Jack - Manafort Don't Give A Sh*t (feat. David Priess and Randall)

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

Ep #42 - This week, Jaleesa covers the latest victim of Russian hacking in Rohrabacher's district, Jordan gives an update on Giuliani's "Lube The Truth" tour, and AG breaks down Trump's enemies list. Also, Randall from Randall's Animals breaks down the latest on Manafort's trial, we have an incredible interview with Veteran Army Medic Red T Raccoon, and pod favorite David Priess returns to the show! Enjoy!

They might be giants that have been on the road for too long. Too long. And they might be giants aren't even sorry. Not even sorry. And audiences like the shows too much. Too much. And now they might be giants that are playing their breakthrough album, all of it.

And they still have time for other songs. They're fooling around. Who can stop? They might be giants and their liberal rocket gender. Who? No one. Decide which pay for forward somebody else's money. Hey, Mueller junkies.

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There's something for everyone and thank you for supporting women in media and women in podcasting. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have and I have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Food and Fire?

I have nothing to do with Food and I've never spoken to them. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So, it is political. You're a communist! No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello, and welcome to Muller She Wrote. I am your anonymous host, A.G.

I use a pseudonym because I work for Trump's executive branch and not only do I not want to violate the hatch act, but he's purging non-loyalists bigly, and I'm trying to lay low. So also this week I got an email. I think everyone in the government got an email saying, you better not violate the hatch act. It included new rules,

and it's like, we can't use an alias to tweet about fundraising activities or anything like that. I thought that was interesting. I hope it's not because of me. Sorry, government. Anyway, I'm going to do my best not to violate the Hatch Act. So I cannot any longer tweet out or ask for any fundraising dollars for any political campaign. So I'm going to leave that up to Julie.

So in Jordan to do. Wait, so does that mean? Okay. So on our Twitter, for example, when we do Fippa Blue segments, and we donate to Fippa Blue candidates, does that mean that can't come from our Moulershi Twitter account? Correct.

Yeah, so our personal accounts will take care of that. Well, we just learned it's a new rule. Yeah, going forward, I can't do that. Crazy. It is crazy. There's all sorts of weird new rules that didn't exist before. And I seriously hope I'm not the catalyst, but- You two popular AG. No, I don't know if that's it

But we'll see this is episode 42 you guys 42 the answer to life the universe and everything will be in this episode With me as always is Julie So Johnson hello and Jordan Coburn hello And this week was Epic, you guys. Jolisa will be covering the next victim in the 2018 election interference by Russia. And Jordan is going to cover the Giuliani, lubed the truth tour, which is ongoing in every city near you.

It is. He's sizing up every week. Yeah, he is. He's getting bigger. His teeth seem to be getting bigger. I don't know if that's a thing with his confidence. His teeth, largest teeth grow as he lies. It's if that's a thing with his confidence, his teeth largest. His teeth grow as he lies.

It's exactly a teeth pinocchio. Weird pinocchio. A toothy pinocchio. So as an aside, I wanted to let everyone know why we call it the Loub the Truth Tour because that's what House Trump is doing. Basically, they're testing their base by releasing bits of truth like the fact

that Trump dictated the Air Force One letter or that Trump paid off playboy playmates. And he's, or you know, that he is obstructing justice. And he's doing this because they're basically rolling the dice that Mueller will not indict a sitting president because of current Department of Justice policy, which means this will likely be decided by impeachment, which relies largely on the court of public opinion. And he also knows that Trump would lose a subpoena battle. So when Trump has to testify to the grand jury and handled by Mueller, he will have to tell the truth

or plead the fifth. And since pleading the fifth would look really, really bad, he would have to tell the truth. But by then, his base will know the truth because of Giuliani. And Giuliani will have kind of muddied the waters so much that they will likely believe that everything Trump has done is within the law. So he's lubing the base to prepare them for the truth.

That's basically why I call it lubing the truth. He just had to jump in really quick. He's preparing them for the truth, but also preparing them for the lies that Trump's going to go on record saying. Good play. Yeah. And I wanted to leave that because I know you're going to report on that later. Oh nice. So I was like, should I tell you I bring up the last? Because he went outside of his truthiness. Yeah, well, even when he did last week when I covered, when he was going back and,

you know, saying that meetings didn't occur, that we know have occurred for sure the whole time. And if they did occur, he didn't know, but they didn't occur. So it doesn't matter, but they occurred. And you know, you talk about gaslighting. Yeah. That's why I, I loved having Andrea Chalout-Bahn so much because gaslight nation is such a cool podcast. Amazing. Check it out if you haven't. Anyhow, I will be going over the Trump enemies list, which is what it is. You know, they, he might not call it that, but that's what it is. And we'll talk about that later. But before we begin, we have a few corrections from last week. First, I referred to Montenegro as Montego. I love that song, no I don't. Also, I had said Collins, who was indicted for insider trading, was going to withdraw from the race.

In fact, he's only suspending his campaign. So there's that. I think he's still going to end up on the ballot. And finally, I wanted to address this clip. It's just hilarious to me to watch them try to do technology. It's so funny. It makes me feel so much better about myself. This is the son of the man that called in and falsified another person saying, what a great man. So I want to make sure everyone knows I don't

think it's because they're old. I don't want to practice ageism here. I think it's because they're old. I don't want to practice ageism here. I think it's because They're Trump supporters. Trump supporters can't tech. They can't meme their sense of humor is not existent Let's just say they don't belong on the TED stage Some of them tried to you were seeing that frog meme the pay pay. I mean Yeah, some of them at the top like the elitist Trump supporters They they know what they're doing, but you're right, but the masses, the Trump supporters. They're polirious. They're poorly, the graphics are bad,

they're kind of blurry, they're pixelated, they don't understand DPR. True, true. They misspell a lot of shit. And Pepe, that's just a weird choice of like, a Nazi slogan, a frog? Why a frog? Why a frog?

Yeah, because back in the day, when I was in Sharp, which is the skinheads against racial prejudice, your laces indicated what faction you were behind. Like if you were white laces, you were white power. If you were red laces, you were Nazi. If you were one black and one white, you were two tone, which is what I was. But they had this if you were blue, two tone, two tone, skinheads against racial prejudice. Oh, like listen to the specials of the soldiers and toasters and you like the

fashion of yeah, yeah, black and white. And. And then if you wore blue, you were neutral. And in green, you loved frogs, which was just, I don't give a shit about anything. But now it means something. And that comes me out of the blue. That's where they started. I like the idea of the blue laces, not giving you about the neutral people.

I'm just neutral. I'm like, I can't really take a position on Nazis. That's great. With that, I'm not going to go blue. Good people on both sides. Yeah, that. I'm not gonna go blue. Good people on both sides. Yeah, that's what the blue face is for. No, I don't know.

I think they were just like, I don't give a fuck. We got a minor correction on a space force segment too. So, and said, minor space force correction, China shot down there in satellite, not North Korea. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I, why did I think it was North Korea? They can't shoot anything down.

Yeah. Yeah, go back your seat, all. Get some self-suffering. I should know better, China's better aim. Finally, we have some great guests this week, including a veteran and fellow resistor, Red T. Raccoon. We have David Pries. He's going to join us again to discuss his involvement

in the letter from former security officials, damning Trump's stripping of Brendan's security clearance. He was part of that letter. And we have a very special guest to give us a breakdown of the Manifort trial. Randall from At Randall's Animals on Twitter of Nastias Honey Badger fame will be here to give us an overview of the Manifort trial.

I figured, you know, I remember one time seeing on the daily show when John Stewart brought Fred in from B-52s to read a passage of an extremely boring book to make it more interesting. So I think that's kind of where we're going with this. Oh, I love it. In the Honey Bachelor video,

I watched that so much in high school, like over and over and over again. Honey Bachelor don't care. So funny. Nasty as Maniford, don't give a shit. I'm excited to hear what he has to say. Anyway, let's go over this week's news with just the facts. Okay, before we get into the facts, I've got a message.

I got a message from the contact page of mullershearout.com from a disgruntled listener who said they can no longer recommend our podcast to Trump supporters and muller haters because they alleged we are no longer unbiased in our reporting, which I suppose is fair. Although I think we were always biased in our reporting. I was going to say, I think it's been pretty consistent. We acknowledge it pretty forthrightly. But I support everyone's right to not listen to a podcast. We're clearly on the side of justice, and I tend to think everyone knows that.

I'll try to do a better job of drawing clearer lines between facts and conjecture, but I thought that's what beans were for. Yeah, yeah. But thank you for the feedback. Okay. It's hard, yeah, it's hard not to have bias about something that we're so passionate about. So it's going to come up, yeah, but I mean, it's noted. I'm not trying to pander to term supporters either.

If we sway some in the process, that's dope. But mainly we're reporting what's actually happening and what's happening is fucked up and a GOP sucks ass and They they just are to blame for all started my new hashtag this week. Hashtag geo please I like it. Yeah, but we also take down Democrats when they're fucked up. Yeah, yeah, we do we're progestists That's what it is. Yeah, and if Democrats go down and Mueller's report I'm for it. Yeah, I want the corruption gone so anyway if Democrats go down and Mueller's report, I'm for it. I want the corruption gone. So anyway, sorry if you're a Trump listener and you found that we're too against Trump, we are part of the resistance. That's what we do.

Thank you for listening, though, until. Yeah, I'm reaching out. Yeah, until just now. Yeah, I don't mean to be a hater. That's, yeah. But I mean, I've kind of, I've come to the foregone conclusion that we, there's just certain minds we're not going to change and I'm not going to try. Exactly. I've encouraged to the foregone conclusion that we, there's just certain minds we're not gonna change and I'm not gonna try.

Exactly. I've encouraged others to stop arguing with Trump loyalists. It just gets you nowhere. Right. What was the old saying, like, don't argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. Yeah, free will is powerful.

I think, you know, you can preach all data someone what you think is right and wrong, but I think in the day they're gonna do what they want and we have to accept that that's America. And we have laws to prevent people from getting hurt by people's bias. But I don't think our bias is harmful. I don't think we're trying to hurt people with it. So, no, we want to save people with justice.

Yeah. All right, so let's get going here. Monday morning, we learned that Peter Struck was officially fired from the FBI. Now, there's been a lot of opinions on social media about this move, but let me lay out the facts. In the federal government, if you want to fire someone, it has to be for a fireable offense, first of all. And in Strux case, there was a thorough investigation done by the IG, Horowitz, Inspector General,

who concluded that while Strux fucked up by using his FBI phone to send text disparaging Trump, and that there was an appearance of bias, the IG found that Strux political views did not at all affect his investigatory work or his work within the FBI. The recommendation was made that he'd be suspended for 60 days without pay because that is the punishment all other agents in the past have received. And when a person brings a wrongful termination case against the government, the number one thing the judge is looking for is whether or not that person was treated in the same or a similar way as others in the

past who have committed the same infraction. In this case, revoking the 60-day suspension and firing struck is not the normal MO in the FBI. So they've created a problem for themselves by firing struck for an infraction that everyone else gets a 60-day suspension for. The only rule struck broke was using the FBI phone to send his texts, which included negative texts about Hillary and Bernie as well. He seems to hate everyone. That is not a fireable offense, you guys. So I think the administration has a wrongful termination case on their hands, and of course we'll cover it. And Strux, GoFundMe for legal fees, raised over $325,000 on the first day. And what I consider the most interesting part of the story is who fired struck.

It was Bodich. Listeners who have been around since the beginning will remember the Komi 5. Bodich is one of the original five people that can corroborate Komi's interactions with Trump. So why did Bodich fire struck? Why didn't, you know, Ray, who's ahead of the FBI? So I'm wondering like, did he succumb to the dark side? Did he give a loyalty pledge to Trump? And is that why he's still there? Or is

Trump pulling like that sadistic mob move of having struck fired by one of his own political opponents? I hope we learn the answer. And we should watch what happens to Bodich as the investigation presses on. Yeah, maybe they just want struck to be a martyr. Yeah, I was thinking that the third option is that they want it to beat them to the punch and make it seem like they're coming up on the side of like what's fair instead of like being forced into something by Trump. Yeah, I don't know, but what I thought was interesting this week was when you know how I said struck hates everybody equally. Yeah, there's a thing, there's a thing that's been in our lexicon for a long time called an equal opportunity racist or an equal opportunity big It you heard that phrase right. I hate everyone equally. Yeah, well when Sarah Sanders was defending Trump's use of a possible

End word on a tape from Amarosa Sarah Sanders said you know what Trump is an equal opportunity Attacker like I swear to God. She was gonna say she was about to say equal opportunity racist She stopped herself before she realized she was just about to say equal opportunity racist. She stopped herself before she realized she was just about to call Trump a racist. Oh man. I thought that was really funny. They slip up sometimes. They almost got her. Then Monday Giuliani started in on his weird ass incoherent public mumbling and Jordan's gonna go over that later in the show. A new mumble wrap, I guess. Must be hard to wrap with those teeth. Oh my God. That's why it's mumble wrap. That would actually be like, top of the charts these days.

It's like when you dress as a vampire for Halloween, you're like, hey, everybody out here. Yeah. I want to play a carnival game. That's like that big bertha one where you like knock down your gin as teeth. Like being very false. But I want to sample Trum's saying,

the United States of America, and just put that on a really dope track and just make it the coolest diss track. You should do a mumble rap. Yeah. Lay down a beat, do a mumble rap of Juliani over it. Just sample all of their little rants. Oh, I'll lose the truth. Oh my gosh, guys. I'm on it. I'm on it. parody snl pay attention. Please donate so we can raise funds for these projects. Yeah. Become a patron now so that we can make weird videos. Also, Monday, Trump appointed a Trump-appointed judge, upheld special counsel Mueller's authority. Judge Dabney Friedrich from the DC Federal Court said that Concord Management, which is

one of the entities that was indicted along with all the Russians by Mueller, he denied their motion to have the case dismissed on the grounds that Mueller's appointment is unconstitutional. This has been tried multiple times by Manafort specifically that I'm thinking of, and the courts keep denying their motions, thereby upholding Mueller's authority to investigate Russian interference. So remember last week when Roger Stone ate Andrew Miller held himself in contempt by refusing the grand jury, Sapina, and Joyce Vance came on and told us that she did so because he was teeing up to appeal Mueller's constitutionality.

Well, that appears to have happened. They have filed an appeal to the second highest court in the land. DC, I think, a pellet court. And this appears to be the vehicle that the conspirators are going to use to have Mueller's authority challenged in higher courts. He filed an appeal to the DC appellate court. That, yep, I was right. Look it if I just read my notes. I will become a parent. And this could go all the way to the Supreme Court. And it's their way of having the Supreme Court here arguments that Muller's appointment was unconstitutional. So keep an eye on that. Oh my goodness. I'm going to have a what's this name? Cavacan. Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh. Rath of Khan. Yeah we go. Yeah. It's just going to suck if that does go to

the Supreme Court because this guy is going to be a big part of that if he gets through. He's going to have to recuse himself, or I'm going to be mad. He wouldn't be on that court, though. Supreme Court? No, the second to highest. But if you get that, it goes to the Supreme Court, and Kavanaugh has been put in. But we're going to go over, I think there was a good stalling tactic that comes up later in the week for not a point. Oh, okay. So we'll talk about that too. But I predict that the court will side

with Mueller on this one, so it puts some beans on that. Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous, just let it go. Thank you. Then just let it go. So annoying. Now I have frozen stuck in my head. Then there were more amaroa tapes this week, and we've gotten a lot of questions about the legality

of her recording people in the White House and the situation room specifically. DC has single party consent, just like New York does, meaning it's not illegal to record a conversation without telling the other person you're recording them. And it's also not illegal to record inside the White House unless you're recording classified information. It does place national security at risk

because foreign adversaries can hack that device and listen to the room, but it's not criminal. She was able to record her firing by John Kelly and a phone call she had with Trump where he pretended he knew nothing about her being fired, which either makes him a liar or incompetent. She recorded a conversation with Laura Trump, Laura Lara Trump, I don't know, Trump, where she was offered $15,000 a month for quote, a position in the campaign, which is allegedly just a bribe to keep her quiet. And she says that she has heard tape of Trump using the N word from his time in the on the apprentice. Penn Gillette also corroborates this story because I guess he was on the apprentice. But the amazing part of this story is that Sarah Sanders would not defend the president.

It seems like she's tired of lying for Trump. When asked if she can guarantee that there's no tape of the president using the N word, she said, nope, can't guarantee that. And that's amazing. Any other press secretary for any other president would have easily been able to say, I can guarantee you the president's never been on tape saying the N word, but she can't. And she's tired of being proven wrong of giving wrong information. So this is like the first time she's ever like sort of stood up for herself.

Yeah. You're right. I never thought of it that way. I was like, oh, pissed at her because she was, you know, saying that she couldn't guarantee it, but I never thought about the fact that that was actually her way of kind of resisting covering her ass. Yeah. Her own fucka be way. She's like, there's probably a tape out there with the inward on it. So I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna guarantee that. She's not going down for that.

Yeah, yeah. And the guys, I'm sorry, I'm going. No, but the fact that he's so racist that she can't make that guarantee you, that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, she's like, this is starting to tape my career, okay?

Just now. Guys, I'm starting to look bad. I've kind of put a foot on. Come on, Smoky. I can do better than that. Then Democrats made history in Tuesday's primaries in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Vermont. First, the Democrats became the first major party to nominate an openly transgender person for the governor of Vermont. Very cool. That's my home state. Woohoo!

Shout out, yeah, nice. They also potentially picked the first African-American Democrat to serve in the house from Connecticut. Yeah. In all four states, Democrats showed up in massive numbers compared to Republicans. So Tuesday was a great night for the blue wave. That's awesome. So let's keep that up, but I'm not asking you for money. Yes.

You want to ask him for money real quick, Jordan? Oh, sure. Yeah, hey, if you guys have any money, I'm Jordan asking you for money. Yes. You want to ask him for money real quick Jordan? Oh sure. Yeah. Hey, if you guys have any money, I'm Jordan Coburn and I do not work for the government. And what's the site of the BIPDU? Swing left actually. Swing left.org. If you want to donate directly to our most important races in the country, you can do

that. You can donate to candidates directly on their websites. You can't, you know, there's a lot you can do. You can fold things from your house now, from your cell phone, I hear. Yep, you can do that. Yeah. And part of patrons... Yeah, part of our donations that you give to the pod if you're a subscriber on Patreon,

get donated to Flubingant the House Blue. By me, specifically. Yeah. And me. I guess it's John's. Yeah, we share By me specifically. Yeah. And Jelisa. Jelisa Johnson. Yeah. We share the burden 50-50. It's not a burden.

It's a great thing. It's an honor. It's a totally ethical, honorable process. Yes. And the abuse and opinions expressed by Jordan Jelisa are not the views and opinions of AG, the federal government, or the branches that AG is associated with. Thank you.

Correct. Any sense of irony, your sensing is all in your head Yep, nope. I'm not being sarcastic at all Also Wednesday the judge in the pop-a-dot case granted a protective order to seal all the evidence in that case His sentencing is scheduled for September 7th, but his fiance Simone Mangine de pop-a-dopolis went on TV saying that pop-a-dop was considering withing his guilty plea and blowing up the whole play deal. And they also asked for a lawyer to represent them for free. Hey, you guys know a lawyer that would represent pro bono? I mean, Bono would do. Sorry, he likes it.

He's generous. He's not a pro bono. I find him a bono and I ever sued anybody. I would ask my lawyer if he was working pro bono. Yeah, that's really funny. Bono would do things pro bono my night. So dumb. Really dumb. I'm so sorry guys. Yeah, me too. Anyway, if Papa dop withdraws his plea, he'll just be putting himself in the same boat as Manifort and things will go very badly for him. It seems his proffer maybe wasn't that great

and he might get a stiffer sentence that initially thought that's what I was kind of thinking to begin with. But, and maybe he was looking for a way out because of that. Either way, either that or he, he maybe he sees the clues that Trump will pardon Manafort and wants to roll the dice. I don't know. But this Friday was the deadline for the government

to make a sentencing recommendation in 8 p.m. on Friday. They filed their recommendation and they want him to serve zero to six months. So it looks like his proper was better than I at first was thinking. Though the sentencing recommendation indicated that pop it up wasn't very forthcoming until he was shown all of his own emails and text messages. Oh yeah, I did write that. He withheld a cell phone he used to communicate with Mithsood until his fourth and final proper session. Additionally, the record shows that at the time of the interview, Pop-A-Dop was attempting to secure a job within the Trump White House. I think it was

like deputy assistant secretary to some treasury, I don't know, some dumb thing. So he had an incentive to protect Trump and minimize his role as a witness. Totally. But they got him and they're only recommending zero to six months. So whatever he has, it must be important. Mm-hmm. Then Wednesday, a Rolling Stone article came out saying that documents have revealed a successful cyber attack on a California congressional race, and Jolissa will be covering that for us in hot notes.

Oh, yeah. The big story Wednesday was the stripping of John Brennan's security clearance and the solidification of Trump's enemies list and the fallout of that decision. And I'll go over all of that later in the show. That was crazy. It's scary. Yeah. On to Thursday.

Several senators, including Diane Feinstein, that's Difi, Senator Leahy and Senator Dick Durbin, wrote a letter to Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary, that there are documents indicating Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh misled the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006 when he said he had no knowledge or communication about post-9-11 interrogation techniques or warrantless wiretapping of Americans. The senators say the documents are currently committee confidential and wrote to Grassley to make the documents available to the full Senate and to the American public. If there is proof that Kavanaugh lied in his confirmation hearings, the Senate and the public deserve to know about

it, especially if he lied about something as controversial as torture and warrantless wiretapping. So please call your representatives and your senators to hold the nomination of Kavanaugh until these documents are made public. The next 40 years of having a shit-scotus justice hang in the balance, and this guy will overturn marriage equality and Roe v Wade, not to mention seating justice that thinks the president is above the law. It's hugely important, so call him. Oh, yeah. Was that Patriot Act stuff?

Yeah. It was a stuff Coney was working on in a higher loyalty. Remember when he's like, we can't torture people, you guys, I can't justify this legally. Wow, he was in it. He was in it. He was in somewhere in there. Weird. And he lied to the Senate, saying, no, I didn't justify this legally. Wow. He was in. He was in. I was in somewhere. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dude. Yeah. And he lied to the Senate saying, oh, I didn't have anything to do with that. I'm just a good Christian boy. Mm. I like on born babies. Also, Thursday, we learned that Trump's stupid military parade will cost $92 million. Not the original $12 million he quoted, mostly because he wants to add tanks. Oh my goodness.

And that probably includes the street repair that would have to happen if you rolled tanks down the street. What if his military parade was actually just his plan to just dominate everyone finally? Oh, dude. Just turns on everyone. My crates. I was horrified.

Will all be lined up for him? He'll be like, yay. Oh my god. You know, people are gonna look back on parades like that during this crazy time when he was like the worst president ever. And they'll be like, yay! Oh my god! You know, people are gonna look back on parades like that during this crazy time when he was like the worst president ever And they'll be like, why did they throw him up a raid? Like, why is this happening through the parade? Exactly, but it'll look bad for us. But well, you guys, the Pentagon came to its senses and canceled the parade.

Oh, that's right, yeah. Hopefully for now. Because it knows that's a total waste of money, but more likely they realize the optics leading up to the midterms as most veterans in Americans oppose this coloss total waste of money, but more likely they realize the optics leading up to the midterms As most veterans and Americans oppose this colossal waste of taxpayer money So today we wanted to talk to a veteran about his thoughts surrounding things like the parade the 92 million dollar parade The ghost leaders at the Department of Veterans Affairs and of course space force So he's a former former army medic and he was in Iraq from 2006 and 2007. Red T. Raccoon. Red, welcome to Mollarshi Road.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, we really appreciate you being here. I've been following you on Twitter since we started the podcast. And I wanted to get your thoughts on, first of all, this parade that initially was 12 million, then was 92 million, and now has been postponed and or canceled by the Pentagon or Trump. We're not sure which. They're both accusing the other of canceling it or postponing it. What are your thoughts on that parade and the money that they were going to spend on it?

So I was adamantly against the greatest, as soon as I heard it. And this was a few months ago. It's been kind of thrown out there for a while. And then when real numbers started getting put towards it, I think more and more people started to realize in the scope of this. I mean, there's so many different angles where I think this is wrong. From just a logistical standpoint,

you're asking soldiers to go and give up their veterans' day in order to come to DC, which I guarantee most of them would not have been local to begin with, which means again, spending time away from their families when we should be going and honoring veterans in our service members. Secondly, the visuals in regards to this

are just astonishing. This is what the Cater shifts do. Authoritarian regimes go and have parades of this nature. I understand that, again, we have local parades that we honor veterans. That's completely different than having military aircraft, military equipment rolling down through Washington, DC. And then the most important thing, and I think the thing that really bothered me the most is that amount of money where originally, again,

you said it was $12 million, and then it ballooned up to $92 million. And one of my advocacy was veterans and kind of learning more and more about the VA system itself. That money can be utilized in so many better places to go and help out our veterans or even just our active duty service numbers too. There's a lot of challenges when it comes to budgets, when it comes to veterans. That money definitely to be used elsewhere.

And unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be. I think that Trump even put a tweet out yesterday and regards just buy more jets. Not knowing that jets cost a lot more than $92 million, but it just shows how cavalier he is with our tax money. And it's definitely something that I'm glad got postponed. I'm hoping it actually gets cancelled. Yeah, he doesn't seem to quite understand the optics or he does and maybe he canceled it because

of the optics for the upcoming midterm and then blamed the Pentagon so that he didn't look like he was cancelling his parade. I don't know. He seems to go about these things in very odd ways. I don't know. He seems to go about these things in very odd ways. He does. And that makes it challenging being a normal civilian, kind of looking into how these things go down. And it's not just the paraded, you know, tax reform, it's healthcare. Messages are very clear from this president. And it composes everyone. They don't really know what is the real message. What's the mindset of this person? And it just makes it difficult, and especially as a veteran.

Again, you're seeing these things continuously happen to veterans where it's one message is being put out there in front of a crowd, hey, we support veterans, we support our service members. And then you're seeing bills, you're seeing things like this parade come out where you're like, no, you know what, you are not doing that. You're using veterans in order to go and make a statement,

maybe go and gather some votes, but the actions don't coincide with the words. Yeah, and there was news out this week that you remember when he decided to forego a debate and instead held a fundraiser for veterans and then apparently he gave half of that money to veterans organizations and used the other half for campaigning, which is, I believe, illegal.

And it's, again, just his actions, you're right, they just don't support the message that he is, you know, standing up for the veterans or being a steward of taxpayer money. And that's evident in this whole space force thing where you're just taking part of the Air Force and giving them all new uniforms and creating on all new bureaucracy and spending all that money to do something we already do. Exactly, and I'm so glad to use the word bureaucracy

because that's exactly what it's just gonna end up being. There is a space unit in the Air Force. They have these things on the control. Just going to create up being. There is a space commit in the Air Force. They have these things under control. Just going to create in this in order to go and help out some private companies, the government contractors, I think it's just the wrong way of doing this. And all of our military leaders agree that this is just a huge mistake.

And I'm so glad you actually mentioned the fundraisers because Trump has a nasty habit of doing that, going and having fundraisers and saying that the money is collected for veterans is not actually happening. One incident that is actually being investigated by the state of New York goes back to before the elections. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a primary debate in Trump decided that he didn't want to be part of that debate.

So we had his own veterans' fundraising press conference. And again, all that money just disappeared I didn't know where. In the state of New York now again, it's investigating that. But again, it's just this image. And it is pressuring as a veteran. And I'm a younger veteran. I've only been a veteran for 10 years. But just talking to fellow veterans,

they're frustrated also. They've been dealing with this for even before Trump, just to be yourocracy as far as the veterans affairs are concerned or sometimes, again, when we're not dealing with a fresh war, some of these veterans get forgotten. I know that we've had these problems in the past with being non-beterans and some of the world works

here in Korean veterans also. It's just time that our governments are thinking of us. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly and I think Trump would do well to remember that veterans and the military active duty service members pay taxes and to have those tax dollars be used for something like this parade or you know having a department of veterans affairs that apparently is being run by this group of three guys at Mar-a-Lago, who have no oversight, which is completely out of the norm, is very frustrating to veterans. I'm a veteran, it's frustrating to me, and most of the veterans that I speak to, although

it's hard to gauge the actual support or non-support among veterans for this kind of stuff. I do run into a lot that support Trump like full throttle. And I can't quite understand where that support comes from. Yeah, and I live in North Carolina. We have a very large veteran and military community, and I run into the same thing. And what I think, what we see in the political climate nowadays is that there's a lot of animosity and a lot of kind of, um, that flooding of heads when

it comes to topics. And so when I run into another veteran that may be a Trump supporter, I like to talk about issues that can kind of bring us together. So regardless of you support Trump or not, you have weightlines into the VA. Regardless of if you support Trump or not, we're still going to go and depend on educational benefits. We're going to go and depend on the GI bills and get more to do. I like to have those conversations. Take Trump out of it.

Let's just talk about our day-to-day lives and kind of look at what we can do to make our lives better, and what the government can do to help us as veterans. That opens up the conversation. It sometimes opens up their eyes to the reality of what's going on nowadays. That 92 million dollar price, not associated with the parade, opened up a lot of eyes. Just knowing that this repair that we see, just even within the veterans affairs itself, which kind of leads us into a kind of scary proposition when we talk about the mission act. That was recently signed. Yeah, and I agree with you when I end up talking to

veterans here, Trump supporters, there's that there's that way in where you find things that to your Trump supporters, there's that way in, where you find things that affect all of us regardless of the administration, and open up the conversation from there, and a lot can be learned. And I think that that also probably applies to the bigger picture, whether you're a veteran or not, to find out and speak when you speak to Trump supporters,

or at least independence who don't resist. We can find our common ground and move forward from there. Exactly. And that's what I try to do a lot on social media. Sometimes I'm better at it than others, but sometimes diving into these really hot topic issues, people want us to go and do that because that divides us even more. There's a lot of things that we can agree on that aren't as white-hot.

Let's go and take a look at some of the smaller issues that we all agree on. You kind of tackle those to kind of bridge between the two sides. Then afterwards, now that we kind of laid some groundwork down in regards to kind of seeing eye to eye, let's go and start tackling some of those tougher issues. And that's the beauty of veterans issues, is that we can go and do that. Everybody wants to support veterans. It's finding the right way in order to do that without sacrificing the care that they see. Yeah, I agree 100%. And I thank you very much for your service.

And also thank you for joining us today. This has been really great to speak to about these issues and also the wider understanding of how we can open up dialogue with those who'd be willing to listen. So I appreciate you coming on today, Red. Now, I appreciate your service and I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me and hope to get

to do it again soon. Yeah, we'll keep in touch. I'm sure there's going to you taking the time to speak to me and hope to get it do it again soon Yeah, we'll keep in touch I'm sure there's gonna be more veterans issues that come to the forefront and we'd love to have you back on again They're definitely well. It doesn't it and does it No, it doesn't all right. Well, thank you very much. You have a great great wet rest of your weekend Finally Thursday the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen struck the hush money deal with Stormy Daniels after the access Hollywood grabbed them by the pussy tape came out. The source of this story has said that Cohen wasn't really into the idea of paying her

to keep her quiet when the idea first came up in September, but changed his mind saying he was open to deal in October when the pussy tape came out. Pussy tape. This shows clear intent to affect the outcome of the election, making this payment in my opinion, and probably in a lot of legal opinions, and illegal in campaign contribution that went unreported. So.

Totally. Watch that, because I think he's going to be in big trouble. Beans all over that one. Beans. All right, guys, we'll be right back. Hey, Mueller junkies. Thank you so much for supporting our show and supporting women in podcasting.

I need to ask you for a quick favor that will not cost you a dime. Please head over to Apple Podcasts and give us a rating. And then subscribe. That simple act goes a long way to helping us get the word out about the Mueller investigation and more importantly, it expands our efforts to flip Congress blue in November. And don't forget, follow us on Twitter at Mueller's She Wrote to be automatically entered to win a PlayStation 4. Don't ask.

Thank you so much for listening. We would not be here without you. Alright, welcome back. Hot notes. Okay, this week, Jordan has an update on Giuliani, but first, Giulista has a report on the next target of Russian interference in the upcoming midterm elections. Oh, yeah, thank you. So, on Wednesday, Rolling Stone reported on yet another cyber attack against a Democratic

candidate in the 2018 midterms. This time, the target was Dr. Hans Kiersted, who finished third in one of California's Congressional primaries on June 5th. And over the past year, the FBI has been investigating a series of cyber attacks targeting Kiersted who finished third in one of California's Congressional primaries on June 5th. And over the past year, the FBI has been investigating a series of cyber attacks targeting Kiersted who just happens to be an opponent of Rohra Barker, a.k.a. Putin's Congressional bitch. So you know, motive. Rohra Barker. Yeah.

So whoever thinks like a muppet name, doesn't it? It does actually. I'm Mr. Rohra Barker. I love it. I like saying it. I had to repeat it like five times this does, actually. I'm Mr. Rohrbacher. I love it. I like saying it. I had to repeat it like five times this morning. Just to get it out. Rohrbacher.

Bacher. Bacher, there we go. Bacher, Bacher, Bacher. Like a little chicken. So whoever's been trying to hack Kyrisid has been doing it since August 2017 via a series of spearfishing attacks. This is just like what the Russians did

when they hacked Podesta in 2016. Yeah, fancy bear. Yeah, totally. So basically, go ahead. Can you explain what spearfishing is? Totally, yeah, I'll just about to you. So basically, what they do, no, it's okay, it's a good question. If you just stop talking to me,

listen, I would get to it. There's more. I do that in my own notes. Yeah, I'm like, oh, man, I should have been talking about this and then it's not that way. I had the same question. I also didn't know the phrase was spear fishing, but basically what they did is they tried to,

or they tricked Kierstedt successfully this time into logging into a fake Microsoft work email, like through an email, they were like, hey, change your password through this because maybe it was time or saying how they do there's like updates, and he fell for it, but then he immediately realized what it was and then he told everybody, but two little two dates.

But that was the only successful one. They also in December started targeting the campaign's website and hosting service. So they were like going deep into this. And according to the reports, someone tried to hack and to cure sits campaign website by trying different username and password combinations at a rapid fire rate over a two-month period. And they also tried to hack into the website's hosting service 130,000 times in just a month. So yeah, they were serious about this. And in January, they tried to hack into his campaign's Twitter account, as well as his personal company's website. So fortunately, like I said,

the only successful attempt was with his work emails. I used to work fortunately very loosely, but Kyrsten's, Kyrgyz Stead's campaign manager, Kyle Quinn, Kessada, told Rolling Stone, I know, Kessada is very cute. I was like something I would order. It does. Yeah, yeah, I didn't want to sound racist, but like I keep thinking Kessody in my head. And I think it's adorable. I think it's cute. It's a Kessody and a Chostada mixed together.

Oh yeah, Kessada. She's probably got in my whole life. I'm so sorry,. It's a quesadilla and a chostata mixed together. Oh yeah, quesadda. Shit. You've probably gotten out of his whole life. I'm so sorry, Kyle, I didn't mean it. It does sound really delicious. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Nice, deliciously racist.

Sorry, guys. Racist to enjoy Mexican food. You're right, it's not, and you know what? I feel, okay, we don't have to get into this. Right? Kyle. It's fun to the emails. Yeah, yeah, we're getting, just flooding in.

Quinn Case out, I told Rolling Stone that their campaign has now decided to go public about these attacks for the sake of voter awareness. And he said, quote, it is clear from speaking with campaign professionals around the country that the sustained attacks of the Kierstedt for Congress campaign faced were not unique, but have become the new normal for political campaigns in 2018. And even though he added that their campaign doesn't believe the cyber attacks had any effect on the primary election results, we should note that he lost by one of the narrowest margins of any congressional primary this year, he fell short of just 125 votes.

So that's pretty freaking close since he was being targeted. And I think basically with this shows that there's a pattern, you know, this whole idea of the new normal and U.S. political campaigns. And I feel like unless we do something to stop it, this won't be the last victim. Like here's to it, it's not going to be the last campaign that gets hacked. And just last month, the director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates, said that the warning lights for future cyber attacks aimed at the U.S. were blinking red. And a week later, a senior Microsoft executive said that they warning lights for future cyber attacks aimed at the US were blinking red and a week later a senior Microsoft executive said that they helped identify and prevent hacking attempts targeting three congressional

candidates in the 2018 midterms just like we already covered Senator McCaskill in one of our episodes and then Senator Bill Nelson said last week that the Russian hackers have penetrated voting systems and Florida. So it's just happening all the time now. And I mean, the FBI is taking it very seriously, but Trump's not doing anything about it. I mean, it seems like we have something specific, there's a whole fund specifically to stop this, right?

Like $120 million. And they spent none of it. None of it. So we're just learning that from these patterns that these targets aren't just high profile state wide candidates or elected officials. They're pretty much any individual congressional campaign that, you know, these hackers feel like is a threat. So, yeah, and they'll never be able to get the emails back or the information they got from being in this email even for the short time. Yeah. And they can't know for sure everything that

they access. It's just like with the DNC hacks, it's just so messy and it's happening right in front of us and we don't know what to do. I mean, the FBI is trying their best, but all they can do is trace the IP addresses and that could take a long time and it's just so scary. We're in the midterms and we're getting hacked right in front of our faces.

Yep. Like what the hell, I feel so helpless. Yeah, it's not a fun feeling. No. If you've ever had your car broken into or your house broken into That feeling is really yeah, I feel violated for sure That's why voting is so important even if they still haka's like they're doing up until the very last day I think it's important to know what our numbers should be so that we'll say hey

This is off and we already have to win by 12 points just to tie because of the gerrymandering. Yeah, so we're up against gerrymandering We're up against Russians not just the public but there's depression in so many ways. Yeah, do not donate any money to anything Yeah, not on AG's bad at least But but Jordan yeah, and release that yeah, we say We say yeah, tell them a lot Like I neither agree nor disagree with that. Yeah, like nice. Donate as if you were donating for another person that would ask you to donate, but can't.

There you go. Yeah. Ooh. Like that. Well said. Toe in the line. Very clear, very clear. I'm sorry.

That's all right. All right, thank you so much. Thank you, Lisa. Jordan. What's Giuliani up to this week? Yeah, he's lubing the truth like no other this week. And this, as I brought up before, he's not even lubing the truth. He's lubing what Trump is planning on the lying about when he talks about. Lubing the lies. Yeah, lubing the lies.

And what's the difference between lies and truth really when you just come out and say that they're true. Good lies on both sides. And they're alternative facts. And the facts change. Yeah, it's locker-ermised. That's the story develops. Locker-ermised. Locker-ermised. It's gonna be a great spinoffs-saic convertible.

Locker-ermised. Okay, so Giuliani said on Sunday that coming in Trump actually never talked about the former NSA director Michael Flynn. They never had the conversation. You guys did you know that? Oh, that's funny. Yeah. I didn't know that.

I thought that that for sure happened. And I thought Giuliani actually had gone on record saying that it happened because he has. He said, so Giuliani this week says that Trump didn't find out. Come you thought that they are. Okay. Sorry. This is this is how he corrects it. He says he says, no, I was talking about in the past when Trump found out that

Comey had said that meeting happened. And I only found that out in May 2017 with the New York Times reported on the Comey memos that came out that logic. So basically he's saying that the meeting that he says, okay, so remember, it's like, it's insulting to all of us that we have to even go back and then say all this. It's hard to try to explain to logic.

Yeah. So first I'll say a couple times that he for sure said and acknowledged that Trump and Komi had that conversation and Trump asked Komi, that was when he asked him, he's a nice guy. It's kind of great. Okay, so on July 8th, he told ABCs this week that Trump had asked Komi to give Flynn, quote unquote, a break during a February 2017 meeting

in the Oval Office. So that's one time he says it, right? Right. So now what he's saying is that, no, actually, he didn't tell him that. What I was saying is that Trump learned about Comey saying that Trump told him that. So, Comey lied and then Trump found out about Comey's lie

and then they responded. Exactly. Comey's a liar. Exactly, okay. And he's also said stuff like, well no, I didn't say that. What I was saying is that that's a possibility of something that could have happened.

Or some weird thing. Exactly. So now they're trying to go back, erase what actually happened and what he already acknowledged happened and say, no, Trump wasn't talking about what he had said. I wasn't talking about what Trump had said. I was just talking about what Trump had said.

He heard that Komi had said. Trump had said to him, whoa. And you're not even like a sadger. No, that's exactly what he's trying to say. Yeah. He's just dragging his base around and this fucked up Mary go round of lies. So that's how it's like a horrible Mary go round. It does.

It does. And so yeah, just a reminder, the Komi was of course investigating false claims by Flynn about his contacts with Russian officials specifically Sergei Kislyak. He's also a cameo star on Russian television. So Michael Flynn, that is. And Kislyak, they all are. So okay. He goes on and says ABC.

He's on CNN and Jake Tapper is like, what about this stuff that you said on ABC, right? Reference is that that's what I just told you about. And then he says, I never, Giuliani, your response, I never told ABC that that's crazy. Never said that. I said that is what Komi is saying Trump said. I have always said the president denies it. But not only did he say, not only did he say that to ABC back in the day that Trump had told Komi to let it go basically. Right. He also told Fox that in July. And this is

what he said in the interview. The obstruction thing is crazy. Giuliani said in that interview, quote, he had a right to fire Komi. That's what it's all about. He had a right to say to Comey, give Flynn a break. There's no investigation at the time. And not only that, he didn't tell him, don't investigate him, don't prosecute him. He asked him to exercise his prosecutorial discretion because he was a good man with a great war record. So he gives explicit, explicit accounts of exactly what though. What he meant was... What are we gonna do? I don't even know what he meant. The ball's in our court.

We are being so abused right now. Like, we need to do something. This is crazy. It's like not just beyond gaslighting. It's like, what is this? Is it fascism? Is there a word for this specifically for what they're doing with the media? I feel like it's... Yeah. it's not what we're doing.

It's like they're doing something else. No, we're the media. Yeah, honestly, even with how bizarre we can be, we try to report consistently and they do the exact opposite. They are actively reporting things and are weird backwards. They're mudding the waters so that when impeachment happens, all the Trump base is just completely confused and they just still support him. Yes, that's super confusing.

Yeah, I don't think it's fucking sucks that they even give him the air time because honestly, I know that there's a benefit, a certain benefit to it because it corroborates claims of obstruction of justice and lying to, you know, fucking everyone. But it and honestly, they get so much ratings from Giuliani going on their shows and stuff, but every time he goes on, he's doing more and more and more damage to the idiotic base that actually listens to what he says.

We would turn him down, right? Milo, she wouldn't let Giuliani go. If he ever wanted to, I don't know. I would, but yeah. Yeah, just because I feel like you have a choice, right? You have a choice. Yeah, I guess I'm not suggesting that they literally

dull at Giuliani on, but it's like. It's still problematic that you're right. Yeah, he's saying things that your reaction, you know, sort of a more, I don't want to say like, just out, yeah, just out-raged. That's how I felt, too. It's like, we report stuff and we laugh about it, and we riff about it and whatever,

just try to just become primes. But this is so infuriating. It's not even funny. It's insulting on so many levels. Yeah. So much of this is not even funny, but this is just so disastrous. It's completely disastrous. That's the most basic thing that started all of this was him telling Flynn to let this

go. And they only try to circle back and say that that didn't happen. They're about pulling the rug from underneath this whole thing. So sorry, I mean, actually, we're talking of each other a lot because we're very passionate about this. It's very upsetting. But that's basically all the looped truth, looped truth update I have this week.

I'm sure there'll be more next week. Yeah. Our high notes were so sad. They're not very hot. Sad notes. Sad notes. They are sad notes. All right.

So this week, Trump made an idiot move by stripping former CIA director John Brennan of his security clearance. This highly political move was announced by Sarah Sanders in a statement in the press room. She also announced that the security clearances of other political opponents were being reviewed, including Clapper, Comey, Hayden, Susan Rice, Sally Yates, McCabe, Bruce Orr, Peter Struck, and Lisa Page. So during Watergate, the second article of impeachment for Nixon was about the abuse of power, and it included the creation of Nixon's enemies list. The main difference is that Nixon had the sense to keep it secret

Whereas Trump is doing it right out in the open It became clear this week As the week progressed that Trump decided to make these moves right after the Helsinki summit with Putin As indicated by the date on the memo he released this week the memo came out this week But it was delayed at data July 26th. That indicates that he intends to release the news as needed to distract us from other news. And that's not conjecture. It was until this week in the Washington Post, it was reported that a White House aid has confirmed Trump made this decision in July, and the decision to take this step was made this week to divert attention from nonstop coverage of Amarose's book and her recordings.

They go on to say that there will be further revocations of clearances that will be strategically released for the same purpose. Even more shocking, Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that he revoked Brennan's clearance because of the Russia investigation. And we found out, although Giuliani also said he didn Right. But then he did. But then he was only saying that he thought he could have. But it wasn't real. And then we found out through tweets that Russia knew about this plan two days before it was announced, which indicates to me that this was discussed at the treason summit. Russia knew that Trump was going to do this.

The backlash following the announcements by Sarah Sanders was swift, and it included a letter released by William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral that was the commander of the US Joint Special Operations Command and oversaw the Navy CO raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. So this is an untouchable motherfucker and his name is McRaven, which is awesome. He wrote this, dear Mr. President, former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. If you Americans have done more to protect this country than John, he is a man of unparalleled

integrity whose honesty and character have never been in question except by those who don't know him. Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well. So I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency. Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs. A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization.

A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself. Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage, and worst of all, divided us as a nation. If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-Ara tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we pray to you would be.

Oh hell yeah. So sexy. But the backlash didn't stop there with McCraven. In the two days following the announcements over 70 former intelligence officers and leaders have come forward denouncing Trump's enemies list. We have one of those former CIA officers with us today. We've had him on the show before. Please welcome David Pries. Hi, David.

Good to have you back. Hello again, A.G. It's good to be back, but I'm saddened that it's come to this and that I have to be back to be talking about this, frankly. Yeah, it's kind of, it's pretty outrageous. So tell us a little bit about this letter and why you signed it. Sure. so it's a little bit about this letter uh... and why you signed it sure well what happened is after the revocation of john brennan's security clearance

uh... we will and we still don't know exactly why the first statement officially from the white house was it was because of his erratic behavior i've known john brennan for twenty years erratic is not in the top one hundred list of adjectives i would put with him uh... it's because he was saying nasty things about the president. But then the next day the president comes out in the interview with Wall Street Journal and says, well, it's all these people were involved with the rigged witch hunt. Either way, it wasn't about the actual justification for holding a security glance, which is does he

need it, if he doesn't, he shouldn't have one, or has he done something to violate the terms of the security agreement and there was not a single word about that. In the wake of that most people saw that virtually every former director and deputy director of the CIA Republicans and Democrats alike, people who observed across administrations came out with a letter saying that this is not the right thing to do for national security. A number of other people saw that who did not rise to the level of the director, or the deputy director, of CIA, or to become a director of national intelligence, and said, yeah, we feel the same way. And so then we had about, I think, 60 former CIA officials from all areas of the business all former officers who simply said that this is something we oppose the actual or threatened removal of security clearances from former government officials. We made clear that in signing the letter we don't necessarily agree with the words director

Brennan chose or the way in which he expresses them. That is irrelevant. The point is it's his right to say those things because that is protected political speech. To start using security clearances as a political weapon against those with whom you disagree, crosses a line that has not been crossed in national security before yeah i agree with you and and can you tell me why it's important uh... and uh... ten national security that former c i officials retain uh... their security clearance yeah and and i'll answer that in a surprising way at first which is to say it isn't in in many cases it's not the default is

when you leave government employment from a position for which you had a security clearance, you no longer need that clearance. Now the government may decide, and this is not an individual choice. This was not John Brennan or anyone else who decides this. This is the government's choice. If they need the skills and the expertise of that person for a particular project, then they will allow the security clearance to continue. In some cases, that's for contracts for specific projects.

In some cases, my understanding is for someone like John Brennan at that level, it is more common simply because it makes it much easier in the case of a crisis to have them come in and essentially say, yes, I went through something like this when I was in charge, let me give you help to get through this crisis. That can be done even without the security clearance, but that's a separate issue to discuss. And I would love to have a conversation about whether we have too many security clearances and what are the right and wrong ways former officers should have them that's great

but what's happening now isn't about security clearances it's about the politicization of a national security norm which is not the way to protect national security it's applying a political limit missed test before season experts are allowed to share their views and that's why so many of my former colleagues signed on to this letter yeah it's it seems kind of obvious to most observers that the everyone on that list is someone who either investigated

uh... tromp in the uh... quote unquote witch hunt or spoke out against him afterwards um... it i feel like if it were for national security reasons, I mean, Flynn wasn't on that list. People who have actually violated national security are not on that list. And it clearly isn't being used in the way that it was intended to be used, at least that power. And so I'd say. You're right. It is interesting to note for that that first list the list of directors deputy directors and uh... now to directors of national intelligence have signed on many of them are people uh... who were on that list that was put out by the

white house of people that they're re-examining the security clear and says what's not about that many of them were republican appointees many of them were democratic and appointees as well but many of them were republican appointees many of them were democratic and appointees as well but many of them were republican appointees to the extent that it is directed at people who are likely to either test a fire speak out about the quote rigged russia which hunt quote

mike haven is an odd one to have on that list because he left office when george w bush left office and was a critic of President Obama on many national security policy issues, he had nothing to do with the intelligence surrounding the Russia investigation. The only thing he has done is from a conservative internationalist position criticized some of the national security decisions and some of the character issues and some of the lack of truth of this president. There is no justification on national security grounds to revoke his clearance because

he has not said anything remotely classified publicly. There are no grounds even if you wanted to punish people who might be able to testify against the Russian witch hunt thing. My Caden doesn't even fall into that category. The only explanation left is political speech. And if you're going to criticize somebody for political speech and revoke clearances based on it, I seem to remember Michael Flynn standing up and leading a chant of lock her up, which is much more on the extreme of political speech than anything that people like my

cadence that publicly yeah that's a really good point and uh... i don't know which is seems to me that once trump finds out he has like an unfettered power like is pardon power or this revoking security clear and so he just seems to use it over and over again like he just becomes kind of almost like addicted to that ability to do these things unilaterally. It's, it's, yeah.

And the metaphor that I heard recently was the scene from Return of the Jedi when Emperor Palpatine, the Dark Lord, starts using the Force Lightning against Luke Skywalker. And he gets so obsessed with using it that he loses his ability to understand what's around him. He gets blinders on so much so that Darth Vader can lift him up.

He's still shooting force lightning out of his fingers and he throws him down a reactor shaft and he explodes. It's that kind of thing. It's this blind focus on this tool that I've just discovered I can use. The odd thing with this one though, AG, is it has been reported from the White House that the whole idea of this was to change the narrative. That the narrative was Amarosa and the tapes she had and maybe just maybe there's a tape of the president using the N word.

Honestly, I can't see anybody who already has a position being changed one way or the other whether they hear him actually saying that or not everybody assumes that he has and does. So they want to change the narrative from something that probably would not do any political damage. And they change the narrative to this, to raising the issue of national security, to raising the issue of Republicans who are rightfully criticizing the president on national security grounds, to me that's an odd narrative shift that you want to do. It's a weird strategy if you're trying to do it. Where it is, they're going to do it more. I don't know if it's Jim Clapper next or somebody else next, but I tell you, since we put

the letter out yesterday, and since the directors and deputy directors put their open letter out the day before uh... it has been just an amazing title wave of other former government officials who have said oh sign me up i i want to stand up and join this so there is definitely more to come you're right that is that is backwards i mean i i i if i were the president i would think that the amorosa stuff would have a less political impact then an enemies list which was the second article of

impeachment for nixon it would be like me trying to distract the cops from my shoplifting uh... by murdering someone and we and we need to remember moving beyond the the issue of this letter or the security clearances and something we may talk about in the in the future we need to remember that the president has very wide powers, both constitutionally and by custom, by practice in the imperial presidency. Things like granting and revoking security clearances, things like giving pardons.

But that does not mean that presidential powers cannot be abused. And Richard Nixon had an article of impeachment specifically about abuse of power not saying he couldn't do some of the things He did because those are presidential powers But if you're doing them for a corrupt intent that can be an article of impeachment and the president seems to either be Oblivious to this or he seems to not care about that prospect and he continues doing these things for perceived short-term Advantage yep, that seems to be all about corrupt intent. Well, David, thank you again so much for joining us and telling us about why you felt compelled to be a signatory on this letter with other CIA officials.

We really appreciate it. Thanks for chatting with me. Bye-bye. Alright, you guys, thanks for listening. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to Muller Shee wrote. The Shee in Muller Shee wrote is no accident. Did you know we are 100% women-owned and operated? Every single person that helps make this podcast possible identifies as a woman. Our creative and web design, our engineer and producers, our editors and digital media

manager, our agent, our ad execs, our merchandising manager, and even the postal service clerk that helps me with shipping in our PO box, all women and all LGBTQ plus allies. We will continue to employ and partner with women as our podcast grows, but we could use your help. Please support women in podcasting by visiting mullershearote.com and become a patron today. Alright, you guys, you ready for the fantasy indictment league? Yes! Alright you guys this week I'm keeping my same picks which are Cohen, Bettina, Junior, Kushner, and Arrando Russian. So, I'm not changing. I still have the same reasoning. They're not gonna do any of the, you know, stone or collusion indictments until they get

Miller or something. I don't know. And that could go to the Supreme Court. I don't know how they're gonna do it. But I don't think that stone or a sawn or wiki leaks or anybody like that's gonna be indicted yet. So I've got Cohen Boutina, junior, Kushner, and a Russian. What about you guys? I'm gonna throw a broady in the mix again in my top five just because he's popping up. And I know that so far they only have him for like

influence, like, you know, selling influence, but that's probably the same thing they'll get Cohen for. So I feel like that could be another one. Whenever they do get Cohen. Was Cohen in my top five? Well, now I want to add him to him All right, so you got Cohen, bro. Yeah, and then I had a Kushner junior and I can't remember I think a rando. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'll go with that

Okay, I'm doing miff's so yeah I'm just I just kind of forgot about him for a while and he really should be indicted obviously. So that I don't know why they're holding out on that. Yeah, I wonder why because they can't. They probably wrap them up in the entire collusion indictment like Bonanza. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to say Miffswood, Superseeding indictments for Poppodopolis.

Well, he hasn't been indicted yet technically Well, he pleaded guilty. Oh, yeah, so that counts as yeah That's true. I think it's lying to the FBI. He's sentencing a zero to six months. Okay. I don't know that there'll be anything It's I might supersede super cheating Hey, well if he doesn't cooperate I think they give him super seating indictments because I know they said he was but then after what came out now It's like he's not really cool You think he might really cooperate it

You think you might blow up as plea deal and then be indicted for a bunch of other shit? If his fiance, what she said is like true. Yeah, that's an indictment. So I'm gonna say, yeah, Puppetopolis Miffs said, two RANDOS and DTJ. Nice.

All right, cool. Junior, yeah. All right, cool. Well, we've got all that set. Please go to our Friends of Justice Facebook page. You can access that by being a patron and you can play our fantasy indictment league. It's not gambling.

And you become a patron by going to patreon.com slash mola. She wrote for as little as a dollar. You get all that stuff. So. Oh yeah, it gets that. We have 903. You guys, we are 97 away from our 1,000 patron goal. That is amazing. I think we can get there in two that. Wait. We have 903, you guys, we are 97 away from our 1000 Patreon Gold. That is amazing.

I think we can get there in two weeks. Yeah. Or one week, maybe. We should do something cool when we hit a thousand, like sometimes, think, just throw them a little. We'll have a party. Yeah, there we go. We'll also change the gold to 2000.

Yeah, we'll definitely do that. We'll definitely do that. We'll definitely do that. Yeah, that will be a thing. But none of that money goes toward any campaigns. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. All right, are you guys ready for sabotage? Yes.

So this Saturday, the Daily Beast reported that late Friday night in the night, in the dark of night, Maria Boutino was abruptly moved from a jail in Washington, D.C. to the lockup in Alexandria, Virginia. That's where the lock up in Alexandria, Virginia. That's where Palm Antiford is being housed. Boutina's lawyer got a collect call at midnight from Friday, on Friday from the Alexandria jail, but the call was cut off before they could speak. He went and tried to visit, but wasn't allowed.

But then he was able to visit Saturday morning, and he told the Daily Beast that neither he nor his client were informed of the move. He nor his client was informed of the move. He nor his client was informed or was either or was. Yeah, it was informed him, okay. Welcome to third grade grammar. He's still higher than Trump's level. I care.

Nor were they told why she was moved. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment, but she was moved in all the night. Interesting. That could be because they ran out of sandwiches, or it could be because she was being threatened, and needed to be moved to a safer facility. I don't wonder.

Yeah, I really wonder too. Or closer to her trial, or maybe coming up under Muller's umbrella, and that's where he wanted her. I don't know, I don't know. Could they be wanting to call her to the stand? No, that's stupid. Prosecution is done. Yeah, they would take her from anywhere really.

Wait, is defense done too? Yeah, defense rested. Dan. Yeah. All right, you guys, there was another big thing. Like breaking news this weekend, the New York Times reported that the White House Council, Don McGahn, has been cooperating extensively with Mueller's obstruction inquiry.

This pleases me to no end. We predicted this back in episode, I think, eight or 12. And then we talked about it again in 14. Remember how I said that they have the same lawyer and they're probably not testifying to Congress? Because they're cooperating with Mueller. And Mueller was like, don't tell Congress anything, because if you do, then Trump will know.

So, I remember, yeah, yeah. So, don't testify in Congress to the public, you come talk to me, and I think that that also could indicate that by any way, according to a dozen current and former White House officials, and others, briefed on the matter, McGann has shared detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the obstruction inquiry, including some that investigators would not have learned

otherwise. He's spoken with investigators three times, totaling over 30 hours over the past nine months, describing Trump's furor toward the Russian investigation, furor, furor, fervor, fervor toward the Russia investigation, and ways in which he urged Trump urged McGann to respond to it. The, this information includes Trump's comments and actions during the firing of Komi and his obsession with putting loyalists

in charge of the Mueller probe like Benchkowski. McGann was involved in Trump's attempts to fire Mueller and to get sessions to unrequse himself. McGann was in the Trump's attempts to fire a muller and to get sessions to unrecuse himself. McGahn was in the room and we reported this when Trump asked Rosenstein, are you my guy? McGahn was there. This is huge. As lawyers usually claim attorney client privilege, but it appears McGahn is willing to go out

of his way to help special counsel to save his own ass. It's amazing. And it's important to note that McGahn's lawyer is also the lawyer for Bannon and Prebus as I was stating before. So I wouldn't be surprised if they are cooperating for furiously, fur-vently, for- This is crazy though, this is huge. As well, so put some beans on there.

Yeah. I don't think that changes my fantasy indictment, Lee. No, but it's so validating. What has it been like 10 months since you called that? Yeah. Something like that. We usually laugh about it. It's like seven months ago.

It's like January. Yeah, Mueller's always 10 months ahead of us. All these people that are losing loyalty, do you think they just really thought he was going to get away from it until now? I don't know, man. They're like, oh, now this looks bad. They couldn't have thought this would be what it was.

No way would they sign up knowing it was this risky. They probably thought they'd get away with it is what it seems. I don't know. But if McGann helps, I'll go see his tribute band. Oh. I think he plays in some sort of weird, old guy. No, I'm not a just older gentleman tribute band,

you know, where they, you know, clear water revival stuff on. I think I gotta have an ally, you know. We have a few of those in San Diego. Mm-hmm. All right, so are you guys ready for Minanigans? Yes. Okay, I'm so excited. Last week we had a brief discussion about Paul Manafort. Let's roll that clip. Good David Addenboro to just narrate in from Manafort.

Or the Honey Badger Guy. Paul Manafort don't give a shit. Oh my gosh. That'd be called Manafort don't care. Well guys, one of our fans reached out to Randall of Randall's animals. That's the guy who recorded the original nasty ass honey badger video that has 87 million hits on YouTube. And he agreed to help us recap the Manifort trial this week. So let's take a listen.

Oh my god! So Paul Manifort is on trial for 10 counts of bank and tax fraud. This is only one of his trials. The next one is supposed to start September 17th and who knows how many more trials he's going to have with all these open investigations coming on. Now a long time ago he worked for a Putin guy named Yana Kunovitch or Yaka Machabitch or Hu Bichikaka. And Ukraine. And this guy was a total asshole. Man of Fort made $60 million and set up 31 foreign bank accounts so he didn't have to pay taxes. Oh what a dick! Instead, he bought all kinds of crazy stuff, like a $10,000 karaoke system!

A Python jacket with three quarter sleeves gross! An ostrich vest to go with this ostrich coat! Yuck! He bought the ugliest, most expensive clothes. Oh my god, did you see the blue plaid jacket? That's disgusting! Then, Manafort lied to get a bunch of bank loans before he quit his Ukraine job because he was broke.

He even promised a banker he could be secretary of the army if he lent him $16 million. Can you believe it? But then the FBI raided his house to form the morning and the judge made him wear two angle bracelets, not one, two. Oh, how fancy. His first trial has been Craig-Cray and they called all the bankers and IRS agents and a guy

from the Treasury who all said Manafort hid money and lied. But then his deputy Rick Gates testified, oh my god, and Rick Gates cheated on his life four times and stole about $700,000 for Manafort. Also another dick. Then, there's crazy Judge Ellis. Ellis is a total honey badger. I mean he's so feisty.

He takes what he wants and he's always yelling at the prosecution and accusing them of crying and being too slow. How cray cray? Anyhow the prosecution got the judge to apologize and talk to the jury about it, but the whole trial only took 10 days. Now that's fast, faster than a roadrunner. In this week, the defense arrested without calling any witnesses, because they don't give a shit, they're just so silly. But that's also so bold. The defense don't care, they're just going to take what they want. They either have no case or they're sure that Trump is going to pardon them, so,

Man of Fort don't give a shit. Wednesday they gave their closing arguments and the defense talked about something that Judge told them that he couldn't talk about. So the prosecution objected of course and it was a big old drama, but everything calmed down eventually and the jury started their deliberations. Then, they needed a break over the weekend because one of the jury members really needed to go on a date. Oh, hello Tinder. Oh my God, that's so hilarious. Um, I'm gonna try to make a video of that. It's should. Yeah. Awesome. I love him. Uh, nasty ass man for it.

So some other points of interest in the trial this week, as you know, we did not get a verdict. And I wanted to make sure you all knew why the deliberation could be taking so long. So Thursday, the jury gave a note to the court asking for questions. And among those questions, they asked about a bank fraud. They asked about what a shelf company is, they asked to clarify what reasonable doubt means, and then they asked for a copy of the indictment, which is I think the important question here, and it is probably indicative of why they're taking

so long to come back with a verdict. The judge refused to give them a road map of which evidence belongs with which count in the indictment. They were basically saying, can you give us the indictment again and tell us what of these 500 pieces of evidence goes with each charge? And the judge said no. You guys figured out you have all the stuff, you have the indictment, you have all the evidence. So it's been left to the jury to put that puzzle together. That's really stupid. And that would presumably take a really long time, but it

could also be protecting the verdict. I think we can expect a verdict early next week, but that's why it's going to take so long. They're going to have to figure out what evidence goes with which charge. My prediction is he will be found guilty on at least 10 of the 18 counts, but if just one juror refuses to convict, that would lead to a mistrial via a hung jury. But then the trial could be retried with a different jury or the prosecution could just give up. But I don't think it'll come to that. I really think they're just working to put together that roadmap of evidence with the charges of the indictment. And another interesting note, as told by Randall, the defense rested without calling any witnesses.

Most experts seem to think this is normal. It seems to me a manifold thinks he will be pardoned. He has a couple of clues from Trump, including his Alphonse Capone tweet, comparing Manifort's treatment to that of the infamous mobster with syphilis. And Trump's flirtation with pardoning Rob Blagoiavich. He was indicted for selling a political position. He was trying to sell Obama's seat. Wow.

After Obama became president. And as we know, one of the charges against Manafort is the Squid Pro Crow where he tried to sell a position in the Trump administration to coque in exchange for $16 million in bank loans. Finally, the judge says, well, I mean, if you think about it, I'll before I go on to what the additional thing that the judge said about the jury. I mean, if you're pardoning Rob Lagoievich, you're tossing around the idea of pardoning Rob Lagoievich for the exact same crime that Manafort's on trial for,

that to me is like a huge signal. And he's probably just sitting there, like just like, you know, Manafort don't give a shit. Yeah. He's like, I'll get, I'm gonna get pardoned. So I'm not calling, we're not calling any, defends, we're certainly not calling Manafort to this stand because anything he can't say can be used

in his upcoming other um, other trials. Yeah. So you just don't want him talking. It's all pointing towards a pardon. Yeah. Wouldn't that start like a domino effect of Trump having to pardon everyone that goes down for this? I don't know.

Um, it would definitely be politically bad. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe not. I think he'll care about pop it up. I'd be like, fuck he did. He turned on me. He weren't doing a bad job. He still turned on me. I can't even say'll care about pop it up. I'd be like, fuck he did, if I could turn on me. He wouldn't have landed a bad job. He still turned on me.

I can't even say your name. Yeah. I think the fact that they even asked for that roadmap is good news because to me that kind of sounds like he's definitely guilty of something. We just need to cross reference exactly what you're charging him for so we can make a ruling on that specific way.

No, basically it's to me it says he's guilty of all these things, but what charges are those associated with? So we know what to convict him of, which charges to convict him of. I don't know, we'll see. Hopefully they're able to put that puzzle together. Finally, the judge says he will release some of the, remember the sealed sidebar conversations.

We talked about with Joyce Vance. He says he's gonna release those to the public. Wow. But he will not release the names of the jurors for their own safety. As Ellis says that he himself has received threats over the case. Yeah, because he's a dick. He's like, I didn't think people would be so into this trial. I'm like, are you kidding? It's okay. So what kind of death threats? He didn't go into detail. I'm guessing. Did he say death threats? He didn't just say death threats.'m guessing, right? Did he say death threats? He didn't say death threats. He just starts.

Oh, just starts. Okay, I thought I read death threats somewhere, but that was probably just like a weird blog. Yeah, so he has protection from the marshals. Good, good. But the jury doesn't. And so, you know, CNN's like, what are their names? And they're like, he's like, I'm not gonna release that.

I suppose he's probably getting threats from not liberals. Oh yeah, that's what I assume. I was wondering if that was the... Yeah, like if you find him guilty and munchy, right, right, yeah. Whatever, stop a country mud hole in your ass, I think is a problem. Yeah.

It is just, I don't know if it's common for liberals to do that too, to like, I don't can't think of many. I'm sure they probably can think, like conservatives can probably think of instances, but we don't normally say things like that, right like, I don't can't think of many. I'm sure they probably can think like, conservatives can probably think of instances, but we don't normally say things like that, right? Like we don't threaten. We're not usually violent. Is that like a tool of fault?

Generally, don't have the guns. Yeah, that's you. But I mean, I think guns are okay for protection, but yeah, we don't, it's not, we're really big on that. No, we don't have a history of that, for sure. There was that one time, I guess, when those people like started bombing things Yeah, it's always that call their exceptions yet and they want to even like the six

Well, they were labor uprisings right there was a French Revolution Christopher George the one that shut out like cops and claimed It was doing it for the people. Yeah, we don't we don't we're not perfect Have you read his manifesto though? I did and it it was on point, dude. It was on point. Not saying it was an out-of-the-shoe, but you were on point. It's like, there are better ways, you know. You don't have to burn in a house and go down like that. Yeah. The root of his ideology, it makes sense that he was so upset. Not again, not saying.

Yeah. It warrants what he did. Right. But his concerns were on point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was really close to it, too, so that kind of messes with your point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was really close to it too,

so that kind of messes with your head. Yeah, he's talking about his experience and all the messed up things that he saw. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, didn't know we talked about. Because we're doing it today. Yeah, sorry. No, hey, that's what we're here for.

Yeah, yeah. We have microphones. Yeah, I think talking your way to justice is way better. Way better than guns. I want to say that, yeah, I can't imagine us might here They said the penis is that what I did that's what okay? That's what the penis my tears that's what Sean Connery says in

Celebrity jeopardy. I'll take the penis my tears and then burnt Reynolds goes are you guys selling penis my tears? I love that is really one of the best skits ever. I'm sorry to net life. Celebrity jeopardy. I like the whole life jeopardy. Oh, that was funny. Oh, so good. Analbum cover, the rapist.

Oh, yeah, therapist. Oh, Jesus. I'll take JapAinus relations. That's Japan-US relations. I love S&L. They're killing it. Politically the season. They are the last two seasons, man.

I love this. I love SNL. They're killing it. Politically the season, they are the last two seasons man. It's can't be hard. Well true, there's a lot of material, but they're doing what I think comedy should be used for. For sure. They're my favorite. We're the court gestures. We're the ones who get the truth out. Yep. All right you guys, that's this week's show. Thank you again for listening and thank you again for supporting Women in Podcasting. We love you all. I've been AG. I've been Julie Cajonson.

I've been Jorin Coburn. And this is Muller She Wrote. Muller She Wrote is produced and engineered by AG with editing and logo design by Jolissa Johnson. Our sound engineering is courtesy of Resonant Recordings. Our digital media director and subscriber managers are Jorin Coburn, Sarah Lee Steiner and Sarah Hershberg, or Valencia. Fact checking and research by AG,

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