Jack - Trump is a Russian Asset (feat. David Rothkopf & Bill Browder)

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

S3E2 - Joining us this week is David Rothkopf (Deep State Radio) and Bill Browder (Head of the global Magnitsky justice campaign). Plus, Jordan gives an update on the NRA, Jaleesa reports on The Trump Org hiring a lawyer, and A.G. breaks down the NY Times report on the FBI investigating Trump after Comey was fired! Enjoy! 

Hi, I'm Harry Lickman, host of Talking Feds. Around table, the brings together prominent figures from government law and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day. Each Monday, I'm joined by a slate of Feds favorites and new voices to break down the headlines and give the insider's view of what's going on in Washington and beyond. Plus, Sidebar is explaining important legal concepts read by your favorite celebrities. Find Talking Fedswear every you get your podcasts. This episode of Mullershi Road is brought to you by Zola. Zola is reinventing the wedding

registry and planning process to make the happiest moment in couples' lives even happier. To start your free wedding website and also get $50 off your registry on Zola, go to zol-A.com slash AG. And thanks to Noom for supporting Mueller, she wrote. It's not too late to kick off your year right. Stay on track to meet your new year's resolutions and meet your goals with Noom.com. Noom is designed for results.

Meet your resolutions by signing up for your trial today at Noom.noom.com slash AG. What do you have to lose? Visit num.com-ag to start your trial today. Again, that's num.com-ag. Start losing weight for good. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs.

That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time, a tree, in that campaign, and I didn't have not have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have nothing to do with Putin. I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin?

I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So it is political. You're a communist. No, Mr. Green.

Communism is just a red hairing. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello and welcome to Muller She Wrote. I'm your host, A.G. With me, as always, is Julie Sejonsen. Hello. And Jordan Coburn. Hello.

Oh my god, you guys this week was insane. I think we can stop saying that now though. We haven't had a non-insane week since we started this podcast just like over a year ago. That's true. But I keep being surprised and I suppose that's good. It means I haven't normalized this shit show. But welcome to our hundreds of new patrons to let you know I go by AG because I work for Trump's executive branch. I've been there since the days of Obama and we took the executive oath of office at the same time actually the same day.

But Trump is purging non-loyalist, so I go by AG. He's even used his Office of General Counsel to file a FOIA request for my employee records. So what I'm trying to do is not violate the Hatch Act by using my name or my agency or my title to campaign against or for any political party or person. That's why I use the pseudonym and why I can appear in public. So I just want to get let all our new patrons know that, although you probably already have been listening. It's really about not using my name and agency.

Anyway, as of this recording, we are now in the middle of the longest government shutdown in the history of the country. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, many of whom are veterans are not being paid. We don't have TSA at full force because they're calling in six 100,000 is a men and women. Many of whom are veterans are not being paid. We don't have TSA at full force because they're calling in six

so that they can work privately elsewhere. So they can get money to feed their families, pay their rent. The FDA has stopped inspecting food. They're trying to get emergency FDA workers in to look at like, you know. That's weird. Critical stuff like cheese and seafood. Is it still going through,

even though it's not being inspected, or just like oh that's not good yeah still going through this is far more of a humanitarian crisis than anything at the southern border that the president's trying to create and it's being perpetuated on our own citizens and not just ordinary citizens but public servants those who keep us safe people who have dedicated their lives to asking not what their country can do for them, but what they can do for their country, right? So, I just wanted to extend my heartfelt concern and apologies to those federal workers, 820,000 of them, 30% of which are veterans or more, that are receiving zero dollars yesterday

in their paycheck. I'm so sorry. And I wish there was something I could do. It's awesome. Today, Jordan, what are you going over in your hot note? All right. So this week, I'm going to cover something I covered a little bit in December. Remember when we talked about that media organization that was basically buying ads on behalf of

both Trump and the NRA? Yeah. Well, there is an update to that story. All right. Cool. And Jalisa, what do you have? an update to that story. All right. Cool. And Jalisa, what do you have? Something about Wall Street Journal report, right? Yeah.

Basically, we're learning that the Trump org is hiring their own lawyer to pretty much combat all these democratic congressional investigations and everyone's lowering up. That's the news. Yeah. Lots of lawyers going around this week. I'm going to be talking about this crazy New York Times report about the FBI investigating Trump a couple days prior to Komi being fired. So interesting, interesting things. We do have some amazing guests today. The host of Deep State Radio, David Rothkoff, will be with us.

And I got to talk to the CEO of Hermitage Capital, the head of the Global Magnetski Justice campaign, Putin enemy number one, Bill Browder. Who's amazing? Yeah, if you haven't yet, go listen to episode two one, Bill Browder. It was amazing. Yeah, if you haven't yet, go listen to episode two of Mollarshi Road. It's all about the Magnitsky Act. It'll be a good primer to the conversation we're about to have with the guy who helped write the Magnitsky Act.

Please mind the sound quality. In episode two, we have some corrections from last week. In the ongoing saga of how to pronounce Herman German Kahn's name, I'm now being told by the Russian friend that it's a hard G. German Khan. This is the father-in-law of Vanders Juan, German Khan Vanders Juan. Vanders Juan is the first guy to go to jail and be deported in the Mueller probe. So there, German Khan. I'm just going to calm Khan from now on. Yeah. That's the same face way again. The whole German, German, German situation. I also said

Montenegrin was a Baltic state, not a Balkan. It's Balkan. And I know that. And I always confuse those two things. And I always mix them up. Sorry about that. Good looking out. Also, I thought a bad conduct discharge was worse than a dishonorable discharge, but it's the other way around. Disonorable discharge are for like murder and rape and shit like that. Wow. And to the women who bristle when I call myself old, because I'm 44, I know it's not old, but my feelings about myself are not a referendum on you. I'm very aware that 44 is not old, although it's relative, right? I thought I wasn't going to make it past 30. So, and I do understand we're trying to smash the patriarchy here, and that includes not feeling old when we're not.

But as a woman, I like to declare how I feel when I want to declare it. And in no way do I imply that my feelings apply to you. Sometimes I feel that way. I know that you guys, when you're 20s, sometimes you're like, I'm so old. That is in no way saying that people who are our age or older or younger are old You know, that's this isn't on you. It's on me. Yeah

It's more a reflection of my experience with time Personal that everyone that shares the same numbers me. I've lived a thousand lifetimes in my brain Make it stuff. I'm sure we all have, right? Yeah, yeah. And there's days we feel really young, and there's days we feel really, really old. And also, I'm a comedian in these are jokes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, if I didn't talk about Perry Menopause, what would I talk about? Good point. Yeah. Muller? There's no content there. What? Let's start a whole new podcast called,

are you there, God, it's me, Menopause. And it's going to be me talking about how old I am all the time. No, another thing at the end of the last episode, we were pointing out that the chief of staff at the Pentagon is Sweeney, quit because Matt is quit, but we learned the day after we recorded that, that he was actually forced out. So keep your eye on Trump purging all non-loyalists,

including me, please don't fire me. It's been happening for a while. Alright, we have a ton of news to get to, so let's jump in with just the facts. Okay, on Monday, we got an update on the Concord Management subpoena battle in the Mueller investigation. Concord management is, sorry, Concord Management and Catering is a Russian company headed up by Pergusion, that's Putin-Chef, they pleaded not guilty to charges filed by the Mueller investigation, Mueller probe, last year in the social media case against Russian

meddling. They're fighting Mueller in court and in a hearing in that case this week, the judge took issue, Dabney, right, Friedrich. Friedrich. Found out that's a woman. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Yeah, me either. My bad. Sorry, lady, lady judge. She took issue with the character and nature of the defense attorney's

filings. Tell it basically said knock it off. Cut it out. So Jordan, you covered some of the colorful language and references in our midweek episode. We have midweek episodes now there for patrons. So if you're not a patron, get on it. You can get on it. You can get that second episode plus all the other shit you get for being a patron for those. Little is three bucks. So go sign up patreon.com slash muller. She wrote, it's a good deal. But you did. You covered some of that colorful language and cartoon references. What were some of the things that Concorde management lawyer, Dubélière, has written in his court filings? Yeah, someone said it is pronounced French, by the way. Nice.

Yeah, so we know now. He said that prosecutors of the Special Counsel Office live in, quote, Fairyland. True. Nice. Yes. And then he also made a reference. He said in these words with no context,

which I am aware of. I ta ta ta ta ta ta ta a puti tat. Reminds me of your titties joke. Yeah. Yours is more sophisticated. Little bit. And didn't he also say fuck in his, like he put the F-bomb in his filing? Completely just unbridled. Yeah.

Iddc. Yeah. Some of the stuff he's saying. Yeah, and then judges like, this is embarrassing and unprofessional. And then he called it a fake laws. Yeah. And that's worse than fake news.

Yeah. He did say that. And he called the judge bias, which pissed her off. Mm-hmm. Anyway, I'm sure her, I don't know, it's just weird. That court filing, she was pissed. She was like, not cut it out. Oh yeah.

You got to stop. This is unprofessional. And then he accused her of being biased. And he's going to have to talk to his client about whether or not he wants to represent them anymore because the judge hates him. She was like, get the fuck out. Yeah, they're like on drugs. Seriously, like, they'd eat or all or something.

They're all just like, on the hard stuff. Yeah. I think they're starting to like conflate Twitter with the courts. Yeah. Just writing how they would normally. It's like idiocracy. Yeah.

Right, where, you know, I owe my balls. That's part of a court filing now. Yeah. It's like, don't speak in metaphors and pop culture metaphors to me. What the fuck? There's a whole reason you went to law school and sewed it high.

So we respect that shit. That's what Muller she wrote his for. Exactly. We speak in pop culture references and say fuck. And assholes and dicks and all the things. Because that's what we have to relate to. Sometimes assholes fuck dick. Sorry, Team America World Police reference.

Oh nice. See, pop culture. Oh, but I'm not a lawyer. Yeah. And then Tuesday, Eric Prince World Police reference. Oh nice. See, pop culture. Oh. But I'm not a lawyer. Yeah. And then Tuesday, Eric Prince told CNBC he'd rather have a proctology exam than another interview with Mueller. I made a joke about setting up a back channel

that I really enjoyed. Julie, so you reported on this midweek. Eric Prince, who's Betsy DeVos's brother in the head of the now defunct Blackwater Private Security firm, is the guy that's, he's the guy who repped Trump in a meeting in the Seychelles with Nader and Demetrieth, right? I just went there and there was a Russian guy. Yeah, yeah.

I'm sure he'll be indicted soon, so put some beans on that. Maybe you guys want to pick him in the fantasy indictment draft this week. Good point. Yeah. I did want to mention we got a message from a listener reminding us that being questioned by law enforcement Is scary and I want to do a sure that person. I'm not talking about interviews of the 99% I'm talking about white collar privilege privilege privilege criminals like Prince who were always like having fingers in my But hole yeah, and you're like dude if you're innocent just it's fine

But I you know well pointed out that that's not true for the rest of the regular folks in this country who are oftentimes, you know, interrogated, using sneaky tactics and the prisoners' conundrum or whatever it's called, what's that called? Uh, prisoners' dilemma? Yeah, prisoners' dilemma, conundrum. Same thing. The capti's conundrum as AG refers to it because I'm weird. I think Montenegro was Baltic, so.

There we go. Anyway, I'm not talking about those folks. There's no reason for these white collar guys to feel uncomfortable unless they're guilty AF. But good looking out. And this week in Republicans can't tech. I'm going to record something for that. So so Manafort's defense filed their response to Mueller's breach of plea filing that outlined the five things Manafort lied about during his cooperation with special counsel.

The problem is that they electronically redacted the document, thrown at black boxes over the text, leaving the actual text under the black boxes. So we could all just copy and paste and read the text underneath. And in those redacted pieces, we found out that Manifort did meet with Kalimnik twice and provide at least and provided him with proprietary campaign polling data and told him about the Ukraine Peace Deal, which

was just a GOP scam to lift sanctions on Russia. And in related news, we learned Thursday that Mueller's team has questioned the Trump campaign polster, Tony Fabrizio. Tony Fabrizio. Almost a year ago, according to some CNN journalist who spotted him coming out of Mueller's office last year, and they didn't bother to tell us about this a year ago. They're just now bringing it up because we found out that Manafort gave polling data to the Kremlin.

So CNN decided to dust off this old gem. That's insane. Irresponsible reporting. I'm frankly shocked. They didn't follow up on that lead when it happened. I mean, the pollster for the Trump campaign was being questioned by Mueller, the guy investigating Russian election interference,

and they were just like, meh, I mean Maybe because there's just so many It's hard to keep up. Yeah too many to report. Yeah, I mean if you're not familiar with polling data is like gold and Campaigns hire teams of people to protect it and get this before Trump hired Fabrizio to be his poster Fabrizio worked in the Ukraine with Manafort One thing we know for sure, Manafort is Fuuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuu Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuuut Fuu interview with Bill Browder. But is it really separate? We'll find out. Finally Tuesday, the Supreme Court weighed in on the secret subpoena battle between Mueller and the mystery company from country A. Basically, a person or a company was appealing

a Mueller subpoena for documents under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Right. And this person or company was saying Mueller doesn't have jurisdiction and we should be immune from subpoena because we're foreign. That'd be quite the easy loophole. Right. And Tuesday of this week, Scota said in a brief order, quote, the application for stay presented to the Chief Justice and by him referred to the court is denied. The administrative stay previously ended by the Chief Justice is vacated. So basically, Scota's vacated their stay of contempt from just over a week ago that we reported.

So the company now has to go back to paying $50,000 per day until they give them the documents, hand them over. The way I read this is that Scotus is not refusing to hear the case, they're just vacating the stay of contempt, though the decision is indicative of agreement with lower courts. I do not know if Scotus will take up the case based on the merits appeal by the company or not. That's still Not been decided But that wasn't all we got Tuesday. Do you guys remember December 14th when the court building was all shut down and fifth floor was sealed and all the reporters were shoot away?

Yeah, yeah, we also got that opinion We got that opinion from the court and in it were a we're a few more clues about who the company is from country A. The first big clue is that the state-owned foreign entity has a US office and they were served as subpoena at that office. And we also learned in the opinion that this foreign-owned entity does significant business at that US office where they were served as subpoena.

Now, before the 28-page unsealed appellate court decision, I was wavering back and forth between the company being VTB. That's the sanctioned Russian bank that was going to fund Trump Tower Moscow and that was buying back Darapaska aluminum shares. So we'd lift sanctions on him. Right. So I was going back between VTB and QIA,

the Caterian Investment Authority. VTB is sanctioned, and thereby, I don't think they qualify as having a US office that does significant business in the United States because they're sanctioned. The Qatar Investment Authority does have an office in the United States. It's at 9 West 57th Street in New York and in 2014 they had planned to invest $35 billion in the US over five years, which sounds like significant business. Oh yeah.

It's a lot of money. All right. Then CNN came out and said that they know that two guys named Kang and Boone, from a law firm called Austin and Bird, are working on the secret subpoena battle on behalf of Country A. And they also CNN mentioned that these guys have also worked with Russians and Darapaska and Manafort. Well, I found out with a little bit of research that they've also repped Glencore, who is the Anglo-Swiss multinational trading and mining company that managed the sale of Ross-Nefte to cutter. And cutter bought 18.93% of Ross-Nefte, and there was a 5.5% commission paid to an unknown party,

though the dossier by Kristiel says that that party is Trump. It's important to note that the owner of Ross Neff was Igor Setschen, who Carter Page apparently met with on one of his trips to Moscow, though he denies it. So QIA, it's foreign owned with an office in the US that does considerable business in the US, from that office, and is not currently sanctioned. They did the Ross Neff deal with Russia and Glencore.

Glencore has been represented by Austin and Bird, who see it and says is part of the subpoena battle. QIA and Al Rumihi met with Cohen and Flynn in Trump Tower in December 2016. We have photos of that. And then he bragged about bribing transition administration officials in a court filing a year later. There's been an additional filing on Cohen that happened the week before Christmas that's under seal in a vault in Manhattan and one of the lawyers on the Mueller team working the case,

Zainab Ahmad is a Middle Eastern expert that speaks Arabic and worked on the Flynn case and as we know Flynn was at that Trump Tower meeting with the guy from QIA. So I'm switching my pick back to QIA. Yeah, that's solid. I can't even. For now. Yeah. Can we all just have QIA? Yeah, sure. I can't imagine, because I was with Rosneff for a while, but that was just to be neat. Yeah, before it was VTV.

Yeah. Well QIA is involved with Rosneff because of the Glencore sale. Right, which is just an interesting connection there. So, I mean, I guess it is still kind of Rosne wrong, but definitely the QI connection is so direct. It's a pretty good argument, but I could be completely wrong. And this will be old news to our patrons because we talked about this in our midweek episode.

Hey, another thing for midweek episodes. Mm-hmm. Then Wednesday happened and it was a shit show. First, Rep Spire says, Jr., Don Jr. will be the first person to be served with a subpoena to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee when it reopens the Russia probe,

which was prematurely shuttered by Nunez and House Republicans, right? So gonna reopen that, Junior's gonna be the first one. God, how nice is it Nunez is not here anymore? Well, I mean, not in that capacity. Right, not in charge. And in a related story,

Matthew Fucking Whitaker has been asked to testify before the House Judiciary before January 29th to answer questions about recusing himself from the Mueller probe oversight, according to Bloomberg News. This is in the wake of another story that broke Wednesday about Snoop Dagg, Rod Rosenstein leaving the DOJ once a new attorney general is appointed. A source close to Snoop Dagg says he wants to stay until Mueller is done and expects a report in early March. We heard from NBC sources that the report would be out late February, but this seems so soon to me. Considering Mueller is still fighting the Andrew Miller piece,

Concord management, he's trying to get documents from country A. He hasn't even gotten those yet. They're just being charged 50 grand until they put up or shut up. But who knows um... maybe it's done uh... and with this new new york times reporting i'm gonna go over hot notes we have some new ways of thinking about this so stick around for that the washington post put out a report wednesday saying that trumps legal team is hired seventeen lawyers this week to battle the muller probe because that's totally how innocent people act.

They also reported that their number one defense is going to be executive privilege, which we reported last week, of course. That should be fun to watch them try to make that stick. Joining us today to discuss Trump's legal defense is the CEO of the Rothkoff group, author of a book coming out later this year called Trader, the case against Donald J. Trump, and he's the host of Deep State state radio David Rothkoff. David welcomed him. Well, she wrote great to be here. So to start off, what do you make of Trump's legal team's decision to hire 17 new lawyers this week? Well, they haven't hired any good ones yet. So they might as well keep trying. That said, I'm not really sure whether numbers are the solution when the

cases that are being made against him are so diverse and compelling. I do note, however, that there are currently, at least the last time I saw accounted 17 investigations against Trump ongoing and as it happens he hired 17 lawyers. So Maybe at least they can count maybe he's just got one for each defend once for you Investigation And so it seems Trump's defense is going to be about executive privilege So how do you respond to that and do you think that that runs parallel parallel to his potential declaration of emergency powers we keep hearing about this week in relation to his wall? Well, first of all, the source, at least I've seen for his defense being executive privilege

was Rudy Giuliani who has to be the least reliable source that won't can imagine on any matter, but particularly on issues pertaining to his client because he doesn't seem to understand the law, the role of lawyers, the nature of the risks that his client faces or how to conduct a public defense. Having said that, you know, this is just one of his many kinds of assertions, the executive privilege assertion being that there are elements of the Mueller report that shouldn't be allowed public and so forth. So I guess it's, if you can't live with the report being written, then let's try to

quash the report. There seems to be, based on what I've read read very, very little grounds for the argument that the report shouldn't be released. And of course, with the Democrats controlling the House, you can rest assured that it will be one way or another. When I was in the government, one of the things that we found was most frequently, the case was that if you wanted some bit of classified or tightly held information to instantly be public, you know, the way to do it was to give it to a congressman.

And you know, things have a way from there. So I don't think that's a defense. I don't think they really know what their defense is going to be, my guess, based on what they've said thus far, is that they are going to attempt to use every tool available to them and a bunch of tools that aren't actually available to them to impede the investigation, to suppress the results, to fight assertions, to attack accusers. It's kind of like throwing the kitchen sink at people. Having said that, Giuliani's assertion of executive privilege is consistent with the president's king-like view of the powers of the presidency.

And we see this in a number of other areas, most notably recently his, you know, assertion that he can, if the Congress isn't going to give him his wall, he can get his wall simply by declaring emergency, even though there's no evidence to suggest that there is an emergency at our border, quite contrary, conditions at our border are at the best that they've been for decades. But he'll declare an emergency and then he'll order the Army Corps of Engineers to go in and build the wall with or without the Congress, with or without the allocated funding. That of course is an assault on the Constitution, much as his desire to pack courts, to attack the FBI, to attack the CIA, to eliminate the involvement of whole agencies in the decision-making process of the government, to change policy

on a dime when he's talking to an international official. Right now, I would say the president is more important to more aspects of decision-making in the United States government than ever before, simply because he's aggregated it all unto himself. And it needless to say, I think to some extent, the rationale behind that is he knows the walls are closing in. He knows this report is out there that the 17 investigations are out there. And sooner or later, he's going to do whatever it takes to protect himself and arguably his family.

I'm not so sure whether all of them are going to get protected by him. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's why it's so important at the dems one house uh... to put a check on this president because uh... in your first point they can just a peanut emola report or more himself and that would be putting it in the hands of congress and that they'll probably likely to him if he tries to declare national emergency anyway so i'm hoping that those checks and and balances will

win the day uh... and you know also this week julie ony said that trump will not answer any I'm hoping that those checks and balances will win the day. You know also this week, Giuliani said that Trump will not answer any more questions from Mueller. I was wondering if you thought, based on past events, if you think Mueller will subpoena Trump to at least answer questions about obstruction? Well, I have no direct pipeline into Mueller. I think Mueller is one of the more remarkable stories

in modern American history, to the degree to which he has managed to conduct this very high-level investigation, while remaining absolutely silent to the press. Absolutely asidious about there being no leaks, really focusing on the work at hand and not getting involved in the inflammatory politics around this. So, you know, I don't, you know, that also has the effect of not really giving an insight into what is likely to do next.

But my guess is that whatever it is, he's going to do next. The comments of Rudy Giuliani have nothing to do with it. I think he's going to pursue it the way he thinks he's going to, who should pursue it. And he's been challenged in the court, court's a couple of times by people saying he didn't have the authority, the court struck that down or by this super secret foreign company that felt that they couldn't impose fines on them for not cooperating. The Supreme Court said, no, stuck with the lower court decision and let that go through. My sense is Mueller is going to do what Mueller thinks is appropriate to the investigation. If that means he's got a subpoena Trump, he'll subpoena Trump.

You know, I do think one of the things we've seen is he doesn't subpoena people unless he's already got the goods. And so I would, if I were Rudy Giuliani or if I were Donald Trump, I would say not being subpoenaed, not providing answers, is actually not going to help them because he's gathering the goods whether or not he speaks to Trump. I think they realize that Trump who is a pathological liar, who literally is on television and said somebody like 212 times during the campaign, Mexico is gonna pay for the wall. And then says, you know, as he did this week,

well, I never said Mexico is gonna pay for the wall. I mean, the guy, the guy is divorced from reality. And, you know, it's perfectly natural that his lawyers would not want him to testify under oath, because it's not that he might lie. He seems incapable of telling the truth. Yeah, that's true. And I'm with you on on the subpoena thing. I don't think Mueller would have even floated the idea of a subpoena a year ago to doubt if he didn't have the goods. And, you know, despite Snoop-Dag leaving, that's what we call Rosenstein. And Trump saying Thursday, you know, we'll see if he releases the Mueller report. I think we will get the findings one way or another. So I'm, I'm, I've got some pretty good confidence in Mueller and that arena. Before I let you go, can you tell my

listeners where they can find your book and get access to deep state radio? They can go to deepstateradionetwork.com, which is where all of our stuff is. We've got multiple podcasts, including deep state radio, Washington for beautiful people that is hosted by Emily Brandwin, National Security Magazine this week. We did an interview with General Mark Hurtling and others coming soon. And as far or you can go to your, you know, wherever your favorite podcasts are given away for free. And as far as the book, the book's going to come out later this year from St. Martin's Press. And, you know, keep an eye out for it. The best way to figure out exactly when it's coming out is to listen to Deep State Radio. And I'll tell you. Awesome. Everybody's CEO of the Rothcop group

and host of Deep State Radio, David Rothcop.. Thanks again for joining us on Mueller, she wrote. Thank you very much and congratulations with your great podcast. And finally Wednesday, the GOP senators say they've met extensively with Bill Barr, not Bill Burr. That would be funny though. That's Trump's nominee for Attorney General. And that he's told them he won't touch Mueller's probe. Sounds like another proctology situation. This promise comes from Barr despite his 20 page submission to the Justice Department about how presidents can't obstruct justice.

GOP senators are saying Barr has told them he's committed to letting Mueller finish. So he won't touch Mueller's probe until he finishes. Okay. How many latent homosexual innuend does Ken Republicans make in one hour? The extra weird thing about this is that Barr has told Democrats he can't meet with them because of the government shutdown. Yet here he is doing butt stuff with Republicans. Yeah. His refusal to meet with the Dems is unprecedented and unacceptable. His confirmation hearings

are next week. I'm going to be watching those closely. You should too. And I hope they let him have it. And I hope they secure a promise from him that he'll keep his hands off Mueller's junk. We learned Thursday that Michael Cohen is going to testify publicly before Congress and everybody's losing their mind. I don't think he's going to tell us anything. We don't know. Get your popcorn. It's going to be like James Comey. Remember that? Yeah. Except way uglier. Yeah. Sorry, I shouldn't look shame. Right.

Well, it'll, I just have a thing for the ugly truth. Yeah, there you go. And the truth will be uglier. He will appear before the House Oversight and Reform Committee February 7th to give a full incredible account of the events that have transpired, transpired. That's not wrong. Through transpired, through his work from Mr. Trump. Quote, I look forward to having the privilege of being afforded the platform.

Cohen told CNN. I hope someone asks him about his meeting with the head of the Cutter Investment Authority, a Trump tower with Michael Flynn. And if any of that Ross Neffsale made its way to R&C coffers with the Trump inaugural, we already know Trump ordered him to make illegal hush money payments. That's old news. Let's get into what he's hiding from the Southern District of New York, right? Whatever it is, I'm sure it's fucking essential. So in case you're new, um, essential consultants is the name of the slush fund company that Cohen set up to accept all those payments from Russians and AT&T and Novartis, that drug

company. And we've created a slogan for essential consultants. It's fucking essential. And you have to say it like that too. Thursday, Manuchin gave a briefing to Congress on why he's lifting sanctions on Darapaska, and I'll be chatting with Bill Browder about that later in the show, but basically he didn't say why he was doing it, and he wouldn't answer any questions, and he was, um, smart me and squirm me, and everybody came out of that hearing like, this is the dumbest shit ever. wouldn't answer any questions and he was, mm-hmm, it's Marmy and Squirmy and... Everybody came out of that hearing like, this is the dumbest shit ever.

So... It's like they only answer questions when they're not asked them and vice versa. It's so weird. Good point. Yeah, like Giuliani. Well word vomit shit out, no one asked them about. Have you asked about something?

Nothing, you're not getting the answer. Oh, we're crazy. Oh my god. If I was questioning Manuchin, I would just stand there and stare at him until he told me yeah shit So like vent therapy questioning Well, we promised him we'd lift sanctions and we need steel to build the wall It's just give them like a pendant paper or something like drow a tin your brain eventually like a child

Drow all the answers or something Slide it across the tip dross a picture. Oh shit. It's curbs it out big drawing or something. Slided across the tip. Draw a picture. Oh shit, it scribbles that out. Big drawing. Late Thursday, the New York Times reported that prosecutors are examining at least a dozen Ukrainians that attended the Trump inaugural. That is not news to us. It shouldn't be news to you. And it's evident in the indictment of Sam Patton, right? That's the guy we've been talking about forever, well since August. And he used to cut out to allow these Ukrainians to buy tickets to the inaugural and funneling that money from us through a Cypress bank account from the Ukraine oligarchs into the Trump inaugural fund. And I'm sure these ticket sales make up a large part of the Trump inaugural fund,

but to put out news that they're investigating these kind of things. We need that. Right. But thanks. Friday we heard from Caluity Rudy who said, big ups to T-Pain for that nickname. You call him that Caluity Rudy? Caluity Rudy. That's funny. Don't at me if you don't like T-Pain.

I don't care. It's a funny nickname. Yeah. It's like a playground insult for a 50 year old man. Yeah, but you know it hurts their feelings. Kalluri Rudy, who says the Trump team should be allowed to correct the final Mueller report. They want to correct the Mueller report.

And you got, I have an idea. Let's have Manafort's lawyers redact it for us. Oh, that'd be great. No, we can just copy him paste. Just copy him paste what's underneath. But like sure Rudy, have me on Forthless lawyers, take care of it. I'm sure you guys would be great at redacting this report.

You guys are so good at tech. Yeah, wow. That's a bold ask. Right? I mean, he's a former prosecutor. Would he ever let anyone, never mind, whatever. They're just seeing if they can bend space time itself at this point.

They're so creative with like the way that they try to get out of this. Like they'll do anything for each other. Yeah, it's kind of like the most bromantic relationship I've ever seen. It's that toxic social homo, homo sociality that we were talking about with the Kavanaugh. Yeah, where they'll completely fuck over

the entire country for each other. To impress each other. It's gross. Also Friday, the Well Street Journal reported that the Trump organ hired lawyers to respond to Democrat investigations and Jolissa will have more on that for us in hot notes. And the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep Elliott Engles, as he will start a new committee to investigate Trump's private meeting with Putin in Helsinki. And I'd put beans on them issuing a subpoena for that translator. And finally, crazy reporting came out from the New York Times

that the FBI opened an inquiry investigation into whether Trump was a Russian asset as you might have heard. It's kind of been on the news and I'll cover that. And hot notes, so that's the week's news. We'll be right back. Hey, Mother Junkies. Have you heard about Zola? They are totally reinventing the wedding registry and planning process so you can stop worrying about all of small stuff and focus on the big day. Over half a million couples have used Zola because it takes the stress out of planning and it does that by offering everything you need in one place. You get a free wedding website, you can set up,

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But first, Jalisa has a story about the Trump Organization hiring a lawyer to oversee responses to democratic investigations. Jalisa, what do you have for us? Yeah, basically that. On Friday, we learned that from a letter. That's it, back to you. Yeah. Nice.

On Friday, we learned from a letter that was sent to the House Oversight Committee that the Trump Organization has hired former White House lawyer, Stefan Pasatino. Hope I'm pronouncing that right. How's that spelled? P-A-S-S-A-N-T-I-N-O. Pasantino.

Pasantino. OK, great. You got it. Yeah, he's there to help respond to all the congressional investigations they're facing regarding Trump's businesses. And last year Pasantino was the second ethics lawyer to leave the White House.

After that, he went to go work for a previous law firm. and now he's back working for Trump. So apparently he worked for prebus. He did. In between his time when he quit last year from the White House and now. So he just started working for the Trump Organizer lawyer but in between that time he was with previous his firm for some reason. Yeah a little minor detail they mentioned there and just skimmed right over. I wonder if he was at that firm before or if he just went to that firm after the White House? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure of that. I can look into it. But basically, I feel like it would have said he was there before if he had been.

Yeah, because that was CNN's reporting and they're juicy and they like to get all the details. But the thing is, he plans to recuse himself from any issues he worked on while at the White House, which would have to include anything in the ethics department considering that's the program he was overseeing. So this is just weird. And specifically, you pass in to, you know, is representing the Trump organ, their response to a request by House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, who in December asked for information concerning foreign payments to Trump's companies.

And since Friday, there was a deadline for this request. Pasantino sent this letter reiterating a lot of the same claims that the Trump or August previously made, which is basically the claim that payments from a foreign government do not qualify as emoluments because they are fees for services provided. Which is, that seems, because I googled what emoluments is by definition, and it seems like it is a service or a fee, like a fee for a service. Like they can't just say that it's not the thing because it's the thing. Like the truth isn't truth. This is just weird, based, you know, from their letter.

And in response to the letter, coming said, we will follow up as appropriate with the Trump organization to seek the information that we need I hate how vague they have to be and he's like basically saying we will follow up as needed with a subpoena up your ass if that's required yeah basically but they're so tame with their words I'm just like these guys just said nonsense to you I wish they could say what they really felt I'm also kind of pissed that while the rest of the government shut down, the White House still gets to hire lawyers to cover their asses. That sucks.

I don't know if he's got a legal fund that he's set up or if it's us, I really honestly don't know. I just really pisses me off. I also find it funny that Trump has ethic lawyers. Like whenever that comes up, they're not doing a very good job, right? Like to have, yeah. I'm just curious, like what up like they're not doing a very good job right They like to have yeah What is it? I'm just curious like what what are they supposed to be doing? Yeah, ethics advisors Yeah, well basically remember what happened with Matthew Whitaker when he talked to the ethics advisors or the department of justice to find out if he should

Requease himself when they were like yeah, oh, I don't like your answer. I'm gonna get a new team What are we gonna say Jordan? Yeah, just it's funny that he said he's gonna recuse himself for many matters that relate to ethics or whatever that he dealt with before. But he's gonna work for Trump. Yeah, Trump is a walking ethical violation. It's so weird. But emoluments aren't emoluments.

And crimes aren't crimes. Yeah, I was just gonna say, Webster's already working on changing the definition. The new edition will be out this year. It's fun. Fake loss. Right? Yeah.

Well, thanks for that reporting. Thank you. Jordan, what's the news on the NRA? Yes. So, remember last month, when I covered that story about Trump and the NRA using the same media company, National Media Research, aka Red Eagle Media, aka Blue Trap Freedom, aka White People Good, to push, just get it, only Red Eagle Media. That's your Bible Swaggin, you know why.

Sorry, I love you, you can't be kidding. And they had used this company basically to push out identical ads on behalf of both the NRA and then on the other side on behalf of Donald Trump. And this is against the law because independent groups are not supposed to have coordinated ad campaigns, but they did it anyway because they probably thought nobody would notice or care to prosecute them. They had cover-up companies basically to make it look like they were different entities,

but the members were doing the work. The members that were doing the work and the signatures that were made were identical for both ads purchased on behalf of Trump versus purchased on behalf of the NRA. So remember that? The NRA. Yes. Well, we were learned this week that some GOP congressional candidates did the same thing in 2016 and 2018.

It was three races to be specific. The first one is Josh Holley's Run for Senate in 2018. That's when he defeated Claire McCaskill in Missouri. The second one is Matt Rosendale's Run for Senate in 2018 in Montana, which he lost. And number three is Richard Burz Run for Senate in North Carolina in 2016, which he obviously won. So Mother Jones reports that FEC records showed FEC records, showed ads for the NRA and those Senate campaigns had been signed off by the exact same person. This person is National Media CFO, John Farrell. We talked about that last time we covered this. and despite them trying to operate under another name,

A-mag, which that's the dyslexic version of Maga. That's great. America, make again great. That's very Yoda. Yes, exactly. Poor Yoda. America is rolling over in his cosmic grave. Yeah. Rolling himself over this cosmic grave. Yeah.

Rolling himself over using his mind. Yeah. I snorted. But yeah, so essentially all of this means that they basically did the exact same thing that Trump and the NRA went on cahoots together on. Outside groups are not supposed to share ad strategy with the candidates that they are supporting, and this certainly would include releasing basically identical ads. I reminder, Larry Noble, he was the FEC general counsel for 1987 to 2000, set of this whole situation, quote,

it's hard to understand how you'd have the same person authorizing placements for the NRA and the candidate and it not be coordination. Exactly. Yeah. Ironically, John Farrill's bio on his website says he makes sure, quote, every penny allocated for media is spent

according to election laws. He must be part of that ethics group you were talking about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you got to call your web wizard, didn't change that bio. He says, that's wrong. So all this stuff, what the Senate races is turning out to be the exact same thing through and through, but instead of Trump as a candidate, it's those three Senate candidates. And that's just what's been uncovered so far, who knows, there could be more.

Same guy, Farrell, signing off on everything, same fake names that really just lead back to this national media group. The similar ads, by the way, would sometimes run within the minutes of each other, so like one would be at 642, and another would be at 659 on the exact same channel. So it was really all national, or one on behalf of the NRA, one on behalf of the candidate themselves, and it was no coordination.

None, none whatsoever. Yup. And it was all tracing back to the same group. So, yeah. Same guy, same time, same ad, totally not involved, it related at all. It was like, believe me, believe what I say, not what you see. Truth isn't truth.

It's sad, he could be like a doll or something. Yeah, and that's like so obvious too. They're literally gonna put it five minutes apart from each other. It's like a one-two punch of stupid for the viewer. So the campaign legal center and the Giffords Law Center to prevent gun violence have both filed official FEC complaints for these violations and the accused parties have not responded to any requests for comment as of now. There's unfortunately not much precedent for this kind of thing being pursued as you

may remember from our coverage last month. It's because the FEC has been an ideological gridlock for like a decade. However, FEC cases always do remain confidential until they're completely resolved. So maybe stuff is actually happening, but we just won't know until it's over. I want to end this segment on a great quote from that guy, Noble, the FEC Council. He says, quote, what this reflects is the FEC use lack of enforcement and the lack of respect that the NRA and the vendor are showing toward the FEC and the

law. You do this if you think no one is going to investigate. And yeah, make sense. All right, thanks for that update. Wow. Damn. NRA is fucked. Yeah.

Same shit. Different day. NRA. That should be their slogan. Yeah. Dude Yeah same shit different day. And all right. I should be there slogan Yeah, dude same shit different day. That's SSDD that has a nice run Yeah, no, I like it. I like where you're going with that. It's like what would Jesus do thing exactly Yeah, I'm surprised. It's not something we usually Bumper social media. It could be a new AMAC thing SSDD Bumper, social media. It could be a new AMAC thing.

I said Stee-D. This likes like Maga. Again, make America. No, America. Make a great grade. Make a great grade. My bad. My bad.

All right. Again, make America great. That makes way more sense. But I like it the other way. It's fun. No, I like, yeah, it's more Yoda-E. Yeah, the other way. All right, sorry.

I had to close my segment with endless rambling, or else it wouldn't be a segment. It wouldn't be true to you. It wouldn't be true to you. It wouldn't be you. Alright, I'd like to go over the New York Times reporting about the FBI opening an inquiry on whether Trump was a Russian asset. If you're a longtime listener or muller junkie, you might be asking, so what? What's the news here? We all knew the FBI was investigating Russia's interference back in 2016, code named Crossfire

Hurricane. We even have a whole bonus episode about it. The main difference between that and this is that Crossfire Hurricane was an investigation into Russia and its interference in the election. A subsidiary of that investigation was whether or not anyone in the Trump campaign was knowingly or unknowingly involved. That the Crossfire Hurricane investigation

was about what Russia did, which both James Baker and James Comey have testified to, is what allowed Comey to tell Trump he wasn't under investigation because he wasn't. This inquiry, though, this new one that we've learned about reported in the Times Friday, was looking at whether or not Trump was either an unwitting or deliberate agent working on behalf of Russia against American interests. And back in 2016, they didn't really have the evidence or the fortitude to look into Trump because how do you even begin to do that? That's a super like sensitive subject. So it wasn't until 2017 when Trump started doing some shit

that they were like, oh, this is pushing us over the edge, we're going to have to do this now. So the investigators wanted to determine if Trump's actions constituted a national security issue. The investigation also had a criminal element and that they were looking into whether the firing of Comey met the standards of obstruction of justice. But it's still about Russia and whether or not Russia co-opted Trump as an asset with his knowledge or not. So, these investigations and the Mueller probe are about Russia and everything that's not,

such as the Stormy Daniels campaign finance violations, they've all been handed off. Right? So let's get some background here. In 2016, the FBI was suspicious of Trump, but didn't open an inquiry, like I said, because they were being ultra prudent, again, because of the significance and sensitivity. They were investigating the campaign, but the candidate himself was another story. But come 2017, there were three events surrounding the firing

of James Comey that pushed the FBI over the edge, and they opened the counterintelligence part of the investigation with criminal elements. Those three events were Trump telling Lester Holt that he had Russia on his mind when he fired Comey, and when he told Russians in the Oval Office that the Russia Cloud was lifted because he fired Comey, who was a nut job. The pressure was lifted, yeah. And finally, there was the letter Trump wrote to Komi about why he was firing him that mentioned Russia. The version of that letter was never set, however,

because McGann and Rosenstein told him that was stupid. Do that's a crime. And Rosenstein even wrote him a more restrained letter and said, don't mention Russia in the letter, bro. And at that time, Trump told Rosenstein to include Russia. He was pissed that Rosenstein's letter didn't have it in there. Rosenstein ignored him, which seems to happen a lot in the investigation, in the Trump administration, people stealing documents and

rewriting them behind his back. That pissed Trump off even more, and he included Russia in his final letter when he thanked Comey for telling him three times he wasn't under investigation. A couple of days after the counterintelligence in criminal inquiries were open, Mueller was appointed and took over both this inquiry and the Crossfire Hurricane stuff. Oh, shoot. All under the Mueller umbrella. Yeah.

So the key here, and we've unknown all these things. We knew that they were like, we were looking at obstruction of justice because of what he said, to lester holt, because he told the Russians in the Oval Office, because of that letter that Rosenstein told him not to send and McGahn told him not to send. We knew all this was obstruction of justice, but we were under acting under the impression that that was criminal obstruction of justice, okay, and that it was separate from the counterintelligence collusion part of the investigation. The key here is that the obstruction of justice aspect of

firing Komi was also a collusion matter. That's the news here, okay. It's a matter of national security. Fire and Komi not only obstructs justice in the usual way we think of obstruction, but it also hurts the FBI's effort to determine how Russia interfered with the election and if any Americans were involved. That's according to James Baker, the FBI general counsel at the time who, if you're an MSW listener, would know as part of the Komi-5, that's the five guys at the top of the FBI that Komi shared his contemporaneous notes with.

And it's the news that we didn't yet know, like I said. Someone read part of Baker's private testimony to the New York Times this week. And he had said, quote, not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done. And that is what would be a threat to national security. Unquote. That means obstruction is collusion. So by firing Komi, Trump was helping Russia by making it hard for our FBI to investigate their interference into our election. That's aiding and abetting of foreign power,

which we know is part of conspiracy, which is what everybody calls collusion, right? Yeah. So a couple of points I want to make about this story. First, Rosenstein's joke about wearing a wire around Trump finally makes sense. How so? Because it wasn't funny before.

We're like, that's not funny. Why is that even funny? But if they were Two days ahead of time of fire, you know before Mueller was appointed talking about investigating Trump that they had open inquiries and whether or not He has been co-opted as a Russian asset wearing a wire around him becomes a funny joke Exactly so good job. You just got funny in my book He I'm sure he didn't but now the joke makes sense, right? book. I'm sure he didn't, but now the joke makes sense. Secondly, this reporting sort of fuses the criminal and counterintelligence silos of the more investigation into one thing.

We kind of already knew this, though, because Komi stated in his announcement that as with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. So ever since 2002, some FISA case, it's been kind of known that the FBI doesn't go at counterintelligence separately from crimes. It's all, they go with the full force of everything they're allowed to bring, right? But we have been here at Muller She wrote, I have been, and a lot of the mainstream media, we've all kind of been under this impression, operating under this assumption that the collusion investigation, which is the counterintelligence part, is separate from the mainstream media, we've all kind of been under this impression operating under this assumption that the collusion investigation, which is the counterintelligence part, is separate

from the obstruction investigation, which is the criminal part, and that we would be getting a separate report on obstruction versus the collusion cases. But with this new reporting, it becomes clear that the firing of Comey and things like that aren't simply criminal obstruction. It's inextricably linked to the FBI's counterintelligence or collusion investigation. Ben Wendes and LaFaire says, quote, FBI officials thought of it rather in the context of the underlying counterintelligence purpose of the Russian investigation. Unquote. That James Baker, when he was asked whether the firing of Komi had added to the threat

of national security that the FBI was confronting, he said, yes. So when folks like Barr and Whitaker and Giuliani say that the president can't obstruct justice because he is justice and under article two, he has the right to fire whomever he wants, that could apply to the criminal aspect of obstruction of justice, right? If your argument is that the president's above the law, but it wouldn't apply to the counterintelligence aspect, right? Which could be the bulk of this. And as Ben Withas of Law Fair Rights, that could raise a differently good question about whether the president can be under counterintelligence investigation by his own FBI, but that's not the issue being argued by the president's allies. So with this new understanding,

is Muller going to issue two different reports on collusion and obstruction, or are they now linked with many different threads leading into the cases like Flynn and Manafort and Gates and Cohen? And if it's the latter, will all that really be wrapping up next month? I mean, we were talking about how NBC was gonna say that the report's gonna come out at the end of February

and Rosenstein's gonna leave. And I was like, well, maybe the obstruction part, well, now we're learning the obstruction part is the collusion part. And that would mean one whole big report, right? And that would be coming out in February. And you know, we've been talking about how the Andrew Miller case is still ongoing. Mueller just asked for six more months for his grand jury. He hasn't even received the documents. He's trying to get from country A, right? And that secrets to peanut battle. So when Rosenstein says he's stepping down early in March, because Mueller's wrapping up, which in a wrong way of thinking would be impossible, but with collusion and obstruction

inextricably linked and taking into account the letter outlining the scope of the Mueller investigation written by Rosenstein, Mueller is responsible for investigating and reporting. We now have a new picture and I reached out to David Priest to bounce some ideas off of him. And he was basically saying, look, those things, the Miller thing and the company A country A thing could be a tiny little percent of things that are undone. And would Mueller wait until every single thread from this case had gone to trial and had a conclusion before he wrote a final report? No, because he's not Ken Star. He's not going to put out a conclusive report that draws conclusions about this thing. He's an investigator. He's a prosecutor.

He's putting together a report with all the evidence to say, I've got, here's all everything I've got. Y'all can continue with the DOJ to investigate this, how you please. Here's my report. continue with the DOJ to investigate this, how you please. Here's my report, and that report wouldn't necessarily have to wait for all these little tiny things to be tied up. Does that make sense? That does make sense. It does make sense, but what if some of those things have something that I think would be consequential enough to the investigation as a whole, you know, then he wouldn't file

his report? Right. That's kind of what I'm thinking. I don't think there's any ways going out in February. I do now, though. Yeah, because I think that we, there's so much we don't know, though. You're assuming we, well, you're not. I'm not saying you're, I'm assuming what you're assuming. Because I was thinking this myself, that those are big things.

But I keep telling myself, we only know 1% of what's going on. The bulk of it could already be done. All this shit we don't know. And these things that we think are huge might be tiny. Right. And I mean, I know Mueller is not political, but it does make sense that that house would continue investigating these kind of things. So Mueller knows that it wouldn't be for not. Like he could. Well, the DOJ would. Oh, yeah, them too.

Yeah, yeah. So, like, yeah, Muller would just be setting it up and passing the torch, essentially, right? Right. Here's all my findings. Here's the bulk of it. There's all these, you know, we're going to figure out what Andrew Miller's doing. And talking to David Pries, and, you know, of course, this is all speculation.

We don't know for sure, but I'm trying to figure out how could the report possibly be done at the end of February with all of these outstanding things. And that was the initial thought, was that those are tiny compared to what he actually knows. Yeah. So it's, I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer, but I assume, and I've emailed a couple of experts on this and I don't have the answer yet, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you What do I assume because I'm not afraid to be in wrong?

That These threads that haven't been wrapped up or gone to trial or concluded Could be continued to be investigated by the Department of Justice and indictments could be issued after the Mueller report comes out as those investigations continue and I also had asked out as those investigations continue. And I also had asked a couple of experts, which I don't have the answer to yet, whether or not the DOJ can continue to use Muller's Grand Jury, which would be a reason for him to extend the Grand Jury six more months. Maybe like, I'm going to give you my report, but you can continue to use my Grand Jury because it's originated from this. And this is the Grand Jury who's investigating these matters.

Wow. But I don't have the answer to that yet, either. But in my eyes, that's the, I'm not gonna say I think that he's done. What I'm saying is if that's the way the report could come out at the end of February. Right, like it was going to. Like a springboard basically for those who want to continue it on.

Right, this isn't the end through fully. This isn't, his report is not the end. Yeah, that makes sense. It is the starting point. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it just depends on what you think Mueller's end role is sort of in all of this. If you think it's more to like Al Yube, then totally February makes sense. Right. And David Priest brought that up too. He's like, I haven't looked at the charging documents for archival cocks in the Watergate and Ken Star in the Clinton investigation. Maybe they said, go all the way to the end and wrap it all up and then report.

Whereas we looked at together on the phone, we looked at the document that Rosenstein wrote about what Mueller's supposed to do and it's just investigate these matters of Russia, anything that arises and anything that arises out of that. And that might signal to Mueller, it's not my job to reach conclusions here. My job is to give you what I've found. And so these things can continue because he might have already found everything

he needs in the Andrew Miller case. Yeah, that's a good point. But it still needs to be concluded but it can be concluded by the Department of Justice. That's right. Totally. It kind of makes sense. Yeah, that's a good point. But it still needs to be concluded, but it can be concluded by the Department of Justice. That's right. Totally. It kind of makes sense. Yeah, yeah, because I'm sitting here like, hope it's the other, like the latter, though, that he's just going to see it all through till the bitter end. And everyone's going to jail.

And that's what I'm, that could be dangerous to our, I mean, everyone will go to jail whether the DOJ continues to tie up the loose ends that don't require any further investigation or require investigation. But you know, he's already got the starting point and all the information that we need about it enough to prosecute. Hopefully. But he might be like, dude, if I wait until we tie up every loose end until this thing goes the next year through appeals with Miller or whatever, and then we have all the trials and then the conclusions are drawn. If I wait another three years, we could re-elect this man.

Yeah. So this also might be one of his decisions that he's making in favor of justice for the democracy versus justice for individuals. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah. I hope if that happens to DOJ,

can remain unbiased enough in their efforts for that plan to work. They have so far. I don't see why they want. Well, this whole report in the New York Times about the Department of Justice and the FBI are opening these counterintelligence and criminal investigations into obstruction as collusion solidify my faith that the FBI, even though it's run by Trump's people, will do the right thing. This makes me feel better. I'm going to sleep better tonight.

Knowing that they opened these investigations. And David Priest had said that there's no reason going on to what I was talking about earlier. There's no reason to think that every prosecution that's an outgrowth of this investigation has to be concluded or all the appeals that would follow in those would have to be concluded for Mueller to file his report. And that all those investigations that would need completing could be picked up by the Department of Justice. Anyway, so that's kind of, if Mueller filed his report at the end of February, that's how he can do it.

Yeah. Even though there's probably two or three years left of trials and threads and investigations and indictments to come out further. Exactly. In general. He'd really be putting pressure on the people and the Congress and the DOJ to do their jobs.

Like, he wouldn't be that like savior that everybody, I guess, us included, kind of makes amounts of you sometimes. Exactly. Which would of makes amounts of be sometimes exactly what Joyce Vance has told us that's what Ben would have said that's what David pre said to me on the phone he's not a white night he's not here to save us all he's here to give us investigate give us the facts and then it's up to us to save our self-partement of justice the the agencies the people the Congress to do the work of the people. He's not a Ken Star. Right.

It's pretty much what he's saying. He's like, hey, I'll give you everything that you need and you do as you will. Yeah, I do get wrapped up in the Romanticized idea of him being that hero that's gonna save everything. And I trust him and I know he's smart and he's gonna do his job. And those draw lines. What's to me, he is a white knight in a hero, and he's gathering all these facts. He's doing it diligently, and he's going to present it in a way

that can't be refuted. Exactly. And those facts and those crimes are going to be so bulletproof because of the way that he's conducted this investigation and without any leaks and completely thoroughly that it it's going to give us this really solid beefy solid report that we can take and use instead of this uh I think it was kind of bullshit right it won't be like a dossier where they can be like well we haven't seen the evidence Mueller has all the evidence

exactly yeah because that's his job as an investigator on a prosecutor. Totally. It's not his job to be the judge and jury. Mm-hmm. So that's a judge and jury job. Exactly. He is. Really.

Damn, that's intense. It's like not only does he have to worry about just the investigation inherently, also how it fits into the grander scheme of things. Right? Yeah. Yeah, and you know, we've been talking about forever about how he's not just interested in methods and procedures and rules, but he's also interested in justice for the country, the democracy, people, the American people, and that kind of falls into that. Like, I'm not going to wait three years to do this and wrap everything up and make conclusions for you.

Right. Because we don't have time. And you know, this is also, we all have our own jobs to do. Exactly. But on the flip side, I could have been poor reporting by NBC. But now they're also saying, source is close to Rod Rosenstein, saying that because he's leaving. And I've wondered myself too, like, Rod Rosenstein is a witness in the obstruction case, which is now the obstruction and collusion case.

And why is he able to overcuse, or overcuse, oversee the Mueller investigation when someone like Whitaker, who's got his opinions about the case, is not. Exactly. And, you know, this is super space beans, but what if he's leaving so he can testify? Oh snap

He couldn't testify with the position he's in now. Well, he would be just be called as a witness He would be in direct conflict, right? Yeah, like James Killington do it until after he was fired, right? Well, it's not so much that it's it's that if you're gonna oversee the Mueller investigation You can't be part of it like mm-hmm sessions couldn't oversee the Mueller investigation, you can't be part of it. Like sessions couldn't oversee the Mueller investigation because he was part of the campaign. Right. He was being investigated. And I think that if you're a witness

or you have inside information into a case, you can't oversee it. Right, yeah, he'd have to like, I guess I was thinking he could recuse himself from a case as opposed to leaving the position as a whole or something But it's too late by this point the case is well in that that time is coming past Yeah, and again, that's super speculation

You might be able to oversee an investigation and be a witness in it. I doesn't make sense to me I would be mad about that. Yeah, I kind of like you. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean, I guess because you also might have the same ethics advisors that Whitaker has. Yeah. He's like, no, no, yeah. I guess I guess because Whitaker decided to stay. Rosenstein could decide to stay. Right. Isn't that true? Well, that's what happened.

Yeah. Well, and then like was Sessions, I mean, that's kind of one of the main reasons he recused himself was for a similar thing. He was again, a criminal in it. He happened to purge her himself. Yeah, but he didn't say that when he recused himself. He just said, I was involved in the campaign and that's why I'm recusing myself.

And the rules are clear and he followed them. Whitaker went to the ethics advisory. They're like, you should recuse yourself, recuse yourself. But he technically doesn't have to. Yeah. And maybe Rosenstein was told you should recuse yourself because you're a witness in the case. And he's like, I don't think I'm gonna.

For the sake of justice. Or just to make sure the investigation's continued on and stuff in the right ways. But I think Matthew Whitaker has shown us that even if you're supposed to recuse, you don't have to. Yeah. And so it could be that too. Right.

He might have been a witness this whole time. Yeah, that would be interesting. Yeah, it seems like to be called as a witness is different than someone like Sessions. That was an active participant in the thing. If you're not a subject or a target or not even a, so I don't even think at that time sessions was a subject. But just to participate.

They might know something we don't know. Yeah. And I guess there exists the potential to reveal your opinions and the consequences, you know, people may think that would have on your ability to oversee the investigation is kind of the risk that being a witness would it pose. But again, I mean, if Snoop Dogg decides he doesn't want to recuse himself, maybe he just doesn't have to. Interesting. So, fuck all y'all.

Snoop Dogg's feeding up. Did you see Snoop Dogg's video? Yes. Oh my God. So fucked. Tell everyone. Yeah, he just posted this amazing selfie video from like his waistline just like looking down like basically telling all the federal employees that are not getting paid

right now that you're crazy. If you ever vote for Trump again, don't forget this shit because he doesn't give a fuck a bet to you and he doesn't give a fuck about any of us. And it's just like the best. Keep it in real man. He got to look at him. He's so good. And it's just like the best. Keep it in real, man. You gotta look at us. Snoop Dogg, Snoop Dogg, love you both. Big ups.

All right, you guys, we'll be right back. Hey, Mueller junkies. It's a new year, and it's not too late for those resolutions. I always start mine at weird times anyway, because there's too much pressure on January 1st. And if there's one tool that you need in your tool belt for self-care and better health, it's noob. I don't have enough time to say how amazing it is in these ads, but let's start with

the basics. It's an amazing app that has a food log, a nutritionist, a health coach, community support, lifestyle hacks, psych tricks, a step counter, and an exercise log, and motivation all in one place. It's all together. And I used to have to use so many different apps to track all that. I had a food vlog and I had a separate exercise tracking app. And all that. This is all in one place. The step counter. It's so great. And I love that little, my coach. He's good. Two big things I've always had trouble with are my all or nothing attitude. Like if I'm doing good for three days and then I have

a cookie, I'm like, well, I just can buy as well. It's got 76 burritos this weekend. Do you do that? Because I get it. Oh, yeah. I did that last night. Yeah, that's a big thing. No, don't be sorry. That's a cool thing about Nume. They're different. They're teaching me how to modify my relationship with food. Yes. Have no shame in those things. Don't look at burritos as shameful. Look at those delicious burritos. Right. They have that one of their amazing lessons that they teach you is that you're going to have ups and downs in your journey basically. And when you hit those downs, know that there's going to be an up and that that's normal. And you don't have to commit

to eating 76 burritos for the next three days to punish yourself. Or to be like, it's all for nothing anyway. I had a cooking. Right. But it's not only resulted in weight loss, but I feel better and I'm happier and I'm less stressed. And we have a tour coming up and we're going to be needing our energy along with tips on how to stay on track when traveling because that can be really hard. So I'm just going to make it really easy. Yeah. And you know how we feel about self-care.

Yeah. Yeah, I love it. It's really good. And the way that the app is set up, it feels like a little game that you get to do sort of a few minutes a day. And it's not hard and it's good information and you're doing something to make your life better. Yeah, like how if you drive one of those hybrid cars, it gives you a little thing about how much energy you're saving and it actually want to save more energy, it's super like that, good psych tricks, I love it.

Yeah, so give yourself this amazing gift by heading to noom.com slash AG and sign up today. That's n-o-o-m.com slash AG. Take their 30 second quiz, find out how long it will take to reach your goal. That's noom.com slash AG. What have you got to lose? All right, you guys, you ready for the Fantasy Enditement League? Yes. Alright you guys you ready for the fantasy indictment league? Yes!

Alright let's get through it. Jordan you get to pick first this time because I picked first last time. I'll draft last this time and we'll go around until we each have five. Sound good? Sounds good. Oh yeah. All right. Stone. Damn you know. I know.

So, yeah. As soon as you got him, last week I was like, blast. All right. Um. Junior. Eric Prince. Noise. Proctology Prince. Noice. Proctology Prince.

Super seating man-affortin diamonds. Super seating man-affort. SS man-affort. All aboard. Ew. He has ordnance. We'll just keep going and see how far we can go. So someone catches us.

That's what that shit does. She'd love crying. Some reason something you would say. I'm gonna go with a sange. Oh fuck. Jaliza? Trump org. Trump org.

They just hired a new lawyer, didn't they? All right, Kushner. Kush. Kush in the hash. And we're out. No kidding. How about... Who's the hash? And we're out. No, I'm kidding. How about...

Ivanka? Hmm, nice. Do you get Corci yet? Oh, no. Corci, yeah. Dropping the ball! Okay. Let's do...

I definitely want a rando. Oh wait, you know what? I'm gonna do vessel in that sky. Mm-hmm On the off chance that dots are connected so she wasn't died it on her whole civil forfeiture in that separate case But you're I'm saying more like yeah, yeah, yeah Moira really related indictment. No plea agreement? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no I can't remember. Erickson, the beast. Did someone not get, did you? Oh, wait, no, you got prints. Okay. One, two, three, four. You got one more.

Okay. Rando. Jolissa? Rando, please. That leaves me. I went last, I don't know why. Oh. Oh.

Damn. Stone, I'm kidding. I know you already fixed it down. It's gonna be him. How about Boyle? Okay. Boyle, it's been a while since I thought about that. Yeah, yeah.

All right, so I've got Junior, a Sange, Ivanka, Boyarkin, and Boyle. Julie, so you've got Prince, tampons? No, Trump, Julie, so you've got Prince. Uh, tampons? No, Trump org. Of course, the Ericsson and Rando and uh, Joko, you've got Stone, Super seating Manifort, uh, Kush, Vessel Netskite and the Muller investigation

and Rando. Yeah, sounds good. All right, cool. You guys ready for sabotage? Yes! sounds good. Alright cool. You guys ready for sabotage? Yes. Alright so this weekend sabotage guys, I can't believe this but there's a report that Ivanka Trump could lead the World Bank. So the first daughter's name is said to be floating around Washington, but it wouldn't be her first unconventional role in the world. So the financial times reported

Friday that Trump is floating Ivanka's name around Washington to be president of the World Bank because we get to nominate that person. The United States gets to nominate that person. The role will soon be open due to the departure of Jim Young Kim. That's the current president. of the world bank because we get to nominate that person the United States gets to nominate that person. Oh, no. The role will soon be open due to the departure of Jim Young Kim. That's the current president who's departing, surprisingly. We were surprised by that. But on politics, at least in Twitter, the idea that replacement might be the first daughter was met with widespread scorn.

Yeah. That's the reason why if she's actually being considered World Bank president, that's why I have her on my fantasy indictment league. Also, I mean, she also laundered money and did that whole Azerbaijan thing. She's super corrupt and she's a complete criminal. But I feel like being nominated to the World Bank

could make her be vetted by other countries' intelligence, agency. Yeah, and they'll dig up something there. Right. Like it's just gonna put a big microscope, a global microscope on her And those agencies might share that intel with Muller and then boom. We might have something that pops up So that's kind of why I was like, oh, she's gonna be under scrutiny. Right. More scrutiny than she is I don't know how to do that unless he wanted to eating into money grab or is it some position of power that he thinks would give him leverage. Yeah. I guarantee you it's 100% self-interest. Yes. Right. Right. I think he just has children so that he can have spawns of himself come out so he can be in two places at once. That

makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's like little money makers running around for you. Or many losers. Yeah. Most people have children just so they can be in two places at once. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It's like little money makers running around for you. Or money losers. Yeah. Most people have children just so they can do chores. I need these students. Yeah. And change the channel on the TV before remote controls. But yeah, this is just a, they're like putin' oligarchs.

Basically, yeah, they're American putin' oligarchs. Trump Crotch Fruit. Oh, gross. I know. Sorry. That's okay. All right, guys, it's time for the interview. And this is going to be amazing.

And I was so nervous to talk to this guy, but it went so well and he was so kind. So everybody check it out. All right. So back in the mid to late 2000s, some bad ombre is stole about $230 million in a Russian tax fraud scheme and then laundered that money through real estate transactions in New York using a Cypress-based investment firm called Prevazon Holdings. Magnitsky, a tax fraud specialist, alleged that the theft was carried out by Russian officials and Putin, a guy who we know gets rich stealing from the

Russian people, targeted Magnitsky. So they arrested him in 2008 and they beat him and starved him and tortured him didn't provide him health care while he was in prison and he died in Russian custody and and then we get to billbrowder he's a CEO of hermitage capital who in response to magnet skis murder lobbied congress us congress to pass the magnet ski act to punish human rights violators. Obama signed it into law in 2012, and in response, Putin banned U.S. adoptions of Russian children. Putin also put together a group of anti-Magnitsky act lobbyists, which included Vesselnetskaya, and she pitched her tale to folks like Dana Roorabacher, who just recently lost his bid for Congress. And she even brought her Magnitsky file

to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. And she also worked for the team defending Prevazon Holdings, who in a strange plot twist, hired a firm to dig up dirt on its enemies, which included Bill Browder. And that firm was Fusion GPS. And that's the same firm that Republicans and then Democrats hired to get Oppo research on Trump.

Also, the same firm that hired Christopher Steele who wrote the dossier. And that's why I think Republicans wouldn't stop asking about Prevazon Holdings and Testimony from Witnesses involved in this case because they were trying to discredit that dossier. So this week, Vessel and Lutz Gaya was indicted for obstructing justice in the civil forfeiture case for the money laundering scheme. And she's charged with coordinating a response with Kremlin officials to whitewash a document filed with the court about Prevazon Holdings and she got caught.

So joining us today to discuss the indictment of Vesonetskaya is the CEO of Hermitage Capital, the architect of the Global Magnitsky Act, and the author of Red Notice. Please welcome Bill Browder. Bill, thanks for joining us on Mueller, she wrote. That's great to be here. So first, I know it's hard to sum up, but is that the story in a nutshell? Did I miss any glaring obvious things that should be brought to light? Well, I'm actually working on my next book, and it's going to be about 400 pages to discuss that.

So for you to be able to do that in three minutes is a big accomplishment. Thank you. It was really difficult. I remember watching your testimony in July of 2017 and listening to the chilling story of the capture and murder of Magnitsky. So, yeah, I was tough to sum up there, but I did want to get your top line reaction this week on the Natalia Vessel-Nitskaya is a person who pushed every boundary and pushed beyond what was legal in many places in order to do the Kremlin's bidding. We saw her cheating in the US case in which the US Department of Justice was prosecuting her client Preversome and she was cheating and and this is where it gets interesting is that

um In order for the US to prosecute Preversome they wanted to get documents Through what's called a mutual legal assistance request from the Russian government through what's called a mutual legal assistance request from the Russian government. And so the United States government asked the Russian government for documents to prove the case. And what happened then was that Natalia Veselnitskaya, effectively goes into the office of the Russian government,

where she's an agent of the Russian government, and instead of the Russian government replying to the Department of Justice Natalia Veselnitskaya replies to the Department of Justice and she says we're not going to give you those documents And then she makes up a fake story about how me and Sergei were the ones who did the crime that her client was accused of and What makes the story so fascinating is that the US Department of Justice got hold of her emails and got hold of documents, of word documents, with properties, and track changes that show that she was the one editing the documents, replying from the Russian government to the US government.

And so she got caught red handed, and it's very satisfying to watch her get indicted and out and watch her squirm and and uh... and make all these crazy comments after being indicted by the u.s. government yeah exactly and it does actually give us a proof that she is connected to the kremlin pretty strongly uh... and i also wanted to ask you do you know of any of the prevenson real estate deals in new york were in any way connected to trump or anyone in his family like kushner well it that there's a sort of

uh... kit there's sort of connected in a very obtuse way um... the the only way i can say they're connected is that preffer zone bought a bunch of properties from a company called a f i a f i is a company owned by levla vaya and levla vaya for a f i were involved with jared kushner a company called AFI. AFI is a company owned by Lev Leviathan. Lev Leviathan, AFI, were involved with Jared Kushner in the New York Times Building transaction a couple of years

earlier. But I think that's a pretty tenuous connection of any at all. Yeah, definitely kind of a third or fourth, you know, time is removed from that. But I was just interested because I wasn't able to find a lot of information on it uh... something else interesting is that trump fired pre-barara who was handling this case or overseeing it two days i think before the prevenson case went to trial and then shortly after that uh... the case was settled uh... why do you suppose do you think that you find any

odd anything odd about that uh... i I didn't. I think the case settled mainly because the US government were able to get three times the amount of money that they had attract to New York in a settlement. So they were able to track $2 million of dirty Russian money coming into the United States and Preverzone settled for six. And I guess they had originally frozen 14 and so their idea was why not take just six instead of risking

a jury trial for the 14 and then possibly end up having to pay the other side's fees if the jury trial goes the wrong way. Okay, that makes sense. And to your point about when you know, V Vesaloletskaya was caught red-handed, coordinating with Russia on this response to the court, that happened back, I think, in 2015. Why do you suppose they waited until this past December to indict her? Well, so they didn't know about it until last year. All this information came out in an NBC News report about a year ago. And after the NBC News report,

I would imagine that I was God's Mac to when I watched this show where they actually had the documents. NBC News had the documents, and I'm sure that the people of the US Justice Department had the same reaction that I did. And I would say it's actually a sort of lightning speed based on my own observation of how quickly cases get put together at the US Justice Department a year from recognition of a crime to an indictment is a pretty fast moving thing. And so I don't think there's anything unusual about that. Okay, that's good to know. I, you know, that was one of the big questions that a lot of our listeners had is why it took so long, but that seems

to be along the timeline tracks of how the Justice Department operates. How do you think the Trump Tower meeting with Vezonet Sky-F figures into this story? And, I mean, what do you make of Manafort's notes during that meeting, which included your name and something that said value in Cyprus as inter among other things? What do you make of all that? value in Cyprus as inter among other things. What do you make of all that? Well, so a lot of the press reported that Vessel Nitskaya was being indicted on a separate matter than the Trump Tower meeting, and that's just not true. The Tally of Vessel Nitskaya had one basic goal, or sort of two goals under one heading, which was to discredit me and discredit Sergei Magiski on behalf of Vladimir Putin to have the Magiski Act repealed.

That was her main, that's what she was tasked with in the United States. And she was operating on a very aggressive plan to do that. And her lying in this court case and the substructure of justice was part of that, and going to the Trump Tower meeting, a meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, with a request from Putin that if Donald Trump gets elected, would he please repeal the Magnitsky Act as all part and parcel of the same thing. Okay, so it's about lifting sanctions. Yes, so just to understand the context, Vladimir Putin is one of the richest men in the world.

He became rich by killing people, stealing assets and prisoning people, etc. Like he did with Sergei Magnitsky. He's gotten so rich, he keeps all that money offshore. And the Magnitsky Act says that people who commit human rights abuses can have their money offshore frozen. And so Vladimir Putin feels very personal about this, and Vladimir Putin has a lot of money that can be frozen offshore. And so after the Magnitsky Act passed in 2012, Vladimir Putin issued a foreign policy white paper, a sort of strategy paper about his foreign policy for the world.

And he said that repealing the Magnitsky Act was his single largest foreign policy priority with the United States. And so this is something which he feels very, very personal about. He really wants to achieve and he's ready to go to great lengths with all sorts of different operations to get there. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I was wondering about that I had read was that and I wanted to ask you, does the Magnitsky Act still allow the president of the United States

to veto individuals on the OFAC sanctions list. Well, so the way the Magnuskiat works is that the State Department and the Treasury Department are tasked with putting together the list of people to be sanctioned. And every year, in December, the Magnuskiat should be updated to add new people. Strangely, this year didn't happen. Not so strangely, the reason it didn't happen is that everybody working in the sanctions team is on furlough because of the government shutdown.

But because this is an executive decision, the president can block people that are being proposed by the state department or the treasury department. The president in theory can take people off the list if he wants to and and he has pretty much unlimited latitude. The only thing the president can't do is repeal the Magnitsky Act. Magnitsky Act was passed as an act of Congress, and so for the law to disappear, it would require an act of Congress to repeal it. I see. And that kind of ties into this week when the Secretary of Trump's Treasury, Steve

Mnuchin, gave a closed door briefing to Congress about lifting sanctions on Oleg Derepaska. Can you tell us how the Magnitsky Act will play a role maybe in helping block that lifting of sanctions? Well, so the, all of Der Pasca was sanctioned under the Katza law, which was the election hacking law, not the Magnitsky Act, but it uses the same exact treasury tools to sanction people. And it's an extremely, extremely powerful tool because by going after the richest

people in the richest Russians, by putting them on the sanctions list, it's absolutely devastating. Now, this whole Derapaska situation is very, very unpleasant for me to watch because Oleg Derepaska for any observer of Russia, we all know that he is effectively an alter ego of Putin. He's a guy who's like a private sector arm of Putin regime. He does stuff in the private sector that, you know, for Putin that Putin couldn't do because he's president. And so by sanctioning Derpaska, it was really sort of like a neutron bomb going off over Moscow. And the fact that they're now discussing lifting part of the sanctions against Derpaska

is a very, very ugly development. And all the justifications that they're using for why they're lifting sanctions don't make any sense to me. Yeah, us, us, yeah, they don't make sense to us either. And it just seems like another way that just seems like one of the many ways they're trying to circumvent these sanctions. Well, I mean, just in case people don't know the arguments that they're making, they're

basically saying that Oleg Derpaska owns an aluminum company, an energy company and some other bits and pieces, and the Treasury in the Nuchin is saying, you know, we mean to sanction him, but we don't want to destroy the livelihoods of people working in these companies. And therefore, what they're saying is that if he reduces his ownership stake from 70% to 45%, then that will make the Treasury comfortable that he doesn't control the companies anymore. But that's just nonsense.

Anybody who's spent more than five minutes on Wall Street or even knows somebody on Wall Street knows that only 45% of a company means you control the company. And so the idea that somehow he doesn't control it if you bring him down below 50% is just a weak sort of, a weak excuse to basically give him a huge gift. Right. And didn't I read that VTB was actually buying a lot of these shares? Of course. And the VTB is going to buy shares. And there's going to be a guy named Lord Barker, a British guy who's been, who's like his

personal concierge, who's going to be the trustee, and all is going to be, you know, it's all sort of smoke and mirrors. And the reality is that they're all just snickering in the background thinking that they legd us over one more time. Well, I hope Congress presses this issue because it's it's disturbing to me that they're even thinking about lifting sanctions on on him or Rousseau or any of his companies, but one last thing I want to ask you about you spent the greater part of your time on activities in support of the Magnitsky Act, which pretty much passed the Senate unanimously. I think there were two holdouts. Famous, a famous holdout was Bernie Sanders, and I was wondering if you've ever had

occasion to speak with him about that vote, and do you know why he opposed it? I do not know, and you know, during the previous election when some of my left wing friends were feeling the burn, I would run them. I say, this is a guy who voted against the Magnitsky Act. I don't know why he did that, but I hold it against him. I mean, it was 98 to 2 vote. Yeah, I've heard both sides of that story, and some folks, uh, he voted no because it didn't go far enough. Uh, it gave the executive too much power, but I, I haven't been able to confirm that with anybody.

That doesn't make any sense to me. All right. Before I let you go, can you tell us about your book, Red Notice? So, um, my book, Red Notice, uh, is a, an account of, of how I ended up in Russia. Um, how I started my business in Russia, how for a while it was an amazing and successful business, and then I encountered the most horrible corruption anyone could ever imagine. And the Russians were stealing everything. I tried to fight the stealing in that led to me being expelled from the country, my company seized, my lawyer, Sergey Maginsky

arrested, tortured, and murdered. And then the last third of the book is my fight for justice, which culminates in the passage of the Maginsky Act, which is the thing that Putin hates more than anything. It's a book which you'll learn a lot about Russia, but you don't have to care about Russia to read it because it's just a fascinating and terrifying story all the way through. Absolutely, it is terrifying. And I encourage everybody to pick up that book, Red Notice. I also encourage you to watch Bill Bratter's testimony to Congress from 2017.

And listen to episode two of Mollershi Road. It's all about the Magnitsky Act and Bill Browder's Testimony. Everyone's CEO of Hermitage Capital and author of Red Notice Bill Browder. Bill, thanks for joining us on Mullershi Road. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dan Dunn, host of What We're Drinking with Dan Dunn, the most wildly entertaining adult beverage-themed podcast in the history of the medium. That's right. The boozy best of the best baby, and we have the cool celebrity promos to prove it. Check this out. Hi, I'm Allison Janney and you're here with me on What We're Drinking with Dan Dunn.

And that's my sexy voice. Boom. Boom is right Academy Award winner, Allison Janney. As you can see, celebrities just love this show. How cool is that? Hey, this is Scottie Pippin and you're listening to the Dan Dunn Show and wait, hold off. The name of the show is what? Alright, sure. Scottie Pippin momentarily forgot the show's name but there's a first time for everything. Hey everyone, this is Scoot McNary. I'm here with Dan Dunn on What Are You Drinking? What's it called again?

Fine, twice. But famous people really do love this show. Hi, this is Will Forte and you're, for some reason, listening to What We're Drinking with Dan Dunn. What do you mean for some reason, Will Forte? What's going on? Hi, this is Kurt Russell. Listen, I escaped from New York,

but I couldn't get the hell out of Dan Dunn's happy hour. Please send help. Send help? Oh, come on, Kurt Russell. Listen, I escaped from New York, but I couldn't get the hell out of Dan Dunn's happy hour. Please send help Send help. Oh come on Kurt Russell. Can somebody out there? Please help me. I'm Deed of aunties and you're listening to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn Let me try one more time. Come on Amazing, it's amazing. Is it right? Ah, that's better. So be like D-Tavantice friends and listen to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn, available wherever you get your podcasts. So Renato, do you still have your own podcast? Yeah, it's complicated. What's so complicated about a podcast?

That's the name of the podcast, remember? Oh! Will you still be exploring topics that help us understand the week's news? You bet, but we'll have a new name because we're going to be working together to explore complicated issues that are done in the news. Working together? Yeah, you're hosting it with me, remember? Oh, right. Wait, does that mean our podcast is going to have a steam op segment? Let's not get carried away. But we'll discuss hot new legal topics, so check out our new episode, coming soon to everywhere you get podcasts, as well as YouTube. Yeah. All right, guys, that's our show for this week.

Big, big news. And if you know people who want to know about what's going on in Mueller news, which is going to start happening more and more now, I have a feeling, especially with this latest New York Times report, send them our way. Recommend us to your friends who are like, I can't keep up on all this, we're happy to help. If you're not a patron, become one, we have a midweek episode now

where we'll be giving you all the news that comes out in the first couple days of the week that you wouldn't have, you normally have to wait until Sunday to hear. And then we, you know, we retool a little bit for the Sunday episode so it doesn't sound so repeating for you. And we're also taking suggestions on segments for the midweek episode. We've got a lot of good ideas so far

Here's some of my favorites. You guys tell me what you think. Okay. Let's see here Cocktail happy hour hump day happy hour Where we come up with a cocktail like the Moscow Mueller and we say how to make it and we drink it. I love that idea because we do when it's a Wednesdays. That's very fun. Yeah, that's beautiful. Plus we get to drink. Yeah, it's so good.

Oh, we're going to make it. Yeah, I'm going to have a cocktail person come in here and make the cocktails for us. Oh, well, hell yeah. Talk about it and we'll give you the recipe. Then you can have the cocktail with us. That's the best, yeah. I'm so down. So there's that, there's the Dem Gavils Investigations

where we just cover, you know, this week in the House Dems Investigate, don't go. Oh yeah, I can get a little gabbles sound. Yeah, I like it because it sounds like them gavils. Oh, like yeah. Yeah, exactly. Dem Gavils, that's beautiful. Love Dem Gavils.

Dem Gavils, don't. See, I don't even know. Dem gavals, though. See, I don't even know what that is, but I do. So that makes it good. Way back Wednesday, where we look at old clips and see how they've played out. Oh. Quote of the week, get listeners and patrons to submit quotes and pick one. Good news for a change, which I would do to Morrissey's good times for

a change. And then we would give you some good news that came out this week. So that's kind of like a nice self-care balance. Muller junkies assemble or activate, Wonder Twins activate. That's a weekly call to action. Yeah, like that. Q&A for patrons, and we only do the Q&A midweek since we do interviews now on Sundays. Whatever happened to blank, that's another one. Oh, like where are they now? Yeah, yeah. And then self-care departure, like albums we like to relax to or other healthy distractions.

Oh, that's nice. So those are some of the ideas. I love them. And do you have any other ideas, guys? Email us. Hello at MollershiRote or add us on Twitter at MollershiRot. What is it? At MollershiRot? Someone had a really funny one that I don't know if it'll work, but it's just called How Fucked Are We? Yeah, I get that question a lot when we do the Q&A. And the answer is always...

That's how fuck you are. And that's just how it always is. And so if you want us to do that every week, that's cool too. But we want this to be for patrons because it is. And so we want you guys to give us input. So again, send us all your information. If you're not a patron, do three bucks. Patreon.com slash mullishy wrote. Get it.

You also get all kinds of cool gifts you get the entire archive you get the newsletter with my show notes you get the book club episodes plus all the old ones and the future ones ad free episodes what else I mean there's so much stuff newsletter yeah um yeah oh fantasy indictment league you get to play fantasy indictment league just cast and take it if we ever go do cool shit. Yeah, you get yeah When we tour when we go on tour. Oh, we should have a live indictment League experience We have VIP meet and greet we can have a draft. I don't know. Yeah, but there's so much stuff that you get and for three

It's a little is three bucks a month so it's totally worth it. I've been told I'm giving away the farm. It's totally fine I think you guys are worth it. So that's it. That's all we have for this week. You guys have any last thoughts? Have a good Sunday. Yeah. Night. Definitely. My birthday's next week. Happy early birthday, G.

Thanks, yeah, the next episode comes out on a birthday. That's awesome. Oh yeah. You're gonna party hard? No, party hardy. Oh. I'm gonna script hard, probably. That's script hard, bro.

Yeah, I'm gonna do something. Yeah. I might have a nice dinner. I don't know. That is something. My birthday shows are all this weekend. Oh, okay, okay. I don't know what I'm doing next weekend, but you know. I'm not old.

Just so everyone realizes. I do realize. Anyway, thank you guys so much. Your support is overwhelming. We love you and keep being bad asses. I've been A.G. I've been Julie Sujanson. I've been Jordan Coburn. And this is Mullershey Road. Mullershey Road is produced and engineered by AG with editing and logo designed by Jelisa Johnson.

Our marketing consultant and social media manager is Sarah Least Diner and our subscriber and communications director is Jordan Coburn. Fact checking in research by AG and research assistants by Julie Sojonson and Jordan Coburn. Our merchandising managers are Sara Lee Steiner and Sara Hershberger Valencia. Our web design and branding are by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios and our website is mullershoewrote.com. Too long. And they might be giants aren't even sorry. Not even sorry. And audiences like the shows too much. Too much. And now they might be giants who are playing their breakthrough album,

All of it. And they still have time for other songs. They're fooling around. Who can stop? They might be giants and their liberal rock agenda. Who? No one. Disadvantaged pay for was somebody else's money. M-S-O-W-Media. No dissadmissed pay for with somebody else's money.