Preet Bharara: And now, let me welcome my guest, Anne Milgram, former Attorney General of the State of New Jersey and friend of mine, and also at NYU Law School, like me.

 

Anne Milgram: Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: Thanks for coming.

 

Anne Milgram: Thanks for having me.

 

Preet Bharara: So, there are there charges. There’s one indictment against Paul Manafort, former campaign manager, for the Donald Trump campaign. His protégé, as people like to call it, Rick Gates; and then there’s a separate charge against a younger man named George Papadopoulos. And he was, by all accounts, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign for a period of time as well. And he’s charged with a violation of what you and I know very well, as a—

 

Anne Milgram: 1001.

 

Preet Bharara: 1001, 18. United States Code 1001, which is, you know, a statute that federal officials like to use and hold over people’s heads because it basically criminalizes lying to the feds. And so what’d you think when you first heard that the charges were being brought?

 

Anne Milgram: So, I was expecting it to be Manafort, potentially. I mean, he was sort of on the list of people I was thinking would be charged. I hadn’t followed the Papadopoulos pieces as closely. And so, I had to gut check myself for a moment because this has been going on now for over a year. And so, in some ways, we were probably both expecting to see charges. There had been some leaks that there were charges coming, that people were being walked into the courthouse Monday morning. And so, I think it’s important to remember how extraordinary it is that we’re seeing charges brought against people who were campaign officials who are essentially charged with defrauding the United States, who are charged with tax evasion, money-laundering. And then to see particularly the George Papadopoulos piece, which I think is in many ways the most interesting piece of this, which sort of gives us little pieces. But there’s a lot that’s missing.

 

Preet Bharara: I think without question, so far, at least, the Papadopoulos—you know, I just like saying it over and over again.

 

Anne Milgram: Papadopoulos.

 

Preet Bharara: Papadopoulos.

 

Anne Milgram: Should we just keep saying Papadopoulos.

 

Preet Bharara: We can.

 

Anne Milgram: Papa.

 

Preet Bharara: That’s the most significant, for reasons we’ll talk about. But you said a second ago that you were expecting it to be Paul Manafort. And the reason we were all – and I said I was expecting to hear who the defendant might be on Monday morning, one or more. And the reason for that is that a network, CNN, reported on Friday evening that there had been an indictment returned by the grand jury that was sitting for Bob Mueller’s Special Counsels Office. That’s not good. You and I both know that’s not good. It’s not supposed to come out. And immediately, a lot of people started blaming the Mueller team. And we have no way of knowing how that happened, but it shouldn’t have come out. What do you think happened there?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah, that’s a great point. There’s all sorts of possible areas. It could have come from members of the grand jury, people in the courthouse who saw members of Mueller’s team walking in and out.

 

Preet Bharara: Well, for any of those people, if it was members of the grand jury or it was a member of the prosecution team, that’s unlawful.

 

Anne Milgram: Or even court security officers. Or even a member of the public who sees someone they recognize. You know, everyone in courthouses talk. There’s a lot of information that goes around, some of it accurate, some of it not. But I’m sure that the reporters and the press are out there watching eagerly to see if members of the team are coming in. Now, how they knew that the actual indictment had been returned, I think, is a real question, because that is what was reported on Friday. It wasn’t just that there were witnesses going in front of the grand jury. It was that charges had been filed.

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t sure it was necessarily true when it came out, because—

 

Anne Milgram: That’s a good point.

 

Preet Bharara: Because other people didn’t confirm it for a while, but it turned out that it was true. So, I want to come back to that in a few minutes. But first, I want to talk about the Mueller team, Bob Mueller himself.

 

Anne Milgram: Mm-hmm. Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: And because I know you’ve dealt with him, what’s your experience been with Bob Mueller personally?

 

Anne Milgram: So, I love Bob Mueller, and I think probably you would say the same thing I would say, which is he’s one of the few prosecutors in America and former federal agent, as the head of the FBI, who really is beyond reproach. He’s just—he’s a straight shooter. When I was AG, I dealt with him on a couple matters. He was, at the time, the head of the FBI, and I was running the Camden, New Jersey police department, and so, we needed a lot of help from the FBI. We had a lot of conversations with federal agencies about getting in to help us with crime fighting. And so, I haven’t dealt with him a huge amount, but I’ve dealt with him on a number of issues, and I found him to be completely aboveboard, completely straight. Probably the least political prosecutor. I don’t think of prosecutors as being political, but Mueller is just—you know, he’s as straight as an arrow. And one of the things I would sort of ask you, Preet, is all this speculation about Mueller is sending a message, right, that he’s out there sending a message to other people through the Manafort and through the Papadopoulos stuff. And my experience with Mueller is that he is just unbelievably methodical. He’s gonna go through the facts and the law, and—

 

Preet Bharara: He’s just doing his job. I’ve said this on this podcast before, and some people might remember it, when we had Lisa Monaco, who you also know. A guy who has subpoena power, a huge budget, 16 lawyers, men with weapons he can deploy doesn’t need to flex—

 

Anne Milgram: Completely.

 

Preet Bharara: Or send messages. The work itself is its message. But I just want to back up on Mueller for a second and say a couple things. One is, the one thing that has bothered me, that there’s a movement to under mine him and say he’s political in some way. But just as a reminder to the audience who may not remember this, Bob Mueller began as the FBI director just a few days before 9/11—

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: In 2001. And by statue, by law, an FBI director can serve only for ten years. So, his ten years came up in 2011. And people may not remember what happened. What happened was the Congress and the president, who was then President Obama, basically said, this is a country of 325 million people, and we can’t find someone better than Bob Mueller. And so, what are we gonna do? Rather than nominate some new person—and there were a lot of people who I’m sure were raising their hand, and you and I know some of them—they decided to do an extraordinary thing. They decided to change the law—

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah. And keep him. Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And keep him. So, literally, they passed a bill called a Bill to Extend the Term of the Incumbent Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was a Senate bill, and S.11-03. And that law passed a hundred to zero in the Senate. And that wasn’t—

 

Anne Milgram: Completely bipartisan, yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: Completely bipartisan. So, because people should remember as a backdrop, if they’re only hearing about Bob Mueller for the first time now, this is a person who was not a young man in 2011 when he was reappointed, and not just reappointed, but reappointed in an extraordinary way that took actually a law to be passed and a president to sign it. And that’s the kind of person we’re talking about. What’s your reaction?

 

Anne Milgram: I think it’s a great point. And I think you and I have both been through it where people don’t know where it lands, and they suspect that it’s not gonna land well, and we should talk about that in a minute. But they suspect that there are gonna be additional charges, which I believe there will be. And so, they’re setting it up to say the investigation is a sham. It’s politically motivated. It’s being run, I think, by people who are not honorable, and they’re not gonna follow the law where it takes them. And so, I think they’re planting the seed to frame that conversation amongst people who are inclined to believe the worst, who don’t know Mueller like people in law enforcement do.

 

Preet Bharara: So, Manafort and Gates were allowed to surrender. They were not treated to what a lot of defendants are, with the FBI showing up at 6:00 AM knocking on the door and telling people to put their hands up. Some people have said that’s unfair, that they’re getting special treatment. Can you explain why it either was or was not appropriate?

 

Anne Milgram: Well, you’ve probably done this too. Our practice was often when someone was represented by counsel and we knew that they were represented by counsel, we would go through the lawyers and allow people to surrender.

 

Preet Bharara: But only in certain circumstances.

 

Anne Milgram: Only in certain circumstances, not in all. But our practice was often that unless we had a reason to believe we shouldn’t do that.

 

Preet Bharara: But you don’t let people surrender if you think that they’re gonna be a risk of flight.

 

Anne Milgram: Mm-hmm.

 

Preet Bharara: Or you think they’re gonna be a danger to the community. So, violent criminals who are not aware they’re under investigation almost are never permitted to surrender.

 

Anne Milgram: Right.

 

Preet Bharara: So, in my mind, it’s not a function of whether or not you have money or means or lawyers, but the nature of the crime—

 

Anne Milgram: Right.

 

Preet Bharara: And the nature of the risk and the threat. I was a little bit surprised, I’ll say. Why house detention? Does that seem odd to you and unusual in these circumstances?

 

Anne Milgram: Well, it sounded like—I mean, this is—so, this is the piece I think is really interesting here, is that’s the exact analysis I would do, is is there a risk to public safety if you release someone, and is there a risk that somebody won’t return or will flee? And here, I agree. It’s a white-collar crime. There’s no evidence that any of these folks are risks to public safety. But in terms of the risk of flight, the government made serious arguments that they thought Manafort was a risk of flight, and that’s why they asked for home detention. And so, it is a little inconsistent with letting somebody—

 

Preet Bharara: It’s a little odd, right?

 

Anne Milgram: Right? With letting somebody walk in voluntarily. Because if you think they’re a risk of flight, you usually would go out and pick them up at 6:00 in the morning.

 

Preet Bharara: And what kinds of questions do you think Bob Mueller’s personally signing off? Obviously, the charges. You were the attorney general of an office of how many lawyers?

 

Anne Milgram: We had 9,000 people, but we had hundreds of lawyers.

 

Preet Bharara:  I was using a smaller office. We had 220 lawyers, 450 employees. And obviously, lots and lots of things go on there. And you can’t personally micromanage all of it. But there are certain kinds of things that are likely to be signed off by Bob Mueller himself, Bob Mueller who was the person who was appointed.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes, I agree.

 

Preet Bharara: None of these other people were appointed by Rod Rosenstein. Do you think that Bob Mueller—again, we’re speculating again.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: But somewhat intelligently, I hope. Do you think Bob Mueller has personally signed off on the no knock search of Paul Manafort’s home?

 

Anne Milgram: I think so. I think I would have. Would you have?

 

Preet Bharara: I would have, yeah.

 

Anne Milgram: I think so too, yeah. Me too.

 

Preet Bharara: I mean, I would have wanted to know—I would have wanted—I think in this kind of case, any kind of substantial step—and we can define substantial step in different ways—is something that I would want to have known about and approved if I were the special counsel. And I would want, as an outsider, Bob Mueller to have known about it—

 

Anne Milgram: I feel the same, yes.

 

Preet Bharara: And approved. So, do you think Bob Mueller approved the request for home detention?

 

Anne Milgram: I do. I mean, I feel like—and my sense is, in a case like this, he will approve every high-level request, court filing, decision, everything that is gonna have an impact on the outcome of the case. And that’s a critical question, of do you ask for detention or not?

 

Preet Bharara: So, there are investigative interviews that are happening. Witnesses have been interviewed.

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: We know that George Papadopoulos was interviewed, and then cooperated and pled guilty. I used to get this question a lot because people were confused about what my job was. Is Bob Mueller personally conducting any of those interviews?

 

Anne Milgram: No. No, I don’t think so.

 

Preet Bharara: He’s not?

 

Anne Milgram: No. I know, I know.

 

Preet Bharara: But he’s the guy—I mean, I once came out of a train when we had a significant case against a huge head of a head fund named Raj Rajaratnam. And a guy came out of the train, and the guy looked at me—

 

Anne Milgram: Why you weren’t in trial.

 

Preet Bharara: He said, “Aren’t you in court? Why aren’t you in court?”

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And I said, I don’t know what this man is talking about. He said, “Don’t you have that trial against the big hedge fund guy?” And I said, “No, I have people, actually.”

 

Anne Milgram: Who do it.

 

Preet Bharara: So, Bob Mueller is overseeing—you think, overseeing things, but he’s delegating all of this authority to his team.

 

Anne Milgram: Well, if it was you, I would think, right? The FBI, when they do an interview, they’ll do a write-up of those interviews, a 302, right? They’ll do sort of a written record of a conversation.

 

Preet Bharara: A 302 is just—is the form number on which FBI agents make a record of interviews that they do.

 

Anne Milgram: And so, I would assume that as they’re doing these interviews, they’re writing them up, Mueller is seeing all of them. And he’s able to help direct the lawyers and say, “Let’s go interview this person next. These five people are on our list.” And I sort of imagined there’s a whiteboard in the office, and they’ve got these lines of inquiry. And so, the Manafort/Gates line is one of them, with Papadopoulos there, and then there’s others, right? There’s the Trump, Jr. meeting with Kushner and Manafort. So, there are different sort of—this is a pretty large, I would think, investigation into the links between the campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to impact the election. And so, my guess is Mueller is sort of in the nerve center of that, trying to figure out what are the pieces, where is the evidence, who have we talked to, who haven’t we talked to? And is really trying to bring that thoughtfully together.

 

Preet Bharara: I’m not a fan of the whiteboard. It’s like a Silicon Valley thing to me, like the whiteboard. But yeah, you have different people who are looking at different things. And I assume that the team of 15 or 16 lawyers is divided up by task. So, for example, there were three signatures on the plea agreement between the special counsel’s office and the lawyers for George Papadopoulos—

 

Anne Milgram: Right.

 

Preet Bharara: Who’s accused of lying to the government. I personally know two of those people, Jeannie Rhee and Andrew Goldstein. Jeannie Rhee and I became prosecutors together, she in Washington and I in Southern district. And we were trained together, actually, at the Justice Department Training Center.

 

Anne Milgram: The NAC.

 

Preet Bharara: The NAC, a hundred—people who know it—a hundred years ago. And Andrew Goldstein, I hired into the Southern district and promoted to be the Chief of the Public Corruption Unit. So, I know them to be tremendous. And Andrew, I know even better because I’ve supervised him, and he oversaw lots of important corruption investigations. So, I know that at least those two, and another person, who I don’t know, Aaron Zelinsky, they’re doing their own thing, but they’re presumably coordinating with each other as well.

 

Anne Milgram: And probably all through Mueller, who’s directing and thinking about what their next steps are.

 

Preet Bharara: I want to talk about the Papadopoulos charge, because that’s significant for a lot of reasons. One, what clearly happened, and I think this is laid out in the documents, FBI agents went to interview George Papadopoulos. They said, we want to interview you about certain things. They told him that to lie to us is a crime.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: So, it’s not like it’s some law in the books—

 

Anne Milgram: It’s not a surprise, yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And some obscure—and they said, if you lie to us, that’s a crime. And we’re gonna ask you these questions about your contacts with various people who were interfaces—that you thought were interfaces with members of the Russian government in connection with the campaign. And then he proceeded to lie to them.

 

Anne Milgram: That’s right.

 

Preet Bharara: And whether or not his interactions with a professor who’s described in the paperwork who was a conduit to the Russian government, whether or not that was criminal in nature, while they’re trying to figure out if it’s criminal in nature, the lying about it after being warned about it is a crime, and you think is an important crime to prosecute.

 

Anne Milgram: I do. I do. And I think it’s a valid crime. Also, the other thing we should talk about just for a minute is that when people plead guilty, they don’t always plead to every offense that they could potentially be charged with. And I don’t know that to be the case here, but it isn’t uncommon for somebody to plead to something like 1001, where there could potentially be other charges. I think it’s likely that that is the most serious charge they have against him at this time, or that that’s where they’re comfortable charging him. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re—at least, in my experience with 1001s, it doesn’t mean there were no other crimes that were being investigated or potentially committed.

 

Preet Bharara: So, he pled to lying to the FBI. But do you think that if they had more on him, they wouldn’t have made him plead guilty to that? Because we would have.

 

Anne Milgram: Right. I would have as well. I would have as well. But I think it’s important to know that—there are two things. One is that—and I’m sort of speaking more  generally, that there are times when you’re doing a plea agreement on someone that you would make them plead to all charges that were potentially against them. I don’t think that was the case here, but I do think it’s just important that we understand that—

 

Preet Bharara: Sometimes you work quickly to bring a charge because you’re trying to flip them.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: And that—it’s not been confirmed 100 percent, but I’m pretty, pretty sure—

 

Anne Milgram: Me too, yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: That that’s what happened here for a lot of reasons. And to flip to someone is, in our old-fashioned law enforcement parlance, to try to convince someone to take responsibility for their conduct, and to cooperate with the government, and provide substantial assistance in some way—

 

Anne Milgram: And potentially testify against other people in the case.

 

Preet Bharara:  Testify against some folks.

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: In this case, there’s been a lot of speculation about what happened. So, I want to run through with you what you think happened, because I see some smart commentary, and I see some stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense, even coming from academics who I don’t think have ever been in a courtroom but like to talk about it. No offense to them. So, George Papadopoulos, it looks like, was arrested on July 27^th, something like that. And he didn’t plead guilty until October 5^th, early October. So, that’s a lot of weeks that have gone by. And I’ve seen some commentators say that the special counsel’s office has suggested that he engaged in proactive cooperation. By proactive cooperation, I presume they mean that he helped them while being a secret tool of the government. Does that necessarily mean that he wore a wire?

 

Anne Milgram: No, I don’t think that necessarily means he wore a wire.

 

Preet Bharara: So, what does it mean?

 

Anne Milgram: There are a lot of reasons I think you and I could think about between the time he was placed under arrest and the time he pled guilty, figuring out, would he cooperate, getting access to emails. It is potentially viable that he would have worn a wire, but by no means, I think, necessarily the case here. But—and also, they’re gonna debrief him before they figure out whether they’ll sign him up as a cooperator.

 

Preet Bharara: When you say debrief him, you mean what?

 

Anne Milgram: What I think we would think about for law enforcement agents is that they would sit in a room and they would want to know everything he knows, from the first days of his interaction with the campaign till his interactions with all the people that are part of the investigation. And they would want to also figure out if he’s gonna be a cooperator. If you’re gonna sign somebody up, you have one critical question, which is, particularly when somebody’s already lied to you, which is are they gonna tell you the truth? And so, Bob Mueller and his team are not gonna cooperate, in my view, somebody who they think is still lying to them. And so, if the agents would have spent a considerable amount of time figuring out what does he know, who does he know it about, what evidence is out there that they can get, and is he being forthright with us now that he’s come forward and changed his story, is the changed story the accurate one?

 

Preet Bharara: So, here’s a question probably a lot of people are asking themselves as they’re listening to us talk. If you’re trying to get someone to cooperate against someone else and testify, and you’re trying to make sure that in order to do that, they will—you have to believe that they’re telling the truth. This guy’s just been convicted of lying.

 

Anne Milgram: Right.

 

Preet Bharara: So, how smart is it for a prosecutor’s office to rely on the future testimony of a guy whose only crime so far has been to lie to them?

 

Anne Milgram: Right. I mean, this is a great question, and I think it is something that if you’re not part of this world, it would be hard to understand. But—

 

Preet Bharara: Well, but ultimately, a jury has to understand it.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: So, literally, the kinds of people who are listening to this podcast, who number in the—

 

Anne Milgram: Millions.

 

Preet Bharara: At least in the tens. They’re gonna have to understand, right? And so, they’re gonna come into a jury, supposing he’s testifying someday. And the defense lawyer’s gonna say, as you know, “How can you believe a word of this man, George Papadopoulos? The reason he is here—the only reason he’s here is because he lied to the federal government. He didn’t lie to any ordinary person. He lied to the very agents, by the way, who are now telling you in this courtroom, and prosecutors who are now telling you in this courtroom, to believe him. That’s nonsense.”

 

Anne Milgram: And that’s—yeah, and that would be the exact perfect argument for the defense lawyer to make in the closing of the trial. And what the prosecutor would, I think, say is, “Look, he lied and he shouldn’t have lied. And there’s no—there would be no excusing by the government for that kind of conduct.” But there would be an understanding that people often do lie under these circumstances. You know, I’ve tried a lot of human trafficking cases. I’ve never had a human trafficking case where the victim was completely forthright when they first walked in the door. And that is really hard for a jury and for other people to understand, which is you’re the police, you’re law enforcement. Why would you not—particular you’re told, if you lie, you’re gonna be potentially convicted of a crime.

 

So, I think you have to make sure that the jury understands that there are a lot of reasons why people are not forthright. They’re scared, they don’t know what they’re sort of looking at. And then they come to tell you the truth. It’s also really important to understand that at the point which you go to trial, you have a lot of other evidence that will corroborate these statements. And so—

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah, so corroboration. So, right. So, what we would always say in court is, if we have a witness who’s testifying who has pled guilty to a crime, like George Papadopoulos will have—so, we’re not asking to like this witness.

 

Anne Milgram: Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: We’re asking you to decide whether or not you believe the witness. And because he’s pled guilty to a crime—in this case, it’s a relevant crime, which is lying—you have to have to ask yourself, what are his incentives now? Now his incentives when he was approached might be to protect the campaign or protect himself, and maybe he was fearful and intimidated. But his incentives now are to get lenience. The only way that will happen is if the prosecutors and the court believe that he’s telling the truth going forward, so he doesn’t have an incentive to lie anymore, and that’s a powerful argument to the jury. And then second, the corroboration that you talked about. So, you scrutinize this convicted liar’s testimony, but hold it up against this other stuff we have, these emails and everything else. And so, you think that the special counsel’s office believes that he will be believed if and when he testifies?

 

Anne Milgram: I do. That decision of who you sign up as cooperators and who you don’t is a really critical one. And there are times when you don’t have a choice. Nobody will cooperate.

 

Preet Bharara: Nobody comes forward.

 

Anne Milgram: Right? I mean, so sometimes, it’s not your decision. But there are times where you do get to make this assessment. And by the way, I saw Trump’s tweet that said “Papadopoulos is a liar,” which is in fact the crime that he has pled guilty to. So, it is in fact true, and I don’t think there’s any question—

 

Preet Bharara: That’s an actual true—

 

Anne Milgram: That that is an actual true statement.

 

Preet Bharara: It’s a true tweet—

 

Anne Milgram: It’s a true tweet.

 

Preet Bharara: By the President of the United States.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: You said just because he was a proactive cooperator, George Papadopoulos didn’t necessarily wear a wire. But he might have.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes, I agree.

 

Preet Bharara: So, let’s talk about that for a second. So, I’ll have people many, many, many times, you approach them, they flip, they want to do anything to help themselves, they’re cooperative, they’ve found Jesus. And then they wear a wire. And then they try to call people who are above them. It doesn’t always pan out, because sometimes you get a guy who wants to be helpful to the government, and he calls up, and he’s so clunky about—they’re not actors, some of them. And they’re so clunky in saying, “You remember that guy you told me to kill? Well, where’s the money?”

 

Anne Milgram: Right, yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And the higher up guy in the Mob hands up the phone and never speaks to him again.

 

Anne Milgram: There’s also times where people—at this point in the case, the Mueller team has been interviewing so many people, and they’re deep into this. And so, enough people have lawyered up and are gonna be very hinky on talking to somebody, and afraid of who’s cooperating and who’s wearing a wire, I think.

 

Preet Bharara: Hinky, by the way, being a specialized term in the law.

 

Anne Milgram: A special term of art, yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And what are the odds that George Papadopoulos, while everything’s swirling around, wore a wire and then successively got other people, like Jeff Sessions or other folks, who he got on the phone with them and they incriminated themselves?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah. I mean, it’s—again, we’re speculating, but I can’t imagine that he got Sessions on the phone. I think Sessions was one of the people in the meeting that tried to shut down, or afterwards, tried to sort of shut this down, and I think would be particularly cautious on this at this point. But I do think people like Manafort, there’s been a search warrant on his house. He wants to know what the government is doing. He’s the former campaign chair, and he’s obviously a pretty center target of the ongoing investigation. And so, could he get other people to talk to him? It’s a really interesting question.

 

And I think also, I mean, there’s a lot in the charges that make it look like, from what we know, Clovis, who was one of the co-chairs of the campaign, has admitted that he’s the senior—you know, he’s one of the senior campaign officials who’s mentioned. And so, there are those folks, and then there are probably other folks. There are a group of people who were part of that team. And so, what’s interesting to me is he could have worn a wire against the people to whom he reported. He could have also worn a wire against other members of the campaign team, right?

 

Preet Bharara: Right.

 

Anne Milgram: I mean, it is very possible. The likelihood that he did it and did it well?

 

Preet Bharara: Seems low.

 

Anne Milgram: I agree.

 

Preet Bharara: But it’s possible.

 

Anne Milgram: Seems low. Possible.

 

Preet Bharara: Now, the fact that we knew about a charge coming on Friday—the fact that we knew on Friday that there was a charge coming as soon as Monday, and people speculated Paul Manafort, and some people speculated Michael Flynn, and that shoe may still drop.

 

Anne Milgram: I agree.

 

Preet Bharara: And then there was also George Papadopoulos, who frankly, I had never heard of. Had you ever heard of him before?

 

Anne Milgram: No. No.

 

Preet Bharara: What does that tell you about who might currently be in the crosshairs, or already be in trouble or pled guilty that we don’t know about?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah. I mean, I expect that there will be people who are charged that we—to come that we don’t know about. And I think this always happens when there’s public conversations about cases, and we don’t have the inside information of an investigation, where we really do focus on the sort of top targets, and we sort of focus on the people who are known to us, like the campaign chairman and others. But all of these people who reported to those folks who are definitely in this chain and having these conversations with members of the Russian government or people who purport to speak on behalf of the Russian government. And I do think we’re also seeing that the Mueller team is interviewing everybody, which is exactly what you would do in a corruption case like this, because you need to know, what do people know? They can obviously testify against your case if you don’t have a deep understanding of what happened, where were people, what were they doing. And so, I completely agree with you that there’s more shoes to drop, and that we probably won’t know who many of them are.

 

Preet Bharara: So, what do you think’s gonna happen next, and who are the other people who should be sitting around worried that Mueller’s gonna come knocking?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah. So, here are the people who I think would be worried. And we should sort of talk about and, again, speculate on a couple of them. If we think about there are different people looking at different lines of inquiry in the case, then one really interesting line of inquiry, I think, is into this meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., with Paul Manafort, with Jared Kushner, and with this Russian lawyer.

 

Preet Bharara: You can say her—let’s try saying her name.

 

Anne Milgram: I come from Ukraine, actually. I should be able to do this. On my dad’s side. Half Ukrainian.

 

Preet Bharara: It sounds almost—I think it’s Veselnitskaya.

 

Anne Milgram: Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya.

 

Preet Bharara: Henry’s nodding. It’s Veselnitskaya.

 

Anne Milgram: So, there’s a meeting that has been acknowledged by Donald Trump, Jr., and there’s email communications about it, and they’re seeking dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of that meeting. And so, what’s really interesting to me is if you and I were wearing our prosecutor hats and thinking about who would potentially tell us about what happened inside that meeting, I don’t think it’s the Russian lawyer. I don’t think—obviously, you and I both know, family usually does not cooperate. And so, that takes Kushner and Trump, Jr. out of the box. It leaves us with Paul Manafort. And so, we understand at this point, Manafort is not a cooperator. But it is a really interesting question to me. There’s now gonna be enormous pressure on him. I agree with you that I think the charges are very strong. There’s a paper trail of this money.

 

Preet Bharara: Are they the most serious charges you’ve ever seen?

 

Anne Milgram: Against Manafort?

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah. I mean, it’s mostly—it’s basically—

 

Anne Milgram: No, but—

 

Preet Bharara: It’s basically lying about foreign accounts, and lying about whether you were an agent for a foreign power.

 

Anne Milgram: I think that’s right, but I also happen to think that we live in a world where I would argue that Russia is an existential threat to the United States in many ways, that they are committed to destroying democracy. They are known to be committed to computer hacking and to really trying to figure out, can they undermine governments? And so, yes, in some ways, it looks like he was very greedy, right? There’s $75 million in money that was laundered and taxes not paid. But there’s also this element of he’s doing things on behalf of a foreign government without being honest about it, which we prohibit because we are concerned about foreign governments influencing, just we’re concerned about them influencing our elections. We’re concerned about them lobbying here without knowing who are their lobbyists?

 

And so, there is a piece of this that I think is more than greed that I think really does—and again, Mueller’s charged with investigating these links to the Russian government, and Manafort is clearly working with a pro-Russian Ukrainian government. And so, you and I suspect—we’re both not big believers in coincidence.

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah.

 

Anne Milgram: Right? And so—

 

Preet Bharara: Although sometimes it happens.

 

Anne Milgram: It does. I’m not saying never, but.

 

Preet Bharara: Would you have hired—maybe you’ll run for president in the future, and I would vote for you. But if you were Donald Trump at the time, would you have hired Paul Manafort in the first place, knowing some of his entanglements with Russia?

 

Anne Milgram: Oh, I have never been asked if I was Donald Trump before.

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah. Just consider that for a moment.

 

Anne Milgram: No. No. I mean, I think the campaign is filled with people that you and I wouldn’t have hired in our—well, obviously not in a prosecutor’s office, but we wouldn’t have hired in a lot of capacities.

 

Preet Bharara: How about for a bakery, in a bakery shop?

 

Anne Milgram: I did work as an assistant pastry stodge when I was in law school.

 

Preet Bharara: I know, that’s why I ask you. I’m familiar with your background.

 

Anne Milgram: Mm-hmm. Back in the day at Le Cirque. I don’t—

 

Preet Bharara: I’m sorry, back where?

 

Anne Milgram: Le Cirque.

 

Preet Bharara: All right, now you’re—

 

Anne Milgram: [?Astaria Del Turco].

 

Preet Bharara: Now you’re showing your elitism.

 

Anne Milgram: Mm-hmm. Well, but don’t ask me to bake anything. That was a long time ago. I can bake Tollhouse cookies. The—no. I mean, it’s easy for us to say this with hindsight. But he is clearly a political operative, and that’s been—and a lobbyist. And that’s been his calling card, and his claim to fame, and why he’s made so much money.

 

Preet Bharara: Do you think he was approached and asked to cooperate before he was charged?

 

Anne Milgram: I think . . .

 

Preet Bharara: I think he probably was.

 

Anne Milgram: I agree. I agree. I think it’s hard to say for certain, but again, because there’s this other meeting, there’s this other sort of piece that we do not have information on, but we know Manafort is the only—I think right now is the only person who’s likely to give us information about it. I think you would take that shot and say, look, we have you dead to rights on tax fraud. We have you dead to rights on money laundering.

 

Preet Bharara: And that’s the kind of thing you and I did all the time and our people did all the time, and I did when I was a line prosecutor. You figure out what overwhelmingly convincing evidence and compelling evidence you have against someone, even if you don’t have everything else worked out yet, and you do what? You go to the lawyer, and you say, as you just described, your guy is dead to rights on X, Y, and Z. We can provide it without witnesses. We can prove it through documents. You didn’t file these registration forms that you were supposed to file. So, this would be a good time to come in. And my speculation is that’s how word got out that he was told—that Paul Manafort was told to expect an indictment. That was part of the approach discussion—

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah, that would make sense.

 

Preet Bharara: To get him to flip.

 

Anne Milgram: But I also don’t think it’s over. So—

 

Preet Bharara: Right. So, why—so, this, maybe people don’t understand who have not been through this process. Just because you’ve charged someone, that’s not it, is it?

 

Anne Milgram: No. And in fact, I’ve had a lot of cooperators who’ve come on after they’ve been charged, before trial, in the middle of a case while the investigation is pending.

 

Preet Bharara: But why is that? So, if the lawyer—if the prosecutor comes to you and says, your guy’s dead to rights this, that, and the other, and they go to the client, and they say, do you want to cooperate and admit your guilt, they say no. Is it because they think the prosecution is bluffing?

 

Anne Milgram: I think sometimes they make think the prosecution is bluffing, or they make think that they have a better chance at beating the case than they actually do. And in the heat of the moment, I think a lot of people—to plead guilty, you have to accept responsibility. You have to say under oath that you committed a crime. And I think a lot of people are not there. And this is moving. I know the public, the people listening to us, won’t necessarily think so, but this is moving quickly.

 

Preet Bharara: It’s pretty fast.

 

Anne Milgram: I think it’s very fast.

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah.

 

Anne Milgram: And so, all of a sudden, you’ve got—one day, you’ve got federal agents doing a search warrant of your house. Not long after, you’ve got somebody coming to you to say, plead guilty. You’ve committed crimes. I think the one X factor here that was not the case in any of the cases I ever did was that it is possible that Paul Manafort is looking for a presidential pardon or thinking that if he’s convicted, he doesn’t actually go to prison for the 181 months that he could get.

 

Preet Bharara: Right. So, his calculus—

 

Anne Milgram: I don’t know.

 

Preet Bharara: Is different from the—most people who we prosecuted weren’t sitting around like, you know, I think Obama’s got my back on this.

 

Anne Milgram: Right.

 

Preet Bharara: So, I don’t have to worry so much.

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: Is that crazy to you?

 

Anne Milgram: I mean, it is so hard for me to think about it. And it is crazy to me, because I think to be a prosecutor means that you very much believe in the rule of law, and that you follow the facts where they take you, and when you believe there’s a violation of the law, you charge, and that there’s then decisions that are made by courts and judges and prosecutors about what accountability looks like and what the sentences might be if you’re convicted of a crime. And so, the idea that—and we saw this with Trump pardoning the sheriff, Joe Arpaio. We’ve already seen him. Literally, Arpaio was standing in front of a court of law, was told he would be held in contempt if he did not change his position. Refused to change his position. Was actually convicted of—after being warned, and then was pardoned.

 

And I think a lot about the rule of law and how important it is for us to be governed by that and not by whim, by fancy, by anger, by politics, by any of that. And then—so, the whole idea to me that someone like Paul Manafort could be sitting back and saying, well, I think Trump will have my back, it’s deeply troubling. And I don’t know—it’s just in my head that it’s one of the factors that I would be thinking about. I don’t know what you—

 

Preet Bharara: So, I agree with all of that, and I think this cloud of potential pardon or the sunshine of a potential—the rainbow of a potential pardon, or whatever idiotic metaphor I can come up with. But to have that looming, I think, is problematic. But how do you think Paul Manafort assesses the likelihood of being pardoned? Did Donald Trump call up Paul Manafort and say, “Listen, buddy, I got you.”

 

Anne Milgram: Or send word through somebody else that—

 

Preet Bharara: And do you think—is there a universe in which you think that, in advance sort of promise—I’m not saying this happened at all. But if it did, is that obstruction?

 

Anne Milgram: It certainly feels like it, right? It certainly feels like a misuse of the rule of law and of the ability to pardon. I have to think a little more about it. But it strikes me that if Trump sent information or sent word to Manafort that, hey, don’t worry about it, I got you—

 

Preet Bharara: Well, what if I change it?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: What if I say—

 

Anne Milgram: I feel like I’m in a law school class. Professor Preet.

 

Preet Bharara: This is really fun for me. You’re a very good student.

 

Anne Milgram: We’ll see.

 

Preet Bharara: What if Trump sent word that, listen, I don’t want you to reveal—

 

Anne Milgram: Mm-hmm, exactly.

 

Preet Bharara: To use maybe a crazy hypothetical, and I’m not saying this is at all true, but just to explore what is happening around here so people get a sense of the issues. “Listen, I don’t want you to blab about all that stuff. I don’t want you to blab about all the ways I colluded with Russia.” And so, if it makes you feel better, I’m gonna pardon you.”

 

Anne Milgram: Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: “So keep your mouth shut.”

 

Anne Milgram: Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: And it was basically a deal where he said, “In order to stop you from giving information to the government that might incriminate me and other people, I’m gonna pardon you.” Does that get closer to obstruction?

 

Anne Milgram: Yes. I think that’s a really interesting question, too, because I would assume that part of Mueller’s investigation will center around Trump firing Comey, these questions of what were they doing to try to stop the investigation and what would they do. And so, it certainly becomes more interesting if there’s this exact quid, which is, look, you could give information that’s potentially very harmful to me in a prosecution of me or others around me. That feels a lot more directed towards trying to prevent the fair administration of justice. Now, again, it’s as little more complicated because Manafort is not obligated to say anything. He’s been charged with a crime. He has a Fifth Amendment right to not say anything. He’s absolutely well within his rights not to do anything. But what do you think?

 

Preet Bharara: Generally speaking, when deals like that are made, they’re not explicit. And it’s hard to prove what’s in people’s minds. How do you think Donald Trump’s lawyers are doing in dealing with all this? How hard a client do you think they have? By client, I mean Trump.

 

Anne Milgram: Oh, very difficult.

 

Preet Bharara: Donald Trump.

 

Anne Milgram: Very difficult, yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And what makes him so difficult? Is it the tweeting?

 

Anne Milgram: The tweeting is exhibit A, I think, for why he’s a very tough client. Exhibit B is, look, you’ve got him. I mean, think about this. You’ve got him publicly on video telling the Russians, asking the Russians to release Clinton’s emails. You’ve got him publicly saying that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. And so, he is his own worst enemy. And it is very difficult to defend someone who’s not taking advice or counsel.

 

Preet Bharara: I want to just unpack that for a second. So, I’ve said many times, you shouldn’t only watch what Bob Mueller does in connection with these charges and how they proceed and unfold, but also what Donald Trump does.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes. Very much so. This is an ongoing conversation. And at some point, it will become relevant. There are pictures of Donald Trump in the room with George Papadopoulos. It will become—there will be real questions about what was said then. And if Trump is tweeting about what happened or what was said, or in any way has a conversation that is related to this, much like his public statements about firing Comey, that is all part of the investigation and of the record. And so, I’m not saying he said anything on Twitter that I think opens him to more exposure since the indictment came down on Monday, or since the charges came down.

 

Preet Bharara: Right. But he could. People understand now from this conversation, from the charges against George Papadopoulos, if you lie to an FBI agent during an interview, that’s a crime.

 

Anne Milgram: Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: But if you just lie in a tweet, it’s not a crime.

 

Anne Milgram: Right.

 

Preet Bharara: Even if your president will, which is good for probably a lot of people. What people don’t always get is that doesn’t mean that you can tweet with impunity, because even though a lie in a tweet may not by itself subject you to arrest and charge, lying in tweets about things that are the subject matter of another case is evidence that you were trying to cover something up. So, for example—I think this is what you were suggesting—if Donald Trump starts tweeting saying he had no idea about X, Y, and Z, and he tries to cast aspersions on people saying those things, and then it turns out that’s wrong, then a prosecutor gets up in court and says, “Why was Donald Trump lying about this? Why was he saying these things? And he was saying these things because he didn’t want us to find out X, Y, and Z.” And then it becomes relevant to his state of mind.

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: And I actually think that his Twitter feed, the things he says in tweets, are the most relevant to understanding what’s in the mind of Donald Trump, because everything else that comes out of an ordinary White House is written by—

 

Anne Milgram: It’s very processed, yes. Yes.

 

Preet Bharara: It’s processed by 75 different people.

 

Anne Milgram: Yup, completely. Ten people approved it, yes.

 

Preet Bharara: And it’s very easy to say, well, that’s—

 

Anne Milgram: But the tweet is—he directly, I agree.

 

Preet Bharara: The tweet is personal, complete with mis—

 

Anne Milgram: There’s no intermediary.

 

Preet Bharara: Complete with misspellings, and covfefe, and whatever else.

 

Anne Milgram: Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: So, to the extent he’s saying things that are false, if he ends up doing that about matters in the jurisdiction and focus of Bob Mueller’s team, that could come back to bite him hard.

 

Anne Milgram: And we should talk about the obstruction piece here, because—

 

Preet Bharara: Please.

 

Anne Milgram: A hundred percent, I agree with you. But also, I think you and I have both seen this 1,000 times, that it’s often the cover-up, not the crime, that gets people.

 

Preet Bharara: Yes.

 

Anne Milgram: Because people really do not come forward. They’re not forthright. And then there’s evidence that proves that—for example, here with George Papadopoulos, that they’ve lied. And so, I think we should all be on the lookout for—the cover-up could potentially be a lot of what we see coming out of future charges.

 

Preet Bharara: How confident are you that we will see more charges?

 

Anne Milgram: I believe we will. I mean, I think you mentioned Flynn before. I think by any account, we would see that there are potential charges against Flynn, both for lying on his security application and for failing to register as a foreign agent, just like Paul Manafort has been charged with here. And so, it’s clear to me—and that’s probably the tip of the iceberg that’s potentially out there. So, I do think we will see additional charges. I agree completely that you cooperate somebody like Papadopoulos because they will give you information about other people.

 

Preet Bharara: Right.

 

Anne Milgram: Right? You don’t cooperate somebody against themselves. You cooperate them to get additional information, to have a narrator who’s actually inside the room, who’s on the emails, who’s part of these conversations about these arrangements of meetings of conversations about getting dirt on the Clinton campaign. And so, it is very clear that he will be used to further the investigation against other people.

 

Preet Bharara: Is there any universe in which you think ultimately Donald Trump himself does not get interviewed by the Special Counsel’s office?

 

Anne Milgram: I was thinking as we were just talking now about this conversation about the FBI shows up and tells you not to lie. I think he does interviewed. I think he does get interviewed, and I—

 

Preet Bharara: I mean, if this were your investigation—

 

Anne Milgram: It’s a hard call, right? And I think—

 

Preet Bharara: Why is it a hard call?

 

Anne Milgram: Well—

 

Preet Bharara: He’s a subject of the investigation. He claims he wants to cooperate. He said in a tweet once that I’ll testify, when he was being accused of things by Jim Comey. Why not?

 

Anne Milgram: Well, it’s still—I mean, he is still the sitting president of the United States. And so, it’s an extraordinary step. I can’t think of—

 

Preet Bharara: But would you ask? You would certainly ask.

 

Anne Milgram: A hundred percent. And I think I would insist, right? So, I think if we’re really sitting here thinking about what Mueller does, I don’t think—it feels to me like you need to talk to Trump before you close a case, right?

 

Preet Bharara: Right, but that’s—

 

Anne Milgram: Or before you make a decision about a lot of the pieces.

 

Preet Bharara: So, the timing of when you speak to Trump is when?

 

Anne Milgram: I suspect the end. Again, it’s hard, because we’re speculating on a lot of different pieces. You could also interview him more than once. And you make a good point, saying that he has said that he would be glad to be—delighted to be interviewed. And so, maybe that is the conversation with his lawyer, which is like, look, we want to talk to your guy. We may come back and talk to him again.

 

Preet Bharara: Right. But then what happens is—

 

Anne Milgram: I think you need to have enough information, though, before you go to him, because I suspect that there are parts of this case that the special prosecutor and the team understand now, or have a pretty good sense of, based on cooperators, based on emails, based on any other evidence that sort of corroborates all this. I suspect that there’s still also a lot that they don’t know, that they’re still trying to figure out. And also, what Trump’s involvement was. So, you would certainly want to have as good a sense of his involvement as you could when you went in. That being said, if you were at a point where you felt like, we don’t know; we just have a lot of questions for him—I think you do go in and you ask for that interview.

 

Preet Bharara: Yeah. Let’s say investigators from the Special Counsel’s office go and interview Donald Trump, and he agrees to be interviewed voluntarily, and then while being interviewed, tells lies about his interactions with the Russian government or some other things that are demonstrably, provably false. To the same degree and the same severity and seriousness that George Papadopoulos lied to investigators. If it’s you, after that, do you—because there’s no one for Donald Trump to flip against, I don’t think.

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah.

 

Preet Bharara: Do you recommend making a referral to the House of Representatives for the impeachment of the president?

 

Anne Milgram: That’s a good question. I mean, I think the tricky piece is that there are a lot of ifs in there that we’re sort of building on to get to that point.

 

Preet Bharara: That’s why it’s called a hypothetical.

 

Anne Milgram: Right, exactly. I do feel like I’m in law school. I think the answer is yes, but—

 

Preet Bharara: Being clear, the answer is yes, that you—if the president lies in the same way that George Papadopoulos did, that you would—there should be action—

 

Anne Milgram: You would potentially make that referral to the House, yes.

 

Preet Bharara: For impeachment.

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah. I mean, I think, look, there’s a lot of debate, and I’m not the foremost expert on this, whether or not the president can be charged with a crime. I think the general consensus right now is that the proper mode of dealing with criminality by someone sitting in that office is to refer to the House of Representatives. And so, I think the first question is, do you have 1001? Do you have a crime that’s been committed because the president has not been forthright when you interview him? And then if that’s the case, how does that get handled? Is it indictment? Obviously, it’s not gonna be a guilty plea. And I think right now, from the experts I’ve read, the right measure is going to the House of Representatives.

 

Preet Bharara: There has been a lot of talk about whether or not Donald Trump is setting the stage to have Bob Mueller fired.

 

Anne Milgram: Yup.

 

Preet Bharara: What do you think about that?

 

Anne Milgram: I think—you know, I mean, here’s what’s hard to know. That is definitely the narrative that’s coming out. I find it very hard to believe that that will happen. And I hope not to be proven wrong. We both know that it’s sort of impossible to predict what will happen with this administration. But Mueller was appointed by the Deputy Attorney General. He’s been given this authorization, which allows him to investigate everything that he’s currently investigating. And so, do I think the president could fire him or cut his budget or something like that? Obviously, yes. I mean, he’s the president of the United States, and there are a lot of different levers he could have. Do I think it would be legitimately done? The answer is no.

 

Preet Bharara: If he were to cause Mueller to be fired or defund him completely, as far as how big a crisis that is for the rule of law in the country, where would you say it lands?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah, I think that’s an unbelievable crisis for the rule of law, because this is not an investigation into just money laundering or tax fraud, right? This really, at its heart, is a question of did a foreign government attempt to influence and influence one of our democratic elections? And I think we can’t forget what an important question that is, because look, we can fight about elections, we can fight about politics. But at the end of the day, those are our fights to have. And the law really prohibits the federal government from coming in and influencing those elections. And so, it’s so core to our democracy and who we are that I think it’s important to remember that. So, couple that mandate to Mueller with the fact that he’s now brought charges against people, that we have an opportunity to say, have actually committed crimes.

 

And so, I think that that—certainly, in my view, it gets harder and harder to follow this fire the special prosecutor as he continues to make cases that look to me to be very strong cases against people who were involved at high levels of the campaign. And so, do I think it’s possible? I think anything is—you know, none of us should be betting.

 

Preet Bharara: Based on what you saw this week, are you more or less convinced that there was collusion between the campaign and the Russian government?

 

Anne Milgram: So, one of the things I think is really interesting—we haven’t narrowed in on this, but on the statement of the crime for George Papadopoulos, there are hints of what was said and done that it makes clear that the special prosecutor’s office knows a lot more about those conversations, about what “dirt” they had on Hillary Clinton, when that happened, what they asked for, what the conversations were about, whether it was—we don’t know yet, were the conversations about can you please release information? Were they just about, oh, hey, we have this information? We really don’t know. But I would say that there’s enough in the charges, the statement of crimes, to sort of make us think that there’s a lot more to the story than we have.

 

So, if I were to step back, I would say we do know a lot of things. We know that the emails were hacked. We know that the emails were publicly released. We know that there were a lot of conversations between a political campaign and a foreign government. We know that some of those conversations related to information that would influence an election. And so, I think, again, I’m not a big believer in coincidence—I think there is a lot here that needs to be explored to understand, did the Russians in fact conspire with members of the campaign to influence our election? And I certainly think this week brings us, with Papadopoulos, a step closer to that.

 

Preet Bharara: Let me ask you a different one to ten question.

 

Anne Milgram: Mm-hmm.

 

Preet Bharara: I love one to ten.

 

Anne Milgram: I know. I like one to ten.

 

Preet Bharara: On a scale of one to ten, how much of an earthquake was this week’s news?

 

Anne Milgram: You know, that’s a good question. I think—

 

Preet Bharara: You gotta give a number.

 

Anne Milgram: Okay. I’m gonna say seven. I’m gonna say seven. And I think if this were any other administration, I would say ten. But I do feel like there have been so many bombshells, it’s almost—and again, this is why I said at the beginning, we have to remind ourselves of how extraordinary it is that we’re even having a conversation about a federal government influencing a democratic election for president of the United States. So, I feel like when I remind myself of that, it feels like a ten. But in the context of Comey being fired, in the context of Donald Trump, Jr.’s admissions about walking into that meeting understanding that there would be dirt, or looking for dirt, and saying he would love it, right? I mean, in the context of all these other pieces, I think I’m gonna go seven.

 

Preet Bharara: I’m sort of with seven along the lines of what you said, because Donald Trump effectively foreshadowed this by saying during the campaign, “I could shoot a guy on 5^th Avenue, and my voters would still be with me.” And now you have actually—no, I don’t believe he shot a guy that I’m aware of. But there’s all this swirl of criminal activity on the part of people who are very close to him, and one guy has pled guilty. And maybe it doesn’t matter. I mean, do you think any of this matter, ultimately, to how the nation turns out or what happens to the administration or the presidency?

 

Anne Milgram: Yeah, but—

 

Preet Bharara: Or is it a bunch of lawyers talking about stuff like us on the podcast and the—does it matter?

 

Anne Milgram: So, you’re right about what I think Donald Trump has done is gone around the traditional norms of how people get elected, of how people communicate with the public, and he’s created his own path through Twitter and through other things, that he’s right. His base is, I think, politically a hundred percent with him. We live in very complicated and difficult times, and on just a lot of levels. And so, I think that all of us are Americans, that we put our country first, and that to think about a foreign power influencing our elections, and there’s no question that there is something really fundamentally problematic. And I don’t think it’s about Democrat or Republican. I think ultimately, we’re Americans, and we should vote who are—for who are leaders are, no matter what people choose, no matter party they are, without having foreign governments putting their hand on the scale. And that to me is fundamental and should be fundamental to all of us.

 

Preet Bharara: Anne Milgram, thanks so much for being on the show, especially on short notice, given everything that’s going on.

 

Anne Milgram: Thanks for going on.

 

Preet Bharara: Thank you. So, now I want to end the show the way I always do, talking about something from the news that was uncovered, and that—

 

[End of Audio]