will we be talking about next week?
Brand new car.
Yeah, Jan hooks. I who knows it could really it could be anything. But we look forward to discussing it here.
On the Jack Podcast, thank you so much everybody for listening. I've been Allison Gil.
And I'm Andy McKay.
And we'll see you next week.