Ben Wittes: Putin’s Cheerleaders

Hey, guys. Welcome to weekend pod. Quick update here. We have breaking news all over the place today. We had a guest switch brought in Ben Willis because of his expertise on Russia and to talk about what happened with Alexei Navalny.

And so I think you’re gonna enjoy that conversation. Obviously, we also get into Fawnee Willis case of the Trump trials with Ben, but we have breaking news out of New York. Finally, we have a decision from Judge Arthur and Geron about Donald Trump’s business case, three hundred and fifty million is the judgment against the Trump family in this financial fraud case. As a result, They are barred. Trump and his two sons, two grown adult sons, Eric and Donald Trump junior, barred from doing business in New York serving as officers or directors of any corporation or entity in New York for three years, just two years for the sons.

Absolutely massive news. Of course, they’re going to appeal. But this, does have some political implications, of course, but the personal implications. And this is Donald Trump’s ego. You know, he put that big trump name on everything because it was so wrapped up into his whole personage.

And to have this stripped away from him, the rage bleeding that we are going to get, the just complete loss of self control as a result of finally facing consequences for his actions. I have to say it’s pretty delicious. One line I wanna pull out here from Judge Engran, The Trump family’s complete lack of contrition and remorse for their extensive fraud and egregious financial misconduct quote, borders on pathological. He went on fact that expert witnesses simply denied reality and defendants failed to accept responsibility. Or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences pathological.

That’s right. We’ve seen that in Donald Trump’s behavior time and time again. Finally, he’s held to account for it much to discuss on this podcast with Ben Willis. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend. And we will be back with you on Monday.

Peace. Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I’m your host, Tim Miller, and we’ve got with us an old friend, Ben Whitis, he is with the Brookings institution. He was with Charlie on the Trump trials.

Lawfair? You know?

Lawfair. Alright. Lawfair. That’s a that’s quite the buzz word these days. I notice on Capitol Hill.

And then the president’s, bleeds. He’s been learning about lawfare. And every time he does it, I I just attach the support lawfare link and share it because, you know, Why not?

Why not? I know. Every time he jumps out us, like, he learned a new word. Maybe we blame you for that a little bit. Okay.

Well, we brought you in kind of the last minute here because we have some pretty sad news this morning, Lexi Navalny, a Russian president, Vladimir Putin’s most formidable opposition opponent collapsed and died on Friday. After a walk at the polar wolf Arctic penal colony where he’d been serving a bullshit three decade jail term He’s forty seven years old. I guess before I get your reaction, I wanted to just take a moment to appreciate the bravery of Navalny who knew the risks that he was taking, going back to Russia, and he talked about why he did that a few years ago in an interview with Krishna Nam. Let’s listen to that.

Why do you wanna go back? And and I guess do you think you’ll be safe when you go back?

Well, well, I don’t think that I, can have aside such a privilege being safe in Russia, but, I have to go back because I don’t want these, you know, groups of killer exist in Russia. I don’t want Putin, be ruling of Russia. I don’t him being president. I don’t want him being Zarya of Russia because, well, he’s killing people. He’s, reason why our the whole country is degradating.

He’s the reason why people are so poor. We have twenty five millions of people living below the poverty line. And the whole degradation of system fortunately for me, including system of assassination of people. He’s the reason of that. And, I want to go back and try to change

it. Well, not a lot of heroes these days, but, he certainly won. Ben, what’s your reaction to the news this morning?

Alright. So a few things. The first is that I will accept that it is true when and only when Navalny’s people announce it. It’s not that I doubt that it’s true. It’s that as a matter of principle, don’t accept any factual representation, coming from the Russian government.

What we have right now is a Russian government claim in their media that he is dead and that the circumstances you describe are the circumstances of his death. Let me Start with that. Let’s wait until his people actually confirm it. He has a very developed organization. Second thing is that assuming it is true, we should not say that he collapsed and died on a walk at a penal colony.

He was murdered by Vladimir Putin at a minimum by putting him in a penal colony in which death is a very likely probability. We’ve all been expecting his death for a while But, you know, the persistent allegations that he was being poisoned or that he was being mistreated have been such that we shouldn’t default to the passive voice or to make him the subject rather than the object of the sentence This is somebody who is other than Volodymyr Zelensky, the single most important enemy of Vladimir Putin in the world who voluntarily returned himself to Russia after having been poisoned once. Remember the reason he was abroad was that he had been nova chucked in a fashion that he then you know, revealed how it was done. And so if he is dead, we should wait for his people to confirm that and we should also assume irrespective of the stated cause of death, his imprisonment, and his disappearance was an effort to kill him and remove him from Russian politics, and we should not let Putin get away with that by reflecting the causes of death as though they are not intentionally inflicted My guess is that, a, that he is dead is true and, b, that there is something more active here than a walk in the park.

Certainly. We’re gonna be sending this video as a strongly worded letter to our friends at Reuters wire with a lesson about the passive voice Nivani’s wife, Julia was at the Munich Security Conference this morning, and she spoke in pretty similar terms to what you just said. She caveats at the start if it’s true. I want Putin, his entourage, Putin’s friends, and his government to know that they’ll be held responsible for what they have done to our country, my family, and my husband. And that day will come very soon.

Joe Biden in twenty twenty one threatened Vladimir Putin over Navalny’s death. He warned of devastating consequences for Russia if Navalny dies in prison, so With that caveat that both you and Julia offered, let’s presume it’s true. What next? What are the implications?

First of all, if it’s true, it’s a devastating blow. One of the problems that the Russian opposition has had over the years is that a lot of their people have turned out to be co optable in some respect. Some of them have turned out to be ultra Jonathan Last, and the ones who have been honorable, straightforward people. And there are a bunch of them, of course, most famously, Boris nemtsov, Putin has just murdered. And there’s a saying where you can kill a person, but you can’t kill a dream, but it actually turns out that if you kill enough people.

It makes a pretty big act on on the dream. And Navalny was a special figure in that he had an ability to talk not principally to elite Russians, elite Russian liberals, but to people who were just angry about the capacity of the Russian government to fuck them over and become gazillionaire oligarchs with palaces. Right? And he was extremely talented at talking about things that Russians actually cared about. I do think if it is true, the loss to the idea of a Russian opposition, a genuinely democratic opposition in Russia that does not aspire to imperial conquest of half of Europe It’s a significant blow.

What happens next? Look, there is not that much the United States can do about this. This is very internal to Russia. You know, it’s literally an appeal colony in the deepest darkest reaches of Siberia. And we’ve already done a lot of things like freezing assets that, you know, as a result of Ukraine.

And so it’s not that there’s a lot of US potential pressure on Russia that we’re not already exerting.

We can’t take any more yachts. There aren’t any more yachts that we can take or New York penthouse apartments?

I would hope we’ve already taken the yacht. K. But what we can do is talk about it and talk about it a lot. I plan to, project the word murderers on the Russian Embassy this evening, and there will be a series of protests, I’m sure, and look both at the senior levels of government and at the individual levels people should talk about it. People should play the clips of Navalny, play the videos that he made.

These are astonishing pieces of kind of investigative. I mean, a lot of them, they’re in Russian because we’re not the audience for them, but people should really learn about what it is that that organization and what he did. And remember it the next time Carlson tells you that, you know, we you may not agree with Putin, but we should listen to him.

Yeah. I wanna I wanna get to our friend, talk her in a second. Just to put a finer point, and I pulled this up a, that AG Hamilton was sharing the partial list of Putin critics or opponents who have mysteriously died or been targeted or obviously assassinated over the last few years. At Navalny, now twice, Pregozian, Maganov, Kango Schvili, shot in Berlin, twenty nineteen, Verzilov, poisoned, twenty eighteen, Serge, you’re gonna have to excuse some of my Russian pronunciations, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, and Britain, in eighteen, nemesau, which he mentioned in fifteen, This is something that people know. Right?

It’s not like a secret that Putin has been engaging in these types of assassinations of his political opponents But is not navalny, maybe a category difference from those examples, as far as maybe rallying more intense focus and opposition.

So I think he’s certainly the most important since Nemtsoff, and he may be more important than Nemtsoff. You know, a lot of the people that you mentioned are people who those not familiar with contemporary Russian politics. Those are names you wouldn’t know. I mean, Gripal and his daughter, of course, are are a little bit different because it was in the UK, and it was somebody that had been treated in a spy exchange, but most of those people are relatively obscure in the west. Navalny is not obscure.

And in fact, it was only a few weeks ago that, you know, he disappeared for a while in that prison, and There was a lot of concern that he was dead at the time, and the expression began Navalny, whereas Navalny was a like, a big trending social media thing. And Lincoln talked about it publicly, secretary blinking, and then the Russians you know, let him release a little video. There was a kind of proof of life situation. And so they are not entirely unresponsive to public pressure about him. The problem is that once he is dead, the public pressure is for what.

Right? What’s the accountability that you can demand for one dead Alexei Navalny that demanding for, you know, fifty thousand dead Ukrainians and twenty thousand missing stolen Ukrainian children If you’ve resisted that, what’s the added pressure that you can do? And look, the answer is that the president of the United States should talk about it. Everybody at the Munich Security Conference should be talking about it. And, you know, people should exact a price.

And, I would hope that companies that are still doing business in Russia now get the question again only with Navalny instead of Ukraine as the reason for the question or in addition to Ukraine, Am I optimistic that there is some magic lever that will be pulled now because Navalny is dead, that was not true because of a full scale invasion and genocidal conduct in Ukraine, no Do I think we should all act like there is?

Yes. The range of bad actors, this highlights over here in America, particularly in not particularly entirely, basically, in the Republican Party.

Don’t leave out Jill Stein.

Oh, and Jill. And our friend, Jill, the enablers to the propagandas. Before we get to Tucker and, and Sarah Longwell and and Denesh De Susan, the worst actors, I wanna highlight something that Kensinger put up on his sub stack this morning that Alexei Navalny was everything that the GOP isn’t taking a stand doesn’t have to cost your life but god forbid you lose your access. I do wonder, let’s just put Tucker in that kind of crowd of comrades over in a box for one second. As we look to Ukraine aid and the actual, you know, responses that are necessary, might something like this backfire on Putin as far as forcing, you know, some of the spineless weasels, the Mike Johnson’s of the world, to actually finally act and show a little backbone.

Do you see any possible green shoots there?

Look. In a sane world, where Republicans were holding up Ukraine aid because of the border, but not because of the border and insisting on border legislation, but then nixing border legislation and letting the Russians overrun of DIVka because the Ukrainians don’t have enough artillery in the same world, like that. If Putin murdered his most important critic, you would think cooler heads would prevail and the speaker would call an immediate vote for unconditional, unattached Ukraine aid so that at least he doesn’t get the windfall of congressional inaction on top of murdering his chief critic. But if you haven’t noticed him, we don’t live in an entirely sane world. We live in a world in which all the data prove everybody’s hypothesis.

And you know, for a lot of Mike Johnson’s and Tucker Charlie Sykes, you know, this just might show the need for more dialogue with Putin. After all, if maybe he only killed Navalny because, you know, we haven’t been being nice enough to him. So I I do worry that people will cram it into their own crazy preconceptions of the thing. That said, look, this should concentrate everybody’s mind. This is a murderous guy.

He’s murderous at the national level. He’s murderous at the personal level. And he’s murderous at the state institutional level. And, you know, the United States has to be more Kenzinger than Johnson about this. And we just have to, you know, put certain domestic considerations aside and just pass that supplemental?

Well, you suggested that maybe the tuckers of the world would show that this needs additional dialogue. We’re doing it live this morning, Ben. Tucker is actually on stage right now at the World Government summit twenty twenty four.

Could I get that right?

I don’t exactly know what he said. But, let’s just listen to it live together.

You should challenge in in in the rules of an interview and you’re a master in in your in your business. It’s not for me to give you a lecture about that. But you should challenge some ideas. For instance, you didn’t talk about freedom of speech in in Russia. You did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about about the restrictions on opposition in the coming, elections.

I didn’t talk about the things that every other American outlet talks about Why? Because those are covered and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following. That every leader kills people, including my leader, every leader kills people. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people.

Sorry. That’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader. That press restriction is universal in the United States. I know because I’ve lived it. I’ve, you know, asked my former, you know, I I’ve had a lot of jobs.

And I’ve done this for thirty four years, and I know how it works. And, there’s more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there’s a great deal in the United States. And so, you know, at a certain point, it’s like people can decide whether they think, you know, what what countries they think are better, what systems I just wanna know what he thinks. That was the whole point. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Leadership requires killing people.

Leadership requires killing people. I, you know, I wasn’t far off there. Look, there is nothing we can do about the tuckers of the world. There is something we can do about the Mike Johnson’s of the world, and that involves in the short term, a maximum pressure campaign to get him to hold this vote, and I do hope that the Navalny story, if it’s true, will work as a significant arrow in that quiver, and I’m confident that Navalny would want that as well. The second thing is that these people really need to be removed from power.

And that’s a longer term electoral thing, but people who don’t understand that you need to stand up to Vladimir Putin really need to not be in power.

Yeah. You know what it reminds me of just listening to that is twenty I can’t remember if it was during the campaign in twenty sixteen or maybe right after he’s elected president. Trump does the interview with O’Reilly where O’Reilly asks him about. Putin and his assassinations. Yeah.

You think we’re so pure?

You think our country’s so innocent? We’ve got a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent? That mindset, there was the interview this week with Marco where he’s talking to Jake Tapper, and he’s like, yeah. Trump says some crazy things.

He’s not part of the council on foreign relations. But you can’t, you know, take that all seriously. And just how wrong that worldview is and how much the Trump worldview. That the United States is not great, that the United States is not any different from any of these other countries in motivation. It is a very debased view of the country, a very dark view of the country, and it has infected clearly a huge portion of the Republican Party, like the party that used to feel that we were, you know, the hope of the world.

Now, oh, you think we’re so innocent. Oh, everybody’s a killer. Everybody murders their political foes. We have Dinesh DeSouza today. Saying that Trump is Navalny, that Biden is Putin, and that he’s being persecuted.

Not just Denise Jesus is saying that, Ben, Here’s Lee Zelda. Lee Zelda, one of the good Republicans supposedly. One

of those famous moderate Republicans.

Yeah. At the world reflects on the murder of Alexei Navalny at the hands of Putin, it’s worth remembering that Democrats are actively doing Biden’s bidding as they also try to imprison his chief political opponent Donald Trump. I mean, this just disgusting moral equivalence has infected so much of the party Is a disinfectant even possible once you’ve gotten to this dark of a place?

I think there’s two answers to that and one relates to the criminal justice system. And the other relates to the political culture. And the answer with respect to the justice system is that if you can watch the proceedings against Navalny and watch the proceedings against Donald Trump and see them as equivalent, then you are really, really misunderstanding both the Russian justice system and its function and the American justice system and its function. These are

That’s a very nice way to put that.

Right. I would say the Russian justice system is a fuchs Hoey and nightmare. It is an instrument of the repressive powers of the state, and nothing more than that. The American Justice system has its problems, but, you know, Donald Trump is getting four fair trials in four different jurisdictions by four different judges, state, and federal, and he will have an ample opportunity to prove himself innocent of each and every one of the ninety one felony accounts that has been directed against him. And by the way, I don’t believe he’ll actually, he may not be convicted of all of them.

Right? They’re they’re actually in doubt. The burden is actually on the prosecution. And part of the answer to your question has to lie in the system playing out, and we get to the end, we get to him being convicted on x number and acquitted or dropped on y number, and people get to look at the result and say, do I think that result has integrity. The answer in the political system is way harder in my view because I don’t know how do you convince a political culture that it has integrity, that its systems have integrity.

And in the face of a relentless multi year campaign of delegitimization that includes, you know, Dinesh DeSouza saying these things and Lee Zelda saying these things. How do you keep people having confidence in the fact that the US system and the Russian system are not the same? That Joe Biden isn’t out there murdering his political opponents. By the way, he’s supposed to be too old and senile to be out there killing people?

His own son is being investigated by the DOJ.

That’s right.

Right. It is hard. And this is the part that is so frustrating. Just when you think about the disintegration, for another interview that might be coming down people’s Pike in a while, I was rewatching the pale and correct interview last night. And for as bad as Sarah Longwell wasn’t that interview, and it was astonishing how bad she was upon rewatch.

It was kind of worse than I remembered really. Still, The talking points were much more in the mainstream of where the American policy is. She talks about Reagan and the shining city on the hill when the issue of American leadership comes up. She talks about the threat from Putin She talks about worries about climate change. And you fast forward to this week.

And Sarah Longwell, did you see this? Sarah Palon puts up a meme that is Tucker and Putin’s face superimposed on two people that are smiling, looking over a grave, And on the gravestone, it says the media and the Democrats. This woman who was on the vice presidential ticket, whatever you think. About her, you know, how much of a clown she’s become now. It’s not someone with no influence.

And she’s just a couple of days ago putting out like literally cheerleading the idea that Vladimir Putin is murdering journalists. And days after she does that, he murders allegedly the opposition leader, political leader, And we’re already seeing in the response wagon circling around this. At something that’s stark, if that’s dark of a faux pas, imagine if you put out a joke about killing somebody, and then two days later it happened. If that doesn’t shake you into reality, you know, what is gonna shake these people? Nothing.

Well, I I also think, you know, after mass shootings, when there’s a political veil Yes. To the mass shooting, we always, you know, have okay, is it Bernie Sanders’ fault that somebody shot up the congressional baseball game? Is it Donald Trump’s fault that there was a pulse night club shooting. Right? I never know how to think about those questions.

But I do think that we should ask a causal question in here about Tucker’s trip, which is if you’re Vladimir Putin, you’ve kind of made a decision that you’ll kill Navalny at the most opportune moment, but you do wanna time it because there’s gonna be some backlash. And then Congress goes on a four month stall on Ukraine aid. And so you really have this perception that the American political system is weakening in its resolve to confront you. And then in the middle of that, one of the most prominent Russia apologists in the United States, second only to Donald Trump himself, shows up in Moscow to kiss your ass.

Really, maybe first. Now let’s just listen to Tucker at the grocery store. I’m sure most people have heard it, but let’s just all do it together. Because really it should be a communal experience.

If you take people’s standard of living and you tank it through of filth and crime and inflation, and they literally can’t buy the groceries they want. At that point, maybe it matters less what you say or whether you’re good person or a bad person, you’re wrecking people’s lives in their country, and that’s what our leaders have done to us. And coming to a Russian grocery store, the heart of evil and seeing what things cost to how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That’s how I feel anyway. Raticalized.

We’re not making any of this up by the way at all.

Not making it up, Ben.

Not making it up in a country where twenty five percent of the population doesn’t have running water. By the way. Look, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the question. Did Vladimir Putin take the current posture of the GOP, both in Congress and with Tucker’s visit and with everything Sarah Paeland’s doing. You put it all together.

Did he take it as a sign that this is a good moment to do this? I don’t know how to evaluate that, but I do wake up this morning wondering about it.

My response to that is kind of like, doesn’t that give too much agency to Putin? Is maybe the heart of darkness in all of us, not all not all of us fall country, but is not the heart of darkness in in Tucker did Donald Trump reveal a darkness that was already within because these fucking guys

Oh, of course. No. No. My my point is when we act like shells for him, he takes it as a signal. These are not things that don’t affect his thinking of what he can get away with.

When you stand up to him, He takes that as a signal. When you pucker your lips and kiss his ass, he takes that as a signal.

He’s getting a lot of good signals.

He’s getting a lot of good signals.

It is so enraging. The Tucker thing, as we sit here and listen to it, and discuss it in the context of Navalny, you know, I’ve been watching all these Tucker videos and kind of laughing. Adam. Right? Because there’s there’s nothing funny about it.

Like, the absurdity of Tucker, this fucking supposed man of the people who’s apparently never heard of the idea of the grocery cart machines where you put in a quarter, and you have to put in the quarter again on the back end in order to put it back. Like, he’s never had a paid grocery cart. He’s never seen that before. He’s never been to an airport, I guess. So there is some absurdity in Tucker going into one metro station and be like, wow.

This is pretty. Russia must be great.

Yeah. I just wanna point out that place. Those people have been being impressed with those metro stations, you know, since the Stalin era, and in a fashion that they then impute to Russia in general and miss things like the great Ukrainian famine. Right? Because they’re really impressed with a subway station.

Like, this is really old shit Yeah. That he’s falling for And, yeah, people in the nice parts of Moscow live way better than people in the rest of the largest country in the world.

Yeah. He should go visit the Nebraska or the main or the Alabama of Russia and see what see what he what he thinks.

He should drive a hundred miles out of Moscow, fifty miles out of Moscow.

But the thing is he isn’t falling for it. And that’s the thing. He’s not falling for Like, Tucker is a very smart person. It’s very evident in his writing and in in back when he did interviews that were not the type of interview that he did last week. He is a malevolent person that has decided that out of either grievance towards his fellow Americans for some reason or out of hatred, you know, that he does not get the treatment among the American elites that he wishes that he did or just out of desire for money or fame or because he’s a fucking troll or because he’s a nihilist, whatever motivations you wanna impute on, is a person that knows better and is now out there being the number one propagandis for a homicidal maniac that just murdered his political opponents and that is kidnapping children that has invaded another country And, like, the lack of just total rage and disgust among the Republican elites and Tucker’s other friends and allies is the thing that is like the most to me disheartening about that because the response should and I’m guilty of this.

The response should not be laughter It should be rage. It’s enraging.

I completely agree, and I do also agree with your friend Carville that mocking them is actually important.

Thank you for listening on my first week.

No. I I listened to the mall. And look, I believe in mockery. I’m the guy who projects, you know, body shit on on embassies around the world.

Yeah.

I think mockery is a really important thing, and it plays an important role, but you don’t confuse the mockery with your internal emotional response. Because the mockery is what you’re projecting no pun intended at them. The rage is what’s driving the mockery. And I spend a lot of time with real Ukrainians, and I find myself increasingly having to explain the behavior of my country to them.

Yeah.

And they are not like Tucker and Trump, they actually believe in America.

Yes.

In this really pardon me innocent way, We’re the people who confronted the Soviet Union, we’re the people who organized NATO, we’re democracy, and you know, relatively non corrupt capitalism, we’re the shield of the democratic world, and try to explain Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. Why does Donald Trump hate Ukraine to a table full of Ukrainians, and it has something to do. Right? It has something to do with Burisma. Personal pettiness.

Right. It’s this little little shit. While they are trying to keep their country independent and trying to get twenty thousand kids back and not lose as many people as they can save. And, you know, it’s a very enraging thing when you’ve had to have that conversation for the fiftieth time and Half of the country’s behavior in this space, not half. Thirty percent is really inexcusable.

And, you know, as somebody who spends a lot of time trying to help Ukrainians navigate our crazy political system, just try to explain it to a hypothetical twenty two year old Ukrainian kid who doesn’t understand, like, what Fox News is or who Tucker Carlson is, just try.

It’s sad. The inverse of that was once true. It was one of the most inspiring things when I was working for McCain Mark Salter, his speechwriter, you know, tell me stories of traveling and McCain all over the world. And it was these types of people, the twenty two year old Ukrainians, the twenty two year old Georgians, people in countries that had autocrats of their own, and they knew that McCain brand, the American brand, it meant something. It meant that, oh, they Will Saletan our side.

They will be on our side. And now these people have to feel like, no. Yep. There’s a big portion on the country that’s on the side of the murder and the despot. Okay.

You’re supposed to be here for truck trials to very brief Trump trial updates that, I just wanna get in yesterday. Trump appointed special counsel. This is related to the topic at hand. David Weiss, is charging Alexander Smereenoff. I feel like the the script writers are a little on the nose here.

By naming him Smereenoff, age forty three, with lying to the FBI and creating false records who was arrested, also a little on the nose at Harry Reed International Airport in Las Vegas what he’s charged with is basically fabricating the notion that he was talking about Burisma business dealings with punter and with Joe Biden when Biden was vice president. Right? I guess, and who knows what’s true at this point, if a liar’s a liar, but at some point, there was evidence that they had spoken about it after, you know, during the period when Trump was president when Biden was a private citizen that he fabricated to investigators, the idea that these conversations were going when Biden was vice president, obviously a big difference. And so, you know, this guy was meant I believe on the Hannity show, eighty two, maybe not by name, but, like, this claim was mentioned on Hannity eighty two, ninety two times, something like that. He’s been star witness for Comer.

Another one bites the dust here on the Hunter Biden investigation.

Yeah. So I have two things to say about this, and I have not followed this case especially closely because I was glued to the television for the Fannie Willis show yesterday. Look, there’s two really important points. First of all, the prosecutor who has brought this case is the same prosecutor who’s prosecuting hunter Biden. It’s the special counsel, David Weiss.

Yep.

So in other words, this is somebody who’s trying to make a case against Hunter Biden. And this witness fabricates this stuff, and he ends up prosecuting him. So, you know, that’ll give you an idea of you know, this is presumably a receptive audience to somebody who’s, you know, got a claim of of a demand of a big bribe from somebody about Hunter and Joe Biden. And yet he turns around and prosecutes him. That’ll give you an idea of how credible this story was.

The second thing is there’s two sides of the Hunter Biden story. One is the side that you know, Hunter Biden was an addict and engaged in all sorts of shady stuff and traded on his father’s name. And you know, got himself into a fair bit of trouble, legal trouble. The second aspect of it was that this was somehow a larger story about Joe Biden than about Hunter Biden. And the different bricks in that story have all turned out to be Bulwark.

And it doesn’t stop Comer from talking about the Biden crime family. You know, no component of it ends up being true. For the simple reason, I think that Joe Biden isn’t corrupt. He what whatever else he is, he’s old. He’s, you know, he is what he is, and he appears to have mishandled classified information, but he’s not he’s not a corrupt guy taking bribes.

So what happens is they get very excited about these people who have some story to tell. And then they turned out to be Charlie Sykes, or they turned out to not tell the stories that they claim they tell. And it’s a very consistent pattern now over time that should make you be real careful with the hannities and comers of the world who are trying to make Hunter Biden be about Joe Biden.

And this was obvious from the start. Yes. The Burisma thing was so obvious from the start. The whole the whole conspiracy theory, I’ve been writing about for years. We could do a whole episode.

Maybe we will this year on the absurdity of the Burisma conspiracy. Okay. The Fony Willis situation has been so depressing and dispiriting to me that I was not able to watch it just because I hate anything that gives Donald Trump a hammer to beat us with us being the pro democracy, pro rule of law side of things. So We’ve got about three to five minutes here. So since I was too depressed to watch and you are glued to it, I’m just gonna put a quarter in the machine and let you kinda get us up to speed.

So the hearing is still going on today, and it is a mark of my, deep respect for you that I am here rather than watching now. This was the best

Just like my babysitter during OJ. She didn’t turn off court TV back in, for probably an entire week.

This is better TV than court TV at its best during the OJ trial. So look, Fani Willis has a bit of a problem, but I I think she actually solved most of it herself yesterday. She had this relationship with a guy she had hired as a special prosecutor in this case Jonathan Last Nathan Wade took the stand yesterday. The issue is whether there’s some conflict of interest as a result of their financial arrangements through this affair. He took the stand and was, I thought completely incredible, claimed that they had gone on vacation together, but, you know, she’d paid him back for everything in cash.

The court also heard testimony from former friend of Fannie Willis, who’s apartment she had taken over, who claimed that Wade and Willis had been dating much earlier than they’ve acknowledged. And the significance of that would be that it’s much worse she hired the person she was sleeping with, and if she hired somebody, and then they later in a context of a professional relationship started to have a romantic relationship. So things around two o’clock in the afternoon look really bad for Fanny. And then she charges into the courtroom and demands to testify. And I have never seen somebody take over a courtroom like she did.

She comes in, she sits down, and She talks about why she always keeps cash around her apartment, and she is as compelling as he was apparently evasive. And I think by the end of the day, she hadn’t really saved the situation And I don’t know what’s going on there today or whether the situation is gonna end up being bad again. But I do have the impression that there is no basis to disqualify her after both Jonathan Last and her sworn testimony. And so that’s a little tentative because, like, they are literally in court right now, but I think this is gonna end up being a bit of a tempest in a teapot. But it was a heck of a tempest in a teapot.

And an entertaining tempest? I mean, it’s got some Perry Mason. It’s got some general hospital. It’s got some house cards. It was great daytime television.

I’m gonna take your word for this, but look, we gotta have our keys and queues in order here, Ben. So I’m thinking about this through the comms guy hat. We’re giving him a lot of fodder to bleed. There’s a lot of bleeding fodder right now, and there’s a lot of delays. We’re giving him some delaying opportunities and some bleeding fodder.

There is no doubt. There is no doubt. That if Bonnie Willis had come to me and say, witness, you know, you’re you’re a good gray beard on this shit, not that I have a gray beard, but you should I have an affair with the special prosecutor and reimburse him for joint travel with wads of cash? I would have said no part of that sounds like a good plan. It’s gonna come out.

You’re gonna get your ass kicked over this. You’re gonna have litigation over this, and it’s gonna let Trump change the subject. That’s what I would have said, but she didn’t consult me in advance about this. Neither did Nathan waive He also didn’t ask me how he should answer his divorce interrogatories. So, like, nobody consulted me on this part, I would have suggested they handle it differently.

That’s not the question on the table right now. The question on the table right now is is she gonna get disqualified from the case? And is Donald Trump gonna reap a real windfall from this? And I I think, you know, you could eat these words, but I think the answer is no.

Ben Will Saletan you for coming out of the bullpen today. It’s like, all my baseball references are twenty years old. I don’t watch baseball anymore, but you’re Mariano Rivera. Or thirty years old Dennis Acrisley, you know, coming out of the pen and just doing a wonderful job. Goose gossage, closing out the week with us.

And, I’m very, very grateful for your expertise and for doing this, and we’ll be talking to you soon.

Thanks, Tim.

Hey, everybody. That was a great first week. You for sticking with me, and thank you to all our guests, to Ben with us today, and, sending our regards to family, the life of Alexei Navalny, rest in power, and hopefully the Americans and our Republican friends are gonna do the right thing in response to this. We will see you all right back here next week. I’m looking forward to it.

The Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.