Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Joe Kennedy III:

My family members, I think, believed in the promise of this country, understood that we were far from a perfect place, but also believed in the promise of what we could be if we set our minds to it.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Joe Kennedy III. Like earlier generations of his famous family, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in the United States Congress. He left the House in 2021 after losing his primary challenge to incumbent Democratic Senator Ed Markey. Kennedy has dedicated much of his career, both in Congress and now as a private citizen to fighting poverty. He’s especially focused on providing civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. And he’s involved with an organization, the Legal Services Corporation that tries to do exactly that.

Preet Bharara:

I spoke with Kennedy about the work of the LSC and its new report on the legal needs of low-income Americans. But we also had a wide-ranging discussion about a topic that is often associated with the Kennedy family, public service. At times the conversation got personal, about the sacrifices involved in running for public office and about the baggage and blessings of growing up a Kennedy. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

QUESTION & ANSWER:

Preet Bharara:

Now let’s get to your questions.

Preet Bharara:

So in the midst of all the discussion about the eight sensational fairly dynamic hearings that the January 6th committee has held over the last month or two, the question I get most often is what is the Justice Department doing? It’s something that Joyce Vance and I discuss in the CAFE Insider virtually every week. And we did again this week.

Preet Bharara:

And in the late breaking story from Tuesday evening in The Washington Post, we have a little bit of a better answer to that question. Here was the tweet announcing the breaking news from Tuesday evening. “The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results according to four people familiar with the matter.”

Preet Bharara:

And the headline of the article itself says simply, Justice Department Investigating Trump’s Actions in January 6th: Criminal Probe. You may be asking yourself the question, “Well, how was that news? How could that not possibly have been true months ago?” And we don’t yet have an answer to that question. Much of the reporting has talked about how the investigation by the Department of Justice combined with the FBI has been focused on the hundreds and hundreds of people who overran the Capitol and were physically present there notwithstanding Merrick Garland statement that everyone who was involved would be held accountable at whatever level and whether they were present or not.

Preet Bharara:

But this reporting suggests that in recent weeks or in the last couple of months, the pace has picked up. And the focus is not just on the low level folks who overran the Capitol and physically engaged in the insurrection, but also people around Trump and including Trump himself. It’s one of the first reports to make this clear. We had a sign that the Justice Department was beating to focus on Trump himself when we learned a couple of days earlier that two top officials who used to work for Mike Pence were called into the grand jury, not just before the committee, but the grand jury itself, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.

Preet Bharara:

So it’s not that surprising that this Washington Post report follows those news stories. What’s DOJ focusing on? Well, reasonably and in a way that should be anticipated, they’re focusing on the conversations that Trump had with various people who are around him most likely to get at his intent in connection with a potential criminal charge. What might those be? Well, I guess I suppose seditious conspiracy with which some people who overran the Capitol have been charged.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s I think a difficult and uphill charge to bring against Donald Trump for various reasons. More likely, they’re seeing if they can meet the elements of a different statute that we’ve talked about before as well, obstruction of an official proceeding. And one judge, you may recall, has already found that there may be probable cause to believe that Trump and others violated that and other statutes. As has also been reported in recent days, the department is also probably looking at the fake electors scheme, and we’ll see if anything comes of that as well.

Preet Bharara:

So the news is welcome, but there are a few things to keep in mind. One, I think the people, myself included, who said that if people were going into the grand jury at the highest levels up to and including the former president and if witness interviews were taking place, we would know about it. And I understand that the department does and tries to do its work in secret behind closed doors, but the way the world works and the way the press works, that just simply isn’t possible when the stakes are this high.

Preet Bharara:

The second thing we know is the Justice Department seems to have a lot of catching up to do. As Joyce and I discussed this week on the CAFE Insider, it’s clear that it’s not sufficient for the committee to turn over transcripts of interviews that it has done, as in the example of Marc Short and Greg Jacob. The Justice Department has to do its own interviews, and its own investigation, and its own collection of documents.

Preet Bharara:

So what does that mean? That means we shouldn’t necessarily expect an indictment of Trump or anyone else coming out of the Justice Department, and we shouldn’t expect this to be resolved anytime soon. And the recent flurry of activity still doesn’t answer the question, which we can put to the side for the moment as to why these interviews and these grand jury subpoenas were not issued many months ago when it was known that some of these folks had vital information that might bear on the question of whether Donald Trump and others in his orbit violated federal criminal statutes. But for now, I think we should be gratified that the Justice Department is doing the work.

Preet Bharara:

We also got a number of questions about Steve Bannon, his conviction and his potential sentencing. This question comes in a tweet from GWO who writes, “Hey, Preet Bharara. I have a question. After hearing of the Bannon conviction today, why does sentencing take so long? Why the delay between conviction and sentencing generally in our justice system?” Well, that’s a great question. I know much more about the federal system than about local systems. I think sentencing is much closer in time to conviction, whether by guilty plea or by trial conviction in many state courts.

Preet Bharara:

In the federal system, it’s standard operating procedure for it to be about three months. So from the moment of a jury verdict or a guilty plea, generally speaking, the judge will set sentencing for about three months off. The main reason for that is a substantial amount of work, depending on the complexity and nature of the crime and the conviction and how many defendants there are, and whether there was or was not a trial, a substantial effort goes into preparing what’s called pre-sentence report.

Preet Bharara:

The probation department, once a conviction is secured, must go to work. They outline in the substantial, sometimes fairly lengthy report for the court, for the prosecution and for the defendant and their lawyers an account of the offense conduct, the background, the relative culpability of that person compared to other people, if it was a conspiracy or there were multiple defendants charged. They do a calculation based on the sentencing guidelines of what the proper sentence should be within the judge’s discretion.

Preet Bharara:

There’s also a period of time that allows both the defendant and the prosecution to object to conclusions or factual assertions in the pre-sentence report. You need to give parties time to do a back and forth. You also need to give both the prosecution and the defendant time to make their arguments about sentencing. Having had a chance to obtain the pre-sentence report, object to the pre-sentence report and make arguments about it.

Preet Bharara:

And then of course, you need to give the court, the judge in the case, some time to sit with the final version of the report, hear the arguments from counsel, consider the case and make some preliminary decision about what the sentence would be before having a live court hearing at which sentencing is imposed. Does it need to be three months? I think in simple cases, it need not be, but it does take some time.

Preet Bharara:

Now, bear in mind, if you are somebody who’s been convicted of a crime and you are out on bail, even after being convicted, it’s generally speaking the skin off your back for the sentencing to be delayed by three months because you’re not serving time yet. And on the other side of the coin, if you’re someone who has been held in custody pending trial, and even after the trial conviction or upon the trial conviction, because that sometimes happens those three months that you spend incarcerated count against your time, ultimately.

Preet Bharara:

And of course, there are circumstances in which the sentencing is set, not for three months after the conviction, but sometimes 6 months, 12 months and even longer. That’s usually in cases where there’s been a guilty plea and the person who has pled guilty is cooperating with the government. And the sentencing is not supposed to happen until the full scope of the cooperation has been accomplished and realized. So it’s arranged, but three months is typical. And I know it’s frustrating for people who want to see the final result.

Preet Bharara:

We got a related question about Steve Bannon as well. This one comes in an email from Danny who says, “Dear Preet, what do you anticipate Bannon’s sentence to be? I read in do DOJ’s release that it could be anywhere from 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail. Thanks. Love the show.” Well, thanks, Danny. I’m glad you love the show.

Preet Bharara:

So as we’ve said before, but just to remind folks, Steve Bannon was convicted on two counts, non-compliance with a request for documents and non-compliance with a request for testimony by the January 6th committee, found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. Each of those counts carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 days and a maximum sentence of a year and is what I think we discussed in a prior show some weeks ago, it is up to the judge to decide whether or not sentence on each count runs concurrently or consecutively.

Preet Bharara:

So conceivably, Steve Bannon could serve two years in prison, one year on each count. I think that’s unlikely because the nature of the conduct and the nucleus of facts that resulted in conviction is fairly overlapping and similar. Documents is different from testimony, but it’s the same basic defiance and non-compliance on the part of Steve Bannon. So I would imagine that whatever sentence is imposed on each count will be set to run concurrently.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s my prediction? I don’t know. I’m not the judge. I do think however, that Steve Bannon, in light of the totality of the circumstances as lawyers like to say, will get more than 30 days. Whether he’ll get the full year, I don’t know. But among other things that the judge might consider is the lack of contrition on the part of Steve Bannon, the fact that he was particularly aggressive in defying the subpoena, the fact that in contrast to other people who were called before the committee, including people who actually had jobs in The White House as official government employees and advisors to the president.

Preet Bharara:

Unlike Steve Bannon, those people came. Those people testified and those people were appropriate, from time to time asserted some privilege, but were not belligerently non-compliant and fairly obnoxious about it. He also stands in contrast, not just to people who were on the President staff but family members, members of the Justice Department and others, with very, very little arguably zero excuse not to comply.

Preet Bharara:

So given the clarity of the case, given the aggressiveness of his non-compliance, given the contrast between him and other folks who had better arguments not to comply but complied nonetheless, I think the court is not going to be overly lenient with Steve Bannon. So my guess is somewhere in the range of a few months, possibly up to the year, but I doubt it’ll be the full year.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with my conversation with Joe Kennedy III.

THE INTERVIEW:

Preet Bharara:

The Legal Services Corporation is the single largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans. In April, the organization released a report on what it calls the justice gap, which is “the difference between the civil legal needs of low-income Americans and the resources available to meet those needs.” Former Representative Joe Kennedy III has been a champion of the Legal Services Corporation for over a decade. First in Congress, and now is a member of its Leaders Council.

Preet Bharara:

Former Congressman Joe Kennedy III, thank you for being on the show.

Joe Kennedy III:

I’m absolutely thrilled, wonderfully with you. And thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So my first question is, as a former government official, why do you not have a podcast yet unless I missed it? It’s mandatory. It’s in the code.

Joe Kennedy III:

Well, we’re testing a couple of them out. We’ll see how well this goes.

Preet Bharara:

But you are. See, I knew I was onto something.

Joe Kennedy III:

Well, I’m being somewhat facetious. But I think, I’m not certain at the moment what the world need more of is content from a former elected official, as much as former elected officials like to believe that what the world is missing is more content from them.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, but who cares what the world wants? This is about you.

Joe Kennedy III:

Exactly right.

Preet Bharara:

Is that how you analyze things? That’s not how other people analyze things.

Joe Kennedy III:

And am I depriving the world of more content from of me? So we will see perhaps, but at the moment, I am just fine doing a little bit more listening than speaking.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I still think you should do a podcast. When you do, you can come on and promote it because-

Joe Kennedy III:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

… it’s the wave of the future, Congressman. So I wanted to start in light because I feel like we have a lot of serious things to talk about.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yeah. Such is the world.

Preet Bharara:

Such is the world, but some of them that we don’t speak about enough. And we have on the podcast from time to time talked about a super important issue that sometimes gets crowded out because we’re talking about the insurrection and war in Ukraine and inflation and all sorts of threats to the rule of law and the world order. But one background condition that I know you focus on, and one of the reasons we’re having you on is to talk about this issue, is the pervasiveness of poverty and the difficulty for people who experience poverty particularly in the legal realm.

Preet Bharara:

People understand how this might be problematic in healthcare, in housing and all sorts of areas. But for the provision of legal services, it sometimes can be a big problem for folks. Just to orient people a little bit. Everyone I think understands, if you pay some attention to civics that if you get charged with a crime, state crime or a federal crime, not since the beginning of the republic but at some point in about six decades ago, the Supreme Court decided a case called Gideon v. Wainwright, which makes it clear that the Constitution guarantees you a right to a lawyer if you’re charged with a crime. How am I doing so far, Professor?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think you’re doing well.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. But should you have a legal issue or a civil legal problem that relates to a basic need and can cause you a great deal of harm and discomfort and can set you back financially and personally and even medically, and you need a lawyer to help you, you got to pay for that. There’s no provision of that. Also fair?

Joe Kennedy III:

Very much so. I mean, highly unfair, but yes.

Preet Bharara:

The statement is fair. The predicament is unfair.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

So here’s where you come in. You have spent time obviously as a member of Congress and we can talk about that in a little bit. But more recently, you have been on the board of the Legal Services Corporation, which has put out a report called the justice gap. You have proposed laws and policies to take care of folks who are not in trouble criminally, but have trouble with civil legal problems. Could you describe the scope of the problem and why we should care about it?

Joe Kennedy III:

Preet, first off, again, thanks for having me and thanks for being willing to devote some more and additional attention to this issue, because as you said, we don’t as a society. And the consequences of this are devastating. And look, you pointed out obviously historically the impact of a Supreme Court case, Gideon v. Wainwright, and what that means. I think most Americans, they accept that they are aware of the fact that you get a lawyer. It’s from watching Law and Order and rerun someplace.

Preet Bharara:

Lots of TV, yes.

Joe Kennedy III:

There you go. And so the Miranda warnings and you have a right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, the court will provide you one, and how important that is. And just again, because you get an attorney doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good, but you get an attorney which is a basic level of, or should be a basic level of competence to navigate the system because the impact of what the consequence of what being charged for the crime can mean for you now, but for you in the future. If you’re convicted of an offense, what that means for job, what that means for family, what that means for the rest of your life.

Joe Kennedy III:

The glaring hole in this is that most people are, to the extent that they end up in a court system, it’s for civil issues, not criminal ones. And the impact there can be just as devastating and sometimes even more so. A lot of low level offenses, even ones that where a court appointed attorney would be given to you, those cases might get dismissed. Or if you don’t have a big criminal record, they’ll end up in some sort of low level agreement or whatnot where the consequences of this aren’t going to be life-altering.

Joe Kennedy III:

You lose your home and are evicted. Even if you had affirmative defenses, if you had legal protections in place, that can have huge generational consequences for you and your family. And where I had my eyes open to this was actually as a legal aid volunteer when I was in law school, and just seeing the dramatic impact of the differing results of what would happen in Boston Housing Court, if somebody had an attorney versus if they didn’t.

Joe Kennedy III:

And the consequences, the downstream consequences of that and how those would manifest not just, at that point, the person renting the tenant, but their children, their grandchildren, the relationship with the justice system, all of it. And it just struck me because growing up in politics as I did, you’d like to have this romanticized idea of, this is what we tell ourselves in our civics classes, which you tell yourself, what’s taught is the law impacts everybody equally.

Joe Kennedy III:

You get public officials around the table, they debate these things. They understand the consequences of them. You have to get enough people to vote to approve a law and they draft it and they come up with it and it goes through committees and ultimately is signed into law. And then it applies to everyone equally, except that it obviously doesn’t.

Joe Kennedy III:

And when those protections are put in place to protect somebody like me, just the same way they’re put in place to protect somebody that doesn’t have the resources that other families do. The fact is that they don’t and the consequences again can be devastating. And that’s the part that so often gets overlooked. And then the secondary and tertiary consequences of this that are just devastating.

Joe Kennedy III:

Despite the fact that, as you know better than anybody, Lady Justice is supposed to be blind. Those scales, you’re not supposed to know who you are or who’s being judged. You’re just supposed to base an outcome off of facts and law. And the reality is anything but. And so this is a critical part of our system that just gets overlooked.

Preet Bharara:

But that doesn’t mean that the situation is hopeless. There is something, an organization that you’re involved with that I mentioned a moment ago, that’s authorized by Congress, the Legal Services Corporation. Now, could you tell us a little bit about what the purpose of the Legal Services Corporation is and why an institution like that, if maybe funded a little bit better, couldn’t fill the gap?

Joe Kennedy III:

So Legal Service Corporation is an entity, again as you said, funded by Congress that seeks to try to alleviate the gaps in our justice system, in our civil justice system. Their primary area of focus ends up being these field grants as they’re called, but grants that comes, money comes from the federal government. Grants that then go into various offices around the country, every single state, and to try to make sure that people get that are in need of legal assistance, that if they qualify and there are some restrictions on what types of cases they will take, there’s income restrictions as well. But that they have access to a lawyer.

Joe Kennedy III:

But the lawyers, at least in my experience, and I don’t want to speak for you but I imagine you’ve had a similar one. The lawyers that end up working at places like Greater Boston Legal Services, Metro West Legal Services and others, end up being very talented lawyers that have dedicated themselves to making sure that aspects of our justice system applied equally to everybody.

Joe Kennedy III:

Not every organization, legal services organization, will take LSC funding because of those restrictions, by the way. And one big one is again, immigration cases. But what they do is try to even this out, and to try to make sure there’s some level of equity with regards to how our legal system is applied. They do enormous and tremendous work. These folks are heroes, and if you equate the court system with kind of the emergency room of our justice system, these are emergency technicians that are doing everything they can, way overworked, way underpaid, extraordinary dedicated individuals. But even LSC doesn’t come close to filling the gap.

Joe Kennedy III:

And there’s been some studies actually, part of this effort led by a Former Justice, State Supreme Court Justice, Chief Justice out of New York that has looked specifically at the impact of what this would mean if you were guaranteed, if a tenant was guaranteed a lawyer in an eviction case. And yes, the price tag on that on the one hand is billions. On the other hand, when you look at what the cost of eviction means for that family and that individual and for society, it saves money.

Joe Kennedy III:

And so again, you’ve got this question a little bit of what are we paying for and why versus should those dollars be allocated someplace else and be used far more effectively?

Preet Bharara:

I mean, this is the problem in trying to figure out the expediency of spending money on something, which you know as well as anyone having been in Congress for a number of years, the cost is immediate and calculable, and concrete. What does it cost to fund a certain number of lawyers for every landlord tenant problem in an eviction proceeding? The gain that you described, which I hardly believe you’re correct that in the long term, over time, society gains more than society spends on that lawyer. But that’s not concrete. That’s not calculable. And that’s not something that a member of Congress can crow about in a chart. Fair?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think mostly fair. I would argue … I mean, listen, members of Congress crow about all sorts of stuff and they put all sorts of crazy things in a chart.

Preet Bharara:

They crow about infrastructure grants that they got, even though they voted against the Infrastructure Bill. That’s my favorite. That’s my favorite.

Joe Kennedy III:

Members of Congress are very good at crowing. I think we can both agree on that. Your point though is very real, is that … So I think two things. One, arguing the societal savings as to what this would mean is a hard thing to argue about because it’s not, taxpayer dollars are hard enough because people don’t understand or feel exactly how their tax dollars are spent although they write a check for taxes. When you’re turning around and saying, “Well, this is the societal savings of that.” No one really, you can’t put a finger on what that is. You can’t name that feeling.

Joe Kennedy III:

The other part of it, Preet, is a lot of the folks that end up being victimized by this disparity, lower income communities, communities of color, they are communities that oftentimes don’t vote at the rates that other more active and politically engaged communities do. They’re ones that if they have, sometimes they’re barred because they’ve got a criminal conviction or felony conviction and they can’t vote.

Joe Kennedy III:

And so one of the big challenges from being a member of Congress, where to some extent here at large, part of the challenge of democracy is it is participatory. But those that participate more, those that know how to leverage that system will get attention from that system. There’s not a huge constituency for people that are trying to make sure that somebody in the midst of a divorce, if you’re not in equal property state, if the husband makes all the money and the wife doesn’t, and he’s now suing for sole custody, if there’s not some level of representation afforded to mom, that’s not an equal hearing. She’s not necessarily guaranteed that.

Joe Kennedy III:

And maybe a judge will say, “Hey, somebody’s got to pay for it,” but who and how much and who gets to say it? And if that bill is coming from … So there’s complexity here and there’s procedures put in place to try to mitigate some of that. But it ain’t the same thing.

Preet Bharara:

If you had to pick one thing, either based on your own experience and knowledge, or based on the report the justice gap put out by the Legal Services Corporation, and you could only pick one kind of issue in which litigants would be guaranteed a lawyer, provided free of cost, what would be the most impactful you think?

Joe Kennedy III:

I mean, you’re at this point, asking me to choose between children, so thank you.

Preet Bharara:

But is it a tenant situation? Is it a divorce?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think landlord tenant is a huge one. I mean, one, you’ve got millions, if not tens of millions of families across this country that are renters. You also have protections that in every municipality are put in place to protect renters. In Massachusetts, we have a number of them.

Preet Bharara:

But those things aren’t helpful if you don’t have a lawyer who knows how to advocate for them.

Joe Kennedy III:

Exactly, right. They are there. So you will have myriad examples of families that don’t have a great relationship or skeptical of a justice system. You’ve got perhaps somebody that doesn’t have clean or perfect immigration status. You’ve got a landlord that is holding some of these issues over the heads of their tenants that then is saying, “If you complain about something, I’m going to report you to, or I’m going to make up a complaint or I’m going to report you to so and so, or such and such.” And so you basically strip literally millions of families of these protections that are put in place to do just that, to provide that level of protection.

Joe Kennedy III:

And if you are able to even out that power dynamic, not only does it mean that tenants are able to avail themselves of the existing laws on the books, you’re not asking to pass anything other, any additional protections other than just ensuring that somebody has greater access to that protection. But now all of a sudden, I think a pioneer work about eviction was a book Evicted by a researcher and a professor from Princeton, Matthew Desmond, who, if I have the number right, I think he looked at a number eviction at a number of different cities across the country and found that at least in one of them, the average amount that somebody was behind in their rent for which necessitated an eviction or eviction proceedings were filed was like 50 bucks.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. That’s not a lot for some people. But for others, it’s a huge amount.

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s a huge amount. It’s not a lot. But then you think of, “Okay, well, you’re evicting. Landlord, somebody’s behind on their rent. They’re going to get evicted.” You’re mobilizing, what, a constable or sheriff to come four or five people, pull all of their stuff out, put it on the street. Somebody’s going to come by and remove all those belongings. Or if they can, which good luck, where are they going to put it? You’re going to, in the midst of a school system or school year, you’re going to have to relocate all of those kids and move them into a different school. That person has to go find another job with an eviction on their … Or find another place to live with an eviction on their record. They’re probably going to end up in a homeless shelter.

Joe Kennedy III:

All of the cascading impacts of this, the cost to that family, the cost that we then bear as a society to fill the rest of these gaps, because somebody who’s behind in the rent by 50 bucks or a couple hundred bucks? That makes no sense. None.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Joe Kennedy III:

And yet this is a system that we now perpetuate. And of course, where we’re going here is now a lot of that lower income housing, particularly oddly enough, mobile home parts are now actually owned and managed by some of the largest private equity firms in the country.

Preet Bharara:

Are there larger programs that would do a better job of dealing with poverty so you deal with the root problem? I’ll give you an example of something that has become a little bit more popular in recent times, maybe because of the check sent to Americans during the pandemic. Do you have a feeling or thought or belief about Universal Basic Income, UBI?

Joe Kennedy III:

So UBI, I think is certainly a policy option that deserves an awful lot of consideration, and I think it’s worth testing in a number of circumstances. The part that I will say, at least from what I’m familiar with anecdotally, is that, and the part that I think policymakers need to be concerned about. For one of the biggest aspects of where that money would go, i.e. rent, that all of a sudden rent just doesn’t go up.

Joe Kennedy III:

So if you have in a community where you say, “Hey, look, we’ll try this for Queens or Brooklyn or Roxbury, Dorchester in Massachusetts, or in a subset of folks that are lower income, and we’re going to guarantee you, say, a thousand dollars a month for the next year or two years and see how it goes.” I think one of the concerns that you folks have is, at least that I have is, does that just mean landlords knowing that their tenants are going to have at least a thousand dollars a month, do they just jack up their rents by 250 bucks? And it just becomes a pass through back off to somebody else for their upstream.

Joe Kennedy III:

So though the goal of UBI to ensure that everybody has sufficient resources to cover basic needs, I 100% agree with. Is there circumstances in which that I think the proper procedures can be put in place where that could be effective? I hope so. Are there concerns where perhaps various aspects of our current system would try to take advantage of that distribution? Yes. And I think we need to just mitigate the downsides of that, if that makes sense.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Joe Kennedy III, after this.

Preet Bharara:

So one way to accomplish these things and to close the gap is through legislation. Legislation, in our system, gets passed by the Congress of which you are no longer a member. So my question to you is, do you miss it?

Joe Kennedy III:

There’s parts of the work that I miss. For your listeners, you will obviously know that or might know, that I’m no longer there not because I decided against it, but because I tried my hand at a Senate race and it wasn’t successful. So yes-

Preet Bharara:

We’re going to talk about that too. Not only did you try your hand at a Senate race, you did something that is very unusual. You challenged the incumbent democratic Senator-

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, I did all those things.

Preet Bharara:

… Mr. Markey, in a primary, even though you had, I believe fair to say quite a safe House seat.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, all of those are things are very fair to say.

Preet Bharara:

So we’ll come back to the race in a moment, but candor please and whether you miss it, or do you think … I guess the other way to ask the question is, imagine you were in the House now with everything going on with the 1/6 committee in the insurrection at Capitol Hill and the divisiveness and some of the members of the opposing party who don’t seem to care about legislating at all. How do you think you’d be feeling if you were in the House today?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think I’d be angry, frustrated, sad, and upset. And look, the reality of this, Preet, and the part that is there’s lots of aspects of this life or public life that are difficult. One of my realizations in the past 18 months, since I’ve been out of office, is that the quality of life outside of office is really an awful lot better than the quality of life in that office.

Joe Kennedy III:

And it’s not, I say that as an unfortunate consequence because that’s too bad. It’s too bad that life is … I’ve got young children. I get to see them grow up. I was teaching our daughter how to ride a bike this weekend. I didn’t … It’s not that I had no free time before, but I didn’t have much. And you are always under pressure to be someplace where you weren’t, whether that was in Washington or campaigning for other people, or around your district. Your time was never wholly yours. I believe in government.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that raises a question that I’m sure you’ve been asked before although I haven’t seen if you’ve answered it. Your family has some legacy. You’re the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy. Your grand uncles include Ted Kennedy and the Former President John F. Kennedy. Your father was a member of Congress. Why’d you get in the first place, and to the extent you can answer without offending members of your family, did you feel obligated as a matter of family, or did you feel some obligation for the same reasons they went into public service? How would you explain why you went in particularly given what you’re saying now about how difficult that life was?

Joe Kennedy III:

So a lot in that question. So forgive me for-

Preet Bharara:

Take your time.

Joe Kennedy III:

I’m not in the position where I’m actually able to officially filibuster, but this will be my consolation prize. The person that pushed me hardest not to run was, in fact, my father who served for 12 years in the Congress.

Joe Kennedy III:

And I think, it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that actually has personally, like you have seen, served at a high level of public office, understand the enormous conflicting pressures that come with it, elected, appointed, or otherwise. And what the job requires of you, you could have had … You were the head of the largest and most powerful law firm in the world, in southern districts in New York. You could have great plans to go to your brother’s wedding, your kid’s wedding. Stuff happens and it changes, and there ain’t squat you can do about it. And over time, those things happen. And just like the job, the lifestyle takes from you. And it is unforgiving and unrelenting in that regard.

Joe Kennedy III:

So part of that, you can know intellectually until you’re in it. You’re not going to know exactly how that feels. And by the way, over the years, know what it means. If that happens once or twice, it’s one thing. When that is just your lived reality with no end date, that becomes another. But part of your initial question anyway, it was my family members that pushed me hardest not to run, which some people find surprising because I think-

Preet Bharara:

But what was the argument from your dad?

Joe Kennedy III:

The argument being that if you think you are doing this because you think you either should or it’s a family profession or calling or whatever else, the job requires too much of you to do that out of some sense of like, “Hey, I think I should.” And whatever, however humble or noble or altruistic those reasons are, unless this is something you actually want to do and dedicate your life to, it’s just not worth it. And by the way, you’ll get chewed up and spit out.

Preet Bharara:

But by the way, on the range of reasons why people run for office, and there are lots of reasons, what you’ve described your family members saying is not the ideal reason. It is still a better reason than the motivation of some people who just want to be famous or want to have power for the sake of having power. You agree with that?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes. And I think what my dad was getting to in that is this, you have to be willing to put your own personal life and your family, and be in a partnership where people understand that there’s going to be days you just can’t get home. And there’s going to be times that you just can’t control. And it’s that family that is going to have to suffer and suck it up.

Joe Kennedy III:

And make sure you want to do that. I used to be asked to talk often to candidates that had young families as kind of the guy that also has a young family and can find a way to make this work and what some folks realized afterwards was like, they probably shouldn’t ask me to do that anymore because-

Preet Bharara:

You were not a good spokesperson.

Joe Kennedy III:

Listen, man, like look what you’re saying, understand what you’re signing up for here.

Preet Bharara:

You could have waited, not everyone has a young family. This is an issue that people have with the Congress. They’re fairly old. And some would say, some of them are too old. You had a young family because you ran for office at a pretty young age. And then my next question is, and hope you don’t find these questions overly bold, you then ran for the Senate. Did you think that the Senate might be more family friendly than the House?

Joe Kennedy III:

I don’t think there is a family friendly job in the upper echelons of elected office. The House isn’t a whole family friendly job. I don’t think your job was a family friendly job. And I don’t think the Senate is really a family friendly job.

Joe Kennedy III:

And I think people think, “Oh well, it’s a six-year term. You’re not as campaigning as often or whatnot.” And on the one hand, that’s true. You’re not up for reelection. The reality is though, particularly now most House seats on either side of the aisle aren’t all that competitive. The ones that are, are very competitive but most aren’t. And so you’re not at that level of desperation in terms of kind of going a hundred miles an hour all day, every day perpetually.

Joe Kennedy III:

And look, in all honesty, I think some structural reform there is necessary where these jobs, these seats should be more competitive. And because of that, if it requires you to work 80-hour weeks for 10 years and you’re burned out afterwards, that’s fine. There’s no reason why these jobs should be someplace where somebody goes for 50 years. And I say that for somebody whose family members served an awful long time in office.

Joe Kennedy III:

But if people have the appetite and the ability, and have the connection with voters where they keep being sent back, fine. But you have to go out there and earn it every time you’re up for reelection and there’s structural aspects that can make that more competitive, which would I think provide a greater connection between elected officials and the electorate and actually make our democracy stronger.

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask you. So let me ask more directly, because I think there are lessons you can impart to other people who observe politics and are in politics and they wonder what those lessons are. But the preliminary question, so why did you run against Ed Markey in the primary in Massachusetts?

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s a good question. I respect Senator Markey. I supported Senator Markey in the past. I supported him today. I obviously voted for him, maybe not obviously, but I voted for him.

Preet Bharara:

Are you still friendly? There’s no bad feelings?

Joe Kennedy III:

We are still friendly.

Preet Bharara:

You’re still friendly with him. Is he still friendly with you?

Joe Kennedy III:

We are, I think. I don’t want to say, with the most amount of respect to the Senator, I can’t say if there’s any hard feelings in that regard. And I also wouldn’t begrudge him if there was. He is somebody that served for a long time with multiple family members. I served with him. I had a good relationship with him, and I have no doubt that it’s only human and natural to be stung by the fact that, “Hey, you’ve been doing your best and all of a sudden this kid comes in and challenges you.”

Preet Bharara:

And you were, how old, 38?

Joe Kennedy III:

39, about to be 40 when I ran.

Preet Bharara:

About to be 40 when you ran. Did you, at any point … Maybe this is totally unfair, but it pops into my head and it wasn’t obviously at the same level. It was a senate election, not a presidential election. But when you were running against Markey in the primary, did you have visions of your granduncle, Ted Kennedy, running against Jimmy Carter in the primary in 1980? Did you ever think about that or no?

Joe Kennedy III:

No. I mean, I didn’t. Plenty of people have made the comparison since.

Preet Bharara:

Well, people like to compare Kennedy’s.

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, people do. And not surprising to you. Those aren’t always the best comparisons for me. When you’re comparing yourself to John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy or Ted Kennedy, those are three tough comparisons. And I take that with an immense amount of pride, even though that’s a tough mismatch for me. But I am proud of the contribution that they’ve made and what they’ve done and what they stand for.

Joe Kennedy III:

And in the fact that people are going to make the comparison with me, what are you going to do? I think one of the things that I learned in this life, much like my father’s advice, was this is you. I ain’t RFK. I ain’t JFK. I ain’t Ted Kennedy. It’s you and you have to own the upside and the downside to that.

Joe Kennedy III:

And so I think there’s … I support Senator Markey. I had supported him. I obviously ran a campaign because I think there was other ways in which one could leverage the power of being a United States Senator and I thought would be more active and engaged. I made the case for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t an effective one. And I respect that, and I respect the will of Massachusetts voters. And I respect the fact that they wanted to send him back to the Senate for six more years. And I was proud to be able to support him through a general election.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m a little worried, and many of your fans may be worried if they’re listening to this, that it sounds like you don’t have much appetite for running again. You’re still a very young man. Are you in your mind thinking no more elective office for you or you’re not sure?

Joe Kennedy III:

I’m not sure. I’m not. I have made the decision in my head knowing how the challenges of that life, not only the opportunities come up relatively infrequently. If you are out of it, it’s harder to stay engaged than you are if you’re in it.

Joe Kennedy III:

Look, I believe in the power of government and what it can do when that power is I think appropriately focused. Again, I ran for the Senate in large part because of that. And it didn’t work, right? So it’s not like I, all of a sudden, was ready to kind of pick up and walk away. I cared deeply enough about this to risk my career on it. Again, that didn’t work.

Joe Kennedy III:

But at the same time, I’m not going to sit around and kind of pine for or try to force my hand into whatever race happens to come up. I’ve got an incredible family, young kids. I think there’s a lot of ways to serve and to stay engaged. Issues like local services, issues like climate, issues like the kind of long-term transformations and transitions we are seeing within our political system that need care and attention that I’m dedicated myself to then and now.

Joe Kennedy III:

And if the opportunity comes up and it’s the right thing for me and my family at that time, I’ll consider it. But I’m not going to be yearning for it or pining for it.

Preet Bharara:

You’re not sitting plotting at this moment, your return to politics?

Joe Kennedy III:

No.

Preet Bharara:

I wasn’t going to ask this, but I just think this is a very honest conversation. From time to time, I will address the issue of why I haven’t run for office. I’ve had opportunities from time to time, obviously. There’s a lot about the act of running that relates to raising money and compromise the principle. There are all sorts of reasons why it’s not my cup of tea.

Preet Bharara:

And I also give an answer that you give, which is if there’s the appropriate opportunity at some point, you never rule anything out in life. And I would certainly entertain opportunities to be back in public service. That was 17 and a half years. I cared about it so much that I had to be fired in order to-

Joe Kennedy III:

Hey, me too. So there you go.

Preet Bharara:

Well, a little … Yeah. I had one guy fire me. You had a lot people in your corner too, a lot more affirmative votes. But I think about my kids who are very aware of politics. And in fact, my daughter, I can reveal. I think I’m allowed to reveal, worked for a candidate in your district. When you had to leave the position to run for the Senate, she worked for a candidate who was seeking to replace you. Her candidate came in like third or fourth, I think.

Preet Bharara:

So she’s interested in public service. My boys are also interested in it. And I am not sure how I feel about their interest, if they have any, in particular in running for office. Pretend you’re speaking to them for a minute, or any young person who wants to affect change and cares about their country and cares about their community, about how they should think about running or not running for office.

Joe Kennedy III:

Oh, boy.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a lot of responsibility. Go.

Joe Kennedy III:

Great, thanks. So I think unfortunately like most things in life, it’s more complicated. Your question kind of gets into a very complex and complicated series of equities to balance. So on the front end, the people that hold the positions of president, senator and congressman, congresswoman are incredibly consequential and important. And so we need good people in those positions. And if you don’t run, no guarantee that the person next to you is going to do a better job than you would, so why the heck not.

Joe Kennedy III:

The reality though that I also came to understand from a lot of time that I spent running around the country, and I spent a lot of time running around the country campaigning for other candidates in the House, in the Senate, governor’s races, presidential races. And because of, Preet, my family and the fact that my family means different things to different folks, but my family has particular residents from places that sometimes today’s Democratic Party doesn’t.

Joe Kennedy III:

So I could go to West Virginia and campaign for people. I could go to parts of rural America and campaign for people. I could go to Rio Grande valley and campaign for other candidates. Oddly enough, I speak fluent Spanish from my time in the Peace Corps. I could go some places and campaign for folks that weren’t necessarily kind of the traditional democratic stomping grounds, or at least today’s democratic stomping grounds.

Joe Kennedy III:

And what you realize is that perhaps not by design but by consequence, by reality today, the entire electoral system on the democratic side of the aisle is focused on short-termism. Every race is existential, every presidential race certainly. But this race for the Senate, how important it is that we keep the Senate for the next two years for Joe Biden. The consequence of what will happen in the House, depending on the outcome of whether the House flips and by how much.

Joe Kennedy III:

Conservative movement was far more sophisticated and far more strategic about how they went about that. And yes, there’s the existentialness of every single race and every cycle, but they built up an entire parallel campaign system that takes a longer term view that has far more strategic about the impact of state legislatures, state courts, school boards, organizations that can help build people together. Literally the kind of political infrastructure that is needed and necessary for people to be able to run and be successful in winning some of these campaigns in tougher territory. They set up that infrastructure in the long term, knowing that they weren’t going to be able necessarily to win every race. But knowing that if they did that for 20, 30, 40 years, it would return tremendously to their benefit. And they’re now reaping what they sowed.

Joe Kennedy III:

And so when I tell somebody to go, “Hey, run for school committee or run for city council or run for mayor or run for Congress,” yes, I certainly wouldn’t tell them not to do it. I’d want them to understand the benefits and the drawbacks of each one of those positions. But I would also urge them to say, “Hey, states like Alabama, states like Mississippi, states like West Virginia, these are states that get written off oftentimes by the political powers that be on the left, which one isn’t fair and two isn’t right and three isn’t smart.”

Joe Kennedy III:

I can’t tell you how many times all over the country, I said, “Look, for Democratic Party, we see you, we hear you. We value your humanity. We value your dignity. We want you on our team. We want you on the field. We, this country, are some of every single one of us in our collected parts and we are going to be the biggest, boldest, strongest nation. We are all in this together.” And then we never went to 20 of the states.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re saying the Bharara family should relocate to Alabama and then run?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes. We could do that. I think that would be a start. But I think there’s a lot of ways in which young people can get active and engaged that says, “Hey, if I don’t want to put myself or my family through the rigors of being the candidate right now, there’s a lot of other work that has to go into actually helping create the structures that will enable our candidates to run,” and actually be quite good training for somebody that wants to run down the road.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you one more question about your family, and you’ll understand it’s kind of a meta question because you have that name and you have those relations, and it’s fascinating to people. I’m not going to bother you with this, but your grandfather meant a lot to me, even though I was born like you after he passed.

Preet Bharara:

And others have meant a lot to … I was at an event with your aunt, Kerry Kennedy, some months ago. And I was sitting at her table and I witnessed person after person during the course of the evening, come up to her. People who had never met her before and invariably, they wanted to talk about her dad or her uncle, or some other Kennedy who meant something important to them. And she was very gracious every single time.

Preet Bharara:

And I wonder maybe this is a question you can’t answer. Do you ever find people’s insatiable interest in talking to you about members of your family who are no longer with us and those who are? Do you find that to be a burden? Do you find that to be tiresome ever? And if it were, would you ever admit that? I appreciate it’s an unfair question, but I just wonder, what is that like and how do you think about it?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think I take the upside on that, Preet, and I think that when people mention it to you or mention to me, it’s coming from a genuine place even if people don’t necessarily phrase the question the right way, or perhaps are a bit awkward about how it comes out. I guess in the spirit of honesty, am I all that excited to hear the stories about where people were when one of my family members was assassinated? Not really. It’s kind of an awkward thing to-

Preet Bharara:

I never thought about it that way. No, that-

Joe Kennedy III:

… turn to somebody and say like, “Hey …”

Preet Bharara:

I can imagine.

Joe Kennedy III:

Right. That’s not what they mean by it though. What they mean by it is-

Preet Bharara:

He saw this connection?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes, and that person was special to them. And that happens all the time. And I understand, I believe anyway, or I perhaps project that this is actually coming from a good place that people were touched in some way by one of my relatives and inspired by them.

Joe Kennedy III:

And I think, Preet, again I’ve been around public life long enough to know that there’s going to be some people that think that you can walk on water because of things your grandfather, or one of his brothers or sisters said and didn’t … I hate to bring it to you. Probably not true. And there’s going to be some people that hate you for those very same reasons, and also not true.

Joe Kennedy III:

The part that how I take that is to say, at their best, my family members I think believed in the promise of this country, understood that we were far from a perfect place, but also believed in the promise of what we could be if we set our minds to it. I mean, my great uncle believed it so much that he decided to say we could go to the moon in 10 years. It was a crazy idea at that point, and yet we did.

Joe Kennedy III:

And there’s still enormous challenges we have here domestically. There’s still hunger. There’s still enormous depravity through the Mississippi Delta, and my grandfather went through there on a very high profile trip. But we still have allowed these disparities to perpetuate, but that is also a choice. And it is a choice, and that we …

Joe Kennedy III:

Part of the role of politicians, it wasn’t so much their voting record, although in part it was. But it was their ability to point that out to people and say, “Our future is going to be the result of our collective choices.” And if you can motivate people to make that choice and believe in that big, bold, vibrant future, we can make it so. And I think people want to believe in that. I think the challenge in this is that there’s forces that are fine with the existing power structures and don’t want that change and they’re going to fight against it. And this is where again we need all …

Preet Bharara:

All hands on deck.

Joe Kennedy III:

All hands on deck.

Preet Bharara:

We’re moving to Alabama per your suggestion.

Joe Kennedy III:

There you go.

Preet Bharara:

We’re going to get it done. What about the modern day and concerns about democracy? How do you think the January 6th committee is doing? What do you think the future of the House in the short or medium term looks like? What’s your worry?

Joe Kennedy III:

I mean, I got a lot of worries.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve got 99 worries?

Joe Kennedy III:

Right. Probably more than that. And I would defer to the distinguished US attorney from the southern district as to kind of the legal implications of what happens if the electoral conduct is reformed and how so, and what happens, the legal opportunities that still exist in all these secretary of state races and whatnot.

Joe Kennedy III:

I think there’s a big question that obviously, it’s not decided yet as to what to do about the former president’s actions. Not for nothing, Preet, this was not your question, but I was an entry level prosecutor for several years. I read that Mueller report. There’s enough evidence to trying the president for obstruction of justice that is on written on one page, one single page of that report. I tried cases on less, with all due respect to former Director Mueller. I don’t think that’s actually a close call.

Joe Kennedy III:

And when you outline 10 different instances that potentially rise to that bar of obstruction, or crimes that could be charged, that’s a whole another question. Not to say he would’ve been or should have been in all 10 of those, but the acts of the commissions of illicit conduct here were rife across this entire administration.

Joe Kennedy III:

And so I am very … The weight that is on members of this January 6th commission, the Justice Department or whatever try to get this right, knowing the political firestorm that will come back at them is not an easy choice but it’s the position that they’re in. And we need them to make a wise one. I think the commission itself has actually done a very good job of staying focused and sharp on the actions of the former president during this time.

Joe Kennedy III:

And I think the attorney general is going to have an understanding that he’s got a lot of information there that presumably that I don’t, that isn’t in the public sphere, that he’s got a weighty decision to make. I would be interested to turn that one around on you to say, given your experience and given that the evidence that you have seen, how you would approach that.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to pass. We only have a few minutes. I address that elsewhere and we can address that offline, but I want to get a couple more things in …

Joe Kennedy III:

Go for it.

Preet Bharara:

… because I have the luxury of having you. Can we jump prematurely to 2024?

Joe Kennedy III:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

What do you think is going to happen in 2024?

Joe Kennedy III:

I don’t think anybody knows what’s going to happen in 2024. I think that my own … So there’s two options really here on the conservative side of the aisle. In my conversations with former colleagues and Republicans in the know, about half of them say Trump is definitely going to run for president. Some of them say he’ll announce after midterm. Some say he might do it beforehand. Who knows?

Preet Bharara:

I think he’s running. I think he’s almost definitely running. Do you?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think he wants to. I also think there’s a piece in the news today about Murdoch moving past Trump. And I think you’ve seen editorials on The New York Post, your beloved New York Post, but also the Wall Street Journal coming at him pretty hard. I would not be surprised if you start to see Fox start to, and the conservative outlets start to move by him because as difficult as the past year has been for the incumbent, for President Biden politically, and it’s been a tough, a brutal year of headlines, fair and unfair, he still beats President Trump in those polls because I think people know that when you remind them of what a Trump presidency was, people still say, “No, thanks.”

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s one thing for a conservative movement to embrace Donald Trump when he was the nominee, and then he was the incumbent and he was being challenged and he’s their guy. It’s another thing when he’s the weakest link in the chain when it comes to unseating President Biden. And so I’m curious how that shifts over the course of the next 18 months.

Preet Bharara:

How formidable a candidate do you think Ron DeSantis would be?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think this is the challenge, is that Donald Trump in every primary, every poll for every primary, Trump still wins. But it’s still early. There hasn’t been … I mean every month here, you’re seeing Republicans start to inch further and further. There are Republicans that are now going to Iowa in New Hampshire. There’s ones that are more overtly testing presidential waters. Ron DeSantis has raised $130 million for his gubernatorial reelection. You can’t tell me that like that $131st million raised is for his gubernatorial race. No one believes that.

Preet Bharara:

Would you agree that the least self-aware potential Republican candidate in the country is Mike Pence?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think that’s a tough race as to which Republican presidential candidate is least self-aware.

Preet Bharara:

I’m voting Pence. I’m going with Pence.

Joe Kennedy III:

I have a hard time understanding. Look, if there’s one issue with politicians at large, your former boss tried to get you killed and you’re still not willing to say a bad thing about them.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. That’s kind of crazy.

Joe Kennedy III:

It’s crazy.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s why I vote Pence for that category.

Joe Kennedy III:

Across the spectrum there is disgusting. So, he’s right up there.

Preet Bharara:

Senator Warren running in 2024?

Joe Kennedy III:

I think Joe Biden will be running in 2024.

Preet Bharara:

You do? Do you really think that? Are you required to say that as an alum of the Congress?

Joe Kennedy III:

I am not required to say that. I do think … Look, I still think that as challenges as these times are in being president of the United States, the hardest job in the world, two things. He was elected largely because he is a good and decent man. And even Republicans that disagree with him say that about him, and it is 100% true. He’s a good and decent man.

Joe Kennedy III:

I think politics in this country still needs more decency and goodness. And I think at a campaign that the harshness, the brashness, and some of literally just vitriol and vileness that we’re seeing from some of the presidential candidate, some of the presidential aspirants on the right will shine through. I think he was also … The biggest challenge this administration has had is expectations that with 50 votes in the Senate and only a five-vote or six-vote majority in the House that they could structurally redefine the constructs of our society.

Joe Kennedy III:

And that’s hard to do if you can’t lose a single Senator, Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. And he, at least in my books, wasn’t elected to do that. He was elected to bring us back to decency and get us back on track. And I think depending on what happens in the next couple months, remember the passage of rescue package, COVID is still a thing but it’s not what it was. They passed a massive infrastructure bill. They did something on gun violence. It looks like they’re going to get something on drug prices. It looks like they’re going to get something on industry supports, particularly for semiconductors, which is a major, major issue for all sorts of industry here.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. But nobody knows any of this. There are polls that say incredible percentages of people have no idea that infrastructure passed. They think it failed.

Joe Kennedy III:

They do. And look, trying to get people to pay attention even though a political campaign is hard. But you haven’t run a campaign yet on that. You got one challenge, you knock it down, you go down to the next. And when you compare this to what that alternative is, and remember the alternative at this point is what we’re seeing come out from a January 6th commission. Aside from the fact that this time it’s not going to be Joe Biden or Liz Warren, or Democrat criticizing Donald Trump, it’s his daughter. It’s his attorney general. It’s his campaign manager.

Joe Kennedy III:

People saying he lost and we told him and he knew. And he tried to get his vice president hung. You run a campaign on that. There’s going to be plenty of his folks that will never believe otherwise. You don’t have to win every vote in this country. You got to win enough.

Preet Bharara:

You got to cut him down. The population that supports him unequivocally, you just got to get that number down. I agree.

Preet Bharara:

Joe Kennedy, thank you for your time. And more importantly, thank you for your service.

Joe Kennedy III:

Hey, likewise, my friend. Take care and thank you.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Joe Kennedy III continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

THE BUTTON:

Preet Bharara:

To end the show this week, I’d like to talk for a moment about the upcoming election season. Now I know many people are rightly focused on the important federal races in November that will determine party leadership in Congress. Some, myself included, are also talking about 2024 already. And of course, the federal elections will have ramifications as to what President Biden can and cannot do.

Preet Bharara:

In the final two years of his first term, there is so very much at stake and the midterms are important and the next presidential election is certainly very important. But I want to take a moment to highlight the significance of state elections too. They’re important as well. And that’s particularly so now, when so many things are being left to the states. Exhibit A is a recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Without action, a woman’s right to choose will be only the first of many other fundamental rights thrown into question with ominous state and national implications.

Preet Bharara:

And the reason I mentioned state races is there was an important primary just this past week. It was in the State of Maryland where I once lived. There, political outsider, Wes Moore, secured the democratic primary nomination for governor of the state. Wes is one of the most accomplished people I know. He’s a Rhodes scholar, combat veteran, best-selling author and former CEO of Robin Hood, one of the nation’s largest anti-poverty organizations. And if elected, he would become Maryland’s first black governor, and he’s only 43 years old.

Preet Bharara:

You may recall, Wes was a guest on Stay Tuned in April 2020. We talked about his vision to fight poverty and how best to aid society’s most vulnerable who were disproportionately impacted during those early days of the pandemic. So, I feel confident that Wes Moore would be an effective and good governor for the state of Maryland. But it’s important to take note of the alternative. That person’s name is Dan Cox, the Trump endorsed candidate, someone who even Larry Hogan, the outgoing Republican governor of Maryland has stridently denounced saying, “I wouldn’t let him in the governor’s office, let alone work for the governor’s office.”

Preet Bharara:

So as you think about and care about and participate in the midterm elections and the federal elections that are coming up, think and care about and get involved in state elections too. And in my view, electing candidates like Wes Moore to the governor’s mansion would be the right move, not just for Maryland, but also the country.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Joe Kennedy III.

Preet Bharara:

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Preet Bharara:

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Sean Walsh, Namita Shah and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.