Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Untouchables: Power, The Mob & An Indictment with Elie Honig

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Scholar & CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig joins Anthony to talk about his new book Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It. They discuss President Trump’s indictment, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein and more. Elie shares his inside account of going up against the Mob, during his time as a federal and state prosecutor – and both share their thoughts on the fate of Sam Bankman-Fried.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm Anthony Scaramucci and welcome. to open book, where I talk with some of the most interesting and brilliant minds in our world today. In this show, I'll bring on guests in business, politics, entertainment, and more to go deep into a piece of their work, whether it's a highly anticipated book, an in-depth feature story, or an opinion piece that has captured my attention. We'll dig into why it matters to you and how their work is shaping our future. People often ask how Donald Trump gets away with it or how other people

with wealth and power manipulate the system. In his new book Untouchable, Elie Honik, he unmasks all the tricks that are used. He draws from the famous cases like Trump and Weinstein to mafia cases he worked on during his nearly 15 years as a federal and state prosecutor. So the real question is, why have so many people been let off the hook? How does our criminal justice system let people become effectively untouchable. Does it take a criminal to actually catch another criminal? That's the big question. Anyway, all these questions Ellie answers for us today on Open Book. Joining us on OpenBook now is Ellie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst, also a graduate of my alma mater, Harvard Law School. You're the better side of the Harvard Law School. I'm more of like the evil capitalist greedy side.

you're the public servant side of the Harvard Law School. So it's nice to have you on. I appreciate it, Anthony. Thank you. You're a good model for Harvard Law. I think Harvard Law is proud of you. I'm proud of you. I appreciate that. They always ask me for money. And of course, I donated money. So there you go. That's the thing. They hold me up as some ideal, but you're the one that goes to for money. And I'm giving them the money because without them, I would be nobody. But here's the title of the book is untouchable. How powerful people get away with it. I'm going to start where somebody didn't get away with something, and that's Al Capone. Because wasn't Al Capone untouchable? Is that a reference to him, or was that just you're firing that out there as a general reference for some of these types of people? It was certainly meant to have a mob connotation about it because a lot of the examples I use in the book, Anthony, are examples from my work as a mafia prosecutor in Manhattan.

And as I went through some of these old cases, and, you know, I love to tell a good mob story, I saw so many parallels between the tactics. that savvy mob bosses would use and the tactics that regular folks, civilians, as the mobsters would call them, used. Al Capone is an interesting study because he ultimately did get his comeuppance, but only after he dodged the law for a very long time and only after they really got him on almost a technicality of his taxes. I actually say in the book, I don't agree with that model of approaching. I'm not, I don't talk in depth about Al Capone. I'm not going back in history like that. But I actually do not agree with the, someone's got to nail this guy for something, and I don't care what and I don't care how model of prosecution. I think things need to be done the

right way. But even so, if they're done with enough spine and courage, powerful people can be brought to justice. So I gave the book to a couple of my friends, some of my classmates from Harvard. And one of them said to me, wow, this is such a timely book because we're in a world of have and have not. Trump tells people that the system is rigged. He knows because he helped to rig the system and you're writing about from a prosecutorial perspective how powerful people get away with things. And you're right, frankly, you're right. So let's go into it. Okay. Why do so many powerful people never face consequences of their actions? So there's really, I see three causes here. One is we have a system with laws and procedures and internal policies that inherently help and favor powerful people and

we can get into those. Two is your savvious bosses, Donald Trump being high on that list, maybe the highest on the list, know exactly how to play it, sometimes in ways that we don't often recognize at face value. And third, I'm critical of prosecutors in this book. I argue that too many prosecutors have failed to do their jobs aggressively enough or smartly enough. And as a result, when you combine those three things, look, not every powerful person completely gets away with it. Plenty of powerful people wind up behind bars, but often it's belated, it's incomplete, or not at all. And so I sort of give examples to flesh out each of those three angles in the book. You bring up a very famous case to lawyers, but probably not a super famous case to the public called

the Marino case. Tell us a little bit about the Marino case. Pretend I didn't. Of course, I know about it, but I want you to talk to people that wouldn't know that case and how did that experience shape your view of power in the courtroom. So I opened the book with this case. This is a real mafia case. I prosecuted, the defendant was a guy named Danny Marino, not the NFL quarterback, but the longtime Gambino Powerhouse. Dan Marino's nephew, a guy named Frank Hydel was murdered when he was 31 years old. This is in 1998. Hydel was basically set up by a bunch of his friends in the mob. They took him out to a strip club called Scarlets and Staten Island. I opened the book at Scarlet's, and then when he goes outside into the parking lot, one of his other friends runs up to him,

shoots him and kills him. They killed him because they believed he was an informant. I end up taking over this prosecution, we end up charging and convicting basically all the people at the crime scene, the shooter, the setup guy, the getaway drivers, and various other people who were in on the planning. But the problem was, we knew that Danny Marino, who was the most powerful person involved in this, had to be involved, but we just didn't have strong enough proof. Finally, we flipped somebody who tells us, yeah, we sent word into Danny Marino. He was in prison for something else. We told him that his nephew was a rat. I don't like that word, but that's the word they use. And Marino's response to us was these simple six words, do what you have to do. And we charged Danny Marino based on that. Now,

that is not a lot to go on, right? You can imagine what the defense would be. Well, do what you got to do. That could mean beat him up. That could mean make sure and then get back to me. That doesn't mean kill him. We charged this case and we frankly ended up pleading him out for five years, which as I say in the book, I'm not proud of. I think it took guts for us to charge him. I think a lot of prosecutors would not have charged him. But in the end, because of the thinness of our proof, we had to give him a very, very favorable deal. And so I say in the book, this conundrum has plagued me since then. How did the most powerful person involved in this get away the lightest? And that sort of becomes a springboard for the book. And I love it. I believe that's a great, obviously, explanation.

It's why you're such a good prosecutor and so great on television. You were a prosecutor eight and a half years. You were a state prosecutor for five years. So at the federal level, eight and a half years, You worked on a lot of mafia cases, okay? And the book details a lot of the mafia thinking with people like Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, etc. So what are these people have in common? The mafia dons, the civilian dons, but also somewhat criminal dons. A lot of things. And I think the Marino case that I just explained gives us a couple of examples.

One, they know how to insulate themselves. You know, sitting at the top of that hierarchical pyramid really provides invaluable protection because a smart boss very much limits who he talks to. And when he talks to those people, he's very careful about what he says and doesn't say. Think about Donald Trump. Think about January 6th. Be there. We'll be wild.

He never said, hey, everyone, go down and smash the windows at the Capitol and beat up cops. But dozens of people who've since been arrested in charge said, well, that's what we understood him to be telling us. Look at Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen got convicted of lying to Congress about Trump's efforts to build in Moscow. And when Michael Cohen was asked by Congress, did you lie because Donald Trump told you to lie? Michael said, and I think honestly, he said, no, that's not how Donald Trump works. He never said to me, Michael, I need you to go in there and commit perjury. He said, Michael, I heard you got your subpoena.

You know, we didn't do anything wrong. And I trust that you're going to do the right thing. And again, that's an example of being very careful with your words, similar to do what you got to do. You leave yourself a little bit of wiggle room or plausible deniability. So those are two of the ways. The insulation of being at the top of the pyramid, being very careful and limited in who you actually talk to, and being very guarded in the way you say things. Those are all very common tactics. So, and just to add to that, Mr. Trump, President Trump, never on email, very rarely on text, lots of face-to-face conversations so he couldn't be recorded by anybody.

No one-party recordations of his voice. So there you go. And there is a famous situation which you're well aware of, and CNN reported on this a while back, where Michael Cohen himself recorded Donald Trump in discussions over the Stormy Daniels payments. And that could become part of the case against Trump if that case ends up getting indicted, although that recording sort of cuts both ways if you really dig into it. It does. It does. And so they may not be used in the case. Let's consider Donald Trump for a second. One of your best lines in the book, I literally laughed when you wrote it was that there's a chance by the time you're holding this,

holding this book, Trump is indicted. Okay. Everybody's focused on an indictment. You know, I've heard you talk about it on TV. Where do you think this is going? What do you think the ultimate outcome is? Well, it suddenly seems the Manhattan DA has jumped the queue. For a little bit, it looked like it was going to be Fulton County that indicted him first on January 6th. And by the way, I'm not one of these analysts who's constantly saying he's going down. It's the end. It's the end. But it does look quite clear that Manhattan DA intends to indict Donald Trump for the Stormy Dano's hush money payment.

But as I always say on air, and I say in the book, indictment, anyone who thinks that they should celebrate or mourn at an indictment, hold on. Because an indictment is just the first step. You have to get through all sorts of motions, legal motions, appeal motions, a piece. heels probably, and then a trial. And it's very difficult to try a guy like Donald Trump, because as unpopular as he is in some quarters, he's very popular in others. And I argue in the book that prosecutors have missed their moment, Merrick Garland being foremost among them, because now here we are in early to mid-20203. If you indict now, this trial, these trials won't be happening until 2024. By that point, Donald Trump's going to be in the heart of the primaries,

certainly will be a frontrunner, might even be the presumptive nominee. You're making the job that much harder on yourself to get an actual conviction from 12 to zero from a jury. So I am critical of Garland in the book for his slow pace, for his lack of focus, for his failure to focus at the top of the pyramid. This Manhattan DA potential charge is curious to me. I don't know why, and I should say I'm friends with Alvin Bragg, who's the DA, it doesn't make sense to me why on this charge, which is fairly might, it could be a misdemeanor under New York State law if things don't play right. Why six and a half years after the fact, why based on the word of Michael Cohen, who has, look, I know Michael Cohen, I believe him now, but he has major credibility problems. I just don't understand that approach

for going after a former president for the first time in American history. So I want you to play defense counsel for a second. Sure. You are now on Donald Trump's defense team. You have this case coming. All right. What say you? Well, the first thing I tell Donald Trump is, look, even if you lose this case, even if you get convicted somewhere down the line, you ain't going to jail. I mean, that's not, look, that's not for sure, but it's unlikely to me, given the potential penalties here. But my argument, first of all, I attack Michael Cohen. I say, folks, jury, their entire argument rests on Michael Cohen's testimony. Let me tell you a couple of things that are not in dispute about Michael Cohen. One, he's a convicted perjurer. Two, he's been convicted of bank fraud.

Three, he's been convicted of tax fraud. This guy is a fraudster. I'm making the argument here. I'm going to roll here. Number four, he despises Donald Trump with every fighter in his body. He wrote a book called revenge. He cannot open his mouth without cursing out Donald Trump. He hates Donald Trump. This is the epitome of a biased witness. And finally, folks, most importantly, the key question in this case is, were those payments meant to silence Stormy Daniels in connection with the election, or were they meant to silence her in connection with personal embarrassment? And if it's personal embarrassment, there's no crime here. It was personal embarrassment. And you know how you know that? Michael Cohen said it. In 2018, he told the FEC, under oath, the Federal Election Commission,

and the New York Times that these payments had nothing to do with the election and they're not criminal. That's what he said back then, folks. Now he's got this axe to grind. He's a liar. He's a perjurer. And now they're asking you to believe him beyond a reasonable doubt. Reject that. Come back not guilty. That's my 90 second close. All right. I mean, it's pretty persuasive. Taccapino, I've seen him on TV. He hasn't done that, actually. So he may need some media tips from you. He's a good lawyer, though. I like Joe. I like Joe. I would have told Joe don't take the case. Trump is a pig that likes shit. You know what I mean? So he may need. It's not just mud.

You're going to end up shit on your shoes as well. You're going to end up sullied by the guy. By the way, can I make the prosecution argument in 60 seconds? Folks, they paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 13 days before the election. That is undisputed. This alleged affair happened a decade before. And they falsely logged those payments as attorney fees. That in itself is a crime.

Let's start with that. Why did they do it? Is it just a coincidence that this happened 13 days before an election? Or was it because they had an election 13 days away? and they were trying to cover up for this affair, which they knew if it got out would hurt his prospects in an election that he just barely won, folks. You don't have to believe Michael Cohen. You can believe him or not believe him, but he's backed up by the recording that we talked about earlier. He has the checks which were cut through him. He's backed up by the paperwork. There's no other reason they would have made this payment. Find him guilty, et cetera. So, you know, I see it both ways.

Do you think the case where can you help me find a few more thousand votes, you know, one more than I need in Georgia, that case, is a good one? It's a much more powerful case in that the conduct is much more serious. Everyone focuses on that one line that Trump said to Raffinsberger, which is a great piece of prosecution evidence, but that's a long call that he has. It's a 62-minute call. And elsewhere on that call, Donald Trump says things like, I just want all the votes counted as they are. So there is, look, he's all over the map. I mean, Anthony, you know him. You know, when he gets amped up, he says things that are completely inconsistent minute to minute. And I think a defense lawyer will try to argue that you cannot discern criminal intent from that one line. You have to look at the totality

of everything, he says. Look, he clearly crossed the line. I think he probably did violate the Georgia laws against soliciting election fraud. But that's also going to be a tricky case. There's going to be a constitutional challenge there as well. The argument's going to be that a DA, a county level elected DA, cannot charge someone for anything having to do with their federal job duties. He's not going to apply to the Manhattan DA because the Hush Money Payments were before he was president. But there is a constitutional argument that, in fact, it is the law that a state-level prosecutor cannot charge a federal official for anything having to do with their federal job. Now, prosecutors will argue this was completely beyond and outside of the job of president, but his folks will argue,

no, he was acting in his role to take care that the laws are enforced. The opportunity to turn an indictment of Donald Trump into a conviction, has that already passed or you think that there's a chance that he goes to jail? I think the best opportunities for that absolutely have passed. I title a chapter in the book, Waiting for Garland, right, to play on waiting for Godot, waiting for Guffman, whatever you prefer. There's no reason Merrick Garland should take two years and now two months to get this indictment done. If he's going to indict him on January 6th, he could have subpoenaed Cassidy Hutchinson and Mark Short and these power play, like Pence, like is being done now, he could have subpoenaed them in the middle of 2021. He did nothing. He built from the ground up and he got a

bunch, you know, the guys who stormed the capital. He had to do that, but he did not build anywhere. And I think for the reasons we said before, I think arguing this case, charging this case in 2021 and arguing it to a jury in early 2022, the conduct is much more immediate. You're not in the heat of the next political election. Charging this case in 2023 and arguing it in 2024, you're asking for trouble. The jury's going to think, if it's so urgent, why did it take so long? And again, you're asking a jury to convict a guy who's going to be probably the frontrunner or one of the front runners for one of the two major party nominations. That's a, that's a heavy lift. So does it take a criminal to catch a criminal?

I mean, when I read the book, I'm saying to myself, you guys do better, prosecutors do better when they have somebody super nefarious that understands the nefarious ways of who they're going after. Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. In fact, people I say in the book, there's this, if all you ever did was watch the TV shows and CSI and SVU and all that, you would think that every case is solved by like lab magic and DNA and blood spatters. The reality is the way that, especially the feds make crimes, is cooperating witnesses.

is I have put on way worse people than Michael Cohen. I have based cases off of murderers. The key comes down to corroboration. Can you back them up? You know, when you ask a jury to believe a convicted criminal, you're not asking them to believe this person as a matter of faith because they're a good human being. You're saying, look at all the evidence that backs them up. Look at the phone records. Look at the financials. Look at the forensics. Look at other witness testimony. And I give examples in the book of cases where I happen to be lucky and have good corroboration and other cases like Danny Marino where I didn't have much corroboration at all. That is the whole ballgame. But yeah, Anthony, our standard line with juries was always, folks, we would love to call nurses and school

teachers up to the witness stand to explain how this worked. But guess what? Those folks can't take you inside the Genovese family. Only another gangster can. And you can fill in the blank for whatever the organization and whoever the cooperator is. So yeah, there's nothing wrong with doing that. prosecutors do build cases and can and should build cases off of criminals. But you want to make sure that, A, they've told you everything, and B, that you can back them up. I want to go to a few other people. Let's go to Jeff Epstein for a second. Yeah. Got in trouble, went to jail, came out of jail, perpetuated more trouble, and was heading to jail for a look like a very long time. And then what happened. When you say went to jail the first time, I would say barely. Yeah, it was a negotiated agreement.

That's what got 13 months. And he was a laborer. Gregory in trouble, right? Because he was the DA working on that or the U.S. attorney working on that. The U.S. attorney, yeah. And they let him spend his weekdays at his lawyer's office instead of behind bars. I'm very critical of Acosta, Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney. He gave Jeffrey Epstein a ridiculously soft deal, like we said, a state prostitution charge instead of federal human trafficking charges. I argue in the book, he was just intimidated by this dream team that I put that in quotes because I'm not, I don't believe so strongly in Allen. Dershowitz's legal skills or Ken Stars, but they're both high-priced intimidating lawyers. But Epstein put together this monster legal defense team that really just overwhelmed Acosta. And I argue in the book, and I have evidence of this, not that he took a bribe or was corrupt. He just didn't have the stones to do this case. And one of his own people said he just got overwhelmed. He was too intimidated by these lawyers.

And it wasn't until 10 years later, and Julie Brown, an excellent reporter, sort of blew the lid off of this. And Acosta becomes cabinet secretary, drawing a lot of attention that finally, belatedly, the SD&Y, my former office, jumps in and charges him appropriately with crimes that you're right would have certainly kept him locked up for the rest of his natural life, but then he ends up dying shortly thereafter in prison. So he would have skirted justice altogether, if not for the media and if not for political pressure. Do you watch the mayors of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner? No, but I know it's set in my, in Philly, my home area. I'm from South Jersey.

That's my area. So I know the people talk like people I grew up with, but I haven't seen it. I mean, listen, you know, there's a little bit of a movement there between the cops and the prison guards and the prisoners. How to hell are both prison guards off duty or taking a break and the cameras are down and Epstein has committed suicide? I mean, when you hear clippity clop outside, it's a horse. It's not a zebra. So you think he committed suicide? I don't. I'm just going to tell you flat out, you know. I don't know. I will say it is outrageous that there was not round the clock coverage on him. That they don't have video is wild to me. I've been in that building, that MCC, the Metropolitan Correctional Center many, many times. I mean, there wouldn't be video inside the cell, but you would absolutely have video of who's coming and going down the hallway and who would have hung a left or right into the cell.

So that kind of absence, I think, causes real questions. Tell me about Bill Cosby. You write about him in the book. Cosby also got a free ride the first time. Prosecutors in that case, the Montgomery County, I think it was, DA in Philly, when they interviewed the first victim, they did it on the phone. That is the exact opposite of the way you approach someone who claims they're a sexual assault victim. You meet with them in person to build that trust. And then when it came down to interview Cosby, they go into Manhattan, meet Cosby at his lawyer's office, and they come out, the chief of police, he's gushing. His quote was something like he was wearing his typical Cosby sweater, and I don't see anything wrong with anything, he said.

I mean, the guy's practically fanboying over Bill Cosby, and they gave him a pass. And then they screwed it up even worse because they gave him a pass so that he would be forced to testify at his civil trial. They said, well, we're not going to charge him criminally, but now he has to testify in his civil case, which can't be, you know, can't be used against him criminally. And he goes and testifies and he admits he uses quailudes and all this. And then they double back and they just reverse themselves and say, actually, now we are going to use your testimony against you. and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ultimately said correctly, you can't do that, prosecutors. You can't lure the guy into testifying by lying to him and then take it back. And so the prosecutors there, A, they gave him a pass the first time through, and B, they screwed it up the second time.

And that's why he's free right now. Okay, five words. You're going to react to them. Okay. All right. Ready? It's actually five people. Bernie Madoff.

Villain. I'm proud of my former office, the Southern District of New York. A bunch of my friends were in on the team that prosecuted him. and he got what he deserved. Bill Cosby. I write in the book about when I was a kid, when we were kids, Anthony, the man was a deity. No, he was everybody's bad.

I tried to explain to my students who I teach at college. Think of Tom Hanks right now. That's how he was beloved. But really, when you dig in, I mean, I did some research in this case. When you dig into what he did, I mean, just an absolute remorseless predator. And the fact that he's out of jail now,

like I said, it's the prosecutor's fault. He's lucky that he's out of jail. The decision was actually, Correct by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but prosecutors just absolutely botched that case. Harvey Weinstein. Same thing. Also, I think a lot of people turn blind eyes to him because he was so powerful. I mean, this is another one of those things like Cosby, where it was a bit of an open secret when you dig into it. A lot of people knew what he was doing, but were afraid to stand up to him.

Finally, when, and Cy Vance, the Manhattan DA, gave him a pass as well, inexplicable and inexcusable, but ultimately got what he deserved belatedly and only because of media pressure and public pressure. Jeff Epstein. Villan. Utter and complete villain who should have been locked away from society much earlier than he was. Donald Trump.

Houdini, a lawless Houdini, I call him in the book because he has slipped away at every turn. I think it's quite likely he will be indicted quite possibly very, very soon. But I also think the chances of A, convicting him and B, that he gets sentenced to prison

and see that all of that gets held up on appeal is very, very low right now. And the indictment may make him politically stronger, too, which is a... Maybe, right? I mean, that's what I fear from a lot of political people who understand how this works. So I think he may get some measure of justice in the form of an indictment, but far, far, far from full justice. Sam Bankman-Freet, will he elude justice? He's a high-profile guy. I'm sure someone in his family's reading your book right now. I don't think so. The Southern District of New York, my old office is prosecuting him. This is an example of DOJ acting very quickly.

They prosecuted him within a matter of weeks. He has said some self-defeating things. and his PR tours. You don't want to get caught on the wrong end of a securities fraud case from the Southern District of New York. So no, I don't think he's going to be that case. And he's also got three of his cohorts have already pled out guilty. So it's super hard on that situation. You wrote an amazing book about Bill Barr.

It was called The Hatchet Man. You came on for that. Thank you. We now have untouchable, how powerful people get away with it. What's next for you, Ellie? Book-wise, you know, Anthony, I want to tell a story next time. I do some behind the scenes reporting in this book. I get into what happened at DOJ in the Southern District of New York and tell the story that no one's ever told before of how the Michael Cohen prosecution happened and how DOJ sort of circle the wagons around Donald Trump.

I want to find one of those like Michael Lewis stories. You know, one of those stories that's been out there that hasn't been told, but that sort of reveals some larger truth about us in the legal field. I don't have it yet. I'm going to take my time. I did two books in a year and a half. I mean, some prolific writing. And then also you got you got fancy. pants people at your book parties too, you know. I mean, I was name dropping that I met people at your

book party, especially dad, by the way, who I greatly enjoyed. Okay, he was, my parents love talking to you. He was totally my kind of guy, you know, we're like, uh, listen, my dad like you, Anthony is a self-made guy. He put himself through school and he built up a nice law practice and because of him, he raised us nicely. Yeah, well, that's how it's supposed to be, though, you know? I mean, that's my father, or when I got the job, when I got it into Harvard, my parents were clueless. They thought it was Hartford. They wanted to take me to Connecticut.

They had no clue because they're not educated. But when I got the job at Goldman, my mother lied about that. She'd telling people it was a law firm because she was embarrassed that I wasn't a lawyer, right? But my father said something to me that I'll never forget. He's like, hey, you're indoors, you're out of direct sunlight,

and there's no heavy lifting. So don't ever complain about the job. Right. And you're on a salary. Yeah, exactly. So whatever that's going on in the world, you're not going to miss a meal. You got to be chill.

But, you know, why I like you and hopefully the reason why you like me is that we got raised right. We're not going to do anything wrong. I'm never going to dishonor my parents by doing something wrong because why would I violate my dad's last name? You know, why would I turn on him after watching him work as hard as he worked to give us the life that he gave us? Do you know what I mean? 100%. I totally agree with that. By the way, it's funny because I think we're sort of one-jured.

generation removed from you. But my grandparents, my dad's both parents, were Holocaust survivors, never met my grandfather. That's who I'm named after. My full name's Eliezer. He died in 1960. But my grandmother was this incredibly tough woman who survived the concentration camps and raised two kids on her own in Passake, New Jersey. And when I got into Harvard, she said, she didn't ring a bell. She didn't know what it was. And she said, well, where is it? I said, it's kind of near Boston. I showed her on a map. And you know what her response was? She goes, it's too far. It's too far. Why would you? Why would you? Yeah, I love these people. You know, I live, I live two miles from my mother. My brother lives four miles. My mother's like, you think you could

move closer like your brother, Anthony. It's like, like he needs a passport to go four miles to her house. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But these people, I mean, this is the families that we come from and we remember and we try to acknowledge a tradition. All right. Well, you're the man to spend all this time with me. I'm giving you a hug. And let's get a beer one night, all right? Great to talk to you, Anthony. Ellie wrote a great book. It gets to the heart of a huge problem in our system. And it's a system, frankly, that people are losing trust in. Ultimately, people feel like there's a two or possibly even three-tier justice system in the United States. One of the reasons why, even though I'm a lifelong Republican, considered a conservative on certain things, I have never been for the death penalty. I did a paper actually while back in law school just addressing this issue, if you're indigent, a poor person, black or Hispanic, and something happens, you're going to jail and you're likely going to get the death penalty. If you're a white, rich person with a machine gun, you take out your

entire office, drop the machine gun, wire $20 million over to your white collar superstar criminal law firm. Well, the chances are they'll plead you insanity. You'll probably spend a life in prison, but you're likely not to get the death penalty. So there's a tiering of the justice system, and there's a well-known belief that things are unfair. And what I love about Ellie's book is that he not only explains that they're right, that there is a certain level of unfairness in the system. He explains actually how it gets done. And is there something that we can actually really do about it?

And the short answer to the question is no. There likely isn't something that we can do about it. But I guess the point that I would make to everybody thinking this through is that the system is reasonably fair. And the system is designed to protect innocent people, no matter where they are in terms of the economic station in life. But anyway, Ellie wrote two great books in 15 months. Pick up Untouchable. He was terrific guest on today's open book.

All right, Ma, you ready to join the podcast? I try. All right. So I got you back on, Ma. So I have a friend of mine that's on CNN. He wrote a great book. He's a former Harvard Law School attorney. He worked for the Department of Justice.

for 15 years, and he wrote a book about how very rich and very successful people get away with doing bad things where they don't get convicted of crimes. Do you believe that that's something that happens, Ma? Well, I think that if it happens, you have to live with it for the rest of your life, so you better off saying your crime. Okay. Okay. All right, but when people commit crimes, okay, if they've got a lot of money, can they get away with it, money? Sometimes depending on who's on the other end. Okay, well, let me give you an example. What about Donald Trump?

Do you think he's going to get indicted, Ma, and get in trouble or he's going to get away with it? I think he might get away with it because he has a real team behind him, even though he bought, I think I've been following it. I think he lies a lot. Don't you think? Yeah, no, I think it's the orange liar. But I think he's kind of, it's a liar. Okay, but you think he's going to get away with it, right? Because he's got a political base and he's got a legal team and he's got the force of his personality, right?

Right? Or no? Yeah. I think he's his worst enemy, though, because he says things out of context. He says what he thinks, and you can't do that as president of the United States. I think that that's what hurts him the most. He's so narcissistic, then he just says things without thinking. You know, he's got a handicapped with his mouth. You know, he thinks that everyone's going to say hurrah, but there are people that think he's a little wacky because he does that. Right. All right. I agree with you. Including myself.

All right. But you think he's going to get away with. with the shit that he's pulling, though, right? Yeah, yeah. All right. All right, so the powerful people can get away with him. What about the mafia, Ma? What about the mafia cases over the years? The mafia's been pretty good at this as well, right?

Well, do you really want me to tell the truth? I will tell the truth. Go ahead. I was in, not that I was involved, but I knew many mafia people that are in construction and the people that were in construction, to in particular you wouldn't cross, because they thought of nothing about killing you.

And I thought that was a terrible thing. And they do get away with it because people have fear from them. They're afraid of them. Even the people on the side of the Justice Department are afraid of them, right? So they back off a little. Absolutely. All right. No, I do remember that, Ma.

I do remember you telling me to stay away from all these people when I was a kid. Do you remember telling me all that? Of course. You don't get in five. First of all, you can't get out of it. Second of all, they all have friends on the side. And because they have friends on the side, they can't leave their wife. So the people that are falling around with them are nuts.

Friends on the side means like friends on the side means like Gumads, right? Ma, like Gumads, right? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Most of them have that. Right. And their wives are not opening their mouth because they're afraid of them too well. No, you told me that since I was five years old, ma.

I remember all. Right. Okay, so let me ask you this question. Does it take a criminal to catch a criminal, ma? Yes, yes, I think so. Okay. So what is it about that? Explain that.

Well, a criminal that knows already like the next thing they're going to do, especially in the mafia, because they have meetings and they discuss what they're going to do. And so that criminal already knows that someone's going to get a hit. And yeah, I think they know. Yeah. Right. So they would know the moves of the other criminal. And so therefore they'd be able to prove the case better, right?

Absolutely. And they usually have very good lawyers, believe it or not. Cutler is a very good lawyer for them. He did the wrong thing for Gatti, but he was a good lawyer. But he kept John Gotti out of jail for many, many years, right? Many, many years, yes. All right. So this man, Ellie Honig, who's a friend of mine who wrote this book, you sort of agree with it then, that there's almost like a two-tier justice system. Certain people can get away with things, yeah? Especially if they look like some of the ones that I knew.

You know, a couple of them that I knew very well, because of course of kids. construction. They were, they were very uncouth. They would, they would insult people right to their face and the person would have to take it because if they answered them, God forbid they answered them. Yeah, like a lot of fear and intimidation, a lot of fear and intimidation, right? A hundred percent. Right. I am Anthony Scaramucci and that was open book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review.

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