Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou and Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, during a panel Monday night on MSNBC, speculated about how the Trump DOJ’s grand jury probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation will play out.

MICHAEL STEELE: Breaking tonight-another new distraction from the Trump administration, designed to pull focus from the Epstein scandal. Moments ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. Specifically, the investigation will look into criminal referrals from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who made unsubstantiated allegations that President Obama and his aides in the intelligence community began the Russia probe to ruin Trump’s chances of becoming president. Now folks, there is no evidence that ever happened. Zippo. Nada. None. In fact, the idea that the Obama administration conspired against Trump was contradicted by a Senate Intelligence Committee review overseen by none other than Marco Rubio, who was the committee chairman at the time. Joining us now: Brendan Ballou, former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department’s National Security Division, and Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America. HOST: Brendan, how many times during your time at DOJ were you asked to secure a grand jury investigation and indictment where it was not clear who was being charged, what the charges were, or the timeline you were operating on? BRENDAN BALLOU: Zero times. This announcement, as you said, said nothing about who’s being investigated, what they’re being investigated for, what the charging instrument would be, what the charges would be. The thing that surprised me the most-or that was most interesting to me about what wasn’t announced-was who was actually going to do the investigation. They just said it was going to be an attorney in the Department of Justice. HOST: An unnamed federal prosecutor. BALLOU: Exactly. Which suggests to me that they have not yet found a credible U.S. attorney to take this on. HOST: Why do you say that? BALLOU: Well, one thing I always say when I come on here is that the Department of Justice depends entirely on its credibility. There are some hack U.S. attorneys who’ve been nominated and confirmed-unfortunately-who would be more than happy to take on an investigation like this. But if you actually want to secure an indictment in front of a grand jury-18 or more citizens-you need somebody credible in front of them. And the fact that they didn’t announce this suggests they haven’t found that person yet. HOST: Auditions are ongoing. SYMONE SANDERS: I just think this is crazy. It’s a huge distraction. And it just goes to show that they are spiraling. The Russia probe is another conspiracy theory-that Obama and folks in the Obama administration trumped up charges against Donald Trump because they didn’t want him to win, that they wiretapped his phone-these are all conspiracy theories. MICHAEL STEELE: Was there evidence that the Russians did try to meddle in our election? SYMONE SANDERS: Yes, yes-but it’s another conspiracy theory. I think, because Donald Trump is-well, I don’t know. You tell me if the radio people have picked this one up. He seemed rattled by the Epstein controversy. It has not helped him. His wobbliness-because it’s like, why don’t you want to distance yourself from all the pedophilia? It’s not giving us more answers-it’s providing more questions. On this, maybe his administration feels like, Well, the people are with me on the Russia probe. I’m on the up and up on that conspiracy theory. So let me just mix that thing up on the table, and perhaps that’ll distract people to look over here-and not over at this thing. ANGELO CARUSONE: Yeah. It’s the safest possible thing he could tap into, as it relates to these conspiracies and these narratives. It’s also one of the promises they’ve been making. You know, when I heard this, I thought back to November 2017. I remember a Rush Limbaugh segment where he basically laid out a story that sounded exactly like what was reported today-a fantasy, a fiction-in which Trump’s DOJ has a non-named U.S. attorney launch an investigation to get James Clapper and John Brennan for Russiagate. I mean literally, they plucked this from a Rush Limbaugh segment. And ti wasn’t just then. And this gets to your point about it being safe. He was such a potent storyteller that those things have legs. When he laid that architecture out back then-and obviously it existed around him-but he told it in such a concise way, and if you pull the thread from that point on, in just a couple years-maybe 18 months-Fox News did 2,000 segments alone on that very topic: the idea that an investigation launched by the DOJ would expose and prosecute these people. So to your point about it being safe-it’s the safest possible play. The two other corollaries to it: (1) This is part of his promise. At his campaign launch in Waco, he promised revenge. This was one of the revenge items-to go after these individuals. (2) I’m glad you started with the frame that it’s about his base. It’s not about the rest of MAGA media or Trump-aligned media. They haven’t been swimming in this Russiagate stuff for eight years. Trump’s base has. HOST: What are we defining as his base here? CARUSONE: I’d say it’s the people who were listening to talk radio eight years ago, who had cable TV and now finally have Roku-but don’t know that it’s Roku. They still think they’re flipping the channels on a cable box. They’re now, for the first time, maybe listening to YouTube because Tucker Carlson is no longer on Fox. That’s his base: the talk radio listener, the Fox News viewer, and the people around it. The ones percolating in QAnon and this kind of stuff. It’s not the Joe Rogan audience, or Theo Von’s audience, or the Bro-podcasts. They were in it for conspiracies against the abstract deep state, but they never cared about Russiagate. In fact, they love Obama. So this doesn’t do anything for them. And that’s the last thing I’ll say-it’s a little landmine, because it’s going to make some of those people really mad. They love Obama. They’re going to think, What is this guy doing? I don’t know anything about Russiagate. This feels like a distraction to stop us talking about your pedophilia defense. MICHAEL STEELE: I want to stick with that a bit. You opened up the other side of this-how this is being fed by the administration in the first instance to that base. And as we touched on last week, you’ve got to be careful about who the players are. The Joe Rogan types, the influencers-they aren’t the base. They’re not the rank-and-file moms and dads out there who put on the MAGA hat. In fact, the people burning MAGA hats? That’s a whole other conversation. But it begs the question: what does this grand jury process do that either legitimizes or delegitimizes the story? BALLOU: You know, I was thinking-talking about all these conspiracy theories-it seems like the worst thing that could happen is they actually bring an indictment that gets to a verdict. If you’re basing a case entirely on conspiracy theories, and then bring it to the public, it’s eventually going to be judged-by a judge and a jury. I suspect what’s going to happen is an endless series of leaks and innuendo, talking about a sprawling investigation. But they’ll wait as long as possible to actually indict someone. HOST: Does that feed the beast sufficiently-the conspiracy-hungry audience following the day to day narrative-just to keep reeling them in? Especially with the linkage to Epstein, since one conspiracy always seems to feed another? SYMONE SANDERS: Yeah, it does. Where I’m from, the streets say a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if they want to. So I find it hard to believe they couldn’t indict something here. Think about this: the DOJ indicted LaMonica McIver on what I believe are trumped-up charges. Who’s to say they won’t trump up charges and indict the ham sandwich version of this conspiracy theory? Where you already have Obama on record in 2016 saying Russia didn’t tamper with election machines. He said Russia can only impact us if we abdicate our values. These are all lies. But they are the DOJ. They can do a lot of damage. BALLOU: Absolutely. But watch what happened in Congresswoman McIver’s indictment. The DOJ got ripped to shreds in its first court hearing there. The lawyer assigned to the case was reassigned-and I think left DOJ entirely. And look at the other indictment right next to it-the indictment of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. That was dropped entirely. So, sure, they might get a quick headline by bringing an indictment-but in terms of securing convictions, you need more than conspiracy theories.

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