Andrew Weissmann: It Stinks to High Heaven

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Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back a professor of practice at NYU Law School.

He served as the chief of the fraud section at DOJ.

I don't think there is a fraud section anymore, so that's an old job.

As well as the general counsel at the FBI, he's an MSNBC legal analyst, co-host of the podcast Maine Justice.

And his sub stack is behind the headlines.

It's obviously Andrew Weissman.

What's going on, man?

You know, things have been so quiet.

So quiet.

I don't even know how we're going to fill a full podcast today, but I have to start, unfortunately, as part of a settlement.

We're now required to begin the podcast with this public service announcement.

So before we get to the news by Julian Maxwell, I want to play this as I'm obligated to.

I'm Donald J.

Trump, and I endorse this message.

Trump.

His penis is teeny tiny, but his love for us is large.

Hmm, USA.

Did you get a chance to watch any South Park this week, Andrew?

You know, I didn't, but you know, it's nice to start on this high note.

I just want to let you know that if you want to talk about Trump's teeny tiny penis on this podcast, you're free to.

You know, that's why I wanted to start there to kind of as a tone setter.

Yeah, I wanted to work it into the legal issues that

all right.

Well, the FCC approved the merger between Paramount and Skydance or

the Shineheart Wig Company or whatever the oversight company is.

So congrats on firing Stephen Colbert and paying a

tribute to the president, to the folks at CBS and Paramount.

But

the South Park guys got that in under the belt.

Can we just talk about that for one second, which is that it really

looks like an extortion racket that is going on, whether it's on the business side where you're talking about Paramount or the CBS settlement or the law firms that have settled, especially when you have Trump saying, you know, it's amazing they're giving you all this money, but they haven't done anything wrong.

And so.

Even if you thought that the president was not intentionally doing it that way, which is like, you know, blinking at reality.

It's clear that's what the recipients, the people who are doing it,

they are feeling that, that they have to pay this up because they're concerned about illegal retaliation.

It's just so unbelievable.

We are in

Russia.

That is what happens in a country where you have no rule of law, where you have these companies and law firms thinking they need to do this in order to not have the government illegally retaliate against them.

At universities, I mean, it's Orban.

That's literally what's happening with Orban.

And Columbia pays the racket off tonight.

I was on with Chris Janssen yesterday, and they played like back-to-back clips of Linda McMahon saying, you know, now the Columbia

has to practice viewpoint balance.

And then the Columbia professor or president next saying, well, we don't feel like the government is involved in

our curriculum.

And it's just like, what?

I mean, like back to back, it's like the administration sees it that you guys totally folded now

and were extorted successfully.

Well, that's this other thing, which is that you have the administration saying that

we think it's unfair that private companies are partisan, whether it's a university or a company.

Guess what?

They're private entities.

They can be as partisan as they friggin' want.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

And when we're to get into the world, I just like, if the Democrats ever get back in charge, watch out, Hillsdale.

That's all I'm going to say.

We got to get to the cover-up.

I really want to talk to you because of this.

It's way outside of my

experience and expertise, kind of what was happening with the Attorney General and Jolaine Maxwell down in Tallahassee yesterday.

But before we get into kind of the details of Todd Blanche, since we haven't talked since this Epstein stuff

blew up,

I'm just kind of wondering your biggest picture thoughts about the cover-up.

It was a New York Times story yesterday.

It just sort of talks about how this spring, the FBI and Justice Department made a all-out push involving hundreds of employees to scour the files with an attempt to find something to release.

And then turns out they didn't release that.

So I'm just wondering your biggest picture of thoughts first.

So big, big picture.

And I was talking to our colleague and friend Nicole Wallace about this, which is the administration is completely schizophrenic in their approach here.

On the one hand, they want to say, oh, we're being as transparent as possible and we want to release everything.

And Todd Blanche tweets out that, you know, he's gotten an order from the president to be as transparent as possible.

And yet they are not releasing so much information.

I think that the Department of Justice has said that there's about 30 gigabytes of information that they amassed in the course of doing the Epstein investigation.

And of course, you know, the Glene Maxwell case went to trial.

So having been on the other side of this, you develop tons and tons of evidence.

And so that's not surprising.

But in the same token that they're saying, oh, we want to be completely transparent,

they then do not release all of the information that they have the power to release right now.

In other words, everything that's not grand jury

with a few exceptions can be released right now if they really thought that they should be transparent.

Instead, they file this motion for grand jury material, which is information that is highly unlikely to be at all sort of pertinent or it's so narrow.

And so you just know that they know already that Trump's name won't be in that grand jury information.

They also know that the law is dead set against them, which is why one judge has already said no to this.

And so they are really doing it to say, look, we tried to be transparent, but look, the bad courts, these rogue, horrible judges are preventing us from doing it.

Which, I mean, to me, this is the, it's just so misleading.

And it just is assuming that their base are a bunch of morons that can't keep two thoughts in their head at the same time.

And so they're thinking, oh, we'll pretend to be trying to be transparent when we're not.

That was a decent bet up until recently.

I think maybe they might have run out of luck on the betting, betting on the base to be too stupid to see what they're doing.

So, just on this, like two thoughts.

One, just on,

I think what we can very clearly call a cover-up at this point.

The Times story

was kind of a little credulous for my taste.

I don't know if people

want to go back and read it, but it goes through this TikTok and kind of talks about how

the administration came to

look through all the files and see that they didn't have anything that they could release as far as

criminal conspirators or people that they could indict or whatever.

That wasn't really the promise that they were just going to release.

They were just going to go through the information to figure out if there were other collaborators to indict.

And they said that they were going to release the files that demonstrated who else was involved in the conspiracy.

But anyway, among that oversight, the Times writes this.

Among other tasks, the lawyers were instructed to flag any mentions of Trump and other celebrities, including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.

According to one of the former officials familiar with the process, the references were recorded in a Microsoft SharePoint online collaborative file.

So they literally have a file that includes all of the mentions of Trump that they could release if they wanted to.

Absolutely.

So, look, having done these kinds of investigations, there is no question

that the FBI and the prosecutors in preparing for the case would be trying to identify every single witness, every single victim, and every single co-conspirator.

And sometimes the witnesses and the co-conspirators can overlap.

But that will be put together.

And here it is just so noticeable.

You don't see any career people.

They could have a press conference with career people being asked those questions and giving the information.

Instead, the lead career person was fired, Maureen Comey.

And so

that is sort of the remarkable shunting aside of the apolitical people who actually did the investigation.

Instead, you have, for the first time, I've ever heard of this, the deputy attorney general who knows nothing about the case, going

down to interview Glene Maxwell with zero background, no way of knowing whether she is like telling the truth, whether she's lying, unless he has all the career people there to be able to test what she is saying.

And to me, it just smacks of all I really want to know from you is, are you going to say that Donald Trump had nothing to do with this?

In which case, you know, they're going to be goodies for her because she's not speaking, you know, for free.

Yeah.

Trump on the tarmac, just before we started taping, was asked if he's open to a pardoner commutation of Gillene Maxwell.

And he said, I don't want to talk about it.

I have the power to do it.

I haven't thought about it.

I don't want to talk about it.

It's not a no about a child sex trafficker.

You'd think that since Megan was really upset about elite pedophiles trafficking children, that like that you wouldn't consider pardoning the one elite pedophile who trafficked children that you have in prison, but Trump's open to it, it seems like.

The Comey Blanche thing,

you hit on something I just wanted to dig in a little bit.

So Blanche goes down to this meeting in Talhasse.

They have a meeting yesterday.

Such a good meeting, apparently, that they're meeting again today.

But in a situation such as this, I mean, again, I'm a total outside of this, but you would presume that if you're going to meet with the felon and witness, co-conspirator and and witness in this case, that you'd want to have the person involved who understands the case, who knows what we already have,

who knows what she's already testified to,

who knows what maybe they, who knows what they don't know, right?

And what they might be able to get out of her that she didn't share either in trial or previously.

And that person gets fired.

And instead,

a political appointee who knows nothing about the case goes down there.

Just that fact itself totally betrays what this is about, right?

Add in that it's the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

The Deputy Attorney General is supposed to have so much on their plate that

this is why you have the career people who are better positioned to do this.

But they're presumably going to be reacting in a way, in an apolitical way, which is why they are career people.

Just a couple of thoughts on this.

One,

to have that meeting with Ghelaine Maxwell, she, I am, I can't say 100%, but I'll say 99.99%

positive that she has already been given what's called sort of a queen for a day or proffer protection.

In other words, that she can't be prosecuted based on what she is saying.

So if she were to say additional crimes, that they cannot be directly used against her.

There's no way that they just said, oh, we're willing to meet with you and we have want nothing in return.

Aaron Ross Powell, you're saying that already happened today, or you mean in the past?

No, I'm saying that happened for the first meeting with Todd Blanche.

The criminal defense lawyer is going to say, I need proper protection, meaning they sort of queen for a day.

She can't be prosecuted for that.

But what's on the table is if you're going to need her information, you know, they're going to be playing for a pardon, a commutation, or at the very least, a significant reduction in sentence.

And so you have to be thinking as the public, you're really going to give somebody somebody who was the right hand to Jeffrey Epstein and who was involved in so many victimizations of minors and others a break for what?

And what is it that you are buying for that?

So I think that's sort of the, to me, that's sort of a big take home on sort of what is happening there.

And the other is, I think

there's sort of two things that Todd Blanche could be doing.

One is thinking about whether she could be a sort of cooperating witness, sort of a full-on person who could testify.

I don't think that's what's particularly going on.

I think what's going on is that he just...

It's just a catch-me-if you can situation, as you see that movie, where you bring Leo DiCaprio in to catch all of the other wire frauds.

Yeah, although here it would be kind of cooperating down because you have Epstein and Glenn Maxwell at the top of this particular scheme.

And so you usually don't cooperate down.

That's bad practice, obviously.

Maybe the money person, Lex Wexner or whoever ends up being, I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, they could have other types of crimes, but you know, it's also unclear.

I mean, remember, she is accused of committing perjury in the past in connection with all of this.

So, it's, I mean, she is a very, very problematic witness.

But what I think is going on is I think Todd wants to neutralize her, which is he wants to sort of, since he doesn't know a lot about the case, can do in a day or two days is just go through chapter and verse to limit what she could do to harm the administration and say, like, what do you know about Trump?

What do you know firsthand?

Sort of test that to just

be able to either, if it's good, use it publicly, or if it's bad, at least limit it so that

it can't be used by others.

So I sort of see that as a neutralization mission.

But all of that, just to be clear, both scenarios, whether it's for cooperation, whether it's for neutralizing, is political.

I mean, this is just not what the Department of Justice is supposed to be set up for.

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Let's add another layer to that.

Well, maybe this is less weird than it seems to me, but this is from a podcast last year.

This is Jolaine Maxwell's attorney, David Oscar Marques' podcast, and Todd Blanche was on it.

David, I mean, in all seriousness to you, I know a lot of people that have worked with you.

I know a lot of people who know you very well.

I now consider you a friend and someone who I know pretty well.

You are by far

the best out there, and I'll always say yes to this podcast.

It might be the first three P.

Let's do three P.

I mean, and then Demarquez yesterday's tweeting after the meeting, looking forward to another productive day tomorrow.

Jelaine honestly answered every question that Blanche asked, and she'll continue to do so.

We're grateful that the government is trying to uncover the truth.

They've never before spoken with her, and we trust the process.

A weird 76ers reference there, I think.

That's pretty strange.

No, is it for them to be that close?

Or is it conflict?

Is it not?

I don't know.

You told me.

Well, they definitely are close.

I mean, one of the things that happened on that podcast is it was revealed that one of the lines that Todd Blanche used to criticize Michael Cohen at the criminal trial.

Remember, Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's personal lawyer.

And And by all sort of appearances, he seems to still be functioning in that exact role.

That one of the lines that he used came from David Marcus, like came from the lawyer for Ghana Maxwell.

But I don't think it's right to

draw too much from the fact that the defense lawyer and the prosecutor know each other or like each other or are friends.

That I have seen that in the past.

But as a judgment, though, wouldn't if you're Blanche like, oh, this is my buddy, shouldn't I bring in an assistant USA, like somebody else to deal with this instead of me?

Absolutely.

So just to be clear, one of the things, and I don't know that this is not happening, but you never,

ever meet with a witness alone, period.

And there's a couple reasons for that.

One is that you need to protect yourself.

What if the witness turns around and says, you know what, Tim told me the following, and you can be like, No, I didn't, but you know who can testify about that?

The FBI agent who was with me and the other FBI agent who was with me can testify.

And so you don't turn yourself into a witness.

So you just have to, and every prosecutor, and Todd certainly knows this.

He was raised as a career person in the Southern District of New York.

You have to have those people with you.

So

I'm sort of going to be curious in the reporting about who else was in that room.

But the most important thing is what you're not hearing is that any of the career prosecutors who are on the case are not in the room.

So keep your eyes and ears open for other prosecutors to either be fired or to resign over what's going to happen here.

I feel like the Maureen Comey story.

just has been a little underplayed.

And obviously it's been covered and got attention, but I just feel like, and you can say this about a million stories, but like in any other administration, like this would be all consuming.

And it's crazy that you would fire the person that was the lead prosecutor on Epstein, on Maxwell, in the middle of this, you know, brouhaha and do it without any reason.

Like it's totally unprecedented, right?

Like this is extremely out of pocket.

It's totally unprecedented, except for the Trump administration.

Just to be clear, the answer to the question of are there other co-conspirators?

Are there people who participated in the scheme,

who assaulted or even raped people or minors,

sort of adultery minors?

The person who will know that is Maureen Comey and the other career prosecutors and agents on the case.

They went to trial against her.

So

this is not that you know everything when you go to trial, but the people who will know chapter and verse and the answer to the questions that the public is sort of clamoring for is the person you just fired.

And just in general, like firing prosecutors for no reason is not standard practice, right?

Like that is, right?

Like it violates the civil service rules.

Just to be clear, the administration's position is there's no more civil service.

They are not giving any reason.

There actually was just a lawsuit filed on behalf of three DOJ employees on this theory that the administration is saying, well, the president doesn't have to obey civil service rules.

There's no Supreme Court precedent for that.

But this administration, having seen what the Supreme Court is doing for them, is, I think, very much given a green light to test out new theories.

And there are people who are suffering as a result of that.

And here it's career people.

Is there any kind of buzz?

And I'm sure you're on text chains with lawyers and prosecutors and stuff.

Like, do we think that this firing was about the Epstein-Maxwell thing?

Is it about the fact that she's Comey's daughter?

Did he just get a bee in his bonnet?

And she's just off of prosecuting Diddy.

Like, and it's a totally wild decision.

So, look, to me, it's got to be one of two things.

It's got to be sort of Epstein related or the fact that her last name is Comey or both.

And I don't know the answer to that.

But normally, when you're in the middle of this huge scandal, it's like, you know, when the old saying is for lawyers, it's like when you're in the middle of a negligence case, like don't fire the motor man.

You know, it's just not a great thing.

Now, she has not said anything.

I think she's, you know, very professional.

But you can be sure that the people in the Southern District of New York who know the truth are

going to not participate in a cover-up.

In the same way, it's so similar to what we saw with Mayor Eric Adams, where we saw multiple career people, both in New York and at Maine Justice, resign over what the administration was doing.

I was just re-watching old video of fat Scott Jennings back when he was fat, working in the Bush administration, having to testify about the firings of the U.S.

attorneys.

You remember this story?

Totally.

The quaint Halcyon days.

Yeah, exactly.

But I bring it up because it's like, again, that was a massive scandal.

Gonzalez ends up getting run out over this.

And it was over the fact that there were some firings of U.S.

attorneys for political reasons.

Here we have this, or Maureen Comey gets fired, and it's either dictated by Trump, like you would assume, where the executive branch just making these sort of decisions about independent career prosecutors in the DOJ, or it's Pam Bondi is worried that, I don't know, something politically on her end.

But again, like this was an all-consuming scandal for a while for the Bush administration when their and their firings were like

at least relatively defensible as compared to this, like in the normal process of a new administration, you know, whatever comes in and like wants to put in their own people, right?

This is just a single person getting singled out.

Yeah, well, just to be clear, that isn't a, that's sort of we want to put in our own people.

That is for political appointees.

That it, for the point of civil service is that when Democrats win, they aren't allowed to just clean house and replace every civil servant with a bunch of Democrats, and the same thing with Republicans.

Just to be clear, what's happened with Maureen Comey is the tip of the iceberg.

One of the people who now has just filed a lawsuit is the chief ethics officer at the Department of Justice.

That's not usually a person you want to fire if you're planning on complying with the ethics rules.

This is somebody who is a career person, worked at the FBI for years in compliance, worked at DOJ in compliance.

And again, the reason for firing, not given.

It was just a letter that says under Article II, that is presidential executive power, you're fired.

No cause whatsoever.

That is basically saying there's just no civil service.

And this is like one where, Tim, I don't know how in your world to make this sort of people understand because it's hard to be like, oh, I want people to rally around the idea of civil service or I want them to rally around the idea of due process.

But just think about the world pre-civil service.

It was a spoils system.

It is exactly what Trump wants, which is a spoils system.

The reason for the civil service is that's not in our interest to have that.

It's better to have career people who are doing things on an apolitical basis.

And so Marine Codemy is just a perfect latest example of that problem.

Yeah, it was the U.S.

Attorneys Lord Fire during the Bush admin.

It was David Iglesias, was the main one from New Mexico.

I should maybe call him, see what he's up to these days.

Maybe he has thoughts about Scott Jennings' new career.

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The other thing, just while we're on U.S.

attorneys for a second, I want to get back to Epsy and stuff, but can you educate me on what is happening in the Alina Haba situation?

This is something that's like over my, like, she gets named interim U.S.

attorney for New Jersey, like doesn't get confirmed, and then the judges in New Jersey decided that she can't stay on, and then the administration fired her deputy.

So, in two districts in the country so far, the Northern District of New York and in New Jersey, the person who was selected by the Trump administration to be an interim U.S.

attorney, at the end of 120 days, if they don't have a confirmation vote within that 120 days under a congressional statute, the judges decide who continues after that 120-day period.

The reason

you and I have never really focused on this issue is

the judges uniformly

say if the 120 days has gone by, they just re-up the person who's there.

Why?

Because under Democratic and Republican administrations, well, they have policy differences.

The person's qualified.

The person's not outrageous.

The reason you're hearing this is the first time I can ever think of you have two separate district court benches, not a single judge, the entire bench votes and did not vote either of these people to continue in their position.

That to me is really the story, which is these people were so unqualified that you have a bipartisan group of judges in two separate districts saying back to back, we're not going to nominate this person.

And so they selected the first assistant.

That's number two.

And then the administration has played games to try and figure out how to get around that issue.

And they're doing that in both districts.

And it remains to be seen.

It's a lot of very complicated nuances as to how the statutes work.

So, what's happening in the meantime in New Jersey?

Like, bad guys are just not getting prosecuted, basically?

Well, I think they're being prosecuted.

But if I were a defense lawyer in New Jersey, in the northern district of New York, I'm going to file a motion saying that the actions of the U.S.

attorney, who you say is the U.S.

Attorney, are actually what we call ultravirus.

That is,

there's no one who's actually in that position.

So this is going to certainly get litigated because defense lawyers have zero reason not to litigate this.

Ultravirus, like Latin,

not like a virus in your body.

Yeah, sorry.

This is what happens when you invite me on.

I did two years of Latin.

Jim Broderick King would be pretty happy with me for catching that.

For a second, I was like, ultravirus.

It's like, oh, wait, no.

Yes, virus.

Okay, got it.

JD Vance probably knows some Latin.

I want to talk about him for a sec.

So there was that Wall Street Journal story about the letter that Trump wrote about all the wonderful secrets that him and Jeffrey Epstein shared, birthday letter.

You mean

the one he didn't write?

Is that the one you're referring to?

Well, yeah,

that's we're kidding.

The story's unclear about that, exactly whether he, what, what his posture is on this, about whether he on the tarmac today was like, people wrote letters in my name all the time.

Is that really true?

I mean, did they do drawings in for like, you know, lewd drawings in his name all the time?

Maybe.

I don't really know.

Tim, that hasn't happened.

You haven't had that.

People writing letters for you and doing lewd drawings and then signing it, Tim Miller.

I mean, I'm just

down to the public notoriety level that Trump was at in the 80s.

So, like, maybe that will happen to me sometime where I'll start to have interns doing things in my name, but not yet, unfortunately.

All emails sent by me are sent by me so far yeah so you know this is one where it's this reminds me of remember when we were covering the mar-a-lago criminal case which seems like about a million years ago yeah and every single day there was a different story like the the documents were planted no no no they're my documents you know it's like i mean it was really like the defense du journal in my mind i declassified them and then no i heard him declassify him it's like i thought he did it in his mind and yeah right right So there was, it was just like, you could, it was hard to keep up, which may be part of the point.

But you're seeing the same thing here, which is like, book, what book?

I didn't write a letter.

Or if I did write a letter, I had my fingers crossed when I wrote the letter.

I mean, it's just, I mean, it's, it's, it just seems so.

preposterous.

And also, this is definitely an example in my, my view of the sort of like you, he protests too much.

There's no question they were friends a while back.

They appear to have had a falling out just own it i mean like there's you know lots of other unless the material is bad exactly unless you're covering up really bad material exactly and so to me it's like why are you not doing what everyone else in that book is who's been asked about this is sort of like yep that's what i did i wrote it like you know my bad and this goes back to my point about the time story where supposedly there's a sharepoint file that includes all of the trump mentions so if they wanted to end the story and the cover-up part of the story, they could just release the Trump mentions that they have gathered, that FBI

agents have gathered, and let people decide for themselves.

And that seems to be like a very clear and easy way for them to get out of the cover-up story, and they don't want to do it.

And I think that is eyebrow raising.

Absolutely.

By the same token, they're busy going to court saying we need permission to release grand jury information, but the information you're talking about is not grand jury information.

That is something that they have the exclusive ability to disclose.

You know how you know that, aside from that, it's the law, is they just disclosed the Martin Luther King Jr.

files.

So they know how to do this.

They're constantly releasing stuff that they think would be helpful to them.

And so that is a perfectly good question.

The other question that was, I was on Lawrence last night and an FBI, former FBI agent raised this, which is, one thing that'd be really interesting to know is, was Donald Trump interviewed in connection with the Epstein investigation?

Remember, he was on record and it was reported that he said Jeffrey Epstein, who was somebody that he hung out with for a time, likes young women or the younger side, I'm paraphrasing.

If you read that and you're an FBI agent, one of the things you would do is go talk to Donald Trump and say, tell me what you saw and what that's based on.

Well, then you have Maria Farmer, like who in 1996,

apparently, and in 2006, apparently, said to the FBI when

she was interviewed about this that she was underage when Epstein was trafficking her and said that she went to Trump Tower and met Trump and Epstein, I don't have it in front of me, but said something like, she's not for you, Donald, or something.

And then they went into another room and she overheard them talking in ways that seemed seemed creepy and suspicious.

So I presumably that's in the file.

And I don't you I guess you tell me you're you're at the DOJ.

Do we keep files from 1996?

Like would that interview be in a vault somewhere?

Yes.

Yes.

Because this case is ongoing, meaning there was a trial against Ghelane Maxwell that is pending on appeal.

She is actually seeking right now Supreme Court review.

Because of that, everything in that file, the FBI file, the U.S.

Attorney's Office files, will all be kept sacrosanct.

Why?

Because you don't know if you might need it because there, I mean, it seems unlikely, but if she were to get a new trial or there was a hearing or anything, you would need that information.

So the idea that that would not be extant

would seem fanciful.

Remember, they have said that there's gigabytes of information in the file and that's all material.

It's hard for me to get my head around.

That's like when when we say we have 36 trillion in debt.

Like what is a, what is gigabytes?

Like what, I don't know.

Like, does my computer have a gigabyte on it?

Well,

I don't do math in public, but this is my translation.

It's a lot.

It's a lot.

They get a lot.

They get a lot.

I want to go back to the JD vance.

Sorry, we got derailed as usual when we're just...

when we're just clucking hens, clucking about the news.

JD,

so originally he said the story was bullshit, the Wall Street Journal story.

The Times is now confirmed at the New York Times.

And then Chris Hayes was tweeting, asking him about this.

And JD, since he has nothing else to do, like replies to people on Twitter.

And I want you to read you his reply to JD, or his reply to Chris Hayes, rather.

The contention,

which is pretty clear if you just read what I said.

Anytime somebody says that, it was pretty clear what I said.

They are.

They're just

red flag.

It means there was not clear, actually.

Okay.

Anyway, the contention, which is pretty clear if you just read what I said, is that it's bogus for the Wall Street Journal to publish a hit piece without showing us the letter.

I have no idea if the book exists.

WSA won't show it to us.

I have no idea if the letter exists.

What I find absurd is the idea that Donald Trump was writing poems to Epstein.

Poems is an interesting word there.

And I find equally absurd that a major American paper would attack the president of the United States without revealing the basis for the attack.

And we all know it's going to happen.

They're going to dribble out little details for weeks in an effort to assassinate the president's character, et cetera, et cetera.

Man.

That is a non-answer.

You know, this is why I'm a lawyer and I like courts of law where facts matter and you have follow-up questions, because this is when you would, if that was the answer I was given in a court, I would have said, okay, thank you very much, Mr.

Vance.

Now could you answer my question?

You know, this is just like distraction.

It's like, it doesn't actually, it's like so much about that is wrong.

It's also very, it's dissembling and it's not a very full-throated, it's, it's a full-throated attack on the the Wall Street Journal, and it's as typical for Vance, a very smarmy and condescending attack on Chris Hayes, but but it's not a really vigorous defense of the integrity of Donald Trump.

Like, I don't know.

Maybe, I don't know, maybe he was, you know, sending like little pube drawings to a child sex predator 20 years ago.

We just don't know.

The real issue here is that the Wall Street Journal is mean.

Yeah.

So, by the way, it's so interesting.

You and I have the same instincts as a prosecutor.

When someone says, you know, well, generally, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, aha.

So, yes, look, this very well could be J.D.

Vance putting his finger in the air and going, like, you know, I'm going to do what I can, but I'm not going to tie myself, like lash myself to the birthday letter and, you know, and vouch for that because,

you know, I have a, or I hope I have a political career post-Trump.

Here's another interesting J.D.

Vance thing that I just, I can't, I can't get over.

I was watching this video with this guy, Tim Dylan, who's a mega comedian podcaster.

And I know, just on its face, that sounds like,

can you just repeat that again?

Yeah,

he's a comedian podcaster who is mega.

And of people who fit that category,

Tim Dylan is the funniest, actually.

So if you're interested in just kind of seeing what it's like on a mega comic podcast, like that's the best one to do.

Low bar.

I mean, the competitors in the space are not great

in my experience.

I don't know if I've done a full canvas of every single mega comedian podcaster, but I've never seen a funny one besides him.

So he's kind of funny.

Anyway, he had dinner with JD Vance a couple weeks ago.

He said on his podcast that he is pushing JD on this.

And JD said to him that like they really don't have anything.

And then all of the video, all those gigabytes of video is just commercial pornography.

The Jeffrey Epstein, maybe he had security footage and like of his victims and and of people coming in and out of his homes and islands, but all that the DOJ has is commercial pornography.

Again, if that's true,

then why wouldn't they just release that?

Isn't that weird that that was what he was saying in private to an ostensibly friendly podcaster?

Also, how does JD know that?

I mean, there are just so many follow-ups, which is

the president has said, I wasn't even told anything about, you know what was in the files and then the reporting from the wall street journal is yes you were and now if you have jd vance saying this is what i i know what's in the epstein files the the gigabytes of whatever that whatever that is i know what that is i mean how do you know

who told you we should send this clip to tim dylan and maybe he can ask the follow-up questions to jd vance since they're apparently having dinner by the way i thought of a good um bulwark episode because you know i'm always looking out for

how to promote

bulwark, which is, I think it'd be great to do an entire episode, which is a review of MAGA comedians and like play their best and worst clips

and then have you with someone funny, not me, obviously, going through it.

Rye.

Right.

Dry, I would say.

All right, Barry, you hear that?

That's a job for you this weekend.

You got nothing else to do.

Grab me some of the best and worst clips.

Okay, I have a few other other legal items to talk to you about, but just is there anything that I've not asked you about in Epstein World that's interested you or titillated you or any observations you have?

No, I mean, I really do think this, the thing that I am waiting for is

what kind of deal are they going to give Ms.

Maxwell?

And what is the reaction going to be from career prosecutors in New York to that?

And, you know, in many ways, that deal could make this a whole lot worse for the administration.

In other words, this could be one where they think they're sort of helping themselves, but the idea that you would give

some kind of benefit to her without sort of full-throated

vetting of it is one that could really come back and bite them.

And you would assume, again, not the core megabase, but some of the other

The slice of the base that genuinely did care about child sex trafficking, you would think would be upset about a sweetheart deal for the ringleader of a child sex trafficking race.

Just last thing on this, actually.

I mentioned this to,

God,

man, I'm doing too many of these podcasts.

I can't forget who I, did I mention this to Chris Murphy?

Who knows?

You guys can listen to the tapes.

I mentioned it to somebody.

I do worry, I worry, I guess, the wrong word, because I actually don't care.

I think that Bill Clinton should be worried and Hillary.

Like, if I'm them, what I'm doing is the way to distract is I tried this thing where we're going to jail Obama.

That hasn't really, that dog hasn't hunted.

I don't think the Obamas are quaking in their boots.

You're the legal expert, so let me know if you disagree with that assessment.

I think they're probably fine.

But to find them, I'm getting info from Ghulane on Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, and I'm not going to name any other names, but other, I guess Trump mentioned Larry Summers this morning.

So other people of that ilk.

And I'm putting that out there into the world to distract from Trump and hope that, you know, over

swamps the, you know, the cover-up side of the story.

That feels, that feels possible, right?

I don't know.

Do you think that's what they're going to try to do?

The strategy right now is definitely that, which is look over here, look over here, and throw that stuff out.

If this was a court of law and that was, I'd be like going, okay, that's great.

We'll, we'll turn to that.

We'll turn to the allegations that she has about Bill Clinton, about Prince Andrew, and whoever else.

Now, can we just focus on Donald Trump?

We'll get to the others, but like while you're throwing all that other stuff out there, can we just talk about what she knows about him?

Because seriously, the things that are incontrovertible is that they knew each other, appeared to have socialized with each other.

And so she's not going to be able to say they didn't know each other and they weren't friendly.

I mean, so that wouldn't be credible.

So the issue is what else does she know?

And if she suddenly knows nothing about Donald Trump, but she remembers, you know, something salacious about

some Democrat.

I don't know that that's going to, the sort of mega sphere that's thinking there's a huge cover-up here is not going to be particularly satisfied.

But from here on.

Is there legal jeopardy there potentially for those folks?

Or who knows?

I don't know.

It's highly, highly unlikely because this is so long ago.

There's a statute of limitations.

And also, you're not going to bring a case based on her word.

Right.

So it's like a media question more than a legal question.

It is exactly a media question.

But again, people should really focus on your point.

They're sitting on tons of information from lots and lots of different sources.

And instead, they're interviewing the number two in the scheme, you know, and they're interviewing her with the person who knows, you know, the least about the case.

I mean, it really stinks to high heaven in terms of what's going on here.

All right.

A couple other things.

So we've got Emil Bove, Emil Bove.

I don't know how we're saying his name.

Emil Bove.

He was one of Trump's henchmen that was then nominated for the third Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Senate voted earlier this week, 50 to 48, to proceed with consideration of his nomination.

So he hasn't been confirmed yet.

This just kind of lets him come to the floor.

Markowski and Collins were with the Democrats in opposition.

This guy is like, there's been.

testimony that he was, you know, encouraging the administration to defy court orders on the deportation stuff.

He told people to destroy notes in the DOJ in the meeting about how they're going to drop the charges against Eric Adams.

I mean, by all accounts, this guy seems like a pretty nefarious character.

Third Circuit Court of Appeals seems like a pretty important role.

I'm just kind of wanting to hear you, your thoughts on the nomination.

This is such an important story.

So,

there is a whistleblower complaint from somebody who is a career DOJ employee.

He represented the government, the Trump administration in the Obrego-Garcia case.

This is Sassoon or one of the other ones?

This is Ruveni, R-E-U-V-E-N-I.

It's a 30-page whistleblower complaint.

It was given to, of all people, Chuck Grassley, who is Mr.

Whistleblower.

And

he has given both his complaint and corroborating emails and text messages about Mr.

Bove.

Also, career prosecutors from the Southern District of New York have also said this guy is really bad news.

He is not fit to be a judge.

He, as you said, is reported to have said about the Abrego-Garcia case and other immigration cases that we, if the judges order us to do things, we may have to just say, sorry, fuck you.

And when he was asked about that in his confirmation hearing, instead of directly answering, he tried to dodge.

And then I think it was Senator Schiff who said, that's, you need to answer the direct question.

He said, well, I just don't recall.

Okay, so let's just be clear.

You have somebody who wants to be a third circuit judge saying, I don't recall if I ever said we'd have to tell the judges to go fuck themselves.

And the other side, so he's, I don't recall.

That's non-evidence.

And on the other side, you have the whistleblower who, by the way, represented the Trump administration and all sorts of things that you and I might find really politically distasteful, including the so-called first Muslim ban.

So we're not talking about some deep state person.

And so he said that is what happened, and he has put it in a sworn declaration.

So you have uncontroverted evidence on this, and Chuck Grassley has not allowed Ravetti to testify and to have that come out.

And yet you're going to put this person on that Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the court just below the Supreme Court.

So if you're Donald Trump, one of the ways that you eradicate any checks and balances is to put people like Bove

onto the courts so that you don't have to worry about any checks and balances.

It's all going to be about presidential power with not worrying about the judiciary or Congress.

I love it when you say the F word.

It just has such a nice ring to it.

It's just kind of that little, you know, that lilt.

You know, it's so hard.

It's like, I really don't, you know, it's when I was in court and I did a lot of mob prosecutions.

And, you know, mob prosecutions, it's like when you start, you know, playing tapes and you have to use them in court.

I mean, it's like every third word.

And while out of court, I am known to

dip into that language from time to time.

You know, in court, because of this solemn nature of it, you just sort of would, I would at least sort of gloss over it and just go to the next word.

So it still is a little uncomfortable.

But here, the, the word so necessary, because

it's just so striking that this is like saying, hey, Tim, have you ever said that you were going to rob a bank at gunpoint?

And you're like,

I don't recall.

It's like,

you know?

Okay.

Seems like you probably did.

Very briefly, like for folks who are not, you know, don't not as familiar with all this, like the third circuit court of appeals, it's not just like some random job.

Like, this is pretty, pretty significant to have a judge

to be that.

It's a lifetime appointment.

Exactly.

And there's district courts, there's the Court of Appeals, and then there's Supreme Court.

And just to be clear, what everyone in my world thinks about is when there are vacancies on the Supreme Court, lots of rumors about Justice Alito and Justice Thomas stepping down and giving the appointments to Donald Trump.

Is are we going to see a

nomination of Emile Bove, of an Eileen Cannon, of a Kismarik?

These people who seem to be willing to do the bidding of the president as opposed to the separate role that they're supposed to be inhabiting when they're in the judiciary.

I don't know about Sam Alito retiring.

That would mean he'd have to spend a lot more time with his wife.

It seems like a real pill.

But I don't know, maybe he's into that.

I don't know.

All the different flags.

And

anyway.

Venezuela, we had our good news about how the hostages that we took and sent to an El Salvador concentration camp were released and got to go home.

We've seen some good videos, nice videos of Andre and others.

It's been really heartwarming.

Meanwhile, on the legal side of things, Bozberg said yesterday that he may initiate disciplinary proceedings against DOJ lawyers over their conduct in this case, about how they sent the Venezuelans over the court orders.

Is that, I don't know, I'm skeptical skeptical that anybody experiences consequences these days, but is this real?

Is this legit?

Talk to me about this.

Sure.

By the way, just going back to the sort of prisoner swap point, as the New York Times has reported, what we got was the return to this country.

This murder.

Exactly.

Of somebody who's committed, who's been, I think, charged and convicted of killing not one, not two, but three people.

Yeah.

That's great.

With an axe, I think.

Yeah.

I'm really focused on that because that's an even more gruesome murder.

Yes.

You know?

I mean, so like that, and that's when we're busy deporting people, but that's who we want to import.

You know, like, I'm not sure the exchange here is working for us.

Yeah.

In terms of consequences, you know, there's only so much at the end of the day that courts can do.

I do think if you look at

the sort of disciplinary committee actions.

And I know this feels very small for people who are thinking about criminal cases, huge civil judgments.

But if you look at the history here, the legal profession has done a pretty good job of policing their own.

You do have Rudy Giuliani and many others who have faced significant consequences to their law license.

And again, I'm not trying to say that is, you know, I'll take it.

I'll say what it is.

I'll take something.

And so you can see what Judge Bozberg has to deal with: is, you know, how can he deal with criminal contempt when the party that usually brings the criminal case is the Department of Justice?

Well, they're not going to be doing it.

He has very little civil authority for a whole variety of reasons.

So disciplinary proceedings is one way of telling the lawyers who show up before him:

you're an officer of the court.

And if you you do not uphold your duty of candor to the court, I'm going to take action and I'm going to send your case to the discipline committee.

And that can be very serious to the person and obviously can lead to disbarment.

God willing.

We'll keep an eye on that.

Last story.

Somebody can fact check me on this.

I'm pretty sure I have not mentioned.

the name Kitara Ravash George Santos since he was kicked out of Congress because I hate the story.

I hate him.

I hate giving him attention.

And he's such a drama queen.

And I just, I don't, I don't get humor.

A lot of people get humor out of him.

Not me.

But

I want to mention him today because he's going to jail for a seven-year sentence for wire fraud and identity theft.

His offenses range from getting a vendor to forge a Baruch College diploma to presenting false financial disclosures, claiming he was a multimillionaire.

He was accused of faking donations in the name of relatives, creating a fake nonprofit to to solicit donations, and running a credit card fraud scheme to steal from elderly and cognitively impaired donors.

Then he spent the money on Ferragamo and Botox and the Hamptons.

So, anyway, do you have any thoughts about George experiencing consequences today?

Look, he is clearly a serial liar.

Judge Seibert obviously saw it that way and gave him, you know, pretty significant sentence.

But this is actually, I'm in the course of writing a book sort of about this issue of what I call sort of politicians who lie and sort of what we can do about it.

And in many ways, yes, it is, he deserves everything that he got,

but it's not like we don't have examples of people who seemingly have done worse.

You know, just again,

let's go right for the big one, which is there was fraud in the election and I deserve to win.

And Joe Biden is not, was not actually

honestly elected to be president, which a huge percentage of the Republican Party believes.

And there's never been evidence to support that.

And to me, that's a lie that is much more insidious.

As bad as what George Santos did, that is a worse lie.

Sympathy for the George Santos here?

Sympathy for the devil from Andrew Weissman?

Not sympathy.

It's, you know, this is, it's sort of interesting.

This is, you know, there's, there's the guilt phase and there's the sentencing phase.

And in the sentencing phase, it is all about putting something in perspective and sort of figuring out, like, you know, what's the level of culpability?

And if you think about a lie that goes to the heart of our democracy and undermines everybody's faith in what's going on and undermines the legitimacy of our government,

it's certainly as bad, I would say, worse.

Definitely worse.

Trump thinks it should be worse.

I'm glad that you said that.

I was not going to share this opinion.

I I was going to kind of end on a laugh, but now that you said it, I don't know.

On the things that I was always a liberal squish on, even when I was a Republican, criminal justice stuff and immigration were like the main and gay stuff, obviously.

Like those were the main areas where I was a liberal squish back when I was a Republican.

I don't know, man.

Making him repay all of the fines to these people.

Yeah.

Making him do community service.

I don't know.

Should he work in an old folks' home and like clean the toilets for these people?

Yeah.

Like prison?

Seven years in prison?

I don't know.

I'm kind of, I don't know.

I'm feeling, I feel a little.

You were in the fraud division, so you tell me.

Like what, like, what, what rises to a level of hard time when it comes to fraud?

Look, seven years is, is a lot of time.

There's no question.

And you can clearly make the argument that seven years is too much.

I do think this is where it's important to put race into the equation, which is there are a lot of people in the black and brown communities who no one would bat an eye when they get seven years, 10 years, 20 years.

And

that's not to say that there isn't a legitimate debate over whether for this kind of fraud, it should be seven years, but I would want to have that debate in the context of looking at the totality so that we're not just thinking, oh, he's sort of a white dude.

Does he really need seven years?

I hear you on that.

Across the board.

Okay.

And Julian Maxwell is really the devil, probably.

And on the topic of the pot, I probably was a little harsh.

Andrew Wiseman, any other final thoughts for us?

No, no, but there's, you know, there's so much to keep an eye out for.

And so I'll be back.

You will be back.

And you will be accepting my requests when you come back.

Thank you so much, Andrew Wiseman.

We really appreciate your time.

Always.

Thanks for having me.

And we'll be seeing you back here on Nicole and around town.

All right.

Everybody else, we'll be back here on Monday with Bill Crystal.

See you all then.

Peace.

So to fake.

I was round when Jesus Christ had his moments of doubt and pain.

Made damn sure the fighter

washed his hands and sealed his face.

Pleased to meet you,

hope you guessed my name.

But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game.

Stuck around St.

Petersburg when I saw it was a time for change.

Killed the Tsar and its ministers.

And astasia

screamed at me.

I rode a tank, held a generous rank.

When the blistering rage and the bodies stank

pleased to meet you,

hope you guessed my name.

Oh, yeah.

I watch business you is the nature of my game.

Oh, yeah.

I watched the glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made.

I shouted out who killed them Kennedys

when, after all,

it was you and me.

Let me please introduce myself.

I'm a man of wealth and taste.

I lay traps for troubadours

who get killed before they reach Bombay.

Pleased to meet you.

Hope you get my day.

Oh, yeah.

But what's puzzling you is the nature of my day.

Oh, yeah.

Get down in it.

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.