Hours after former White House adviser Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail for defying a subpoena from the January 6th committee, the partisan panel subpoenaed former President Donald J. Trump in what the New York Times described as the ‘most aggressive step taken so far.’

The Friday subpoena comes a week after the committee voted unanimously to do so, and demands that Trump turn over documents by Nov. 4, as well as appear for a deposition on or around Nov. 14 in an interview that could last several days.

“The deposition will be under oath and will be led by the professional staff of the Select Committee — including multiple former federal prosecutors — as well as members,” reads the committee’s letter to Trump, which asks him to inform them “promptly” if he intends to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.

Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, said this week that if Mr. Trump refused to comply, members of the panel would “take the steps we need to take,” although it was unclear how successful any enforcement effort would be, particularly if Republicans win control of the House in next month’s elections. In that case, G.O.P. leaders, who fought the formation of the inquiry, boycotted it and have denounced it at every turn, would be all but certain to disband the committee upon assuming control in January. -NYT

The Friday subpoena seeks records of calls, texts, Signal exchanges or other communications surrounding January 6th, between Dec. 18, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021. They are also looking into “handwritten notes; fund-raising appeals based on claims of widespread voter fraud; documents related to the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys or other militia groups; information about the planning of the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, the gathering of pro-Trump electors from states won by President Biden, and the pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election,” according to the report.

The panel is looking specifically into communications with 13 Trump allies who ‘played key roles in an effort to overturn the election’; Roger Stone Jr., Stephen K. Bannon, Michael T. Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn, Christina Bobb, Cleta Mitchell and Patrick Byrne.

As Jonathan Turley noted on Monday,

It is unclear if Trump will contest the subpoena, but he has contested virtually every previous subpoena in civil and criminal cases. The committee has, in my view, a solid case to compel him to testify. However, it had that case back at its creation on July 1, 2021; it simply waited until a subpoena may be impossible to enforce.

In football, they would be flagged for an “intentional grounding” for throwing a ball where there was no viable receiver or “a realistic chance of completion.”

Two points were immediately emphasized by the committee and its supporters in the media.

• First, some of the coverage highlighted that this was “unanimous” without recognizing the irony of that distinction. House Democrats barred two Republican members originally selected by GOP leaders, who then boycotted the panel in response. There is no indication the committee, hand-picked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has ever had anything but unanimous votes. The only thing its members can cite for not being yes-men is that when there were demands for greater balance in witnesses or questioning, they all said “no.”

• The second point is even more telling: The committee has precedent for former presidents being subpoenaed, such as Harry Truman — but that example is hardly helpful. Truman was subpoenaed by one of the most notorious panels in the history of Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was ridiculed for its lack of balance and due process.

While called “historic,” former presidents have been subpoenaed before, though it remains exceptionally rare. It is even more rare for them to testify. Truman never did; when Congress subpoenaed former presidents John Tyler and John Quincy Adams over the alleged misuse of funds, Tyler appeared but Adams submitted a deposition. Others, such as Bill Clinton, were subpoenaed to appear in civil cases or subpoenaed for documents, such as Richard Nixon.

The Jan. 6 committee had a noble mandate but failed to use it to offer a credible investigation for citizens across the political spectrum. From the first to the final hearing, it presented a one-sided narrative in a tightly scripted, packaged production. No defense or alternative explanations for key events or statements were allowed; witnesses were largely asked specific questions to get them to repeat what they said in previously recorded interviews, as members read from a teleprompter.

The committee could have been so much more. It could have followed the type of balanced inquiry that pursued allegations tied to the Pearl Harbor attack or Watergate. Even without Republican-appointed members, it could have insisted on balanced hearings with witnesses and dissenting views.

Nevertheless, the committee revealed important, often disturbing details. It was important for Americans to hear from figures like former attorney general Bill Barr and White House lawyers who struggled to counter unfounded advice given to Trump by outside lawyers on challenging the 2020 election. There were painful scenes of Capitol police overwhelmed at barricades and members of Congress hunkered down in offices.

Yet, the focus on a single approved narrative gave the hearings the feel of an infomercial selling a product that most of us bought two years earlier.

Subpoenaing Trump on the final scheduled hearing only reaffirmed how the committee was driven by political rather than investigative priorities. Indeed, the timing was embarrassingly transparent. While Trump could appear without a challenge or the Democrats could retain the House, few experts are predicting either outcome.

For more than a year, the committee said its investigation was focused on Trump’s intent and actions. Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) explained that the subpoena was essential because “he must be accountable. He is required to answer for his actions on Jan. 6. So we want to hear from him.” Why, then, wait until the last hearing, especially if the House may flip to GOP control in a matter of weeks?

It seemed another case of planned obsolescence by the House leadership. In the first Trump impeachment, Speaker Pelosi imposed an arbitrary deadline for impeachment by Christmas. That deadline was then used as an excuse to hold only one hearing on the legal standard with only one Republican witness. (I was that sole witness.) This was reportedly ordered over the objections of House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) who raised the abandonment of both due process and precedent. Pelosi then delayed transmitting the impeachment articles to the Senate — destroying her own rationalization for the lack of hearings.

In the second Trump impeachment, Pelosi went one better: She ordered a “snap impeachment” that dispensed entirely with hearings and witnesses.

If Trump declines to appear before the committee on constitutional grounds, the House would likely run out of time for any challenge.

Thus, the only way to enforce this subpoena in time would be a “snap contempt” vote that does not wait for negotiation or judicial review.

Stocks are surging today amid a dovish one-two punch from Fed whisperer Nick Timiraos who hinted that the time is coming to reassess the pace of rate hikes, followed a few hours later by the otherwise hawkish Mary Daly who also suggested that the Fed may be moving too fast while bringing up the sensitive topic of broken markets, and the reason for this particular dovish reversal and jawboning is becoming increasingly clear: the same reason we have been warning for the past year that the Fed’s tightening campaign, now in its terminal stages, will inevitably break something which will manifest itself first in a worldwide dollar shortage and short-squeeze crisis, as global USD funding markets grind to a halt.

Of course, this is good news, because as BofA Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett (whose latest weekly note we will dissect shortly) is fond of saying “Markets stop panicking when central banks start panicking.”

So in what may be the best news to shellshocked bulls after the worst September and worst Q3 in generations, in a harrowing year for markets, central banks are starting to panic more with every passing day. First it was the BOJ with its September intervention, then the BOE with its bailout of pensions, then the BOJ again with its second consecutive injection of billions of US dollars into the market – consider the paradox: there is such a massive USD short squeeze out there that it was the Bank of Japan that was compelled to inject approximately $40 billion in USD today (in only its second intervention this century) to prop up the yen since the Fed won’t lift a finger…

… and now, for the third week in a row, it’s Switzerland’s turn.

Recall that one month ago, after the (first) panicked pivot by the BOE, when global markets were in freefall, we said that markets desperately needed some words of encouragement from the Fed, or failing that – and with the dollar soaring to new all time highs every day – the Fed had to make some pre-emptive announcement on USD Fx swap lines, if only to reassure global markets that amid this historic, US dollar short squeeze, at least someone can and will print as many as are needed to avoid systemic collapse.

Fed has to issue FX swap line press release before open

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 26, 2022

So fast forward two weeks to October 5, when there still hasn’t been any formal announcement from the Fed, but ever so quietly  the Fed shuttled $3.1 billion to the Swiss National Bank to cover an emergency dollar shortfall, as we first reported a few days ago.

Remarkably, this was the first time the Fed sent dollars to the SNB this year, and the first time the Fed used the swap line in size (besides a token amount to the ECB every now and then)!

But it certainly wouldn’t be the last time – as we have warned, expect far wider use of Fed swap lines as the world chokes on the global dollar shortage – and sure enough one week later, the Fed announced that it had doubled the size of its USD swap with the world’s most pristine economy and its central bank, the Swiss National Bank, sending some $6.27 billion to avoid an emergency funding crunch.

… And then, just when people thought that things are set to normalize with Credit Suisse stock surging, it doubled it again, and in the latest week, the Fed almost doubled the amount of US liquidity it sent to Switzerland from $6.3 billion to $11.1 billion…

… a number which is roughly doubling every single week. Remarkably, this was not only the third consecutive time the Fed sent dollars (in size) to the SNB this year, but the largest single USD swap transfer in history!

The next logical question obviously is: why does Switzerland have a financial institution needing over $11 billion in cheap (3.33%) overnight funding – up from $3 billion two weeks ago. We don’t know the answer, but have a pretty good idea of who the culprit may be courtesy of Goldman which earlier this week issued the following competitor warrant.

And speaking of the coming crisis, recall what we said at the start of September: the coming Fed pivot will have nothing to do with whether the Fed hits or doesn’t hit its inflation target, and everything to do with the devastation unleashed by the soaring dollar (a record margin call to the tune of some $20 trillion) on the rest of the world.

BBG dollar index 1300, back over covid panic highs, and new record as dollar margin call sweeps emerging markets. Pivot will not come from “inflation target is hit” but from devastation across ROW pic.twitter.com/C3h15bko0B

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 1, 2022

Here will will again remind readers of what Bob Michele, the outspoken chief investment officer of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told everyone a few weeks ago as paraphrased by Bloomberg, when he said that said “the relentless dollar could forge a path to the next market upheaval.”

Michele has been in de-risking mode, sitting on a pile of cash which is near the highest level he has held in 10 years. And he is long the dollar. While a market crisis sparked by the greenback is not his base case, it’s a tail risk that he is monitoring closely.

Here’s how it could happen: Foreigners have snapped up dollar-denominated assets for higher yields, safety, and a brighter earnings outlook than most markets. A big chunk of those purchases are hedged back into local currencies such as the euro and the yen through the derivatives market, and it involves shorting the dollar. When the contracts roll, investors have to pay up if the dollar moves higher. That means they may have to sell assets elsewhere to cover the loss.

“I get concerned that a much stronger dollar will create a lot of pressure, particularly in hedging US dollar assets back to local currencies,” Michele said in an interview. “When the central bank steps on the brakes, something goes through the windshield. The cost of financing has gone up and it will create tension in the system.”

The market probably saw some of that pressure already: as we noted at the time, investment-grade credit spreads spiked close to 20 basis points toward the end of September. That’s coincidental with a lot of currency hedges rolling over at the end of the third quarter, he said — and it may be just “the tip of an iceberg.”

Indeed it was, and since then things have only gotten worse… and will keep getting worse, because here is Michele is what he thinks happens next: as Bloomberg writes, “the central bank will be so committed to combating inflation that it will keep raising rates and won’t pause or reverse course unless something really bad happens to markets or the economy, or both. If policy makers pause in response to market functionality, there has to be such a shock to the system that it creates potential insolvencies. And a rising dollar might do just that.”

Needless to say, the fact that the Fed is already quietly shuttling tens of billions of dollars to various central banks to plug dollar overnight funding holes, confirms that the rising dollar has already done just that. One look at the meltup in FRA-OIS – the most widely used indicator of interbank lack of funding and liquidity – which just hit a fresh 2022 high, is enough confirmation.

As for what happens next, we suggest that you i) quietly panic if you are still short USD – and hoping for the Fed to come to the rescue – because at last check (March 2020) JPMorgan calculated that the global dollar short was $12 trillion with a T, or some 60% of US GDP, a number which has conservatively grown to about $20 trillion as of today…

… and ii) keep a very close eye on the visitors to this particular tower…

… and this particular hotel.

Authored by Joseph Solis-Mullen via The Mises Institute,

While whispers of the current emerging market debt crisis, the result of the rapidly strengthening dollar, could be heard throughout the summer, virtually no one predicted the blow the dollar’s rise would deal to some other developed economies. But with the dollar reaching levels not seen in a generation, a battering is precisely what several are being unexpectedly dealt.

In September, the Bank of Japan intervened to stem a persistent bleed, buying yen for the first time in twenty-five years (and again today). The yen, which had been steadily losing value since the middle of March, when the Bank of Japan announced it would not be following the Federal Reserve in a hawkish pivot to combat inflation, will likely remain under pressure given the Bank of Japan’s commitment to ultralow interest rates. However, the singular move marked a shot across the bow at the macro funds that speculate in currency markets: think twice before shorting the yen.

The following week it was the Bank of England’s turn. Bond markets, rattled by new UK prime minister Liz Truss’s unexpected announcement of yet more unfunded tax cuts and increased spending, sold off violently in the pound’s largest ever single day decline. The move sent yields spiking, bond prices moving inversely to yields. Already mired in economic crisis, with inflation still running near 10 percent and the price of heating a home five times what it was a year ago, the Bank of England has now revealed its intervention was done to save several public pension funds whose leveraged positions faced liquidation because of the sell-off.

Bond and currency markets having at least temporarily been calmed by these interventions, the examples of Japan and England illustrate the advantage a currency sovereign has over most borrowers in the emerging markets, who are forced to borrow in dollars to access international credit markets: in a crisis, the Bank of England and Bank of Japan can simply turn on the printing press to keep the lights on and people fed.

Italy, itself facing an even worse economic crisis than the UK, has no choice looking ahead to the coming winter but to go along gratefully with whatever protection Brussels and the European Central Bank (ECB) are willing to give it as the spreads on its bonds threaten to widen.

Of course, while all of the above actions can help avoid an immediate credit event, their use has become all too regular, and the now staggering debts of the rich world will increasingly take their toll in the new higher interest rate environment, with the percentage of GDP devoted to paying annual interest rising precipitously.

A problem for the long run, apparently.

While at this point minor compared to the immediate, starvation-level situation wrought by the rising dollar in places like Nigeria, Egypt, Argentina, or Kenya, the full impact of the Federal Reserve’s top to bottom bungling of inflation on its major advanced trading partners has yet to fully materialize. Changes in the real economy lag changes in interest rates, but already warnings from Seoul and Delhi suggest the reversal of capital flows resulting from capital moving into treasuries is hindering necessary investment. Though, that may pale in comparison to the damage of a global recession, which the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization all now warn is increasingly likely, and due in no small part to the precipitous pace of the Fed’s rate increases.

For their part, Jerome Powell and Co. remain unmoved by the markets’ cries of “uncle.” The US economy is sending mixed signals. In particular, citing the continuing tightness of the labor market, the result of a demographic imbalance between generational cohorts, the Fed continues to make the political space it needs to continue its inflation fight. Facing complaints from lawmakers and investors alike, high ranking Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly emphasized the need for the institution to stay its course in order to maintain its “credibility.”

Apparently, this is a feat only accomplishable by pushing the economy it overheated off a cliff.

At a moment when virtually every central banker the world over was asleep at the wheel, credit to the few central banks that got it right. In Brazil and Mexico, for example, countries with troubled histories of inflationary spikes and currency sell-offs, rate hikes were earlier and sharper; as a result, their currencies held up amidst the otherwise global rout in the emerging markets; this, in turn, helped Brazilian and Mexican businesses as the global economy soured. In both cases economic growth has been maintained despite the deteriorating macroeconomic environment.

As the old adage goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure.

Had the Federal Reserve been bound by some version of the Taylor rule, rates would have automatically adjusted as soon as inflation began to tick up in 2021.

As it is, wishful thinking, misleading narratives, and an unaccountable few have given the global economy a series of unnecessary and deadly shocks.

When President Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme was unveiled in August, the White House assured the public that it was “relief for borrowers who need it most“ and promised that “no high-income individual or high-income household – in the top 5% of incomes – will benefit from this action.”

However, in what the Washington Free Beacon describes as a “bait-and-switch” of American taxpayers, the election-year handouts are now being offered to people with incomes far above the initially-advertised limits. 

Here’s how a fact sheet posted in August by the White House described the program’s parameters: “Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples).”

Now that that program has gone live, it’s clear the American public was misled. 

As the Department of Education’s online application form explains, debt relief is available to those who made less than $125,000 in 2021 or 2020. With a generous two-year look-back, the word “or” opens the door to people who were below the threshold in 2020 but then blew it away in 2021.  

“That’s good news for recent law school graduates, many of whom are now employed at white-shoe law firms making over $200,000 a year, or for doctors who just completed their residencies,” writes the Free Beacon. 

Critically, the rules also ignore how applicants are doing this year — which is already more than nine months gone. 

Put it all together and an individual could be eligible for the program if he, for example, made $124,000 in 2020, $750,000 in 2021 and is knocking down a million in 2022.  

The dollar limits refer to an applicant’s Adjusted Gross Income, which excludes various types of income. As The Beacon notes: 

Paycheck Protection Program funds aren’t considered income, nor is inherited wealth, meaning one could have received a cash influx and still qualify for Biden’s helicopter cash drop. Remember this when Biden drones on about how “not a dime will go to those in the top 5 percent of the income bracket.”

It gets worse: The program leans hard on the honesty of applicants, which is never a good idea where government handouts are concerned. The application only requires basic information and an assertion that the applicant is eligible — no proof of income is required.

According to CNBC, the Department of Education “will verify a certain number of borrowers have told the truth about their eligibility as a fraud prevention measure.” 

As legal challenges to Biden’s unconstitutional debt relief order stack up, debtors are rushing to the application website: More than 8 million applied just during the weekend “beta test” period that proceeded Monday’s official launch.  

“Any borrower who has already received forgiveness will likely get to keep it, even if the courts block the president’s plan,” higher education funding expert Mark Kantrowitz tells CNBC.  

On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Bryant bought Biden and his millions of forgiveness-seeking beneficiaries more time, as she denied a request filed Wednesday by the Brown County Taxpayers Association, a Wisconsin group that sought to keep the plan on hold while its legal challenge goes forward.  

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s giveaway will cost the federal government about $400 billion — for a government that already owes $31 trillion…and counting. 

Student loan forgiveness doesn’t actually forgive the loan. It just transfers the debt to people who never asked for the loan, never agreed to the terms, and never benefited from the loan or saw any of that money.

— Steve (@oldguy_steve) April 14, 2021

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

When the $400 trillion global credit-asset bubbles all pop, maybe there will only be $100 trillion in wealth sloshing around.

Getting rich in a bubble economy isn’t that hard as long as you were rich enough to buy assets at the start of the bubble.

For example, some friends bought a modest old house (built 1916, under 1,000 square feet) in the East Bay / San Francisco Bay Area for $135,000 in late 1996.

They invested money and sweat equity in improvements (new heating and wiring, etc.) and sold it for $545,000 in 2004.

Now the house is worth over $1 million.

Official inflation since 1997 is $1 then is now $1.80, so if the value of the house had kept up with inflation the current value would be $250,000.

Studies have found housing tends to gain about 2% net of inflation annually, so with this added in, the house “should be” worth about $325,000.

So the house is worth triple what historical (pre-bubble) valuations would suggest.

The stock and bond markets have yielded similar stellar results over the past 25 years, roughly double the handsome historical expected returns.

Other investments have yielded spectacular returns. Many tech stocks have risen ten-fold or more, and those who bought Bitcoin for $650 in August of 2016 when I projected a price target of $17,000 (absurd at the time) could have reaped a nearly 100-fold gain had they held on and sold at the peak around $65,000 in November 2021.

Not everyone who owned or bought assets in the early years of the credit-asset bubble have become wealthy, but most have done well for themselves.

Going forward, the tricky part will be keeping this wealth.

There are several reasons for this.

One is that all bubbles pop, despite the vigorous protests of those who have profited so mightily from the bubble.

Another is the magnitude of the challenge: to preserve their gains, everyone will have to rotate out of asset classes that are deflating into assets that are rising or at least holding their value.

As John Hussman has pointed out, somebody owns the devaluing asset all the way down, i.e. bagholders. These owners absorb the losses.

There’s about $400 trillion in assets / wealth sloshing around the global economy. If (say) half of that wealth must exit declining assets and find safe haven in some other asset classes, that’s a tall order.

$200 trillion out of declining asset classes (real estate, bonds and stocks, for example) into what asset classes that will be worth $200 trillion in the new era?

Proponents of safe-haven asset classes abound. Crypto enthusiasts are confident cryptocurrencies and crypto-investments will register massive gains, while precious metals investors are equally confident that PMs will fulfill their historic role as safe havens that gain value as things unravel.

Others claim real estate and stocks will hold their value for various reasons (global capital flows, etc.).

I have little confidence in any of these projections because the era we’re entering–the instability born of scarcity and depletion–has no modern analog.

We have to go back to the 1600s to find any sort of similar climate-driven scarcities, and even further back to to find eras of climate-disruption / resource depletion instability (Ming Dynasty, Cambodian Khmer, late Roman era, Mayan city-states, Bronze Age civilizations, etc.)

Just as previous civilizations cut down their forests to sustain the expansion of their economies, we’ve exhausted the cheap-to-get oil and coal.

The transition to some other equivalent sources of energy is not guaranteed to be smooth or equivalent in scale, portability, reliability, etc.

If there are no recent historical analogous eras, how confident can we be in projections of how $400 trillion can seamlessly slosh out of loser-assets into a set of winner-assets?

Another reason is the entrenched nature of speculative fever. “Investors” is now the polite term for gamblers who have grown accustomed to reaping quick gains and moving capital around with a few keystrokes.

This mentality is a rocket booster for instability, an instability that undermines real investing by generating wild swings of valuation. One either joins the crowd at the gaming tables or risks being wiped out by sudden downdrafts.

Another reason is the increasing desperation of authorities to keep a fragile, destabilizing system glued together.

Put yourself in the shoes of authorities seeking revenues to cover the costs of their immense borrowing and spending.

Any asset class that registers spectacular gains draws a target on itself. Hmm, shouldn’t “the rich” (i.e. the owners of whatever asset registered spectacular gains) pay “windfall taxes” on these (undeserved / unearned) gains?

Of course they should. Let’s start with a 50% tax that progresses to 90%, and increase the penalties for evasion.

Then there’s a wealth tax to nail all those greedy souls who refuse to sell to reap their gains. Let’s start a wealth tax at $10 million, so the bottom 95% will support it, and then move it down to $1 million.

How about requiring pension funds, 401K and IRA retirement accounts to own government bonds “to protect these assets from speculative losses.”

Next, let’s limit withdrawals and transfers to overseas accounts to a trickle. The “wealthy” will be wealthy on paper but won’t be able to access much of their wealth.

Assets held in Periphery economies may simply be expropriated without due process. You have it, we need it, done.

In the course of this year, I have endeavored to explain my thesis that the real action to pay attention to isn’t in comparing one broad asset class to another, but nuanced differences within each asset class.

For example, real estate in enclaves that are highly attractive to the super-wealthy and merely-wealthy may gain in value even as 95% of real estate / housing declines or even collapses back to the valuations of a generation ago.

Some stocks may do extremely well even as 95% of equities crater.

In other words, I doubt that there are any easy generic answers to the question, “how do I preserve my wealth going forward?”

Diversifying assets is one strategy.

Another is to concentrate on assets we control directly such as our primary residence, family enterprise, etc.

Another is to focus on intangible forms of wealth such as skills and trusted personal networks.

Yet another is to recognize the divide between Core and Periphery will widen and assets in the Periphery will be at far greater risk than assets held in the Core.

From a historical perspective, we might lower our expectations so we’ll be delighted to hold onto 50% of our current wealth, or perhaps 25%.

In other words, when the $400 trillion global credit-asset bubbles all pop, maybe there will only be $100 trillion in wealth sloshing around, and much of that will be severely constrained by authorities of one kind or another.

The instability generated by climate disruption-resource depletion will not be easy to navigate. Partial success may be all that’s within grasp for most of us.

What do we need to sustain our well-being? Perhaps that’s the type of wealth we should prioritize preserving.

*  * *

This essay was first published as a weekly Musings Report sent exclusively to subscribers and patrons at the $5/month ($50/year) and higher level. Thank you, patrons and subscribers, for supporting my work and free website.

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A star reporter for ABC News has been missing since an April 27 FBI raid at his Arlington, Virginia apartment.

Emmy award winner James Gordon Meek – a deep-dive journalist who was also a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee, abruptly quit his job of 9 years and “fell off the face of the earth,” after the raid, one of his colleagues told Rolling Stone.

At the time of the raid, Meek, 52, was co-authoring a now-published book about the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to ‘sources familiar with the matter,’ federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid – though one investigative journalist who had worked with him said it would be highly unusual for a reporter to do so.

“Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents,” said his lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, in a statement. “If such documents exist, as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing. The allegations in your inquiry are troubling for a different reason: they appear to come from a source inside the government. It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation. We hope that the DOJ [Department of Justice] promptly investigates the source of this leak.”

Tucker Carlson: “ABC News Producer who was working on a book about Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal was raided by the FBI and has gone missing.” pic.twitter.com/6W8tptpu0x

— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) October 20, 2022

As Rolling Stone notes, it’s unclear what story Meek could have been working on that would have put him in the FBI’s crosshairs.

Meek worked on extremely sensitive topics — from high-profile terrorists to Americans held abroad to the exploits of Erik Prince, the founder of the infamous military contractor Blackwater. In recent years, some of Meek’s highest-profile reporting delved into a 2017 ambush by ISIS in Niger that left four American Green Berets dead. Meek and ABC then adapted the story into the feature-length documentary 3212 Un-Redacted, which debuted last year on Veteran’s Day on ABC’s sister company Hulu.

A robust Emmy campaign began prior to Meek’s disappearance, with events like a screening and Q&A at the Motion Picture Association in D.C. that the journalist attended with one of his daughters. The story was particularly incendiary because it undermined the Pentagon’s official narrative of what happened on the ground in the African nation, and presented “evidence of a cover-up at the highest levels of the Army,” according to the film’s logline. Adding intrigue, sources say another ABC News investigative journalist, Brian Epstein, also abruptly and inexplicably left the network a few months before Meek. Epstein also worked as a director, producer, and cinematographer on 3212 Un-Redacted (Hulu stopped Emmy campaigning after Meek apparently went AWOL, and the documentary ultimately failed to receive a nomination). Epstein told Rolling Stone, “I’m not commenting on this story,” before abruptly hanging up. -Rolling Stone

Meanwhile, Meek’s co-author on the Afghanistan book, retired Green Beret Lt. Col. Scott Mann, says he has no idea what happened.

“He contacted me in the spring, and was really distraught, and told me that he had some serious personal issues going on and that he needed to withdraw from the project,” Mann told Rolling Stone. “As a guy who’s a combat veteran who has seen that kind of strain — I don’t know what it was — I honored it. And he went on his way, and I continued on the project.”