The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It by Elie Honig

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It by Elie Honig CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds. How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of and participants in the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back? In Untouchable, Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their own benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully eluded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the four years of his administration, Donald Trump’s corruption seemed plain for all to see. The former president obstructed justice, flouted his responsibility to the Constitution, lied to the American people, and set the United States on a dark path to disunity and violence. Yet he has never been held accountable for any of his misdeeds. Why not? Untouchable holds the answer. Honig shows how Trump and others use seemingly fair institutions and practices to build empires of corruption and get away with misdeeds for which ordinary people would be sentenced to years behind bars. It’s not just that money talks, Honig makes clear, but how it can corrupt otherwise reliable institutions and blind people to the real power dynamics behind the scenes. In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system more honest and fairer, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds.

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. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my friends. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in today. We have an amazing guest.

We have CNN's Ellie Honig on the show with us today. She's a turning guest for a second time with his second book that he has coming out. You can order it wherever fine books are sold. But remember, stay on those alleyway bookstores because you might get mugged or you might need a tetanus shot. The new book is called Untouchable, How Powerful People Get Away With It. Eli Honig is on the show with us today, and his new book is out January 31st, 2023. We are starting to get deep into 2023, so there we go. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing book, but in the meantime, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Remember, uh, the Chris Foss show is a pseudo MLM.

You have to invite five of your friends for the town. Friends or neighbors or relatives. I'm just kidding. You don't have to do that. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Foss. Goodreads.com forward slash Chris Foss. The big LinkedIn group, LinkedIn newsletter, all the stuff we do over LinkedIn is just amazing.

Uh, Ellie is a CNN senior legal analyst and the best-selling author of Hatchet Man. He previously worked for 14 years as a federal and state prosecutor. From 2004 to 2012, he was an assistant U.S. I'm sorry, United States. You can call it U.S. if you want, I suppose. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As a USA, Honig successfully prosecuted more than 100 members and associates of the mafia, including bosses and other high-ranking members on murder, racketeering, and other charges. In 2022, he was nominated for an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding News Analysis, Editorial, and Opinion. and opinion. He also has podcasts and writes for Cafe and Vox Media, teaches at Rutgers

University and is a special counsel at a New Jersey law firm. Welcome to the show, Ellie. How are you? Great, Chris. Thank you for having me. I do want to issue one, I guess, disclaimer of a disclaimer. In the opening to your show, it says, we have guests who are so smart, they're going to give you brain bleed. You are at no risk of brain bleed from watching this show, everybody. You're safe. Well, I mean, at least on my half. This is why we have smart people like you on the show is because it offsets the dumber half, the me, the side of me.

So welcome to the show. Congratulations on the new book. This is always great. A second book and returning guests on the Chris Voss Show. That, of course, is a, you know, you should probably add that to your bio after this. No, don't do that. But give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs

and what you want to do. I'm just Ellie Honig on Instagram or Twitter. One of the upsides of having a very unusual name like this is it's not like I'm Jim Hunter 5 or anything. I'm just Ellie Honig. There is no other. So E-L-I-E-H-O-N-I-G. I'm on

all the different social media sites. Not the ones that the kids use. The one that we old people use. You should be on TikTok. That's really becoming a thing. It's funny. First of all, my kids would not permit that. First of all, they're already unhappy enough that I exist and that I'm on Instagram.

yeah, there's some, you know, TikTok has massive following, you know, Jake Tapper started doing TikTok through it for his show, which has his, yeah, his show has a really good social media presence. They post clips and they do really well. And I remember maybe a year ago, he went on TikTok and people sort of,

I guess some people rolled their eyes at him, but I think it's been a successful foray for him. It's good. We need good journalism over there because the misinformation over there is insane. Like, it's just insane. So let's talk about your book. What motivated you to write this book after Hatchet Man? I wrote Hatchet Man.

And only a year and a half ago, by the way. I'm now told that this is a bizarrely short turnaround time between books. Apparently, people take three, four, five years. But what happened was I wrote Hatchet Man about the Justice Department and Bill Barr. And within a couple of weeks of it coming out, my editor, Harper Collins, said, what do you want to do next? I said, I don't know. I don't really have any new ideas other than that. And he goes, well, think about this. He said, what question do people ask you the most? I said, oh, well, that's easy. How the hell does he get away with it? And he goes, perfect a prosecutor, which you talked about in the intro. And I was surprised to find how many times lessons that I learned from real cases, things that I saw, for example, real life mob bosses do are transferable and other bosses do in politics and finance and any other field you can think of. So I tell quite a few stories in the book about my time as a prosecutor. I also took a lot of what's out there publicly. There's been great reporting

around some of these big cases and issues over the years. I had to do some deep dives. I do a bunch of historical research. And I also have original reporting in the book where I tell some behind the scenes stories of certain DOJ investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump, of Michael Cohen and others and sort of let the reader draw their own conclusions about whether what happened behind the scenes of certain DOJ investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump, of Michael Cohen and others,

and sort of let the reader draw their own conclusions about whether what happened behind the scenes was kosher or not. And then you go across some past presidents. You go back to like Agnew and Nixon, I think, don't you? Yep. Yep. That part fascinated me because I do have a few chapters in the book about how of all the untouchable people out there, the president, I don't care who your president is, is the most untouchable. You know, we like to say no person is above the law, I say, but we ought to add a little bit of an asterisk saying, except the president sort of is. And I dug into the whole policy against DOJ indicting the sitting president. And there's some fascinating historical underpinnings. So people sometimes say that DOJ cannot indict the sitting president. That's actually not quite right. The right way to say it is DOJ has long decided that it will not even try. And they first

started wrestling with this issue back in the early 70s. Now, you might think that was probably tied to Watergate. It actually wasn't. The reason they first started asking this question is because Spiro Agnew, who was VP, had a separate bribery scandal, nothing to do with Watergate. And the answer that they came back with was not great news for Spiro Agnew, which was, we don't think we can indict the sitting president. We do think we can indict a sitting vice president. And of course, Agnew ended up resigning and he actually was kind of prosecuted. I have some detail in there. He basically worked out a deal with prosecutors where he would plead essentially no contest and not go to jail, but resign the vice presidency. So there's an interesting history of this from Nixon to Clinton on to Mueller and now. And why do you think they

get that privilege? I mean, we were supposed to be in the Constitution, the Madisonian sort of idea was the concept that no one is above the law, that no man is above the law. And they tried to, you know, fulfill that with with Nixon. But then, you know, he got pardoned by Ford. I think the answer is it's purely a practical concern. And if you look at DOJ's memos where they're considering this question, as I say in the book, it's really not legal analysis. They're not saying let's look at the law. It's not – it's just we don't know.

It's not in the Constitution. It's not in the laws. It's a practical memo. Basically, they ask the question, well, how would we function if our chief executive was under indictment, was going through a trial while in office, was convicted, was in prison even theoretically while in office. They basically just say like, we know nobody's supposed to be above the law, but that won't fly. And they do make a point in the memo of saying you can still investigate a sitting president. It's happening right now. Joe Biden has a special counsel. Donald Trump was certainly investigated many times while he was president. And you can indict the president when he's out

of office, whether by impeachment or resignation or losing an election, but just while the guy's in office, you can't actually indict him. And there's an interesting debate. And I lay some of this out in the book about whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. I actually think it's probably for the best that we not indict the sitting president. I know if Donald Trump's actions enraged a person or Bill Clinton's actions enraged a person, They want them and they want them right now. But I think if we step back and divorce ourselves from our political leanings, and whether it's Bill Clinton or Donald Trump or whoever may get the blood boiling, I think it's

probably for the best that we just wait, wait till he's out of office. And by the way, Congress should do its job if it's really bad and impeach the guy and remove him. But even if not, you know, but as I argue in the book, there's other things that protect a former president. Yeah. I mean, I think you really, you really put your finger on the pulse. I mean, there was a, I remember a joke from CNN that always read or not CNN, MSNBC, both great, uh, journalistic, uh, endeavors. Um, but there was a joke from SNL about MSNBC being always running, what was it, impeachment porn. And I remember it was so funny.

But, you know, I love MSNBC. But I would go on there and I would see the people going, this is the one. This is the one bringing Trump down. This is the investigation. And they got him dead to rights. You know, Michael Cohen goes to jail and the guy who really benefited from it doesn't. Maybe there will be some sort of is it performative then that you feel that uh uh you know that uh maybe we're investigating

these people it's just performative the investigations themselves um that's an interesting way to put it i mean i definitely i definitely you know try to refrain from the the walls are closing in standard stuff when it comes to Trump. I do say in the book though, you know, it was interesting because we had to lock this book a few months ago, meaning, you know, you're done writing it and it has to go to the printer. And I said to Harper, like he might be indicted by the time this book comes out. And so I actually have a section of the book where I say, there's a chance by the time you're holding this book, Trump's indicted. I'm not, I don't do the predictions thing, but I do think the signs are that the Fulton County district attorney in particular is very likely to indict Trump.

But I do have a chapter in the book explaining why everyone is so focused on indictment, but really you ought to be focused on the ultimate outcome, which is can there be a conviction? And I argue in the book that both DOJ and the Fulton County DA have wasted so much time that their best opportunity to turn an indictment into a conviction have already passed. And that there are various that if the Fulton County DA in particular indicts, they have a very steep, rocky, uphill climb to turn that indictment into a conviction. And so if there is an indictment, both sides need to hold their horses because on the day an indictment drops, if it drops, liberals are going to, some liberals are going to be popping the bubbly and having a ticker tape parade and some conservatives are going to be outraged. But as I lay out in the book, there's, there's a lot of reason to think that those tables may turn when the case is over and done with.

The investigations thus far, you know, it's interesting. Everyone wants to take a pot shot at Trump, but no one yet has wanted to indict him. We've seen him named in reports. We've seen him impeached. We've seen civil lawsuits. We've seen subpoenas, depositions. We've seen criminal referrals. Yet nobody, for all the bluster, for all the campaign promises that various prosecutors have made, nobody has yet dropped an indictment. But again, I do think it's really important that people remember an indictment is the start of a criminal case. People who are on indictment watch are ready. And as soon as there's an indictment is the start of a criminal case. You know, people who are on indictment watch are ready. And as soon as there's an indictment,

all their wild dreams and fantasies are going to come true. Well, that's, that's the, that's the kickoff of a football game. That's not the end of a football game. I think the most, the biggest frustration I feel,

you know, I went through this with, with the Trump thing where at one point I said, what I think a lot of Americans say, why do I fucking follow the rules? Why do I bother? I mean, look at this guy. Look at, you know, these rich guys, you know, Wall Street guys who get off and, you know,

it's kind of become, I don't know, you know, you went back quite a bit, but it feels like it's epidemic, endemic to, you know, our society right now where if you have enough money, you can get off. Yeah. So, Chris, well, you should follow the rules because you're not one of the people who's protected. So let me give you that advice. But I do talk in the book about far more than Trump. I talk about other celebrities, CEOs, politicians, and really the answer that I come out with is there are three things at play here. One, we have a system that just gives advantages to people who are wealthy, and I'll give you an example of that in a moment.

We have savvy bosses who know how to exploit that and use some of the tactics that I saw in drug kingpins and mafia kingpins. And then, frankly, prosecutors sometimes fail to do their jobs adequately. I'm critical of various prosecutors in various respects. But let me give you just one. And, you know, look, I know everybody kind of realizes intuitively that the justice system isn't exactly equal for everybody. What I try to do in the book is, though, is go next level, next layer and say it's beyond the obvious. And here's here's an example. We all know, I think, that wealthy people, powerful people can pay for their own

dream teams of lawyers. We remember OJ Simpson. I actually argue in the book on a chapter about Jeffrey Epstein that the reason he was able to get off very, very light in the first case that was brought against him in Florida is because he paid for this intimidating team of lawyers that really just scared the prosecutors out of their wits. And I found some, I think, compelling support for the fact that the reason Alexander Acosta, who was the US attorney, gave the case away is he just didn't have the guts to do battle with these lawyers. Here's what's lesser known though. When I was a prosecutor, it was very common to see that the leaders of a powerful organization, mob included, would often select and pay for

the lawyers, not just for themselves, but for the other people around them, the other people on the indictment. And we see that with Trump. We see that all the time. Why do you do that? Because you keep them from cooperating. I tell a story in a book about a mob case with 20-something defendants where one of the low guys on the indictment wanted to flip. He and we had to go through this sort of dramatic cloak and dagger ritual to shake him loose. We saw an example of that recently with Cassidy Hutchinson.

She had devastating testimony against Trump, but she wasn't able to come forward with it because at first her lawyer was paid for by Trump-affiliated political entities, selected and paid for. And she has since said, he basically led me to believe that if I said anything harmful to Trump, it would be trouble for me. She actually lied in her initial testimony. As a result, she's now admitted that she lied to Congress about that. And only when she shook loose of that lawyer, was she able to come clean and testify. And that's why, by the way, the house called that emergency hearing. Remember, they just announced it the night before, we're gonna have an emergency hearing tomorrow. And it was her because they broke her loose. And the last thing I would say on this is DOJ is permissive of this. It was long DOJ policy

up until 2008, that if you're a corporation or you're a large entity and you're providing and paying for lawyers for your employees, let's just say, we will count that against you in assessing whether you've been cooperative because it makes it harder for people to cooperate this happens all the time this happens in the corporate world as well sometimes people want their lawyers paid for it's expensive but in 2008 doj changed their policy with a stroke of the pen and they said no it's perfectly fine now there's actually a quote the doj letter or memo on it where they say something like um we believe that corporate america shares our commitment to transparency it It's like, I don't think so. It's not their job. I mean, I'm not saying corporate America is evil. I'm saying it's not corporate America's job to worry about

transparency, right? And so since 2008, the policy has been, go ahead, you can pay for other people, other people's lawyers, and we won't hold it against you. And administrations of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, have had the opportunity to change that policy and none of them have that's now been our policy for 15 years yeah there's this there's a saying that what the wheels of justice move slowly but grind exceedingly fine and and in some cases you know you see that uh the january six people and everything else but it's extraordinary to me because it is it is damaging when you see merrick garland you know just just mucking about and like you know whatever he seems like a fine gentleman um but but it that's the impression people get it's damaging to the rule

of law it's damaging to the constitution because like they're there i heard other people say you know i want to get rich so i can break the law and be in touch. I won't do whatever I want. Right. And I'm like, it's kind of a shitty attitude. But yeah, I do talk about Merrick Garland in the book. I mean, I praise him in the book and I criticize him, which I'll get to in a second. But I praise him because he's done a good job of restoring much of what DOJ stands for. He has been truthful with the American public. And it's kind of sad that you have to praise an attorney general for not lying to us, but after Bill Barr, it's worth

noting. He also has restored, I think, DOJ's independence and its sort of core values. My criticism of Barr, Chris, is exactly what you were saying. He is approaching this investigation of January 6th like a tepid bureaucrat and not like an aggressive prosecutor. He always says, well, we start at the bottom and we work our way up. First of all, that sounds fine to people who aren't prosecutors. No, you don't. You ask, where is the highest point I can start? I had cases, drug cases, mob cases, you name it, where you go, ooh, we actually have people in the inner circle way up top.

Let's start with that. Let's not waste our time way down here. And here, Merrick Garland was behind the ball on anything relating to anyone in a position of power. Cassidy Hutchinson, many other White House aides, witnesses, he didn't get to them until after the January 6th committee did. We're two years and change out. He hasn't indicted anyone anywhere near a position of power. Now, the standard defense of Merrick Garland is have patience. He moves slowly, but he knows what he's doing. And I argue in the book that he's already lost.

By waiting this long, he's already blown it because there's no reason if he had been focused and aggressive, he couldn't have indicted the January 6th case against powerful people. I don't just mean the people who stormed the Capitol. Obviously, they had to do those cases. I mean, against the real powerhouses behind it. He could have indicted that case by the end of 2021, but he didn't want to. He slow played it. He took this ridiculously myopic bureaucratic approach. And if he does indict now, let's play this out. What if Merrick Garland indicts tomorrow? Okay. When is this case going to go to trial? Again, everyone's very fixated on an indictment. We're not going to have a trial until 2024. By that point, we're going to be three years out. We're going to be in the middle of the primaries where Donald Trump is going to be either a leading contender or the presumptive nominee by that point. There's no legal bar on prosecuting somebody there, but you make your job of getting 12 jurors unanimously to convict him harder every day that passes. Yeah.

And that seems to be sometimes what prosecutors way is that balance of, well, you know, if we get that one guy on the jury who's a Trump fan and, you know, then we then we can't indict. So maybe we shouldn't bother. Yeah. I'm not sure they would think about it that explicitly in their minds, but there clearly is trepidation in going after Trump, both for two reasons. One is it will be difficult to convict him for the exact reason you say, Chris. You know, people think, oh, well, Trump's not very popular in, let's say, Fulton County, Georgia. You know, it's a blue area. He'd probably get convicted.

No, no, no, no. I did the research on this. The vote in 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia was 72% for Biden, 26% for Trump. Total political landslide. But if you do the math on that, the odds out of a 12 person jury selected at random, as it's supposed to be, the odds that you'll have at least one Trump voter on that jury are 96, I think, percent. The odds that you'll have two or more are high 80s. The odds, you know, it's just mathematical, percent. The odds that you'll have two or more are high 80s. The odds, you know, it's just mathematical, right? The odds that you'll have three or more Trump

voters is like in the high 70s or mid 70s. So number one, he's going to be remarkably difficult to convict. And I think prosecutors understand that. Number two is it's, you know, if you indict Trump, you're going to, he's going to attack you. He's going to attack your family, his followers, you know, that could be intimidating. His followers will certainly attack you on social media. We've seen an uptick in in in political violence lately. So, you know, and there's also just the concern, even if you're not fear fearful for your own welfare, just what will this do to the country? Is this worth it or is it easier to just move on?

I don't agree with that, by the way, but I think that's clearly and I have some inside reporting from DOJ that confirms this, that that there has been talk of what was termed to me as the prudential concerns with indicting a former president. Wow. I mean, the the the the Georgia attorney general down there, attorney accounting. She had to get security amped up for herself and her team. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she did that on her own. You know, I'll say this about that. I mean, I have some questions about the DA. I get it if she's worried about political, you know, about political violence, but I also think there's some grandstanding there. Somehow they let it leak that their people were wearing bulletproof vests. Like if they were really concerned, that wouldn't have leaked out.

I do feel like there, there's a little bit of theater theatrics in that again, not to under, not to underplay the, the level of political violence that's out there, but you can take those safety precautions without letting the world know that, Oh,

we're wearing bulletproof vests. In fact, if you really cared about protecting your safety, you would keep that all that confidential. Yeah. I wear one now on the show during the podcast, every podcast, it your safety, you would keep all that confidential. Yeah. I wear one now on the show during the podcast, every podcast. It's just, you never know. I might get shot.

But that's for fashion. And sometimes the comments on YouTube that come in live are pretty evil. So you got to have that. Don't read the comments. You can't read the comments. Don't read the comments. Love you, commenters. You're great.

So in your book, you outlay a lot of different things. You talk about some of the different issues with these investigations, especially the Garland issue, the Southern District of New York, how it was interfered with by Bill Barr. Do you give some advice on maybe how we – do we need to modernize our legal system to where it's more streamlined? So we need a few things. Courts need to do a better job. I have a section in there about how the Supreme Court has gutted our public corruption laws. And by the way, if you were down to justice nine zero and another one. Um, they are just taking our corruption laws and, and making them more and more narrow to the point where there has not been a meaningful federal criminal prosecution for public corruption in years. Now I date really this,

this trend in the law started six years ago, and we've not seen a large-scale, significant public corruption prosecution successfully initiated since then. So that's number one. Congress can do better. Congress can make clear, pass new laws saying, no, when we define public corruption this way, we meant it broadly, or pass a new law. They've not done anything. When under control of Democrats and when under control of Republicans, you can question why they might not want to do that, right? Why would they want to write laws

that could be used against them? Prosecutors need to do better. And I give various ways in the book, and we talked about one or two examples here where prosecutors need to either change their policies the way they handle powerful people and or be more aggressive in going after powerful people. But I mean, of course, look, the main malefactors here are the actual people who abuse the system, the bosses and all that. But if the question is, you know, you can't expect them to change out of having good conscience. So there's a lot that we can do. There's a lot that Congress can do, that our judiciary can do, that prosecutors can do to even the scales. Yeah. And I've heard for a long time that when you're rich, you can hire 10 attorneys.

You can really overwhelm. You can hire your own NFL team of attorneys, basically. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's a thing where prosecutors just go, hey, man, we don't want to deal with that. We don't have the costs. And then the other thing is, is anybody who knows how how trump is and you probably agree with me on this uh uh is is even if he got indicted and got uh prosecuted he'd probably appeal that thing to hell and back two or three times through the scotus i mean i

mean you know there are limits on what you can do but there's no question that if trump is indicted he will the first thing he will do is try to get the case thrown out as any defendant would do but especially if he's indicted in the state, there's actually, he has a reasonable argument that the federal court should throw it out. And even if he's convicted, he still has to, you know, and he sentenced to prison, which is not certain if he's convicted, he would appeal to the court of appeals. He would appeal to the Supreme court. And, you know, we are, if anyone, the chances of each successive event coming to pass are less and less. Maybe he'll be indicted.

I think it's more likely than not that he is indicted. The chance of conviction, I think, are much lower. The chance of imprisonment are lower than that. And the chance of it all being held up on appeal are even lower than that. You know, you're right that wealthy people can and do hire very expensive legal teams. I don't think people realize how expensive lawyers are. I lay out some examples in the book of where other people, not Trump, spend tens of millions of dollars on their defense. And even if you're not going to put together a dream team, I mean, if you want to go to trial in the federal system, you better have a

million bucks or you're not going to be able to pay for trial. So I do think that some lawyers just would rather not deal with it. I use, again, the Epstein case as an example. I give an example from my own experience where sometimes I would get a trial and it would be against a two-lawyer team or a solo practitioner who had a paralegal. And sometimes I'd be against a good two or three-lawyer team. We did one case where the defendant had a big New York law firm that put like five lawyers on the case and three paralegals. And they just, I tell a story that every night they would file some motion in the middle of the night, 3.30 in the morning. And, you know, in addition to everything else you're

trying to do, it was a nightmare. And I say one morning I was at like a little convenience store by the courthouse during trial. And I saw one of the paralegals from the other side. And I jokingly said, I said, no motion last night, huh? Wow. And he goes, it was like seven in the morning. He goes, check your email. And when I walked in the office a few minutes later, there was a motion filed at 642 or something like that.

So yeah, they do make life difficult. And frankly, a lot of prosecutors don't have the bandwidth to fight it or get intimidated. Yeah, you're looking at someone who's guilty of that trick. I learned it from some really good attorneys that we had for my corporations. The midnight motions? Yeah, you're given like 30 days sometimes to respond to something.

So everything is about time delay and just millions of piles. You ask for everything in discovery that is stupid. We hereby request all documents. And so they taught me that. And so when you do your response, you wait till the last few minutes of the 30-day thing and you send that thing

in the middle of the night. So I'm sorry. I mean, people, you know, it's the 11.59 p.m. filing. Smart judges will say, not just a date, but they'll go, I need your filing by February 4th

at 5 p.m. And then it'll get filed at 4.58 p.m. Yeah. Everything is about buying time, wearing down. I mean, I've worn down need your filing by February 4th at 5 p.m. And then it'll get filed at 4.58 p.m. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is about buying time, wearing down. I mean, I've worn down so many different civil cases and stuff. Yeah.

I mean, you get sued for all sorts of crap when you make money and have businesses. I think you were quoted on a podcast. I can't pull it up right now on the internet. I killed it. So I can get a good feed. I think you said you don't think he's ever gonna, uh, any charge they're gonna stick on Trump on a podcast.

Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, I, I, uh, similar to what I just said to you, which is if he's indicted,

I think it's unlikely he's convicted. And if he is convicted, you know, you still need to have a judge who's willing to send him to prison. And by the, by the way, by the time any of this all comes to completion, by the time you have a, if, if there's hypothetically an indictment and then hypothetically a trial and

a conviction he's going to be into his 80s by this point and then you know and then you're going to it's all got to be held up on appeal through the court of appeals and then potentially through the u.s supreme court i mean you're talking years and years away i i do think it's unlike i think these orange jumpsuit fantasies for donald trump are just that i think they're fantasies note to self give up the orange trump fantasy yeah uh you know the the the interest you bring up a good point i mean i i don't mean ill-willed our politics we never should uh have that sort of attitude but he's he's not the most healthiest guy in the world based on his diet and how he eats. And, you know, it's possible he could dodge anything that might stick.

Well, I guess I wasn't so much suggesting he might die, which I suppose is possible. I was suggesting, like, a judge is going to look at – I'll put it this way. If it wasn't Donald J. Trump and if it was any other 83-year-old, let let's say at the time this all comes to pass, who was in bad health, as you say, judge, you know, depending what he's convicted of, it might be a violent crime. It might not probably not going to be a violent crime unless you get into like seditious conspiracy, but a nonviolent crime with no priors. If you just said that to a prosecutor, if you just said, what do you think is the likely outcome at sentence? I think most didn't attach a name to it. I think they would say that's a very few judges are going to send an 80 plus year old nonviolent first time offender to prison. Although that's not automatic. I mean, someone like Bernie Madoff who's stolen people's life savings. And you would argue here,

if you're a prosecutor in the case of Trump, it's a january 6th kind of crime that this undermines our core democracy now if it's mar-a-lago in the documents that's a different argument that's that's not as you know it's not good for our democracy but it's not a coup on our democracy i was going to ask you about the classified documents issue because now it's really muddled you know i mean i'm i'm still searching my house for some i hope you are too uh everyone should be looking make sure they don't have them i think i think i might have some in the fridge i'm not sure next to the dog food but uh you know the the the interesting thing is is so many people have been you know just some you know some white house aide accidentally took something home, gets prosecuted. You know, they don't, 30 days or something are a little fine, but still they get hit.

And now we have all these presidents run around with the classified documents, right? I mean, it all comes down to knowledge and intent, right? So, for example, you've had, we've had cases where people have taken like one document. Like, I don't have the, but General Petraeus, right? He was convicted. I think they gave him a misdemeanor, but he basically intentionally took a few documents and gave them to his biographer. I think it was. Um, so if you knowingly take one document and intend to distribute it, that's an easy case, but if not an easy case, but that's a strong case for

prosecution, you can have 10,000 documents, but if you can't show that the person a new and, had criminal intent, then you're not going to have a crime. And I think Trump has been given a gift by the later developments with Biden and Pence. While obviously, I think we can readily understand the differences in the cases and make a checklist and go, well, Trump had way more documents and Trump's people apparently obstructed justice or may have obstructed justice, whereas Biden and Pence were to varying degrees cooperative. Ultimately, I think it's tough for Merrick Garland politically and optically to say, I'm going to indict Donald Trump, the guy who's going to be running against the president under whom I serve. I'm going to indict Donald Trump and seek to imprison him. That's what an indictment is.

And I'm going to give Joe Biden a pass on a documents case, And I'm going to give Mike Pence a pass on the documents case. He can come out all day and say every case stands on its own merits. And we found important distinctions between the case. That's smart and that's fine. But the vast majority of this country, I think, is going to is going to have a hard time accepting that. Yeah, it just it just breaks the rule of law at this point. I mean, if Biden does something illegal, I voted for him. I want him indicted.

There's reason for the rule of law thing. Two quick questions because I know we've got to go. One is you're very critical of Cy Vance in the book and William Barr. You wrote the book, of course, Hatchet Man. And William Barr is doing this rehab tour of his reputation and then of course there's stuff coming out about some of the things that are going on what any follow-up thoughts you had on that book and his little rehab tour he's doing i mean bill barr bill barr if anything since he's left office has reconfirmed and re-reconfirmed my central thesis which is that he's a liar

and he's a political activist um he's there to protect his own and promote his own political beliefs it's funny because he you know he always put on this false air of like i'm a i'm an old grandfather he said in his confirmation i'm half retired i don't need this job he was in he was attorney general twice he's one of two people ever to be ag twice he was ag in the early 90s he always put on this i don't really care what people think about me. Yet it has since come out. First of all, he does this media tour, which is still ongoing as of last week. He was on Bill Maher, I think.

But he also, like since then, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, a bunch of his texts have now come out from when he was AG. And he's like frantically monitoring. He's not on social media, but he's like, did my statement get retweeted? At one point he's like, Don Jr. retweeted me. It's really embarrassing. He's

obviously quite vain about his public image. I have no problem with being vain about your public image, but don't pretend like you're Mr. Modest who doesn't care what people say. And we've learned more and more about political pressure tactics that he brought to bear on the Southern District of New York, ways he tried to engineer certain favorable political results. So I don't think Barr has won over any new converts. I think, if anything, his bogus image rehab tour has probably set him back further. Cy Vance, a Democrat, I should say, I'm very critical of in the book. He basically gave Harvey Weinstein a pass until the media called him out on it. He gave the Trump children a pass, heeding the advice of a lawyer from whom he had taken a heavy campaign donation. And then when he got caught by the media, he returned the donation.

And then when he thought the tempest had blown over, he took a new donation. I think Cy Vance has been very timid and very really generous towards powerful people. And I think was not an effective and not a strong prosecutor. I think he was weak. I think he was compromised. I'm not saying he was bry, but I think he had weak ethics. I think he had a weak moral compass. And I think he blew a lot of high profile cases for that reason. There you go. And we got Mark Pomerantz we're trying to get on the show to talk about his new book, and I guess there's some kerfuffle over that. You want to talk about someone who has no credibility?

Bring him on. Go ahead. I mean, this guy, I'll say I'm friends with – I talk about him. We have shots fired, people. I'm friends with Alvin Bragg, who's the current DA, so let me – I say that in the book. I have a little – but in the book, I lay out why I think Pomerantz is full of it. And by the way, the things that he said in his resignation letter are quite opposed to things he's now saying in

his book and saying on 60 Minutes. There's actually a really good article that just came out on just security by a guy named Ryan Goodman, who's a very smart academic. And he has dissected Pomerantz. It's called Pomerantz v. Pomerantz. And it shows the inconsistency in the various things that Mark, my, my big question to Mark Pomerantz. And I sort of pose this in the book is if you were really so hot to indict Donald Trump, why didn't you indict Donald Trump? You had three years to do it. And the thing to keep in mind about Pomerantz, I think there's a lot of, after the fact bravado here, not only did Alvin Bragg not think he had enough evidence at the time but alvin bragg said keep working on it and pomerantz had a temper tantrum and resigned rather than keep

working on it but i think it's three people working on pomerantz's team quit because he was out of line and because he was trying to make leaps that weren't supported by the evidence so i'm very skeptical of mark pomerantz i don't think he's acquitted himself well in his media tour. I thought he was embarrassing to himself on 60 Minutes. And I have a – not a chapter, but five, six pages in the book about why I think he's out of line and I think he's – we talked before about everyone wants to circle around Trump and posture at Trump. And, you know, Mark Pomerantz had had, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of days when he could have indicted Trump if he was so hot to do so. As he now as he now claims, yet he mysteriously never did. But now he wants to praise himself as the guy who would have. Yeah. And there's the whole kerfuffle where they're like, hey, man, don't put out that book. We're still investigating. Well, that's another thing.

I mean, you know, this is an ongoing investigation. Look, they don't have the right to stop him under the First Amendment. He can do what he wants for the most part. But talk about a disloyal act that's going to undermine the case. He'll say, I know what my obligations are. I'm not I've not said anything. Ask Alvin Bragg about that. Ask the DA's office. They're like, this is an ongoing investigation. So I have a problem with that too. Yeah. Very interesting and very enlightening too, because you've, like I said, you put your finger on the pulse as to why everyone's like, why are all these rich people get away with everything? We're kind of all tired of it. And it, it, it erodes the rule of law.

It doesn't, in my mind, I've heard people say, why do I need to follow the rules? You know, and, and stuff. So I just want to get rich so I can do whatever I want. And that's a really heinous idea. But I'm not rich, so I guess I can't explore that option. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it, Ellie.

GiveUsYour.com is wherever you want people to find you on the interweb. Ellie Honig at Twitter, Ellie Honig Instagram, Ellie Honig Facebook. Ellie Honig book is called Untouchable. It's on Amazon and all the independent sites and everything else. There you go, guys. Order it up wherever fine books are sold.

Untouchable, how powerful people get away with it. Just came out January 31st, 2023. I'll be looking. Are you going to do a second follow-up book maybe? Or is there any other books in the thing? Well, this is book number two. Gosh, I'm going to finish the promotional tour for this. Then I'm going to take a day or two

before I start thinking about what I'm going to do. But I'll say, you know, writing a book is incredibly challenging but also incredibly rewarding. So I'm already sort of halfway thinking about what I'm going to do next. I'll hit you up for any ideas. Yeah, Hatchet Man 2.

I mean, you can for any ideas. Hatchet Man 2. You can comment on the whole thing. Perhaps. He's giving me more material. Definitely. Thank you very much, Ellie, for coming on the show. Thank you, Romano. Thanks for having me. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, all those places on the internet.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. That should have us