Jack - Gutting Public Integrity

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

The Trump Administration is gutting the Justice Department's unit that oversees prosecutions of public officials accused of corruption.Emil Bove has fired the Chief of the Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Task Force, and Todd Blanche has fired the Justice Department Pardon Attorney.Judge Beryl Howell has blocked sections of Donald Trump's executive order punishing the Perkins Coie law firm.The top ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee calls for the Department of Justice Inspector General to open an investigation into Ed Martin, interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia.Judge Dale Ho has canceled the hearing in the Eric Adams dismissal case after amicus Paul Clement recommended he dismiss the bribery charges with prejudice.Plus listener questions.Questions for the pod? Questions from Listeners Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis 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

MSW Media. The Trump administration is gutting the Justice Department's unit that oversees prosecutions of public officials accused of corruption. Emile Beauvais has fired the chief of the organized crime and drug trafficking task force, and Todd Blanch has fired the Justice Department pardon attorney. Judge Barrell Howell has blocked sections of Donald Trump's executive order, punishing the Perkins Cooey law firm saying that they likely violate the constitution. The top ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has asked the Department of Justice Inspector General to open an investigation into interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. And Judge Dale Ho has canceled the hearing in the Eric Adams dismissal case after amicus

curi Paul Clement recommended he dismiss the bribery charges against the New York City mayor with prejudice. It's Sunday, March 16th, 2025. And this is Unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Unjustified podcast. It's the eighth episode. So we are eight weeks in to this new Department of Justice under the Trump administration. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Okay, as you can see, we have a lot to cover today. Plus, we're going to take some listener questions as always. You can submit your questions to us by clicking the link in the show notes. All right, AG, where are we going to start today?

Well, I think we should probably start at main justice. That's where Trump's personal attorneys, Emil Bové and Todd Blanch, are taking a sledgehammer to key units and personnel at the department. Now this reporting comes from The Hill. The head of a Justice Department task force dealing with organized crime and drug trafficking was fired by the Trump administration Friday. And he indicated he believes politics may have played a role. This is Adam Cohen.

He said he was fired by acting Deputy Attorney General, General, General Emil, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Beauvais. After spending weeks actually working with the Trump administration, the Trump team on a new memo concerning the task force, Cohen shared the news, which he labeled a shock in a LinkedIn post. He said, putting bad guys in jail was as apolitical as it gets. He said, my personal politics were never relevant, not until yesterday. The outgoing OCDETF, do we say that? OCDF?

No, we don't. I don't know why I'm laughing because no one would know this unless you were in the inside, but it's OCDF. That's how it's pronounced by people in the game. Silly me. OCDF. So the T is silent and the C is soft. Okay. Apparently anyway, the outgoing. Oh, said, oh, so deft, deaf, no T. Anyway, French. No, it's not.

I'm sorry. It's French. The Ocelot, the outgoing Ocelot head. No. So anyway, this is Cohen and this is, you know, actually serious business. Shouldn't make light of this because this is a really important drug trafficking and organized crime unit. Uh, he added that he'd been in regular discussions with leadership about crime

initiatives and recently helped draft a memo outlining the task force's role in combating illegal immigration under Operation Take Back America, which is a Trump initiative. The decision to fire Cohen can be seen as part of a broader trend in which the Trump administration is removing or sidelining career justice department officials who traditionally hold their positions across different administrations. An internal email from acting U.S. attorney Matthew Podolsky, I think that's how you say that. This memo reveals that three assistant U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York were

also placed on administrative leave the same day that Cohen was fired from the Department of Justice. Two of them, Cecilia Cohen and Andrew Rohrbach, were involved in the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. These removals came after eight DOJ attorneys resigned in protest for refusing to file a motion to dismiss corruption charges against Adams which they claimed were politically motivated. In the email, which was seen by Reuters, Podolsky expressed his disagreement with the decision, quote, we were given no choice nor asked for our views on the decision with which I disagree, he stated. A third prosecutor, Alex Kristofsik, was also placed on leave after

criticizing Ed Martin, Washington, D.C.'s interim U.S. attorney. Kristofzic condemned Martin's warning to Georgetown University Law School that he would not hire students unless the school removed diversity, equity, and inclusion from its curriculum. Ah, I remember that letter. Now the OCDEF under Cohen's leadership was responsible for operations targeting drug cartels and organized crime across the United States. Experts are concerned that Cohen's sudden firing could disrupt those investigations,

potentially leaving criminal organizations with less oversight. Now Andy, you worked a lot in organized crime at the FBI. Did you ever work with this OCDEF office at DOJ? Yeah, absolutely. So this is like the highest, that's not an official thing, but I would say like unofficially, this is one of the most kind of the premier appointments in the justice department. On the criminal side, so forget about terrorism

and chasing spies and counterintelligence, things like that. On the purely criminal side, the organized crime and drug trafficking task force, this is the group that does the biggest, most complicated criminal prosecutions that we have around the country. Organized crime cases take years and years and years and they have lots of intelligence

and electronic surveillance and things like that. The major drug trafficking organizations, same thing there. You're working internationally with foreign partners and maybe like Mexico and other places where we have good partnerships to try to go after these cartels. And there's like what we call sophisticated investigative techniques that are used. So that's Title III electronic surveillance interceptions and the use of like very complicated undercover techniques and things like that. I was going to ask about undercover. There seems like there was a big undercover element

to this as well. Full on. So this is a prime job. And my suspicion is they are just clearing it out because they have someone they wanna give it to. This is something that, this is a real plum assignment that typically only goes to someone with a lot of criminal

investigative and prosecutorial experience. And if you're looking to give away premier jobs to supporters and things like that, this might be one that they had their eye on. I'm just speculating. Don't know that for a fact, but that's the way I see it. But yeah, but like you said, usually this isn't one of those jobs that administrations give their inexperienced friends. Absolutely not. It's not like an ambassadorship to the Bahamas or something.

Oh, not at all. Which are jobs, don't get me wrong. They're important jobs and they have functions, but you don't have to have a lot of experience in counterintelligence and drug trafficking and criminal law enforcement in order to get a job like that, like an ambassadorship, where here you would need that very specific, it would be very important to have that very specific experience under your belt.

Absolutely. This is the kind of thing that goes to a non-political career prosecutor, somebody who has really proven themselves at having taken many, many cases to trial in court, having served in leadership positions within a US attorney's office, this is a major job for a very serious criminal prosecutor, not someone who's political, not an appointee, not someone who's been confirmed, a career prosecutor. So the idea that we would now be turning this into some sort of a patronage position is pretty unnerving.

Yeah, that is sort of frightening, but that's not all we have more, more gutting of more important departments, other important departments, I should say, not that they're more important, just other different, more important departments going on. What, what do we have going on at public corruption? Yeah. So next up from Ryan Reilly and his colleagues at NBC, the Trump administration is gutting the Justice Department's unit that oversees prosecutions

of public officials accused of corruption, three sources who spoke on a condition of anonymity told NBC News. The unit, the Public Integrity Section, which is typically referred to by people inside DOJ as PIN, has overseen some of the country's most high-profile and sensitive prosecutions. Now, though, only a small fraction of its employees will remain, and the unit will no longer directly handle investigations or prosecutions, the two sources said. Prosecutors in the unit, which had housed dozens of employees, are being told to take details to other positions within the department.

Its current cases will be reassigned to U.S. attorneys' offices around the country. Now, David Lofman, who full disclosure, somebody I know well and have great respect for, worked with him closely when we were both still working for FBI and DOJ. Lofman is a former head of the DOJ's counterintelligence section who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations questioned the move. Quote, the only reasonable interpretation of this extraordinary action is that the administration wants to transfer responsibility for public corruption cases from career attorneys at main justice to political appointees heading U.S. attorneys offices, Lofman said.

The decision, he added, raises serious questions about whether future investigations and prosecutions will be motivated by improper partisan considerations. Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like to me, what Lofman said. It sounds like he wants to have more control over which public officials and elected officials get investigated and prosecuted by putting them under US attorneys that he himself appoints. Of course. But I mean, he's still also going out of his way to get rid of all career line prosecutors and stuff at main justice anyhow, but he's farming these specific cases out.

Didn't Jack Smith used to work at Penn? He did. He ran Penn for a while. He came in after a kind of embattled period there. And as we talked about it, one of our very first episodes of the Jack podcast, he dedicated himself to basically reviewing all the cases they had, investigations they were involved in. And he closed a bunch of them down and others he moved forward with. So it's, it's always been a very influential and important place in main justice, because those cases that are undeniably political, right, not because they are embarked upon for political purposes, or that the prosecutors are politically motivated,

but rather that the targets of those investigations are political people by definition. This is the group that investigates whether politicians are involved in corruption. So it's always been influential and controversial. And it's been the type of work that DOJ does that they felt like they needed to keep a, they need to do what we refer to as centrally manage it, meaning DOJ main really controlled that program to ensure that you didn't have one-off random prosecutors in districts around the country that were, you know, starting investigations or prosecutions

for political reasons. This is the way DOJ managed that program to keep it consistent and, you know, ruthlessly controlled by applicable law. So the idea that that going in the opposite direction now and sending this program out to, I think there's 90 something US attorney's offices around the country is to me, it speaks of an administration that does not want successful penetrating, insightful investigations of political corruption. That's what it feels like to me. They also do want to be able to tell these political appointees at the US Attorney's

offices to go investigate certain things. We know that M.L. Bove and Ed Martin, a lot of people have been having trouble with kicking off investigations into people, political enemies they don't like for no good reason with no probable cause to do so or whatever the standard is to do that. I'm thinking of specifically Ed Martin trying to get seizing funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and being unsuccessful at that and then trying to get somebody else to do it and get somebody else to do it. So yeah, obviously Trump doesn't want anybody looking into people he doesn't want looked into and he wants to be able to instruct people to look into people he wants to look

into and this is going to help him do that. And also, you know, these are the guys that that Emil Bové locked in a room for an hour and said, I'm going to come back in an hour if you haven't decided who's gonna file the motion to dismiss the Eric Adams charges I'm firing all of you. And so that one guy Edward Sullivan came forward and you know violence and all right to spare everyone's jobs I'm gonna go ahead and file this and now they're just firing everybody anyway. Yeah of course they are yeah so like throwing this to the four wins and maybe ensuring that investigations that you want to happen are in the hands of political appointees that will be willing to do whatever is necessary to stay in their jobs and also to distract from and water down the ability of a pin to undertake investigations into people you like.

Yeah, this is a heck of a strategy for the new administration. Yeah, and we're still not done yet with this section of reshaping with a sledgehammer. The Department of Justice, this is from the Washington Post. They fired the pardon attorney because she wouldn't let Mel Gibson have his gun back. So this is Elizabeth Oyer. She said she was fired after refusing to back the restoration of gun ownership rights to actor Mel Gibson, who's a Trump supporter, but who was also convicted of domestic violence in 2011. Oyer headed the office of the pardon attorney, which works with the White House to decide who should be granted clemency.

She said, the only reason I'm speaking out about this is because I think it's important to shed some light on what's going on at the Department of Justice. It is incredibly difficult for people who are still there to speak up and people who are still there fear retaliation from the current administration. And you know, rightfully so. So what ended up happening was Trump administration came to her office and said, you have a new job. I want you to find people who have been convicted of crimes and restore their gun rights is basically what I want you to do.

She's like, all right. So she spent a bunch of time, her and her office putting together a list. They scoured the country. They found 95 people. They thought it would be okay to restore their gun rights. Folks who had committed all 95 of those people, their crimes were committed over 20 years ago.

All of the crimes were not violent in nature, like domestic violence, for example, and to show she had this. And then I think maybe Emil Boves came to her and said, okay, whittle it down to nine. And she's like, okay. So she picked the nine most deserving candidates for clemency. Yeah. And this is a part of the law, right? That's why you have a pardon attorney. Exactly. The law that strips your gun rights if you are convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor

involving domestic violence, there's a part of that law that says you can under special circumstances have those rights restored. And that's what was kind of the heart of this process. And so she whittled the list from 95 down to nine, gave it over to, I think it was Bovay, I can't remember who she said, she was doing an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. And they came back to her and said, okay, now just add Mel Gibson, would you? And she was like, no. No, he's not deserving of clemency.

And so they fired her. And so now we don't have a part. And honestly, they were probably going to fire the pardon attorney anyway. She's a, again, a career, a civil servant, a front line lawyer who's started because she was started I think under the Biden administration. But that's just, you know, one of the things that can get you kicked out of this administration is if you worked for the Biden administration. Yeah. I mean, she basically said, look, he doesn't fit the criteria of the other 95 or whatever people that we suggested.

It's his conviction wasn't that long ago. And it did involve domestic violence, which like all kinds of studies indicate that people who engage in and are convicted of offenses involving domestic violence are more likely to hurt people, particularly if they're armed. And so with that, she found herself in a position where she just couldn't ethically agree to add him to this list. And, you know, I point this out only because like it's, this is what I've been telling people, young people who I interact with, and some of whom are, were or are students in my class. And they talked to me about their concerns about taking jobs in the administration.

And what I always say to them is, when that moment comes that you're asked to do something that's not consistent with your values, your ethics, or your morals, that's when you leave. Other than that, stay and try to do your job well. But it's just, I feel like that's what Elizabeth Oyer did here. She talks in detail about how she really spent a sleepless night over it,

trying to figure out how to answer this question. She knew she was going to be held accountable for whatever her answer was. And she, in the end of the day, could not really stomach going against what she knew was the right thing to do. And good for her, man. Good for you, Ms. Oyer. Yeah. I wouldn't be able to, I wouldn't have restored a domestic violence offenders gun rights in order to keep my job. No way. Right. Absolutely. 100% not going to do it. So yes, congratulations. Way to stand up. And that's a great interview. If you get a chance to catch it, you can Google it and I'm sure it's up on YouTube.

But I think it was with Chris Hayes. So check that out. All right. We're going to talk some more about attacks on the rule of law. But this time, Trump is going after law firms. And we're going to do this after the break. So stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, in addition to slashing personnel and departments that would otherwise provide independent oversight of the Trump administration, the president is also going after law firms that have represented his perceived political enemies. During remarks given at the Justice Department on Friday, Trump called for his perceived enemies to be jailed, his courtroom opponents scum, and he called judges corrupt and he

labeled the prosecutors who investigated him as deranged. Then, after Covington-Berling took Jack Smith on as a client, he revoked their security clearances. Days later, Trump signed an executive order intended to punish Perkins Cooey, a large law firm that has had high profile Democrats and also the infamous Fusion GPS as one of their clients. Yeah, this is a grudge that goes way back for Donald Trump ever since I think FBI Director Comey sat him down and said, we have a pretty salacious dossier out there that you should know about. And then took contemporaneous notes about some of those meetings and follow up meetings.

And here we are, Andrew. It never goes away. Right. So anyway, Perkins Cooey has sued the administration for this attack. So he did it to Covington Burling, right? There were just a handful of lawyers who were representing Jack Smith, and he yanked their security clearances specifically. But then a couple days later, he signed this executive order against Perkins-Cooey. And so now Perkins-Cooey has

sued and also filed for a temporary restraining order to block major parts of this executive order, namely parts 1, three, and five. Now part one bars diversity, equity, and inclusion and is kind of just a weird political rant about Fusion GPS and the Christopher Steele dossier, all that, right? So that's part one. Part three orders the cancellation of any government contractor that does business with Perkins Cooey. So if you, like I said, I think I said on the beans, if you make Navy blankets in Terre Haute, Indiana, and you once hired Perkins Cooey to litigate something, you could lose your contract. Or if you hire them in

the future, they will cut off your contract, your government contract. That's right. Yeah. So part five bars Perkins Cooey employees from entering government buildings, which makes it impossible to be part of any case that involves a government official, and prohibits government employees from interacting with the law firm. Now, Judge Beryl Howell held a hearing on this. She got the case. She was assigned the case.

And it did not go well for Trump's Department of Justice or his executive order. Quote, I am sure that many in the profession are watching in horror at what Perkins Cooey is going through. It sends little chills down my spine to hear arguments that a president can punish individuals and companies like this. So there were a lot of choice phrases that she had for the Department of Justice Lawyers about the chilling effect that this would have on people's ability to have legal representation.

Perkins Cooey saying that they're being damaged because they're losing clients and money, obviously. So within hours, she actually granted the temporary restraining order. Yeah, that's right. And so this is some of the language from her ruling. She said, upon consideration of plaintiff Perkins-Cooey LLP's motion for a temporary restraining order, the memoranda, declarations and exhibits submitted in support and the

arguments in support and opposition presented at the expedited TRO hearing held on March 12, 2025, for the reasons explained orally at the hearing, it is hereby ordered that plaintiffs' motion for a temporary restraining order is granted. It is further ordered that defendants are enjoined, which of course means stopped, from implementing or enforcing sections one, three, and five of executive order 14230, issued by the president on March 6th, 2025, entitled Addressing Risks from Perkins-Coye LLP. It is further ordered that defendants are enjoined

from using the statements laid out in section one of Executive Order 14230 in any interactions with plaintiff or plaintiff's clients or employee of plaintiff or plaintiff's clients. It is further ordered that defendants are directed to suspend and rescind all guidance or other direction provided to their officers, staff, employees, or contractors to communicate, effectuate, implement, or enforce sections 1, 3, and 5 of executive order 14230. So that basically prohibits the government from enforcing any parts of that order.

It is further ordered that defendants are directed immediately to issue guidance to their officers, staff, employees, and contractors to disregard sections 1, 3, and 5 of Executive Order 14230 and to carry on with their ordinary course of business absent these sections of the Executive Order. It is further ordered that defendants are directed to immediately communicate to every recipient of a request for disclosure of any relationship with Perkins-Coy or any person associated with the firm made pursuant to Section 3A of Executive Order 14230 that such request is rescinded until further order of the court and cease making such requests pursuant to Section 3A of Executive Order 14230 until further order

of the court. It is further ordered that defendants must in good faith take such other steps as necessary to prevent the implementation or enforcement of Sections 1, 3, and 5. It is further ordered that defendants of the U.S. Department of Justice, Pamela Bondi in her official capacity as US Attorney General, the Office of Management and Budget, and Russell Vogt in his official capacity, must additionally immediately issue guidance to all other agencies subject to Executive Order 14230 to suspend and rescind any implementation or enforcement of Sections 1, 3, and 5.

and rescind any implementation or enforcement of sections one, three and five. But as further order, the party shall file by 4 PM on March 13th, a joint status report proposing a schedule to govern further proceedings in this case. So that's where we are. That's a pretty much, um, a very long way of issuing a full on judicial smackdown in a TRO motion. I mean, she could not possibly have granted them any bigger victory and been any clearer about the fact that she thinks that that those three sections of that executive order are basically poison pills. Yeah, and I mean, she, like you said, it's not just ordered that they're blocked. It's

ordered you have to rescind it. You have to make a statement rescinding it. You have to send out to all your agencies that you're not going to enforce this. You have to apologize and do a dance and, you know, there's, there's a whole, yeah, a whole lot that goes into temporary restraining orders for these kinds of executive orders that it's not just like, hey, hang back. It's like, no, you have to actively tell everybody that it's not in effect. And so now it's going to the case, we'll go forward the underlying merits of the case, right? I'm assuming here that if

she doesn't, there'll be another hearing for preliminary injunction, which is a more permanent temporary restraining order. But also she could, you know, she could be asking to hear on the merits and consolidate a preliminary injunction with the merits, which is kind of what you get when, like what Kathy Harris did. She was a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board. And she said, combine my preliminary injunction request with the merits and have a hearing on that. And then when they did, she filed for summary judgment on the merits because she consolidated with preliminary injunction, which gave her a permanent injunction. Both preliminary injunction and permanent injunction can be appealed all the way up

to the Supreme Court. As I assume this will also be because Donald Trump will not back down from fighting against Perkins, Cooey and other law firms. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I don't think I'll be successful. This thing was so over the top and like, overtly coercive. I mean, they basically sent a blast message out to every business in this country that if you hire this law firm, you can never do any business with the United States government. And that's an incredibly destructive and coercive thing to do. And so I think the law firm's on good standing here. You know, from all of our coverage of these things and over the last couple of years,

like one of the factors that the court has to consider before they grant this is chances of success on the merits. So it is in an underlying way, it's a statement from the judge about the fact, not that you needed this because her position on this is pretty clear, but she thinks that they'll probably proceed on the merits. This is why this is a point at which, and this really only happens in civil litigation, but it is a point where somebody gets this kind of order, it usually then leads to some sort of a settlement or resolution of the matter because there's not much, if you're on the wrong side of the TRO, this case ain't going in a good direction for you.

Right. Yeah, no, agreed. All right, everybody. Representative Jamie Raskin, I believe he's the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. He wants the Department of Justice Inspector General to investigate. Good old Ed Martin, the interim or acting or maybe, I don't know what he is, but right now he's playing the role of the US Attorney for District of Columbia. So we're going to go out over Jamie Raskin's letter after this quick break. Stick around. Hey everybody, welcome back. The inimitable Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, has written a letter to Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice Inspector General, one of only two Inspectors General that Trump didn't fire, which tells you a

lot about Michael Horowitz. Yeah, right. I mean, like, are you kidding me? Don't get me started. You know, this whole show off the rails. Holy cow. I know how you feel. Anyway, him and Kufari, right? Who Raskin also said should be removed because he lied to Congress. But anyway, Jamie Raskin is asking him, Michael Horowitz, to investigate Ed Martin. It says, I write to request the Department of Justice Office Inspector General immediately open an investigation into several recent actions by Edward R. Martin Jr., the interim

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, that appear to violate the Constitution, federal statutes, DOJ regulations, and rules of legal ethics. As detailed below since taking office, Mr. Martin has used his office to illegally attack critics and perceived enemies of the Trump administration while endangering the public safety of citizens of and visitors to our nation's capital. Mr. Martin has already fired over a dozen career federal prosecutors assigned to prosecuting violent crimes in Washington, D.C., simply because they had worked on the investigations of the massive lawless attack on the Capitol on January 6th,

an attack Mr. Martin was personally involved in and publicly supported and praised. In addition to firing the January 6th prosecutors, Mr. Martin has demoted senior career leaders within the office to entry-level positions, including the leaders of the office responsible for prosecuting violent crimes and firearms offenses in D.C., almost certainly on the basis of political retribution and revenge for doing their jobs. Mr. Martin has also threatened to investigate and prosecute critics of the Trump administration, including journalists, attorneys, peaceful protesters, and members of Congress in blatant violation of the First Amendment. He even ordered an attorney to illegally freeze the bank accounts of nonprofit

organizations who received grants for climate and clean energy projects, leading to the resignation of the office's career chief of the criminal section. And Mr. Martin violated one of the office's career chief of the criminal section. And Mr. Martin violated one of the most basic principles of professional ethics by making court filings on both sides of the same matter, filing both on the behalf of the United States and separately on behalf of a criminal defendant convicted of assault in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. I have previously issued oversight requests to Mr. Martin. He's refused to respond to them or even engage with the committee in light of

his stunning refusal to cooperate with legitimate congressional inquiries even while his nomination to be the permanent US Attorney for the District of Columbia is still pending before the Senate. I am requesting that your office urgently initiate investigations into these profoundly troubling developments detailed below. Now, Section 1 is Ed Martin's participation in the January 6 attack in the Capitol. Quote, Mr. Martin actively participated in the lead up to the January 6 attack on the Capitol and was present on Capitol grounds himself on January 6, 2021. Capitol grounds himself on January 6th, 2021.

His actions and his efforts since the attack raised serious questions about his political bias and his fitness as the chief law enforcement officer in DC. Now, next he goes on to section two, which is about his dismissal of a January 6th case that he himself defended in court. Quote, after being an active participant in the January 6th insurrection, Mr. Martin personally served as defense counsel for at least three January 6 rioters, all of whom were found guilty at trial. One of Mr. Martin's clients was a rioter named Joseph Padilla.

Following his conviction, Mr. Padilla filed an appeal while Mr. Martin continued to represent him on January 21st, 2025, the day after, after, keyword after, the day after he was appointed as acting U.S. attorney, Mr. Martin, in his official capacity, and while still listed as Padea's attorney on record, promptly filed a motion to dismiss Padilla's case. You can't do that. You can't be on both sides of a single case. You can't be the prosecutor and the defense attorney. Oh my God. Sorry. I went off there. Okay. Beyond this extraordinary action as a lawyer for both the government and its criminal defendant, Mr. Martin also failed to recuse himself generally from participation in the January 6 cases or to seek advice from the career ethics lawyer in his office before seeking to dismiss Mr. Padilla's case. Oh my God. Yeah.

Now, I mean, this is just something being the lawyer on both sides of a matter. It's just something so outrageous. It's probably never even really talked about like something that you don't do. Cause it's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no but it's insane that you would get the job, if any normal person, and I'm not talking about Democrats versus Republicans, I'm saying any lawyer would say, okay, now I'm the district attorney or the state's attorney or the US attorney. Yeah, do you just get up and go to the other table and put on a different hat and... No, you do this extensive, what they call conflicts review, and you withdraw from every... You recuse yourself as the US attorney from every case that you had any involvement or

interest in. Andy, I think if you want to be the prosecutor and the defense attorney, then you just need to get one of those quick change outfits and maybe just change your accent a little bit. And while you're in court, just run over, like kind of duck down and run to the other side of the, you know, the other table and be like, well, see, I'm the defense attorney now. And I think the, I think the represent, yeah, the represent both sides kit includes a Groucho Marx glasses, the glasses with the nose and the mustache. And then you put that on when you jump into the other side.

Is that what is that how Ed Martin is going to respond to this letter? Hello, Michael Horowitz, Inspector General, it's important to note that when I wrote the letter dismissing the case, I was wearing my Groucho Marx, um, appearing as attorney kit, appearing as us attorney and defense attorney and, uh, subject of the investigation slash witness. Oh my God. No, no, your honor. It was my twin brother. That was my twin brother.

All right. So those are the first two things he wants the inspector, Jamie Raskin wants the inspector general to look into, right? First of all, his participation in January 6th. Second of all, the fact that he played both lawyers, you know, on two sides of the same case when he dismissed a case that he was defending. So the third thing that Raskin wants Horowitz to investigate is political bias and retribution in the January 6th cases, extraordinary favor for January 6th defendants. Now the fourth thing is Ed Martin using the office to target perceived enemies of Trump

and Musk. And the fifth thing he wants the Inspector General to look at is the pressuring of prosecutors to initiate sham prosecutions to fulfill Trump's policy goals. That's a reference back to that seizing the money from Inflation Reduction Act grants to nonprofit organizations.

So all of that together, like all those are the, those are the five things that he wants the inspector general, your good friend, and one of only two spared by Donald Trump's firing of every single other inspector general, Michael Horowitz to look into. Yeah. Yeah. So Raskin goes on to conclude the letter by saying, in seven short weeks, the list of Mr. Martin's constitutionally, legally and ethically indefensible actions have grown exponentially. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia is one

of the largest and most important U.S. Attorney's Offices uniquely charged with enforcing both federal and local laws and serving the nearly 700,000 residents in the District of Columbia. As head of the office, Mr. Martin has a responsibility to enforce the laws faithfully and impartially. But so far, public reporting has indicated that he has failed to adhere to these high ethical standards and may have violated DOJ's own regulations, federal statutes, and the Constitution. The House Judiciary Committee is charged with the responsibility of conducting oversight of the Department of Justice.

In order to conduct oversight of the DCU's Attorney's Office, members must have a full and accurate understanding of Mr. Martin's actions. Because Mr. Martin and the DOJ have declined to respond to our requests for information, we respectfully request that the Office of Inspector General immediately open an investigation into each of the matters listed above, and upon conclusion, issue a public report

detailing your findings about this astonishing sequence of events. So there you have it. Yeah, I'm assuming we'll get this if Michael Horowitz does open this investigation. I'm assuming we'll get the report in 2032. Yeah, yeah, if then. Actually, you're not gonna ever get one. He's not gonna open an investigation. The ground he's gonna stand on is DOJ's like official mandate is to investigate the actions of DOJ employees. So Martin is not an employee yet, technically, right? He's not been confirmed

yet. Even if he's getting paid and he's the acting? Yeah, I know it's totally shady. That's my guess. I think he's gonna say this guy is not a fully onboard confirmed person. He's simply serving at the president's request as an as an acting and might have that we you know, if he's if he gets confirmed, we'll look at it again, something like that. That's my guess. Wow. All right. Are you? That sucks. Have you, have you seen it where they, where he's turned? He's refused to look into acting appointed before?

No, but it's pretty consistent. Like if he's looking at someone and then they quit, the investigation goes away. Like they see that termination, a very clear employment agreement as somehow essential to the work that they do. Well, then you probably should do something to make it so that your investigations don't take four years. Yeah, that would help. If you could get one done within the span of the lifetime of a cicada or whatever.

Someone's job, right? Yeah, come on. Anyway. Oh, it's 17 years. Time for Horowitz to shed his skin and release his reports. It's time for the brood X IG report. Okay, to watch on this. It's a plague. It's one of the plagues. Michael Horowitz is one of the plagues. All right, definitely. Everybody. Definitely. For sure. All right. Everybody, we're almost at the conclusion of what's going on with New York City Mayor Eric Adams' bribery and fraud charges. And we're going to talk about where we're at. We'll give you an update, but we have to take one last quick break. So stick around. We'll be right

back. Hey everybody, welcome back. As I said before the break, we are nearly at the conclusion of New York City Mayor Eric Adams's bid to dismiss the criminal charges against him with the assistance of Trump's Department of Justice. As you know, Emil Bové wanted this case dismissed without prejudice, leaving the option for the Department of Justice to bring the charges again later if they so chose. But there was some evidence of an alleged quid pro quo between the Justice Department and Eric Adams. Namely, you do our immigration bidding in New York and we'll grant you leniency. Now, Andy, as you pointed out, the only two scenarios here that could happen are both

corrupt. Either Eric Adams opposes Trump's immigration policies and is willing to go along with them for leniency, or he agrees with the immigration policies but will refuse to carry them out unless he gets leniency. That's it. Those are the two choices and they're both super corrupt. Yeah, totally. The whole thing is ridiculous. On any logical grounds, it's indefensible. But you know, honestly, it's great for Eric Adams and this is his chance to dodge what would have otherwise been a very significant and according to the former acting US attorney, likely successful

prosecution of him. Years, years in prison. So with the Department of Justice and Eric Adams on the same side, Judge Dale Ho, who is the judge deciding whether or not to grant Emil Boves motion to dismiss the charges against Eric Adams. He asked a third party to write an amicus curia brief in opposition. He explained it's like the adversarial thing

that we do here is important to get all the facts out. And since there's no adversary, we need one. Paul Clement, you're it tag, you're it. So his brief, Paul Clemens brief came in late last week. We mentioned it briefly on last week show We promised to get into the weeds of it today with you on this episode But there actually aren't really any weeds to get into it's a 30 page filing He says call Paul Clement says that Judge Dale Ho should dismiss this case with prejudice, not without.

He says that Judge Ho doesn't really get to decide whether to dismiss, just how to dismiss. He also said that the judge can consider materials outside of the four corners of the motion to dismiss. Remember, because Emil Bove was like, no, you can't have those meeting notes and you can't use my memo, like that memo that he wrote to Danielle Sassoon. And so, and you know, she talked about in her letter, her resignation letter, those notes,

how he collected those notes from the meeting where the quid pro quo was discussed. But Paul Clement says, if you decide to deny the motion to dismiss, what would happen with it? The Department of Justice wouldn't prosecute. And then Eric Adams would file a motion to dismiss the whole thing on speedy trial grounds, requiring a dismissal with prejudice. And if Trump pardons him, that's the same as a dismissal with prejudice. So why bother with all the expensive, long drawn out processes that all end the same as a dismissal with prejudice. So why bother with all the expensive long drawn out processes that all end the same way with a dismissal with prejudice? So Bovay and DOJ filed their response saying they really, really, really think this should be dismissed without prejudice.

And they cite this. You're going to love this. Remember how we talked about how ridiculous it was that Trump was citing Marbury v Madison to say that he should be immune when it specifically says the opposite. So the two cases that the DOJ cites here, same lawyers by the way, who cited Marbury in the immunity case. The two cases they cite to back up their reasoning to dismiss without prejudice are US v Rosenberg and US v Gogarty. And I talked a little bit about this on the Daily Beans, Andy, because there's a reason why Beauvais doesn't explain how those two cases support his argument? Because they don't. Both of those cases were

pre-indictment. Okay. And actually one of them, you know the Rosenberg case, the espionage case, right? They wanted to be charged under the Atomic Energy Act. Yeah. And so then the judge said, no, this is a good case. You were charged under the espionage act properly. And they said, okay, well, we want the, we want the judge to write us a letter that says we will never be prosecuted under the atomic energy act. And he's like, no, and that would have been, and that would have been without prejudice. Right. And so that's what Emil Bovay is saying here, why Eric Adams should be dismissed without prejudice.

And yeah, and GoGriddy was pre-indictment. So this is post-indictment. Obviously pre-indictment is going to be dismissed without prejudice because you haven't had – there's no prejudice. Anyway. You've never been prejudiced. Yeah. It's just bonkers that he mentioned those two cases. prejudice because you haven't had, there's no prejudice. Anyway. You've never been prejudiced. Yeah, it's just bonkers that he mentioned those two cases. And it was just a real quick

sentence like in his big old long thing about why this whole thing should be dismissed with prejudice. There were just only two sentences about why it should be dismissed specifically without prejudice. And it was Rosenberg and Gogarty. And I was like, do you think I'm not going to look those up, bro? Do you think I'm? Yeah. You think you can just slide by? Because normally when you file a, when you file something like this, Andy, you would say, you would cite your case law and you would quote from it or say why that case, for example, Rosenberg that you're making. Yeah. Right. None of that. It's just like, well, you know, Rosenberg. Supports the point that you're making. Yeah. Right. None of that.

It's just like, well, you know, Rosenberg and Googherty were dismissed without prejudice. So this should be, that was it, period. So. Honestly, he should have stayed with Marbury versus Madison. It worked for him in the other case as insane as it was, it worked out for him. So you know, he should have, he should have gone back to the same. Well, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so the judge, judge Dale Ho, he's canceled the hearing that was scheduled, uh, that he was going to have. Uh, I don't know if that is a signal that he's going to follow what Paul Clement has said. Uh, but as of this recording, I'll check

one time here and one more time here. He. I haven't seen a ruling yet from him. But what do you think about this? I mean, he brings up, I disagree. I think that you should deny the motion because on its face, it's wrong. It's not legal. And you should make the DOJ do nothing and then file a dismissal on speedy trial grounds. I think you should go through that exercise if you think that it's unlawful to grant the dismissal of these charges, but we'll see.

Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. To me, and this is just how many times I'll beat my head up against the same tree stump, I guess to me it's worth making a point over like the judge could easily take the position here that like, yeah, sure. This is if I refuse to grant leave to dismiss the charges, then I leave this big problem for DOJ. But so what? That's the executive branch's issue. They need to figure out how to clean this thing up. They didn't need to show up for the trial or embarrass themselves by not showing up for the trial

or pardon the guy. So I wouldn't, you know, it, refusing to go along with Clements opinions, I think puts the judge in the position of putting the attention on the appropriate place here in this issue. It's not what the judge sizes of what do j did. Problem is now though you've got three parties who say that this should be dismissed. Oh yeah, yeah. Two are saying with and because Eric Adams changes tune. He said, oh yeah, no dismiss me with prejudice, yeah. Yeah. Two are saying with and because Eric Adams changed his tune. He said, oh, yeah, no dismiss me with prejudice, please and One the DOJ saying without so now that's the only opposition here is, you know with or without Mm-hmm

so I don't know I I I wish judge Ho would do Ho would deny this motion to dismiss, but it would also, I think, be hard for him to go against everybody. Yeah, no doubt. And I mean, there is a logic to Clement's argument. This is where we're headed anyway. One way or another, the same thing happens. These charges go away never to come back. And so if you're Judge ho, you could just be kind of like throwing your hands up. But like, I don't know, I think it's worth fighting the war, but that's just me.

Yeah. And I mean, he's got to execute the law the way he sees fit. So it's not like, I don't think judge ho is the kind of guy who say, well, you know, I'll go ahead and not follow the rules, uh, cause it just doesn't make sense this one time. Like, I don't, it doesn't strike me as that. But we'll see what he says when he says it. And we'll let you know. All right, everybody, that's the show. It's time for listener questions. If you have any questions for us there, you can find a link in the show notes and you can email us any question that you might have. And Andy and I will be happy to try to answer it. So Andy, what do we have for listener questions

this week? All right, so we have two this week that I picked for what I think will be obvious reasons. The first one comes to us from Dallas who is in Australia. So not somebody in Dallas, but his name is Dallas and he's in Australia. Okay, hi from Dallas in Australia. And I gotta say Dallas, that opening line had my brain tied up for like five minutes before I figured this out. But anyway, hi from Dallas in Australia. We treasure your work creating scrutiny so these horrible things are not happening in the dark.

I have a question about Eric Adams. Dallas says, given that there were other charges being developed against him with a superseding indictment anticipated, does that mean that if this batch gets dismissed with prejudice, there's still a possibility of other charges being brought against him in the future? And it's a good question. Dallas and a lot of people are talking and thinking about this this case right now so unfortunately i think the answer is no there's. If this the case that is current current state of indictment against him dismissed. With or without prejudice i would say it's dismissed without prejudice. let's say it's dismissed without prejudice, the likelihood of any prosecution coming forward that was based upon or drew upon the same basic facts, that will be considered part

of the same matter. And I don't see that as ever being a possibility of new prosecution under a different term. Hmm. That is a really interesting question because the charges here are the bribery and fraud. The superseding indictment was obstruction of justice. I know Bill Barr had written a memo about Trump's obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation saying that without the underlying crime of conspiracy with Russia, there's no, you can't go after obstruction. I thought that was legally incorrect. And I thought that the obstruction that Eric Adams participated in, namely getting his co-conspirators to delete things, destroy

evidence and lie to the FBI, were separate from his bribery charges. But yeah, I don't see anyone being willing to bring the obstruction of justice for crimes that were pardoned or dismissed. Do you know what I mean? I've never seen, I've never seen a obstruction case brought against crimes that were dismissed. Not chargeable basically anymore. Right? Yeah, I agree. So, and I may have reversed this, which is a bummer. But yeah, if these charges are dismissed with prejudice and you come back later and try to indict him under a different statute, he's gonna come into court and say, yeah, Judge, the Justice Department is just trying to get around its

own problems. It's all derived from the same conduct and therefore it should be any charges based on this conduct and these same facts should be barred by the prior dismissal. Whether he succeeds on that or not is a different question, but that's certainly the attack that the defense would take. Yeah. And if I were trying to bring the charges, I would say, yeah, no, sorry, these are two different crimes. Your bribery and stuff was one crime that was dismissed. That doesn't get you off the hook for telling your co-conspirators to lie to the FBI and destroy evidence in

that case. But I honestly don't think a judge would let you hang obstruction of justice out there without the rest of the. Yeah. What are you obstructing at this point if it was dismissed? I agree. I agree. Anyway, great question. Really good question. Yeah, yeah.

So all right. From Dallas's very specific question, I want to kind of back up a little bit and hit something on kind of a bigger, a bigger issue that we also got a lot of comments about this week. And I should say that some of those messages that we got indicate a real kind of concern or desire to understand, I think, like, what might be the pathways to like, resisting the current state of political affairs, more comprehensively or effectively. So there's, I definitely sense that kind of

strain of, of, of what some of our audience is thinking about right now. So along those lines, Mike from Atlanta writes in longtime listener, thanks for keeping us well informed. My question is about the Supreme Court's immunity decision. Prevailing discussions seem to posit that the president can break the law and that there is no remedy available to those harmed, but doesn't the Supreme Court decision just mean

that Trump can't be prosecuted for the decisions to find illegal actions? However, that decision doesn't prohibit a court from providing remedies to the victims of the illegal actions. What am I missing? I think the bigger issue here, Mike, is whether or not the things that we are currently seeing the president do are in fact, illegal. And that's a that's kind of a question that's come up for many people this week as

well. So that's a hard thing to answer. So far, I guess the best way to do that is to say, we don't know. Certainly the president has the ability to enact these executive orders, including them, whatever he wants. Those things are being now challenged in court. And that's when we're going to find out whether the courts disagree with whether or not the president had the authority to, you know, take the action he did. So it's, it's a little bit, I think premature to try to determine that. But there you go. Well, those civil cases are being allowed to go forward. And so in that you are, people have been and are continuing to sue him to get remedies and relief as victims of people who have suffered harm, namely Blasengame et al., which is

about Capitol police and certain members of Congress in a Swalwell lawsuit that I think Benny Thompson had one too, but he had to withdraw because he became the chair of the January 6th committee. So that the fact that those lawsuits are still alive and well tells me that the immunity decision does not prohibit a court from providing remedies to victims of illegal actions. So unless you're talking about some other kind of remedy besides damages in a civil suit, I think that you're right on with your assessment in that it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, yeah. And of course, as you mentioned in the question, the Supreme Court decision talking about the fact that the president essentially can't be prosecuted, or more specifically, what evidence can and can't be used against him in a prosecution. I think the problem that a lot of people have now is they're recognizing that that opinion, in addition to the specifics involving prosecution,

indicated a broader interest on the part of the Supreme Court to expand the role of the presidency and the power that the president has. And I think that's what's driving a lot of concern right now. The fact that they may be pushing in that direction doesn't make it explicitly illegal, but you can count on the fact that there are many institutions out there that are going to file these sorts of lawsuits to determine that in the court of law, which is the way it should be. Agreed. All right. Thank you so much for your really, really good questions, very thoughtful questions. If you have any questions for Andy and myself, please click on the link in the

show notes and submit your questions to us. It can be about anything. We appreciate you listening and we're going to keep doing our best to keep you up to date on what's going on with the Department of Justice. So thanks so much for listening. If you want to become a patron and support this program, you can do that at patreon.com slash Mueller, she wrote. Our shows are always free free but you can always support and pledge for independent media support us. Thanks so much to everyone who does already. Andrew, do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here this week? Not really. Another head spinning week. All kinds of crazy things happening and I'm sure

we can count on that being repeated next week. So we'll be right back here to talk to you about all the developments. Yes, we will. And I just double checked so far, nothing from Judge Dale Ho yet on the Eric Adams dismissal. So we'll save it for next week. Everybody until then, I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawkey with art 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 Joel Reeder 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.