From 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., A.G. works for President Donald Trump. A 44-year old military veteran living in San Diego, A.G. has a senior role in an executive branch agency and a fine-tuned sense of chain of command. She estimates there are six people between her and Trump on the government org chart.



Unbeknownst to her coworkers, A.G. spends virtually every other waking hour creating Mueller, She Wrote, a liberal comedy-slash-journalism podcast that giddily tracks Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into her boss and commander-in-chief. Well, unbeknownst to most of her coworkers. “There’s a handful that I trust to also be non-loyalists and they know about the podcast,” she says.

A.G. and her co-hosts, San Diego comedians Jaleesa Johnson and Jordan Coburn, started recording Mueller, She Wrote last fall, out of a spare bedroom belonging to A.G.’s two cats (her husband is allergic). The podcast takes the structure of a Game of Thrones episode, with each host checking in on a different character in the sprawling Mueller investigation universe—Trump, Manafort, Flynn, Broidy, Barrack. The sons. The sons-in-law. A.G. jumps in with gossip from the Hill, contextualizing notes and fact-checks. All three jump in with speculation about syphilis-induced dementia, the biohazard measures one might take before handcuffing Michael Cohen, and how George Conway’s critiques of Trump affect his romantic life with Kellyanne. There is a fantasy indictment league.

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A.G. wanted the show to be made entirely by women because “women have a different sense of justice.” By this, she means emotional intelligence, sensitivity towards violations and assaults (including the constitutional variety), and gallows humor. Their haters mostly complain that the women giggle at serious matters, A.G. says. “To which I say, I’m sorry, women laugh. We’re allowed to laugh and it's not necessarily giggling.”

The chaos of the Trump presidency has created an ecosystem of insider-experts. The president’s inner circle gives information to the press in the hopes of taking down other members of the inner circle. Never-Trumpers get booked on cable news to promise voters that Trump diverges from Republican doctrine. On Pod Save America, former Obama staffers assure liberals that Trump defies norms to which Obama adhered. Mueller, She Wrote's brand of insider-expertise is subtler. A.G. is a mole, but she’s not reporting live from inside the Department of Justice. Mostly, the three hosts offer a digestible and enjoyable recap of a news story that can feel impenetrably complex and serious, with a sprinkling of A.G.'s intel and informed speculation. “I wanted to make sure nobody got tired of hearing about Mueller,” A.G. says. “If we decide our president is above the law, our democracy slips away.”

Over the last nine months, the women of Mueller, She Wrote have built a modest-but-devoted audience of Russia investigation heads and #resistance tweeters that, lately, has been growing quickly. In the past 90 days, according to A.G., Mueller She Wrote has been downloaded 350,000 times, and their audience has doubled each month. In October, they’ll appear at Politicon—the political-entertainment world’s answer to Comic-Con—on a stage previously occupied by Pod Save America, Chelsea Handler and Jake Tapper.

Does the Russia investigation brings out your inner Jessica Fletcher? NBC Getty Images

Politicon will be a high-visibility moment for the anonymous host, who has only performed live once, at the Comedy Store in San Diego, wearing a paper bag over her head. But then, A.G.’s identity is already an open secret. A decade moonlighting in the local comedy and music scenes left her with an internet track record. Curious audiences can draw a line between the details she discloses on the podcast, past work, Google search suggestions and LinkedIn. In this respect, A.G. is like any part-time creative with a day job. This podcast does not reflect the views of her employer. Except A.G.’s employer is a president with a penchant for purging disloyal civil servants not seen since the Nixon administration.

A.G. is not overly concerned about being outed. “I’m not trying to hide,” she says over the phone during her lunch break. In creating a pseudonym, she explains, “I was basically trying to avoid violating the Hatch Act, because I have ethics.” (Subtext: Unlike some people.) The Hatch Act of 1939 says you can’t use your government title to campaign politically for or against another party, she explains. That means a Trump bureaucrat is safe to make a Trump-bashing podcast as long as her name and title aren’t attached to it. But—and she gets “very upset” about this—the rules don’t apply to everyone. “I think Kellyanne Conway has been on T.V. violating the Hatch Act no less than six times, which would be a fireable offense for us normies down on the food chain.”

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Mueller, She Wrote also illustrates the indignity of being one of the millions of civil servants working for an administration that prizes loyalty over ideology and ideas. It’s something that can be hard to wrap your head around as a partisan in the private-sector: People work in government not because they want to work for the president, but because they care enough about what they do to do it for any president.

A.G. makes this idea real. On Mueller, She Wrote, the Russia investigation doesn’t seem to be a way of undoing the 2016 election or an impeachment countdown clock, as it is for many liberals. It’s about wanting the president to follow the same numerous, arcane rules the “normies down the food chain” follow. The same rules A.G.’s previous bosses followed. Bosses A.G. worked for not necessarily because she liked them, but because we elected them and she believes in this democracy stuff. She—and her father and her grandfather, who also served in the military—were willing to die for it.

I'm not trying to hide. I'm trying to avoid violating the Hatch Act, because I have ethics.

Back at work, A.G. says morale is low. The agency is being told to reduce regulations and staff and there’s no job security. She empathizes with the tens of thousands who have responded to this crisis by leaving. Those who work for the E.P.A. might be more effective in the private sector at this point.

But, in her line of work, she says, “we’re here to protect the safety and lives of Americans and we’re all holding out until he’s gone, keeping our heads down and moving forward with what little we have.” Plus, she says, “they’re going to need people to put the government back together again...maybe we’ll be able to put it back together again better than it was.”

And if Mueller, She Wrote got so big she didn’t need a day job? A.G. has a Ph.D., and student loans, and she’s done the math. The podcast payout would have to be improbably large to make up for the student loan forgiveness offered to federal employees. “I’ll be here until he fires me,” she says. “That’s a promise.”

Kat Stoeffel Features Director Kat Stoeffel is the features director for ELLE.com

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