Ben Wittes and Michael Feinberg: Breakdown at the FBI

Transcript

Speaker 4 She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding.

Speaker 5 Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard.

Speaker 2 But then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 10 And that was a different kind of difficulty.

Speaker 12 So we asked her doctor for more help.

Speaker 17 Seeing symptoms like these in a loved one, it could be time to ask their doctor about Rexulti, Rexpiprazole 2 milligrams, the only FDA-approved treatment proven to reduce the symptoms of this condition.

Speaker 23 Rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment.

Speaker 27 Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke.

Speaker 28 Report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent.

Speaker 31 High blood sugar can lead to coma or death.

Speaker 35 Weight gain, increased cholesterol, unusual urges, dizziness on standing, falls, seizures, trouble swallowing, or sleepiness may occur.

Speaker 38 Learn more about these and other side effects at Rexulte.com. Tap Ad for PI.

Speaker 39 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rexulte.

Speaker 40 Talk to your loved ones, doctor.

Speaker 41 Moments matter.

Speaker 42 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 46 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 48 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

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Speaker 56 Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 87 I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a law affair double header of sorts in segment two.

Speaker 89 Our friend Ben Wittis is back.

Speaker 92 But first, he was recently a top deputy in the FBI's Norfolk office.

Speaker 73 He resigned after being told he'd be demoted for being friends with someone on the Cash Patel enemies list.

Speaker 68 His title had been Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Norfolk National Security and Intelligence Programs.

Speaker 98 He'd previously worked in other roles, such as a unit chief at the J.

Speaker 99 Edgar Hoover building in D.C.

Speaker 95 It's Michael Feinberg.

Speaker 100 How you doing, man?

Speaker 101 I'm doing well. Are yourself?

Speaker 103 Well, I'm still employed, so I'm doing better than you, I guess.

Speaker 102 It seems like.

Speaker 101 Yeah, yeah. And I saw from one of your earlier podcasts that you actually got to go see Oasis kick off their reunion tour.

Speaker 92 I saw Oasis' first homecoming show in Manchester and Heaton Park.

Speaker 48 It was fucking brilliant.

Speaker 3 It was brilliant.

Speaker 101 Yeah, I feel bad. I've been making fun of Oasis on Blue Sky lately, but that's a mistake.
That has more to do with the personalities personalities of Liam and Noel.

Speaker 101 I've actually seen, I saw them a few times in their original interview.

Speaker 48 They sound as good as ever, man.

Speaker 105 I don't know.

Speaker 51 Liam's been, I think, I don't know if Liam stopped smoking or what's going on, but they sound great.

Speaker 89 Highly recommend. And you've got free time.

Speaker 109 So they're playing all over the world.

Speaker 57 Well,

Speaker 101 we're having a kid in about two and a half years.

Speaker 101 So unfortunately, free time is not really on the agenda for me.

Speaker 89 Congrats.

Speaker 51 Well, my advice to new parents, nobody tells you this, like three months to nine months is actually a great time to world travel with a child.

Speaker 106 No one tells you this because after that, because, you know, they, you know, unless you have a, unless you have a cranky child, but most of them at that age just shut up.

Speaker 55 If you just give them a bottle or change the diaper, once you get to about a year, you know, they've got minds of their own.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 70 So anyway, so maybe contemplate that.

Speaker 106 We have at least something in common.

Speaker 91 Robert Burns, you wrote an article for Law Affairs that said goodbye to all that about leaving the bureau and like one of of these insane only in Trump 2.0 stories, you're forced to leave, I guess, because you went to a concert with Pete Strzok, who people might remember from the lovers' texts that Trump liked to mention on the campaign trail from the first Russia investigation.

Speaker 77 So

Speaker 45 I guess you were spotted with Pete, and that led to a series of events, which brings you here.

Speaker 65 Why don't you just kind of walk us through what happened?

Speaker 101 Yeah, so I don't actually quite know how this was brought to the estimable Dan Bongino's attention, but he did handle it with his usual temperance and maturity. So,

Speaker 101 you know, I was at the office on a Saturday and I get a call from my special agent in charge who tells me

Speaker 101 that it has come to the attention of the deputy director, as she called him.

Speaker 119 Deputy Dan, we call him around here.

Speaker 101 Yeah, yeah. It's

Speaker 101 It's come to his attention that I have remained friends and remained in contact with Pete Strzok since he left the bureau. And

Speaker 101 there's nothing false in that. It's absolutely true.

Speaker 101 You know, he and his wife were a guest at my wedding. We hang out quite a bit.
We talk all the time.

Speaker 101 As I said in the piece, largely about the food scene in various cities and mostly about different bands. Our friendship kicked off when we discovered we were both huge Smiths fans.

Speaker 101 It's not exactly the stuff of a deep state conspiracy, more just us showing our...

Speaker 120 Morrissey has been getting pretty kooky these days.

Speaker 122 Yeah,

Speaker 101 he's problematic, let's put it that way. But yeah, so I admitted to being friends with Pete, and there were a series of more phone calls about it.
And basically by the end of the day,

Speaker 101 once I had sort of regained my self-composure,

Speaker 101 because it was very clear to me that my career was

Speaker 101 my life really was about to change drastically as a result of having a target on my back for Bongino and Patel.

Speaker 101 I was explicitly told by my special agent in charge that my career was functionally over.

Speaker 101 I was not going to get a promotion for which I was in.

Speaker 101 I needed to prepare for the fact that I would, in all likelihood, be demoted.

Speaker 101 And I

Speaker 101 also needed to reconcile myself to the fact that I would be called up to DC

Speaker 101 in order to submit to a a polygraph about the nature of my friendship with Pete, whatever that means.

Speaker 124 They explicitly said that to you.

Speaker 96 You're going to have to go take a polygraph test like you're going to meet the parents.

Speaker 119 Yeah. Talk about whether you and Pete were what.

Speaker 122 Like, what would even have been

Speaker 101 that accusation? As near as I can tell,

Speaker 101 Patel and Bongino really do believe that there is some sort of deep state conspiracy, like something out of a Chesterton novel that is.

Speaker 125 I don't think either of them have read any Chesterton novel.

Speaker 101 I'm actually making a point to drop in as many cultural references they would not understand in everything that you I do as possible.

Speaker 101 But yeah, I think they really do believe that there is some sort of organized deep state resistance to the Trump agenda, which is just quite frankly not true.

Speaker 101 And the mere fact that Pete and I get along and are friends was enough that they needed to,

Speaker 101 I don't want to be melodramatic and say, ruin my life, but you know, they needed to take away my primary source of income when my wife was seven months into a high-risk pregnancy, make us go through Cobra for insurance, remove the mission and dedication to our country for which I've always been proud of.

Speaker 101 You know, it's...

Speaker 101 It's weird. I wish I had a better word for it than that, but.

Speaker 119 Lunacy would be maybe one way to start.

Speaker 97 Lay the predicate for people a little bit.

Speaker 127 Like, what kind of work were you doing?

Speaker 101 Yeah. So I was most recently at the Norfolk field office where I was the assistant special agent in charge over the entire national security portfolio.

Speaker 101 And for a good part of that time, including the first three or four months of the transition, I was actually the acting special agent in charge because the former had been promoted.

Speaker 101 So it was natural for me to step into the role.

Speaker 101 But prior to those 18 months, I've dedicated my entire career to combating the Chinese Communist Party and its efforts to undermine the national security of the United States.

Speaker 101 I oversaw a number of very public indictments, which had a material effect, I think, making us safer. And I worked on a lot of stuff that's still classified that I can't get into, but

Speaker 101 that all ended in a similar place.

Speaker 109 I mean, you would think that China Hawks, like yesterday, there was the testimony from Mike Waltz, who got downgraded to UN ambassador after the Signal Gate situation.

Speaker 108 I mean, like, he's made his whole career being a China hawk. There are a number of China Hawks administration.

Speaker 44 Like, you would think that there would be a counterbalance of people who are not, who are less concerned about your friendships and more concerned about institutional knowledge against the Chinese.

Speaker 109 No, nobody actually cares about that.

Speaker 101 No,

Speaker 101 there is a complete willingness to jettison any sort of subject matter expertise

Speaker 101 from the FBI if the individuals who possess it are political undesirables, friends with political undesirables, or just had the timing misfortune of having been promoted by Chris Ray.

Speaker 49 Oh, so you mean like there are people that

Speaker 129 just kind of got caught up in bad timing, bad luck.

Speaker 101 Yeah, I mean, if you, if you, you know, within the Bureau, we use the phrase seventh floor as a sort of metonym for all FBI leadership. Yeah.

Speaker 101 And within the first week of the administration, like everybody on the seventh floor was given their walking papers. I mean, you know, this is reported in the Times and the Post and the Journal.

Speaker 101 It's no secret. Like they just eviscerated

Speaker 101 the top line of leadership that had all the real institutional knowledge, not just about the threats, but about how best to use the levers of power that the Bureau has.

Speaker 101 So like what, I mean, I i guess you were in there as recently as what six weeks ago or something like what yeah what is happening now like what are they what are the remaining people working on how's the morale like what's immigration and violent crime largely there's a willingness by patel and bongino to have the bureau function essentially as just an augmentation effort for hsi for people who don't know what's hsi sorry homeland security investigations which is a subset of ice which is immigration and customs enforcement and the fbi is also going on enforcement removal operations.

Speaker 101 It's weird.

Speaker 101 You know, traditionally, a cabinet secretary or somebody like the FBI director who is immediately below a cabinet secretary would try and hold joint loyalty to his or her president, but also the department that he or she ran.

Speaker 101 And that second concern is just nowhere in the minds of Bongino and Patel. So they're doing nothing to protect the jurisdiction and mission of the FBI.

Speaker 101 They're just using us to advance the president's

Speaker 101 primary political cause, which is the constriction of immigration into the United States. So,

Speaker 101 you know, when I was in Norfolk, national security squads, white-collar squads, squads that handled public corruption, they were eviscerated to

Speaker 101 move agents and analytic support from their previous threats to immigration operations and to a lesser extent, South American gang operations.

Speaker 92 What does that work actually look like?

Speaker 105 If I'm not mistaken, the FBI doesn't really have a history of doing immigration enforcement works.

Speaker 121 What are the agents being told?

Speaker 118 What does that actually mean?

Speaker 125 They're turning their focus to immigration work.

Speaker 101 Yeah, so you're very right about the history and subject matter expertise. The FBI has actually had Title VIII authorities which would allow them to do immigration enforcement since 2001 when

Speaker 101 their powers were sort of put on steroids as a result of the 9-11 attacks. They never did it because

Speaker 101 it made no sense. Like the FBI is very good

Speaker 101 at complex investigations of highly coordinated organizations using very complicated statutes like RICO or FISA.

Speaker 101 Instead of doing that, you now have massive amounts of agents standing around doing perimeter security, rounding up children and grandmas.

Speaker 109 Well, that's something Dan Bagino can understand. I mean, that's, you know, the RICO cases are complicated.

Speaker 50 You know, just being a mall security officer is something that's like in his, in his wheelhouse.

Speaker 101 Yeah, perimeter security is something an agent with like six weeks in the office would normally do on an arrest.

Speaker 101 And now you have agents with decades of experience and real subject matter expertise spending a good portion of their day doing it.

Speaker 127 So what are the practical effects of that?

Speaker 73 Are people, I don't want to get any trouble or anything, like are folks like still doing the other work and just like trying to do it themselves?

Speaker 73 Are there major things that are that are lost?

Speaker 121 And if you were to be worried about something,

Speaker 112 what would you, you know, what would you think?

Speaker 101 There are a couple of areas about which I'm very worried. You know, on the criminal realm, Maine Justice, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, has been very upfront that, like,

Speaker 101 white-collar crime is no longer a priority. He has said, I think, in public statements, that it harms American businesses to enforce laws on the books.
So that's out the window.

Speaker 101 As has been widely reported, DOJ's public integrity section, PIN,

Speaker 101 has also been eviscerated by firings and resignations.

Speaker 101 And I'm focusing on DOJ rather than FBI resources because

Speaker 101 a lot of people don't realize, like, the FBI can't bring criminal cases on its own. As much as we hate to admit it, we need the help of federal prosecutors.

Speaker 101 And if the federal prosecutors are no longer working those violations, the investigators are just running on a hamster wheel. Like they're not getting anywhere.

Speaker 101 So that area of criminal enforcement is gone.

Speaker 101 They're not going to do a lot of right-wing domestic terrorism work. In fact, they pardoned thousands of people for their role in January 6th.
So that's not getting worked.

Speaker 101 And I saw no real concern on the part of FBI senior management, particularly when I was working as acting SAC, to really do anything on the counterintelligence and international terrorism fronts either.

Speaker 44 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 64 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 69 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 2 Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard, but then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 10 And that was a different kind of difficult.

Speaker 12 So we asked our doctor for more help.

Speaker 23 Rexulte should not be used as an as-needed treatment.

Speaker 28 Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke, report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent.

Speaker 34 High blood sugar can lead to coma or death, weight gain, increased cholesterol, unusual urges, dizziness on standing, falls, seizures, trouble swallowing, or sleepiness may occur.

Speaker 38 Learn more about these and other side effects at RickSulty.com. Tab ad for PI.

Speaker 39 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rick Sulti.

Speaker 124 So the folks that are still there, what is morale like?

Speaker 129 And maybe morale's good because the people that are there are folks that are excited to meet Cash Patel.

Speaker 111 I don't know, right?

Speaker 126 I don't think they're fans.

Speaker 130 Or maybe there are a bunch of people there who are just trying to keep their head down.

Speaker 116 Like, what's the FBI, you know, what's like inside the building, do you think now?

Speaker 101 So I'm happy to answer that, but I got to give two caveats to sort of qualify my answer. Sure.
First is I still talk to a real lot of people in the FBI.

Speaker 101 I mean, it's where I spent the better part of two decades. But the people with whom I speak and the complete strangers who've reached out to me on, you know, various platforms.
Self-selecting.

Speaker 101 Yeah, exactly. Like, these are people who, the people who hated what I had to say in law fair, are not going to be reaching out to me to express their ire at the seventh floor.

Speaker 101 That's caveat number one. Caveat number two is I think we really need to differentiate between the workforce and the newly appointed senior executives.

Speaker 101 The workforce, from everything I am hearing, both directly and secondhand, is miserable. They joined the FBI out of a real desire to serve their country and protect it from serious threats.

Speaker 101 And a lot of them don't feel like they're doing that anymore. The senior executives are more problematic because there are some who

Speaker 101 think by staying on and accepting promotions, they're acting in the best interests of the FBI. I disagree with that analysis, which we could get into or gloss over.

Speaker 101 But there's also a lot of senior executives who see opportunity and they are purposefully promoting people who are not eligible for pensions yet.

Speaker 101 So they're over a financial barrel and they can't push back against the administration.

Speaker 101 And

Speaker 101 I think people who are willing to put themselves in that situation

Speaker 132 are of a different

Speaker 101 type than the workforce who really just wants to do their work.

Speaker 87 Let us get into it because I was going to ask you, I mean, was there a part of you, right?

Speaker 61 Like you weren't fired, right?

Speaker 122 Like you were threatened with demotion.

Speaker 101 Yeah, right.

Speaker 118 You were threatened with demotion or and obviously your humiliation of having to, whatever, take a polygraph test and talk about what concerts you went to with Pete Strzok.

Speaker 100 So was there a part of you that was like, F these guys, I'm going to stay.

Speaker 128 Make steroid Dan Bungino fly down to Norfolk and fire me, you know, to my face. And, you know, maybe I should stay in here and do the work.

Speaker 101 Yeah. So I did think of that.
There were two reasons I did not pursue that path. The first is it wouldn't have been an option.
I know a number of people who were targeted the same way I was.

Speaker 101 Maybe not for the exact same reason, but there was something in their life outside of the bureau that rubbed the current rulers in the wrong way. And

Speaker 101 when they say demoted, they're being really clever about it. They're not actually giving them a diminution in pay or a change in GS levels.

Speaker 101 They're removing them from leadership positions and putting them in empty offices where they have nothing to do.

Speaker 101 So even if I stayed and accepted what was coming my way, I wasn't going to be working on investigations or operations to protect our country.

Speaker 101 I was going to be sitting in an empty office, not getting any phone calls or emails.

Speaker 101 Number two is

Speaker 101 I could have fought this. I talked to a lot of immigration lawyers in a very condensed time period to figure out whether I had a case.
And everybody agreed that I did. And I would probably.

Speaker 89 Sorry, why immigration lawyers?

Speaker 101 Sorry, employment lawyers.

Speaker 111 I was like, all right, were you thinking about fleeing?

Speaker 110 Was that just a...

Speaker 29 All options are on the table.

Speaker 101 Sorry, employment lawyers. And

Speaker 101 fighting that would have taken years. It would have made me miserable.
It would have made me a very frustrated, bitter, angry person.

Speaker 101 That's not who my wife needs during the third trimester of pregnancy. And it is absolutely not who my son is going to need during the first few years of his life.
So I made,

Speaker 101 you know, not to sound maudlin or over-wrenching, but like a really heartbreaking decision that I had to leave.

Speaker 125 And you mentioned this, but just kind of to put a finer point on it, like, obviously there's been reporting in the Times and about other senior leadership and stuff that have left, but

Speaker 125 you're just kind of the one that's talking about this the most publicly, right?

Speaker 121 I mean, the number of people that have been run out, I think, exceed what is in the public domain and what people realize.

Speaker 125 Was that fair to say?

Speaker 101 Yeah, I mean, because you have a lot of things happening. You have the departure of senior executives who are being forced out.

Speaker 101 You have people like me who are choosing to resign as a means of escaping untenable situations. But you also have a really large number of people

Speaker 101 who

Speaker 101 are eligible for retirement, but are still leaving much sooner than they planned.

Speaker 101 You know, most agents, because of the weirdness of the federal employee retirement system, you're usually eligible to retire around age 50 and you're mandatory at age 57.

Speaker 101 You have a real lot of people who are planning to stay till 57 who are now punching out the day they turn 50.

Speaker 127 Yeah, I do wonder about that.

Speaker 113 Like, I was like, if you're a 50-year-old G-man who's been, you know, who has just decades of experience behind you, serious, not political, right, any meaningful way, and you go into a meeting one day and it's podcaster Dan Bongino telling you that you have to, whatever, start doing perimeter security around

Speaker 112 a park ice raid.

Speaker 62 And you've got to have talked to some people who've been in maybe not that dramatic of a situation, but like that type of situation.

Speaker 118 Like,

Speaker 56 how do people even process this?

Speaker 62 Like, what is the leadership?

Speaker 92 Is there any competent person that they have

Speaker 118 given power to in order to guard against that? Are these guys literally reporting to Dan Bungino?

Speaker 101 So

Speaker 101 it is rarely the case under normal times that a line agent would ever come into contact with the deputy director. That's changed a little bit under this administration.

Speaker 101 But yeah, there's a lot of links in the chain of command between those two who relay these orders to them.

Speaker 101 The problem is, if you get high enough in that chain, you're going to be dealing with somebody who is appointed by these people and by definition is willing to work with them and probably

Speaker 101 not in a position to push back.

Speaker 101 So

Speaker 101 you have that as one part of the dynamic. The other part is like

Speaker 101 they are executive branch officers. Like if the White House, if DOJ wants to prioritize immigration, that's entirely within the bounds of legality and propriety.
That doesn't mean it's smart.

Speaker 101 That doesn't mean that they're having the hard discussions about the second and third order consequences of ignoring other violations or the opportunity costs of having agents spend eight hours a day on perimeter security.

Speaker 101 So most of the line agents I know

Speaker 101 are just keeping their heads down and

Speaker 101 doing what they can within the bounds of law and their oath to the Constitution, but hating their lives on a daily basis and feeling like they're not contributing to an important mission.

Speaker 109 So you don't have any funny stories for me of Dan Bongino, you know, giving orders in crayon or anything to senior bureau officials?

Speaker 101 I mean, none that you don't know.

Speaker 101 I mean, Dan Bongino has spent the past week wrapped up in a conspiracy theory involving a child molesting financier who was actually arrested and killed himself during the first Trump administration.

Speaker 101 But somehow this has become a deep state conspiracy now involving Comey Obama and Biden. Like,

Speaker 101 we're through the looking glass. This is Alice in Wonderland.

Speaker 44 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 48 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 49 and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 57 Whether it's breaking breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 65 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 86 Learn more at ms.now.

Speaker 5 Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard.

Speaker 2 But then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 17 Seeing symptoms like these in a loved one, it could be time to ask their doctor about Rexulte, Rexpiprazole 2 milligrams, the only FDA-approved treatment proven to reduce the symptoms of this condition.

Speaker 23 Rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment.

Speaker 27 Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke.

Speaker 28 Report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent.

Speaker 38 Learn more about these and other side effects at Rexulte.com. Tap Ad for PI.

Speaker 39 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rexulti.

Speaker 41 Moments Moments matter.

Speaker 109 All right. That brings me to two other burning questions I had for you as an expert G-Man.

Speaker 119 But

Speaker 84 I want to lean on your expertise on.

Speaker 109 We'll do the silly one first with Epstein.

Speaker 90 Okay.

Speaker 87 So like, I'm reassessing all of this. Maybe I'm going a little info wars.
I don't know.

Speaker 55 But, you know, the three minutes of missing video, I'm starting to wonder.

Speaker 84 But I'm just teasing.

Speaker 107 But I do wonder when people talk about the files or whatever,

Speaker 120 you've been in these investigations, maybe not child sex trafficking investigations, but similar investigations.

Speaker 127 Like, talk about what are people even talking about?

Speaker 116 Like, if there was actually a serious effort to review the FBI files about Epstein and kind of release unredacted things that had been redacted before, like, what would that even be?

Speaker 101 Yeah, so, look, anything is possible in the world. So, I could turn out to be totally wrong, and I just want to admit that upfront.
But

Speaker 101 investigations don't have like secret vaults and cabinets where we put certain evidence and other evidence goes different places and only some people

Speaker 101 know about the findings where other findings are so highly sensitive that only senior executives. Like,

Speaker 101 first of all, if there was something really damaging on a case this size,

Speaker 101 it probably would have leaked at this point, just being realistic. Not from the FBI, but probably from Maine Justice.

Speaker 101 Secondly, like,

Speaker 101 this is a prime example of why you don't want conspiracy theorists running a really important law enforcement and intelligence gathering operation. Like the only thing

Speaker 101 that should be guiding what they are putting out or what they are saying is like, what did the witness and victim interviews say?

Speaker 101 What do the financial documents we've looked at say? What do the travel logs say?

Speaker 83 I mean, there's some private financial documents.

Speaker 108 Like, that's the kind of stuff that might be in there that I think is a more realistic quote-unquote conspiracy theory.

Speaker 125 It's like Trump's friends, donors, Les Wexner, or whatever, if it is in there, you know, from paying a lot of money.

Speaker 95 And FBI looked into it and they're like, I don't know, can we invest?

Speaker 107 Can we actually indict this guy over this?

Speaker 61 It looks bad, but you know, maybe that's the kind of thing that would be

Speaker 101 yeah, but but like the number seven FOIA exception, which would normally restrict the release of that sort of information, you know,

Speaker 101 it's limited to things

Speaker 101 that

Speaker 101 that would a tip off the subject that he or she is being looked at subject's dead epstein's dead yeah

Speaker 101 you know and the other requirement is it's gonna affect an ongoing enforcement action and once again epstein's dead It's possible they're looking at other co-conspirators.

Speaker 101 I mean, we know they are at least one, or they're thinking of opening other cases on individuals, but like they can say that without identifying the individuals.

Speaker 101 There's just a lot of smoke right now. And I've been in the government long enough to know that when people of

Speaker 101 what I will politely call the intellectual makeup of Dan Bongino see a conspiracy, there's probably not a lot of fire behind that smoke.

Speaker 102 Okay.

Speaker 107 So that three minute, the three minute video from the prison doesn't have you, doesn't have your G-Man, the spice sense to speak.

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 55 Three minutes of missing tape. It's enough time to get in there and gout somebody.

Speaker 101 I mean, look, the advice I was given when I joined the Bureau very early on and that I passed on to probably every single person I ever supervised, never assume malevolence where incompetence will suffice.

Speaker 125 This is where I go to my normal why I'm against most Trump conspiracy theories.

Speaker 120 It's like Trump can't keep a fucking secret.

Speaker 61 We know everything about this asshole.

Speaker 67 Anyway, all right, here's my last FBI expertise question for you.

Speaker 52 When the administration was first starting and all these hires were being made, right, The cash one was particularly of concern to me for a specific reason, right?

Speaker 62 Which is the FBI does have a lot of powers.

Speaker 78 Like the FBI can create a lot of problems for people that they're investigating before you get to a grand jury, right?

Speaker 88 Like there's investigation, you know, hassling.

Speaker 110 And I don't know, like.

Speaker 73 Maybe these guys are just too incompetent to do that.

Speaker 119 I mean, obviously, you know, Comey's been hassled a little bit.

Speaker 103 There have been examples, but like what, what do you think about that?

Speaker 125 Like, as far as concerns about about potential retribution, maybe, I don't know, maybe targeting you or others

Speaker 104 with the kind of powers that the FBI has.

Speaker 52 What might somebody be concerned about or not concerned about in that realm?

Speaker 101 This is actually one of the few things I take some comfort in. Right.
First of all, I don't think Patel or Bongino understand enough about how the FBI works to fully leverage its abilities.

Speaker 101 Secondly, a senior appointed political official within the FBI, of of which unfortunately there are now more than there ever has been, they can't run an investigation.

Speaker 101 You know, like they need a GS 10 through 13 level case agent to actually go out and do stuff.

Speaker 101 And I have immense faith in the overwhelming majority of that workforce, that they take their oath to the Constitution very seriously.

Speaker 101 My worry is that over the three and a half to seven and a half years that Cash, I'm not going to math, however long Cash Patel is director, because it's a 10-year term,

Speaker 101 you know, he's going to have the ability to really influence the internal culture of the Bureau in terms of how we train new agents and play a role in terms of what sort of people we hire.

Speaker 101 So while right now there is a very strong rule of law culture within the FBI, I do have concerns that that culture may be weakened as we promote people who are willing to work for these clowns and also as we hire people who are not alarmed by what they see going on.

Speaker 109 So you're telling me you don't think there's a master plan?

Speaker 122 You don't think Cash is like looking at my texts about the Oasis set list and trying to wait for an opportunity?

Speaker 101 I don't know. Am I allowed to ask one silly question?

Speaker 48 Of course, yeah.

Speaker 101 Did they play any of the B-sides? Like, did you get acquiesce or the master plan?

Speaker 61 Of course we got the master plan and acquiesce. Yeah.

Speaker 92 It's almost all the first two records.

Speaker 95 They played almost nothing from, so we got a ton of b-sides from the first two records.

Speaker 48 Okay.

Speaker 118 Almost nothing from the last few records.

Speaker 104 Little by little, they played, I forget, maybe like two or three songs.

Speaker 115 So we're not on the first two records.

Speaker 52 That was perfect.

Speaker 101 Those are the two tours I saw them for when I was much younger.

Speaker 62 You got to get back out there. You got two weeks.

Speaker 95 I think you can get to Heathrow and then get back in time for that child.

Speaker 101 I am never going to stop resenting my son for having a due date the same week that Pulp is reuniting in D.C. So.

Speaker 127 Oh, you can do it.

Speaker 62 You can make it to the hospital in time.

Speaker 125 I had a friend that was at an LSU game while his child was being born, and he made it to the hospital in time.

Speaker 61 It's all good, you can do it.

Speaker 74 Mike Feinberg, man.

Speaker 91 I'm sorry these fuckers are doing this to you, thanks, but you know, don't let them get you down. I appreciate your service to the country, and uh, let's stay in touch.

Speaker 57 All right, sounds good.

Speaker 101 Have a good one.

Speaker 122 Thanks, brother.

Speaker 130 Everybody, up next, Ben Wita.

Speaker 42 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 46 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 23 Rexulte should not be used as an as-needed treatment.

Speaker 28 Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke, report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent.

Speaker 38 Learn more about these and other side effects at RickSulty.com. Tap Ad for PI.

Speaker 39 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rick Sulti.

Speaker 73 All right, we are back with Editor-in-Chief.

Speaker 70 What is that right?

Speaker 130 Yeah, Editor-in-Chief of Lawfair.

Speaker 92 He also writes Dog Shirt Daily on Substack.

Speaker 127 It's our old buddy Ben Wittis.

Speaker 70 What's happening, man?

Speaker 131 You know, just living the dream.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 131 you know, I'm no worse than anybody else. I'm chilling in Washington while you're hanging out in Spain and Britain.

Speaker 130 Yeah, with the American flag.

Speaker 88 I love that you still have a little patriotism in your soul, Ben Wittis, in these moments.

Speaker 118 Your guy, Mike Feinberg, who wrote that Good Ride All That piece for Law Fair, just finished with.

Speaker 61 You caught the end of that.

Speaker 62 And I don't know, man, that guy, it's just one of these examples.

Speaker 109 It's like anytime you meet one of these supposed shadowy deep state people, it's like this is crazy.

Speaker 81 It's like this guy's got fucking conservative philosophy books sitting behind him.

Speaker 84 You can sort of scroll in there and see his Bill Crystal style library and taking his job seriously, doing China counterintelligence.

Speaker 65 And he's out of there because somebody spotted him at a concert with Pete Strzok or something.

Speaker 70 The whole thing is lumisite.

Speaker 131 Well, yeah. So he's, so I've known Mike for a long time.
We're old workout buddies and uh you're working out what do you what are you doing you max benching or what no no it's more of a you know

Speaker 131 solid core pilates kind of situation um but uh you know mike's kind of out of my league um but um we've known each other for it's got to be more than 10 years now and

Speaker 131 you know whenever i've been on the show and you know you guys

Speaker 131 you or charlie before you would ask about like you know what's going on in the the FBI. And I would say something like, oh, you know, FBI agents are

Speaker 131 crafted. This isn't like, you know,

Speaker 131 you know, a year at the police academy, right? This isn't like, you know, these are people with exquisite expertise. And I always mention, you know, language skills.

Speaker 131 And, you know, some of them are, you know, money laundering experts. And I'm always thinking of Mike when I say this.
This is a guy who's, you know, he speaks Chinese, he's a lawyer,

Speaker 131 he's spent 15 years in China counterintelligence. You know, this is the kind of person you get rid of at the peril of the institutional capacity of the agency.

Speaker 131 And he knows just a remarkable amount about a lot of different things. This is not, you know, what when people think of an FBI agent, they sometimes think of a kind of knuckle-dragging cop.

Speaker 131 You know, yeah, he's got some tattoos and he can, you know, bench press a lot and he knows how to handle firearms, but he also, you know,

Speaker 131 has good Mandarin, knows the history of French film, you know, has read Proust and yeah, has a has a wall of books that he's actually read that are reflective of uh, you know, a conservative legal tradition and other stuff.

Speaker 131 So, this is the type of person they're driving out of the bureau.

Speaker 122 So let's just broaden that out a little bit because he was talking about the actual bureau itself and how there's been reporting about obviously the politicals getting run out of the seventh floor, but it's actually broader than that as far as people leaving.

Speaker 95 The same thing's happening elsewhere and it's happening at DOJ.

Speaker 78 It's happening at state.

Speaker 46 Just talk about both from an institutional capacity perspective, but also sort of the legal perspective.

Speaker 90 Last time we were talking, we were talking about like, can they do this?

Speaker 116 You know, are these people going to be able to hire employment lawyers and stay on?

Speaker 128 Like, what is your sense for the breadth of the drain from DOJ and others?

Speaker 131 The breadth is enormous. And, you know, I think the best way to understand it is as

Speaker 131 there's a purge going on, which is

Speaker 131 an active getting rid of a certain cadre that are politically suspect. There is also,

Speaker 131 you know, you see this with the Department of Education, with the State Department the other day.

Speaker 131 There's also a concurrent downsizing that is just like, let's just reduce the size and capacity of the agency, which is not targeted at individuals.

Speaker 131 It's just let's rip this agency apart and make it less capable than it used to be.

Speaker 131 And then there's a third thing that

Speaker 131 is going on that

Speaker 131 actually doesn't involve my particular areas, but it is

Speaker 131 worth thinking about in this context, which is a large-scale destruction of the government's grant-making capacity.

Speaker 131 And this is particularly acute in the scientific areas, the biomedical space.

Speaker 131 The world's largest funder of cancer research, which is the National Cancer Institute, is

Speaker 131 getting out of the business of funding cancer research, right?

Speaker 131 And so you have, I think, these three strains, which are somewhat independent of one another, but all part of this larger package of

Speaker 131 war on what Trump thinks of as the deep state and

Speaker 131 those of us who live in a reality-based environment would call the institutional capacities of the federal government.

Speaker 131 The magnitude of it is immense and hard to get your hands around because frankly, very few of us, I mean, I have expertise in the Justice Department and the FBI.

Speaker 131 I don't have expertise in the, you know, the the grant-making capacities in the medical research space of the U.S. federal government.

Speaker 131 And so very few people have a kind of holistic sense of what this looks like. But I do think thinking of it in 360-degree terms is important.

Speaker 131 There is another way to do it, another way to think about it, which is what are we spending money on? And, you know, if you immigration detention centers,

Speaker 131 that's right. So if you say, if you look at it in the macro picture and you say, what is the Trump administration spending money on?

Speaker 131 The answer is it is reducing funding for all of these traditional things that we think of in the sort of post-war era as major government priorities.

Speaker 131 And it is spending that money and much more, by the way, on building detention facilities, though not adjudication capacity to deport as many people as humanly possible.

Speaker 108 Yeah, just a quick aside, because I want to get more into the staffing side of it, but on the grant making, since you mentioned it, I did a video last night.

Speaker 44 People should go check out for more details on this, but like they're doing this rescissions package today on the hill, which basically defunds things they already funded as a shorthand for what they're doing.

Speaker 121 The procedural vote passed last night, 50-50 with advanced tie-breaking vote.

Speaker 109 One of the things in it, they cut the, it's like 100 million for the UNICEF General Fund, which essentially just is like the organization that whenever there's a major crisis in the world, they go and ensure that kids like under five are able to get food, like an access to nutrition.

Speaker 70 100 million is like nothing.

Speaker 52 Like this bill,

Speaker 65 they just passed the OBBB that raises the deficit by 3 trillion, 4 trillion, 5 trillion, depending on who, what, which analysis you look at.

Speaker 92 You know, this is just a total drop in the bucket.

Speaker 128 And to your point, it's hard to kind of for everybody to wrap their heads around everything, you know, that's being that's being cut in these situations.

Speaker 113 And it's like these small line items for people who don't have big lobbying efforts, you know, that do real good work.

Speaker 131 and the great concession that the Republican moderates, such as they are, gouged from the administration on the rescissions package was not cutting, I think it was $400 million for PEPFAR.

Speaker 131 So that's the win, right? I think

Speaker 131 the best way to understand the administration is and its priorities is in terms of the gross financial picture. And that is, you know, cutting.

Speaker 131 and look you can agree with these values you can disagree with these values i happen to find them morally appalling um but just describe let's just describe them neutrally which is we want to lock up and deport as many people as humanly possible and we want to cut the federal government down to size in nearly all other areas and we want to give enormous tax breaks.

Speaker 131 That's the gestalt picture.

Speaker 89 Yeah, you could just kind of evenly describe

Speaker 110 the recent funding decisions to spend, you know, whatever, 450x on prison camps that you're going to spend on food aid for the world's youth.

Speaker 100 I mean, that's just what they've decided to do.

Speaker 112 Back to the staffing stuff.

Speaker 93 You wrote about Arez Rouveney, I think I'm getting that right, a DOJ prosecutor who has been pushed out and just a huge kind of firestorm around that.

Speaker 93 Talk about that story as a kind of representative of what's happening right now.

Speaker 131 So first of all, Erez Rouveney is not a prosecutor.

Speaker 131 He was a civil litigator in the immigration space whose job for the last 15 years has been to defend administration initiatives in the immigration space, including under the Trump administration.

Speaker 131 He's one of the people who defended the travel ban.

Speaker 131 The woke travel ban?

Speaker 110 He was the defender of the woke travel ban?

Speaker 110 He's on the briefs.

Speaker 131 I think he argued some of the stuff in the lower courts. He's a very talented lawyer.

Speaker 134 It's like it isn't really a Muslim ban because we also threw North Korea on top.

Speaker 131 Exactly. That's, you know, I mean, there are a lot of positions that Eras Rouveni has litigated on behalf of a number of administrations for that I don't share.

Speaker 131 I always believe in

Speaker 131 never criticizing the career lawyers for defending the administration policy because that is their job. That is why we hire them.
And they don't formulate the policy.

Speaker 131 Their job is to defend the policy. In the Biden administration, you defend the Biden administration policy.
In the Trump administration, you defend the Trump administration policy. As long as you are

Speaker 131 observing the ethical rules and norms of being a government lawyer, I exempt these people from criticism.

Speaker 131 Eres Rouveni did exactly that, and he got fired for it. And not just fired, but Pambandi denounced him personally on national television.
And

Speaker 131 the government doesn't even really deny the allegations,

Speaker 131 not in a meaningful way that he puts forward, which is that,

Speaker 131 first of all, the

Speaker 131 Dracula like Emile Bovie, you know, said to a room full of lawyers that they might have to say fuck you to court orders, that the government has lied to courts, has willfully defied court orders.

Speaker 131 And Rouveney, unlike,

Speaker 131 you know, these themes are the same themes as we saw in the sort of Eric Adams dropping that case.

Speaker 131 But he did something that none of these other lawyers who've left have done, which is that he wrote a 27-page account of it all

Speaker 131 and

Speaker 131 included 150 pages of underlying documents that are

Speaker 131 really shocking. And, you know, we can talk about the details of the...

Speaker 43 Yeah, sure, shocking in what way?

Speaker 123 Yeah.

Speaker 131 Well, so, you know, first of all, he, you know, when he says that Emile Bovy

Speaker 131 said,

Speaker 131 we might have to say fuck you to the courts, he then has,

Speaker 131 you know, a bunch of texts between him and other lawyers when they seem to be defying the court orders, where one of the other lawyers says, I've guessed we've reached the fuck you point.

Speaker 95 This is like defying the, and this is in the context for people, this is defying the court orders around immigration stuff, such as like the Plains del Salvador and Abrego Garcia.

Speaker 112 Exactly.

Speaker 125 And Reveini was on there.

Speaker 128 The Brego Garcia case was the.

Speaker 131 So he works on three cases kind of concurrently that are all still, one is Abrego Garcia, one is the JGG case, which is the Alien Enemies Act case to El Salvador, and then the third is this DVD case where, you know, that ends up with the flights to South Sudan, right?

Speaker 131 And in each of these cases, he's trying to restrain the government from essentially first defying court orders, but then failing utterly in its duty of candor to the court.

Speaker 131 And in each case, he is either pushed back at quite senior levels or ignored. And then, look, he files this document.

Speaker 131 Emil Bovie then has his confirmation hearing. He is asked repeatedly about

Speaker 131 Mr. Ravani's allegations.
And he,

Speaker 131 I think it is very hard to escape the conclusion that he lies under oath about it. He says he doesn't recall saying that they were going to have to say, fuck you, to Judge Boesberg.

Speaker 131 And I think it is very hard to escape the conclusion that both he and

Speaker 131 at least one other

Speaker 131 Justice Department lawyer were engaged in a willful, not to mention

Speaker 131 the DHS hierarchy, were engaged in

Speaker 131 an effort to deport people illegally, irrespective of what the courts had to say about it. And so, look, you know, this material is now public.
And the real question is, does anybody care?

Speaker 48 Well, is that the question?

Speaker 102 Do we have to answer that question?

Speaker 131 I mean, look, yeah, I think actually that's the real question.

Speaker 131 Because the answer for, you know, if you could get two or three Senate Republicans to care, that would be, well, you'd need four, but that would be an important thing. No chance of that, in my view.

Speaker 127 This is the shocking thing to me about, and this goes back to the Feinberg situation, and maybe shocking isn't the right word, but this is the dispiriting thing, is that,

Speaker 118 you know,

Speaker 113 I understand, I don't support, but I understand kind of the own the libs, drink the liberal tears reaction that you see online when the State Department bureaucrats are like boxing up their stuff and getting out of there and the Department of Education is showing up.

Speaker 123 This is old

Speaker 128 right-wing anti-government ideology, right? And they don't think that a lot of people in the federal government do good work and it's fine for a lot of them to be fired.

Speaker 93 Right.

Speaker 69 So I'm not endorsing that.

Speaker 78 I'm just saying like that is something that is understandable.

Speaker 97 The dispiriting thing is that like in the DOJ and an FBI, like we are talking about people that are being kicked out that are totally apolitical, that are doing objectively real work to

Speaker 99 keep the country safe, to defend the rule of law in the country.

Speaker 94 And the fact that like across the board, people are being run out on the rail, kicked out,

Speaker 94 expertise is being lost.

Speaker 92 They're stopping doing certain types of investigations

Speaker 47 in service of nothing, in service of the paranoia of the podcast host, who's the deputy FBI director.

Speaker 57 That is the thing that is you would, you would imagine that there'd be one fucking Republican on the Hill that would be like, Wait a minute,

Speaker 125 we need to have more respect for the people that are putting their lives on the line for the country that are trying to protect us that work at the

Speaker 118 work at these law enforcement agencies.

Speaker 80 And like, there's nothing, zero.

Speaker 131 Let's talk about Senator Tom Tillis in particular, the now venerated Tom Tillis.

Speaker 86 Who is venerating Tom Tillis?

Speaker 110 I missed that.

Speaker 131 Yeah, yeah, that happened while you were away.

Speaker 62 I would have disabused the venerators if I had been in depth.

Speaker 131 You know, he

Speaker 131 the big beautiful bill, and he, uh, when Trump attacked him and said he was going to organize a primary campaign against him, he announced that he wasn't running for re-election anyway.

Speaker 131 And, you know, this augured new era of independence on the part of Tom Tillis.

Speaker 131 Tom Tillis spent much of the month of January fiercely defending Cash Patel and criticizing aggressively those who were suggesting that he might be a conspiracy theorist who had no business running the FBI.

Speaker 131 I have not, you know, while Tillis has said that he regrets his vote for RFK, now he has not said anything of the kind about Mr. Patel, to my knowledge anyway.

Speaker 131 And moreover, I have not heard him say that, you know, it is simply unacceptable for Emil Bovie to do the things that he is credibly said to have done.

Speaker 131 In fact, has provided no evidence that he didn't do.

Speaker 131 And that coming up to the Senate Judiciary Committee and saying in response to Erez Raveny's allegations that he just doesn't recall whether he said, fuck you, about the courts, you cannot confirm somebody to be a judge on the Third Circuit United States Court of Appeals, which, you know, is he going to vote for Emil Bovey?

Speaker 131 I wouldn't bet against it. Let's put it that way.
This is a completely unacceptable set of behaviors by a lot of different people.

Speaker 131 And we haven't heard boo from the Inspector General of the Justice Department. Senate Republicans don't care.

Speaker 131 The DC Circuit Court of Appeals put a stay on Judge Boesberg's contempt inquiry, an administrative stay, and then have been radio silent for three months.

Speaker 131 And so my question is, when you have people behaving this way, what is the mechanism of accountability or is there none?

Speaker 114 I mean, I think that there is none, right?

Speaker 95 If the Senate Republicans

Speaker 113 aren't going to do anything about it.

Speaker 107 It is crazy in the context of the Epstein thing.

Speaker 119 I've been doing a lot of interviews with the Epstein thing.

Speaker 118 I understand why Republican-based voters and podcasters are upset about the Epstein file situation.

Speaker 107 But, like, for ostensibly responsible senators, like, it's insane that there are Republican members of the U.S.

Speaker 61 Senate that are trying to get accountability for Trump on not releasing the redacted Epstein files, but there's not a single one who feels like, hey,

Speaker 93 maybe it was a bad thing that we ran out the China expert from the FBI because Cash Patel's FIFAs were hurt, that like some other random, you know, he was friends with some random person.

Speaker 67 Again, similarly to the funding, it's a telling breakdown of what the priorities are.

Speaker 131 Yes. So let's talk about the real housewives of the Justice Department.
Go for it. Normally, you would say it is a bad thing

Speaker 131 that the deputy FBI director just goes walkabout on a, you know, Friday, refuses to come into the office and won't say whether he's quit.

Speaker 62 I'm sorry, Ben.

Speaker 95 We all need mental health days sometimes.

Speaker 130 You know, have you ever stormed out of the office just because you're mad at a colleague, decides you need to eat ice cream and, you know, watch Bravo all day?

Speaker 131 I just want to say I totally respect Dan Bongino's right to do it. Normally, the president of the United States, when you ask him on a Monday morning, do you have a deputy FBI director?

Speaker 131 This literally happened Monday. And Trump said, I think so.

Speaker 110 Like,

Speaker 131 you know, he literally.

Speaker 92 Costanza shows back up at the seventh floor and he's like, what, you guys took me seriously?

Speaker 110 You thought

Speaker 110 about that little joke on Friday about me quitting?

Speaker 131 I understand

Speaker 131 that, you know, people think everybody needs a mental health day. The deputy FBI director is one of the true workhorse jobs of the federal government.
And you don't just walk out in a snit

Speaker 131 and say about the attorney general, either she goes or I goes. And by, and by the way, the fact that like these people are like

Speaker 131 acting like this is,

Speaker 131 you know, normally you would think it's a bad thing that they've turned the upper echelons of the Justice Department and the FBI into a weird, like, the girlies are fighting reality show.

Speaker 131 Right now, I'm relieved that they're,

Speaker 131 you know, fighting over whether a dead guy for he's been dead for what, six years now, seven, five years, whether he had files and they were on the attorney general's desk or whether he never had files and that was never on the attorney general's desk.

Speaker 131 And by the way, Dan Bungino's quit. No, he's not.
Yeah, he's playing golf. I mean, I love this.

Speaker 131 And the reason is the more consumed they are with destroying each other, the less focused they are going to be on destroying the cultures of the the agencies that they're running.

Speaker 131 And so, you know, bring it on. It's the Iran-Iraq war.

Speaker 132 Arm both sides.

Speaker 131 Amplify all the messaging.

Speaker 122 We should have like a Banjin, oh, Bandi, you know, kind of like a food fight, like in a cage, like a WWE style thing where like they both get cakes, they get to throw each other pay-per-view.

Speaker 112 I would pay for that.

Speaker 131 I would totally, I wouldn't pay for it. I'd pirate it.
But yeah, I mean, look, it is profoundly embarrassing that

Speaker 131 this is what the upper echelons of the law enforcement operatus of the United States is doing.

Speaker 131 And the fact that we all kind of treated it like a QAnon-themed soap opera going on at the Attorney General and FBI director level was just kind of a normal weekend.

Speaker 131 And that the stories should be broken by Laura Loomer and Axios, right?

Speaker 110 Like these aren't like the...

Speaker 133 Congrats to Axios

Speaker 112 on that story.

Speaker 131 I think it is

Speaker 131 a telling marker of where we are. Let's just put it that way.

Speaker 44 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 48 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 49 and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 33 rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment elderly people with dementia related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke report fever stiff muscles and confusion which can be life-threatening or uncontrolled muscle movements which may be permanent high blood sugar can lead to coma or death weight gain increased cholesterol unusual urges dizziness on standing falls seizures trouble swallowing or sleepiness may occur learn more about these and other side effects at ricksulty.com tap ad for pi i'm glad her doctor recommended rexulti talk to your loved ones doctor moments matter

Speaker 109 I've got another telling marker.

Speaker 89 Just one more thing on the staffing.

Speaker 107 So we've been, you heard from Mike Feinberg the type of expertise we're losing from the FBI.

Speaker 122 I want to highlight somebody who's coming back to work.

Speaker 107 A former FBI agent who was charged with encouraging the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th to kill police officers has been named as an advisor to the Justice Department task force that President Trump recently established to look into retribution against his political foes.

Speaker 118 That's Jared Wise, and he's going to work for Eagle-Eyed Martin.

Speaker 110 Yeah, former FBI agent.

Speaker 112 Yeah.

Speaker 129 I thought the FBI agents were all part of a deep state plot to go after Trump, and it was the woke liberal agents bureau.

Speaker 47 That seems to be wrong if Jared Wise was working there.

Speaker 131 Well, yeah, I mean, one thing that I've never met,

Speaker 131 and I, you know, I've hung out in FBI circles quite a bit. Left-wing FBI agents, they don't exist.

Speaker 89 Never met like a purple-haired, nose-ring, non-binary FBI?

Speaker 131 No, they all work for NSA.

Speaker 131 No, I'm serious.

Speaker 131 Those people are like you walk around the halls in Fort Meade, and they'll be like some, you know, girl with purple hair

Speaker 131 walking next to a military officer.

Speaker 131 And, you know, those people are linguists and computer science geeks and math geeks. And that's all of it.
But the FBI is like, it's a bunch of conservative white guys.

Speaker 122 We do honor their service to the NSA, too.

Speaker 128 We really, we appreciate it.

Speaker 47 And absolutely.

Speaker 130 And if they get run out on the rail as well, they're also welcome on the Blorke podcast.

Speaker 70 All right. I want to do a little Ukraine.

Speaker 110 Is it good news?

Speaker 103 Obviously,

Speaker 128 unimaginable suffering has happened in Ukraine over the last six months while Donald Trump

Speaker 113 played out his melodrama with Vladimir Putin. And so it's horrible.
So this is not like... not a rah-rah Trump thing.

Speaker 77 But does it feel like maybe something has changed here?

Speaker 67 Or do you think that this is a can kick?

Speaker 93 Trump does, you know,

Speaker 127 seems to be upset with Putin, more open to allowing Zelensky to use offensive weapons.

Speaker 92 Zelensky is getting some attackums and patriots that are needed long overdue.

Speaker 134 Like, what's your assessment of the state of play?

Speaker 113 And what are you hearing from your Ukraine pals?

Speaker 131 All right. I have three things to say about this.
First of all, let's distinguish between two policies that were announced on Monday. The first is the availability of weapons to Ukraine.

Speaker 131 The second is,

Speaker 131 Vladimir, you have 50 days to sign an agreement, otherwise punishing sanctions.

Speaker 131 I think the second one,

Speaker 131 you know, an inexplicable 50-day grace period. I don't think that is a big change of policy.
It is a change of tone. To put the onus essentially entirely on Putin is a significant change of tone.

Speaker 131 And I do think there's promise in that. But 50 days is a long time.
A lot of Ukrainians are going to get killed in those 50 days. And I don't think Trump deserves a lot of credit for,

Speaker 131 you know,

Speaker 131 announcing that something bad will happen to Russia 50 days from now. The weapons issue is a different matter.
And I think it's assuming it's real.

Speaker 131 And I want to see the actual weapons transfers happen before I assume that.

Speaker 122 You want to make sure Darren Beatty doesn't put a stop, you know, stop delivery on those.

Speaker 131 For example, I also want to make sure Trump doesn't change his mind, and I want to make sure that the Europeans are as aggressive when it comes to actually spending money as they are when it comes to talking about it, which is a chronic issue.

Speaker 131 That policy change is very important.

Speaker 131 And my willingness to criticize the Trump administration is almost infinite. But I do want to give him credit for that.
If it happens, it's a very big deal.

Speaker 131 And Ukraine desperately needs those new, more air defenses. It has been asking for long-range missile capability for a long time.
If it gets both, that is a big deal.

Speaker 131 Now, there are two things that I don't like about this deal. One is that I don't know for sure that it's really happening.
And so, my willingness to say, well, you know,

Speaker 131 this is a great thing. It should have happened eight months ago, but it's a great thing, blah, blah, blah, is tempered by the fact that I'm not 100% sure it's really happening.
So

Speaker 52 hold that thought.

Speaker 131 But the other thing is that I don't love the fallback to the position that,

Speaker 131 we're not going to spend a dime.

Speaker 131 Europe's going to pay for it. And our involvement here is sort of transactional.
We're going to supply weapons to Europe so that they can give them to the Ukrainians and they will pay for them.

Speaker 131 Now, this is the best we can hope for from Trump, I think. And

Speaker 131 I don't want to be churlish about it. But we should be supporting Ukraine with money.

Speaker 131 And what will be to me the rubicon where trump i will say yes donald trump has changed on ukraine in a profound way and has adopted a policy that is consistent with what i think u.s policy should be is when he goes to congress and asks for a supplemental of whatever size is appropriate for U.S.

Speaker 131 spending. That goes back to the earlier part of our conversation where we say, look at how they're spending money.
And they're still not spending money supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Speaker 131 And so I think it is, look, it's an important step. It's a big change.
And it does, it will save lives in Ukraine if it really happens. So I don't want to sound churlish about it.

Speaker 131 Is it this is the day he became the president?

Speaker 52 No.

Speaker 123 No.

Speaker 112 Yeah.

Speaker 87 I will add one amendment that's slightly churlish, but more cheeky than churlish, I guess.

Speaker 107 it should be worth mentioning that that obscene scene in the Oval Office where J.D.

Speaker 128 Vance was demanding that Volodymyr Zelensky thank him for doing nothing.

Speaker 67 The origin of that fight, like the crux of that fight, rather, was

Speaker 67 that Zelensky was just trying to say to them that they're trusting Putin. They shouldn't trust him.

Speaker 92 That was basically the crux of the fight.

Speaker 96 Zelensky's basically like, I hear what you guys are saying, but he's been saying this for a decade and a half.

Speaker 66 You cannot trust that he says he's going to come come to the negotiation table.

Speaker 120 They're going to keep attacking us.

Speaker 127 And then Trump and JD Vance got their butt hurt and pissed that Zelensky was saying that.

Speaker 89 And now here's Trump this week saying, essentially, Zelensky was right.

Speaker 57 And he didn't say Zelensky was right, but he's saying, yeah, yeah, like

Speaker 57 Putin didn't do what he said he was going to do, it turns out.

Speaker 67 And it's like, that's all Zelensky was trying to tell him.

Speaker 105 And he was doing it in a very modest way.

Speaker 74 And it created this Oval Office scene, this kind of petulant

Speaker 122 reaction from Trump and advance.

Speaker 47 And anyway, it merits mentioning.

Speaker 131 Oh, it merits mentioning. Look, nothing can redeem Trump's treatment of Ukraine in the first six months of his administration.

Speaker 131 And in no sense, when I say that this is a big deal and it will save a lot of lives, is that meant to

Speaker 131 undermine the point that the first six months of the Trump administration have been a very, very deep betrayal of our European allies and

Speaker 131 Ukrainians who are under fire. I am approaching the question from a slightly different point,

Speaker 131 which is Ukraine really, really needs more interceptors and more Patriot batteries, and it may just get them now. And I am very grateful for that.
I am not praising Donald Trump.

Speaker 66 Ben Wittis, thanks for checking in, as always.

Speaker 91 It's good to see you, my friend.

Speaker 75 Everybody go head over to Lawfair Media, sign up for the newsletters, Dog Shirt Daily.

Speaker 50 I do like the situation.

Speaker 89 Ben's been writing the situation, which is occasionally very serious and at times, you know, has a more comedic tone to it.

Speaker 131 I try to make one out of four of them for, you know, three out of four are super earnest and angry, and one out of four is written with the idea that if you're not making fun of the situation, you are part of the situation.

Speaker 122 We'll leave it there. Everybody, go sign up for Lawfare Ben.

Speaker 107 I'll be talking to you soon.

Speaker 130 And listeners, we'll be seeing you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.

Speaker 111 Peace.

Speaker 135 Take the time to make some sense of what you want to say.

Speaker 135 And cast your words away upon the waves.

Speaker 135 And sail them home with acquiescence on the ship of hope today.

Speaker 135 And as they land upon the shore,

Speaker 135 tell them not to fear no more.

Speaker 1 Say it loud and sing good proud today.

Speaker 1 And then dance if you wanna dance. Please, brother, take a chance.
You know they're gonna know which way they wanna go.

Speaker 1 No wisdom we don't know how it's gonna be. Please, brother, let it be.
Life on the other hand, won't let us understand.

Speaker 1 We're all part of a master plan.

Speaker 1 Say it loud, we're singing by

Speaker 1 today.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying right is wrong,

Speaker 1 it's up to us to make

Speaker 1 the best of all the things that come our way.

Speaker 1 Cause everything that's been has passed, the answers in the looking glass

Speaker 1 There's more than 20 million dollars. Online's endless corridor.

Speaker 1 Say it loud and sing it proudly.

Speaker 1 We'll dance if they wanna dance. Please, brother, take a chance.
You know they're gonna go. Which way they wanna go

Speaker 1 is that we don't know how it's gonna be. Please, brother, let it be.
Life on the other hand won't make you understand.

Speaker 1 We're up on every path.

Speaker 91 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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Speaker 123 We lead.

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Ben Wittes and Michael Feinberg: Breakdown at the FBI

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