Jack - Without Prejudice

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Donald Trump once again taps his bench of veteran private attorneys to staff the department of justice by nominating Stanley Woodward as associate attorney general.Trump’s White House directly fired two line prosecutors in a stunning escalation of the war on the independence of the Department of Justice.A federal judge in Virginia has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to fire ODNI and CIA employees who recently worked on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.There are generally no confirmation hearings to confirm US Attorneys, but senate democrats have called for a hearing for Ed Martin as Senator Adam Schiff has put a temporary hold on his nomination.Donald Trump has ousted the National Security Agency Chief Gen. Timothy Haugh and his civilian deputy Wendy Noble after a meeting with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.Judge Dale Ho has dismissed the fraud and bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams 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. Donald Trump once again taps his bench of veteran private attorneys to staff the Department of Justice by nominating Stanley Woodward as associate attorney general. Trump's White House directly fired two-line prosecutors in a stunning escalation of the war on the independence of the Department of Justice. A federal judge in Virginia has blocked the Trump administration's attempt to fire ODNI and CIA employees who recently worked on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. There are generally no confirmation hearings to confirm U.S. attorneys, but Senate Democrats have called for a hearing for Ed Martin as Senator Adam Schiff has put a temporary hold

on his nomination. Donald Trump has ousted the National Security Agency chief, General Timothy Haw, and his civilian deputy, Wendy Noble, after a meeting with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. And Judge Dale Ho has dismissed the fraud and bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams with prejudice. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Unjustified.

It's Sunday, April what? Sixth? April 6th April 6 2025 I am Allison Gill and I'm Andy McCabe It's been another rough week Allison, but Fortunately, we had a couple of bright spots, right? Yeah. Yeah around the country and a few of those special elections Yeah, I remember down, you know down in Florida. We were looking at Florida one in Florida six we were also looking at Florida one and Florida six. We were also looking at New York 21, but Trump pulled his nomination of a Stefanic to what

the UN, I think that's right. That's right. You as ambassador to the United Nations, because they might've lost that one. And they did make like made exceedingly incredible ground up in Florida one and Florida six. I mean, those were like plus 30 Trump County districts and they cut those leads in a half or by two thirds in one case. And I thought that that was significant. So we didn't win those seats, but man, that's got to have a lot of Republicans in closer districts kind of shaking in their boots.

I should hope so. I mean, I think it's a, it is definitely a positive sign. It's hard to, it's hard to say, Hey, we lost two races. Yay. Yay. We almost won. That seems a little bit weird. But the numbers I think are, are, I don't know, I guess encouraging, I could say that that maybe people in those districts, some of them are having second thoughts. And then of course we get Wisconsin, which was no doubt a victory, a victory obviously for I know it's a not officially a nonpartisan race, but certainly the judge who was supported by Democrats takes the win there. But more importantly, maybe by Democrats takes the win there, but more importantly, maybe

Elon Musk takes the loss. Yeah. It was a huge referendum on whether or not Elon Musk could come into states and just buy elections, right? I was very worried about the outcome of that, but so glad Susan Crawford beat Brad Schimel, the MAGA Musk-backed judge for that seat by a 10 10 point margin. So that was good. And then Senator Booker made us all feel awesome on Tuesday. He broke Strom Thurman's record for the longest Senate floor speech in history going 25 hours and five minutes. That was awesome, symbolic,

historic. And he wasn't just like reading the phone book either. He had points and he made, it was a speech. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely was. What a moment. I mean, like in a time, in a couple of months where we definitely seem to be searching for inspiration and, you know, moments that just, uh, not necessarily like, you know, win the war for you or anything, but just kind of light you up and, um, generate some positivity and, and yeah, inspiration, I think from a guy who got up there and really laid it all out and, you know, just the idea of Strom Thurman rolling over in his grave, kind of, kind of satisfying on some level. I know.

Yeah. And I think he ended it that way. He's like, I didn't make this speech because of Strom Thurman. I made it in spite of Strom Thurman. So I thought that was great and was a good shot in the arm, I think, on Tuesday. It was a good day for democracy. But Andy, some are calling what Judge Dale Ho did this week a bright spot as well. I personally am having a hard time seeing it as a good thing

and maybe you can help me out. But trusted voices like our friend Mimi Rocha and Andrew Weissman have written pieces praising what Judge Ho did. So let's start there. First of all, Mimi Rocha, former Westchester County District Attorney, former AUSA Chief at SDNY.

She said on Thursday, she wrote for MSNBC, U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho dismissed the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams with prejudice. While the order ends, Adams' criminal problems for now and gives the Justice Department what it wanted in part, do not let anyone spin this away from the most important and lasting takeaway from the judge's detailed and thoughtful thoughtful 78 page opinion, that the rule of law and prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and the Justice Department who resigned rather than carry out what they saw as an unethical, improper, and potentially illegal order were 100% vindicated by Judge Ho's extensive findings.

And she points out that Judge Ho demolished the government's rationale for dismissal, not just as thin, but as pretextual. The judge ultimately dismissed the case against Adams, not because the reasons the Justice Department gave warranted it, but because of separation of powers and the practical consideration that a court cannot force the Justice Department to continue with a prosecution to which it will not commit resources.

I think all of that is right. I share your feeling that this was not a bright spot in the week. It was not a good thing, but I have to say that I come down on the side of what he did simply as a matter of practicality. There was no other realistic way forward with this that would have been productive or effective in the long run. There's really, he needed to handle this in a way that cut off the Justice Department's ability to continue to hold leverage over Adam's head, right? Which is clearly what they tried to do with this by dismissing it without prejudice, holding that threat of re-initiating these charges if Adams ever stepped out of line or did something

in New York that Trump's Department of Justice didn't agree with. And Ho squashed that potential by dismissing it with prejudice. I think that was that was the kind of stop the bleeding decision. You had to prevent that and in terms of refusing to grant the dismissal I mean yeah he could have done that but he can't force the Department of Justice to prosecute and so he was stuck between a bit of a rock and a hard place. He could have taken the symbolic move and said, no, I won't do it.

And then DOJ would have promptly sat on their hands for 70 days and the entire thing would have been dismissed by speedy trial clock violations likely. Right, which is what I think he should have done because there's a reason Rule 48A exists in the first place. It's because DOJ used to just dismiss stuff without any oversight from any branch, which disrupts to in my mind the balance of power and the checks and balances that we have. So they came up with rule 48A saying the court has some discretion here. And I think when the court has discretion and the

cards are laid out that way, that to go ahead and dismiss the charges when this is clearly pretextual, even Judge Ho said it was, kind of negates the whole purpose of Rule 48A to me in my mind. Yeah, I mean, I can see that. I don't disagree with you. But I think had he gone the other way, maybe he gets the symbolic, he gets credit, he would have gotten credit for the symbolic defense of Rule 48A. I think probably he figured it's just not worth it. In the long run, he factors in the timing of the election or the primary election that's coming up. And he seemed to think there was some advantage to getting this thing disposed of before the primary.

Yeah, but there's no rule that says that. I mean, he even says, he even argues in the whole front half of his thing that the DOJ is reasoning saying that it was too close to the election was stupid. Like because it's about indictments and overt investigatory steps, not trials or things that happen after the indictment. And he was indicted nine months before this happened. But he did say that his practicant, that was one of the fits, one of the things you have to weigh, right? Is this in the public interest? And he decided it was in the public

interest to not have this butt up against the primary on June 24th. That's right. I disagree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can, that's okay. Well, the other thing too- You disagree. That's what we do here. But there's another thing too. He said that the court concluded that no further inquiry was necessary and conceded. He said, while some questions remain for those seeking a complete picture of how the decision to dismiss unfolded, me included, for example, what exactly was said at that January 31st meeting between the Southern District of New York, the Department of Justice and Adams as lawyers, and what the USAO and

the SDNY said in its follow-up letter to the Department of Justice, those things. The record already makes clear that at least one of the rationales the Department of Justice has advanced is in fact a real basis for the motion that the DOJ has determined that dismissing the case will advance federal immigration initiatives and policies. So Judge Ho said no further factual development is necessary to arrive at that conclusion and delving deeper would not change the ultimate outcome here because the court even if it were so inclined could not force the government to prosecute this case by denying the motion.

Yeah, but sure it wouldn't change the ultimate outcome other than we would have all the information. The public would know what happened, what led up to this. Looking outside the four corners of the 48A motion to dismiss, looking at those memos that Beauvais sent Sassoon, looking at the meeting notes that, you know, Emil Boves wanted to eat after that January 31st meeting. I want to know what happened there. And sure, it's going to end up, like you said, and like the judge says, in a dismissal with prejudice when they run out the speedy trial clock because he can't force DOJ to prosecute

nor can he deputize somebody to become a special prosecutor. That only happens in contempt cases and probably not even anymore given more recent findings. But I wanted to know what happened, what went down. I think that's more in the public interest than whether or not we get a dismissal with prejudice close to an election that this dude has no chance to win anyway. I get that and I think that you can certainly see the public interest equation differently than he does. I think part of what he struggled with here is like, there's nothing about this is typical. You don't see this from other departments of justice. And so-

Right. That's the problem. Right. And so as a result, there's not really an established method or process for deeper fact finding and reporting of those facts. Even the facts that you mentioned here, like how do we get to that? We'd have to have, I guess, a series of hearings- Yeah, there would be hearings.

... in which he would have to call in witnesses. But now the court is putting itself uncomfortably in the position of prosecuting the Department of Justice in a way. Good. So something... Well, Paul Clement was like, sure. Because Judge Ho asked Paul Clement, can I even look outside the Rule 48A motion? And he said, yeah, sure, you can, but why? It's going to be dismissed anyway.

And he went with that. And, you know, I also reread Gleason's amicus curi brief in the Flynn case. And he was like, look, there's a history here. And we have rule 48A for a reason. And that's kind of where my, you know, I don't, I don't kind of come up with my own legal opinions out of thin air. I always read somebody who's way smarter than me. And I agree with Gleason in this case. Now we never got to, like you said, Andy, we never got to find out what would have happened, those hearings, for example, after, um, cause Sullivan, Emmett Sullivan,

Judge Sullivan didn't get a chance to decide what he was going to do because Trump just swooped in and pardoned Flynn. And now I kind of wish we had seen what happened there. And there is only one other case Judge Dale Ho mentioned in the district that this has happened in before. And in that case, they they denied the judge denied the dismissal and the DOJ ran out the speedy trial clock. It's only happened one other time. And I'm like, well, why don't you go with that? Because it's too close to the election and it wouldn't be in the public interest is what that's what he would say. Honestly, if I think if John Gleason or Judge Gleason was on the bench for this case and he actually had it not as an amicus, I think he would have maybe done it differently. You can see this differently. And I think a lot of people will probably

not be satisfied with what Judge Ho did. I think the big takeaways are that DOJ did a horrible thing here. It was likely illegal, totally improper, a really corrupt bargain from both sides. We talked about that extensively. That's the most important thing. The second most important thing is Judge Ho resolved the one issue that could have continued to impact and unduly influence political decision making going forward. That's the extortion of Adams by DOJ. He did quash that.

And he got rid of that. Because if you let it go for 70 more days leading up to the election and Eric Adams wasn't playing ball, DOJ could swoop in and say, actually, we are going to prosecute this case. Of course. And so I think- Let's say Adams kick pushes back and does nothing. And then, look, Adams might not make it through the primary.

Right. Right? And he's then no longer of any use to the Department of Justice and then he gets prosecuted? I mean, that would have been abysmal. Right. But- So he did quash that, like you said, and he did not grant the Department of Justice what they wanted, which was to dismiss without prejudice.

And it's yet to be seen. I have not yet seen an appeal to his decision to dismiss with prejudice. But Emil Boves could very easily come back and appeal that and say, no, it needs to be without, because we want to we need him. Yeah, like, it'll be an interesting filing. Sure. If he does, you're stealing our Patsy from us. Go ahead and explain that to the court, sir. We created this very carefully. I mean, yeah, I would,

no other human being on earth would consider doing that, but if Emil Boves might. It's the kind of thing he would do. And if he does, we will talk about it on the next episode. We also need to talk a little bit about some personnel actions that happened to the Department of Justice this week. And we're going to do that, but we have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, let's go over some personnel actions at the Department of Justice that may have flown under the radar this past week, given everything else in the news. This reporting comes from Talking Points Memo.

In another brazen step to weed out President Donald Trump's perceived political enemies and break down the barrier of political influence between the White House and the DOJ, Trump's White House directly dismissed two career prosecutors without reason. The firings are representative of Trump's vow to retaliate against his supposed political enemies in a department he claims has been weaponized against him. On Friday, Los Angeles-based federal prosecutor Adam Schlieffer was fired via email from a White House official with no reason for the dismissal given, according to reporting from the New York Times.

Schlieffer had been working on a case against the founder of Fatburger, Andrew Wiederhorn, who was also a donor to political action committees that have supported Trump per the times. Oh, interesting. Um, shortly before he was fired, the fat burger guy, the fat burger prosecutor, right? Schlieffer? Yes. Is that how you say it? Schlieffer? I'm taking a guess at that. I guess it could be Schleifer.

Could be Schleifer. I'm not sure. In any case. case, yeah. So he had been working on a case against Andrew Wieterhorn, who is the founder of Fatburger. And now he finds himself working on no cases, having been fired for no reason whatsoever. Yeah. And Talking Points Memo says that shortly before he

was fired, right-wing political activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer posted on Twitter highlighting old social media posts from 2020 where Schleifer was critical of Trump. Quote, why is Biden holdover Adam Schleifer still working for the US Attorney's office under the new Trump administration? He is a Trump hater who has been working at the US Attorney's office since 2021. That's what she said on Twitter. Fire him. He supported the impeachment of President Trump and said he wanted to repeal Trump's tax plan. We need to purge the U.S. Attorney's office of all leftist Trump haters.

That's what she said. And put a pin in Laura Loomer because she's going to figure prominently into another story we're going to get into later. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Now also last week, career attorney Reagan Fondren was similarly dismissed as acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee and from the DOJ entirely. So not just taken out of the acting U.S. Attorney role,

which is, you know, people come and go out of those roles, but he lost his job. And this is according to reporting from the Daily Memphian. She also received the news via an online email. In a statement on Friday, Senator Marsha Blackburn said that Joe Murphy would replace Fondren, saying that Memphis is in need of, quote, a U.S. attorney who will return to increased caseloads

Aggressively enforce our federal criminal laws and keep violent offenders behind bars so that Memphians can feel safe again And in a statement to talking points memo regarding the dismissals White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said quote the White House in coordination with the Department of Justice Has dismissed more than 50 US attorneys and deputies in the past few weeks. The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it. It's worth noting that prosecutors are a part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch.

Yeah. Yeah. That's worth noting. Also worth noting that I think any one of those 50 probably has a defamation claim against Carolyn Leavitt now for having been called someone who subverts democracy and not being honest by an official White House statement. That's really shocking. And I would add disgusting on the part of Carolyn

Leavitt. Yeah. And the difference here, if I were in the press room right then, which I was not and will not be because I don't work for Breitbart or Tim Pool, she's talking about the US attorneys. Yeah. Every time we turn over an administration, we get new US attorneys. But this guy, that fat burger guy was a line prosecutor. Like- You mean Schlieffer. Right, Schlieffer, he was prosecuting the fat burger case.

Yep. Line prosecutor, not US attorney. Yeah, this is a classic statement from the Trump White House. It's totally confusing and ultimately tells you nothing because it's infested with contradictions like that, right? Like the judicial branch versus the executive branch, which she's a member of, but apparently doesn't know the difference between the two. I'm surprised she didn't quote Marbury v. Madison.

Yeah, there you go. There's what, 96 US attorneys, I think, around the country. Typically, they're all fired on Inauguration Day. Every single one of them. That's just the way it works. They know that when they take the job. Their resignations are requested on Inauguration Day. But the AUSAs, the line level attorneys, they stay. They are professional. They're not political. They follow the facts in the law. They uphold, they're there because of the rule of law and not because of the president. But not anymore, apparently. A line, AUSA in Los Angeles can get fired for things they said years ago on Twitter and maybe also for the fact that they're investigating

a friend of Donald Trump. I mean, that is a really bad sign for justice in America. Yeah, I agree. And the independence of the Department of Justice, which is just shattered. I mean, it's just been completely shattered. There's no two ways about it. All right, next up, out, dedicated career prosecutors in Stanley Woodward. All right, this comes from Politico. President Donald Trump named yet another veteran of his criminal cases to the upper ranks of the Justice Department on Wednesday, nominating Stan Woodward as associate attorney general. This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for the Department of Justice. This is the department's third ranking position.

Woodward never directly represented Trump, but was a key architect of the legal pushback to the criminal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith. He represented Trump's personal aide, Walt Nauta, in the case that Jack Smith brought over Trump's hoarding and illegal retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Woodward has long been a go-to lawyer for Trump's inner circle. He spent years representing Trump's social media muse, Dan Scavino, in grand jury proceedings, civil cases, and also before the House's Jan 6th Select Committee. Other Woodward clients have included Kash Patel, who was a witness in the classified

documents case and, of course, is now Trump's FBI director. Woodward clients have included, Kosh Patel, who was a witness in the classified documents case and of course is now Trump's FBI director, Peter Navarro, who was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the House's January 6 investigation. That sounds like some great legal advice he got there. Representative Scott Perry, after his phone was seized by investigators working with Smith, and House GOP leaders who filed a legal brief arguing against the validity of Congress's effort to hold Trump ally Steve Bannon in contempt. So they argued against their own ability to hold someone accountable who contemptuously refused to respond to them.

Well, that's Republican Congress. Like, we hate our power. Please have it. Yeah, exactly. That's all they've been doing is capitulating. I saw Woodward after I was at the courthouse to see Judge Tonya Chutkin set the trial date for the January 6th Trump case, March 4th, I think, 2024 was the trial date she set after that hearing. We were walking out and I looked in and I was like, oh, hey, there's Pete Navarro arguing his case with the, I'm going to drop in there. Dude Woodward is, you know, I'm going to, I'm just going to say he's not a great lawyer. He's also

sloppy and sloppily, but I don't want to hold that against him. He also represented a slew of January 6th defendants, including Ryan Samsell, who ignited the breach of the restricted capital grounds. Kelly Maggs, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role. Oops, that didn't go well. In the alleged plot by the oath keepers leadership to help Trump seize a second term. And Federico Klein, remember him, former State Department official. Yeah. Who was convicted of assaulting police at the Capitol tunnel. All of them were pardoned

or had their cases dismissed after Trump took office in January. Woodward's nomination requires Senate confirmation and the move solidifies Justice Department control under a group of lawyers who were most directly responsible for shielding Trump from consequences in his many legal struggles, starting with the first impeachment trial during his first presidential term and continuing with the four criminal cases he faced in 2023 and 2024. That's right. Attorney General Pam Bondi helped defend Trump during the 2020 impeachment trial for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Biden family.

She was also a vocal surrogate for Trump during his criminal cases. And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, of course, was Trump's lead attorney in the two criminal cases brought by Jack Smith, as well as the New York hush money case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. Emile Beauvais, who holds the position of principal associate deputy attorney general, which those in the business always refer to as the pay dag, is a top aid within the justice department. He worked closely with Blanche during those criminal proceedings. Yep. I bet he felt real good to be the acting deputy attorney general for a minute, you know,

Yeah. Yielding his power. Flexy. Yeah. Only to be relegated to pay dag. I remember when I first read that, I was like, all right, come on, principal acting deputy attorney, like our principal associate, deputy attorney general, come on. Can we? Yeah. That's why they abbreviate it. Yeah. It's just too, too long and not very memorable. And I think at the time it was O'Callaghan under, uh, Rod Rosenstein. Yep. And they are

the ones who helped whip up that obstruction of justice memo that they tried to keep secret under deliberative process privilege, but lost in court. And that's where we found out that Bill Barr was basically how he quashed any ability for any future attorney general to bring the obstruction charges that Mueller found. Yeah. Yeah, O'Callaghan was also the really notable new low for DOJ when he started appearing at the White House behind the podium in the press room to talk about like gang arrests and stuff. I remember that.

It's like, oh my God. I'd known Ed since I was an agent in New York. We worked cases together. I actually had a very high opinion of him when we worked together many, many years ago. So seeing things like that was just remarkable. I mean, I couldn't believe it, could not believe it. Yeah, heartbreaking how some people just kind of got,

fell into the cult, I guess. Yeah, seduced, I think, by the proximity to power and all the things that that could bring. Yeah, agreed. All right, we're going to shift gears from the Department of Justice over to the intelligence community, but we do have to take another quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Welcome back. Let's shift over to the intelligence community.

Like I said before the break, remember when I said to put a pin in Laura Loomer and not like in a voodoo doll way, but like, but maybe I mean, don't write it out. Yeah. Who's selling Laura Loomer voodoo dolls? This is from the Washington Post. The director of the National Security Agency, the NSA, the powerful US wiretapping and cyber espionage service was fired Thursday, according to one former and two current US officials, General Timothy Hawk, or hog. He's got, it's kind of like a, it's almost a hard G but not really. Got it. Who also heads US Cyber Command was let go along with his civilian deputy at the NSA,

Wendy Noble, according to the officials. Like others in this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personal moves. I want them to say, like these folks spoke on the condition of anonymity, so they wouldn't end up like Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss. That's what I would like it to say from now on in these reports. Either that or on the next plane to El Salvador. Right, exactly. Going to CICOT. Far-right activist Laura Loomer advocated for the firings during a meeting with Trump on Wednesday. she confirmed this to The Post on Thursday evening, that this was her idea. In the meeting, Loomer, a fervent Trump supporter, who's actually been

pushed away a few times for being a little off the deep end, she pressed for the dismissals of a number of officials besides Hawk and Noble, in particular National Security Council staff, whose views she saw as disloyal to the president. At least five key National Security Council aides were fired on Thursday. Quote, NSA Director Tim Haw and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump, Loomer said in a post on X early Friday. That is why they have been fired. Loomer told the post that she urged Trump to dismiss Hall because he was quote, handpicked by General Mark Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2023, when Hall was nominated to lead Cyber Command and the NSA.

Now, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country's top uniformed military officer, Milley would have had a role in helping select the nominee for Cyber Command, whose leader earns a fourth star on confirmation. Milly, who retired in 2023, had his security detail and security clearance revoked in January by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over perceived disloyalty to Donald Trump. This Loomer meeting, Andy, reminds me of if you saw that From Russia with Lev documentary on MSNBC, when in a meeting at the BTL steakhouse or something, I can't remember, maybe BLT steakhouse. BLT maybe? Yeah.

Yeah. In passing, Lev Parnas mentioned to Donald Trump that Masha Yovanovich was trouble. We saw the video because he recorded it. And then Donald Trump came out firing her. She's going to go through some things and completely tanked her career. Just from someone mentioning in passing that they were disloyal to him at some point. That's how these decisions seem to be made. Now Noble was reassigned to a job within the Pentagon's office of the Undersecretary of Defense for

Intelligence and Security. The NSA is part of the department. Hawk, who assumed his dual position over a year ago, was traveling on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, did not respond. The current and former officials say they were not aware of any official reason for Hawke's dismissal or Noble's reassignment. The named acting NSA director is Lieutenant General William J. Hartman, who was the Cyber Command deputy, according to one of the officials. Sheila Thomas, who was the executive director at the NSA, was named acting deputy, according

to two officials. Hogue is a cyber professional with more than 30 years of military service, including as head of cyber commands, Cyber National Mission Force, which led offensive cyber military operations overseas and as commander of the 16th Air Force in San Antonio. He ran cyber commands half of the quote Russia small group, which was a joint effort with the NSA to defend the 2018 midterm elections from Russian interference. Oh, I see where this is headed. That's where the scarlet letter comes from.

Apparently, the NSA portion was led by Ann Newberger, who went on to serve in the Biden administration as a deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies. So the guy with the most experience in the universe about preventing cyber attacks from Russia for interference in our elections has been targeted and removed. Yeah. Well, we're not interested in that anymore because we also got rid of the foreign influence task force. So it just basically, hog would have been a, you know, an obstruction in the path of open doors to our election infrastructure for all enemies.

Yeah. Which apparently seems to be the new policy. The thing about this, there's so many things about this that I just are amazingly dumb and surprising. The thing I can't believe is like the week after, we're only one week after the great Signalgate controversy in which the national security advisor, the guy in charge of all these staffers who got fired, convened a group of cabinet level officials for the purpose of discussing

classified military information and highly sensitive foreign policy discussions on Signal, an off the shelf commercially available messaging app that is not rated or confirmed or approved for use for any of that stuff. And he received nothing but support from the president and a basically a green light from Pam Bondi that there would not even be an investigation. Contrast that to this week where Laura Loomer, who comes from, I don't know where, has zero experience in anything. She's, from what I understand, conspiracy theorist and an internet troll.

She gets a direct audience with the president and five people, six people, 10 people keep hearing different numbers on the national security staff. Professionals, staffers at the director and sub-director level get fired. It's unbelievable to me. Like you would not take any sort of action against the NSA who so clearly violated the rules of handling classified material and

possibly violated the law in the process. Do nothing to him. But when you find out you hear these these rumors of potential disloyalty in the histories of these people, you fire them immediately. It's unbelievable. It's like Stalinesque. Yeah. Although we did get the acting DOD inspector general launching a review of the Signal Chat. Yeah. And this is a career person. This is a former the former PDIG and the principal deputy inspector general. He became that in 2023. I think his name is Stebbins. He's currently the acting after all you know, Trump fired

all but two of the inspectors general. So he so he's going to be looking into the Hegseth signal chat and is probably gonna, he wrote in a letter to Hegseth, I am probably going to need a lot of materials from you and stuff for this investigation. So we'll see what comes out of that. That dude should check his email constantly because your fired message is probably being drafted right now. Yeah. They just got to keep firing people until they find somebody who won't look into this.

Exactly. That's probably what's going to happen. All right. Well, in a related story, Andy, Trump tried to fire employees from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, and the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, under his Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative. But a judge has temporarily blocked the firings. This is from Politico.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Tranga issued a preliminary injunction Monday requiring that the affected staffers at the CIA and the ODNI remain on the payroll while they appeal their terminations and seek reassignment to open positions at their agencies. Ruling from the bench, by the way, in his courtroom in Virginia, Trenga said CIA Director John Ratcliffe had made clear that the employees who faced a five p.m. deadline Monday to resign or be fired were being dismissed under a reduction in force. And that gave the employees certain protections, right? Like you got to give them 60 days notice and they get appeal rights and things like that. Quote, the plaintiffs

face termination without any suggestion of wrongdoing or poor performance, said Trenga, an appointee of G.W. Bush, by the way. Simply, I miss the days when we didn't have to put in the story who appointed a judge. That did not happen prior to 2016. It never happened, yeah. Quote, simply requiring the government to follow its regulations is a minimal burden.

That's what the judge said. Yeah, you think. Tranga didn't rule out allowing the intelligence agencies to fire the staffers eventually, but he said they could not do so until he gets a report on the outcome of the internal appeals and on the consideration of the employees for other jobs at their agencies.

A written order Tranga released on Tuesday appears to cover only the 19 officials who joined the suit after they were abruptly put on administrative leave in January. Before Tranga's ruling, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis Bargan, am I pronouncing that correctly? I haven't heard his name spoken. I've only read it. All right, we're going to say Bargan, who was heckled by some of the affected employees following a hearing last month. I love the idea of that press the government's argument that the intelligence community leaders have broad power to restructure their agencies without following

Wow Bargain Bargain, no, you don't if you're gonna riff people you got to follow the law About reductions in force. Hey, attorney bargain. This is the government. It's not mom's pie shop. You got to do things according to the rules. That's what they used to tell us anyway.

The special intelligence agency authority to summarily fire employees does not need to be a national security rationale. Yeah, I don't know where that came from. I'd love to see a site to a case or something, but I'm guessing there isn't one. Yeah. And this is kind of similar to what happened with when Dellinger went to the Merit Systems Protection Board twice, once with Raymond Lyman and once with Kathy Harris, to say that the probationary employees were being fired without notice and without appeal rights

and basically saying this is a reduction in force. You're not actually going to each probationary employee and assessing their performance and letting them go based on that. You are just saying all probationary employees must be fired. In my eyes and in the eyes of the law, that is a reduction in force, which requires 60-day notice, appeal rights, and a report on the outcome of internal appeals, and the consideration of employees for other jobs at the agency. There's a lot of things that, I mean, that's a law. It's a law passed by Congress. So you can fire all the probationary employees once you've assessed that they are not a good fit for your agency, but you can't do it all at once.

And same with these folks, right? Just like the judge said, you can fire these folks, just not this way. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at Radcliffe's, the article says, made clear that the employees faced a 5 p.m. deadline Monday to resign or be fired. That's not a resignation if you do that. If you're told you're gonna be fired at 5 p.m. and you resign, that's not actually a resignation.

That doesn't have the legal effect of a resignation. You're essentially being, you're being terminated. Right. Right? It's just all this smoke and mirrors is kind of kind of awful. Yeah, I don't think they understand resign or be fired. Yeah. Um, you know, which is when Biden came in, that's what he said to all the US attorneys, right? Hey, resign or be fired. Right. By Monday. And so they probably think, oh, same thing, right? No, these aren't appointed U.S. attorneys. These aren't political appointees. These are career professionals who have appeal

rights if they are going to be removed. Yeah, for sure. All right. We have a couple more quick stories plus listener questions after this quick break. If you have a question you want to ask us, there's a link in the show notes. You can click on that, fill out the form and we'll see if we can read your question and answer your question in the show next week. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Welcome back. We have a few quick stories before we get to our listener questions. First up, Senate Judiciary Democrats are pushing for a rare confirmation hearing on Ed Martin. Dick Durbin said, while the Senate Judiciary Committee does not typically hold hearings for US Attorney nominees, Mr. Martin's record merits heightened scrutiny.

And since his nomination to serve as US attorney for the District of Columbia, Mr. Martin appears to have attempted to scrub much of his previous public commentary from the internet. Imagine that. For example, nearly a thousand hours of his podcast have been removed from online platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts,

interfering with the committee's ability to thoroughly examine his record. And Andy, I'm proud to say if I ever am offered a job in the government again, I don't feel the need to erase what I have said on the internet in the past. Well, I don't expect to ever be offered a government job again. But if I were, I mean, I say the podcast stays. Why not? You don't expect to ever be offered a government job again, but if I were, I mean, I say the podcast stays. Why not? You don't like the podcast? Don't offer me a job.

There you go. Senator Adam Schiff on Tuesday placed a hold on Martin's nomination, a move that blocks his swift consideration on the Senate floor, but also one that Republicans can easily defeat with just 50 votes. Right. This is the unanimous consent thing, right? Right. That's how they normally approve US attorneys. US attorneys are typically not very controversial nominations because they're typically like competent, responsible professionals

with good career records. I know all that seems quaint now, but yeah. And so they'll usually bring a whole, you know, a dozen or so together in one of those consent votes and they'll all just pass, you know, big chunks. Yeah. But Adam Schiff is saying, nope. Not this one. Yeah. And even I think Ruben Gallego is stopping unanimous consent on nominations to the Department of Veterans Affairs, as long as they keep slashing. They're about to cut 83,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs. So I think they should

do this on all of the nominations. That's just me throw sand in the gears all the time. Why not? What could be, how could it be worse? Like, tell, explain to me how you're making it worse by blocking unanimous consent and I'll consider your argument But I can't think of one right I agree also from the Guardian Trump has been ordered by a judge in England to pay more than 620,000 pounds in legal costs after unsuccessfully suing a company over denied allegations that he took part in perverted sex acts Okay, the US president brought a data protection claim against Orbis. Remember Orbis business intelligence? I do the consultancy firm founded by former

MI six officer Christopher steel in 2022. So as much as he's trying to, you know, get rid of things that protect us from Russian interference and, and go after law firms that represented Chris Steele, go after law firms that represented Jack Smith. He, he still has to pay 620,000 pounds for his failed lawsuit against Chris Steele. Yeah, I'm going to call that a bright spot. That's a win. That's a win. Why not? Holy cow. Yeah. All right. What do we have for questions this week? All right. We've got two, I think, really timely questions

that are going to kind of resonate with some of the things we've spoken about already on the show. First one comes from Paul. Paul says, is it possible for a judge to sanction an individual DOJ attorney for making statements or delivering a document the judge finds to be untrue i know judges can characterize an agents testimony in a negative light and that could impact future testimony by that agent. Does the same hold true for attorneys perhaps of judges sanctioned individual attorneys they might not be willing to stick their necks out for Bondi, Boves or Trump. Now this is like super timely because it hits upon what's happening in the courtroom of Judge Boesberg, which we talked about last week. He's continuing to dig into this issue of whether or not the government ignored his order to turn those flights bound for El Salvador around and come back with

the alleged Trende Aragua members. So it brings up a couple of things. First, your reference to the fact that judges can characterize an agent's testimony in a negative light. That is true. What happens there if an agent, let's say an FBI agent, gets on the stand and testifies in a way that the judge believes is not true, maybe not blatantly false in a way that could get you prosecuted, but still have a hard time testifying in the future because those comments can be brought up by other defendants. Anytime that agent testifies, a defendant in a prosecution years later can say, isn't

it true? A judge once found you incredible. So for that reason, the US attorney's office will not put that agent on the stand. That's where the blocking comes in. It's not the court saying you can't testify anymore. It's the local US Attorney's Office saying, we don't want to take a chance putting you on the stand because it'll hurt our case. I'm sorry to interrupt, but Mimi Rocha brought this up in the Judge Dale Ho situation. Because in his ruling, he said, he used the word pretextual.

She said, as a prosecutor for over 20 years in federal and state court, I can tell you with absolute certainty that having a judge call your arguments pretextual would be a moment of great embarrassment and even concern about compliance with other court rules. That's right. That's right. So really devastating. I think DOJ is going to get their lunch head into them on this by Judge Boesberg. And that kind of an order or ruling could be really

devastating to the individual attorneys involved. I also wanted to mention there's been confusion in the reporting on this, the difference between contempt and sanctions. So what Judge Boesberg is considering is actually holding the department and some of those individual attorneys in contempt. Now, contempt of court is specific, is a judge's ability to take action in regards to what behavior on the part of the attorneys that the judge believes disrespected the court

or displayed disobedience to the court and its orders and its process. It's a very specific, very serious, the most serious thing a judge can do to discipline an attorney. Sanctions are much broader. Sanctions are, it's a response to violations of court rules and things like that where the judge will slap one side or one attorney with a financial penalty.

And they can be found in criminal cases or civil cases. It's usually a financial fine that the judge imposes and it's for kind of a violation of process. As Anna Bauer says, make rule 11 sanctions great again. Yeah, exactly. Contempt is like a notch higher. Ah. It also can end up throwing you in jail.

I don't anticipate that's gonna happen in the Boasberg case, but it's on the menu. No, I imagine they'll have a big giant conversations about how to purge the contempt before they issue any punishments in the contempt. I would expect so. But rule 11 sanctions are what you're, you know, one of the things you're talking about,

right? And rule 11 sanctions are penalties imposed on attorneys, law firms or parties who violate the rule by filing pleadings, motions or other papers that are not well grounded in fact or law or are presented for an improper purpose. So yeah, okay. It's a smack down for sure. But it's not as bad as contempt. It's not as bad as contempt.

Contempt is like you have undermined the court itself. You've disrespected us. You've lied to us. You failed to respond to our orders. It's just, it's really not a good thing. And Boesberg said that he didn't make a ruling from the bench. He's not going to rule until this week, he said, but he did say that there's a probability, a likelihood that there's probable cause for contempt here in this particular case. So I think it's coming.

It's leaning in that direction. It'd be interesting to see if he does it, what sort of effect that has on other attorneys at the Department of Justice. Are more attorneys now gonna start standing up and saying, I'm not doing that. I'm not taking that position in court. Right, are we gonna see a bunch of resignations or?

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'm not saying like, oh, they're all gonna be walking out in droves, but it'll be interesting to see if people start pushing back on the AG. Okay. So our second question here comes from Jeff. Jeff says, how can Elon Musk's activities paying people to canvas for Wisconsin Supreme Court election, paying people who sign a petition or giving away a million dollar checks in relationship to an election, how can any of this be legal?

And how can we stop it and hold him accountable? This of course is referring to the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin this past week in which Musk did all those things. He paid people to canvas to go out and knock on doors and try to get people to canvas to go out and knock on doors and try to, you know, get people to turn out to vote for his preferred candidate. That's not illegal to pay people to canvas.

He also handed away million dollar checks to people supposedly at random for showing up at these rallies but the people who received the checks did not seem like random selectees in any way. One of them was the head of the college Republicans and all this other nonsense. He also even said, I'll give you 20 bucks every time you take a photo of yourself with Brad Schimel and a thumbs up or something like that at up to $1,000. You can make a thousand bucks. There you go.

Posting that on social media. That stuff is all gross, but it's not illegal. Where he gets close to illegal is in paying people to sign a petition, which I think also includes some language about your intent to vote for Trump. It's not clear if that's illegal or not. The promise hasn't actually been challenged in court yet. It could be because it is illegal in this country

to pay someone to vote a particular way. It's possible that this could be interpreted by a court as essentially the same thing as like, you've all heard, everyone's heard this like myth about like people scalping tickets outside of an arena and saying like, here, if you buy this picture of my dog for a thousand dollars, it comes with two front row seats to the show, you know, and that is not legal. It's goofy and it does not get you out of the, out of the, out of jail for

having scalp. He didn't say he was a cop. He didn't tell me he was a cop. So it doesn't count. Exactly. Josh Call, attorney general, tried to sue to stop this and it went all the way up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, ironically, and they wouldn't hear the case. But I am not familiar enough with, I know, first of all, Pam Bondi is not going to bring anything. Not a chance. Not a chance. No. Not a chance.

But I'm not familiar enough with Wisconsin state election law to answer this question. But that shouldn't stop us from giving Josh call a phone call or a local DA in Dane County, for example, to see like, hey, at least look into this. I'm just, I can't answer the question with enough authenticity or knowledge because I just am not familiar enough with Wisconsin election law. Yeah. My only message on this one is it could be, it's possible that a court in which it's illegal to, it's pretty much illegal everywhere to pay someone to vote, right? You can't, you're not supposed to do that. And it's possible that you could interpret what he was doing within that, within that,

within the scope of that prohibition. But it needs to be challenged. It's got to be somewhere he's got to get sued or prosecuted for doing it. And we won't really know until that happens. Yeah. And I know that the that Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania tried to sue as well. And those lawsuits got shot down. Also, when when Musk was giving away million dollar checks, he was calling it a an illegal lottery. Right, right. that's right. So, I don't know, we'll see, but I have been writing to folks in Wisconsin,

to district attorneys and the attorney general saying, hey, could you look into it? And you're gonna have, I think, better luck outside of the WoW counties, maybe if you look in Dane County or a county where they've got a more amenable district attorney to this kind of thing. But we'll see. And if we do get those charges and or lawsuits, we'll obviously let you know. Heck yeah. Yes, we will.

All right. Great questions. Thanks so much. Again, if you have a question, there's a link in the show notes you can click on, fill out the form, send us a question. We'll read it on the air. We really appreciate all your questions. We really appreciate all of our listeners as well. Thank you so much for tuning in every week to Unjustified. We really appreciate it. It's not as fun as the Jack podcast, but it is as equally or if not more important that we keep an eye on what's going on with the Department of Justice here in this Trump administration. So thank you for listening. Any final thoughts before we get out of here for the week, Andy?

Yeah, for sure. I totally agree with what you're saying. I really feel like DOJ is in the eye of the storm here because all of these things, whether it's the firing of government employees or whatever actions DOJ is taking against the agencies, so many of these things are going to be challenged in court and it's going to be the Department of Justice that goes in to represent what Trump is doing, just like you're seeing in the immigrant case to El Salvador that's in front of Judge Boasberg. So it's really the great kind of catch point

where you get to see how the courts are dealing with the many different actions of this administration. I know it's tough to try to keep up with these things, especially after a week like this where we've all been like, our heads have been spinning with the news lately with these crazy tariffs and the massive changes to our economy and to people's economic wellbeing that might be negatively impacted by what we see happening here. It becomes hard to kind of focus on all this stuff,

but all you gotta do is tune in every Sunday and you'll get the wind up from you and I in terms of what's happening over there at DOJ in the eye of the storm. Yeah, awesome. And we appreciate you listening and we'll be back in your ears next week. Thank you so much. 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 Hawke 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.