The MeidasTouch Podcast - Bombshell Federal Ruling Spells Doom for Trump and Guest Craig Unger Says Trump is Russian Asset

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast we have an incredible guest, investigative reporter and author of five books on the GOP war on democracy, including the critically acclaimed AMERICAN KOMPROMAT, Craig Unger. During this interview, Craig does not mince words: disgraced twice-impeached ex-president Donald Trump is a compromised Russian asset. The remainder of the episode the brothers give you the latest breaking news you need to know. We cover it all: a Federal Judge in California says president Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct congress, President Biden speaks at Warsaw rallying the world while Trump holds a rally for Putin in Georgia, America hits lowest unemployment numbers since 1969 & the Jan 6 committee is ready to interview Ginni Thomas! If you enjoyed today's episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast please remember to rate, review and subscribe. As always, thank YOU for listening! DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: AG1 by AthleticGreens: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas ExpressVPN: https://expressVPN.com/meidas Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Are you ready for a Midas Touch podcast? Ben, Brett, and Jordy fighting for democracy with you each and every day, each and every pod. And our guest today, Craig Unger, the author of American Compromat, who also wrote a new piece for the New Republic called How Republicans Spent Decades Cozying Up to Putin's Kremlin. There's no equivocation with Craig Unger, who says he's 100% sure that President Trump was and is a Russian asset. And the GOP is Brett and Jordy. Are you ready for an action packed news filled edition of Midas Touch podcast? What an intro. What an intro. And I'm fired up right now. I don't know about you, Jordy, but Ben's got me ready to go. I couldn't even do my hand thing. I just let Ben go. I just let Ben go. No time for the hand thing. Ben is just on for the hand

thing. No time for even you and Brett and Jordy talking anymore. Let's get right. What? No time for the hand thing is what Brett used to say to me in high school. Let's get right into it. A judge in California, a judge who I've appeared in front of before, Judge David Carter, has issued a ruling in a case involving John Eastman, who's identified himself as the president's lawyer during the January 6th time period. Federal Judge Carter accepted those representations in his ruling that John Eastman was the lawyer. John Eastman was withholding about 111 documents from the January 6th panel, saying these documents were subject to attorney-client privilege, he probably should have just turned those documents over rather than seeking a preliminary injunction so that the judge would

actually review these documents and have to make a finding whether what's called a crime fraud exception applies. So Brett and Jordy, Ben, as the lawyer, let me just break it down. Yeah, Ben, we're the layman's over here. I've heard the term crime fraud exemption. I've heard you say it multiple times. But what does it exactly mean here in this new bombshell federal judge filing? between client and their attorney or communications between client and attorney in furtherance of that representation and furtherance of a litigation is subject to what's called attorney client privilege, meaning it would remain confidential and not be disclosed because when people talk to their attorney and want legal advice, the law says we want that to remain

confidential. Except, of course, if you're planning a crime with your lawyer. Let me get this straight. As a lawyer, you're allowed to defend your client who's accused of a crime, but you're not allowed to go so far as to actually start committing crimes with your client. Everybody has the right to a lawyer in our system if you are accused of criminal conduct. That is what our Constitution is for. But you do not have the constitutional right to go about committing crimes with your lawyer. And the January 6th panel, the January. It's called a criminal attorney, not a criminal attorney. Ah, nice. Exactly. And there were a number of crimes the January 6th committee told this judge that were committed

by Trump and Eastman, including 18 USC 371 conspiracy to defraud the United States and sounds bad. 1512 C2, which criminalizes obstruction or attempted obstruction of an official proceeding and common law fraud. And let me just read from this 44 page order, quote, the court finds more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6th, 2021. That's the part that lots of people are focused on. But let me bring you a little bit further down in the ruling as well. The illegality of the plan was obvious. Our nation

was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington, laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election. President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle, and the federal judge called this a coup, a coup in search of a legal theory. He used the word coup. Now, just some background on Judge Carter, Vietnam veteran, no-nonsense judge, pro-democracy judge. I called this on the Legal AF podcast that I do with Popak weeks ago that Judge Carter was not going to take kindly to a coup against the United States.

He goes on to say in the concluding paragraphs that this ruling itself, this is not a civil case. This is not a criminal case. This is a case that he's overseeing. That is the case that he's overseeing is just about documents, about ordering Eastman to turn over documents. And basically, 95 percent of the documents he ordered to be turned over, like 101, I think he clawed back about 10 documents. But he was saying that there needs to be accountability. There needs to be accountability. There needs to be justice. Brett Jordy. And I think I frequently joke, obviously we knew that. We knew that Trump was engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

We knew he obstructed an official proceeding. We've known this the entire time. But to finally be hearing a federal judge utter those words, to finally be hearing a federal judge call this a coup, that's a big, big, big deal, folks. Ben, as a layman, I got to ask you, what happens next here? Do the documents go straight to the Jan 6th committee, or is there an appeals process now? I know lawyers like to do their little appeals all the time after these cases.

So what's the next step? The next step, Eastman can have an opportunity to appeal. He can do a petition to the Ninth Circuit not to turn over those records. Although me, when I read the order, I'm not even necessarily sure that those subset of records that he was fighting to keep privileged are even going to be like all that bombshell anyway. Like to me, the bombshell is a judge has reviewed the full record and has reached that conclusion. And so to me, that's kind of the big headline here. Eastman can appeal to the Ninth Circuit. It's going to go nowhere. These documents will be turned over to the January 6th committee. But the bombshell is a federal judge to say that the DOJ no doubt is

going to take notice of that ruling of this order by this federal judge, a very well-respected federal judge. And this was really the first time. It's why this is such big news for a federal judge to say it in such clear, stark, unequivocating terms like this. And speaking of unequivocating terms, clear terms, although some people wanted to try to parse it and try to make unnecessary BS about it, Brett, maybe break down President Biden's powerful speech in Warsaw. President Biden gave a speech in Warsaw, Poland, about the Russian invasion into Ukraine. I really think this has been, and I've said it before on this podcast, I really think this has been President Biden's finest hour of his presidency. I think the way he is bringing together the world, the way he has brought together NATO, like it's a comment that Biden

has said frequently too, that Putin thought that he was going to divide the world, but he actually made the world that much stronger and that much closer. Biden was not mincing words during the speech. One of the interesting things I thought he said earlier on was he said to Putin, he said directly, don't even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory. He said, or NATO will come with the full force of our collective power. He said American forces are not in Europe to engage in conflict with Russian forces. American forces are here to defend NATO. A lot of riveting words. He laid out the stark contrast between our fight between democracy and autocracy. And he laid it out clearly in those terms. You could either be on the side of democracy or the side of autocracy.

And that, to me, is not just the message to the world, but it's also a message as to what's going on here in the United States. We're facing the same battle on a different level here in the USA, a battle of democracy versus autocracy. And then one line that Biden apparently had ad-libbed in the middle of the speech is what is sort of gaining the most attention here. And that's when President Biden said, for God's sakes, this man cannot remain in power, speaking about Vladimir Putin. And when I heard that, when I heard him cap off his address with that statement, I was like, yes, exactly. That's the kind of language we need to be using. This is exactly what we need to be saying. Now, the media has not stopped talking about this comment as some sort of horrible, horrific gaffe. You know, it's one thing if you don't agree with it, but it was pretty clear to me that President

Biden knew what he was saying and said it clear. And I have to also kind of blame the White House here for the way they kind of tried to walk it back and ease it on. I mean, here's my problem with politicians in general and the way like political organizations and offices work in various politicians. They are like they're scared of their own shadow too often. And when somebody says what everybody else is thinking, and I don't think President Biden was even calling for, we need to oust Putin. But it's a pretty clear and I think a commonly held belief that a maniac who is committing genocide on people all across the world, who is oppressing his own people like this does not belong in power. I don't think that's access to nuclear weapons. I don't think that's a

controversial statement to be made. But then this sort of half-assed walk back by the White House at the end, to me, I think it hurt the point a little bit. And I think it made the media attention even greater. It's sort of like a Streisand effect, if you will, where the White House said, the president's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region, a White House official said. He was not discussing Putin's power in Russia or a regime change. What I wish they said was like, you're damn right, Putin can't be in power. Absolutely, Putin can't be in power. You heard what he said. His words speak for himself. That's what I was kind of hoping from the White House. He said what he said. Don't walk it

back. It was a powerful statement. He meant every single word of it. Don't give the media that out. Then to jump on you and play this we're both sides, isn't that they love to play? If you want to walk it back, though, I think the way you could walk it back, though, is to say, yes, Biden meant what he said. As long as Putin is engaged in this genocidal conduct, then he cannot remain in power. If Putin chooses to work with the international community again and withdraw from Ukraine and provide reparations, then there could be discussions. I think there's a pivot there, but I also don't want to put the full blame on the White House. I mean, I do want to focus on my frustrations with the media, focusing on that, the around the clock coverage on, oh, is this a gaffe? You know, it's every day

President Trump said the dumbest, most hysterical shit in the world, including that same day as a speech. And we'll get into that shortly, you know. And I mean, during the presidency, the media with such kind of kid gloves when it came to Trump on every day, there would be so many gaffes that it was literally all gaffes that the media was kind of outgunned by gaffes. The media couldn't keep up with the gaffes. So the media was like, let's just not even focus on any of these issues. It is too difficult. Oh man, I'm going to have to call Kellyanne Conway and ask for a comment. That's going to be annoying. I'm not even going to reach out for a comment because I just have to deal with these shitheads versus no, you could have

been laser focused. You could have held accountability. The media should have been, frankly, what the January 6th committee is to January 6th, like the steadfastness of the January 6th committee and the way they fought. They've been criticized. You're going too slow, this, that and the other. But they've been in court every day fighting and winning battles, laser focused on getting information, whereas the media was like, OK, what story can I write today? You know, it was like, all right, let me write this story. You know, let's not even focus on the key critical issues. Thank you. What were you going to

say? I was going to say and the reporter sometimes admit it. And I don't mean to keep bringing Daniel Dale into it, but he's like the fact checker guy. And, you know, you've seen him post multiple times. He'll be like, I just found an example of one of these tweets. Trump last night released a 14 minute Facebook video full of lies about the election. It's too bonkers irrelevant to even bother fact checking at this moment. It's like, why is that so pathetic? That is so pathetic. I didn't even know that, Brett. That's huge. He wrote that today. No, it wasn't today. But this was in December at the height of when the election was attempted to be over. This was right before January 6th, the one that I found.

But I've seen him write this multiple times. You know what that would be like as a lawyer? Me saying, wow, this is a very challenging case. It's way too difficult for me to even deal with. I'm not even going to do this. Just trust me that it's bad. Just trust me that it's bad. Judge, just judge, take my word for it, okay? with. I'm not even going to trust me that it's bad. I'm not even going to judge. Just judge.

Take my word for it. OK, imagine the January 6th committee basically said, you know, John Eastman's legal arguments, judge. It's just so bonkers. It's so wacky. I'm not even going to go tell you. Take my word for it. No, that is journalistic malpractice by Daniel Dale and by, you know, and he's the representative of it, but that right there, Brett. Yeah. I didn't even mean to pick on him there, but I just, he was the perfect example of the issue that I see in the media that the thing is, if everything is a 10 and with Trump, everything is a 10, right. On like the crazy bat shit, crazy scale. If everything is a 10, then there's nothing new to report on because it's just Trump being bonkers and crazy again, nothing to see here. But if you have somebody

who's measured and competent and knows what the hell he's doing, like president Biden, and then he says something that deviates from what you think he is going to say, all of a sudden it's red alert. Let's talk about it on the media for the next two weeks as the biggest gap on the planet. Biden knew what he said. President Biden knew what he said. And my, you know, my probably best kind of take on maybe what the White House is also doing there is maybe there is a sort of good cop, bad cop thing happening here where you got the benefit of President Biden out there saying exactly what he needed to be said, saying exactly what the international community needed to hear. And then the White House gets to be like, oh, no, he wasn't talking. He was talking about that. You know, come on, come on, come on, guys. And so you get this good cop, bad cop where he gets his message out without making an official U.S. policy, you know, of regime change.

So there's also that sort of idea. I mean, there's strategy involved in everything that's done. I just think they're not a fan of the walk back. Not a fan of the walk back at all. Very philosophical of you, Jordy. Now, going- Not a fan of the walk back. Very philosophical words there.

Going to, from Warsaw- You're such an asshole. Going from Warsaw to Commerce, a small city northeast of Atlanta. Trump's big Georgia rally this past weekend was a big dud. I think it was sparsely attended, maybe a few thousand people with all empty chairs everywhere. It was, again, the greatest hits of Trump's grievances. You had Trump had, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene said all of the crazy shit that she said. You had Senator Perdue

called for Governor Kemp, who he praised a year earlier, to be locked up and imprisoned. That's just their go to line to just lock each other up now is what Senator Perdue said about Governor Kemp. Donald Trump, the rally, the timing of it really appeared to be counter-programming of Biden's speech in Warsaw. As Biden called for Putin to be removed from power, Trump called on Biden to be disqualified and the Biden administration to be disqualified from having any policy in Ukraine. I mean, literally parroting Putin talking points. You have someone who represents the other political party, the main political party, the radical right Republicans, as they call themselves now, the extremist Republicans. Their position is that the commander in chief should be disqualified from foreign affairs.

The way the Republicans try to demonize Democrats, our military, they try to demonize them as the enemy. They do demonize them as the enemy for the Republicans. Democrats are far worse than Vladimir Putin, than Russia. Trump believes Kim Jong-un is a better friend of the United States than Joe Biden. And that is what their people view. We'll show a wacky poll in a second that goes to the heart of these issues. But Brett, Jody, what are your thoughts on that? Whatever you want to call Trump. Let me just say this. I get so fed up with people in the Twitterverse or out there that say you guys have Trump derangement syndrome. How are

you still talking about Trump? Well, it's because he's the leader, the leader of the Republican Party. And when he speaks, everyone who's anyone in the Republican Party just bows down and kisses his ass. His words are important. We have to cover it and you have to pay attention to his craziness. Yeah. And I liked watching the reporters who were there reporting on it. You had Greg Blustein, who works at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I believe it's called. He said he's covered more than two dozen of these Trump rallies across the nation, and that this is the smallest crowd he has ever seen since Trump won in 2016. Stephen Fowler said something very similar. It's almost time for Trump to speak here. It's the smallest rally I've ever covered here. And it goes on and on. Mike Sington says it's over for the washed up, disgraced ex-president

Trump draws smallest crowd yet at rally. He is blaming cold weather, a classic Trump. And meanwhile, you have all these, you know, Trump sycophants like Liz Harrington going, there are 40,000 people there, 40 to 35,000 people. You know, the fake news is lying to you. And you have all these other nuts being like, it's so amazing. Trump, the most powerful man in the world who hit a hole in one earlier in the day, then performs to a sellout 40,000. Yeah. It's Kim Jong-un. It's Putin. It's weird. The whole MAGA culture is just very, very, very strange. Even when you see these videos of like Marjorie Taylor Greene walking and giving high fives to people and people taking selfies with her and Matt Gates and all that. It's just a weird celebrity culture of

outcasts and misfits and losers and people who are frankly, they're crazy. I mean, they're crazy. Let's be real. They have real, real, real problems, but they don't get a pass for having those real problems because they've turned it into hate. And there was a PRI survey in 2021. Brett, I'm not sure you sent me this survey earlier that shows about one in five Americans agree with the core tenets of QAnon. This was in this. Seriously. So this was the question. The government, media and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation. 5% of Americans completely agree with that. 11% mostly agree.

20% mostly disagree. And 60% completely disagree. And 60% completely disagree. That just goes to show you what is being one fed to people. And two, like if you were to ask Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, they would likely be in that poll of completely agree, mostly agree. Not going to lie to you. This poll scares the shit out of me. I mean, think about how many people that is. Okay. Say it's 20%, right? And I just looked it up. How many people over 18 are in the United States? Because I'm assuming we're not talking about children in this poll. We got about 260 million adults in the United States. 20% of that is like 52 million people. So they're saying like 52 million Americans

agree with the statement. The government, media, financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global sex trafficking operation, child sex trafficking operation. 50 million people. That's insane. We talk about the derangement, though, of the radical right extremists who believe this. This is who they are. I also want you to play, Brett, this clip that Patriot Takes. Patriot Takes is just one of the most genius social media companies that exist, political action groups that exist. What they find and what they put out there each day

is just some of the most hard-hitting stuff. And they don't get enough credit. But play this clip of Madison Cawthorn, who went on a podcast talking about what he's observed in Washington, D.C. as a member of Congress. I mean, the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington, I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington, the average age is probably 60 or 70. And I look at all these people, a lot of them that I've looked up to through my life, always paid attention to politics, guys that, you know, then all of a sudden you get invited to like, well, hey, we're going to have kind of a sexual get together at one of our homes. You should come. And I'm like, what did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they're asking you to come to an orgy yeah uh or the fact that you know there's some of the people that are leading

on the movement to try and remove you know addiction in our country and then you watch them do you know a key bump of cocaine right in front of you and it's like this is this is wild wow congressman adam kinziger's response is incredible he well, I've never seen that, but I also don't run in the far right freedom caucus circles. So maybe I would have one criticism of Adam Kinzinger's comment though, the far right freedom caucus circles, that circle is the circle of mainstream GOP. Sadly, Adam Kinzinger is the fringe. What would be a traditional conservative? What conservatives now call themselves conservative, and you know that I don't refer to the GOP in any way as conservative. These are the least conservative people. That's conservative. I mean, they'reies and doing bumps of cocaine, very conservative

cocaine orgies. They're raising your taxes. They're pro QAnon. That's conservative. They call themselves conservative. These people are out of their mind. And you're seeing it seep into the mainstream more and more every single day, just like we saw during the confirmation hearings of Judge Katonji Brown Jackson. All the stuff that they were pushing from Hawley to Cruz to Cod and everything about this child porn, all the stuff that they were pushing. It's because 20% of Americans believe in QAnon, and that is the base of the Republican Party, not Adam Kinzinger. If the base of the Republican Party was Adam Kinzinger people, they would be all about that life, but they're absolutely not. And that's why I'm just going to say that's why the fight is so important. And that's why we need to stay constantly activated,

because I'll tell you right now, those people vote. Those people vote. Those people don't go, oh, well, I didn't get the package I wanted in the last bill. And then, no, those people go and vote because to them it's life or death. It's if I don't vote, the child sex trafficking, pedophiles, Satan worshipers are going to ruin my life. So you need to vote with that same intensity that they're voting at, or otherwise that 20% is going to envelop the rest of us. And then we're in a very, very dangerous place. After our interview with Craig Unger, we are going to discuss how the Democrats will win in 2022 in 10 minutes or less. We will break it down for you because the Democrats have the winning issues on literally every single issue. So let's bring in Craig Unger. But before doing that, let's give a

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We are joined by Craig Unger, who is a veteran investigative journalist, bestselling author of five books on how the GOP waged war on our democracy, including the critically acclaimed American Compromat, How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power and Treachery. And no, sadly, it's not fiction. That is real life. and we're seeing the implications of that today and Craig is also has a new column out in the new republic called how republicans spent decades cozying up to Putin's Kremlin Craig welcome to the podcast thanks for

having me let's go start with really your most famous probably most prescient book right now that everyone's talking about, American Compromander, though all your works are great. And I would tell all of our listeners to go back and check all your works. But in this book, you answer the question, is Donald Trump a Russian asset? And that answer, it's no equivocation you know i hate when i bring people on these pods like you answer the question yes and here is how can you tell us exactly what that means right well i'm not the first person to answer yes and a lot of the top uh intelligence officials in the country john brennan of the cia clapper michael morel have all said that trump was a russian asset and i i asked brennan exactly what

that meant. But he's never drilled down and no one ever, I've never seen an American official drill down and say exactly what does that mean. And what I did was, I tried to go all the way back and one of my most important sources, I mean, it's also sort of amazing if you're around the D.C. area, there are a lot of former KGB agents who are very well informed and are willing to talk. And among them, I reached out to Yuri Shvets, who is a major in the KGB. He was based in Washington Station in the 80s, recruiting Americans to spy for the Soviets. And at the same time, his colleagues in New York Station were recruiting Donald Trump. And according to Uri, the way that started out was in 1980, 42 years ago, Trump was going through what was his first and one of his very few genuine real successes in real estate. He was building what is now the Grand Hyatt Hotel right

next to Grand Central Station. And like any hotel, it needed lots of TV sets. You would think most chains like Hyatt or whatever would have reliable third-party vendors for those kinds of big purchases. Trump went to a small shop in lower Manhattan called Joy Lud Electronics. It was owned by former Soviet emigres, including a man named Simeon Kislin. And according to Yuri Shvets, Kislin was a spotter agent. I should say that Kislin has denied this, but he did confirm the sale of hundreds of TV sets to Trump. And this was the operation that opened the door of the KGB to Donald Trump. And things sort of started to flow from there. There would be other people in the KGB who met with Trump, including a woman named Natalia Dubonina.

And she was working at the United Nations Central Assembly Library. And if you go back and look at the clippings from the 1980s, the UN Library was famously a place, a nest of Soviet spies. And she met with Trump a couple of times. She wrote about it in the Russian press. And from that, the KGB invited Trump to Moscow. He was filled with, Yuri told me exactly what happens when that, and they're sort of bombarded with KGB talking points. And Yuri did that with the spies he recruited. And though Yuri was not specifically dealing with Trump, we see that when Trump came back, suddenly he was full involved in these KGB talking points. And he talked to reporters at the Washington Post, the New York Times, that suddenly he should be negotiating the strategic arms

limitation talks. Remember, this is a time when Trump was palling around with Jeffrey Epstein, and they were having parties with 38 people, 28 of whom were young girls, and two of whom were Epstein and Trump. So the idea that he was very serious about foreign policy is a little hard to take. Nevertheless, he dipped his toe in the water to run for presidency in 88. And among the things he did was take out a full page ad in the New York Times, Washington Post and the Boston Globe. And it was full of talking points, which was exactly what the KGB wanted to hear. And when Uri went back to Moscow and he was in Yosemite, which is the headquarters for counterintelligence, the active measures department delivered a cable, and they were touting their greatest and latest success, having recruited a new asset. And they attached as evidence this ad,

full page ad in the New York Times, signed by Donald Trump. So, you know, you can start from there and see all the favors that Russia, former Soviet emigres, members of the Russian mafia did for Donald Trump, and then just see what Trump did in return for them. I think a lot of people want explicit quid pro quos. I think that's kind of naive. The thing is, if you come to Trump with a few million dollars and say you want to buy a condo, he's not going to ask where it comes from. And this happened in 1984. A Russian mobster named David Bogdan came in with six million dollars in cash, says I'll take five condos. Dude, just for inflation, that's more than $25 million today. This happened enormous number of times with Donald Trump. It wasn't just this one time with David Bogdan.

And I think one of the areas that people don't look at nearly enough is money laundering through real estate. And it's very easy to do. And Trump has done it again and again and again. And I'd love to see that crack down on. I just want to give a quote from Yuri Shvets from your book, American Compromat, quote, this is about Trump, quote, this guy is not a complicated cookie. His most important characteristics is being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This combination makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter. I recently commented on Twitter. I said there's a lot of comparisons between Trump and Putin. But see, I do think

Putin does have the hyperinflated vanity, but I think Putin is of a higher intellect than Trump. So Trump strikes me more in the vein of a Lukashenko, someone who would be a puppet of Putin, you know, then a Putin. And what I feel we see more and more now as all of our eyes and all of our attention has turned to Russia and Putin. The similarities, as you note in your book, between these talking points, the Putin talking points, the Trump talking points, granted, Putin uses something like denazification. But in many ways, it's Trump, you know, with Antifa and creating, you know, these other straw man enemies and the parallels are just so directly striking. I mean, do you believe I mean, is we talk about an indirect kind of relationship that they have where they don't have to actually give marching orders?

But how is the communication actually kind of taking place where the orders where where Trump is actually picking this up? Is he just watching Russian TV? Is it coming through Fox News? Like, how are those parallels just so direct? It looks like he got an email, even though we know Trump doesn't read emails, that say, here's what you need to read today. Right.

You know, I don't know all the answers to those questions, but I think there's a lot of areas to look for. I mean, one is the legal establishment of America. And this is one of the things where I wonder how much Operation Kleptocrat will crack down. But if you look at the huge firms like Jones Day and Kirkland and Ellis, they represent so many oligarchs, the big oil companies, big banks of Russia, Alpha, Rosneft, and the whole lot. So if you look at the managing partner of Jones Day, a guy named

Steve Brogan, he can talk to Vladimir Lechman, who was head of Jones Day's Moscow office and represented an enormous number of Russian oligarchs and so forth, and was someone who Putin could deal with. And you also look at Don McGahn, who was another senior partner of Jones Day and was White House counsel to Donald Trump. Brogan could be meeting with two of his allies, and he's got a wire right in to the Kremlin and the White House simultaneously. I mean, he's talking to the lawyers for two of the most powerful men in the world. Similarly, Kirkland and Ellis, I mean, William Barr was there, and so many of them were, so many of his allies from Kirkland and Ellis were in the Trump Justice Department. What's going to happen with them? If you look at the money laundering I was talking about earlier, it didn't just happen with that one time I mentioned with David Bogdan.

There were at least 1300 condos that Trump sold in his American holdings alone that ticked off the two predicates for money laundering and all cash transaction to an anonymously owned entity. That happened at least 1,300 times. I told you the day the Bogota one was five units. Well, there are at least 1,300 more. That's only for Trump's American properties. And you really think his properties in Panama or Kazakhstan were under higher supervision? That's not necessarily the Philippines. I mean, these countries are known for their corruption. So it probably went on on a massive scale, which would involve billions of dollars. And if you calculate for inflation, it's many billions of dollars. And that money comes out laundered, and it's no longer Russian money, right? When it's laundered. So to what extent is that in the system? I was looking at Open Secrets recently, and they counted over $180 million in Russian

lobbying money going into the GOP in the last 16 years alone. That's a lot. And that doesn't include the $75 million that Paul Manafort has. So I think when you add it all up, you're really talking billions of dollars. And the Russians have become most effective when they do what is hybrid warfare. I mean, I kind of see what's going on in me is it seemed to me Putin and Russia had done this incredibly sophisticated hybrid warfare that caught us all unawares and was enormously effective and efficient. And now he's doing this brutal, clumsy, expensive and failing old style military warfare. But it's the same Putin. And we'll see how it plays out. But I think we have to crack down thoroughly on all the Russian money coming into the GOP because the Russians

own Republican Party. Such a good observation, Craig, that you make is that the level of, people say, three-dimensional chess, like infinite dimensional chess that Putin was playing psychologically and achieving his goals over the past decade, you know, was something that, you know, you'd look at and go, you know, while disturbing for democracy, it was clearly a plan. He knew what he was doing. And then you mentioned, then he does this clunky war and you're like, wait a minute. That's what this was for. And that is very Trumpy. But going back to the law firms that you mentioned, so I'm about 12 years out of law school now. I went to Georgetown Law. And when you go to a school like that,

you get recruited by the firms that you mentioned. I never went in that direction. I don't think our listeners truly know when you mention those names. You and I are both steeped in it. But there are these big law firms where the top law students across the country get recruited to go to. And that's kind of where the law schools themselves push you to go to. And these are not small firms. They have thousands of lawyers and thousands of paralegals. They have offices in all of these countries. And these are American law firms, though mostly they're based in the United States. So like Jones Day, you mentioned, is based in Cleveland. I think Kirkland and Ellis is headquartered in Chicago or New York, but they have offices

all over. But they have offices in foreign countries like Russia, and they do lots of business with oligarchs. And you're a law school student coming out of law school in America, and you could be assigned to a case for an oligarch. And these firms are still there doing the bidding of them. And as far as I know, Craig, like if you're a public relations firm, you have to register, Foreign Registration Act, Foreign Agent. But these law firms, as far as I know, don't usually have to register as foreign agents. They try to carve out exceptions, but they're foreign agents. And

the damage that that does, that's why I didn't go into big law, but that's a real problem that's harming our country. Right. And it's quite different than representing, say, I don't know, Vineyard in France and you're representing the French government in that regard, and they're perfectly legitimate commercial transactions, and that's all fine and well. When you're representing Rosteft or Alpha Bank, you're representing Vladimir Putin. And I should say, a lot of these guys make eight-figure salaries. I mean, they're doing quite well. Craig, do you think when we see this plan that we keep speaking about, this klepto capture plan that the DOJ has engaging in, Merrick Garland released a statement saying that they were going to come after the oligarchs' assets here in America.

How much do you think that's going to affect what we're seeing right now in the country, the Russian influence in the country? Or is this money so well hidden that it will kind of find a way to make its way to the people? they're going after people who've taken measures to avoid anti-money laundering regulations. But the anti-money laundering regulations, as I see it, especially in real estate, have been incredibly lax. Does that mean they are going to completely change them and really, really bear down and force them? I don't know the answer to that. We're going to have to see how it plays out. But I'm sure it's not just in real estate. I kind of gave an outline of how much Trump himself may have profited from this. This could be a billion dollars just for Trump alone. But Trump isn't the only one. There are plenty of other real estate. And by the way, Russia is not the only one who's abusing these laws. The Emirates,

the Saudis, China, there's a lot of that going on. In all, I believe it's the economist James Henry, I think he's used a figure above $30 trillion in dark money out there. And if you just imagine that, that's about twice America's GDP. That is enough to handle a lot of corruption. And there are a lot of people who are not going to walk away from it. And I think we, I mean, that's enough to be a powerful, powerful geopolitical force. And I think that's part of what we've been seeing in this whole conflict, much of which was hybrid warfare, much of it remains as hybrid warfare. And I think we should not take that off the battlefield, even though all the attention right now is focused on Russia being stalled in Ukraine. Ukraine, you know, let's remember Operation Solar Wind, right, which was one of the biggest hacking exercises last year in 2021. They can penetrate the electric grid. There was a penetration. It was not, I don't think it was definitively traced to Russia, but in the Tampa,

Florida water supply. And someone was able to hack into it and raise the level of chlorine by a factor of 100. And amazingly, someone was doing his job and caught it before it was too late. But if not, thousands of people might have died. So there's all sorts of, or imagine shutting off the electric bridge in the middle of winter, even now here in the northern part of the United States. I don't think a lot of people realize that, Craig, that they literally have the capacity to hack our infrastructure, to hack our information, just in the way they disseminate disinformation and the way they've taken over our real estate. I don't know if you've saw this video, but if anybody listening to this wants me to send it to them, you can tweet at me. I'll get you the video. There was a video a

few weeks ago that I saw about an entire city block in London, basically, that was basically known to be owned by the Russians. And it's a place where all these places are places where people work, where people live, apartments, et cetera. And nobody's able to actually trace the original owners of these buildings because of the system, the way it's set up. They're able to hide who actually is behind these buildings. And I just think it's a really fascinating thing and something important to know that the Russians are able to take over so much of our society in all these ways and not even be on the books about it at the end of the day. Well, we can also do that to them to some extent. And I think the most successful,

one of the most successful operations ever was probably a joint US-Israeli venture that shut down the Iran nuclear reactors. That was, I guess, about 10 years ago. But it was a successful intelligence operation in which no one died, you know, I mean, it played a role in sort of tamping down the conflict. So American Compromat, it speaks about Trump. It also speaks about the Republican Party. And in your new article for The New Republic, you speak about how the Republican Party has been infected with this pro-Putin strain. Your article is called How Republicans Spent Decades Cozying Up to Putin's Kremlin. And in the subheader, you ask a question. You say, the man who once worked to connect indicted former Republican

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and casino Jack Abramoff, who is a lobbyist and known convicted felon to Russia, is now the chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Any questions? Well, yes, I've got I got plenty of questions. So Marjorie, chief of staff, who you're referring to is a guy named Ed Buckham. Tell us about Buckham's connection and why should the American people be concerned about his connections to Russia? Right. Well, what you start to see in the 90s, I mean, it's important to understand how far back this goes. And also, I mean, we can't leave Paul Manafort out of this because Manafort and Roger Stone and his other partners were part of what became known as the torturers lobby. And Ed Buckham was part of this as well. And

essentially what you, you know, when I was a kid just coming out of college, I remember being sort of horrified by the way big defense contractors, big pharmaceuticals or big oil would buy their laws by making huge contributions through lawyers who would then make contributions to politicians and help write legislation. Well, what Manafort and Buckham and people like that did is they globalized it. And they said, we're not going to just represent American oil companies, we'll be doing Russians as well. Buckham was one of the first. He ended up getting a million dollars put into Tom DeLay at the time, was one of the two ranking Republicans at the time. And he took a six-day junket with his whole team to Moscow.

They spent time golfing. They met with the prime minister. It was sort of a lavish affair. And when Tom DeLay got back, a group called the United States Family Network and made a million-dollar contribution. The head of the U.S. Family Network was Ed Buckham, who was also the latest chief of staff. So it's not very hard to figure out how that came about. And today, of course, Buckham was sort of drummed out of the party.

This was a big scandal 25 years ago. People forget. I mean, that's another thing you keep the older I get, the longer I cover this stuff. You see how the norms have shifted. When I was a child, Eisenhower, as president, as chief of staff, Sherman Adams was fired. It was a huge national scandal because he received a nice fur coat from a lobbyist. Now we're talking many billions of dollars and still nothing done about it. It is just amazing to me, you know, and not only that, they're representing hostile foreign powers. Russia is not our friend. again and again in so many ways, I don't think people realize the basic consequences. For example, let's take Oleg Deripaska, one of the most powerful oligarchs, one of the closest to Putin, and he's the czar of the aluminum industry. He's behind Rusal, the Russian aluminum conglomerate. Well, aluminum is a strategic resource. By that, I mean it's used in aerospace, airplanes. It's used by Boeing.

It's used for commercial jets. It's used for military aircraft. So do you really want a hostile foreign power in charge of your aluminum industry? And here you have Deripaska approaching Mitch McConnell to build a plant in Kentucky. It looks like this is dead now, but still, this is what is going on. And McConnell voted to lift sanctions on Deripaska at the anticipation of having some of his money come into Kentucky and into the Republican Party. I mean, you have other ways it's flowing in as well. There are naturalized American citizens like Leonid Blavatnik, who is another billionaire oligarch,

but since he's an American citizen, he can pour in as much as he wants to various super PACs for the Republicans. And that's exactly what he does. How do you think this Ed Buckham connection with Marjorie Taylor Greene happens? How does he come to be the chief of staff for Marjorie Taylor Greene out of all this? Does he see her as some sort of unwitting idiot who he could latch on to and then help push pro-Putin talking points and things with her? How does this happen? Well, I don't know the specifics as much as I want to.

I did reach out to him four or five times and he never got back to me. Not surprisingly, you know, as a rule of thumb, I think it's worth following the money. And I think it's naive of people to think that there are always explicit quid pro quos. You know, I'd always wondered about this congressman, Kurt Weldon, who was one of the first, not exactly a famous guy, but he was one of the first congresspeople who was known as Putin's favorite congressman. Another was Dana Rohrabacher, who was also tied up with Ed Buckham. Yeah. And that's who McCarthy famously said, there are two people who I believe put in pay is Rohrabacher and Trump. Absolutely. And for Kurt Weldon, if you dig deep enough, you can find out that his young daughter, she was in her 20s then, didn't have much professional experience.

And she was suddenly making half a million dollars working as a publicist for some Russians. So crazy. And back in the 90s, that's pretty good pay for a young woman in her 20s. So one of the things you stated in your article, you said, for more than 25 years, the party of Reagan has been transforming itself into the party of Putin, only to discover that Vladimir Putin may not be a great role model after all. I'm wondering what the stories that you're telling about, you mentioned Mitch McConnell, you mentioned William Barr. In Trump, they clearly saw vanity and low intellect, as we hit on earlier.

What did the Russians see in the Republican Party as this is who we're going to latch on to? Well, I think there's greed and self-interest is the most obvious. It's just money, money, money. I think there's also a willingness to detach themselves from reality. And it's just extraordinary to me. I mean, I'm not a pro wrestling fan, but it's a huge sport in the United States. And, you know, if you remember Kefefi, do you remember when Trump tweeted Kefefi? How could you forget? How could we forget Kefefi? Well, I started googling around about the early days of pro wrestling, and they had a term I think was called Kefabi.

It was like Kefefi. It was not. Kefeb, I think. That may be it. I don't know how to pronounce it. But in the early days, they were saying, well, are we a sport or are we entertaining? Is this real or is it not? And the truth is Kay Feb or whatever it is came to stand for the suspension of disbelief. So you know what? You may be a fan. You're a fan of Gorgeous George because he's a good guy and you're rooting for him. And that's all that matters. It doesn't matter what he's really like or what the details are. You're behind him. And I mean, it's fascinating watching them do this pirouette on Putin,

now say he's a bad guy, when they've been taking money from him all this time. And what they're gonna do, and they started doing, is they're gonna blame Biden and say it's because he was weak. And I think the real truth is if Trump had been reelected, God forbid, he would have gotten out of NATO. We know that from the reporting in The Washington Post already. And he was acting that way, entirely consistent with the way he was when he was

president. We would have seen something entirely different happening now, which is when the Russian army marched in, there would have been, I mean, the display of unity with Biden and NATO was extraordinary to me. I mean, it was overwhelming. I went so far as the first favorable tweet I've ever tweeted in my life. It's been amazing to see Biden and NATO working together after Trump had destroyed NATO. It has been. And if Trump had been reelected, I'm sure that would not have happened. There would have been no NATO and we would not have been seeing the extraordinary response by Ukraine itself. They would have felt deserted. No doubt in my mind that you are 100% spot on there. Now, that's the GOP. What do you make of

the far right media stations, the Fox News, the OAN, the Newsmax? What's up with their messaging? Why are they so fervently pro-Putin? Well, Fox is a really interesting case, especially Tucker Carlson. I want to do some more research on that before, you know, I've read around it. Tucker, you know, his relationship to Viktor Orban is very interesting. He did seem to make a big switch around 2016. And he's been just very, very pro-Putin ever since. Now he's doing some tap dancing because it's not looking so good, but I'm not sure that shows what's really in his heart. Fox is an international company, right? And they have huge properties all over the world. And I would think it could damage their reputation. What Tucker has been saying and have legal consequences that has not played out.

But I'm sure it's something that's discussed at the highest level of Fox. And that means I'm sort of interested in their chief legal officer is a man named Viet Thanh. Rupert Murdoch is now, I think, in his 90s and is not quite as hands-on as he once was. He handed off to his son, Lachlan Murdoch, but Lachlan moved back to Sydney, Australia, leaving behind Viet Dinh as the chief legal officer. So I'd love to know what he's really thinking and doing on this matter.

And I know you said that you're going to do some more research on those stations in large, but do you think like Murdoch and the Murdochs, do you think they know the division, the civil unrest that they've stoked in this country? I think they have to. It really is odd how people are isolated in their bubbles. I wonder, does Putin really know? Is it possible he can't listen to CNN? Or I mean, how isolated are they? I mean, is it possible that doesn't get back to him? My view is that it has to seep through sooner or later. I mean, he's already had one high profile resignation. And I would think someone like Viet Dinh is very aware of the polarization. But I think

part of the point is that that is profitable. That brings in more money to them, the more polarization. I mean, if we were a quiet United country, who's going to watch Fox News? It is like watching pro-wrestling. No, you're exactly right. Profit over people, as some people like to say. And it's sad. It's a really sad thing. And I just have one more question for you, because I know we're running out of time here. And thank you so much for giving us this time. It's been amazing. Through all of your research, your writings, would you consider Donald Trump the biggest embarrassment slash just least patriotic figures in American history? He's just heinous beyond belief. And I was stunned. I was in New York Magazine in the 80s.

And even then, I found him sort of a repulsive character. But at least it was just, okay, you have this, let's see, real estate developer. That happens, right? But they were glamorizing him. And it was good for sales. It was catnip for the gossip columnists. He would call them up. He fed that and they bought it. And I think there is certainly a part of the mainstream media deserves a lot of the blame for elevating him to what he

became. Greg, I think you're right there. And there's a lot of blame as, you know, Jordy stated in his question, as Brett mentioned, you know, on Fox, I mean, you know, because they're the direct actor, but you think about the mainstream media, you think about what it is they're covering, what their choices are, it is obvious without even massive amounts of research. You've delved deep though to give the answers and the receipts, but it's not, I mean like Trump congratulated Putin on being man of the year. Like the Republicans are out there rooting for Putin in public right now. And you barely hear a peep from the mainstream media about an entire political party in the Republicans who have basically surrendered their patriotism, have surrendered to Putin. You just don't hear about it.

And they talk about Democrats, Republicans, you know, as though it's like, you know, oh, you know, this side's winning today and that side's winning today. It's like one side is completely traitors. Like, I don't know how else to say it. If my side of Democrats became traitors, I'd stop being a Democrat. But like, can we just like,

like the media needs to focus on this. Right. And it's especially, you know, I grew up during the Cold War and the Republicans back then were the hardline Cold War warriors against Moscow. And suddenly they're in Moscow's pocket. It's quite, quite extraordinary. Craig Unger, thank you so much for joining us on the pod. Everybody go out and buy. I'm sure people have it already. I might as mighty know you, Craig. But if you don't have it, you got to get it immediately. American Compromat, how the KGB cultivated Donald Trump and related tales of sex, greed, power, and treachery. Go and buy that right after the interview and check out Craig's most recent column in the New Republic,

how Republicans spent decades cozying up to Putin's Kremlin. Craig, it's been great speaking to you. Slightly scary and nerve wracking, but I'm sure you get that a lot when you hear these. But we could diagnose the problem. That's how we fix it. Well, thank you. I enjoyed being with you. It's a great interview with Craig Unger.

Compromise, a great book. I like that he doesn't mince words. I like that. Very direct. And I'm not doesn't mince words like that. Very direct. And I'm not going to mince words here. The Democrats are going to win in 2022 if they follow this very simple formula. Stop calling Republicans conservative. Just stop it.

That's number one. They're not conservative. Frame who they are. They are radical right extremists who want to destroy our democracy. Repeat after me. Republicans are radical right extremists who want to destroy our democracy. We could add on to that. You know what they also want to do? They want to increase your taxes. They want to increase your taxes. Let's add on.

Republicans are radical right extremists who want to overthrow democracy and they want to increase your taxes. It's going to be a long sentence now. And where do we get that from? Literally, that's in the plan. The plan is to raise your taxes. Show this clip of Rick Scott on Fox News. I love when they go on Fox News and get the facts. John Roberts, who's pretty good. John Roberts says, that's literally what your plan is. Play it. Recently put out an 11 point plan to rescue America. Two of the big points of which are,

quote, all Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently, over half of Americans pay no income tax. It also says all federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again. So that would raise taxes on half of Americans and potentially sunset programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Why would you propose something like that in an election year? Sure.

Well, John, that's, of course, the Democrat talking points. It's a plan. It's a plan. But here's this thing about reality for a second. Let's talk about Medicare. It's not a Democratic talking point. It's in the plan. OK, so let's add to it.

The Republicans are radical right extremists who want to overthrow democracy. They want to raise taxes. And they want to, you heard it there, destroy Social Security. They want to take away your Social Security. Okay? Can we repeat this over and over again? Let's add to it. What they also want to do is take away a woman's right to choose.

They want to have the government get involved in those decisions. They want to take away your ability to get contraception. They want to outlaw contraception. They want to remove your right to choose outlaw contraception. So should we tie all of these kind of concepts together now? The Republicans are radical right extremists who want to overthrow our democracy. They want to raise taxes. They want to destroy social security. They want to ban contraception. They want to take away the right to choose. I could keep adding on. They want to ban books. They are pro-racism. They want another civil war. They are pro-insurrection. I can go on and on. Repetition, folks. Repetition, folks. But then I want to focus on the positive. Like we have the lowest

unemployment under Biden since 1969. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week fell to its lowest level in 52 years as the U.S. job market continues to show strength in the midst of rising costs and an ongoing virus pandemic. So positive news. But what about what about spending and the deficit and debt? Because all I hear from the right, Ben, are about that spend liberals, right? How about Biden's budget is projected to cut the deficit by over one trillion dollars, whereas the deficit already fell already from three point one trillion to two point eight trillion in twenty twenty one and is expected to fall another one point four trillion $1.4 trillion this year. Biden is cutting the deficit that Trump created. Republicans are not conservative. Republicans are radical right-wing extremists who want to destroy democracy,

who want to raise taxes, who want to destroy your ability to get social security, who want to ban contraception, who want to take away your right to choose, who want to ban books, who want to increase the deficit while the Democrats are the ones fighting for you. That is how you win 2022 in under 10 minutes. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this edition of the Midas Touch podcast. Ben, Brett, and Jordy, fighting for you each and every day. Special thanks to our guest, Craig Unger. I also want to give a shout out to our sponsors, AG1 and ExpressVPN. Check them out.

Support our sponsors. That supports our show. Thank you so much. We will see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.