CD330: Prosecutor Jack Smith's Deposition

Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party. And so the president got information from people he trusted on other issues. He rejected it whenever it didn't fit him staying in office. And there was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in, that would mean he could no longer be president. He would reject it. And any theory, no matter how far-fetched, no matter how not based in law, that would indicate that he could, he latched on to that. And we were confident that we had very strong proof of that pattern. He also, I would just add, very consciously did not try to reach out to the sort of people who have the most expertise on these issues. He reached out to people who he thought could back him up. I am so damn tired of being lied to. I don't think I can deny it anymore. You can't stick to your story if you think it flies. But I'm not going to buy it anymore. Hello, my friend, and thank you for listening to the 330th episode of Congressional Dish. I'm your host, Jennifer Briney. And this is my first episode back to work after the holidays. It is now 2026. And my work week began on the five-year anniversary of the most chaotic counting of electoral college votes in our nation's history, the five-year anniversary of the MAGA riot of January 6th, 2021. And so in honor of that anniversary, I spent the day watching some testimony that I wasn't supposed to see. I spent the day watching an eight-hour closed-door deposition of Jack Smith that took place in the House Judiciary Committee on December 17, 2025, and surprise, it was released to the public a few weeks later. Jack Smith is the special prosecutor who is in the process of building two criminal cases against Donald Trump in between his presidencies. One case accused Donald Trump of taking classified documents that he was not allowed to have, storing them recklessly in Mar-a-Lago, and then impeding the investigation when he got caught. Jack Smith was also in the process of building a case that accused Donald Trump of committing fraud in an attempt to remain the President of the United States despite losing the 2020 election. But Republicans in Congress, instead of investigating those criminal acts, have decided to investigate the investigator, which is why they called Jack Smith into Congress to testify behind closed doors. But Democrats had the opportunity to ask questions too, and they asked questions about the investigations into Donald Trump's behavior. And as far as Donald Trump's behavior is concerned, today we're only going to focus on testimony about the election fraud, because Jack Smith was under some kind of injunction by a court that prevented him from providing really any details about the classified documents case, and so I didn't really learn much. But also, honestly, I don't care as much about that case as I do about Donald Trump's attempt to remain in power. And so in this episode, you're going to hear what I considered the most interesting testimony about both lines of inquiry. You're going to hear testimony prompted mainly by Democrats with their questions about Donald Trump's behavior and the legality of it. And you will also hear answers to questions posed mainly by Republicans about the rationale behind some of the decisions made by the prosecutor himself. And I will not be interrupting the testimony. You're going to listen to about 45 minutes straight of testimony, and then you can decide for yourself what you think as you go. I'll tell you my thoughts at the end. But just so you know, I've reordered the clips by subject, and you're going to hear pauses between them. That's how you'll know where my edits are. And if you want to judge my edits, please do. We have the transcript of the entire deposition and of the individual clips that I flagged with timestamps in this episode's show notes for you. And if you appreciate that, please pay for the show. We had a rough 2025 because our community, like a lot of Americans, is getting crushed in this economy. And the reason that affects us is that this show doesn't allow advertisements. This is a crowdfunded show. It's honor system style. And so when our community is hurting, so are we. And so please pay what you can. The options for supporting the show are listed in the show notes for you as well. But back to the testimony. Before you hear this testimony, I want you to understand the context. And so here's some information that I think you should know. First, I highly recommend you listen to the entire episode that is currently our number two most valuable episode of Congressional Dish as chosen and paid for by our executive producers. And that would be episode 266, contriving January 6th. That's the episode that summarized over 20 hours of evidence exhibited by the January 6th committee investigation. Because I am still not sure that the American people at large really understand what the riot at the Capitol was in service of. It seems like the riot itself is what a lot of Americans think Donald Trump is being called a criminal for inciting. And to be fair, the Democrats in Congress absolutely were saying that. But the riot at the Capitol happened at the end of a two-month-long scheme to keep Donald Trump as president despite his loss. And at the heart of that plot were fake electors. That scheme has always been my main focus. And it turns out it was one of the main focuses of the prosecutor who never got to bring his case to trial as well. And so as a refresher, here's about 10 minutes from episode number 266, which contains footage from the January 6th investigation that I had edited, which explains the fake elector plan. The architect of Donald Trump's devious scheme to remain president, was a man that will be in every third grade textbook until the end of time as one of America's most notorious villains. His name is John Eastman. John Eastman has always been a politically motivated lawyer. He was at one time the chair of the Federalist Society, a group of proudly partisan conservative and libertarian lawyers. After President Trump lost the election, John Eastman emerged from Chapman University, where he was a law professor, to present President Trump with a plan for remaining president despite his loss, a plan written in shockingly blunt detail in a two-page memo. And here's the plan, as explained in the Eastman memo. On January 6th, Eastman suggested the Vice President Mike Pence, in his position as the person that reads the certificates created by the electors and sent over from the states, would open the certificates in the joint session of Congress as usual. But seven states, all states won by Joe Biden, would have two certificates each, one certificate signed by the real electors, the Biden electors, and one certificate signed by fake electors, Republican Party electors that certified that Trump had won their state, even though he didn't. Because of the double certificate situation in those seven states, Vice President Pence would announce that because of the ongoing disputes in those seven states, no electors could be deemed validly appointed in those states. That would mean that the total number of electors would be reduced from 538 to 454. The Constitution says that the election would be won by the person who gets, quote, the majority of the electors appointed, unquote. And since the new total is 554, a majority of that would be 228 instead of 270 to win. With those seven Biden states eliminated, that would have put the score at 232 electors for Trump and 222 for Biden. Vice President Pence would then gavel President Trump in as reelected. The memo then goes on to say that Democrats would then essentially lose their show. And quoting now from the Eastman memo, quote, Pence says, fine, pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the quoting from the Constitution, quote, votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote, unquote. Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations. The bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is reelected there as well, unquote. And that was the plan that the Trump team ran with. On December 14th, 2020, that was the day that the electors met all over the country to certify the election for President Biden. And the election was certified with no problems in all 50 states. But on the same day in seven states that were won by President Biden, illegitimate, fake electors who had been gathered with the assistance of people at the head of the National Republican Party, they met in signed documents certifying a Trump win in those states, even though Trump had lost. The fake documents were signed by well-known Republicans, including lawmakers and party leaders in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico, states accounting for a combined 84 electoral votes. If all were to go according to the Eastman plan, these fake documents would be used by Vice President Pence on January 6th to get those 84 electoral votes tossed in the trash, lowering the totals just enough so that Trump would have beaten Biden by 10. Here are the highlights of the testimony submitted to the January 6th committee about the fake elector part of the plan to keep Trump as president despite his role as the loser. My name is Casey Lucier. I'm an investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. On November 18th, a lawyer working with the Trump campaign named Kenneth Cheesebro wrote a memo arguing that the Trump campaign should organize its own electors in the swing states that President Trump had lost. The select committee received testimony that those close to President Trump began planning to organize fake electors for Trump in states that Biden won in the weeks after the election. At the president's direct request, the RNC assisted the campaign in coordinating this effort. The next witness who's going to be questioned by the January 6th committee lawyers is Ronna Romney McDaniels. Yes, as in that Romney, she's Mitt Romney's niece. But she's been the National Republican Committee chair since Trump's inauguration weekend. During the two months after the election, the Republican Party, under her leadership, helped Trump create the fake documents that were submitted to the National Archives and Congress. Here's her confession. What did the president say when he called you? Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states. I think more just helping them reach out and assemble them. But my understanding is the campaign did take the lead and we just were helping them in that role. As President Trump and his supporters continued to lose lawsuits, some campaign lawyers became convinced that convening electors in states that Trump lost was no longer appropriate. The next two speakers are former Trump campaign lawyers, Justin Clark and Matt Morgan. I just remember I either replied or called somebody saying, unless we have litigation pending this, like in these states, like, I don't think this is appropriate or, you know, this isn't the right thing to do. I'm out. At that point, I had Josh Finley email Mr. Chesbrough politely to say, this is your task. you are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward. And this was my way of taking that responsibility to zero. The committee learned the White House Counsel's Office also felt the plan was potentially illegal. The following questions are going to be directed at Cassidy Hutchinson. And so to be clear, did you hear the White House Counsel's Office say that this plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for Donald Trump in states that he had lost was not legally sound? Yes, sir. The select committee interviewed several of the individual fake electors, as well as Trump campaign staff, who helped organize the effort. This is Robert Sinners, who worked for Donald Trump's 2020 campaign. We were just, you know, kind of useful idiots or rubes at that point. You know, a strong part of me really feels that it's just kind of as the road continued and as that was failure, failure, failure, that that got formulated as what do we have on the table? Let's just do it. And now, after what we've told you today about the select committee's investigation, about the conclusion of the professional lawyers on the campaign staff, Justin Clark, Matt Morgan and Josh Finley, about their unwillingness to participate in the convening of these electors. How does that contribute to your understanding of these issues? I'm angry. I'm angry because I think I think in a sense, you know, no one really cared if if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy. Would you have not wanted to participate in this any further as well? I absolutely would not have had I know that the three main lawyers for the campaign that I've spoken to in the past and were leading up were not on board. Yeah. This is Andrew Hitt, who's the former chair of the Republican Party in Wisconsin and one of the people who signed the fake documents. I was told that these would only count if a court ruled in our favor. So that would have been using our electors, well, it would have been using our electors in ways that we weren't told about and we wouldn't have supported. Documents obtained by the select committee indicate that instructions were given to the electors in several states that they needed to cast their ballots in complete secrecy. Because this scheme involved fake electors, those participating in certain states had no way to comply with state election laws, like where the electors were supposed to meet. One group of fake electors even considered hiding overnight to ensure that they could access the state capitol as required in Michigan. Here are the January 6th committee lawyers questioning Laura Cox, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, who did not participate in the fake elector plan. Did Mr. Norton say who he was working with at all on this? effort to have electors meet? He said he was working with the president's campaign. He told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the Capitol and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote in per law in the Michigan chambers. And I told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate. In one state, the fake electors even asked for a promise that the campaign would pay their legal fees if they got sued or charged with a crime. Ultimately, fake electors did meet on December 14th, 2020 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wisconsin. At the request of the Trump campaign, the electors from these battleground states signed documents falsely asserting that they were the, quote, duly elected electors from their state and submitted them to the National Archives and to Vice President Pence in his capacity as president of the Senate. In an email produced to the select committee, Dr. Eastman told a Trump campaign representative that it did not matter that the electors had not been approved by a state authority. Quote, the fact that we have multiple slates of electors demonstrates the uncertainty of either. That should be enough. He urged that Pence act boldly and be challenged. Documents produced to the select committee show that the Trump campaign took steps to ensure that the physical copies of the fake electors electoral votes from two states were delivered to Washington for January 6th. Sixth. Text messages exchanged between Republican Party officials in Wisconsin show that on January 4th, the Trump campaign asked for someone to fly their fake electors documents to Washington. A staffer for Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson texted the staffer for Vice President Pence just minutes before the beginning of the joint session. This staffer stated that Senator Johnson wished to hand deliver to the vice president the fake electors votes from Michigan and Wisconsin. The vice president's aide unambiguously instructed them not to deliver the fake votes to the vice president. Even though the fake elector slates were transmitted to Congress and the executive branch, the vice president held firm in his position that his role was to count lawfully submitted electoral votes. So that was the big picture plan to keep Donald Trump as president. And in the testimony you are about to hear, Jack Smith is going to refer to that plot extensively in discussions with members of the Judiciary Committee who are familiar with every detail. And so now you are in the know too. Another important piece of context to this discussion has to do with phone records that Jack Smith subpoenaed from members of Congress. And as you know, if you've listened to recent episodes of Congressional Dish, in the bill that reopened the government after the longest shutdown in U.S. history, Republican senators snuck in a scandalous self-serving gift that will allow them to be paid half a million dollars or more of our tax money if their phone records are subpoenaed and they are not informed about it. That provision was backdated to before Jack Smith's investigation subpoenaed the phone records of members of Congress, setting up a group of Republican senators for a payday big enough for each of them to buy a house with. And in this testimony, you're going to hear about 13 minutes of explanations by Jack Smith for why those phone records were subpoenaed for his case. And I'd also like to remind you that about a decade ago, and I read the law for this show, the USA Freedom Act privatized the Patriot Act. So what that means is that instead of the government hoovering up the entire world's data and sending it straight to government data storage facilities, which is what the George W. Bush administration was doing, well, the USA Freedom Act gave the government permission to get phone records instead directly from the telecom companies. The law requires the telecom companies to keep secret those orders from the government, which demand our phone records, and the law applied to everyone in the United States. And you can refresh your memory about that law by listening to episode number 98 of Congressional Dish. Another piece of important context to remember is that during Jack Smith's investigation, the Supreme Court had rendered a shocking verdict that ruled that the President of the United States has immunity from prosecution for acts that he takes as a part of his job as the President. However, they also said that a President can still be prosecuted for actions taken outside of his official responsibilities. That Supreme Court ruling caused a delay in Jack Smith's case and forced Jack Smith to reevaluate his charges and the validity of his case. You're also going to hear reference in this testimony to Representative Scott Perry, who is still in Congress representing Pennsylvania's 10th District, which encompasses Harrisburg and the surrounding areas. And I don't know if Scott Perry was going to be included in the list of official co-conspirators, but when President Trump was considering replacing the Attorney General who had told him that his election fraud claims were bullshit, he was considering replacing that guy with someone who would instead act on his bullshit claims. Well, it was Scott Perry of Pennsylvania who found the environmental lawyer inside the Department of Justice who was down to be the guy who would say that Trump's election fraud claims were true. Scott Perry also objected to the counting of his own state's electors, and he did so after the riot. And then in the years that followed, he obstructed the January 6th committee's investigation. And then finally, you're going to hear a reference to Twitter. And you should know that Elon Musk took over Twitter on October 27th, 2022. And so when Jack Smith talks about Twitter, he is in fact talking about it in the Elon Musk X age. All right. I think you've got all the knowledge that you need now to be in the know during this testimony. And so now let's get into the testimony. The first voice you are going to hear is Jack Smith. The members of Congress are all off camera. And while I do know a lot of their voices, it really doesn matter who they are And you can probably guess which party they in based on their questions And so now let get started with Jack Smith bottom line from his opening statement The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. We made clear in our indictment that there are proper ways to dispute an election. And asking for an audit, which President Trump did, and I believe in only two of the states that were in question, that's a way you can do that. Filing lawsuits, completely legal and proper way to do that. But in this case, those lawsuits were part of our proof that put President Trump and his co-conspirators on notice. The suits, the results, and the things that court said in finding those suits without merit were one component of evidence that put him on notice that these allegations were false. Also, there were instances where there were protectual lawsuits. There was one lawsuit, for example, that was filed in New Mexico minutes before the deadline so they could say there was a dispute in New Mexico so they could proceed forward with the fake electors ballot. There was another lawsuit in Georgia where one of the co-conspirators explicitly said in an email, we're on notice that the things in this lawsuit aren't accurate. So we shouldn't have the president sign a certification of this lawsuit. And then they played with the language a little and had him sign a certification nonetheless. And so these lawsuits, well, filing a lawsuit absolutely clearly is something you can do. They were probative evidence of the criminal intent in this case for those limited reasons I just suggested. I believe earlier, and we're turning back to January 6th, the conspiracy leading up the events on January 6th. I believe earlier you said that the reason why, and I'm paraphrasing here, that you charged the president was that he was the most culpable person related to the crime of attempting to criminally overturn the 2020 election. Do you recall saying worse to that effect earlier today? Yes, and because we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt and met the requirements and the federal principles of prosecution. And I believe you said some of the false claims he was putting out created a certain level of distrust about the validity of the election of 2020. Do you recall saying something like that as well? Correct. That's alleged in the indictment. Great. So I want to start with how that level of distrust was created. In your report, you say, and this is a quote, the through line of all Mr. Trump's criminal efforts was deceit, knowingly false claims of fraud. Can you generally describe some of these knowingly false claims of fraud that were spread after the 2020 election? Sure. There's a number of them. Part of the explanation is why they're false. And so, you know, just off the top of my head, an example is he was on notice in this election that in Pennsylvania, for example, that he would be ahead in the vote count for a period of time. And then when the mail-in ballots were counted, his lead would dissipate. He chose to represent that phenomena that he'd been briefed on that was normal course of an election that all sides knew that that was going to be. he chose to present that as evidence of fraud. And to people who are not maybe as informed as him or informed as his campaign managers who told him these things, that's the sort of thing that creates distrust. There were fraud claims in Michigan, Georgia, where he was specifically disabused by people he trusted, by political allies, by the people when he chose to call them who are best situated to know. In Georgia, I'm thinking of the Secretary of State. he reflexively rejected those things and continued to state false things after he'd been told that repeatedly that they weren't true. And why was it important? It probably goes to the mindset, but why was it important of all of these repeat statements from individuals that Donald Trump's claims were untrue? How did that play into your overall investigative findings? Well, I think the pattern and the depth of the pattern and the length of the pattern was pretty damning evidence that he knew these things were false. He only brought fraud claims that involved states that he'd lost. He only approached people generally who had party allegiance to him. When he was told that a fraud claim wasn't true, he didn't stop making it. Another example I can give is that Sidney Powell, who's alleged as one of the co-conspirators, was part of his team at the beginning of this conspiracy. Shortly after, she began making statements that really nobody could credit, that were facially false. And at some point, Giuliani made a statement that she wasn't on the legal team anymore. And Trump, at one point, was on a call, President Trump, where he basically, if I recollect it right, he muted the call and said she was crazy. But then after that point, he continued to promote her fraud claims and lawsuits. He considered putting her as a special counsel, even though he'd admitted, you know, he used the word crazy. And the statement she was making could by any reasonable person be viewed as true. And so I think that sort of like claims that were so outlandish and so just fantastical, continuing to push those sort of claims after they've been disabused with strong evidence of our case. You know, people come into the Oval Office. I mean, the president isn't conducting his own due diligence. He is receiving people in his office that are telling him these things, whether it be Rudy Giuliani, whether it be John Eastman, whether it be Jeffrey Clark, whether it be Sidney Powell. and you know for the most part he is just receiving this information and you know his statements are almost just regurgitating what what what these people have told him I mean isn't that the case no and in fact one of the strengths of our case and why we felt we had such strong proof is our witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the president, they were going to be political allies. We had numerous witnesses who would say, I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for President Trump. I wanted him to win. The Speaker of the House in Arizona, the Speaker of the House in Michigan. We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump, who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government in a legal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party. And so the president got information from people he trusted on other issues. He rejected it whenever it didn't fit him standing in office. And there was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in that would mean he could no longer be president, he would reject it. And any theory, no matter how far fetched, no matter how not based in law that would indicate that he could, he latched on to that. And we had we were confident that we had very strong proof of that pattern. He also, I would just add, very consciously did not try to reach out to the sort of people who have the most expertise on these issues. He reached out to people who he thought could back him up. Did you, did President Trump ever acknowledge, and I believe you talked about it in this paragraph, but did President Trump ever acknowledge that he knew that he had actually lost the election to President Biden? Yeah, so this paragraph references different statements that he made in the presence of other people. One is that it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election, you still fight like hell. And then the other was, can you believe I lost to this effing guy? So referring to Joe Biden. From a legal perspective, this is really quite clear. I think all of us want to make sure people's First Amendment rights are not abridged in a way that they shouldn't be. I think I certainly feel that way. I'm sure everybody in this room feels that way. But there is a very clear carve out for fraud in our case law. Supreme Court, I think there's one case is the Stevens case talks about that and there are others. And so when you're committing a fraud, meaning you're not just saying something that's untrue, you're saying it knowing it's untrue or with reckless disregard for the truth, that's not protected by the First Amendment. People commit crimes all the time using words. When someone commits a fraud, an investment fraud, or someone commits an affinity fraud where you try to gain someone's trust, get them to trust you as a general matter, and then you rip them off, defraud them. That's all words, but it's not protected by the First Amendment. And in a lot of ways, this case was an affinity fraud. The president had people who he had built up, who had built up trust in him, including people in his own party. And he preyed on that. Some people wouldn't do it. Others would. We're lucky that enough wouldn't, that the election was upheld. uh well what happened with the elector plan was when they came up with the idea of having these fake electors there were certain electors who would just not put up with it thomas marino i think he was from pennsylvania is an example of that and so as a result and he wasn't the only one in the scheme generally as a result they had to replace electors and again just to keep in mind all the electors we're talking about here are people who supported Donald Trump. These are people who signed up and said, I want to be an elector for Donald Trump. And these people, when they stepped out, they had to replace them. And part of what's required under the Electoral Account Act is that there are procedures for doing that. And they couldn't follow those procedures because they were replacing people without the consent of the governor and things of that nature. Also in Pennsylvania, I believe it was Pennsylvania, there was a call where there's a text of this where electors were pushing back on this and also wanting to be covered if there was liability and to be indemnified or things of that nature. and they wanted like statements in their certificates, basically saying you're only going to use this if you win these lawsuits. And there was a text chain with some of the people who are carrying out this scheme for President Trump, basically ended with these people should be shot. And then we can't let this snowball like this, otherwise we're going to have to do this in all the other states. Again, your recollection. I'm sorry, I don't think he said these people should be shot. I think they said whoever put this slate together should be shot. I think that's what it said. On November 20th, Mr. Trump calls Republican legislators from Michigan to the White House and urged them to remove the Biden electors and replace them with electors that would elect Trump. they, subsequent to that, made a statement that there was no evidence for that and went back and the electors were certified as the votes have indicated they should be. Subsequent to that in December, there was an effort to create fake electors. And in fact, on December 14th, when the electoral colleges meet and all the state legislatures, there were 16 fake electors in the basement in Michigan. And four of them tried to get into the Capitol to overturn the election. Did you look at that whole phenomenon? We did. and what was your conclusion what was the uh how would that have played if at all in your prosecution well i think i think that event you're referring to and i think we interviewed some of the law enforcement officers who were there that day when they were trying to get in what they were doing and what the email traffic among co-conspirators showed is they were trying to mimic the procedures of that are required by the electoral count act but they couldn't mimic them. And if I recall, the email traffic on this started with, we have to follow these procedures. And then when it became clear they couldn't follow all the procedures, it was like, well, do the best you can, follow as many as you can. And so I think if I do recall certain states, it may have been Michigan, that the electors had to convene in a certain government location. And so as a result, I believe there may have been a state official involved in trying to get them into, if I'm thinking of the right situation, get them in there. So again, they could mimic the procedures, even though they were not the electors that represented the will of the people, how the vote was actually counted. The question ultimately is, it seems like the alternate electors matter, it seems like it was subject to a lot of starts and stops. And I wanted to know whether after you became the special counsel in November of 2022, were there any starts and stops or was that full speed ahead on that probe? That was a part of the case that we investigated from the time I started until the indictment. It ended up being one of the most powerful parts of the case. We had electors who were going to be witnesses. I referenced earlier a congressman from Pennsylvania who had said this was an attempt to overthrow the government. We had other electors who said, I was told that this would only be used if we won in litigation. And obviously the record in our case showed that the co-conspirators were trying to use their elector votes despite that fact. And again, this goes to the point I made earlier. These are people who wanted to be electors for Donald Trump. They are not people who were opposed to him. They were not people who are from a different political party or enemies. And so the fact that we had elector witnesses like that who felt either they'd been misled or they felt that this whole effort It was it was an attempt to overthrow the government. I thought that was pretty powerful evidence. And so we moved that part of the investigation forward with the rest of the case. When you're talking about the fake electors, you mentioned a congressman from Pennsylvania who I guess might have been a witness who might have pushed back on the fake electors scheme being legal. Do you recall saying that earlier? I do. Who was that member? My recollection, I think his name was Thomas Moreno. He was a former U.S. attorney and he was a former, he's a Republican, former congressman. And he had agreed to be, and this is before the election, agreed to be an elector for Donald Trump. And when he was presented with this idea of the fake elector scheme, my recollection of his reaction was that this was an attempt to overthrow the government and it was illegal. What did Donald Trump want Vice President Pence to do to overturn the election results? Well, ultimately, he wanted him to just hand him the election to say he won. There were different proposals that President Trump and his co-conspirators put to Mike Pence. But in essence, he wanted Mike Pence to impose his own choice about who should be president over the will of the American people who voted in the election. Was one of those ways that Donald Trump tried to pressure Mr. Pence was to reject the lawful electors certificates of their votes during the electoral counting process? Was that one of the ways that you recall? That's correct. How did Mr. Pence respond back to Mr. Trump's pressure about rejecting the lawful electors certificates? I think Mike Pence, Vice President Mike Pence, falls into the category that I described before. He did something that was very hard to do. He went against his party. He paid a price for it. But I think, again, someone like that putting country over party, I think he would have been an effective witness. He did not agree to go along. The individual who worked for Mork Meadows by the name of Cassidy Hutchison was a, you know, she was a star witness for the January 6th committee proceedings. and she made some real outlandish claims that, for example, one of them was that President Trump tried to take control of the wheel of the suburban that he was being driven in. Is that an allegation that you're familiar with? The circumstances regarding President Trump getting in the Secret Service vehicle after the Olympics. Yes, I am. Okay. And what did your offices, you know, did you evaluate that claim? We did. Okay. And what was your determination? Ms. Hutchinson, regarding that particular claim, was a second or even third-hand witness. She had heard other people talk about that. And so we went to, we interviewed, I think the people she talked to, and then we also interviewed, my recollection is correct, officers who were there and including the officer who was in the car. All right. That officer, if my recollection is correct, and I want to make sure I'm right about this, said that President Trump was very angry and wanted to go to the Capitol. But the the version of events that he explained was not the same as what Cassidy Hutchinson said she heard from somebody secondhand. That's correct. People with different views than you can say the special counsel's office is only interested in prosecuting President Trump because an election is coming up. And he is he's going to be the Republican nominee. And the special counsel works for a Democratic president. The special counsel works for a Democratic attorney general. And so the special counsel's laser focus on President Trump is simply to prevent him from, you know, either being the party's nominee or being a successful party's nominee or at the very least, keeping him off the campaign trail. How do you respond to that? All of that is false. and I'll say a few things. The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol as part of this case does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit. So did you develop evidence that President Trump, you know, was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th? So our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him. But you don't have any evidence that he instructed people to crash and crash the Capitol, do you? As I said, our evidence is that he, in the weeks leading up to January 6th created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren't true. He made false statements to state legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts, and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them. And then he directed them to the Capitol. Once they were at the Capitol. And once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question, in my mind, endangered the life of his own vice president. And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it. And then even afterwards, he directed co-conspirators to make calls to members of Congress people who were his political allies to further delay the proceedings Mark Meadows when we interviewed him he referenced the fact that that afternoon Chairman Jordan had been in contact with the White House And like Congressman McCarthy's contact with the White House, it was relevant because, and again, Meadows stated this, that these were supporters. These were credible people that the president relied on. And what I recall was Meadows stating that I've never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything. And the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything than what it was. And it goes back to that sort of information from someone who is a credible source to the president, proving that that actually happened and that there's actually a record of that call and exactly when it happened and what actions happened after that or didn't happen after that. Extremely probative to our case. Those records were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation. We had evidence from the Department of Justice officials that Donald Trump said to them, just say the election is corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. I think given that was the perspective that Donald Trump had, our view is that the case we would have presented at trial would have been Donald Trump preying on the party allegiance of people in his party. And people like the vice president didn't agree to that. People like the elector from Pennsylvania I mentioned didn't agree to that. People like the Speaker of the House in Arizona didn't agree to that. But the extent to which those contacts were happening was relevant to our investigation. With the toll record subpoena, maybe just walk us through what you get. You get the incoming telephone numbers that call a particular cell phone, right? That's correct. And you get the time that the call occurred. Yes. And you get the length of time of the call? I believe that's correct. Okay. And you also get the list of numbers that the upcoming, you get the incoming and the outgoing, right? That's correct. And is there any other information that the toll record subpoenas provide? That is what I understand is the major thing you're seeking to get with the toll records. Okay. And when you get one of these subpoenas, you just send it to the carrier, correct? It doesn't involve the judge. The subpoena? Yes, that's correct. Okay. It doesn't require a judge. The only time a judge gets involved is if you're seeking a nondisclosure order, is that right? If it's a subpoena for toll records, that's correct. Okay. And do you always seek the, you know, is it the practice of your team to always seek the NDO? Well, in this particular case, there was a grave risk of obstruction of justice, given the obstructive conduct of President Trump as his step forth. For example, in the indictment in Florida, President Trump tried to obstruct that case in multiple ways. As I mentioned earlier in the litigation we had regarding 57.2, we had numerous instances of him attempting to, in our view, intimidate witnesses or keep them from cooperating. And so given that reality, we did seek nondisclosure orders for the total record subpoenas you're talking about. As it relates to members of Congress and senators and their staff, definitely their staff as well. I mean, that presents concern that we don't have an opportunity to, you know, quash the subpoena. How does your office deal with that prospect? Well, the nature and I should also be clear that when you're getting an NDO, say for toll records, it's not based on an allegation that necessarily the person who has the phone number is personally going to obstruct the investigation. It's that if this gets out, people could obstruct the investigation. So I want to make that clear. Second point would be you are correct in that inherent in getting an NDO is that at various times, people who might have arguments about why to quash a subpoena won't be able to make those arguments. In our investigation, this came up with Twitter. We wanted to get records from Twitter regarding President Trump. Twitter, and we applied for an NDO from the judge, Twitter refused to provide the records unless they could tell President Trump about that. And so we had litigation with this in the district court. the district court agreed that there are situations and there it was that twitter argued that president trump should be able to assert executive privilege over the the records we wanted as a result of that litigation the district court found that we it was proper of us given the level of obstruction in this case to get that ndo that decision by the district court was upheld by the Court of Appeals. And then that decision by the Court of Appeals, Twitter, my recollection is Twitter sought to get the Supreme Court to overrule that and Supreme Court refused to. And so I tell you all that to say. And then you find them, right? Well, actually that's before they, they refused to comply even after she ruled and she set a schedule of fines. And so part of the appeal was. You sought the fines, right? Absolutely. Yes. But the point of telling you that was that inherent in an NDO is it may be that certain arguments about why a subpoena should be quashed can't be made. So that happens. And I think there's a parallel in those situations. When you sought these non-disclosure orders, the judge didn't know it was a member of Congress. Is that correct? I don't think we identified that because I don't think that was department policy at the time. Did you seek search warrants for the content of any, you know, of the telephone calls or, or, you know, the content relies mostly to text messages? Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members? From members? No, I don't recall. It was just records. Correct. Okay. Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Before I was special counsel, the people who were working on one of the investigations did get a search warrant for the cell phone of one congressman. Congressman Perry. Yes. But by not telling the members, you know, by going through this NDO process, I mean, they didn't have an opportunity to litigate the speech or debate concerns. That's correct. And that's unfair in our view. I understand your position. And as I said before, we respect the speech or debate clause. I'm aware of no case in the Supreme Court or the D.C. Circuit that says that getting non-content toll records from a third party violates the speech or debate clause, particularly where. And I think an important point here is these records were not sought to use against members of Congress who were targets. The investigation we were conducting was of President Trump and his co-conspirators who were all obviously not members of Congress, but also private, not even members of the White House. Let's fast forward to say this would have gone to a trial. How would you, in your experience, have used this type of evidence in a trial? Oh, it would have been relevant in a number of ways. So it would have been relevant, you could put it together in a summary chart to show the series of contacts. And it could be relevant to show the campaign that evening to reach out to senators to delay the proceedings. It could also be relevant to show, for example, on the afternoon of January 6th of notice that there was notice that violence was going on. Congressmen, both Republican and Democrat, and the vice president were in danger. That text records would make that incontrovertible that those calls actually happened. They'd also be relevant for examining witnesses, whether it would be a prosecution witness who might not remember exactly when a call happened, or a defense witness, for example, if any of the co-conspirators were to testify, which, as I mentioned before, was something we would have welcomed, we would have had toll records to question them about the calls that they made, the calls that they received, things of that nature, which, in my experience, can be very effective. An example I could give you is on January 6th, we had information from Mark Meadows, who was present for a call where Congressman McCarthy was asking for help. He was asking the president to come to his aid while the Capitol was being seized. Getting the exact toll records for when that happened was relevant for our investigation, both to question other witnesses about, so we had an accurate timeline, and also to corroborate that the call happened at approximately the time witnesses said it happened. But it's pretty significant to subpoena of the Speaker of the House's toll records, right? We followed department policy, and we followed all legal requirements in getting those records. You know, to get the information you're looking for, nobody disputed the Speaker and the President were having communications on January 6th. So one way you could have gotten that information is you could have asked the Speaker's lawyer to look at his phone records and to give you the information you needed, right? Well, you say now that nobody's disputing, but my experience in criminal investigations is that people often at trial dispute things that you never thought were going to be in dispute during the investigation. And so when I conduct a criminal investigation, I don't assume there will be no disputes. having a record that is a hard record about a time in the timeline of that afternoon was particularly important because that violence started the president refused to stop it he endangered the life of his vice president then he's getting calls and not just not calls from from democrats not calls from people he doesn't know calls from people he trusts calls from people he relies on and still refuses um to come to the aid of the people at the capital So that's very important evidence for criminal intent in our case. Right. But you could ask Elliot Burke for that information, the speaker's lawyer. You could ask Elliot Burke to say, can you get us the speaker's phone records for this time? And he probably would have said, of course, in avoiding a toll record subpoena. And your question? Why didn't you do that? We got these records in a manner that was consistent with the law and consistent with department policy. There's nothing improper about how we got these records. In your view, who needs to be held to account on these toll records? Well, certainly my office did everything consistent with the law and department regulations at the time. As I think we referenced earlier this morning, the department regulations on this, since we issued these toll records, has changed. I believe now, and I believe this is in 2024, if we were to make an NDO application to a judge, we would need to identify if they were members of Congress. And so to the extent you think something needs to be changed, that change happened. But that was not required at the time that we issued these subpoenas. We, in our conclusions, cited a number of statutes, which ended up, I think, being part of your investigation, including conspiracy to obstruct a federal proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, false statements, and so on. But you added something which I think was very interesting, which was a conspiracy to violate voting rights, which is something that we hadn't done. And I wonder if you would take a moment to expound on why you thought you had sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a conspiracy to violate the voting rights of the people. Sure. The right to vote in a presidential election is one of the most sacred rights that American has. Americans have. And in this particular case, we had strong evidence that the defendants in this case sought to interfere with, obstruct, injure that right. We had evidence in just a couple examples where President Trump was asking local officials to find 11,000 votes. When you find 11,000 votes, you're deluding other people's votes. we had evidence that they were targeting certain states and particularly certain parts of certain states generally urban parts of states to have those votes thrown out with no factual basis whatsoever i believe we cited this in our final report but there's even statements of the co-conspirators in this case at least one i'm coming to mind now you know specifically saying we want to get rid of these votes. We want to subtract them. And diluting the vote count in that way, there's strong precedent for that being a violation of the statute that we charge. Didn't you charge any of those co-conspirators? As we stated in the final report, we analyzed the evidence against different co-conspirators. My staff determined that we did have evidence to charge people at a certain point in time. I had not made final determinations about that at the time that President Trump won re-election, meaning that our office was going to be closed down. But, you know, surely one of the fundamental principles of prosecutorial work is you work from the bottom up and you try to get as many fact witnesses to to work with you. And a lot of times those fact witnesses have criminal liability. And a lot of times those lower fact witnesses, the smaller fish, are almost always there. They're either prosecuted or they they are given an immunity because they fear they're going to be prosecuted. But here you didn't you know, you kept laser focused only on President Trump. Two points. One, as I said, we were considering prosecutions of these people. And I think I don't want to say what the ultimate conclusion would have that would have been. But that was something that was being considered. The second thing I think to understand contextually is this was a case where the issue was how to present it in a concise way. We had so many witnesses, again, so many witnesses who were allies of President Trump available to us to testify. This was not a case where we needed more witnesses. It was a case where we needed to be able to present the case in a streamlined way because there was so much evidence. Did you you sought gag orders in both the Florida case and the D.C. case? Is that correct? We sought an order in the D.C. case under rule. I think it's 57.2. And we did that because Donald Trump was making statements that were endangering witnesses, intimidating witnesses, endangering members of my staff, endangering court staff. As you might remember, right around when the indictment was released, he issued a tweet saying, if you come after me, I'll come after you. he called in a tweet he called general mark milley a traitor and and mentioned that that what he'd done in olden times people would be put to death as a result of the things he was saying the judge in this case received vile death threats and and with respect to the dc uh both the district court and the court of appeals a panel of judges found that his actions were in fact causing what he said they caused. They were causing witnesses to be intimidated and endangering people. And I believe it was the Court of Appeal also found that in addition to intimidating or chilling witnesses who existed, it would chill witnesses who had not yet come forward because they'd afraid that they would be next. So yes, we did file that. And I make no apologies for that. So when we got the immunity decision. We had a series of decisions to make. The first was to look at our evidence and see, do we still have a case here? Do we still have admissible evidence that would allow us to proceed to trial? So that's what we did first. Once we determined that we did have that evidence, the next thing we determined is, do we need to supersede the indictment? And because there was evidence before the grand jury that the Supreme Court had clearly said was immune, we determined that we needed to supersede the indictment. And I'm sorry I'm being long, but I think the context will help. Once we determined that, we had to make sure that our conduct in going forward with an indictment and everything after complied with the election year sensitivities policy. And to do that, we consulted with public integrity on drafts of the indictment on our plan forward. And as we set forth in the final report, Ping concurred that we had complied with that policy. And I would just add that policy does not stop prosecutors from trying their cases in court. This was about him as a candidate trying to say he won an election, he didn't win. And so having to frame this in that manner, obviously it limited some of the evidence. That's why we had to supersede the indictment. But I don't think it was an exoneration because I still believed that there was substantial evidence that would allow us to prove the case beyond reason without. On the 17th of October, Mr. Trump filed a motion to delay public disclosure of our appendix to the brief, meaning the actual evidence. Sorry to the page again? Yeah, sure. It's 107. I'll let you get to it. 107, footnote 258. They filed a motion to delay the appendix, meaning the evidence, until after he filed his own appendix, which would have been November 14th, well after the election. so that both appendices will be released simultaneously after the election. He filed that motion before obtaining our position, so we emailed the court's chambers, copying defense, informing the court that we did not object to that procedure. We did not object to our evidence being, in essence, embargoed from the public until after the election. So, again, I think that's pretty strong evidence that we were not trying to have an effect on the election. Notwithstanding the fact that it's 165 pages. So there you have it. And if you want more, as I was recording this episode, I found out that Jack Smith will testify in a public hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on January 22nd. But I feel like I know all I really need to know. I know that I find it so rich that members of Congress are so offended that their call records were accessed using the USA Freedom Act process, which the rest of us are subject to. And I really love the part where they wind about how unfair it is that they don't get the chance to challenge the secret subpoenas. Well, that's what happens to us innocent Americans every single day. But instead of fixing it for all of us, Republican senators gave themselves and just themselves, they left out the members of the House, but they gave themselves a payday for the injustice that they themselves caused. And I hope Republican senators are punished for this on election day this year, because they clearly don't think that they should be subject to the same laws as we are. And this is just one piece of evidence in addition to their total abdication of their responsibility to oversee the Trump administration's lawlessness in this Congress so far. Republicans in general just seem to think that the laws do not apply to them. And bigger picture, listening to the prosecutor who compiled the case against Donald Trump for his conspiracy to commit fraud against this nation to remain in power, listening to how sure the prosecutor was that he had a solid case, I'm angry all over again that the United States will never get that trial. Because it's one thing for Donald Trump and his co-conspirators to get away with all of it legally, but they also seem to have gotten away with it in the court of public opinion. Because the fake electors conspiracy, I just don't think that's understood by the American people. Now, a good Netflix documentary could solve that, and I hope that someday sooner than later that it will. But for now, he really got away with that. Just like he gotten away with all of the crimes that he committed over the course of his life You know Donald Trump allegedly broke contract laws by refusing to pay people as a young businessman and he was convicted of faking business records Donald Trump was also found in another civil case to have diverted money donated to his charity to his own election campaign. And then there was the Trump University. His university had to pay out a large settlement after it was accused by many people of basically being one big fraud factory. And then, of course, a civil jury found Donald Trump liable for rape. And there have been dozens of similar accusations, including some truly horrific ones in the Epstein files. I really hate to think what's lurking in the files that they are still hiding from us. And then, of course, there's the classified documents case and the election fraud cases that Jack Smith will never get the chance to try because somehow 77 million of us were conned into empowering Donald Trump again. which I do think we have to keep in mind. 77 million Americans is about 22% of the total U.S. population. It's not even close to half of us that support this, but that's all it takes in a nation where so many of us think it's a righteous action to sit on the sidelines of elections. And right now I am just stunned by the level of lawlessness of this administration. But what did we expect? The current president of the United States is an unpunished criminal. He's never known a punishment that wasn't financial. And when a guy is filthy rich, financial fines don't really hurt. Donald Trump thinks he's above the law because so far he has been. And the Republicans in Congress are helping him keep that status. And I'm angry that our nation of laws, that they've never really applied to this guy. And I don't understand why. But that doesn't really matter now. What matters now is that he needs to be stopped. We're at the point where Donald Trump is toppling other governments, although doing so like an idiot, because in Venezuela, President Maduro's partners, they're still in charge. So, you know, what was that? But the point is that Donald Trump is violently overthrowing foreign governments. Donald Trump is ordering the murder of random people at sea. And Donald Trump is allowing his lawless agents, the thugs known as ICE, to murder us now with impunity, American citizens. We all saw the video of Renee Good being shot and killed in Minneapolis. And according to our vice president, who gave a press conference about that shooting, the ICE agents have absolute immunity. The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job. And that attitude comes right from his boss, from the president who told the New York Times that only this can stop him. Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to? Yeah, there's one thing, my own morality, my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop. But that's not true. There are people who can stop him and J.D. Vance and that frozen fish-faced monster, Christy Noem, and everyone else in the Trump administration who think that the law does not apply to them. The people who can stop them are the 535 members of Congress. And right now the Republicans are choosing to let the lawlessness go unchecked. But this is an election year and we are not powerless. We can remove the Republicans in Congress from power should they continue to allow this violent lawlessness. And we don't have to wait until November. The path to stop Donald Trump and all of the people that he has empowered runs through your member of Congress's office, especially if you are represented by a Republican. You can call them every day. Even better, you can show up to their office and be nice to the staff because you want the staff to like you and to report your thoughts to the member of Congress. But the staff members keep tallies of what people are contacting them about every day. And if every day their job is taking a tally of a nonstop barrage of calls demanding that the Trump administration be investigated and the lawless members of it, including Donald Trump himself, be removed from power, the members of Congress will fear for their own jobs and be politically forced to act. You have the power to make that happen because you have power over Congress and Congress has power over the Trump administration. And so if the events of this year already feel overwhelming, you can act. You can contact Congress. It does make a difference. And if you are in an all-blue district, you must know someone in your life in a red or semi-red district. Give them a call and see if you can convince them to call their member of Congress. See if you can get their permission to call on their behalf. All you need is their zip code and their name and you can pretend to be them. It's probably not the most ethical thing to do, but these are the times we're in. But your time is best spent. not following ICE agents around and risking your life by harassing them on the job, but your time is best spent by verbally harassing Republican members of Congress. The problem that we have is that we have criminals in power, and Congress can remove the criminals. So, 2026 is off to a hell of a start, isn't it? for the first time in a couple of years, I took two weeks off where I just, I completely checked out of Congress and it was really, really nice. But to come back to this level of chaos and awfulness, it's, at least I have you guys because we know we are not alone in all this. We are doing it together. So I do want to take a minute here to thank our executive producers. But I also want to thank everyone that had emailed me over the course of the last few months I went back into my emails, which I have been ignoring for months In fact, I can tell you exactly when I stopped reading my emails. It was september 11th 2025 That was the date of charlie kirk's shooting And I don't know how much I talked about it on this show But if you listen to we're not wrong my other podcast that I host with justin robert young and andrew heaton We talked about it quite a bit but that murder really messed me up because it was a podcaster who was doing a live event who was killed. And then the reaction to it was he deserved it. And it's really sad, predictable, but sad to see a lot of those same people that were disgusted by that reaction. Because Charlie Kirk, I don't care what words came out of his mouth. He didn't deserve to get shot in the neck and killed while at work. Renee Good didn't deserve what she got either, but a lot of the same people who were upset about the reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder don't seem to be as upset about Renee Good. So the hypocrisy is, it's stunning, although not surprising. It does seem like some people in this country will just defend Donald Trump no matter what they do. And I know that a lot of them, at least on the airways, have financial success because of it, because of their, loyalty to Donald Trump in defense of him. I understand why it happens, but they're hurting the country in the process. So it's just gross. But anyway, I stopped going into my emails for a while, even though I knew a lot of them would be nice. But that shooting made me really think about the danger inherent in what I am doing with this podcast. I mean, this episode. I'd be lying if I didn't have about five minutes. It didn't take long for me to decide to do it. But I'm flying back from Europe. I've been in Europe for three months. My visa is about to run out. I'm flying back from Europe next week. And I'm going to have to go through customs and border patrol. And I do know that the law right now seems to be applied to people based on their loyalty to Donald Trump. And all you have to do is look at my podcast and see this episode and the January 6th episode. And if they're compiling a list of low-level podcasters, although I must say, I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm actually one of the most successful podcasters in the world. My numbers are not huge like Joe Rogan's, but I've been in the top 95% of podcasts for well over a decade. This is not a small podcast as far as podcasts are concerned. I've been in the top 5% for many, many years, which means that if they are compiling a list of people that are speaking publicly against Donald Trump, I do think my episodes, this one being included, especially with the comments that I made at the end of the show, they could get me in some trouble. But as you can see, I'm doing it anyway. But doing that, seeing podcasters being murdered and seeing the murder be celebrated, it really screwed me up. And just the way that I saw the murder happen. I was on the air on We're Not Wrong. And it was at the end of the show. In fact, Andrew had already left the show. It was just Justin and I. If you watch the video of it, I have my feet up on the desk. We're just kind of hanging out at that point when Justin got a whole bunch of texts. And we both opened our... Justin was on the computer. I was on my phone. But we opened up Twitter and I was checking Twitter to see if he was alive. And the video of his shooting popped up and I saw it and I wasn't looking for that. I had some PTSD. I think that's the only way to describe it because for, I mean, it was at least six weeks and especially in the first three weeks or so of it, I was replaying it in my head over and over and over and over and over again. So yeah, that was really ugly. I'm feeling much, much better now. I don't have that running over and over again in my head. But I tell you all this because I just kind of stopped reading my emails. I just let the emails collect. And so when I came back to work in January, I read all of your emails from September 11th on forward. I did not have time to respond to almost any of them. So if you didn't hear a response, I apologize, but I did read them all. And I just want to thank you for all of your messages, especially those after Charlie Kirk shooting were so supportive. And I really appreciated the people who said how much you would care if anything happened to me. And I also got a lot of messages about episodes that I've done with interesting information. And even though I don't really respond that much because I do get a lot of messages, I just, I enjoyed reading your thoughts and I appreciate you sending them. So I just wanted to say thank you. And I'm hoping to read my emails more often now, but in general, I only check my emails about once a month because all the time I spend reading emails is time that I'm not spending reading bills and producing episodes. And so, yeah, it's about a once a month thing if you don't hear from me. That's why. But one thing that I am very excited to tell you about, which was in my emails and is now sitting here in my executive producer list, is that right at the end of the year, an anonymous producer submitted enough money to buy four executive producer credits for citizens detained. And I've mentioned it a few times, but 2025 was a rough year for the podcast. We had a lot of people cancel their support for the show. All of them, except for one that I can think of, was because of financial reasons. So I'm looking in the Patreon. I've been seeing a lot of people saying that they're really sorry that they still want to support the show, that they'll be back when the finances get better. We've had another cancellation wave at the beginning of January. And I know I reevaluate my finances in the beginning of January. All of my production costs went up while my income went down in 2025. So it's like, I absolutely get it. But to get these four executive producer credits right at the end of the year, I want this anonymous producer to know how big a difference you made in my psyche. I was so excited for that. And actually, if I'm going to tell you the God's honest truth, there were happy tears. There were definitely happy tears. You made a big difference for me. You also made a big difference for the episode that you picked, which was Citizens Detained. That was about US citizens that are being detained by the Trump administration. There was testimony in a hearing that was not allowed by Republicans in Congress. So it wasn't an official hearing. The Democrats did it without Republicans' participation, but we got testimony from US citizens who were essentially kidnapped by ICE and held against their will. And they shouldn't have been. So it's their testimony. And I think that's an important episode. And so you said this is for four executive producers towards episode 329. Everyone needs to hear this. We are all these victims. I agree with that message too, because I know that a lot of those people were from Southern California. I know exactly some of the roads where this happened to them and my family and friends and myself. We drive around Southern California, wrong place, wrong time, can happen to any of us. And so I agree. I love that you said we are all these victims because it really can happen to any of us at this point if ICE is in your city. And so your four credits is going to put Citizens Detained on the front page of the most valuable episodes list. It is now tied for fourth place. And that was all you, my friend. So thank you for putting it that high up on the list. I also agree that that one, it's a really important episode to listen to, even though it's depressing and dark. And especially with everything that's happening in Minneapolis at this point, I don't think it's going to be all that surprising. But anyway, thank you so much for putting those credits on that episode. I appreciate you so much. I also appreciate Hank Barta. I've appreciated Hank Barta for many, many years. You have been a producer of this show forever, and you just got an executive producer credit put on the One Big Beautiful Bill of Dangerous Law episode. And Hank also sent in a message. He said, I find it difficult to choose episodes to boost this way. Every episode Jen chooses is important. This one got to me, however. The mention of the cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have just come up in that Russ Vought intends to eliminate NOA entirely. Like when Trump suggested we stop counting COVID cases to reduce the patient count, not studying climate change will not make it go away. Worse, it will leave us less able to respond to it. Worse yet, it will stymie any efforts to prevent further climate change. This stick-your-head-in-the-sand approach to the problems we face is infuriating. There's lots of value in that episode, more than I can touch on here, but the NOAA elimination is one that pushed this boomer over the edge. Thank you so much for supporting that episode. I think there is so much important information in there, but that's a good point. I actually, until you brought it up, I forgot that there was any threat to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I will say this about their plots. They want to privatize, or at least have said that they want to privatize the reporting of the weather, but they don't seem to realize that outlets like the Weather Channel and these private people that they think they would be doing favors for are using the information that comes from the government. So I don't know if that plan is just half-assed because they don't understand how the private weather forecasting system works and how much it relies on the government. And I haven't heard any follow-up on that. That doesn't mean that it's not going to happen, but I just don't know if this is a plan that is real or if that's just a thing that they say, and then the details make it a whole lot harder when they try and put it in the action. I don't really know. But yes, thank you for putting that back on our radar. I also think that would be tragic. And I also think that if there's something that's going to stop them, it's actually going to be the fact that weather in particular is something that kills people in red states. So I'm thinking of Tornado Alley. A hurricane is pretty big. And obviously, the track of a hurricane really matters. But the track of a tornado has to be precise down to a specific house. And so if you're in Oklahoma and the Republicans who you've empowered are the ones who are going to make it harder to figure out where the tornado is going, there's going to be pushback to that idea. So there are some forces that I think would stop that particular plan within the Republican Party, but these people are chaotic. So that's what's made this job really hard for me, not only in the last year, but also in the first Trump administration is that I've always called Congress my window to the world. So it's like anytime I've had a question about what's going on, I watch the hearings and I learn a lot and you can see what they're talking about for the predictions of the future. In normal times, there would be hearings about Venezuela and we would get answers that way. But right now, our policies seem to be constructed on the whims of individuals. I actually think the Venezuela plan has more to do with Marco Rubio than it does with Donald Trump. The Greenland thing though, that's all Donald Trump, perhaps Stephen Miller. It's so personality-based that it's hard to use Congress as the crystal ball that I used to. So, I mean, I say this about NOAA, but with these people, who knows? But yeah, thank you for putting a credit on that episode. And actually you are not the only one because Lisa Leslie has also put a credit on the One Big Beautiful Bill, A Dangerous Law episode. And so what that does, And thank you, Leslie, for doing that. I actually think that is also one of the most important episodes I've done in a long time because that is a very impactful bill and we should be voting based on what was in it. So your two executive producer credits are now going to tie the Big Beautiful Bill episode for first place. For most valuable episode, it is now tied with War Money, which is the episode that gives you the history of Israel and what was going on with our money, supporting Israel's actions in Gaza. That one was produced in early 2024. But yeah, so one more credit will put the Big Beautiful Bill episode firmly into number one, if anyone is interested in doing that. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I know that this is not the happiest podcast. These are not the happiest times. I'm hoping we'll get back to happy times and someday we'll see Congress make improvements that help us. But until then, I do appreciate you staying informed. I know that it's not easy. So also producing this podcast is not easy. And so I could not do it without Claire, who is my production and research assistant. I also want to thank Mike at Pro Podcast Solutions. You are the best. Thank you, Mark at podcastbranding.co for doing our web design and security. Thank you, Lauren, for taking care of our executive producers and for being my sister. Thank you, Dad and Robin, who are my biggest fans and take care of my taxes. And also, as always, thank you, Brian Karras. He is our guardian angel and we miss you today and forever. All right. Thanks so much. And I will talk to you soon. Bye. We don't have a domestic spying program. In between. We got a president who plays with the facts. With the facts. And then he waves a flag to cover his tracks. As if a lie is alright. If the end will justify the means. Now we are so damn tired of being lied to. The polar ice caps aren't going away. We don't think we can deny it anymore. You can stick to your story if you think it lies. But we're not keeping quiet anymore. We are so damn tired of being lied to. Government jobs consume the profits of the private sector. We don't think we can deny it anymore. You can't stick to your story if you think it flies. But we're not keeping quiet anymore. Now we're not keeping quiet These bills represent common sense, bipartisan solutions that actually solve problems.