The Bulwark Podcast - Ben Wittes: Putin's Cheerleaders

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Alexei Navalny heroically stood up to Putin, but Tucker and MAGA's worst actors can't get enough of the Russian leader—and Russia itself. Plus, another anti-Biden witness bites the dust, and Fani Willis' table-turning moment. Wittes joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes: Navalny's investigation into Putin's $1.3 billion Black Sea villa 

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Hey guys, welcome to the Weekend Pod. Quick update here. We have breaking news all over the place today. We had a guest switch brought in Ben Wittes because of his expertise on Russia and to talk about what happened with Alexei Navalny. And so I think you're going to enjoy that conversation. Obviously, we also get into the Fannie Willis case of the Trump trials

with Ben. But we have breaking news out of New York. Finally, we have a decision from Judge Arthur Engeron about Donald Trump's business case. $350 million is the judgment against the Trump family in this financial fraud case. As a result, they are barred. Trump and his two sons, two grown adult sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., barred from doing business in New York, from serving as officers or directors of any corporation or entity in New York for three years, just two years for the sons. Absolutely massive news. Of course, they're going to appeal. But this does have some political implications, of course, but the personal implications. And this is Donald

Trump's ego. You know, he put that big Trump name on everything because it was so wrapped up into his whole personage. And to have this stripped away from him, the rage bleeding that we are going to get, the just complete loss of self-control as a result of finally facing consequences for his actions, I have to say it's pretty delicious. One line I want to pull out here from Judge Engeron, the Trump family's complete lack of contrition and remorse for their extensive fraud and egregious financial misconduct quote borders on pathological he went on fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences pathological that's right we've seen seen that in Donald Trump's behavior time and time again. Finally, he's held to account for it. Much to discuss on this podcast with Ben Wittes. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back with you on Monday. Peace. Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, and we've got with us an old friend, Ben Wittes. He is with the Brookings Institution. He was with Charlie

on the Trump trials. Lawfare, you know? Lawfare. Oh, right. Lawfare. That's quite the buzzword these days, I notice, on Capitol Hill. And in the president's bleats. He's been bleating about lawfare. And every time he does it, I just attach the support lawfare link and share it because, you know, why not? Why not? I know. Every time he jumps out, I was like, he learned a new word. Maybe we blame you for that a little bit. Okay. Well, we brought you in kind of the last minute here because we have some pretty sad news this morning. Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most formidable opposition opponent, collapsed and died on Friday after a walk at the Polar Wolf Arctic Penal Colony, where he'd been

serving a bullshit three-decade jail term. He was 47 years old. I guess before I get your reaction, I wanted to just take a moment to appreciate the bravery of Navalny, who knew the risks that he was taking going back to Russia. And he talked about why he did that a few years ago in an interview with Christiane Amanpour. Let's listen to that. Why do you want to go back?

And I guess, do you think you Why do you want to go back? And I guess, do you think you'll be safe when you go back? Well, I don't think that I can have such a privilege being safe in Russia, but I have to go back because I don't want these,

you know, groups of killers exist in Russia. I don't want Putin be ruling of Russia. I don't want him in Russia. I don't want Putin to be ruling of Russia. I don't want him being president. I don't want him being czar of Russia because, well, he's killing people. He's the reason why the whole country is degrading.

He's the reason why people are so poor. We have 25 million people living below the poverty line. And the whole degradation of system, fortunately for me, including system of assassination of people, he's the reason of that. And I want to go back and try to change it. Well, not a lot of heroes these days,

but he certainly won. Ben, what's your reaction to the news this morning? All right, so a few things. The first is that I will accept that it is true when and only when Navalny's people announce it. It's not that I doubt that it's true. It's that as a matter of principle, don't accept any factual representation coming from the Russian government. What we have right now is a Russian government claim in their media that he is dead and that the circumstances you describe are the circumstances of his death. Let me start

with that. Let's wait until his people actually confirm it. He has a very developed organization. Second thing is that, assuming it is true, we should not say that he collapsed and died on a walk at a penal colony. He was murdered by Vladimir Putin, at a minimum, by putting him in a penal colony in which death is a very likely probability. We've all been expecting his death for a while, but the persistent allegations that he was being poisoned or that he was being mistreated have been such that we shouldn't default to the passive voice or to make him the subject rather than the object of the sentence. This is somebody who is, other than Volodymyr Zelensky, the single most important enemy of Vladimir Putin in the world, who voluntarily returned himself to Russia after having been poisoned once. Remember, the reason he was abroad was that he had been Novichoked in a fashion that he then, you know, revealed how it was done. And so,

if he is dead, we should wait for his people to confirm that. And we should also assume, irrespective of the stated cause of death, his imprisonment and his disappearance was an effort to kill him and remove him from Russian politics. And we should not let Putin get away with that by reflecting the causes of death as though they are not intentionally inflicted. My guess is that A, that he is dead is true, and B, that there is something more active here than a walk in the park. Certainly. I'm going to be sending this video as a sternly worded letter to our friends at Reuters Wire with a lesson about the passive voice. Navalny's wife, Yulia, was at the Munich security conference this morning, and she spoke in pretty similar terms to what you just said. She caveats at the start, if it's true, I want Putin, his entourage, Putin's

friends, and his government to know that they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, my family, and my husband, and that day will come very soon. Joe Biden in 2021 threatened Vladimir Putin over Navalny's death. He warned of devastating consequences for Russia if Navalny dies in prison. So with that caveat that both you and Yulia offered, let's presume it's true. What next? What are the implications? them have turned out to be ultra-nationalists, and the ones who have been honorable, straightforward people, and there are a bunch of them, of course, most famously Boris Nemtsov, Putin has just murdered. And there's a saying where you can kill a person, but you can't kill a dream. But it actually turns out that if you kill enough people, it makes a pretty big impact on the dream. just angry about the capacity of the Russian government to fuck them over and become

gazillionaire oligarchs with palaces, right? And he was extremely talented at talking about things that Russians actually cared about. I do think, if it is true, the loss to the idea of a Russian opposition, a genuinely democratic opposition in Russia that does not aspire to imperial conquest of half of Europe, it's a significant blow. What happens next? Look, there is not that much the United States can do about this. This is very internal to Russia. It's literally in a penal colony in the deepest, darkest reaches of Siberia. And we've already done a lot of things like freezing assets that as a result of Ukraine. And so it's not that there's a lot of U.S. potential pressure on Russia that we're not already exerting. We can't take any more yachts?

There aren't any more yachts that we can take? Or New York penthouse apartments? I would hope we've already taken the yachts. But what we can do is talk about it and talk about it a lot. I plan to project the word murderers on the Russian embassy this evening, and there will be a series of protests, I'm sure. And look, both at the senior levels of government and at the individual levels, people should talk about it. People should play the clips of Navalny, play the videos that he made. These are astonishing pieces of kind of investigative, I mean, a lot of them, they're in Russian, because we're not the audience for them. But people should really learn about what it is that that organization and what he did. And remember

it the next time Tucker Carlson tells you that, you know, you may not agree with Putin, but we should listen to him. Yeah, I want to get to our friend Tucker in a second. Just to put a finer point in, and I pulled this up, that A.G. Hamilton was sharing, the partial list of Putin critics or opponents who have mysteriously died or been targeted or obviously assassinated over the last few years. Navalny, now twice, Progozhin, Maganov, Kangoshvili, shot in Berlin, 2019, Verzilov, poisoned, 2018, Sergei, you're going to have to excuse some of my Russian pronunciations, Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain in 18, Nemtsov, which he mentioned in 15. This is something that people know, right? It's not like a secret that Putin has been engaging in these types of assassinations of

his political opponents. But is not Navalny maybe a category difference from those examples, as far as maybe rallying more intense focus and opposition? So I think he's certainly the most important since Nemtsov, and he may be more important than Nemtsov. A lot of the people that you mentioned are people who, those not familiar with contemporary Russian politics, those are names you wouldn't know. I mean, Skripal and his daughter, of course, are a little bit different because it was in the UK and it was somebody that had been traded in a spy exchange. But most of those people are relatively obscure in the West. Navalny is not obscure. And in fact, it was only a few weeks ago that he disappeared for a while in that prison. And there was a lot of

concern that he was dead at the time. And the expression Gideon Navalny, whereas Navalny was like a big trending social media thing. And Blinken talked about it publicly, Secretary Blinken, and then the Russians, you know, let him release a little video. There was a kind of proof of life situation. And so they are not entirely unresponsive to public pressure about him. The problem is that once he is dead, the public pressure is for what, right? What's the accountability that you can demand for one dead Alexei Navalny that demanding for, you know, 50,000 dead Ukrainians and 20,000 missing stolen Ukrainian children? If you've resisted that, what's the added pressure that you can do? And look, the answer is that the President of the United States should talk about it. Everybody at the Munich Security Conference should be talking

about it. And, you know, people should exact a price. And I would hope that companies that are still doing business in Russia now get the question again, only with Navalny instead of Ukraine as the reason for the question, or in addition to Ukraine. Am I optimistic that there is some magic lever that will be pulled now because Navalny is dead, that was not true because of a full-scale invasion and genocidal conduct in Ukraine. No. Do I think we should all act like there is? Yes. The range of bad actors this highlights over here in America, particularly, not particularly, entirely basically in the Republican Party. Don't leave out Jill Stein. Oh, and Jill, and our friend Jill. The enablers to the propagandists. Before we get to Tucker and Sarah Palin

and Dinesh D'Souza and the worst actors, I want to highlight something that Kinzinger put up on his sub-stack this morning, that Alexei Navalny was everything that the GOP isn't. Taking a stand doesn't have to cost your life, but God forbid you lose your access. I do wonder, let's just put Tucker and that kind of crowd of comrades over in a box for one second. As we look to Ukraine aid and the actual, you know, responses that are necessary,

might something like this backfire on Putin as far as forcing some of the spineless weasels, the Mike Johnsons of the world, to actually finally act and show a little backbone? Do you see any possible green shoots there? Look, in a sane world where Republicans were holding up Ukraine aid because of the border, but not because of the border, and insisting on border legislation, but then nixing border legislation and letting the Russians overrun Avdivka because the Ukrainians don't have enough artillery. In a sane world like that, if Putin murdered his most important critic, you would think cooler heads would prevail and the Speaker would call an immediate vote for unconditional, unattached Ukraine aid so that at least he doesn't get

the windfall of congressional inaction on top of murdering his chief critic. But if you haven't noticed him, we don't live in an entirely sane world. We live in a world in which all the data prove everybody's hypotheses. And, you know, for a lot of Mike Johnson's and Tucker Carlson's, you know, this just might show the need for more dialogue with Putin. After all, if maybe he only killed Navalny because, you know, we haven't been being nice enough to him. So I do worry that people will cram it into their own crazy preconceptions of the thing. That said, look, this should concentrate everybody's mind. This is a murderous guy. He's murderous at the national level. He's murderous at the personal level. And he's murderous at the state institutional level. And, you know,

the United States has to be more Kinzinger than Johnson about this. And we just have to, you know, put certain domestic considerations aside and just pass that supplemental. Well, you suggested that maybe the Tuckers of the world would show that this needs additional dialogue. We're doing it live this morning, Ben. Tucker is actually on stage right now at the World Government Summit 2024. Did I get that right? I don't exactly know what he said,

but let's just listen to it live together. You should challenge in the rules of an interview, and you're a master in your business. It's not for me to give you a lecture about that, but you should challenge some ideas. For instance, you didn't talk about freedom of speech in Russia. You did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about restrictions on opposition in the coming elections? I didn't talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about. Why? Yes, this is my question.

Because those are covered, and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following, that every leader kills people, including my leader. Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people. Sorry. That's why I wouldn't want, including my leader. Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people. Sorry.

That's why I wouldn't want to be a leader. That press restriction is universal in the United States. I know because I've lived it. I've asked my former, you know, I've had a lot of jobs. And I've done this for 34 years, and I know how it works. And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there's a great deal in the United States. And so, you know, at a certain point, it's like people can decide whether they think, And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there's a great deal in the United States.

And so, you know, at a certain point, it's like people can decide whether they think, you know, what countries they think are better, what systems they think are better. I just want to know what he thinks. That was the whole point. Yeah. OK. Leadership requires killing people. Leadership requires killing people. So, you know, I wasn't far off there. Look, there is nothing we can do about the Tuckers of the world. There is something we can do about the Mike Johnsons of the world. And that involves in the short term, a maximum pressure campaign to get him to hold this vote. And I do hope that the Navalny story, if it's true, will work as a significant arrow in that quiver. And I'm confident that Navalny would want that as well. The second thing is that these people really need to be removed from power. And that's a longer term electoral thing. But people who don't understand that you need to stand up to Vladimir Putin really need

to not be in power. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of, just listening to that, is 20, I can't remember if it was during the campaign in 2016 or maybe right after he was elected president, Trump does the interview with O'Reilly, where O'Reilly asks him about Putin and his assassinations. Yeah, you think we're so pure? You think our country's so innocent?

We've got a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent? That mindset, there was the interview this week with Marco where he's talking to Jake Tapper and he's like, yeah, Trump says some crazy things. He's not part of the Council on Foreign Relations, but you can't take that all seriously. And just how wrong that worldview is and how much the Trump worldview that the United States is not great, that the United

States is not any different from any of these other countries in motivation. It is a very debased view of the country, a very dark view of the country. And it has infected, clearly, a huge portion of the Republican Party, the party that used to feel that we were the hope of the world. Now, oh, you think we're so innocent? Oh, everybody's a killer. Everybody murders their political foes. We have Dinesh D'Souza today saying that Trump is Navalny, that Biden is Putin, and that he's being persecuted. Not just Dinesh D'Souza saying that, Ben, here's Lee Zeldin. Lee Zeldin, one of the good Republicans, supposedly. One of those famous moderate Republicans. Yeah. At the World Reflects on the Murder of Alexei Navalny at the hands of Putin. It's worth remembering the Democrats are actively doing Biden's bidding as they also try to imprison his chief political opponent,

Donald Trump. I mean, this just disgusting moral equivalence has infected so much of the party. Is a disinfectant even possible once you've gotten to this dark of a place? I think there's two answers to that. And one relates to the criminal justice system, and the other relates to the political culture. And the answer with respect to the justice system is that if you can watch the proceedings against Navalny and watch the proceedings against Donald Trump and see them as equivalent, then you are really, really misunderstanding both the Russian justice system and its function and the American justice system and its function. These are-

That's a very nice way to put that. Right. I would say the Russian justice system is a Foucaultian nightmare. It is an instrument of the repressive powers of the state and nothing more than that. The American justice system has its problems, but Donald Trump is getting four fair trials in four different jurisdictions supervised by four different judges, state and federal, and he will have an ample opportunity to prove himself innocent of each and every one of the 91 felony counts that has been directed against him. And by the way, I don't believe he'll actually, he may not be

convicted of all of them, right? They're actually in doubt. The burden is actually on the prosecution. And part of the answer to your question has to lie in the system playing out, and we get to the end, we get to him being convicted on X number and acquitted or dropped on Y number, and people get to look at the result and say, do I think that result has integrity? The answer in the political system is way harder, in my view, because I don't know how do you convince a political culture that it has integrity, that its systems have integrity. a relentless multi-year campaign of delegitimization that includes, you know, Dinesh D'Souza saying these things and Lee Zeldin saying these things. How do you keep people having confidence in the fact that the U.S. system and the Russian system are not the same, that Joe Biden isn't out there murdering his political opponents. By the way, he's supposed to be too old and senile to be out there killing people.

His own son is being investigated by the DOJ. That's right. It is hard. And this is the part that is so frustrating. Just when you think about the disintegration. For another interview that might be coming down people's pike in a while, I was re-watching the Palin-Currick night and for as bad as sarah palin was in that interview and it was astonishing how bad she was upon re-watch it was kind of worse than i remembered really still the talking points were much more in the mainstream of where the american polity is she talks about reagan and the shining city on the hill when the issue of American leadership

comes up. She talks about the threat from Putin. She talks about worries about climate change. And you fast forward to this week and Sarah Palin, did you see this? Sarah Palin puts up a meme that is Tucker and Putin's face superimposed on two people that are smiling, looking over a grave. And on the gravestone, it says the media and the Democrats. This woman who was on the vice presidential ticket, whatever you think about her, you know, how much of a clown she's become now, is not someone with no influence. And she's just a couple of days ago putting out, like, literally cheerleading the idea

that Vladimir Putin is murdering journalists. And days after she does that, he murders, allegedly, the opposition leader, political leader. and we're already seeing in the response wagon circling around this. As something that stark, if that's stark of a faux pas, imagine if you put out a joke about killing somebody and then two days later it happened. If that doesn't shake you into reality, you know, what is going to shake these people? Nothing. Well, I also think, you know, after mass shootings, when there's a political valence to the mass shooting, we think, you know, after mass shootings, when there's a political valence to the mass shooting, we always, you know, have a, okay, is it Bernie Sanders's fault that somebody shot up the congressional baseball game? Is it Donald Trump's fault that there was a

Pulse nightclub shooting, right? I never know how to think about those questions. But I do think that we should ask a causal question here about Tucker's trip, which is, if you're Vladimir Putin, you've kind of made a decision that you'll kill Navalny at the most opportune moment, but you do want to time it because there's going to be some backlash. And then Congress goes on a four-month stall on Ukraine aid. And so you really have this perception that the American political system is weakening in its resolve to confront you. And then in the middle of that, one of the most prominent Russia apologists in the United States, second only to Donald Trump himself, shows up in Moscow to kiss your ass. Really, maybe first now.

Let's just listen to Tucker at the grocery store. I'm sure most people have heard it, but let's just all do it together because really it should be a communal experience. If you take people's standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation, and they literally can't buy the groceries they want, at that point, maybe it matters less what you say or whether you're a good person or a bad person. You're wrecking people's lives in their country. And that's what our leaders have done to us. And coming to a Russian grocery store, the heart of evil, and seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That's how I feel anyway, radicalized. We're not making any of this up, by the way, at all. Not making it up, Ben.

Not making it up in a country where 25% of the population doesn't have running water, by the way. Look, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask the question, did Vladimir Putin take the current posture of the GOP, both in Congress and with Tucker's visit and with everything Sarah Palin's doing, you put it all together, did he take it as a sign that this is a good moment to do this? I don't know how to evaluate that, but I do wake up this morning wondering about it. My response to that is kind of like, doesn't that give too much agency to Putin? Is maybe the heart of darkness in all of us, not all of us, the whole country, but

is not the heart of darkness in Tucker? Did Donald Trump reveal a darkness that was already within? Because these fucking guys. Oh, of course. No, no. My point is when we act like shills for him, he takes it as a signal. These are not things that don't affect his thinking of what he can get away with. When you stand up to him, he takes that as a signal. When you pucker your lips and kiss his ass, he takes that as a signal. He's getting a lot of good signals. He's getting a lot of good signals.

It is so enraging. The Tucker thing, as we sit here and listen to it and discuss it in the context of novelty you know i've been watching all these tucker videos and kind of laughing at him right because there's there's something funny about it like the absurdity of tucker this fucking supposed man of the people who's apparently never heard of the idea of the grocery cart machines where you put in a quarter and you have to put in the quarter again on the back end in order to put it back. Like he's never had a paid grocery cart. He's never seen that before. He's never been to an airport, I guess. So there is some absurdity and Tucker going into one metro station and be like, wow, this is pretty. Russia must be great. Yeah. I just want to point out that those people have been being impressed with those metro stations, you know, since the Stalin era and in a fashion that they then impute to Russia in general and miss things like the great Ukrainian famine.

Right. Because they're really impressed with a subway station. Like this is really old shit that he's falling for. And yeah, people in the nice parts of Moscow live way better than people in the rest of the largest country in the world. Yeah. He should go visit the Nebraska or the Maine or the Alabama of Russia and see what he thinks. He should drive 100 miles out of Moscow, 50 miles out of Moscow. But the thing is, he isn't falling for it.

That's the thing. He's not falling for it. Like, Tucker is a very smart person. It's very evident in his writing and back when he did interviews that were not the type of interview that he did last week. He is a malevolent person that has decided that out of either grievance towards

his fellow Americans for some reason, or out of hatred, you know, that he does not get the treatment among the American elites that he wishes that he did, or just out of desire for money or fame, or because he's a fucking troll, or because he's a nihilist whatever motivations you want to impute on him he's a person that knows better and is now out there being the number one propagandist for a homicidal maniac that just murdered his political opponents and that is kidnapping children that has invaded another country, and the lack of just total rage and disgust among the Republican elites and Tucker's other friends and allies is the thing that is the most, to me, disheartening about that. Because the response should, and I'm guilty of this, the response should not be laughter.

It should be rage. It's enraging. I completely agree. And I do also agree with your friend Carville that mocking them is actually important. Thank you for listening on my first week. No, I listened to them all. And look, I believe in mockery. I'm the guy who projects body shit on embassies around the world. I think mockery is a really important thing and it plays an important role, but you don't confuse the mockery with your internal emotional response because the mockery is what you're projecting, no pun intended, at them. The rage is what's driving the mockery. And I spend a lot of time with real Ukrainians, and I find myself increasingly having to explain the behavior of my country to them.

And they are not like Tucker and Trump. They actually believe in America in this really, pardon me, innocent way. We're the people who confronted the Soviet Union. We're the people who organized NATO. We're democracy and, you know, relatively non-corrupt capitalism. We're the shield of the democratic world. And try to explain Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. Why does Donald Trump hate Ukraine to a table full of Ukrainians? And it has something to do, right? It has something to do with Burisma. Personal pettiness. Right. charisma personal pettiness right it's this little little shit while they are trying to keep their

country independent and trying to get 20 000 kids back and not lose as many people as they can save and you know it's a very enraging thing when you've had to have that conversation for the 50th time. And half of the country's behavior in this space, not half, 30% is really inexcusable. And as somebody who spends a lot of time trying to help Ukrainians navigate our crazy political system. Just try to explain it to a hypothetical 22-year-old Ukrainian kid who doesn't understand what Fox News is or who Tucker Carlson is. Just try. It's sad. The inverse of that was once true. It was one of the most inspiring things when I was working for McCain. Mark Salter, his speechwriter, you know, would tell me stories of traveling with McCain all over the world. And it was these types of people, the 22-year-old Ukrainians, the 22-year-old Georgians,

the people in countries that had autocrats of their own. And they knew that McCain brand, the American brand, it meant something. It meant that, oh, they will be on brand, the American brand, it meant something. It meant that, oh, they will be on our side. They will be on our side. And now these people have to feel like, no, there's a big portion of the country that's on the side of the murder and the despot. Okay. You're supposed to be here for Trump trials. Two very brief Trump trial updates that I just want to get in. Yesterday, Trump appointed special counsel. This is related to the topic at hand. David Weiss is charging Alexander Smirnoff. I feel like the script writers are a little on the nose here

by naming him Smirnoff, age 43, with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He was arrested, also a little on the nose, at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. What he's charged with is basically fabricating the notion that he was talking about Burisma business dealings with Hunter and with Joe Biden when Biden was vice president, right? I guess, and who knows what's true at this point, if a liar is a liar, but at some point there was evidence that they had spoken about it after, you know, during the period when Trump was president, when Biden was a private citizen, that he fabricated to investigators the idea that these conversations were going when Biden was vice president, obviously a big difference.

And so, you know, this guy was mentioned, I believe, on the Hannity show 82 times, maybe not by name, but like this claim was mentioned on Hannity 82, 92 times, something like that. He's been a star witness for Comer. Another one bites the dust here on the Hunter Biden investigation. Yeah, so I have two things to say about this, and I have not followed this case especially closely because I was glued to the television for the Fonny Willis show yesterday. Look, there's two really important points. First of all, the prosecutor who has brought this case is the same prosecutor who's prosecuting Hunter Biden. It's the special counsel, David Weiss. So in other words, this is

somebody who's trying to make a case against Hunter Biden, and this witness fabricates this stuff, and he ends up prosecuting him. So that'll give you an idea of, you know, this is presumably a receptive audience to somebody who's, you know, got a claim of a demand of a big bribe from somebody about Hunter and Joe Biden. And yet he turns around and prosecutes him. That'll give you an idea of how credible this story was. The second thing is there's two sides of the Hunter Biden story. One is the side that Hunter Biden was an addict and engaged in all sorts of shady stuff and traded on his father's name and got himself into a fair bit of trouble, legal trouble. The second aspect of it was that this was somehow a larger story about Joe Biden than about Hunter Biden. And the different bricks

in that story have all turned out to be bullshit. And it doesn't stop Comer from talking about the Biden crime family. You know, no component of it ends up being true for the simple reason, I think, that Joe Biden isn't corrupt. Whatever else he is, he's old. He's, you know, he is what he is. And he appears to have mishandled classified information. But he's not a corrupt guy taking bribes. So what happens is they get very excited about these people who have some story to tell, and then they turn out to be charlatans, or they turn out to not

tell the stories that they claim they tell. And it's a very consistent pattern now over time that should make you be real careful with the Hannity's and Comer's of the world who are trying to make Hunter Biden be about Joe Biden. And this was obvious from the start. The Burisma thing was so obvious from the start. The whole conspiracy theory, I've been writing about this for years. We could do a whole episode, maybe we will this year, on the absurdity of the Burisma conspiracy. Okay. The Fonny Willis situation has been so depressing and dispiriting to me that I was not able to watch it just because I hate anything that gives Donald Trump a hammer to beat us with, us being the pro democracy, pro rule of law side of things. So we've got about three to five minutes here. So

since I was too depressed to watch and you were glued to it, I'm just going to put a quarter in the machine and let you get us up to speed. The hearing is still going on today, and it is a mark of my deep respect for you that I am here rather than watching it now. Just like my babysitter during OJ. She didn't turn off Court TV back in, for like an entire week. This is better TV than Court TV at its best during the OJ trial. So look, Fannie Willis has a bit of a problem, but I think she actually solved most of it herself yesterday. She had this relationship with a guy she had hired as special prosecutor in this case, Nathan Wade. Nathan Wade took the stand yesterday. The issue

is whether there's some conflict of interest as a result of their financial arrangements through this affair. He took the stand and was, I thought, completely incredible, claimed that they and Willis had been dating much earlier than they've acknowledged. And the significance of that would be that it's much worse if she hired the person she was sleeping with than if she hired somebody and then they later, in a context of a professional relationship, started to have a romantic relationship. So things around two o'clock in the afternoon look really bad for Fonny. And then she charges into the courtroom and demands to testify. And I have never seen somebody take over a courtroom like she did. She comes in, she sits down, and she talks about why she always keeps cash around her apartment. And she is as compelling as he was apparently evasive. And I think by the end of the

day, she had really saved the situation. And I don't know what's going on there today or whether the situation is going to end up being bad again, but I do have the impression that there is no basis to disqualify her after both Nathan Wade's and her sworn testimony. And so that's a little tentative because they are literally in court right now, but I think this is going to end up being a bit of a Tempest in a teapot. But it was a heck of a Tempest in a teapot. An entertaining Tempest? I mean, it's got some Perry Mason. It's got some General Hospital.

It's got some House of Cards. It was great daytime television. I'm going to take your word for this. But look, we got to have our P's and Q's in order here, Ben. So I'm thinking about this through the comms guy hat. We're giving him a lot of fodder to bleat. There's a lot of bleeding fodder right now, and there's some delays. We're giving him some delaying opportunities and some bleeding fodder.

There is no doubt. There is no doubt that if Fonny Willis had come to me and say, Wittes, you're a good gray beard on this shit. Not that I have a gray beard, but should I have an affair with the special prosecutor and reimburse him for joint travel with wads of cash? I would have said, no part of that sounds like a good plan. It's going to come out. You're going to get your ass kicked over this. You're going to have litigation over this, and it's going to let Trump change the subject. That's what I would have said. But she didn't consult me in advance about this. Neither did Nathan Wade. He also didn't ask me how he should answer his divorce interrogatories. So nobody consulted me on this part. I would have suggested they handle it differently. That's not the

question on the table right now. The question on the table right now is, is she going to get disqualified from the case? And is Donald Trump going to reap a real windfall from this? And I think, you could eat these words, but I think the answer is no. Ben Wittes, thank you for coming out of the bullpen today. It's like all my baseball references are 20 years old. I don't watch baseball anymore, but you're Mariano Rivera or 30 years old,

Dennis Eckersley, you know, coming out of the pen and just doing a wonderful job. Goose Gossage. Goose Gossage, closing out the week with us. And I'm very, very grateful for your expertise and for doing this. And we'll be talking to you soon. Thanks, Tim. Hey, everybody. That was a great first week. Thank you for sticking with me. And thank you to all our guests who've been with us today and sending our regards to the family, the wife of Alexei Navalny. Rest in power. And hopefully the Americans and our Republican friends are going to do the right thing in response to this. We will see you all right back here next week. I'm looking forward to it.

The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breth. I'm gonna say What's on the other side Oh, we can be there Forever and ever And we can be heroes Just for one day We can be heroes

We can be heroes Just for one day We can be heroes