Transcript
The Ghislaine Maxwell Interview: Reframing The Narrative
Amicus: A Law Review · Sat Aug 23, 2025
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When we, as always, have a lot on our academic, our discussion syllabus, we'll talk about that in just a moment.
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in this late Saturday, August of 2025.
We do have a lot of things on our agenda, four things in particular that we are going to be addressing, discussing, analyzing, pulling apart and putting back together again on our weekend broadcast.
We necessarily have a lot of news breaking late in this past business week, including on Friday.
Friday of Justice past week, let me identify some of those stories and then let me also tell you about some of the work that we're going to be doing in analyzing a couple of major decisions, major decisions as we often do on this broadcast, pulling them apart, putting them back together once again in the areas of judicial determinations, judgments, what they mean, what they don't mean.
how we should understand a couple of things that happened both in a state court and in a federal court late this past week.
We know well that just in Friday of this past week, some major news related to the law, the rule of law and the administration of justice here in America, that includes
Two major stories coming out of Washington, DC.
One of them, of course, is the execution by federal agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of a search warrant at the home of former Trump advisor, former ambassador, former national security advisor, a fellow named John Bolton.
You have seen an awful lot of news about this already.
We're going to talk about the predicates for a search warrant.
Where does that come from?
What are the circumstances under which federal agents
Nations have authority, authority under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to go into a home.
and sees materials, evidence of crime, also going into an office in this particular situation.
We're going to talk about the civics and, yes, some of the law school predicates for search warrants in America on our 250th anniversary of the lifeblood of our American experience here.
What does that mean?
How does that happen?
And specifically when we talk about probable cause, we're going to talk about the involvement of a magistrate judge in making a determination
about whether or not there's a basis for the federal government to go in.
We're going to acknowledge once again that the Fourth Amendment does indeed acknowledge that all of us have a fundamental right to privacy inside
inside our own homes.
How does that get compromised?
How does it get affected when a magistrate judge determines that indeed there's criminal evidence inside that location?
And I'm going to talk most significantly following up on things that we have chatted about before.
about this mix of legitimate law enforcement initiatives and activities and politics.
And the reason why you do not want to mix the two of them, the reason why what this administration has done in breaking down that wall between the Department of Justice and politics, things at the White House level, things at the main justice building, why that is once again illustrated in this search.
and the seizure of documents, other materials at the home and also the office of John Bolton just late this past week.
The larger issue coming out of this search, the results of which we do not know.
Yet we'll find out down the road.
We'll talk also about the consequences what happens after a search, but the big takeaway We'll talk about this in great detail the consequences once again of going down this road of attacking people in the political process and then and then Either at the same time subsequent to that at some point down the road finding that they may in fact have engaged in criminal conduct necessarily therefore
encouraging discussion and criticism and skepticism about the legitimacy of the law enforcement action that may in fact be legitimate but tainted tainted in the public view by virtue of the kinds of attacks that our president has been sending in the direction of john bolton and many other people will talk about that interplay between politics and law enforcement here in our broadcast the other big news of course coming out of washington dc as well
Also coming out of main justice is the release of the audio tapes and yes, the transcripts of that famous, that infamous interview.
It really is not an investigative interview, which we'll talk about, but that interview that happened back in July between the deputy attorney general of the United States of America, his name, Todd Blanche.
We have talked about him a lot.
The former private attorney of this president going to Florida.
Last month, to talk with Ghislaine Maxwell, she is a convicted felon.
She is convicted of heinous crimes under the federal criminal code sentenced to 20 years in federal custody for doing what?
For engaging in sex trafficking?
involving girls and young women of the highest order, the most catastrophic kind of thing that a human being can do.
She is convicted of that.
And of course, what we have here once again is this confluence, this bringing together of politics because of the president's commitment during the course of the campaign, bandied about also in recent times of his presidency, the last seven months of his presidency,
also promoted by people like Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, that somehow inside the Epstein files, there is the Rosetta Stone, if you will, but all the things we need to understand in connection with what?
With Hillary Clinton, with the all sorts of other conspiracies out there, with QAnon, all kinds of things that may be wrapped up inside crazy, unfounded conspiracies.
All of this prompting, stunningly,
actions that's almost unprecedented.
That is the Deputy Attorney General of the United States of America, who is in charge of the day-to-day operation of our Department of Justice going to Florida to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell to do what exactly.
Well, we'll talk about the results of that investigation because now we know exactly what he said, what he didn't say.
We'll talk with you about what Ghislaine Maxwell said to him.
What she did not say.
And the big stories here are two of them.
Again, the takeaways on this broadcast, this weekend on Amicus is just this.
Number one, the things that Ghislaine Maxwell said she had an assignment to do.
She knew what she had to do and she did her job well.
She basically exonerated the president, as you probably know already.
We'll talk about some of the specific things that she said, distancing him dramatically from, frankly, even any close association with Epstein.
She'll distance herself from the very activities and the conduct for which she has been convicted by a jury in federal court and for which she's now been sentenced and serving that sentence in federal prison.
The other portion of the story, which we will talk about in
Perhaps equal detail is the conduct, the behavior, the language used by our deputy attorney general, who number one should not have done this investigative interview, if you want to call that at all, an investigative interview, should have sent this to the responsibility, to the assignment board of an assistant United States attorney, a litigating attorney inside the Department of Justice who knows how these things are done.
We're gonna talk about what a proper
proffer is, P-R-O-F-F-E-R, how those are normally conducted, who conducts them, why they're conducted, and why this is so far afield from the traditional ways in which proffers are conducted, and focusing then upon what the mission of our deputy attorney general was on behalf of his former client, with whom he continues to have an attorney-client relationship.
We'll talk about what Todd Blanche's assignment was.
in comparison to what Ghislaine Maxwell's assignment was and offer the view that they're pretty much coterminous.
They're basically associated.
We'll talk about his role in all of this and the ways in which any litigator looking at this transcript, looking at the exchange between him and Ghislaine Maxwell would shake their heads and abject disbelief that this was not.
This was not an investigative interview.
This was the kind of thing that one might anticipate seeing on an evening talk show where Ghislaine Maxwell or other people would sit down and be asked powder puff softball questions without any follow up with any exploration of the specifics behind them.
And the failure, therefore, of the deputy attorney general to do a true proffer and determine whether she is telling the truth or not.
And that's the big takeaway.
The combination of glane Maxwell there plainly exonerating not only herself in many ways limiting limiting what Jeff Epstein himself did and certainly putting a distance a broad distance between any of this conduct and the president of the United States of America the combination of that and the failure of our deputy attorney general to pursue in any meaningful way the veracity the truth of what she was saying leaves us with a document that's basically
worthless.
It accomplishes what it was intended to do, which is probably to give the president in the end what he wanted.
To give the president, again, the former client of the deputy attorney general, the capacity at some point to give her what, clemency?
to give her a pardon which he can do under the Constitution.
Now you've got the predicate to do that based upon what her denials that much if not if all of this happened.
We'll talk about the minimization of her role, the role of others, and the ways in which she interacted again with Todd Blanche that suggested that his role there was not to determine any new facts, not to figure out whether there should be further investigation.
There is none to be had here.
All of that underscoring
the vacuousness of this initiative from the first point.
The pointless notion of going there to get more information, it did not happen.
To determine whether or not Ghislaine Maxwell will be honest and truthful, she was plainly not by virtue of the things that she said.
We'll talk about all of that in some great detail.
We're also going to talk probably into our second hour about these two other major pieces of litigation results that came out just this past week as well.
One coming out of the appeals court.
in New York State, reviewing that civil fraud judgment, $520 million, about a half a billion dollar judgment.
You recall this, prosecuted by the office of the attorney general, her name is Leticia James.
We'll talk about what the appeals court did and did not do, and reviewing the judgment.
finding that Donald Trump was responsible civilly for civil fraud and his valuation and his reporting on the values of properties there in New York.
And we'll talk about what the Court of Appeals did with that $520 million judgment.
That's the amount at which it stands now.
We'll make the distinction between those two and clarify exactly where things stand in that particular case.
And they're also going to look to a decision by the Supreme Court.
Yes, indeed, they're not done.
And that
is involving NIH Grants National Institute of Health.
and particular $780 million in grants, we'll talk about a very convoluted decision by the Supreme Court, almost incomprehensible as the justices weigh in on whether the president can and cannot cancel those grants and the decisions of our Supreme Court justices, all of that, all of that, not necessarily intuitive and not at all clear, but we're going to pull it apart and put it back together once again, those NIH grant issues coming up.
All of that here on Amicus Hallar Review, inviting us always, your comments, your questions, your observations on our broadcast going forward.
Stay with us for all of that and more.
This is amicus a lot of you my name Jim Santel I'm your host this hour and next hour as well as we talk about some of these major developments in the areas of rule of law justice and government and that brings us to our first
principal item on our ambitious syllabus this weekend and that is as you well know as you well are digesting in these hours this report and confirmed reporting of the search of the home and of the office of former national security advisor and former ambassador John Bolton who is plainly
run a foul of the president in many ways publicly will get to that as well.
Representative of the FBI commenting officially saying that FBI agents Friday morning of this past week conducting a court authorized form of activity in the area and indeed visually we know well that their FBI agents both at John Bolton's office in downtown Washington DC.
And also at his home in Bethesda, you well know that's in Maryland, just north of the Washington area.
That's where most of the activity was taking place yesterday.
What do we know about this?
Well, again, we don't know a lot.
We don't know a lot.
And that point should be emphasized right at the start.
Why?
Because we have not yet seen the affidavit, the affidavit that supports the authorization to conduct.
this search.
We get back to that in just a moment.
We do know, however, from arguably some sources, reliable inside the FBI, others with knowledge of what this is all about, that it may well be that the focus of this search and of plainly what is an undergoing investigation here is that John Bolton may, if heavy emphasis on may, have illegally shared or possessed some classified information.
Ricky criminal statute here involves potential crimes as a part of the espionage act.
We've talked about that a lot in the past.
Another potential criminal statute that I identify is one that bars the unauthorized removal of classified documents from material.
Where have we seen that before?
That, of course, in the infamous Mar-a-Lago prosecution of our current president.
former private citizen after we move those documents from the White House.
Those are the kinds of things that we're gleaning so far from some of the off the record statements made, indication that maybe some of this information, some of the basis for that search warrant came from some overseas sources.
According to people briefed on the matter here, John Ratcliffe, who of course is the CIA director, apparently provided some limited access to some intelligence to the FBI.
And that
Intelligence may have suggested that John Bolton mishandled classified material.
So let's back off about all of that and go back to process Let's talk about where this comes from and what are we to make of again?
Not so much the substance, but the process here Well, where does a search warrant come from again the fourth amendment?
This is John Madison stuff, right?
It basically Establishes that all of us have a right to privacy in our homes and the the privacy that is one of the
core functions, the core purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and the people of
to be free from what?
Unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
And so you say, well, gee, how can that happen?
And the word, of course, is unreasonable.
The privacy right that you have in your own home, and yes, indeed, in other areas, including your office, but a bit less so, including things like lockers.
And frankly, we get into schools, other quasi-public areas, a little bit less so.
But that right, that right can always be overcome.
This is one of the conditions on the Fourth Amendment says that if you are engaging in criminal conduct and at that location, including your home, including your office, there is evidence of crime in which you've engaged, which other people have engaged.
Then, then the government can indeed go where to a federal judge, a federal magistrate judge and say, we have credible evidence.
Probable cause is the word.
That's the standard to believe that in this location, in this house in Bethesda, in this location in Washington, D.C., in the business itself, the office, there is probable cause to believe that there is evidence of a crime.
And the significant first thing we have to comment about in connection with the Bolton search of just late this past week is just that.
You got to go to a federal judge.
You cannot simply do this on your own.
with a couple of exceptions.
What are those?
Again, as a part of our law school teaching here, if in fact the privacy right owner, that is the person who owns the home who claims the privacy rights is sure, come on in.
You can do that upon a request by the government.
That's called a consent search.
And you can open your door and you can let federal agents, state agents search wherever.
You may give them authorization to do.
There's also a thing called exigent circumstances.
If somebody is running away and posing a danger to the community and happens to run into your home, run into your office.
Yes, indeed, law enforcement in hot pursuit can pursue that person before the limited purpose of arresting them.
But those plainly did not happen here.
What we have here unmistakably is an application process.
And so we know that federal agents at some point went to a federal magistrate judge there in the District of Columbia.
And they were accompanied almost assuredly by either assisting United States attorneys or litigating attorneys at the Department of Justice.
And they presented a document, a petition for this search warrant to that federal magistrate judge and said to him or her, here is the basis upon which we believe that there is crime going on.
There is evidence of crime located in these particular venues.
And significantly, the magistrate judge needs to look at that and determine independently
branch of government, not the Department of Justice, not the executive branch, has to determine whether or not the government has shown in that affidavit, a sworn affidavit by the agent, maybe several agents, testifying under oath that this is what the results of their investigation have shown to this point.
Based upon that, the investigation can or cannot proceed, premised upon the analysis of
that judge, that magistrate judge, and there have been circumstances in my own career where the magistrate or the federal judge has said yes, sometimes the judge says no, and finds that there's no problem to cause.
That's the determination, that's the check on all this.
That plainly happened here, and so a magistrate judge gave authorization to the federal government to go in to these two locations and search at the office
and search also at the home of John Bolton.
When we'll come back, we'll talk more about that process.
We'll talk about what happens next.
And most importantly, we'll talk about this uneasy mix between retribution and politics and law enforcement here on Amicus, a law review.
This is Amicus, a law review.
My name is Jim Santel.
Thank you for joining me in our weekend broadcast here.
All things rule of law related, justice related, government related, including the function of your federal government, your U.S.
Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation just late this past week in executing a judicially authorized search warrant at the home in Bethesda.
John Bolton and also his office in downtown Washington DC talking about the mechanism for getting that and that is of course the application to a federal magistrate judge or a district court judge can do it as well finding probable cause and what does that mean basically well there's got to be sufficient evidence to believe to conclude not beyond a reasonable doubt that's the highest standard in the criminal process of all simply got to establish that there is a reasonable
basis to believe.
If you go into this property, you will find some evidence of criminal activity.
And beyond that, the magistrate judge or the federal judge has got to determine, again, the basis for that conclusion.
Is this reliable information?
How do we know that?
Who has been there to see it?
Also, particularity is another portion of the analysis.
What do we know about what's there?
Where it's located, the magistrate judge can limit the search to various locations, can provide authorization to go in all locations.
And again, we don't know exactly what the breadth of this has been.
But there's also another requirement, and that gives us some insight into what this may be all about beyond the speculation that comes from some sources in Washington.
And that is a
concept called recency or through other other extremes, staleness, you've got to be able to establish to the magistrate judge that the information, the
criminal activity, the conduct, the evidence is there now that is recent.
It is current.
This is not stale, for example, in drug cases.
You've got to establish probably that's been there in the last several hours, not beyond that.
If it goes beyond that, likely the drugs, for example, move in and out, and it's no longer current, it's no longer recent, it becomes stale.
In the case of white collar cases, documents, not nearly that much a concern.
Why?
Because documents tend not to
move back and forth.
And in this particular case, if indeed John Bolton has documents that he shouldn't have, they would not move around a whole lot.
But it's still a significant thing to note.
Why?
Because of something else we always think about.
And that is the statute of limitations.
There's a five year statute of limitations.
Can't prosecute somebody for the mishandling of classified or other national security secrets beyond a five year period of time.
So what do we know about John Bolton?
We know that he was a major senior advisor again ambassador national security advisor in the first Trump administration Which plainly is much farther back than five years and so and so if he has possessed and does have documents and is leaking them is misusing them is mishandling them
Matters related to his doing that five years ago would not be the subject of a prosecution, arguably even a search warrant today, unless there's somehow tied to recent activity.
And that's where we get back to recency and the lack of staleness.
So somehow in this presentation to the magistrate judge, the federal prosecutors and the agents had to say that there is something about his activity recently within the last five years, within the seven months of the Trump administration.
within the time of the Biden administration that brings this more current, that makes this an active and live prosecution, an active and live investigation even right now.
That's recency.
Also,
Probably almost certainly a part of this application, this written presentation to the magistrate judge in support of a finding of probable cause.
And that leads to the final thing before I make some observations about the uncomfortable confluence of politics and law enforcement.
That is that we don't know where this goes next.
Be very clear.
This is a search warrant, documents removed, maybe other materials as well.
They will now be analyzed by the FBI.
This matter will probably go quiet for a while while that analysis gets undertaken and pursued by agents trying to figure out now what they have.
What does this stuff show?
That's what we're going to be doing now at the FBI.
In the meantime, in the meantime, John Bolton has not been charged by a grand jury, not been charged by a criminal complaint.
That could happen.
There could be a process.
of him at some point down the road as this investigation, including but not necessarily limited to the search continues, that hasn't happened yet.
And that's why he is not in custody.
He remains a free citizen as all of us should be in the wake of a search warrant that does not identify us in particular as the target for an arrest.
or an apprehension or detention of some kind, John Bolton not in custody, the search of his home and of his property conducted, and we will see what happens down the road with the results of that.
Significantly along the way, we know that the director of the FBI, stunningly, ironically said and wrote in his social media post about 7 a.m.
on Friday, no one, capital N-O, capital O-N-E, no one is above the law.
FBI agents on mission.
No one is above the law.
Well, tell that to the Supreme Court.
Tell that to the Supreme Court, Cash Patel, because plainly there is someone who is above the law, and that person, of course, is the President of the United States of America, according to what the Supreme Court told us a bit over a year ago.
Interesting as well that other commentary coming out of this from our Vice President, who submits to an interview on NBC, and he says, we're in the early stages of an ongoing investigation
to John Bolton, I will say we're going to let that investigation proceed.
Fascinating use of language, because it leads to the other point in all this, which is this mixing and the complete destruction of any wall.
It has always existed between Republican administrations, Democratic administrations, the White House and main justice, the White House and U.S.
Attorney's offices, FBI offices, other agency offices around the nation.
That necessary separation that ensures that law enforcement is doing its job apart from any partisan or political animation.
And that has broken down undeniably from the first days of this administration.
We've got more of it right now.
It happens virtually every day and it is underscored when the vice president talks about we.
and the prosecution that we are arguably going to be undertaking, the investigation that we are conducting, Mr. Vice President, that should not be the case.
You should say to the American population that this is a matter for the Department of Justice to pursue and determine whether or not there's a basis for prosecution.
You are not constitutionally, statutorily involved in this matter, or maybe now in this administration.
This dropped all these kinds of norms and practices and policies and procedures.
Maybe you are.
And you are in fact dictating to the Department of Justice what has never happened before in our recent contemporary American history, which is the White House, the President, the Vice President dictating what it is that the Department of Justice does in terms of prosecutions and others.
And that leads to the final point in all this, which is the major point about the confluence, this mix, this very disturbing mix of politics and the language of retribution, which the President has used.
We know well.
We know well that a lot of the animosity between John Bolton comes in the wake of that first term when he was serving as a national security advisor.
Since that time, we know as well, the president has called Mr. Bolton a low life.
He's called him a sleaze bag.
He said that he is not to be trusted.
He is not a fan of Mr. Bolton understating things wildly.
And he has also been at odds with Bolton, not only about this book that Bolton published,
that book producing some litigation way back when in which the federal district court judge frankly did acknowledge even the course of permitting the publication to go forward that the
publication probably does include some information, maybe even some classified information that John Bolton should not have had.
Important to note that history.
Important to know what the facts of this case are that John Bolton himself is not with clean hands on all of this.
That was a civil matter, but it also prompted an awful lot of animosity between John Bolton and the president.
Recently, recently John Bolton has also commented.
But many other things that the president has done among other things we know that John Bolton has been hugely critical of many of the policies and practices of this White House He has been critical of the ways in which the White House has handled some fundamental things in the areas of national security and Other domestic issues as well all of that again prompting the attention of this president and being very critical in that public
domain.
What is the point of all that?
Why do I raise all that?
Well, in the first term, you may recall well an awful lot of the president's senior advisors.
This was a time when
President had surrounded himself with people who were giving him advice and maybe, maybe just maybe, my president at that time was listening to some of it.
He was repeatedly warned by his aides at that time, including his White House counsel, his chief of staff, you may recall all of this, that he should really refrain from doing this name calling from publicly accusing his enemies of breaking the law, that they are in violation of not only the constitution, the statutes, but that they should be jailed, jail her.
Lock her up, those kinds of things.
They advised against doing that.
Why?
Because if in fact there came that day when one of those so-called enemies does in fact do something wrong, is in fact in violation of the Constitution or the federal laws, the public might not believe it.
and the legitimate law enforcement action, which this could well be.
It may well be that John Bolton has violated the Espionage Act and maybe those other laws related to the handling of classified documents.
We don't know that yet.
That's a determination that a jury will make down the road, if at all, upon a prosecution.
The concern is that by these attacks by the White House, by the President, the name calling, the attacks on John Bolton, it leads to suspicion
that the law enforcement initiative here, the very execution of this search warrant, is not premised upon a legitimate law enforcement purpose, but rather is partisan in nature.
For all we know, the investigation of John Bolton is legitimate.
And his conduct may be rock solid in terms of the things that maybe one day we don't know, an indictment will issue, saying that he did all of these things.
The problem is that when the president goes out there and breaks down that wall between prosecution investigation and politics and calls for people to be investigated and prosecuted and thrown in jail prior to and even while the investigations are going on, it suggests that the
Purpose and the mission of what law enforcement does is not regular.
The presumption of regularity that we've talked about a lot on this broadcast is lost.
And one of the reasons why prosecutors always are quiet and do not talk about these kinds of things, do not talk about politics.
They do not engage in name-calling or reasons to believe that someone should be
imprisoned, should be prosecuted is just this.
If in fact investigative activity shows that they are in fact responsible for criminal conduct, that they have in fact undertaken conduct actions, behaviors, this in violation of the law of our nation, there will be this appearance of bias.
And the question of the legitimate question, the integrity of that very investigation prosecution we called into question,
legitimately by the people of this nation who are suggesting there may be bias here in light of all the threats that Donald Trump has made as to John Bolton and many others targeting him and talking about him as being an enemy of his and of the state the government has now lost the presumption of good faith that otherwise would attend this prosecution investigation and that is the reason why once again this arms-length relationship between the White House and the Justice Department
has got to be maintained.
It's been broken.
It is compromised in this administration.
We will see it again as this particular investigation may be a prosecution of John Bolton continues.
When we come back, we'll talk about the other major story of late this past week.
That is Ghislaine Maxwell and her discussion with the Deputy Attorney General of the United States here on Amicus.
A lot of
This is Amicus, a lot of you.
Thank you so much for joining me and my terrific producer, Greg.
As we talk through these major stories happening in the areas of rule of law, justice, and government function of just late this past week, we talked at great length about the John Bolton search and seizure of documents at his home in Bethesda, also at his office in downtown Washington, D.C.
The predicates for that, and again,
underscoring the civics lesson here, which is why you don't mix politics and law enforcement.
We mixed it in this administration for the first time in our nation's history, saw some of that in the first term of Donald Trump.
It has blossomed in a way that is almost unrecognizable today.
That is the
burden of pursuing law enforcement legitimately when the integrity of that investigation is compromised by the kinds of things that a president, a White House says about the very targets or the subjects of the investigation.
We've got other targets, arguably other subjects of investigation, including people like Ghislaine Maxwell, who about a month or so ago sat down with our deputy attorney general to talk with him.
about what?
Well, we'll talk more about that in our second hour, but we know that on Friday, in addition to the bolt in the search, the other big story coming out of Washington, D.C.
was the fact that there was, in fact, the release of the transcript of that conversation, a two-day conversation between the deputy attorney general and Ghislaine Maxwell that happened.
We'll talk about that in great detail.
Pull some lessons from that as well.
The lesser story candidly that under other circumstances would almost be at the top of the headlines would be the fact
the Justice Department did in fact give Congress some subpoenaed Epstein files on Friday provided Congress with thousands of pages from his investigation into this Epstein matter the batch of materials again going to join James Comer of Kentucky he is the chair of the oversight committee
stunningly evil, even though the disclosure is far from complete.
The documents are not everything that is in the file.
He praised the department saying that the department is moving at a pace far faster than anyone ever produced documents by the Biden administration.
Again, we don't know what those documents say, but we know that some releases being made now to the Congress, nowhere near the entire file.
That, of course, parallels, again, on the same day the release of the transcripts of this much-related conversation in that connection.
We have got Dick on the line.
Always appreciate our callers.
And Dick, appreciate you're waiting for a while here.
Call in from Madison and talking about some of these Epstein documents.
Well, real quick to the Bolton thing, too.
It seems like the president and the vice president are, again, on different pages.
Because Trump claims he doesn't know where any of this initiated.
Right, right.
Even though it was the head of the CIA that directed it from what I understand.
Right.
Anyway, to the situation with the Epstein thing, Ro Khanna from California.
Yes,
Yeah.
Well, he says that what they dropped today or last yesterday, and they looked it over thoroughly overnight, the attorney and people looking at it, that it's less
than 1% of what they still have.
Right.
Well, if that's the case, he makes William Barr and what Barr did to the Mueller report looks like a planker.
And again, that's significant, right?
Because to the extent he has you and a kid in connection with the Bolton matter,
Our president routinely misstates that's being charitable lies about the things that in fact the administration does can presumably today say, we produce these materials.
In fact, Rokana Dick as you're saying is accurate.
No reason to believe he's not 1% of this file of tens of thousands of pages.
It's probably all electronic.
We don't do those things in terms of written paper anymore.
There could be some of that, but a very small amount disclosed.
We've got, again, an effusive praise by James Comer, the head of the Oversight Committee.
He, of course, was forced to issue the subpoena for these materials after some Republicans joined the Democrats asking that this be produced, compelled to issue the subpoena.
Now we've got the production of it, Dick, as you indicated, but not nearly the entire amount of this.
My guess is, in the end, a lot of this will be incredibly boring.
again, the Rosetta Stone, as I said before, of all these kinds of things.
But to put this to rest, Dick, I suspect you'd agree, they need to produce all of this, or at least all of this short of the redacted names of the victims, maybe some other things related to legitimate law enforcement purposes.
This is not yet compliance, and that's your comment, Dick, and we appreciate very much your being a part of our discussion and our analysis as we get into the story.
stories pleural related to Ghislaine Maxwell.
In particular, the release not only of some portion of the file which has been sitting at Maine Justice for years, but also now the release of the audio you can go online and listen to and I commend you.
doing that, listen to the exchange.
It's long hours of conversation and that's what it is.
It's not an investigative interview between Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted felon responsible according to a jury sentenced by a judge to 20 years in federal prison for doing what?
Manipulating human beings, causing them great harm, sex trafficking of the highest order involving girls and young women.
and doing it, doing it herself, engaging in sexual assault with respect to people who are still out there.
She plainly was in concert with Jeff Epstein, and she spent a lot of time during the course of this interview talking about the relationships that she had with Epstein, Epstein had with others.
Along the way also minimizing dramatically anything that she herself did glane Maxwell sitting down stunningly stunningly with the deputy attorney general of the United States of America I cannot emphasize as would others in a nonpartisan way
representation of administrations on the Republican side, the Democratic side, all in between.
The Deputy Attorney General is not an investigative person.
He may have some skills.
We'll get back to that in just a moment.
But when you are the Deputy Attorney General, you're responsible for administering the Department of Justice.
You don't do this.
In our second hour, we'll talk about
about all of that.
Ghislaine Maxwell will talk about the conduct of our deputy attorney general and we'll do some analysis of what you can take away and not take away from this thing that happened in Florida a month or so ago.
All of that here on Amicus, a law review.
This is Jim Santel, my name, Jim Santel, here, your host on this hour as well, our second hour of our weekend broadcast here on Amicus, a lot of you.
Thank you so much for joining me as we continue our discussion of these major still breaking issues in the areas of rule of law, justice, and government, focusing now upon the release of this transcript, two days of what can only be called a gentle conversation between Ghislaine Maxwell convicted
sex trafficker, sex assaulter.
person responsible in a major way for the victimization and the harm suffered by girls and young women at her hands, and also the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.
I'm gonna talk about what she did and did not say to the deputy attorney general, his name is Todd Blanche.
I'm gonna talk a lot about Todd Blanche himself because I'm gonna offer to you as one of the theses of this, our second hour of our broadcast, that this examination, so to speak, and that's in quotes,
and that is not what this was all about, is as much about our deputy attorney general as it is about Ghislaine Maxwell.
The upshot, the big takeaway from this, of course, is no revelations of any information.
It is not.
It is not the Rosetta Stone.
It's not the holy grail of information that somehow many people thought might be produced here.
No new information about anything related to Ghislaine Maxwell's conduct or that of Jeffrey Epstein.
Nothing that can be pursued in terms of future investigations, and that leads to the first comments about the reasons for doing proffers.
Let's go back and do a little bit of that before we get into the substance of what Elaine Maxwell said, did not say to our deputy attorney general.
What was this all about?
Again.
announced that the Deputy Attorney General in not only a rare but unheard of exercise of his authority, he can do this.
He's a lawyer for the Department of Justice going to that federal prison in Florida where Ghislaine Maxwell has been until recently incarcerated.
She is now at a minimum security prison in Texas, as you know, in the wake of this
conversation.
He goes there and he decides to conduct an interview with her, a discussion with her.
We find out from this transcript, the good thing about this is we discover that he was not alone in the room.
There were at least one or maybe more agents from the FBI there.
They should have been doing this investigative interview.
That's what they're skilled in doing.
And they would also brought some expertise that plainly this deputy attorney general, this interviewer either did not want
exhibit or did not want to explore in any way.
But nonetheless, we have the chief operating officer for the Department of Justice engaged in the weeds in a discussion, making himself a witness if ever it happens to the things that Ghislaine Maxwell has told him.
And what is this all about?
Again, he begins this
discussion with her by saying, you know, we've got an agreement.
It's put to paper.
It's committed to paper.
It's called a proffer, P-R-O-F-F-E-R.
And basically this happens all the time inside state and especially federal offices.
Basically it's under these circumstances.
If you have, could be a target, could be a subject, could be an active defendant, could be someone who's convicted already, maybe heading towards sentencing, maybe has been sentenced.
And you say to that person, or,
that person's attorney says or the person himself herself says, you know what?
I'd like to come in and talk with the government.
I'd like to talk with a federal agent, a federal attorney about the things I know.
I'm going to tell you what I did.
I'm going to tell you what others did.
I'm going to give you some information that you may not know about the investigation, whatever stage it may well be.
And again, this can happen during the investigation.
precharging, it can happen after the investigation is completed, after a criminal complaint is issued, a grand jury indictment is issued, while the case is going to trial, while the case is in trial, it's not unusual, it's atypical for the parties, maybe some night to sit down in the middle of the trial, if there's going to be some resolution of this for the parties to sit down and the defendant to come in with his or her lawyer and say, okay, let me tell you what I know, and let me perhaps provide you with some information
you don't know about in connection with further investigations, other people involved in whatever the criminal conduct has been, legitimate law enforcement to find out what others may have done, what other acts are out there.
And under those circumstances, the government can and often does issue what's called use immunity, USE.
Basically, it says this, that if you come in, Mr. or Ms.
Defendant, Mr. or Ms.
Target or Subject, even if you're convicted, you come
we will grant you use immunity.
What that means is the things you say during the course of that one hour, that two hour, that two day examination, that discussion will not be used against you.
in a subsequent prosecution.
If you admit, as we hope you will candidly, that you yourself have engaged in criminal conduct, why?
Because we've got the evidence to support that.
We've got the collateral and corroborating information to suggest that you were indeed involved in this.
If in fact you come in and you're honest with us, and you tell us what you did, and yes indeed you may have information about other people, other crimes and conduct, we will not use any of that.
in a prosecution of you, including a prosecution that might be underway or an investigation that might be underway.
If in fact we result, the result of all this, we come to a conclusion that you can plead guilty and we agree that you're going to become a witness.
Maybe in those circumstances, the report, the information that you give will be a part of that subsequent understanding and disclosure.
But under the use immunity grant, which is what
Glaine Maxwell got nothing that she says will be used against her in a future prosecution.
And the concept there of course is if you lie, if you come in.
And you tell the prosecutors things that are known not to be true.
As Ghislaine Maxwell did for two days in front of the deputy attorney general, all bets are off.
And it's not unusual if in fact a defendant or a target sits down and begins to either minimize or deny their own involvement when there is evidence to suggest just the opposite that the proffer will be concluded promptly.
Because that's the predicate for it.
Honesty, straightforward commitment to the truth.
and articulation by it, by that particular target or subject.
Glaine Maxwell did not fall into that category, nor for what it's worth.
Did she provide any information about any future prosecution investigation?
We didn't anticipate that.
This case has been closed.
One of the defendants, Jeff Epstein, has killed himself in prison.
As an aside, during the course of her examination, so to speak, by the deputy attorney general, she doubted whether or not he really did kill himself, but she acknowledges that that was speculation.
But along the way, Ghislaine Maxwell does a number of other things that only minimize her own involvement, minimizes and places on a shelf almost the involvement of other people, including Jeffrey Epstein and all this and basically lies about fundamental things that the government knows are true.
Why?
Because she went to trial and much of this was proven in court resulting her conviction, her sentence and the fact that she is in federal prison today.
presumably for 20 years, unless the president decides to give her some clemency or a pardon.
All of that, all of that up brings us to this examination.
And it also brings us to the deputy attorney general, who again, should not have been there.
Should not have been there for a couple of reasons, not only because of his status, as somebody who has to make decisions arguably about the results of this, but also, also because he wasn't prepared.
or maybe, maybe he intentionally was not prepared.
And one of the upshots, of course, as we will talk about is the fact that Todd Blanche, our deputy attorney general, was not engaging in this as a true proffer.
This was the kind of discussion that you would envision happening on an evening talk show, on a morning talk show, on one of your favorite news services out there, asking her simple questions about whether or not she did this or that.
And of course, she denies much of her involvement, minimizes her involvement, that of Jeff Epstein, and significantly, significantly that of other people about whom she was questioned.
We'll get to the manner in which the deputy attorney general did not conduct this deposition, which it wasn't, this investigative interview, which it wasn't, in a way that would result in any meaningful information.
The way that he conducted this was not intended.
to produce any substantive material that could be used for law enforcement purposes but instead plainly to establish a record.
that is now established.
And what does Ghislaine Maxwell say?
Well, again, principally, she stands and she sits in front of the deputy attorney general.
And she basically says that the allegations against her and Epstein are false.
And she swaths away many of the theories and loose ends in the case.
She says they're they're basically not real.
She insists that there's no client list of the rich and powerful, which again, the Justice Department also affirmed in a memorandum.
She also indicated
that there is no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as a part of his actions.
He didn't do any of that criminal conduct.
And again, none of that, none of that key to all of this.
But the reality is that she also, also diminishes dramatically the involvement of her in this horrific scheme, this horrific plot, this.
plot executed to accomplish the destruction of human lives.
She acknowledges along the way a social relationship between the president, Donald Trump and Jeff Epstein, but she denies any connection between Donald Trump and the sex trafficking ring.
Nothing here to see, nothing here to see.
She denies herself recruiting an underage victim of Epstein, who she said had been recruited while working at a spa at Mar-a-Lago.
You may recall well that that person, that person did speak to the media.
And in particular name is Virginia Gwifery, G-R-U-F-F-R-E.
She was 16 at the time.
And while Maxwell says she never recruited Ms.
Gwifery or anybody, no masseuse at Mar-a-Lago, Gwifery's representation is that she was approached by Maxwell.
at Mar-a-Lago invited to become Epstein's traveling masseuse.
She said that two of them then groomed her to perform sexual services and passed her around like a platter of fruit, that according to what Ms.
Gryffory had said, to the rich and powerful predators.
And what is the point of all that?
Well, there are two points of that.
One is Ms.
Gryffory committed suicide early this year as a result of the things that Ghislaine Maxwell did and Jeffrey Maxwell did as well.
That is tragedy at the highest levels.
as is all of this.
It's also significant that Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, does nothing to follow up on those ranked denials.
Does not confront Ghislaine Maxwell with anything to suggest that what she's just described about recruiting a masseuse at Mar-a-Lago might be wrong.
Along the way, Glaine Maxwell tells other lies, and there are many of them.
Here's another one.
For example, she volunteers that she was not given all the discovery that she needed during the course of her trial.
And that is flatly not true.
Again, does the deputy attorney general follow up with her and say, well?
Ms.
Maxwell, the record, as it is in this trial, is clear that the judge found, had a hearing on this, found that you were provided all of the discovery, no violation of what's called Jenks or Brady, which are the obligations of the government to provide all this discovery.
You got everything.
And so the notion that you would sit here today and suggest that somehow your trial was compromised because you didn't get all the discovery, that's simply wrong.
Did the deputy attorney general ever confront her during the course of this with that lie?
No.
And there are many others out there along the way, along the way again.
The focus of this, who is is Elaine Maxwell, makes very clear that she is a big fan of Donald Trump.
She praises him for the accomplishments along the way.
She said she likes him a lot.
She admires his accomplishments.
She says along the way very significantly that this is somebody that she has regarded, held in high regard.
And then she goes on to talk about the lack of any involvement by this president.
When we come back, we'll tell you specifically what she says in connection with Donald Trump's involvement in all of this as amicus.
All our review continues.
This is Amicus, a law review.
My name is Jim Santel.
We are talking about examining, pulling apart, putting back together these transcripts of the stunning and shockingly uninformative and unhelpful discussion.
It's not an investigative interview between Ghislaine Maxwell and our deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.
Plainly, plainly sent there, the deputy attorney general is to get exactly what he got.
He knew what his assignment was, which is to get the information that presumably would provide.
We'll see if this happens.
Support for the president's plan to give her clemency, maybe give her a pardon.
And Ghislaine Maxwell also understanding her role, what she's got to do, which is two things.
One is provide the...
interviewer in this case the deputy attorney general an awful lot of reason to believe that that that in that indeed she is telling the truth that she did not do that but nonetheless suggesting to the president indirectly through the deputy attorney general she's a big fan of his what does she say about donald trump
who significantly has refused to rule out the possibility of granting Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon, all this.
What is she, she says, she says this, President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me.
She said, I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.
And I like him.
And I've always liked him, she says.
She described the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, a man we've all gotten to know in ways that are very concerning, very troubling.
She described him as a gentleman in all respects.
This is the man who's going to be looking at this transcript.
He's going to be determining whether or not Glenn Maxwell continues to be at that low security prison in Texas.
whether she is released at some point, much to the horror, much to the consternation, the objection of not only the victims of her horrific crimes, but also should be to all Americans out there.
She is basically sending a message through this process about how much she admires the president of the United States of America who holds in his hand the capacity to provide her with a key to her jailhouse door.
I admire him and I review him as a gentleman in all respects.
What does she go on to say about him?
Again, she provides a lot of information to suggest that she never saw, has no information about, no involvement of our President Donald Trump with any of this conduct.
During the interview, of course, she basically says that she did not witness events.
She punted when she was asked to provide details about known incidents along the way as well.
Along the way, she also talks specifically about the president of the United States.
She says, I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting.
She says, I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.
She wants to get acknowledges that there is a friendship.
between and that they knew each other, but limits that very, very dramatically.
At one point, interestingly, she casually describes how Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now our Health and Human Services Secretary, once joined Epstein in a trip for dinosaur bones in the Dakotas, she dismisses, she dismisses significantly that a suggestion that former President Bill Clinton was among the men who received massages in her presence.
Likewise, not only indicating that Bill Clinton had no involvement here, interestingly, Todd Blanche spends more time asking her about Bill Clinton.
than he did asking her about Donald Trump.
When Todd Blanche asks her if there were any international businessmen or politicians, she says off the top of my head, I can only think of a former Israeli prime minister.
She's pressed about some other people and she gives us some various names who are just friends with Mr. Epstein.
She describes the fact that she is bemoaning the development of this whole Epstein matter well beyond what it should have been.
She says, so there's a narrative created.
and was built upon, related to all of this, and it just mushroomed into what basically she said was like a Salem witch trial.
She said, people have gone and lost their minds over this thing.
I understand that, but she says, the issue is how do you satisfy a mob that can't understand the lifestyle because it's like P. Diddy in Redux on TV with the Clintons and Trump?
I mean, it's all bananas.
And again, suggesting that there is nothing here to see, nothing to be concerned about,
and horrified that Americans do not understand the lifestyle and the circumstances under which these kinds of folks engage in these kinds of conduct.
Now, in addition to the complete lack of any information that would suggest that Donald Trump
Bill Clinton, others was involved in anything related to this.
She minimizes her own involvement and suggests, of course, that that the conviction against her was unfounded.
She is still seeking review of that along the way.
She is encouraged, if you will, by Todd Blanche herself, who seems to play political favorites in a lot of this along the way.
True.
He peppers her with some questions about the associates of of Epstein while dropping other lines of questioning when the conversation becomes a little bit.
too close to home.
At one point, when Elaine Maxwell was defending Epstein, denied the allegations of sex trafficking, she said that the associates of Epstein had been unfairly vilified for the relationships with him.
And Maxwell goes on to say, again, addressing the deputy attorney general, some are in your cabinet, who you value as your coworkers, should not make clear who she meant.
But another point, once again, she describes this vacation, if you will, with RFK Jr.
She said there is no way that Epstein's associates would be with him if he was a creep or because they wanted sexual favors.
The deputy attorney general follows up on none of that, asking more about who these people are, what the motivations may have been.
And in fact, he is incredibly deferential to it.
At one point, he reassures Maxwell that he says this, if I think that you're not being honest or that you're missing something, I'm not going to.
This isn't got you.
And when he ended the second day of the interview with Maxwell, he complimented her for going through with the interview and said, we'll be in touch soon.
This supposedly experienced and polished trial lawyer, not only not pursuing this as an investigative interview, but producing nothing aside from what his boss sent him there to do.
When we come back, I'll tell you more about that and we'll talk more about other events in the rule of law in America as Amicus Alauraviu continues.
This is Amicus, a lot of you.
My name is Jim Santel.
Thank you for continuing to join me and my wonderful producer, Greg, as we together march through and attempt to make sense of this incredible
and almost shockingly bad interview by the Deputy Attorney General of Ghislaine Maxwell.
Jeannie from Eau Claire sends us a note and she's spot on about this.
Jeannie says they're reframing the severity of the crimes with the way they're reporting about the meeting with Trump's lawyer.
Absolutely.
And that's a big takeaway.
And that's an important point, Jeannie and others who are out there thinking about this.
This is a dramatic minimization of the involvement, not only of Jeffrey Epstein, but Galene Maxwell, maybe others in this horrific crime.
And it is also done in a way that, again, by the incompetence of the deputy attorney general in failing to follow up, to quiz her, to question her on the lies that she's telling, the things that are demonstrably untrue, leaves this record for the president to consume and say, see?
She has not only exonerated me.
She's also exonerated Bill Clinton.
There's nothing to see here.
And she has basically said there is nothing to see here.
There's no no horrific behavior here.
The jury improperly convicted me.
I was improperly sentenced.
She minimizes her own involvement that of others as well.
She is dismissive along the way of Epstein's documented history of praying on young women and underage girls despite their own conviction for that very
enabling behavior.
She and self was involved in sexual assaults.
She says along the way that she never saw Epstein encourage men to have inappropriate contact with his masseuses, minors or young women.
And he was asked by the deputy attorney general if she knowingly selected girls for Epstein.
Max replies, I never, ever checked their age and I never checked their credentials.
huge numbers of denials that again would have stopped any investigative interview in its tracks early on along the way as an aside in addition to other things she's commenting about the rich and powerful and how they they engage in this kind of behavior.
There are also these conspiracy theories out there that she may have been paid.
for a blackmail effort in connection with some intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Again, it is absurd about the FBI, the CIA, even the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, all involved in this somehow according to these completely unsupported and ridiculous theories.
Maxwell emphatically denies all those accusations that she has no knowledge of others.
But in one particularly regulatory exchange, we also find more about her and also her interviewer.
In one exchange, again, Todd Blanche asks if she had ever had contact with a Mossad agent.
Again, Mossad is the Israeli intelligence agency.
And Maxwell responds, well, not deliberately.
And Todd Blanche,
maybe pushes back a little bit and says, pardon me.
And she repeats, not deliberately.
And what happens?
Todd Blanche does not ask her what she meant accidentally.
Did you have some other contact with Mossad Israeli intelligence agents at some point?
No follow-up as well.
That is one instance of many of those over two days in which the deputy attorney general either reveals himself to be incompetent as a lawyer or more accurately, not there, not there to conduct a true investigative interview, not there to find out anything that would produce further information
that would be helpful in a law enforcement setting, and that's the big takeaway on all of this.
Along the way, at the very end of all of this, there is some description as well about
this notebook that was compiled by Maxwell to celebrate Epstein's 50th birthday way back in 2003.
A lot of reporting on that.
And we're going to begin to finish up on this before I give you some larger commentary on this point.
Blanche asks if Maxwell remembered President Trump submitting a letter or a card.
And she responded, Maxwell responds, I don't.
And asked to define the relationship by Todd Blanche.
What is this relationship about?
He asks, Max replies, I don't think they were close friends.
And that is perhaps illustrative of the entire interview, which again, replete with lies, demonstrable lies that could have been presented to her.
replete with misrepresentations, minimizations of our own involvement, certainly the big point of this, indicating that Donald Trump was nowhere near this.
And not even a close affiliation, not even affiliation of any meaningful sort with Jeff Epstein at all.
And the point of that leads to some final commentary about this.
Yes, she was there for a purpose.
And she has an audience, yes indeed, of the deputy attorney general, but he's the conduit.
He is simply there asking these powder puff softball questions so that the president can hear from her directly, not only her effusive praise of him, how much she likes him, respects him, and how he always treated her as a gentleman.
but also her clear statement for the consumption by all of us.
The president had nothing to do with any of this conduct, which is what Todd Blanche was sent there to do.
He did his job as well, not as a deputy attorney general, not as someone who's pursuing an investigative pursuit here at all, but rather to deliver to the president what he wants to hear.
And that raises the question then about what this is all about.
It probably is.
We'll see what happens in the days ahead.
Probably the predicate for the issuance evil clemency that is reducing the amount of time that she has served to the time that she has been in prison or or an outright pardon any of that is possible the president once again refusing to dismiss that as an option and along the way along the way as all of this comes out Recognizing as do prosecutors across the country that this was not a proffer
This was not a circumstance where we're trying to find out what exactly it is that this target, this subject, this convicted defendant might know beyond what we've already proven in court.
for which he is now serving in prison.
This was an attempt to create a record beyond the office of the pardon attorney for the president of the United States of America to consume, and yes, for the public to consume as well, even, even through broadcasts like this one, as I repeat the things that she said that are patently untrue, and that are monsterly untrue based upon the very trial
in a trial proven beyond a reasonable doubt to a trial jury unanimously returning a verdict as to her and her involvement in this sex trafficking, this manipulation of human beings, this victimization of human beings that continues to this day by virtue of the president's conduct and this kind of behavior by the Department of Justice itself.
All of that, all of that
in the wake of the release of these materials not only to the American public but now and now as Dick has said in our first hour and as as we continue to anticipate the release of additional materials from the Comer
committee, if you will, the oversight committee there in the United States Congress.
We'll see what those additional materials show, probably very little if anything.
And even though those materials are voluminous in nature, will be reviewed undeniably by the media and certainly by members of Congress, their staffers, unlikely we'll get any more information about this other than
what the president wanted, which was a confirmation of his lack of involvement, and frankly, the minimization of the involvement of anyone else under any other circumstances.
This kind of behavior, two days of this, would have been stopped in its tracks.
Why once again?
Because a proffer is premised upon honesty.
This was not that.
Nothing new disclosed here.
Nothing new of importance, in fact, just the opposite in sending us back in an opposite direction.
direction.
So Janie's comment that the severity of the crimes is not only limited, diminished, almost, almost erased is exactly how you can understand the two day examination by our deputy attorney general of this convicted felon in federal custody.
We've got some other things related to Donald Trump coming out of courts just this past week as well.
Let's begin to talk a little bit about those as well.
Recall well.
We'll call well that a judge actually called Justice Arthur Enger on many, many months years ago, actually now, entered a judgment against Donald Trump in an amount now totaling about $520 million.
Initially it was less than that, but you've got some interest accruing there.
And basically it was after this extensive trial, a civil trial, tried to him, not to a jury, presented by the
The attorney general of the state of New York, her name, of course, LaTisha James, also a strong, strong adversary of the president, also someone the president has described in scurrilous terms.
In the wake of that presentation, what does justice judge trial, trial judge Angaran do?
He says, you know what?
I find
that the the the defendant in this case the civil defendant this is not a criminal case as engaged in fraud doing what in connection with his valuation of certain properties statements made to banks and other officials about the quality the nature of financial transactions and fundamentally the real estate valuation of things that donald trump holds in violation of new york state law
And the judge, judge, or justice, and grant enters extensive rulings to that finding that this is an instance of civil fraud perpetrated by Donald Trump and his sons in connection with this attempt to undervalue, devalue, misvalue the properties that they own.
Along the way, once again, the judge is obliged to impose at the request of the Attorney General of the State of New York a judgment.
And he imposes this judgment that, yes, once again, now stands at about $520 million.
That's huge.
That's more than half a billion dollars if my math is correct.
That is a big sum of money.
That's the fine he enters in this civil fraud case.
Goes up to the Court of Appeals.
New York Appeals Court judges.
in the end, they issue this decision that comes out just this past week.
And it is a mixed bag.
It is important to understand what the appeals court does and does not do in connection with this major case.
Pending before the appeals court could now go up to the New York Supreme Court a divided a divided panel of that appeals court throws out throws out the half billion dollar fine itself and Says that that enormous financial burden is not appropriate given the nature of this underlying offense Peter Moulton who's one of the appeals judges who was lengthy and frankly
Sort of convoluted ruling on all this reflects some deep disagreement among the five judge panel.
We've got decisions.
all over the place on this.
But Peter Moulton, again, one of those appeal judges says, well, harm has certainly occurred.
And that is one of the major takeaways here.
Harm has certainly occurred.
The fraud existed, the court finds.
It was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion dollar award to the state.
That's the fundamental notion.
That's the fundamental thing that the appeals court has done.
Not, not at all removing the judgment of fraud.
entered as to Donald Trump and his sons, but finding that the amount of the fine imposed by judge or justice, Eric Engaran is simply too much.
And so along the way, we get a statement, of course, from the attorney general.
She says Donald Trump and his two children remain liable for fraud.
And says the court has affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court.
Donald Trump, needless to say, misrepresents what the court has done here.
He responds on social media, as he often does.
He declares complete victory.
He praises the court for having, quote, the courage, capital C, to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful decision, capital D. Well, they did that in part, but again, he remains a convicted in the civil setting, responsible for civil fraud.
And along the way, of course, that is the big takeaway from what happens in this particular case.
There's another judge who is skeptical of the accusations for years.
He wanted to throw out the case entirely, believing that the case lacked the, the prosecution did not have the power to do it.
Two other judges concluded that the prosecution had the authority to file the case, but wanted a new trial, all kinds of things all across the board here.
The upshot of which is the fine is no longer,
there, but the underlying offense conduct still in the nature of civil fraud.
When we come back, we're going to talk about another, another serpentine and somewhat curious decision coming out of the United States Supreme Court just this past week.
This is Amicus.
Hello.
My name is Jim Santel.
And this is the final segment of our weekend broadcast.
We're talking about a couple of difficult to parse out decisions of the courts in America, including this decision by the appeals court in the state of New York.
You've got Justice Moulton and a 126 page decision.
That's a lot to consume.
Basically saying that the $450 million, $450 million judgment now up to $520 million.
including interest was excessive.
He said that the punishment did not fit the wrongdoing, even though the wrongdoing, the civil fraud in violation of the New York law remains in place.
The judge, the justice concluding that it was an excessive fine that's barred under the constitution of the United States of America.
And yes, indeed, he is invoking.
Here's your civics.
Once again, the eighth amendment, the US constitution prohibits excessive fines, basically to ensure that financial penalties imposed by courts and
governments are not disproportionate to the offense committed.
And that's what the court has found here.
Again, a number of different opinions coming out of that panel, various of them supporting the underlying judgment, various of them asking for a new trial, some of them indicating that the remedies need to be reviewed in further court action.
So lots and lots of serpentine decisions there, the upshot of which is the fine goes
away the finding, the finding by the court, by Justice Angaran.
A couple of years ago that fraud was committed that remains in place and that remains a part of the record as to the current president.
His name is Donald Trump.
Let's talk about something else that Donald Trump has done.
And that is involving the National Institutes of Health.
And among the one hundred and ninety or so executive orders that the president has issued in recent times, we've got something coming out of the Supreme Court.
Yes, I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, gee, weren't the out of business now?
The answer is no, they continue to work during the course of this summertime.
And in what can only be called a fractured ruling, another one of these serpentine difficult to follow decisions where we've got justices weighing in in various aspects.
This past week, the Supreme Court ruled five to four, a very interesting combination, the five to four, that the Trump administration could for now, could for now cancel.
stop, about $780 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health.
And those grants were things that the government had said had been intended to explore topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, gender ideology, and vaccine hesitancy.
A different five justice majority, again, stay with me on this, let's stand for now a lower court's ruling that the administration's policy
Directing the cuts was unlawful.
In other words, the grants could be canceled, but the underlying policy?
The policy itself, those are unlawful and should be put on hold.
To make this even more curious, Amy Coney Barrett, one of the associates, of course, she was in both majorities.
The order, of course, is not the last word.
It's going to proceed in the lower courts.
The upshot of what can only be described as a scrambled ruling, and it's going to be subject to moral litigation, appears to be that the grants that were already canceled will not be reinstated.
Those that were canceled already, the $780 million will not go back in
enforced, but recipients can in fact sue in a specialized court and future cancellations may be barred.
Why?
Because the underlying policy adopted by the president, at least according to the Supreme Court, cannot stand.
In her concurring opinion, Justice Barrett wrote that the challenges to individual grant terminations were probably filed in the wrong court.
But, again, distinguishing her from the other justices, she says the challenge to the policy guidance was in the right court.
She added that whether claims about the guidance in this case will succeed is another question.
But the lower court judges ruling could remain in place right now.
Interestingly, Chief Justice John Roberts
He joins the three court members.
We talk about all of them a lot, but those include Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would have blocked both the policy and restored the funding.
Again, the overall ruling here, the funding that has been canceled already, that can remain canceled, but the policy, the policy is no more Roberts.
and Sotomayor and Kagan and Jackson form the four-member dissent, and they would have blocked the policy as well and restored the funding, which is what distinguishes their position from that of the others.
Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh would have allowed the policy and the cuts, both the money, the allocations, and the policy itself to go forward.
The mixed result here, plainly a break.
from what the Supreme Court has done in handing Donald Trump an awful lot of these kinds of wins in recent days.
After the National Institutes of Health had sent out some boiler pipe notices, terminating thousands of grants, some research and some advocacy groups, a union, some individual researchers, 16 states had sued saying the motives were apprecious and they were arbitrary.
and Judge Young, the lower court judge, says there's not a shred of evidence to support the administration's position that these DEI studies inside the NIH are often used in support of unlawful discrimination.
on the basis of race and other protected characteristics.
He dismisses all of this.
Again, subject to review by the Supreme Court, which they've just now done.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals refuses to pause Judge Young's ruling and writing for the panel there.
The judge, Judge Julie Rickleman, said that a period of determinations would set back life-saving researchers and the work that they do by years, if not decades.
Interestingly, interesting along the way, of course, the three liberal members joined the long dissent of the Chief Justice, who wrote that the policy guidance and consequences were legally inseparable
from the finding there.
And in her own judgment, her own opinion, Justice Jackson says she drew from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbs saying this is a Calvin ball, jurisprudence with a twist.
Calvin ball has only one rule.
There are no fixed rules.
We seem to have two, she says, that one and this administration always wins.
When we come back next week, more from the Supreme Court, more from the courts of America, more from the Justice Department, more from
rule of law in America.
Stay with us for that.
Have a good weekend, everybody.