Liz Oyer on Corruption at Trump’s DOJ and FBI

0:00Ben Meiselas:The number two highest ranking official at the FBI just suddenly resigned, and we need to look deeper at what's actually happening here. Let's look at the headline first. Andrew Bailey, the FBI's co-deputy director, resigned suddenly on Monday. He says that he wants to spend more time with his family, but the real reason why he's resigning appears to be how catastrophic Kash Patel is running the FBI just into the ground. One of the most recent developments was how Kash Patel demoted two senior counterterrorism agents in the Washington field office over their handling of an investigation into purported harassing or prank phone calls to Stephen Miller's wife, but there are a myriad of other issues as well.

0:51Ben Meiselas:There is Kash Patel's appearance at Alina Habba, Donald Trump's former lawyer's wedding this past weekend, and I'll talk about who Kash Patel took photos with there. There's the FBI hack. The FBI website was hacked by a group called Shiny Hunters, and it's described as a catastrophic hack. You have the FOIA request that was recently revealed showing that Kash Patel was demanding top people at the FBI respond to an account called, and I don't like this word, I'm just reporting on the facts, Retard Finder featured Kash Patel on one of their posts. And Kash Patel said, we need to respond and rebut Retard Finder's photograph of me calling me that.

1:41Ben Meiselas:Again, I hate that word. I'm just reporting on what the facts are. Kash Patel is also planning a trip to Russia to meet with Putin's team shortly. And since January of 2025, about 2 ,600 or 2 ,900 FBI agents have either resigned or have been fired by the Trump regime, and a lot of those involve leadership positions. Let's break all of this down. So Andrew Bailey, who was the former Missouri Attorney General, turned co-deputy FBI director, he resigned. Now, he was brought in to basically babysit Cash Patel because lots of people, even people close to Trump, said, look, Cash Patel's a complete idiot and you need to bring in a grownup.

2:33Ben Meiselas:And even though this Andrew Bailey guy, in my view, is not a good dude and has been involved in a lot of election conspiracies from 2020, people viewed him as a lot more competent than Kash Patel. So he was kind of brought in to be an operator while Kash Patel goes to Italy and parties and drinks beer with the hockey team and goes to his girlfriend's concerts or Russia or whatever the hell that Kash Patel is doing. So this is one of the reasons that is being cited by NBC as why Andrew Bailey resigned. Two senior FBI agents were just ousted over investigations into alleged harassing or prank phone calls that were being made to Stephen Miller's wife.

3:19Ben Meiselas:And so you have Michael Bergwald, the special agent in charge of counterterrorism matters at the FBI's Washington field office, and his deputy, Cortland Ray, were ousted from their positions by bureau leadership after investigators determined that allegedly harassing phone calls Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, received from unknown individuals did not warrant further investigation. So Stephen Miller and Kash Patel routed these prank phone calls to the counterterrorism division in the FBI. The counterterrorism division is like, why the hell are we handling this? These are like prank phone calls, and they didn't see this as requiring further investigation.

4:04Ben Meiselas:And then these two individuals were immediately demoted. And these are career people who have hung on, despite the fact that 2 ,600 other top, 2 ,900 other top FBI agents and leaders have been pushed out. So data point one. Data point two, Trump's one-time personal lawyer, Alina Haba, just married Turkish billionaire in a$10 million wedding in a Midtown Manhattan hotel they apparently met recently, got married right away in the shotgun type wedding, allegedly. And take a look at this photo right here where you'll see Kash Patel and who else is in this photo? Ali Abdalaziz is on the far left. He manages a lot of Russian, Belarusian, and Chechen MMA fighters.

4:55Ben Meiselas:Abdalaziz was an FBI informant until the FBI dropped him because they suspected he was a double agent. So you have Kash Patel, the leader of the FBI, partying with someone who the FBI believed was a double agent. Yep, that's a MAGA wedding for you right there. Data point number three, FBI data allegedly stolen by the hacking group Shiny Hunters also carries granular details about scores of bureaus' official job assignments, including sensitive work against Chinese spies, Russian intelligence, drug cartels, and more. The catastrophic FBI hack also exposed FBI's own hacking unit, the Remote Operations Unit.

5:46Ben Meiselas:Data point number four, Kash Patel. In this FOIA request, you'll see that Kash Patel directed his bureau to immediately respond to that account called Retard Finder to say that we need to respond in the exact response from some of his officials within the bureau. Yeah, we're not going to respond to at I find retards. That would look bad on you. And Kash Patel said, it's not about them. It's about the number of views because people see it and they need to be seeing our stats, man. That's what they need to be seeing. Also, Kash Patel continues to face backlash over apparently this trip is still going to be happening to Russia that he's previously announced.

6:31Ben Meiselas:Now, this is Kash Patel's press secretary right here. His name is Ben Williamson. And he says, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is all fake news. Deputy Bailey announced his departure at 9 a.m. today. And before 11 a.m., I saw three different fake news narratives, like one, that Bailey left today. He's leaving October 2nd, not September 28th. So fake news there, that he was annoyed by recent personnel moves. No, he wasn't. He supported them. And three, that Cash and Bailey went weeks without meeting or talking. They meet and speak daily. I'm in the room for many of these. It's a rough one out there. It's a rough one out there.

7:12Ben Meiselas:And then I think it's worth pointing out as well, this lawsuit filed previously back on September 10th of 2025 by three of the top former FBI officials who were forced out, who were fired or forced out, Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans. You'll recall on September 10, 2025 in their lawsuit. This is what they wrote. For decades, plaintiffs Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans served this country with distinction and courage as special agents and senior officials of the FBI. Over the course of their remarkable careers, they prevented terrorist attacks, rescued American hostages, saved children from predators, and disabled violent street gangs.

7:57Ben Meiselas:Each day of their service was dedicated to protecting the American people and to fulfilling the oath they took when they joined the FBI to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Plaintiffs' commitment to these higher principles compelled them at all times to perform their duties free from political bias or influence. The same commitment galled defendants who initiated a campaign of retribution against plaintiffs for what defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty. On August 8th, 2025, FBI Director Keshop Kash Patel terminated plaintiffs combined 60 years of distinguished service in federal law enforcement with cursory single page letters sent to each plaintiff.

8:48Ben Meiselas:He did so in violation of federal law and the United States Constitution. I mean, we're talking about people like Brian Driscoll, the former acting director of the FBI. We're talking about Spencer Evans, who served the FBI for over 20 years. You're talking about Steven Jensen, the former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, some of the top people there. And then when you look at the overall numbers in the FBI of FBI agents driven out under Donald Trump, talking about 2 ,800 agents, many of them leadership positions as well. These are people who understand the nature of the FBI core values, promoting people from within who will be able to help the FBI.

9:35Ben Meiselas:And so that's what is going on in the Trump regime. I want to bring in former top pardon lawyer at the DOJ, Liz Oyer, to make sense of the rampant corruption that we are seeing at the DOJ, at the FBI. Let's bring in my interview with Liz Oyer. Now I want to bring on the former U.S. pardon attorney at the Department of Justice who was fired by Todd Blanche back in 2025 because she wouldn't recommend better terms for Mel Gibson because of his domestic violence background. We'll get into that just to remind people about what happened there. And I know it's a big part of what we're seeing right now with these pardons for sale and just the corruption there that you stood up to back in 2025.

10:23Ben Meiselas:I just got to ask you, because this is still hitting me as a litigator, someone who litigated against the Department of Justice pretty hard. I mean, just seeing the types of filings the Department of Justice is making I mean, you know, late last night before midnight on national security grounds, they're saying this is why we're banning MSNOW and CNN and Politico from the White House. And then in the briefing itself, they've basically the DOJ, the proud tradition of the DOJ, where I used to recommend to my law students, regardless of which administration is in office, this is a great place. DOJ is a great place to start your career and to go back into your career.

11:06Ben Meiselas:It's at every level. they're posting Trump's social media posts as their briefs to make national security arguments to say this is why the press needs to be banned because Trump did it on truth social. And so the arguments themselves, the way it's being presented, to me, it's all rule 11 sanctionable. You know, it should be. It's kind of being normalized even when it's rejected by federal judges. Like the very piece of paper would be laughed out in court if anybody else even wrote these things. So just talk to us about that, because I know you've been talking about it today. Yeah, there are real questions about whether the arguments that DOJ is making right now are being made in good faith.

11:45As a lawyer, you have an obligation to conduct yourself in good faith in the practice of law. They're just making stuff up as they go along to try to defend the president's indefensible decisions after the fact. So in this case, regarding Trump's media ban, he made it very clear in his initial social media posts that he was banning CNN, Politico, and MSNOW because he did not like what they were writing about him because they were covering him very critically. He didn't like that. And so he called them fake news and he banned them. Now he has realized that that is not a legally defensible reason to ban the media from coming into the White House.

12:24There is very clear precedent saying that you cannot discriminate against certain media outlets based on their particular perspective or viewpoint. So Trump had to make up a different reason. And now the reason is national security, which is becoming his go-to when he has nothing else to rely on. And the Justice Department filed a brief late last night that has basically invented a national security rationale for banning these three particular media outlets from the White House. It is totally contrived. It is all made up after the fact rationalization, and it should not withstand legal scrutiny.

12:59The question of whether the individual lawyers who are advocating these theories should be sanctioned in some way is also a very good one. Yeah.

13:08Ben Meiselas:And I mean, they said it was a national security threat that these outlets, for example, reported on the United States slaughtering the little children in Manab Elementary School, where 168 children were killed. When you look at what they were saying were national security threats that the outlets were reporting on the US military running out of munitions and engaging in war crimes. And that's among the oh, and then Politico reporting that the Dallas Republican Midterm Convention was a lame event and that it was weird and it was a strange event. And those were the national security grounds that were being put forward of why we have to ban the media based on Trump's truth social.

13:52Ben Meiselas:Do you think that, you know, what do you think should happen? I mean, to these lawyers who, you know, they cloak themselves in the DOJs, you know, they work at the DOJ. The DOJ built up all of this, you know, respect when the courts and the presumption of regularity, which is now thrown out the window, but courts still seem reluctant to take that next step? What do you think should happen? I, you know, initially wanted to give all these lawyers the benefit of the doubt because it is hard to practice law and have a client who is not aligned necessarily with what you think. But we've reached the point where Donald Trump expects the Justice Department to bend reality to his will.

14:36And the lawyers who are making legal arguments that are not in good faith and that are part of this effort to bend reality are complicit in what Donald Trump is doing to destroy the rule of law in this country, and they should be held accountable.

14:54Ben Meiselas:So remind people of how and when you were fired, because to me, this also relates to what we're seeing now with these pardons for sale, the quid pro quos. I've been very critical of what CBS has done more broadly to 60 minutes, although I think their segment on the pardons was a good segment where they talked about and they exposed a lot. That was real journalism where they exposed what was happening there. And you saw these pardons for sale, these kind of grifters who are in Trump's orbit, who are out there every day saying a million bucks, two million bucks, $250 ,000 gets you this. And it was very transactional.

15:34Ben Meiselas:It was very kind of normalized the way they would do it. Remind people of what happened to you and what we're seeing there, because I want to get your reaction to what we saw on CBS. Yeah. I mean, I think that what was missing from this, the 60 minute segment is really a sense of outrage about what's happening. Donald Trump is selling, monetizing the pardon power, And that has thoroughly corrupted the pardon power to the detriment of people who are deserving and to the detriment of the American public and victims of crime. The CBS segment, the 60 Minutes segment reported on the staggering amounts of money that people are making from the pardon economy, but more sort of as a curiosity or a fascination and without really underscoring the incredibly destructive effects that that has on the legitimacy of our justice system.

16:24It is really something that is dangerous, it's corrupt, and it's not normal. The situation with Donald Trump's pardons deviates from all historical precedent in terms of the way that he is using the pardon power to enrich himself financially, to benefit political allies, and to undercut cases that his own Justice Department is pursuing. So this is really incredibly problematic. It's incredibly corrupt. And it's something that I thought the CBS 60 Minutes piece really didn't fully capture.

16:57Ben Meiselas:It was a good point because I think I was supplanting our collective outrage in lieu of their, you're right. I mean, they did present it like it was, what they did a good job was going undercover and getting the footage and putting the footage out there. And here's what's kind of happening. But you're right. In a normal time, the lens would be shined and said, this is illegal. And then they would bring in a voice like you, right, who was there and who ran the pardon office. And you would say, this is a crime. This is unlawful. Let me tell you the process about how we go about these things, not basically reporting like you're taking a safari and you're looking at a zoo and you're like, look at that elephant and look at that cheetah.

17:44Ben Meiselas:I mean, it is crazy. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you noted the reasons for my firing from the Justice Department, they relate to the same theme of the politicization of the president's official powers. In my case, I was asked to prepare a recommendation for the attorney general that she reinstate the gun ownership rights of the actor Mel Gibson, who lost his right to own a gun after he was convicted of a very serious domestic violence crime because of public safety concerns, because it is dangerous for domestic abusers to be in possession of firearms, I was unable to make that recommendation.

18:20The data from the Justice Department shows that it is 500 % more likely that a domestic violence victim will be killed if her abuser has a firearm. So I was not going to make that recommendation. I was told that I should make it because Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with the president and he's a famous Hollywood actor and that wasn't good enough for me and when I declined to make the recommendation I was very shortly thereafter fired and it really just illustrates that everything in this administration is about political favoritism connections and business transactions at the end of the day it's not about what's in the interest of the American people and it's not about what the justice system demands in terms of fairness and due process.

19:06Ben Meiselas:You know, one of the hard things I think about covering this DOJ is that the normal language of criticism, even using the word politicization, it understates. And people sometimes will say, well, Liz, you sound hyperbolic or Ben, you sound hyperbolic, you know, because the words of what's happening, we almost don't have it in our lexicon that like Like what happens when the Department of Justice literally becomes the criminal RICO racketeering enterprise, the bad guys, and they are the gangsters. They are the mafia, and they are doing things like covering up child sex trafficking rings with the Epstein files.

19:48Ben Meiselas:They're the ones out there working with the biggest drug lords that there are to pardon them and to put the people who sold the most drugs internationally back on the street. and they do it with a smile and they do it in your face and then people like you and i you know will say look at what's happening and then we'll be the people like ah but you're just saying that it's not hell breaking loose it's not i'm like well i'm trying to give you that how bad this is and so but before we go i mean try to situate yourself in this moment that we have heading to the midterms you know we're here and i don't view this as even as a political thing to me this is a right and a wrong and a competence and all of these things.

20:31Ben Meiselas:So talk to us about where you see things, the state of things right now, September, 2026. Well, there are so many things coming at us so quickly that it's hard to keep track of all of them. And that's part of the strategy of this administration. I think there are really important stories that are flying under the radar. And one of the things I am most concerned about is the integrity of our upcoming elections. We have to have free and fair elections. If we continue to have free and fair elections, I believe that this administration will come to an end because it is not benefiting anyone with, apart from a handful of billionaires and friends and allies of Donald Trump.

21:11So I think it will come to an end if we have those elections, but we need to preserve the integrity of our elections. One of the most disturbing things that I've seen since this administration took office was a press conference that happened yesterday that has really gotten very little attention. The acting deputy attorney general gave a press conference touting a major prosecution by the Justice Department, which he said proved that Donald Trump is right about mail-in voting. And what the prosecution was actually about at the end of the day is a single postal worker who discarded a bunch of ballots along with a whole lot of other mail because he was feeling overwhelmed by his route and he decided to dump some mail in a dumpster so that he could go home earlier.

21:56The Justice Department has made this mailman, a 34-year-old from Utah with no criminal history, into sort of like the scapegoat now or the person who's going to prove Donald Trump's theory that the election process cannot involve mail-in ballots. And it really has nothing to do. And what What this postal worker did, it's probably illegal if it's true, and it's very bad conduct, but it has nothing to do with trying to sabotage an election. It has nothing to do with mail-in ballots. But this administration is so disingenuous and trying so hard to sow doubt about the integrity of our elections that I think we need to keep calling them out on things like that, like what happened yesterday, so that we can ensure that the next election allows the public to cast a referendum on the conduct that we've seen from the administration to date.

22:46Ben Meiselas:Liz, I know you've been putting out a lot more videos on YouTube and you've been building a platform as well. Tell people where they can see more of your videos and hear more from you and read stuff from you. Yeah, I'm on all the platforms as Lawyer Oyer. I have a sub stack as well as YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. And I post a lot of content about the Department of Justice and threats to the rule of law under Lawyer Oyer. Liz Oyer, great to see you as always. Thanks, Ben. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Before you go, our book, WTF America, is available for pre-order now.

23:24Ben Meiselas:It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To pre-order, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.

23:58Ben Meiselas:We'll be right back.

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