BONUS B-Side Pod: Epstein a Mystery, Not a Conspiracy; Trump FASTER than Putin: Ari x Bazelon, Shteyngart in Pod Chat

You know, recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are different. If a podcast isn't your thing, you lose a few minutes. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. Maybe I Know a Guy just isn't enough for your home. That's why Thumbtack works. It matches you with top-rated local pros with photos, reviews, and credentials all in one place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. At DSW, we ask the important questions. Like, what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an RSVP. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with designer shoe warehouse. Head to your DSW store or DSW.com today. And let us surprise you. Hey, it's Ari Melburgh, the journalist and attorney. We're at MS now, although we're off air outside Extra. And I have Emily Bazelon, New York Times Legal Writer. Nice to see you. Glad to be here. We want to talk about some serious stuff, including what we've learned in the Epstein case and how that's unfolding. I also want to ask you because here we're talking about everything under the sun and how you feel about whether law works. Is it worse? Is it falling apart? So we're going to start with Epstein and then get to that. When I look at this story, I feel like it started out as very obviously a traditional crime story, what in other venues we call true crime. Then the extent of the political links and other things he had became evident. And then somewhere over the next couple years, it became a mass movement story because a lot of people really were interested and care about it. How do you view it? And obviously you might view it differently, but as a legal writer... Do you feel like it's evolved into something larger? Is it approaching like JFK levels? I mean, it's obvious, yes, it's absolutely evolved in something larger. I remember the sweetheart deal. I remember thinking that that was really strange. I didn't understand it. It was puzzling and those kinds of things bother me because it feels like the justice system is not behaving in any way in an even-handed manner. Yeah. And then I feel like it... You know, his death in jail was a big turning point because that also seemed mysterious. And it, then there was like a kind of... sense that there was a conspiracy theory, but then it was like one of those conspiracy theories like JFK's assassination that feel like, well, maybe there is actually a conspiracy here. Yeah, and it's funny. Lawyers, when we say conspiracy, that's its own legal term, which involves more than one person conspiring to break the law. There are conspiracies in law. Then there's conspiracy theories in the world.

And then there is the stigma or the negative that you're referring to. And a lot of mainstream politicians, certainly in journalism, people don't want to just be trafficking in what is unproven conspiracy theories. Then I would add and tell me what you think, there are unsolved mysteries. That's different than a conspiracy theory if you say, oh, someone won this election and you've got a group of people who, for whatever reasons, won't accept that. And they're only cherry-picking material against that. But... It looks like it was resolved. An unsolved mystery, like this person dies in prison, and then the key video goes missing. And then it takes, we checked, four years to get a watchdog report out of the DOJ. And then there's this missing snippet. So how do you view that? Like, is it helpful if we're going to take this seriously? And again, I know there are people who want to sell anything for their reasons. Money clicks, whatever. I know New York Times tries not to do that. We try not to do that. But what do you think of that spectrum of like an unsolved mystery already is different? Well, I think as journalists, you want to, when you don't know the answer to questions, you want to remain open to the idea that maybe there's something more here. On the other hand, if you're constantly like chasing wild leads, that's a waste of everyone's time and you feel foolish. So I think for a while, it seemed like... We were all supposed to just accept the idea that Epstein committed suicide in jail and not question it and that it was sort of fringy to think otherwise, but it never really got adequately answered. Can I ask you a hard question? Yes. When you have that pressure, you don't want to seem fringy because of your own seriousness, your editors, then how do you not let that become a bias where you're... not pursuing certain things. I mean, I think it does. As a legal reporter, because I have my thoughts, but how do you do that? I mean, I think you're right. I think that it does. If people are mocking the pursuit of something as a conspiracy theory, then you might feel like you're not supposed to touch it. It's a little, and you know, this is where Julie K. Brown gets a tough of credit, right? She's been on your show and deservedly so. Like, she took this incredibly seriously from the point of view of the survivors in a way that I think other people. people just didn't dig into it the way she did. And she built out a set of evidence about their experiences that made the harm and the extent of the harm undeniable. And so then, at least to me, that felt like, okay, well, now I'm interested in this. Now it justifies all this attention because you're talking about all these women who as girls, some of them, had these incredibly terrible experiences. And then it stopped feeling salacious to me. It started feeling like, okay, This matters and we don't understand. We haven't gotten to the bottom of it. We're still not at the bottom of it. No, and have you observed, again, helping peel back the layer of the system? Here we are. We're inside a mainstream media institution, but we have a little more time. Did you observe a shift where whoever they are, but the people who matter, what we call the elite, suddenly said, oh, I guess this does matter. I guess we do need to do it. Did you see a legitimization? Yeah, and I think, look, the pressure for it started on the right. It seemed first like that was absolutely where it was coming from, and the people who were a lot of them, Trump supporters, or just in the Maggie universe, were kind of keeping the story alive. And then I think it became bipartisan. And that was a pretty interesting moment in Congress where it's not just Thomas Massie, the Republican, who's leading the charge, but you have Democrats starting to come in. And look, you know, there was something politically opportunistic about that because...

they realized, like, there were these unanswered questions, but also it seemed like Trump was trying to make the story go away. So it's, you know, there was a political incentive there. But that was an important turning point moment, too, because then you really have serious congressional attention to this story, which previously had felt like it was kind of coming up from the bottom and the media was interested in it, but it didn't have necessarily like the political establishment fully engaged. And then they got really engaged. And now we have all these wild disclosures. Right. And it's funny you say that because I think about that in terms of reporting. We're in the politics. So you can be like, here's what it feels like to do normal yoga. And you're as flexible as you are. And then you can try to do hot yoga. and feel like, well, I'm doing the same thing, but there's all of this heat. And then at a certain point, you're like, you don't know. You'll see I'm going to land this analogy. Uh-huh. You don't know, like, is this harder because of the heat? What percent of it is the heat? You almost can't even really know. All you can try to do is your practice, see, the yogi. And when you're reporting this kind of story, if you actually care about the facts, and I get that some people are just going to do what they want with it. But you kind of are swimming through something with so much political heat, and the developments relate to political institutions like campaigns in the Congress and what the government does, even as you say, well, we're still going to follow these leads. So it doesn't really matter to people in the UK. which political party did this for which benefit in the U.S., the reality of the strength of the evidence has mattered. If you talk to survivors and their advocates and lawyers, they see that as long overdue progress in a whole different country. And so you have that, or we've been covering... Trump clearly has these problems here, and the Trump DOJ is under rightful scrutiny because they're the ones with the power now. But we've also covered how Epstein very deliberately tried to cultivate, and in some reports allegedly... potentially illicitly cultivate, leverage over both parties, financial institutions, the customs officials, the files added more detail to how, and it's not the biggest issue, but it's an issue, how he was trying to basically curry favor with the federal customs enforcement down there, which matters for all sorts of reasons. But then we have Larry Summers, who was at one point a gold standard figure in the Democratic Party from President Clinton, Treasury Secretary. Kathy Rumler was a top White House lawyer. It's not an accident. It's because Epstein wanted to have all this insurance. And so that's a long-winded way of saying that you can be in the sauna of the hot yoga. You don't like this analogy. No, I kind of knew. And you could be in it and be like, wow, there's all of these other pressures and all these people have all these reasons. And yet where we're trying to land is not who does this benefit, but like, what's the truth?

Yeah, so I guess I would say two things. I mean, one is that what you were talking about is this like sense of corruption from this whole elite network that feels like a cabal that was, and you can see everyone talking to each other, and it feels like there's this layer of social capital way above the rest of us, certainly above me, and people know each other and they're benefiting and Epstein is working it. To go back to your analogy, What that brings up for me is like sometimes it's easier for me to work on a story when I don't have obvious political like heat to worry about, right? You're just like pursuing the facts. It doesn't matter. A room temperature place to work out. Yeah, like you're just doing your thing. Yeah. The thing we always do, which is like asking questions, pursuing the facts, wherever they're going to lead, right? If there's a lot of political heat on something, then... what we become more self-conscious because there's this other whole layer going on of consequences and you're still supposed to we have the same tools we're supposed to do the same thing I think though sometimes it just the stakes go up and you feel like there's all this attention and then sometimes it's really hard you do think about like what the consequences are going to be you can't help but think about that and you know you still have to like call it the way it's gonna go, but it does change what it feels like to be doing the work when it gets hot. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Great answer, really interesting, and I like we're just kind of really talking through it. Part two, in conclusion, the law in general. Is it broken? Go ahead. I mean, I... I think it is vulnerable and weak right now in a way that feels different to me. Different than your entire career doing this? Yeah, different than my entire career. And I would say that there are two big institutions. I mean, the Justice Department, the politicization of the Justice Department, which, you know, the Trump administration has been very frank about. They see... I mean, Trump just hung a big banner of his picture on Maine justice in Washington. That kind of says it all. Like, he sees DOJ as an extension of the presidency. And that has not been the way it has worked since Watergate. We've had separation, independence, especially when it comes to criminal investigations. An honest prosecutor looks at crimes, not people. Exactly. Start with the behavior. Trump admits that they just want to target people. Right. And so that is, to me, like, breaking... Something and it goes beyond norms. I've gotten kind of frustrated with norms like we depend on them so much and they're so important and they worked fine mostly for 50 years but like actually it's of it's the rule of law that's at stake right and so that vulnerability feels new to me

And then the other thing I think is different is the Supreme Court. And I don't think it makes sense to write off the Supreme Court as a bunch of hacks who just do Trump's bidding. And the tariff ruling earlier this week is like the best evidence for that. At the same time, it has become deeply conservative and ideological in a way that is new in my lifetime. Sometimes I like to go back and think about the Warren Court, which was the last time the court was super liberal. Maybe the only time the court was super liberal. And you can argue that that court was like, you know, charging ahead in this activist way in a way that is similar to what's happening on the right, that like you get control and then you pursue your agenda. And that's how it works. And liberals didn't complain about the Warren court. But. I still think some of these opinions are so unpersuasive. I mean, to me, it goes back to Shelby County when the Supreme Court started dismantling the Voting Rights Act, which, like, we may be about to see more of from them. It just is not on its face a good opinion, that majority opinion. Yeah, it's bad faith, probably. It's just, like, bad legal reasoning. And some of the, you know, their reliance on... The theory of originalism, this idea that you just go back to the original meaning of the Constitution or the law and the text is there and you just read it and you automatically apply it. The conservatives have never done that consistently. It's not a methodology that really leads to neutrality the way it's often claimed. And now they've switched this... broader, even less accountable theory called history and tradition, where you could just like cherry pick from any year. Anyway, all that is, it's, to me, feels new and bad. Yeah, and that's why, depending on your reference, if you like Zoolander, it's when Mugatu's like, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. or network for our older viewers who remember, if you go back to old movies, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I watch some of this stuff, and it is funny because there is a certain type of breaking point. And you can concede that all societies have had progress over time, that law has always moved in concert with political and public reality, so rich people do better. 200 years ago, white male property owners did better. And you can, that's a valid longstanding problem. That's its own problem. But then you have what in autocratic studies they call dual state, where separate from that real problem, you look up and you go, oh, yeah, there's just these rules. And then there's the actual dictatorial effort over here. Or to quote Martin Luther King, he said, never forget that. everything that happened in Nazi Germany was legal, by which he meant it was part of that government system. Legal doesn't always mean valid. And I'm not saying we're there. Don't misquote me. But I'll give you the final word on there. There are times where you're trying to just show what's happening. And other times you go, wait, maybe.

all of the way that we're looking at this is changing around us and everyone that means lawyers I'm a lawyer and a journalist people who are in this field actually need to like step up and make a bigger switch you get the final word yeah I mean I think about this dual state historical analogy a lot right and you can also use it for Jim Crow it applies like you have one law for white people and one law for black people and the white people kind of pretend that everything's okay and it's like completely not And afterward, it seems utterly obvious. It should that that is utterly unjust. And I don't know where we are on that trajectory right now. I feel like it's important not to get ahead of myself about this because it's not my job to get ahead of the facts. Like, I'm supposed to find out the facts. Thank you. And also, I don't think it helps because it just makes us all really cynical, right? That's, yeah. The country, you know, there is more authoritarian impulse swirling around right now far more than in my lifetime. But those impulses. Those forces have not consolidated power really thoroughly. No. I don't think. And so I feel like it's really important to remember that the power still lies with the people and that so far elections are still happening that have, you know, they are flawed, but they need to remain free and fair. We need to believe that they can remain free and fair and fight for that. That's one thing. I do feel like we can fight for democracy as journalists and lawyers. Yes, and we are within a factual system that respects... Law rule of law and Yeah, I think that's a hopeful note and to end on that hopeful note the fact that bad things happen doesn't mean you don't try to do good things the fact that you say oh we have a law against murder vast majority of people agree that we protect human life and we don't support killing people the fact that there is murder and some murder goes unsolved doesn't meet lead people read most rational people then say I guess this whole banning murder thing doesn't work right the fact that there are bad people doing bad things and in some periods of time they get away with more of it isn't that although yeah I look I liked having you here on we don't you know it's just post show after hours outside if you have a do you have any ideas for the name podcast oh name huh It totally feels like a podcast to me. Right. Well, that's the vibe. And you guys can drop names in the comments if you want for these conversations. You can subscribe to these legal breakdowns. You can find Emily Bazelon on our TV show and here on YouTube. Thanks for joining. Thank you, Ari. Donald Trump is trying to make the U.S. more like Russia under Vladimir Putin. I know people say a lot of Russia talk and what are the facts behind that. That's what I'm actually going to get into right now. I'm Ari Melba. journalist, lawyer, if you watch these programs, you can always subscribe on YouTube. But we actually have the facts to back this. This is from the Financial Times.

I can put this up on our YouTube page as well. This is just you get the general snapshot. What it shows is that when you actually count the measures of autocratic and dictatorial moves, things we think of as problems over there and not here, at least a lot of Americans do, rounding up journalists and searching them or arresting them or jailing them for things they do and report, or in Don Lemon's case, that he was at a scene where there was violations, which is standard journalism all the time. We cover... protests that are past curfew or involve trespassing. Journalists in America have the First Amendment to protect them. So covering that doesn't make you a part of that crime, except if you're in Vladimir Putin's Russia or now Donald Trump's America. And this chart shows that Trump is actually pushing us away from rule of law and democracy faster than Vladimir Putin did overtime in Russia. That's not something that's a... criticism, that's what the actual measurable facts show. And so that's kind of my introduction to what we're doing here because I've talked to some of our viewers and folks about what we want to get into and learn and not just have the strictures of television. So I got television quality guests, including Gary Steingard, who's a celebrated novelist, a Vladimir Putin critic, now with Trump. Critic, come on out here, Gary. Hey! How we do it? Good. Good to be the first person on this couch. Here we go. How do you feel? I feel great. Good. So we're here. It's light TV, but more casual. I love it. Maybe across between late night and Wayne's World for those, remember. But you actually know what you're talking about when it comes to Vladimir Putin. Why do you say that Trump's... moving faster to decline rule of law than even Vladimir Putin in Russia. Well, look, I grew up in the Soviet Union, then moved to the United States. I seem to be involved with every failing superpower out there. Is it me? I don't know. Let's see. When you look at this chart, which is really incredible, that was the financial times, when you look about where we went, how far down we went in a year. If this trend continues, by the end of Trump's turn, we will be behind Turkey in Russia. Worse, yeah. We will be worse if, you know, this continues. If we don't continue to do the wonderful things people have done in Minneapolis and other cities, if we don't contact our Congress people, if we don't march in the wonderful, oh, those wonderful parades. I covered one of them for the New York Times, the No Kings Parade in Chicago, which, of course, is a city that is. dealt so wonderfully with what Trump is doing, you know, because dictators, authoritarian people are scared of being made fun of. And it's also important for us to know that we're not alone, that there are so many people like us. The problem with countries like Russia and other places is that you can't appear somewhere. When Vladimir Putin started making sure the demonstrations were becoming illegal, people decided the rule of law said, that a demonstration is more than one person. So one person would appear.

And because that's not really a demonstration. It's just one person. And then when Vladimir Putin said, you couldn't use, you couldn't talk about the special military operation, which is what the invasion of Ukraine was called, people would just show up one single person holding a copy of war in peace because it has the word war in it, which was banned by Vladimir Putin. So it's fascinating to see how people resist. We still have the opportunity to resist. In Russia, that opportunity is long than done. Right. And then you're past that point. And you're also speaking to something that you're a novelist, among other things like... that happens when there are limits. I mean, people today online know if there's a limit that doesn't really make sense, if they say, well, you can't mention killing or self-harm. There's a respectful, thoughtful way to do it, but you're not going to discuss what's going on in the world without discussing the fact that the U.S. government killed two people in Minnesota. So people quickly come up with, oh, they're going to say unaliving or they're going to say it a different way. And if you tell people, yeah, you can't gather, you're giving them examples. But what about this sort of... civic tipping point where and I've been in countries in Latin America where it seems like things got so bad that most folks weren't trying to protest anymore they were trying to survive it doesn't feel like we're at all there yet from what I can observe although there's a contrast between elites and CEOs who are like okay I'll sit this one out and citizens who aren't we've covered that but like Did you observe that or your family in Russia? Is there a tipping point there and are we at risk of that? Well, look, the reason the Soviet Union fell apart was there wasn't enough ham on the shelves. It was a very simple thing. It was reality, yeah. It was reality. You know, I, we left in 1979 and 50,000 of us, we were called the grain Jews. We were traded because the Soviet Union didn't have enough wheat to feed his people. So we were traded for bushels of wheat. I was traded for a baguette. You know, I don't know who got the better side of that one. But, you know, the thing is that these regimes are both evil and stupid. There's a lot of incompetence. The whole thing that just happened with El Paso's airport is another wonderful example of people cosplaying and then there's real life effects and everything falls apart. So, but the question is how far can we take this without? How far can we trust that our systems are resilient? Well, according to this chart, they ain't that resilient. One, is that, again, real talk, is that a little depressing? People like to share good news, plans. I'm someone who usually looks like, okay, what's possible? But is it depressing that ultimately it's reality, like you say, in economics, which, again, Trump seems to know, people who have underestimated him by putting this cartoon criticism of Trump. He hasn't just zeroed in on economics. He's zeroed on the Federal Reserve. He's put two members under investigation, like an autocrat move. Completely autocrat. We don't see any validity there. Because he wants them to do what they otherwise wouldn't do, which is artificially juiced the economy, so he doesn't run into the problem, your say. Well, look, he's following the ban on planet. Every segment of society, including Bad Bunny's performance, you know, at the Super Bowl, is an object that he tries to politicize. There's no...

There's nothing left that's unpoliticized. That is a very autocratic move. Growing up in the Soviet Union, everything was politicized. You know, the space race, this, not that it wasn't here, but it was just incredible. And why? How does that benefit the ruler? Because the ruler then has their hands in every little thing. You can't turn to a private reality that's just you. The ruler is always in the same, they're always right next to you. It's in a big brother kind of way. They're always looking over your shoulder. Which is whack. Whack. And interestingly, is not really how most people want to live. When you think about, again, some people don't follow politics at all. In America lately, it's become a big part of everything. It's like a portal almost, yeah. And then you've got betting markets, everybody's it. But when politics works well, it empowers people to have better lives and not have to think about politics all that. Well, that's it. You know, so this is what. My last book I wrote Vera, which is about this 10-year-old girl, said slightly in the future, the reason I wrote it was because, and it does have a kind of dystopian element to it, but I wrote it because I had my son's 12 now, but he was 10, and... He knows so much. As a 10-year-old, he knew so much about politics because that's what he and his friends talk about. And that's the same way that when I was a 7-year-old in Lennigrad, I knew every member of the Politburo. But this is what happens when you live in a world where it's just you and the leader. I was just in a country. I won't even name it. But in authoritarian country where people kept... saying our president, our government, and then looking this way and that way. And that's exactly, and then saying things that were obviously false about the president and the government. Yeah, and I'll share one final thought that's about something serious, and then I'll ask you one more question. And we'll end. We had Rob Reiner on our show a lot. Rest in peace. And I got to know him a little bit. And... after he was tragically killed and we had covered that that night, you know, we thought in the show about how to cover it, and we covered it by looking at his life and his legacy, as well as you do in news, the latest in the investigation, that's part of the news. And that's where we left it. Now, I'm not second guessing because there's a million ways to do it. Some people were so outraged by what the president said that we didn't cover that night, that I'm not repeating, that they felt the need to respond, which I understand, because that's how that stuff works. But we really looked at it like, Wow. And my mom even mentioned me like, oh, so it's obviously despicable what he said, but also it's that Trump couldn't stand. that for a day the attention would be fully on someone else. And so he's using outrage to get in there. So at least people are still talking about him. And as you say, that's the opposite of a conservative government that says get things done and get out of people's lives. He's everywhere. It's fascinating because it's a damned if you don't kind of scenario. Well, that's the challenge of news. Well, that's the challenge of it. And I think, you know,