The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election by Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election by Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman https://amzn.to/3SE6CWt From veteran award-winning investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, the epic inside story of the prosecution of a president. In Find Me the Votes, two years of immersive reporting by Isikoff and Klaidman has produced the most authoritative and dramatic account yet of a defeated president’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and how a local Georgia prosecutor—a daughter of the civil rights movement—decided to indict him and his allies for his desperate attempt to hold on to power. From the beginning, Fani Willis saw Donald Trump’s crimes as a voting rights case, and an attempt by the former president to deprive the citizens of Georgia of the franchise, a right for which her forebears had bled. Isikoff and Klaidman take us deep inside both the nerve center of Trump’s effort to steal the election and the DA’s team of prosecutors as they build their case against the president. Their reporting reveals new information on the plot to criminally seize voting equipment in several states; Sidney Powell’s attempt to obtain preemptive pardons from Trump; and revelatory communications between the president and his co-conspirators. We see the prosecution take shape in Willis’s office in the face of heinous threats of violent retaliation from Trump’s supporters. With blockbuster original reporting and exclusive access to thousands of secret documents, emails, text messages, and audio recordings, Find Me the Votes is investigative journalism at its finest. The authors also conducted exclusive interviews with key sources in the Trump conspiracy, as well as with the president’s top targets, including Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and the Fulton County DA’s team–featuring hours of interviews with Fani Willis herself. This is riveting contemporary history, and a lasting account of the prosecution of a president who tested the rule of law as no president ever had before. Isikoff and Klaidman have written a story for the ages.About the Authors Michael Isikoff is an award-winning Washington investigative journalist and the author of three New York Times bestsellers: Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story; Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War (with David Corn); and Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (also with David Corn). He has worked for the Washington Post, Newsweek, NBC News, and Yahoo News and is a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, and other networks. He lives with his wife and son in Washington, D.C. Daniel Klaidman is an award-winning journalist and author based in Brooklyn. He spent more than a decade at Newsweek, where he served as managing editor, Washington Bureau chief, Middle East correspondent, and investigative reporter. Klaidman was a key part of the teams that won National Magazine Awards for Newsweek’s coverage of 9/11 and the Monica Lewinsky affair. He previously served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and is the author of Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency. Most recently he was editor-in-chief of Yahoo News.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. 15 years of bringing the smartest people, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors,

the Pulitzer Prize winners, the brilliant authors and minds that write the latest stuff and expose you to the stories of the world. As we always say in the Chris Foss Show, stories are the owner's manual to life. And so we're excited to have two amazing journalists with us today. And their book that launches today on January 30th, 2024, it's called Find Me the Votes, a hard-charging Georgia prosecutor and rogue president and the plot to steal an American election. We have journalist Michael Isikoff on the show with us today and Dan Kleidman joining us on the show. And they're going gonna be talking to

us about their amazing book their insight their hard-hitting reporting and everything went into it michael isikoff is a award-winning washington investigative journalist and author of three new york times bestsellers uncovering clinton a reporter's story hubris the inside story of spin scandal and the selling of the iraq war and r Roulette, the Inside Story of Putin's War on America. Daniel is an award-winning journalist and author based in Brooklyn. He spent more than a decade at Newsweek, where he served as a managing editor, Washington Bureau chief, Middle East correspondent, and investigative reporter. Welcome to the show, Michael and Daniel. How are you? We're good. We're good. Good to be with you. There you there you go very exciting congratulations on the book i'm sure a lot of hard work and hard-hitting journalism went into this give us your dot

coms your twitter is wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs i'm at d kleidman that's k-l-a-i-d-m-a-n at d kleidman and i think my Instagram is the same. There you go. And I'm at Isikoff, I-S-I-K-O-F-F on X, formerly known as Twitter. There you go. So congratulations on the new book, guys. Find me the votes, damn it, or else. I don't know.

That's not in the title. So give us a 30,000 000 overview what's inside the book look this is the story of the georgia case against donald trump and there is a as we write in the book a compelling logic to focusing on georgia georgia was ground zero for what we say it was the most anti-democratic plot in American history. It's where Trump's pressure campaign was most furious, most intense, most relentless, and led and went to the most extreme lengths in terms of the pressure he put on Georgia state officials at every level, from the governor to the attorney general, to the secretary of state, of course, down to state legislators, to an online investigator for the

secretary of state's office. I mean, Trump was calling constantly, pushing these completely bogus theories of conspiracy theories about voter fraud and secret algorithms and Dominion election machines, much of which he was getting from a bunch of eccentric lawyers who were, you know, one of whom was a full-blown QAnon adherent. I'm talking about Lynn Wood, one of the people who was brought in to be the public face of Trump's legal assault in Florida, and the other has pled guilty in the racketeering conspiracy case in Fulton County, and that's, of course, Sidney Powell. So from these folks to Georgia state legislators, it was all part of a relentless effort by Donald Trump to change the outcome of the 2020 election. of alleged criminality had taken place in Georgia, from the fake elector scheme to lying to government entities, to a full-on cyber heist of an election office to get access to voting

machines and sensitive voting data, to threats against average Georgians. This was the case that had the most, sort of the biggest human dimension in terms of the victimization of average people and also high-level officials, as Mike was alluding to, the pressure campaign against people like Governor Kemp. But in terms of poll workers, in terms of tech workers for the Dominion voting machine company, these were people who were just, you know, sort of average Americans who were volunteering in some cases to do the important work of democracy and became targets of relentless and horrific threats of violence, of sexual violence, of racism, beyond anything that was seen anywhere else in the country. So that human dimension was important.

And then a lot of this was also against the backdrop of the tragic history in Georgia of segregation and of voter suppression that's gone on for so long. So we just thought it was, in a lot of ways, the most compelling story to tell. And this was the story I was hoping someone would write about. You guys spent two years developing this story, if I'm correct. And you guys interviewed, you know, I've always wondered, who was this person who recorded the call? And evidently, you guys were able to find who that person was and tell that story. And I don't think it's been reported a lot about that story until now with your books. So tell us who was the person who recorded that call for the infamous history that will always be remembered.

Michael? Hey, Chris, I got to apologize. apologize i cannot hear you i just can't we have a really crappy internet connection and i'm not hearing your questions so i i'm i we could i don't know i could sign off and try to get back on or you could let danny i'll tell you, I'll let Danny answer the question, and then I'll feed it to you in the private chat. How does that sound? There's a private chat, and I'll feed you the question in the private chat. How does that sound? Can you hear that part?

All right. If you can hear me and you want to put a question in the chat, I'll take it. There you go. We'll do that. I'll let Dan take the first swing at that one. Yeah, look, this is one of the most extraordinary stories of this whole book in some ways. You know, one of the things that we found reporting this book was there were a lot of unsung heroes. For one thing, and I think it hasn't gotten quite enough attention, there was, as we described it, a Republican wall of resistance to Donald Trump at the highest levels of the government in Georgia. So Brian Kemp,

the governor, who resisted Trump's furious entreaties to get him to hold a special session of the legislature to overturn the election, to the attorney general who threatened to resign, you know, rather than be bullied by Trump, to Brad Raffensperger, famously, who took the call from Trump. But this is a story, the person that you're talking about is the 30-year-old political consultant on Raffensperger's staff, who no one really had ever heard of, named Jordan Fuchs, who made the decision on her own, unilaterally, to tape this call from the president of the United States. She didn't tell her boss, Brad Raffensperger. She didn't tell Meadows, the chief of staff who was arranging the call. And obviously, she didn't tell the president herself.

She knew she had to do this because of the likelihood, the certainty that Trump would come out afterwards and distort the call to benefit his own political interests. And so she taped it. She was on the call, but on mute. So nobody knew she was there. And it was a really, we call it the gutsiest, most consequential act of the whole post-election battle. And it's the key piece of evidence, not just in this case, but it is front and center in Jack Smith's case as well. And one last point on her courage in doing this. She happened to be visiting her grandparents in Florida,

which is a two-party consent state, which means that if you're going to record someone on the phone, you need to get the consent of the person you're recording. She didn't do that, and that meant that she was exposing herself to the possibility of criminal prosecution. We know that when the January 6th committee wanted to bring her forward to testify, a lawyer for the Secretary of State's office asked that they not do so because of the concerns that she could be prosecuted. In the end, Fannie Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney who was leading the investigation of Trump in Georgia, was able to put her in the grand jury only because she immunized her. And so they did get her testimony.

But an extraordinary story from, again, one of the unsung heroes of the Georgia, the whole Georgia episode. There you go. Without her, we may have never even heard of this. Absolutely. And I think it was rumored that he was making the same calls to Michigan and other places, but there was no recordings of him. I think there was at least one attorney general or election official that said, yeah, we got a

call from Trump and whatever. But evidently that was going on still, and this is the only one we're able to really capture. Is that correct? That's right. And so we don't know what else he said on any of these other calls, but we certainly know what happened in Georgia. And here we are as a result of it. There you go. Now, you guys have exposed several things in the book. What are some of the other mind-blowing things of you? Did you uncover in the book that, you know, I'm seeing the different things about what's been reported in the book?

What were some of the other surprises that you found that are in the book? People are going to be like, holy crap. Mike, can you hear? Or do you want me to take it? No, I'm sorry. I'm just going to have to punt on this. I cannot hear. I mean, Danny

knows the book as well as I and I can handle it, but I just can't hear the question. Let Danny take care of it. Okay. All right. Sorry. All right. See you later, Mike. There you go, Mike. It's always, when you're on the hotel

road, you know, it's tough. It's tough. Fortunately, I've been doing this for the last couple of days, so I actually remember what's in the book. Look, Chris, there are a ton of revelations in this book and all sorts of things that really surprised us. Let me tell one of, I think, the most dramatic stories in the book that comes actually in the prologue, and then we revisit it toward the end

of the book. But we talked a little bit about the threats against poll workers and other people involved in administering the election in Georgia. Fannie Willis, the DA, and her team were the target of relentless threats after her investigation really got going. And a lot of it was generated, I think, by Trump, who was out there tweeting about her and calling her a racist and calling her a fascist and a thug and so on and so forth. That clearly riled people up. But in the days before she announced the indictment, the threats against Fannie Willis were really intensifying. And wherever she was, she was getting these threats because many of them were coming into her cell phone.

There was one person in particular who was calling regularly, and he had this creepy computer disguised voice. And he was making the most sickening sexual and racist threats i'm gonna you i'm gonna i'm gonna you look she had gotten used to a lot of these kinds of awful threats but what really rattled her was when this person started to mention her her her daughters, and he pronounced their names correctly, and he indicated he knew where they lived, and he actually said what their addresses were. So right around this time, a couple of days before the indictment, her security staff discovers on a dark web MAGA site an assassination threat. The words were, the best time to shoot her is when she leaves the building. Wow.

So the security staff came up with an elaborate operation to protect her and to smuggle her out of the building. And it's really extraordinary. So this occurs on the evening that the indictment is announced. Fonny Willis gives a midnight press conference. We were there. We watched it. Unbeknownst to us and reporters who are there from all over the world, when she leaves the room, she heads into a back office. And when she gets there, she takes off her business attire, black business suit, her string of pearls, and she puts on civilian clothes, sweatpants, T-shirt, sneakers, and a baseball cap. Meanwhile, a member of her team, one of her investigators, who's about the same size as Fonny Willis, puts on clothes very much resembling what Fonny Willis was wearing. Black business suit, a string of pearls, pumps, and a black Bob wig that looked like Fonny Willis. She puts up one other accessory, which is important to note, which is a Kevlar bulletproof vest. Because the body double, along with a number of other members of the staff who are posing as deputies,

as Fonny Willis' deputies, they walk out the front of the courthouse and they get into official black SUV and leave the courthouse. Fonny Willis and her actual staff, dressed as civilians, they sneak out the back of the courthouse. They get into unmarked civilian sedans, and they're whisked off to an undisclosed area. Fonny Willis ends up at the hotel where she was staying under armed guard and waits out the storm after the indictment. So a pretty dramatic story. I could go on if you want me to talk about other revelations, but I'll leave it. Please do. That's extraordinary.

You feel like we're living in Columbia. You know how Columbia has to have those secret courts and, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And right. And it's an important point because, you know, the fact that we don't feel safe in our courts, in the institutions that are the symbols of the rule of law in this country is, is problematic. The other thing I would say that we found both surprising, revelatory, and really disturbing was the, the extent to which the QAnon kind of conspiracy cult was a driver of the, of the stop the steal enterprise. We all knew that, you know, some of these people involved in all of this kind of dabbled in the QAnon conspiracy. But we did not realize the extent to which key figures were, you know, were really, you know, almost driven by these crazy conspiracy theories.

Mike, I think, mentioned the lawyer Lynn Wood, you know, who was one of the most celebrated lawyers in America. I mean, in the 90s, people as old as we are will remember that Lynn Wood represented Richard Jewell, the falsely accused Olympic bomber, the Ramsay family. And then at some point, you know, in the last few years, he went down the QAnon rabbit hole. He was tweeting that Mike Pence would symbolic of the relationship, the kind of symbiotic relationship between QAnon and Trump world. And even after posting all of these crazy things, he was invited into the inner sanctum of the Trump campaign's kind of legal command center. He was the really the face of Trump's quixotic legal battle in Georgia. You know, this stuff isn't, it's not just weird and exotic, you know, it's consequential and it's dangerous because because Lin Wood was filling the social media channels with hateful rhetoric. You know, these that's just that encouraged the sort of torrent of violent and hateful threats and the terrorized average average American citizens. And so I just think that people aren't fully aware or appreciate

the extent to which QAnon was a factor in all of this. I'll just make one last point. Trump was calling Lin Wood and cheering him on. We have audio tape of Trump calling him. And one of the most important figures in the QAnon conspiracy, the guy who basically ran the platform on which QAnon conspiracy theories were spread, and who some people believe was Q himself, although he eventually denied that. A man named Ron Watkins. He was actually involved in the discussions and the planning with Wood and Sidney Powell. And he was piped into their meetings from Japan where he lived. And the last thing I'll say about this is Ron Watkins at one point tweeted a video of a Dominion tech worker, Dominion being the company that made the voting machines that were used and were the object of a lot of these ridiculous conspiracy theories. He tweets this picture of a Dominion tech worker in Georgia, a young guy, an immigrant from North

Africa, who's putting a flash drive into his laptop. And he says, with no evidence at all, that this guy was manipulating voter data. Utter and total nonsense. Ron Watkins had hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, on X now, and it unleashed all of the QAnon foot soldiers who went after this guy. They doxed him. They threatened him. He ended up, they were putting animated nooses on social media outside of his house that were swinging ominously. Our understanding is this young guy for years after all of this happened was still suffering the effects of PTSD from all of this.

So again, really consequential and dangerous stuff that had a real impact on average Americans. There you go. And I'm glad you guys are writing this stuff because the importance of journalism is to remind people and give them a more in-depth effect of what went on, you know, because people, you know, they forget, you know, what's the joke about Americans after three weeks, you know, they're forgetting whatever is going on in the carnation is more important. And so it reminds people of like, hey, this is how hellish it was

and how dark of a moment was in our history. I think, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think there was maybe a handful of people who stood between us and the brink. There was Rathensberger. There was the two people at Justice that told Eastman to shove it up his woo-haw when he tried to take the thing there was probably actually maybe one more there was the the white house the white house the attorney for the white house i forget his name who who stood up in that big meeting they had where they got in the fight with uh uh yes i think that was um uh sip alone

yeah and then pence in saying we're not gonna i'm not gonna i'm gonna you know follow the constitution i think i think there's maybe five people that sit between us and the brink maybe there was more that refused that did what rathensburg did we just don't have a recording of it yeah and look that is you know if there there is a hopeful story in all of this, it's that some people do have the courage and do stand up and make a difference. And that is an important story of what happened in Georgia, that Republican wall of resistance that I talked about. It would have made a huge difference in Georgia if the government, you know, Trump thought, Trump thought he, one of the reasons he focused on Georgia was because he thought, you know, Georgia was in the bag, first of all, Georgia had gone Republican since 1992. He fully

expected he was going to win there. But also Republicans controlled the government, you know, at all levels, from the legislature to the governor's mansion. So he fully expected that, you know, Kemp and the others would back him up. And the fact that they didn't was really significant. I mean, had they been able to call a session, a new session of the legislature, who knows what, what might've happened. And, you know, the thing that is, I, you know, I think that is worrisome is, you know, we're about to go through an election in all likelihood, again, between Trump and Biden. And that's, you know, troubling in, in, you know, in, in a number of ways, first of all, um, you know, in, in, in Georgia and, and elsewhere, the, you know, Trump is going to do whatever he can. And obviously, he's going to do whatever he can to make sure that he's got his own people in place

who could do his bidding. But it is also, I mean, even if you think about the QAnon issue that I was just talking about, there's a sense that after 2020 you know the the sort of q anon thing beginning to to fade a bit from from people's minds we were in the media we weren't writing about it as much it sort of was not at the at the above the surface but it was and it is these sort of dark forces are still bubbling kind of menacingly beneath the surface. And the polling suggests that there's still a significant percentage of Americans who are either, you know, full on QAnon adherence, or are QAnon curious and susceptible to QAnon 25-30%, maybe. So if you think about this looming almost certain election, I think, between Trump and Biden again,

that clash, I think, is likely to fulfill the prophecy of a lot of QAnon people that Donald Trump is going to battle Biden and is going to win back his, you know, restore his rightful place as the leader of this country. And you've got to believe that Donald Trump is going to tap into that paranoia for electoral purposes and legitimize a lot of those crazed beliefs. He did it the first time around. I'm not sure he has any incentive not to do it again and and that could lead to violence again there you go you know and i think i think the damage was done even though you know george

is now prosecuting him everything else i saw you see the stats i'm sure you've seen him where people have less faith in our elections than ever before even like normal people who aren't you know there may be a little bit more moderate or first-time voters, they're questioning our elections. And I mean, that's what has Putin laughing to the bank. You know, that's all you need is to run it down. And Trump has been doing it, you know, since he won in 2016. In fact, he was doing it before he won in 2016, where he said that immigrants are going to vote and, you know, and, you know, and I'm not, I can't lose. And if I, if I did, if I do lose, it's only because of, you know, fraud in the election. And, and again, who here thinks that he's not going to do that again? He's got every indication is that he will. And that is problematic. And it's corrosive to our democracy if half the population thinks that democracy is fully broken and elections don't work. Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Today, the news came out that the prosecutor who's,

I believe he's the lead prosecutor in the georgia case he settled his divorce today ahead of testimony that he might have made so he basically avoided testimony and shut down the thing do you did you guys have any inkling in your book i know you guys have probably been in edit and waiting to print for a while did you have any inkling of this divorce story and any potential you know affair with fannie willis we we did not. And interestingly, you know, since it all happened, I've spoken to people who are closer to her and who work with her, and they were all completely shocked. So the people around Fannie Willis had no idea that this was going on. We should say that she has not acknowledged it yet. She has not confirmed the allegations, but we're

expecting that she's going to file a response to that original motion that dropped a few weeks ago. Later this week, the deadline is on Friday. We did write about Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor who she was allegedly having this improper relationship with. And interestingly, he was not the first, second, or possibly even third person that she went to for this job. She originally went to Roy Barnes, who was the former Democratic governor, the last governor in Georgia since, I guess he was governor in, I can't remember exactly when he was governor. But anyway, the last Democratic governor of Georgia Georgia and a real heavy hitter, like one of the premier lawyers in the state. And she also went to a guy named Gabe Banks, who was a former federal prosecutor and a very well-respected criminal defense lawyer.

He, too, turned her down. The reason that both of them turned her down largely was because of these threats. Rory Barnes said to us, hypothetically, because he didn't want to talk directly about it. They said, hypothetically, would you want to be followed around for the rest of your life by a bodyguard? And Gabe Banks, we understand it was his family. He was concerned and his wife was concerned about potential threats. So she ultimately settled on Wade. And some people have questioned whether he had the credentials to be the lead lawyer in a case like this. What's important to understand,

and I think has not been really fully reported, is that Nathan Wade was never anticipated to be the main trial lawyer in the case or the sort of legal architect of the case. He was always going to be the kind of manager, the guy who was behind the case, or the sort of legal architect of the case. He was always going to be the kind of manager, the guy who was behind the scenes, the guy who ran the grand jury process. And by all accounts, he was very good at those things. In fact, I spoke to one of the grand jurors who watched Wade over, you know, hundreds of hours, navigating the grand jury through, you know, dozens of witnesses, thousands of documents, some of the legal issues that they had to deal with, and said that he was really quite

good. There is a suggestion that she hired someone who didn't have the credentials for a job like this because they were lovers. And I think it's more complicated than that. Also, we don't know that if they were having a relationship, a romantic relationship, we don't know whether it started before or after she hired him. Yeah. And I mean, imagine it wouldn't really overthrow the case or derail the case other than just to throw mud on it. Yeah. This is an important it's an important point chris uh because um look the the the the theory of of the roman motion is that fanny willis and her whole team and therefore the whole office should be disqualified from bringing this case because of because of a conflict of interest because the relationship with with nathan wade

and the fact that they went on vacations together and there were some financial entanglements suggests that she has some some stake in the outcome of this case that rests on the idea that because she was paying nathan wade and they used maybe some of that money to go on a few trips, that they were essentially there was some kind of a corrupt agreement between them. Hey, let's prosecute the former president of the United States. That way we have this case that will go on for a long time. We can make a lot of money and go on a lot of trips. It's absurd. All prosecutors

get paid for their jobs. They all would have an incentive. And the reality is that conflict of interest, the conflict of interest rules in Georgia are quite clear. First of all, they have to be an actual conflict. Second of all, you have to have, it has to be something that would give you a real, where you have some improper stake in the outcome of the case. So for example, if Fannie Willis had been dating the judge in the case, or a defense lawyer in the case, or a cop in the case, who was a witness, you know, that would be problematic. If, for example, and we know this is, she didn't do this, but if, for example, and we know this is she didn't do this, but if, for example, she had hired Nathan Wade on a contingency fee basis, i.e., hey, I'll pay you X to do the case. But if you got a conviction, I'll pay you twice as much. That would that would that would mean that he had a stake in the outcome.

And and, you know, that would suggest, you know, improper bias or whatever. And that's not the case either. In the end, Judge McAfee, Scott McAfee, who is the judge presiding over this case, is going to have to look at Georgia law and precedents and make a decision based on those things. It's not about the optics. Gee, this looks bad. And so I'm going to toss her from the case. Although, you know, judges have a fair amount of discretion, and so we don't know exactly what he'll do.

But most legal experts that I've spoken to think it's unlikely that he will disqualify her. That'll be good. I would hate to see this whole thing unravel. And that is the risk because, and I'll explain why, the way it works is if she is disqualified, nobody on her team can handle the case. And in fact, nobody in the office can, because she's the district attorney. So the conflict would taint the entire office. That means they'd have to try to go, they would, it would go to something called the prosecutor's council in Georgia, and they would have to figure out what to do.

They would have to find another district attorney's office that could take on this case. There are not a lot of district attorney's offices in Georgia that have the resources to take on a case like this. And imagine the team would have to learn all of the ins and outs of the cases to reinvestigate parts of these. I mean, it would be a disaster. And I think there's a likely chance that it would never get to trial. Yeah. Or be delayed indefinitely. You know, we had Peter Strzok on and, you know, he'd been on the Mueller report, the Mueller commission thing. And, you know, the incidents with his messages, he's a really nice guy. But the incidents with his messages with Lisa Page and stuff, that just tainted the report.

And so I'm sure even if they don't find any impropriety, they're just going to keep painting, you know, the Georgia cases. You know, this went on and all that crap to train, devalue it and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they will. I mean, you know, and they had been doing that even before any of this came out. So that was the playbook. And now they do have some, you know, they have some fresh ammo. You know, it'll be, if she hangs on, which, again, I suspect she will if she hangs on, you know, it'll be interesting to know how much how much juice that continues to have or if it sort of fades over time. I think, you know, my guess is that after the 15th of February, when the judge is holding a hearing in this case, after this is resolved, if she hangs on, you're going to start seeing Fonny Willis doing the kinds of things that maybe need to be done to rehabilitate some of this.

These reputational issues, maybe doing some big interviews. And I suspect you will also see her in the courtroom. She is a fierce and incredibly talented courtroom lawyer. And I think that may be part of her strategy to rehabilitate her reputation. There you go. She'll be angry. So very insightful, man. Lots of great data. Give us your final pitch out for people to order up their book wherever fine books are sold. Look, I think the virtue of writing a book and doing kind of nonfiction narrative, narrative nonfiction, is that we had an opportunity to sort of tell

the whole story of the Georgia investigation, and as we call it, the plot to steal an American election. It's all in one place. It's character driven. And it makes a lot of, you know, we use narrative and characters to make some larger points about where we are in this country right now in terms of elections, in terms of the threat to democracy. And it's a really important story going forward. We didn't just write this story because it was a colorful tale. We wrote it because we thought it was a warning signal for what is looming, what could happen in 2024. And people need to understand what happened in 2000 and 2020 to be on guard for what could happen in 2024. So we think it's a really important book in that respect. And the last thing I'll say is to come back to something I said before,

which is sometimes these news stories can seem distant and remote, and how does it affect me personally? Well, the people who were targeted in Georgia, the average Americans who gave up their time and sacrificed so that to give people the right to vote freely in this country, you know, they are just average Americans, like, like, like many of us, and they suffered terribly because of all of this. And it could be any of any of us, any civic-minded person who wants to participate in our democracy and vindicate, you know, the rights of Americans to be free.

They are all potentially targets of this kind of conduct. And that's important for everyone to know. Yeah. I mean, we are all the stewards of our democracy. Exactly. What very well said we we need to defend that i mean 247 248 years let's hope we can get to 250 for just one round number of it but i'm glad you guys are out there with the book i'm glad you do the hard-hitting work of telling these people stories of heroes and reminding people you know who've forgotten you know a lot of this stuff like you said just gets this is some crap went back there.

So thank you very much, Dan, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Give us your dot coms anywhere you want people to follow you on the interwebs. I've been back on X to promote the book. So I'll be there for a while. It's at D. Clydeman.

And D. Clydeman is also my Instagram. And, you know, Facebook, I think it's also D. Kleidman. And D. Kleidman is also my Instagram. And Facebook, I think it's also D. Kleidman, or maybe it's just Dan Kleidman. So those are the places where you can find me. And I'm at CBS News on the investigative team there. So if anybody has things that they think ought to see the light of day, hit me up. And hopefully we can do the good investigative work that needs to be done in this country for CBS. There you go. We love journalists.

You guys stand between us and the brink, except for one channel. I think we all know the three letter words that are on that channel, but we love journalists. So there you go. Thank you very much, Dan, for coming on the show. Order up the book, folks. It just comes out today, January 30th, 2024. Find Me the Votes, a hard-charging Georgia prosecutor, a rogue president, and a plot to steal an American election. Remember, folks, we are all the stewards of our democracy, and it's really important that we keep one. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have a sign.