Attorney and Author Dan Conaway and Mike Brooks Radio show "Arrested"
Attorney and Author Dan Conaway and Mike Brooks Radio show "Arrested"
Did Paul Manafort lie? William Barr arriving at DOJ and Andrew McCabe February 16, 2019
Criminal defense attorney Dan Conaway and Mike Brooks discuss:
1) William (Bill) Barr. He arrives at a justice department that is in desperate need of an infusion of credibility. Will he succeed?
2) Cybercrime hot topic - Former Coke scientist accused of stealing trade secrets for a Chinese venture.
3) Andrew McCabe becomes the first former official on record to corroborate reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told DOJ officials about discussions.
4) Did Paul Manafort lie and violate his plea deal?
Welcome to arrested at the only vive and local show that takes him into the belly of our criminal justice system. Cohosted by Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney, Dan Conaway of Conway and Strickler PC. Good morning. Everybody walked into a restaurant leg. It'd be with us as water. We've got some great topics to talk about today. Well
Speaker 2:Dan, it looks like that we have a new attorney general bill barr was confirmed by the Senate this week with a vote of 54 to 45, but he's got a tough job ahead of him, especially after all of the news coming out this week. In fact, I'm looking forward to the 60 minutes interview tomorrow night, Sunday night with 60 minutes interviewing the former deputy director of the FBI and he was also for a while acting director of the FBI, Andrew Mccabe, but bill bars going a tough job ahead of him trying to build credibility back to the Department of Justice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is, um, this is just an incredible story, Mike. I mean here we've got, um, a brand new attorney general for the United States and it couldn't have come at a better time. Um, and there's an article put out today, it's in today's Wall Street. It came out just a couple of days ago, uh, Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal and she's been doing a really good job of following this whole five's a court mess and following the investigation back to the beginning of this, uh, and she's been doing it really dogwood reporting on this issue throughout the last year. And so, uh, the title of the article, it's in the Wall Street Journal, no bars, hot mess. He rides that justice department that is in desperate needs of an infusion or credibility, could not be more true. And you can see her article. It's Wall Street Journal did it.
Speaker 2:February 14th. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He's still there. He's still there, but he's expected to, to possibly resigned. Probably going to resign. Yeah, I'd say so too.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Uh, and this is just, um, I mean there's so many issues the bar's going to come into. But the key thing about this is that, and this is an issue that, um, Mr. Russell brings up in her article is a, this, the good thing is that we've got in bar somebody who's not involved in any way, in any shape, on either side of the equation here, not a member of the Trump administration, not a member of the Trump election team, Trump transition team, nor a member of the Justice Department, the FBI or anything like that. So this is great. And he's got the ability and the credibility to do his job properly. So you couldn't ask for anything better than that. No, absolutely. So we start there and then we've got on top of that, ah, the McCabe Rosenstein debacle where you've got Rosenstein Rosenstein a insisting and the justice department behind them, that Mccabe, uh, is not telling the truth once again, because this is, he remember he was fired, yes. For Line two officials and agents and so forth and so forth. Um, so you hit that. Now you have them going on 60 minutes and claiming that Rosenstein did all this stuff, including offering to wear a wire, pushing for the 25th amendment. Maybe some other cabinet members possibly write numbers, wait cabinet Mather members. Basically what you have, and this can't be stated strongly enough, is you have the 25th amendment basically when Mccabe is saying, is that as an unelected official? Yeah. He decided on his own and possibly with others after call me lefties, Zam and George now, right? Yeah. To, uh, open up an investigation into US citizens include and Donald Trump and an entire campaign, uh, and an entire campaign presidential campaign on the basis of at best are completely unverified dossier, right. Paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee fusion gps, yet written by a foreign national, uh, former every former British spy, right form British by former, whose job was the Russian desk who then went and colluded with the Russians. And we're talking about former government officials, apparently in government officials. He colluded with the Russians and the wrote this dossier, which was completely unsubstantiated. Everybody agrees, Oh, I've slowly and use that as a basis to get a Pfizer warrant, which was taught, which was, look, have you dealt with Pfizer worn before and it had been before the Pfizer growing total bs. This is insane. It is. And it's the exact thing that, that, that people like myself, uh, have always been worried about the Pfizer court that it would be misused. Yeah. So we've got, and then we've got Rosenstiel he's saying McCabe is essentially lying. And so you've got these two people, you've got conflicts all over the place because this means that for instance, Rosenstein it at this point almost needs to resign because he's clearly a witness. You can't be a witness and be on the prosecutor's side at the same time. No, you can't any more than be on the defense side. Sure. Right? So he's made himself a witness. There's a clear conflict there. And so the whole thing is one big fat mess. And, uh, the question is what, what's, what's going to happen and all that. But this is where Mr. Barr can really, w we really need Mr. Barr right now because this looks, this is looking more and more like the concerns that we had with the FBI. For instance, back in the sixties and seventies when they were spying on American citizens, including people like Martin Luther King. This looks very similar to the weapons of mass destruction. Remember those when at the UN, a guy who was pow held up the violin said weapons of mass destruction uranium. And then we get there, and I can't remember the comedian's name, I think his name is Louis Black. I think that's him said. You know, why didn't the government, he's a comedian. Yeah, yeah. But he said, look, why do you need at least get, find a missile and strap it on a camel and take a picture of it. Right. But they didn't even bother to, they found no, if it's the best structure. So, and this was
Speaker 2:going on the information the intelligence community was giving to him.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. And, and my, my point being that for civil engineering, it's like myself, I don't care which side it is, but these are organizations with massive power. I mean the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Justice, these people have the ability to do great justice, but um, but they also have the ability to do great harm. And here you have many actors within these organizations not doing their jobs properly
Speaker 2:and the whole thing. We're going to talk more about the Pfizer court because I think after this, I think that needs to be re re totally revamped.
Speaker 3:Something's gotta be done since, doesn't happen again. Yeah. Because under the 25th Amendment, um, this looks like a cool,
Speaker 2:it does, it looks like a coup, a silent coup with, from within the Justice Department and the FBI.
Speaker 3:This is the kind of stuff it's supposed to go on in places, you know, like third world countries and countries with long histories of, uh, no, no d democratic history, totalitarian regimes and uh, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:No, it, it, it's totally, totally ridiculous and made me look, I was assigned the FBI fulltime for six years. You know, I was at headquarters quite a bit. Uh, Louie free was director back then. Uh, the deputy director, you know, I knew really well and this would've never happened during that, during, during that time. It just never would have happened. And it's interesting because you have, um,
Speaker 3:and, and I, I want to be very clear here. I'm going on memory, just memories. It's something that I read over a year ago, so I have to go back and fact check this. But if I'm, if I'm, if I'm recalling correctly, my understanding is that the first time that, that our president learns about the dossier is when Komi comes to his home and it's during the transition period, I believe. And I'll, I'll double check. I want to go more into the lowest scored investigation on another show. But my understanding as of today, and again, I need to clarify this, I'm not sure, but this is my understanding is that today is that Comey basically shows up and says, listen, we need to tell you about the situation. We need to talk to you a little bit about this. And tez kind of, it's almost like a show up, right? It's, it's men is a meet and greet. It's not men as that. But what, when I've read that what I've seen in the past is a police tactic and FBI tactic and they do it to defense lawyers sometimes too. They tried it with me when I was very young. Uh, it's an intimidation tactic. They come in, they say, listen, we're not telling anybody this, but we got this, this thing here we need to show you because it could really be damaging to your, your family. And this is, this is not like to mafia doing this. This is the FBI or the Justice Department. And they do pull this kind of crap. And when I read that the Comi had done that, and that's how Trump first learns about the dossier. If that's, if that's in fact the case, I don't know that it is. That's what I've heard. Then it looks like intimidation from day one because that's the kind of stuff the police pull, including the FBI. Again, I've had it pulled on me when I was[inaudible]
Speaker 2:when I was young. Lord, my, my question is if that were the case, did, uh, did the director, did Komi then prepare a three o two and investigative report about what that conversation was about? We don't know. Uh, my guess is the answer is no. Yeah. Uh, but the whole
Speaker 3:saying from the beginning to the end with a Pfizer court and now we have this 25th amendment issue,
Speaker 2:the vs. Dot. Page and all this and that and the deleted the text messages and everything else. And the DOJ Jig his office. It was crazy. Crazy.
Speaker 3:It's just thinks, and one other thing is, think about it. Mccabe, whom did McCabe lie too? Why was he fired?
Speaker 2:Lie to Congress and yeah.
Speaker 3:Now, okay. Everybody else who's lied to Congress, what's happened to them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've gotten a died and arrested. Right. Okay. But what happens to Mccabe? He quit. Yeah. Well, yeah, he was, he was basically a fire. It wasn't that he wouldn't, he didn't, he's not going to get his benefits from money here, but you can still locked up in a frigging jail cell. Like, uh, what's his face? Manafort. And he's not, he didn't have his home. Ransack about 25 Asian. Nope. Right. He's not walking around and selling books. Well it ain't over. Dylan's over. Yeah. Coming up, we're going to talk more about this silent coup, uh, at the DOJ, at the FBI against president Trump. What is the 25th Amendment? How can that be invoked that a whole lot more coming up on a arrested with Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney Dan Conaway on a new chalk one oh six seven, this is arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan Conaway. Thanks for joining us on arrested this fine Saturday morning. And by the way, if you do not have not picked up dance book, arrested battling the America's criminal justice system, you are missing out. If you like what we're talking about here by the book, take a look at what Dan has to say and he lays out what the criminal justice system is. And, and I, and I tell you, you will learn a lot from the book is I did go to a rusted book.com Barnes and noble, Amazon, you can pick it up in a number of different places, but if you haven't picked up a copy of Dan's book, arrested battling America's criminal justice system, you're doing yourself an injustice. Well, Dan, we're talking about the new Attorney General Bill Barr. He was confirmed this week by the Senate and uh, and we're also talking about d still deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and the silent coup from what it appears, uh, with the Justice Department and the FBI against president Trump. And, um, there, there's an interview coming up tomorrow night that I'm, I'm looking forward to, uh, to seeing it and it's full length feature with former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew Mccabe. He was also asking director and, and, and CBS and in fact, some of the things he's come out and said, Rod Rosenstein has said, no, it's a total lie. He's lying. But you know, there's talk that they were going to try to wire, put a wire on cabinet members on Rod Rosenstein, um, and w w invoking the 25th amendment. What number one, what is the 25th Amendment? What is it used for? What does it mean and could that get president Trump out of office?
Speaker 3:Yeah. All great questions. So let's just start with the 25th amendment. Uh, it reads as follows, in case of the removal of the president from office or of his death, comma, resignation or inability to do discharge, the powers and duties of set office, the same meaning the presidency, the position officer, president shell devolve on the vice president. So it would go to the vice present. The key language a here is inability to discharge the powers and duties of his office of president. Right? So that's what we're talking about here. And this is in, this is one of the, Oh, this is in the constitution and it was based upon to provide some type of orderly succession, uh, in the case where you had a situation where president really became disabled and unable to perform its functions for whatever reasons. And there's a history of this. Um, it's been invoked a couple of times. Um, for instance, uh, when, uh, the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, right, there was that period, uh, the one where it wasn't invoked. Uh, but it was done practically. It was during the Wilson Administration cause he had a stroke and a essentially his wife and others, um, ran the, ran the presidency for a period of time, uh, until he recovered. Um, so this is, that's what it's there for. So it has the good purpose. We need something like the 25th amendment in the constitution because things do happen. Um, so there's nothing controversial about the 25th amendment in and of itself. Um,
Speaker 2:but it seems like by the way, they went about this whole,
Speaker 3:no, that's the issue. The issue is, and again, that language is vague. The inability to perform one's duties is basically what happened was that, you know, you've got this duly elected president and a big chunk of the country and a big chunk of the government elite in Washington. And when I say government elite, what I mean is the real insider's of Washington, you know, the career people in Washington. Sure. And they worked for organizations like the CIA, the FBI, Department of Justice, you know, or who they are. Um, and normally they do an excellent job. Um, but in this case, there was so much hysteria after the election of Donald Trump because no one expected it. Essentially.
Speaker 2:No. They basically annoy, did Hillary, you know, that she was gonna win. Everybody knows it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, uh, and so you've got all these people in disbelief, and then you've got this sort of shock factor afterwards. And then, uh, the firing of Comey, uh, which, uh, one side claims this is obstruction of justice. I disagree. Uh, the other side says, well, it's within the president's council.
Speaker 2:Many times, many times an incoming president, we'll have everyone submit letters of resignation. Yeah. You know, I mean, as of, uh, uh, noon on January 20th owned an overreaction,
Speaker 3:there's nothing, there's nothing unusual about that. No. So, uh, you know, so, you know, I'm on, I'm on that side of the ball on that one. Uh, it's very straightforward. There's not obstruction of justice there a period.
Speaker 2:And even Alan Dershowitz has said, you know, he's, I, I, I look at him as a constitutional scholar. He, well, he is, and he said, no,
Speaker 3:there's, this is not me and Mr Dershowitz are on the same page on this session. Uh, for sure. Um, so you know it. So then the question becomes, okay, what was going on? Because you've literally got unelected people. We have a duly elected president. Right. And just to be clear, the way the president is elected is through the electoral college process and the electoral college process is an indirect way of voting for a president. Sure. It's set up that way purposely. Exactly. Right. And it's set up that way to actually specifically do what happened in the Trump Clinton situation, which was this. It makes them, I'll, I'll put it as simply as I can. You know, the old story of the country mouse versus a city mouse? No. Okay. We got the city mouse. This has been going on forever. Okay. This is you. You can go back centuries and it's always country mouse versus city mouse. Okay. Thank me to look at me like what? Nah, let's go for number. And what it is, is, you know the city mice, right? Yeah. Well, you know, quite frankly, there are people like me, you know, uh, they live in the city, they got lots of education, you know, they talk real mice that you can use a$5 words would look real nice. They can, they can, they can use a$5 word when a 50 cent word would do. Right. Right. Things like that. Okay. Then you've got the country, your mouth, the country mouse lives in the country. They tend to be conservative. Type lipped saved their money. Neither a borrower nor a lender be right. Hang onto your land. Burn the mortgage. Yup. Kind of people. All right, so the, in this case we had to me, this election is the same ice first, the country mice. Real simple. Well, our founding fathers knew this story and the new in what they were worried about was that the elites in the cities and then worrying about this 230 years ago, right. With takeover the elections. Why? Because there are more people live creation of people and there were people there, population centers, so therefore the majority could rule over the minority or simply put the city mouse. We'd be able to rule over the country mouse as much as you wanted if you have and create what's called tyranny of the majority and Spanish. They created the electoral college to protect the country mice and make it fair. I liked that analogy. So Trump has dual elected. If you hate his guts, fine, you're you. You have every right to hate his guts. Right? Right. You've got to rip the time. I love him. He said, I don't care. But the electoral college is what it is. So what you've gotten is a duly elected president and officials at the Department of Justice at the FBI looking at this thing. And guess what? They haven't been elected by anybody. You didn't vote for him? I didn't vote for him. Did you see McCabe on the ballot anywhere homie
Speaker 2:or McCabe's? Norma Caves wife? No. You didn't see her running for office a struck. Um, nope. Missed him. Lisa Page. Nope. Nope. None of them.
Speaker 3:There you go. So you know, that's the problem. The problem is, is you have these unelected officials who are the elite of Washington DC. You've got this president coming in who was not supposed to be there in their minds. He represents the country mice right near the city. Slicker. Right? And they decide that apparently that he's unfit for office and early on. And so then they start like, how can we get rid of them when they invoked the point for the moment and this thing that he's unable to perform his duties and office when the man has net a stroke. No Man. One, he speaks in full sentences and he's actually, there's one other thing too. He's the type of individual that the founding fathers actually saw as presidential material because they wanted outsiders, they didn't want parties. Uh, they didn't want career politicians running
Speaker 2:precedent like we see most of Capitol Hill is
Speaker 3:right. What they wanted was a successful person in life who comes in sort of at the end of his career and can be president and step into public office and then step, step back out and go back to his private life.
Speaker 2:We're going to talk more about the, the 25th amendment and want to talk a little bit also about what is the fuck, what is Fysa the foreign intelligence surveillance act and how is it used or how has it possibly missed use in this case, you're listening to arrested with Mike Roach and gribble defense story, Dan kind of way or the new talk. What? Oh six seven this is arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan Conaway. Thanks for joining us here on arrested with Mike Brooks and Grummond fence attorney Dan Conaway. And by the way, I said it before and I'll say it again. If you haven't picked up arrested battling America's criminal justice system, go right now to arrested book.com or yourself a copy rundown to Barnes noble. And if they don't have it there, they'll ordered for you. Are going to Amazon and order a copy for yourself. Learn about what the criminal justice system is all about. Dan Lays it all out for you in his book, arrested battling America's criminal justice system. Well, Dan, we're talking about the, uh, the 25th amendment and also want to talk about about the foreign intelligence surveillance act, but with the 25th amendment with what they did on the seventh floor of FBI headquarters, that's where the director's office is. I didn't know that it's on the seventh floor. Cool. And uh, you know, I always say, Oh God, there's been so much going on. 74. Well with Komi Mccabe and all the other assistant directors like struck Peter Strock was a deputy assistant director. People just call them FBI. He just, no, he was in leadership there right when it comes to running around. No, no, not at all. Not at all. And, and, and what was going on on the seventh floor to me was just very troubling to say the least.
Speaker 3:Well, and it's interesting cause, um, and I'm going to start our conversation here, Mike. Uh, from the Strauss was article in the Wall Street Journal again, uh, came out, uh, February 15th. Yeah. Uh, so to use back, this is what she says, to use back channels to stay in touch with sources of it fired to open counter intelligence investigations as opposed to criminal ones into political figures to actively hide those investigations from congressional overseers to hold meetings about removing presidents under the 25th amendment. If the answer to any of these questions is yes, Americans deserve to know that this is the brave new world they live in and she's talking about the things that are new, uh, attorney general Mr Bar needs to investigate. And then she goes on to say, if not, how did it happen and how can leaders make sure it never happens again? What protections are there against the clear bias, the permeated law enforcement's upper ranks, Peter Strock or McCabe in subordination, Jim Comey, obsessive media computation, uh, cultivation, Mr McCabe, so forth, so forth and so forth. And so we're talking about, that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about unelected officials. You really took it on their own and now we know McCabe admits it,
Speaker 2:right? It seems to me the day, you know, I mean heavy known, uh, you know, the, the director personally and is in a deputy director back when I was there personally and, uh, you know, on a first name basis and then to then to listen to what was going on with, with Mccabe, with coal me. I tell Ya, it, it, it's, it's disgusting to me. It really is.
Speaker 3:It's, it's, it's terrifying, uh, as a u s citizen because, um, and again, if you look at it, well, the first, it's terrifying for as US citizen just to see this going on and to say, wow, this is what our government's doing to, you see, the difference is not equal protection under the law. Yeah. Last time I checked Mccain's walking around on 60 minutes, I didn't hear any report that his house was searched or seized or no, he's been indicted. He's not under investigation for doing the exact, violating the same exact federal code section a and potentially others including perjury. Right. Um, that private citizens have been arrested and accused and prosecuted for now I've, you know, look, if you're lying under oath then there, or you're lying to investigators and officials, there should be consequences for that, for the law. But why is it the McCabe if I'm, if I'm your average US citizen, my first question is why is McKay becoming a celebrity over this and allowed you to just walk away and not at least not be under investigation or potential charge for perjury you should be or if something, yeah. Right. I agree. One zero zero one right under federal code something. Uh, and he's not so, and, and my guess is quite frankly will be
Speaker 2:you say you don't think he will be, you don't think it will be.
Speaker 3:I'm a deep cynic when it comes to those kinds of having worked with the DOJ and the FBI on many cases over the years as defense counsel and the representative, the private citizen. Uh, I would say that I'm rather pessimistic that any, anything, uh, may of major criminal consequence will ever happen to former agent.
Speaker 2:Well, it's good to be, it's going to be interesting to hear what he has to sale 60 minutes. And then I'll wonder, I wonder if there are any investigators with around 60 minutes of our him. No, I wouldn't either, but I wouldn't need, wants to talk to her. Okay. Yeah, I know. But you know, once you start running your mouth, that's when you go to the jail, saw you started hemming, you, you're going to him yourself up one way or the other, you know, one of these statements. And then I tell you though, with Rosenstein still in office, maybe they could open up a k. I, I don't know how they would go about doing that, but Rosenstein is clearly not McCabe's friend at this point. No, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. And, uh, you know, he, he could, he could step down, recuse himself, but then it would be up to the new attorney general when he's sworn in to decide whether or not, how he wants to proceed, if he does on any of the, any case against. Right.
Speaker 3:And, and what, what could happen, what could happen there is Rosenstein could resign. Right. And then, um, uh, then he becomes what he is, which is he's a witness, right. Period. And you can't be one or the other. You can't be a defense lawyer or a member of the prosecution team. Right. And be a witness in a case.
Speaker 2:Simple, simple conflict. Sure. What about call me, call me at when, when you finally came out and he, and he leaked the information to his buddy at Columbia to the New York Times. That's a violation as well.
Speaker 3:Right? Has called me. Been arrested? No. Hmm. I know. Interesting. Equal protection under the law, ladies and gentleman, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh. And[inaudible] you know, he's hawking his new book also. Yup. You know, oh, mighty. It is what it is. It is switching gears a little bit. Yeah. The foreign intelligence surveillance act that we started talking about a little bit, that to me looks like it may have been abused in, in this, in this particular case. Um, what is it, how, how does, yeah. How was it used and how could possibly it in this particular case been abused?
Speaker 3:Well, it's, it's interesting because this goes back, this question goes way back. Yeah. Um, meaning for, for myself. Sure. Um, and just to give you some brief background and a, I cannot pull up the gentleman's name off the top of my head, but he was the assistant attorney general back in 2004. Um, and I just can't pull up his name. Very nice man. Uh, and he was a speaker at the International Bar Associations Criminal Law Conference, which involves criminal law and transnational issues. Right, right. Um, and, uh, we discussed the Pfizer court wasn't a holder, was it? No, it wasn't. It was, it was a, it was under W's administration. 2000 to 2002, 2003, 2004. Yeah. And then also I heard him speak, um, at the, uh, he's an African American gentleman, um, who I just can't pull up his name. I don't worry. No problem. He was under Ashcroft. Okay. Yeah, he's under Asheville. Um, so we had a, uh, then he was also gave a speech to the lawyers club of Atlanta about six months later. And we also sat around and discussed the Pfizer court socially in Dublin. It at this bar associated convening, cause we're in Dublin. So you know, you have to be right. Of course you gotta begin us. Uh, so we were all, a bunch of us are all sitting around and as a civil libertarian, I said, this Pfizer court scares the heck out of me because I understand what you're trying to use it for, but I think it's going to get abused. And the response back that I got was, uh, you know, the fourth amendment is not a suicide pact. And when you've got crazy nutbag terrorists yup. Who are wanting to poison the water supply. And remember you remember those days back then? Oh yeah. Remember what it was like? Oh yeah. I mean we really thought like in New York it was going to get poisoned cause they were going to throw water in the reservoir that's up in central park. You know, they're, they're going to throw a poison in there. Yeah, there were poisoned, I mean there was a lot of it. Remember the mail? Oh, this terrified to open up their mail.
Speaker 2:I would, I was the guy going around collecting up these a suspected anthrax letters. Were you doing that stuff? I was forced. Yup. Know, sit there. There was
Speaker 3:a lot of panic, a lot of fear. And so with the Pfizer court did was it gave, it gives our intelligence community and our law enforcement community, um, time to and the ability to go get a warrant privately and secretly. Right. Uh, and they can get it quickly with probable cause and be heard quietly. And that way if there is some nutbag trying to blow up the country, right, they can do something about it. Sets the purpose of the court.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, we're going to be talking more about the FYSA and was uh, Paul Manafort. Did he, did he violate some condition of his release? Possibly for supposedly line. We'll talk about that a whole lot more. Coming up on arrested with Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney. Dan kind of way. I'll let you talk one. It was six, seven. This is arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan Conaway. Thanks everybody for joining us here on arrested with Mike Brooks fence during day and cut away. Well, Dan, we're talking about God, so many different things having to do with bill bars, new attorney general Rod Rosenstein who was still the deputy who probably will be resigning soon. And the statements made by Andrew Mccabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and also acting director of the FBI. Uh, when an in a, in an interview is coming on tomorrow night on 60 minutes on CBS News, uh, and Rod Rosenstein calling him a liar. But what was kind of wrapped around all of this was a, uh, uh, Fysa the foreign intelligence surveillance act. You know, the Pfizer court issuing basically a ward, you know, to, to spy on people and the, and the whole thing. You were talking about it possibly being abused. Um, I still think something needs to be done so we, this doesn't happen again. I mean, I had the utmost faith in Fysa back in the days of, you're talking about back in the mid nineties when we were, uh, they are facilities Khobar Towers being bombed in 1996, uh, US embassy in Nairobi and Dar Salaam, Tanzania simultaneously bombed by[inaudible] in 1998. The threat to our infrastructure in major cities all around, whether it be water power grids, um, you know, train all this. Yes, I'm all for that. I'm all for using the FYSA can I have somebody that you've got to have some mechanism? You do. You do it at the time and now, you know, that was the best we have then we're still using it now. Is it the best we can do right now? I think we can do better.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think that's going to be, um, part of, uh, our new US attorney's job. Mr. Barr, I, and he's going to have to get in there and he's got the skills. He's got the ability he's going to get in there to make these changes. Um, so, uh, also Larry Thompson, Larry Thompson was there. He was the gentleman I was thinking. Yup. Yup. Um, so, and uh, so Mike, what I was talking about with, uh, Larry Thompson in Dublin was I get your point. We need this, this is important. Sure. But at the same time, I just, I just felt, I said, I feel it's going to be abused, uh, because it's going to be used because it's so secretive that somebody going to use it in this based upon the history of the, uh, of the FBI, which again, you have to, if you go back and look at the FBI where they were, uh, from back from the Nixon administration before that, there's a lot of bad stuff going on. There's her veiling crooning dossiers and files on basically when people, they just don't like sure. Because they're on the left, right, right there, the board protesters and things like that during the civil rights movement. And then it goes back further than that. So you've got histories of problems with these issues. You've got the weapons of mass destruction that never showed up on a rock. Yeah. Right. Yup. Uh, that the CIA was in charge of and we went to war over, uh, you know, that was, that was the thing. We had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam had these things was terrible and uh, so forth and so forth. Well, turned out, none of it was true. So, um, it doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum you're on, these agencies have to be held accountable and they can be abused and they can make mistakes. It's a, here you've got a situation in my professional opinion of clear abuse and it's based upon what I was worried about way back in 2004 when I'm sitting in Dublin at the International Bar Association with Mr. Thompson because he was one of our key speakers. Yeah. There. Um, and that is that you're going to have somebody use it for political purposes or get even purposes or just cause they don't like the way the guy's nose looks looks. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know, but what are the main things when you, when you have a face of warrant is basically the information that goes into that vice a warrant that it has to do with the probable cause when you go before the Fisa court to grant this, you know, and, and, and in this particular case, you know, you had bad information going into this, right, exactly. From collusion with Russia. And the problem is, the problem is, did the higher ups on the seventh floor at FBI headquarters, did they know that this information was, was, was faulty? Did they know that it was false? They didn't know it was a lie. They know that this steel does. Gay was total bs, you know, did they know this and did the investigators who applied for the, for this Faisel warrant at the time, did they know that that information that they were using to establish their probable cause for the warrant, that they know that the information was flawed and a lot of it alive? That's the big question.
Speaker 3:And, uh, my understanding, uh, again, based upon, I'm going on memory here, sure. But my understanding was that, uh, most of the, all the major media outlets refused to even announced talk about it. Um, where it, because they didn't see credibility there. Yeah. It's based upon someone who, again, based upon recollection. I'm not sure this is true, but I recall reading this that a steel, let's put it this way, he was not in love with Donald.
Speaker 2:No. And he's one that did, came out, you know, when it and, Oh and, and a lot of the, um, the media, oh, Donald Trump was in Russia in a hotel with a bunch of prostitutes urinating on them and all this guy. And No, it was total, total unequivocal become just total bs
Speaker 3:and what he, and, and this is what's in that dossier. You read the dossier. And so it's all unclaimed. It's based upon collusion with Russians, uh, by a foreign national, it's written by foreign nationals. And my understanding is that this, and again, this gets back to a lot of my reading of Kim Strassel with Wall Street Journal, who's really done a great job. And you can go to simply go to the Wall Street Journal website, pull up her articles, and you'll see a whole string of articles where she's talking about. And um, so you know, here's a situation where you've got, um, just abuse to the system. They're using this dossier, which is based upon colluding with foreign nationals. It's paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton. It's completely and verified. Everybody knows it's not verified, not even any of the news outlets would publish it.
Speaker 2:And for them to use that as a base of probable cause that ridiculous.
Speaker 3:Now they're claiming, my understanding is that they're claiming they had something else. But what's the something else? The something else is what I don't know of anything else. No, I don't either. We haven't seen anything. And so to walk in, in my mind and place, Mike, can you tell me is as an agent, but my mind is an attorney. I, I'll take it. Let's take a simple case where I got a drug case, right? Right. Uh, I'm walking in front of a judge with this mess and trying to get a warrant. And we're talking about a federal judge row. Yeah. I mean, you know, these people are intimidating people and you, you, I'm a walking near water with this thing, right? And say, hey, probable cause judge,
Speaker 2:I mean this is, you start investigating every, there were only certain judges that will sit to side Warren still with the foreign intelligence surveillance and I take through job deeply suicidal solutely they do, but they, you know, they're only going on the word or to the agents who is, who has written this and his swearing to this, that, that, that, that this what they, the information they have is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as far as they know to get this warrant. Dell build a case
Speaker 3:and then whom do they investigate? Do they investigate terrorists? Nope. Do they investigate for nationals? Not In this case. They investigate American citizens. And that was exactly my concern 16 years ago in Dublin when we're all sitting around having a beer
Speaker 2:and this is the foreign intelligence surveillance act now Horan what they're going to try to say is, is there going to tee, they're going to try to tie in the, the Russians with this, but it had nothing to do with this. If that were the case, he should have gotten exactly exact gift. Firstly, you have to do is open up an investigation into the Russians to see if anything that they're saying it's worth. I did that. This whole thing was tainted right from the beginning, but the, but the big question is where do we go from here to make the system better and to make this system work? That is the question that, uh, that we'll be talking about on another episode of arrested and next week we will get to Paul Manafort. Did he lie in violation of his plea deal? We'll be covering that and a lot more next Saturday and don't forget, go out and buy his book arrested battling American criminal justice system. Thanks again everybody for joining us on arrested. We'll see you right, right
Speaker 1:back here. Next Saturday, 8:00 AM arrested with Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney. Dan. Thanks. Thanks for listening to arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney, Dan Conaway. Well, this show provides general information. It does not constitute legal advice. The best way to get guidance on your specific legal issue is to contact a lawyer. For more information or to schedule a meeting with an attorney. Please visit Conway and strickler.com.