QUESTION & ANSWER:

Preet Bharara:

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

Jonathan Karl:

The reason the Russians didn’t invade Ukraine While Donald Trump was president is they didn’t need to invade Ukraine. Putin’s grand aim here, aside from rebuilding the Russian Empire, but the most important tactic is to degrade NATO.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Jonathan Karl. He’s the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Karl has covered every major beat in Washington, Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department, and for over a decade, the White House. As a White House correspondent, Karl had a front row seat for the Trump presidency. Now, he’s written a book about Trump’s chaotic final months in office. It’s called Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. Today, Karl joins me to discuss the latest developments in Russia’s war with Ukraine, the state of the Biden presidency and the craft of reporting. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Preet Bharara:

Now, let’s get to your questions. This question comes in a tweet from Bob who asks, “Will or would you have former AG Barr on your program since he’s on the book circuit?” That’s an interesting question. It’s always, I might say, as used to be said on Saturday Night Live, the question is moot because I don’t think Bill Barr would come to my program because I think he knows what I think of him and he has better outlets and venues to hawk his book. The other answer I would give is, even if he was prepared to come, I think not.

Preet Bharara:

I think that Bill Barr in many ways, is to use Elie Hoenig, my colleague, Elie Hoenig’s words, a total two-faced BS artist, who is trying to rehabilitate his image, sell books, make a bunch of money when duty call for him to make some of these statements and give some of these revelations to the public into investigating committees, whether the panel that conducted the impeachment inquiry or the current January 6th Committee and the self-aggrandizing way in which he talks about what he did, in his eyes, I guess heroically courageously, not my view, is something that shouldn’t be in the book but should be under oath and with sworn testimony. And as the old saying goes, “It’s a day late and many, many dollars short.”

Preet Bharara:

I’ve also observed him in the last few days talked about his book and talked about his experiences at the end of the Trump administration. He dodges tough questions. He tries to make himself out to be the hero. He outright lies about various things, including lying about whether or not he got a letter from Bob Muller complaining about the summary that Bill Barr put out back when the Muller report was still under wraps. It would also not interest me to promote his book and help his sales by having him on the show.

Preet Bharara:

And by the way, Joyce Vance and I discussed the Bill Barr book, interviews of him and his tenure as AG on the Cafe Insider Podcast this week, but there’s one point I forgot to make. That is when you compare the Bill Barr of today and how he talks about how he spoke truth to power to Donald Trump and you go back and you look at his resignation letter, obsequious and unctuous as I think I called it on Twitter, there’s a particular passage from it that rankles me more than any other and it’s this. Back in December of 2020, he wrote in a letter that was made public, “I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people.”

Preet Bharara:

But it gets worse, in my view. Barr goes on to write, “Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance.” Ah, relentless, implacable resistance and Barr would have you believe now that he is the resistor, give me a break. This question comes in an email from John, who writes, “Do you think they should speed up the confirmation process for Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson? I am concerned we will lose a red state democratic senator by death or resignation and control would be given back to Mitch McConnell, who’ll undoubtedly pull more dirty tricks out of his tattered hat.”

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know that his hat is his tattered, but he certainly will pull dirty tricks out of his hat, pristine or tattered or otherwise. So I was a little bit worried about this because you never know what happens on Earth and you never know what happens to mere mortals and senators are mere mortals. And there was one senator who has been out for a period due to illness. I have been concerned that Joe Biden took a number of weeks to pick Brown-Jackson, but it looks like we are now on track. Hearings have been scheduled for March 21st. That’s just a few days away. Typically, they take four days. You’ll have opening statements on day one and then rounds of questioning by various senators.

Preet Bharara:

So by the end of the week of March 21, the hearings will be over. There’ll be an opportunity for senators on the committee to present questions for the record. Those are done very, very quickly, turned around very, very quickly. There tends to be a vote in the committee or an attempt to have a vote in the committee the following Thursday when the judiciary committee usually meets. They can also meet on another day to expedite further. Often, what happens is the opposing party can request a delay of one week, as a matter of right. At least, that used to be the rule and I believe is still the rule. But you’re talking about a committee vote within a couple of weeks of the hearing.

Preet Bharara:

And then I know, because I know him well, and I know his public statements. Senator Schumer, the majority leader for the Democrats, is going to want to get this vote on the floor as quickly as possible. So we’re talking about a hearing in a week and a half, the votes within a week or two of that, floor vote probably immediately following. So heaven permitting, nothing will happen to any senator and nobody will switch parties. So maybe I’m naive, but I think it should be a smooth ride for Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson. Some Republicans will say nasty things and they will try to make an effort to sully her.

Preet Bharara:

It’ll be dozens and dozens of votes against her, maybe as many as mid to high 40s, but I still remain confident that she’ll be confirmed. It won’t be a squeaker. We won’t need Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie. The three Republicans who voted for her before, I think there’s a very good chance they will vote for her again including Lindsey Graham who has made some negative statements and had a different candidate that he preferred from his home state. But maybe this is naive, but I feel good about it.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in an email from Daniella who writes, “Dear Preet. Is it significant that the January 6th Committee suspects Trump committed crimes related to the insurrection? Do you think the committee will be able to get the documents from John Eastman? Will this get DOJ to investigate?” So these are all good questions. Just to review for folks who haven’t been following it closely, there is an argument, a dispute going on between the January 6th Committee. I guess they have a lot of disputes going on with a lot of different people and a lot of potential witnesses. But one that’s been important and has been a focus in the past week has been the dispute they’re having over a subpoena for documents with respect to John Eastman, who in fact, is a lawyer, so far in good standing and was an adviser to Donald Trump in the days leading up to January 6th.

Preet Bharara:

On January 6th, itself, he had a big role in trying to convince people in Trump’s orbit and Trump himself to get Mike Pence to overturn the election. Now, obviously, the January 6th Committee is not a prosecutorial agency. It can’t bring an indictment, it can’t bring a criminal charge and so the relevance of that committee, asserting in court papers, their belief that there’s evidence in support of the idea that Trump committed crimes, namely violation of two identified statutes, obstruction of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States of America. That’s not because they’re planning to bring a prosecution because they can’t, those statements are in service of the committee’s argument that the documents and communications between Eastman and others is not subject to the attorney-client privilege.

Preet Bharara:

And the reason for that is there’s something called the crime fraud exception. And the crime fraud exception basically says, “If a person, whether he’s a lawyer or not, is engaged in communication in the provision of advice to a client and it’s about a future crime or they’re acting as co-conspirators to try to commit or plan some crime. Obviously, the attorney-client privilege is not appropriately applied.” And to make that argument, they’ve set forth the case for Donald Trump having violated these two statutes. And by itself, it’s not super significant, except in a larger context, it’s very, very, very significant.

Preet Bharara:

So the direct relevance of it is whether or not the committee will be able to get the documents from John Eastman. There was a long marathon session before the assigned judge yesterday who seemed very skeptical of the attorney-client privilege argument, not just because of the crime fraud exception, but also because of this idea that some of the advice that John Eastman was giving Trump was not really legal advice but political strategy, which is not covered. So there are multiple bases on which the judge may overrule the objection by John Eastman and direct the provision of those documents to the committee.

Preet Bharara:

But the larger context is you have a significant respected congressional committee that is going on record and not just from their perch in Congress, but going on record in court filings, stating their belief based on a review of lots of documents and interviewing of a lot of people. So it’s not as by the seat of the pants analysis. They are stating their belief that there is substantial evidence that Trump committed a crime. Now, there is another prosecutorial agency called the Department of Justice who we’ve all been wondering about, “What are they doing? Are they doing something covertly that we don’t know about? Are they waiting in the wings? Are they waiting for a referral?”

Preet Bharara:

And they’re sending a loud and clear message for the whole country and the world to see and certainly for the Department of Justice to see that there is a basis for believing that Donald Trump committed a crime. Maybe it’s not chargeable, maybe you can’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but to me, the upshot is, it’s sufficient enough to warrant the opening of a thorough investigation with respect to the violation of these two statutes. Will that itself get DOJ to investigate? I don’t know, but I think it’s something that’s significant and we’ll see what the DOJ has done. We may learn that at some point and see what they do going forward.

Preet Bharara:

This final question comes in a tweet from someone who uses the handle @MsMissDemeanor. That’s very cute. “Hi, Preet. Need some lighter talk to take my mind off of everything going on. Just wondering how you eat your M&Ms, i.e., dump them out and organize by color and eat them one by one or indiscriminately picking from the bag as you go like a monster. Thanks for all the great content.” Well, I hate to disappoint you Ms. Miss Demeanor, I think I’m a bit of a monster. First, I should make it clear that I never eat regular M&Ms. I think only monsters eat those. I eat peanut M&Ms. They’re the best. They are to me the only true M&Ms. I’m a big fan of M&Ms Although been trying to cut down during the pandemic, but typically I will open a bag, stick my hand in, and as you put it, indiscriminately pick them out as I go like a monster. Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this.

THE INTERVIEW:

Preet Bharara:

Jonathan Karl is one of the most widely respected journalists in Washington. Before joining the White House Press Corps, he was a senior national security and foreign policy correspondent for ABC News. Today, I speak with Karl about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Plus, Karl gives an inside look at what it was really like to cover the Trump presidency. Jonathan Karl, welcome to the show.

Jonathan Karl:

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

It’s hard to believe that you haven’t been on yet.

Jonathan Karl:

What took so long? I think I remember interviewing you on the podcast that I used to have and you were getting ready to start this thing. We got-

Preet Bharara:

A little while ago. I think we assumed we couldn’t afford your fee.

Jonathan Karl:

It is steep, it is steep, so I appreciate that.

Preet Bharara:

So we don’t want to insult you by low balling you, but now, we’re rolling in the dough.

Jonathan Karl:

It’s huge.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be able to pay your fee. You have a, I guess, not so new book out, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. We’ll get to that and some of the scoops in that book in a little bit, but I should note for the audience that we are recording this on Tuesday, March 8th, around what some people would refer to as happy hour. Not a lot to be happy about and I was telling you before we started taping that there are a lot of developments today in a bunch of different areas, and in particular, with respect to the invasion of the war in Ukraine. I want to get your reaction to a couple of things. Then we’ll take a step back and talk about politics and a whole bunch of other stuff because you’re a great brain to pick.

Preet Bharara:

I caught you on This Week this past Sunday morning. And part of the debate that I heard you having with other members of the panel was why has the Biden administration not yet decided to stop buying Russian oil and gas. And you seem particularly perplexed by that. And I’m paraphrasing, but you said something like, “It seems odd and weird given that we’re stopping everything else. Why wouldn’t we do that?” And as of a few hours ago before we started recording today, Joe Biden announced that he’s indeed doing that thing. Was that inevitable?

Jonathan Karl:

I think it was. First of all, it’s been interesting throughout all of this that Congress has actually been, it seems to me, leading on this and there was great momentum in Congress for cutting off Russian oil and gas, but my point on Sunday is Biden has rightly said that these are stiff sanctions, these are unprecedented sanctions. I guess the closest comparison would be the way Iran was cut off and the moves that essentially brought Iran to the negotiating table under President Obama. But here you talked all these sanctions, the SWIFT sanctions, the sanctions on individuals, the sanctions on Putin himself, on Putin’s foreign minister, on his spokesperson, on various oligarchs close to Putin, and yet, you don’t sanction the very thing that drives the economy, the Russian economy. This is-

Preet Bharara:

Was that logical?

Jonathan Karl:

As McCain famously said, “It’s basically a gas station with nuclear weapons. We’re going-

Preet Bharara:

Is that kind of gas station self-serve or-

Jonathan Karl:

Whatever they tell you to get the gas.

Preet Bharara:

On Jersey, you can’t … I don’t know if people know this. New Jersey, you cannot pump your own gas.

Jonathan Karl:

Full service only, it is throughout.

Preet Bharara:

Well, but the good thing about the Jersey gas stations, they also have nukes.

Jonathan Karl:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

If you knew that. But is some of this a cynical gambit on the part of Republicans? I’m not sure if it is. I’m putting the question to you. It was very easy for a lot of Republicans to say, “Stop buying gas and oil,” and then lie and wait for gas and oil prices to rise at the pump in America and then say, “Look, Joe Biden has caused the price of gas to go up.” Is there a certain kind of gamesmanship going on there or not?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I think the movement was genuine and I actually think Zelensky has been a major force in all of this and pushing for a tougher response and having Congress lead the way and pushing Biden towards a tougher response. Remember Zelensky did the Zoom call where he had hundreds of members of the House and the Senate and making a direct appeal, most prominently for a no fly zone, which I don’t think is going to happen. But I think that there’s a lot of political pressure because of the enormous appeal of this heroic figure that has arisen out of Ukraine and captured the world’s imagination.

Jonathan Karl:

But that said, gas prices are going up and they’re going to go up more and you can be sure that the Republicans will use that in the midterms. And what they’ll do is they will say not that it’s because we cut off Russian oil and gas in large part because Republicans were in the front of the line pushing for it, but because Biden hasn’t done enough on domestic production and they’ll run that whole game, that whole playbook. So yes, they will use this. They will conveniently fail to mention Republican complicity in this move to cut off Russian oil and gas which is going to be the biggest factor, let’s face it, in rising, in the further rise in the price of oil.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Are you surprised that not just official sanctions have had some effect and are going into effect, but also all these private companies seem to want to get on the bandwagon and assert themselves as being against the invasion of Ukraine, including most recently, a couple of hours ago, McDonald’s announced that it is ceasing operations at least temporarily in Russia. And it made me think of an old memory. In 1993, my family and I traveled to Russia and we went to the McDonald’s in Moscow that I think was fairly new. And I will tell you it was the cleanest McDonald’s I’ve ever seen before or since.

Jonathan Karl:

That’s really funny because I went to that McDonald’s in about the same time. It was either ’93 or ’94.

Preet Bharara:

It was crazy, right?

Jonathan Karl:

And when that McDonald’s opened, it was a tremendous symbol. And you remember the long lines around Red Square …

Preet Bharara:

Oh, yeah.

Jonathan Karl:

… for people to get their hamburgers, but it was a real symbol of communism is ending. Russia, the Soviet Union still, which opened in 1990, is opening up. Another thing I thought of as I saw that news was Tom Friedman’s famous proposition that he put out there that no two countries that have a McDonald’s had ever gone to war and he suggested this was something. And then, that was about ’96 when he said that and I think, at the time, it was actually true. Obviously, it wasn’t true for very long. He amended it some years later and said, “Okay, well, no two countries with a Starbucks, maybe.” And I think what is driving that is the thing I mentioned, first of all, is the way Zelensky has captured the world’s imagination, but also the sheer horror of what Russia is doing and the lack of any pretext. Why? It just doesn’t make any sense.

Jonathan Karl:

One thing that is just so horrifying about all this is the way that Putin has actually shut things down inside Russia, the flow of information inside Russia, to a degree that we didn’t even see during the dark days of the Soviet Union. We still have ABC News. We still have people in Moscow, but they can’t report. Every major news organization has people still in Moscow, but because of this new law that says essentially if you report the truth on Ukraine, you could go to jail for 15 years. That doesn’t affect what people know in Russia about what’s going on, but it affects our ability to know what’s actually going on in Russia. But you also have, of course, the fact that the Russian people are … You can’t entirely cut off information in this time, but-

Preet Bharara:

But you can cut off a lot of it, which is actually just concerning. That was, in fact, the second development I was going to ask you about. The New York Times just in the last few hours, I think, announced that it was pulling staff from Russia because of the new law. One of my employers, CNN, I believe, as of a few hours ago, said that they’re not pulling people yet out of the country, but they’re standing down and reporting until they analyze the consequences of this law. And I don’t know how much analysis you need to do, but it sounds like it’s something that is a pretext for putting anyone, Russian or from the West, in prison for saying anything that Putin doesn’t like and that includes the truth. So it’s a mess.

Jonathan Karl:

And do we really think that he wouldn’t put American journalists in jail, that he would hesitate to do that?

Preet Bharara:

That would have been unthinkable three weeks ago, right?

Jonathan Karl:

And I think of … You mentioned CNN, Tiananmen Square. And you remember the way all the news, all the all the major television networks were there for the summit. The tanks came in. It was all being broadcast and then the Chinese shut everything down. But again, this is different. This goes further than that. This is a threat to throw people in jail and 15 years in Russia is a massive … I mean 15 years is a big sentence anywhere. You’re a former prosecutor, but that’s a sentence reserved for high crimes in Russia.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think, he wants, Putin, does he want to have people who are American. There’s that WNBA player, do you think he wants an excuse to have Americans or Westerners in custody as some future bargaining chip?

Jonathan Karl:

It sure seems that way. They’ve got an Olympian now in prison. I think that they’re going to use that for all it’s worth.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. The other thing you mentioned, this is development that I wonder if you have a reaction to, it has been the considered wisdom, I think, of a lot of people, experts, certainly, it’s the view of people in our government, that no fly zone that some folks had been requesting and advocating for, would be too direct a confrontation with Russia and it would implicate potential war between NATO and Russia directly and so they think it’s a bad idea. But over the last day or so, there’s a growing set of experts, former government officials and people who are policy experts who are advocating for a limited no fly zone. Do you stand by what you said a minute ago that you think that can never happen?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, things aren’t moving very quickly. Also the other major development today we had was the Poles, I think, surprising American officials, I think surprising people at the White House and the Pentagon and at the State Department, the Polish government saying that they’re going to turn over all their mix …

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jonathan Karl:

… to Ukraine. Oh, actually, to the United States to give to Ukraine. So it’s like this. It’s a bit of a process that we have done. I don’t know how those planes are actually going to get to Ukraine, but they’re going to turn them over to Ramstein Air Force Base and-

Preet Bharara:

I think by truck convoy.

Jonathan Karl:

Truck convoy to the border and then-

Preet Bharara:

We can actually put a truck convoy to good use.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we’ve got some of those around DC right now as a matter of fact.

Preet Bharara:

We can borrow some from Canada too.

Jonathan Karl:

But the issue with the no fly zone is, I don’t know exactly what a limited no fly zone looks like, but a no fly zone means that you also … Obviously, it means direct, you’re going to shoot down Russian jets that fly over Ukraine, you’re going to shoot down Russian missiles as well, easier to shoot down. But to do that, you’re going to most likely need to go after air defense systems that are on Russian territory. So it really does lead rather quickly to a wider conflict.

Preet Bharara:

So bad idea, right? Even though it sounds good and your heart aches for at least some limited no fly zone, I think what people are talking about is what they’ve referred to as a corridor for humanitarian aid and for evacuation, but the sky doesn’t have lanes, right? So I don’t know how that works.

Jonathan Karl:

No, and I don’t want to say good idea or bad idea. You listen to what Zelensky says and he most recently made the case to the House of Commons. You see these purely civilian targets and he mentioned, “Schools and hospitals are getting bombed. How can you not? You have the power. You, in the West, have the power to,” what’s the phrase he uses, “basically clear the skies over Ukraine.” But it’s complicated. But here’s the thing. Where is Putin going? And is this ultimately going to lead to a wider war with the West? Is this ultimately going to lead to, God forbid, World War III? I can’t even believe I’m talking about this.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s a great question, Jonathan. What’s the answer?

Jonathan Karl:

Biden, in his State of the Union Address, said, took all the tough line on Russia, but he also very clearly said-

Joe Biden:

Our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.

Jonathan Karl:

No way. No how. It’s not going to happen. But in the very next line, he said-

Joe Biden:

And as I’ve made crystal clear, the United States and our allies will defend every inch of territory that is NATO territory with the full force of our collective power, every single inch.

Jonathan Karl:

So is Putin going to hit supplies coming in from Poland? Is Putin going to decide that he needs a corridor, to use the phrase again, to use the word again, to Kaliningrad and decide that he needs to use to take action in Lithuania for the same insane reasons that he has taken actions in Ukraine? And are we going to ultimately end up in a conflict, a military conflict with Russia? And if we did, heaven forbid, you look back to this and think, “We let Ukrainian cities get leveled and we did nothing militarily about it. And now we’re already in the conflict that we thought we were avoiding.” These are tough decisions.

Preet Bharara:

But the US has resisted at least in one respect the saber rattling by Putin when he made the move to put his nuclear arms on higher alert. I don’t know what the phrase is for that in Russia. A lot of people thought that the West would have to go tit for tat and cooler heads prevailed and we did not change our DEFCON level. So does that give you some more optimism that we won’t take any bait?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I think it’s not so much taking bait. It’s what happens if he actually does move on a NATO country. It is not inconceivable. In some ways, it looks like it may be inevitable. By the way, on the nuclear question, I don’t know if you … Did you ever see the thing that Oliver Stone did? He did a series of interviews with Putin and he released them in 2017. But the interviews were actually before the 2016 election. Do you ever see this?

Preet Bharara:

I didn’t see those. No.

Jonathan Karl:

Ut’s some of the strangest-

Preet Bharara:

Does Putin admit that he killed Kennedy?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s possible that Oliver Stone has spent more time, more one on one time, with Vladimir Putin than any other American because he spent a lot of time. He had total access. It was hours of interviews, but there’s a really surreal scene. And by the way, Oliver Stone is essentially agreeing with him on everything, “America is the problem.” It’s really quite astounding, but-

Preet Bharara:

But is he doing that to draw Putin out or does it sound like that’s what Oliver Stone believe?

Jonathan Karl:

I think that he and Vladimir Putin both agree that America has been a force for evil. In the way he was steering the conversation, he was essentially in agreement with Vladimir Putin, but-

Preet Bharara:

I never liked that Oliver Stone. I want to put that on the record.

Jonathan Karl:

Well, he made some great movies, let’s be clear. Born on the Fourth July, it’s a great movie and others. Platoon. So he actually asks Vladimir Putin, “Have you ever seen the movie Dr. Strangelove?” And Vladimir Putin looks at him, “No.” And, “You got to see it. You got to see it. Stanley Kubrick is brilliant.” And they actually sit down together and watched Dr. Strangelove and have this conversation about the use of nuclear weapons. And of course, Putin is watching Dr. Strangelove and say, “Aha, that’s the way the Americans operate. Now I know,” but-

Preet Bharara:

Mystery Science Theater 3000, Putin version.

Jonathan Karl:

It’s actually really worth watching in a very twisted way because the way you can see Putin thinking about nuclear weapons in a way that’s quite frightening.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s bad. This is not reassuring, Jonathan.

Jonathan Karl:

No. I saw somebody trying to come up with a good theory about this to reassure us which is, “Putin is so far away from people the end of that big long table because he wants to stay alive. He doesn’t want to catch COVID.” So if he wants to stay alive, nuclear war is not a good thing. If you-

Preet Bharara:

I don’t think 20 feet helps you from the radioactivity.

Jonathan Karl:

No, no.

Preet Bharara:

I think it’s 20 feet and 20 feet and washing your hands for 20 seconds isn’t going to do the trick. Final development that I can think of from today in Ukraine or the ones that come to mind is the fact that the Putin government has announced there will be no conversions of the ruble, the Russian currency, to any other currency until September at the earliest. So he’s basically in the course of two weeks destroyed the ruble. Can you comment on that? And then the more important question is, do you have any sense from your sources and other experts about whether they’re holding out any actual realistic hope that Putin has hurt himself so badly in Russia that someone does something about it?

Jonathan Karl:

First of all, on the ruble, I visited, traveled and reported from the Soviet Union on several occasions during the mid ’90s, and then again, during Putin’s first term. And I remember seeing times when the ruble had crashed and when it was hard to get anything in Russian shops. And then I remember seeing under Putin, the Yeltsin into Putin, the revival of a Russian economy. My first visits there, it was literally hard to get a meal in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Lord knows, the rest of the country. And this must bring back such fear on the part of the other Russian people who have seen prosperity and then have seen an economic downturn far beyond anything that we’ve seen, maybe with the exception of the Great Depression in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

I’m very confused about this because I see reports that seem to conflict with each other or conflict with common sense. On the one hand, I see this reporting that suggests that citizens in Russia who have family members in Ukraine and who correspond with them or talk with them on the telephone don’t believe it when the Ukrainian relatives say, “We’re being invaded. We’re being bombed. Civilians are being killed,” because the Russian folks believe the propaganda. They’re not seeing any of that news for the reasons we discussed a couple of minutes ago, so they’re not blaming Russia, they’re not blaming Putin.

Preet Bharara:

On the other hand, when your economy tanks and certain credit card transactions are not able to be done and you can’t exchange your ruble for foreign currency and all sorts of other things that are going to be the consequences-

Jonathan Karl:

You can’t buy a Big Mac.

Preet Bharara:

You can’t buy a Big Mac. Based on your reporting from the country and understanding the culture of the country a little bit, how do you think people are computing those conflicting things?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, that there was another thing today that came out. There was a poll of Russian citizens. Washington Post has written this up. Our polling folks believe it as a fairly reliable poll and it showed that 58% of Russians approve of the operation in Ukraine, which sounds like, “Wow, solid majority, the Russians are approving what’s happening,” despite all of what you just said. 58% is actually really low. That’s even low in the context of military operations in the United States that proved to be very unpopular eventually. Think about the-

Preet Bharara:

The war in Iraq was hugely popular initially.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, hugely popular. So if at the opening stages, before the full magnitude of what’s going on is really felt, there’s only 58%. I don’t know how accurate this poll is, but like I said, our polling folks say that this is a reputable outfit and they’ve looked at it and they think this is a good poll. So I don’t know. Part of it comes back to our discussion of the lack of information, except for information that’s blatantly false, reaching a lot of Russians. But again, you can’t clamp everything down. As you said, Russians living in Russia have family members who are living in Ukraine. They may be telling them they don’t hear it, but they’re hearing what’s happening.

Preet Bharara:

You just hope and assume that at some point, given how isolated Russia is going to be and is becoming, that you can’t shut out logical conclusions among the citizenry of Russia. Can we talk about politics in our own country as it relates to what’s happening in Ukraine? So as recently as 10 days ago or a couple of weeks ago, there were Republicans including the leader of that party, Donald Trump, who were lavishing praise on Putin saying, among other things, “Who cares what happens in Ukraine? The word savvy and brilliant were used to describe Putin. There’s been a bit of an about face on that. Is there any political consequence that’s going to befall anyone who was saying positive things about Putin two weeks ago?

Jonathan Karl:

I think that it’s interesting that that phenomenon that you just described wasn’t widely present on Capitol Hill. So it was Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo. It was people like Tucker Carlson and other Fox personalities.

Preet Bharara:

Not elected members of Congress so much you’re saying.

Jonathan Karl:

It really wasn’t much elected members of Congress. There were some. I don’t know if you follow Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

Preet Bharara:

No, who’s that?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s apparently very influential.

Preet Bharara:

Cannot be.

Jonathan Karl:

I think she’s on the foreign relations committee or no, maybe she’s not on any-

Preet Bharara:

I don’t think she’s in any committees.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the Republicans in Congress largely did not echo almost, almost entirely did not echo that crazy talk. I think the other question is, does Donald Trump pay a price for that? Now, Trump has pivoted to now making the case that none of this would have been happening if he were president and that the crazy line he puts out there and says that he’s the only president in the entire 21st century that didn’t see a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Every other president in 21st century had the Russians invade Ukraine. But you know what? The reason the Russians didn’t invade Ukraine while Donald Trump was president is they didn’t need to invade Ukraine.

Preet Bharara:

Trump, if reelected, was going to withdraw from NATO.

Jonathan Karl:

Yes, Putin’s grand aim here, aside from rebuilding the Russian Empire, but the most important tactic is to degrade NATO. He wants to degrade NATO, wants to push NATO back. Donald Trump was doing it. Donald Trump was doing it and not to mention browbeating Zelensky and holding back military aid that had been approved by Congress, all of that. So the Russians … Trump was doing just fine in serving Putin’s interests.

Preet Bharara:

Going back to the show I saw on Sunday that we were talking about the beginning of the show, one of your colleagues at ABC, Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, said something like, “If only Biden had followed Trump’s policies with respect to Russia, this wouldn’t have happened and we would be in better shape.” And I don’t know that you got the chance to fully respond to that. So please, the floor is yours.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, I did blurt out like, “The Trump policy? The guy that held back the javelins, the guy that beat up on Zelensky and was trying to get him to take up dirt on the Bidens? Come on.” But it’s absurd, because first of all, the point that Christie was making, the little element of truth is that under Trump, we were providing arms, defensive arms to the Ukrainians. And that’s something that Obama had resisted and it’s something in the first part of the Biden administration that he had resisted. But first of all, that wasn’t Trump’s policy. That was the Congress.

Preet Bharara:

There’s this distinction that people keep forgetting and the Trump Alliance also is that various parts of the US government were taking strong action in both statements and indeed towards Russia, all of which seem to chafe at Donald Trump.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, and look, Trump had people in his administration … Hard to find a bigger Russia hawk than John Bolton who was his National Security advisor. Pompeo talked tough on Russia. Certainly Mattis. There were people in the Trump administration, the boss, the boss wasn’t there, but also this was not just about providing javelins. There’s a bigger issue which is the way that Trump and Putin seem to be in lockstep, that’s overstating it to a degree, but on NATO. Trump was constant was raising questions about Article IV. Remember when he said, “Montenegro, those guys are really nasty. We’re really going to defend them if they get attacked.”

Jonathan Karl:

He wanted to pull troops out of Germany. Remember, and I’ve mentioned this in my book when he decapitated that the civilian leadership at the Pentagon right after the election ,fired Esper and fired several other senior officials at the Pentagon, put in Chris Miller, sent General McGregor over there as the top advisor. His assignment was to get out of Afghanistan, to get US troops out of Germany, get US troops out of Africa. That was the simple basic thing, “Get them all out.” So he was doing exactly what Putin wants to have happened. He wanted and he was he was stopped by some of the people around him from going all the way, but he didn’t believe in NATO. By the way, he thought that NATO countries paid dues.

Preet Bharara:

Did he know what NATO stood for, do you think? Well, I’m not sure about Trump, but there was a disturbing poll, I think, among American college students and some giant percentage of them couldn’t state what NATO stood for. I don’t mean as a matter of principle, I mean just NATO.

Jonathan Karl:

Like North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they didn’t know what that was. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

You’re showing off now, Jonathan.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Vassar College did well by you.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about how you think overall the Biden administration has handled this, and in In particular, in contrast to the withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan that a lot of people were critical of? I’m not a foreign policy person, but I was a little bit critical of that based on what I saw as a private citizen. Do you think they learned something from that? What are people telling you about their own feelings about how this has been handled compared to the last significant crisis?

Jonathan Karl:

Afghanistan was a disaster and the only thing that mitigated the politics of that disaster is that he was essentially continuing precisely the policies of Donald Trump in the way he handled Afghanistan. I think that Biden has done a very good job on a terrible situation. It’s hard to say he’s done a great job, we’re watching Ukraine getting leveled.

Preet Bharara:

As an initial matter, he was right.

Jonathan Karl:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Right? One of the most important things is to actually predict accurately. That was one of the failings in Afghanistan. And here, people didn’t believe him and Blinken and others when they said, “There’s going to be an invasion. Good luck.” “Oh, I don’t think so.” Even the Ukrainian people didn’t think it was going to happen.

Jonathan Karl:

Even Zelensky said it wasn’t going to happen.

Preet Bharara:

Even Zelensky, yeah. So that that’s a big kick in the pants in a good way for your credibility if you end up being … It’s unfortunate. I think they would have hoped to have been wrong and that would have been a different fallout.

Jonathan Karl:

But they made a very … It was a unconventional decision which is that they saw the intelligence and they made a decision to share the intelligence and to show exactly what Putin was doing to describe how he was going to do it with stunning accuracy, not just the invasion itself, but the propaganda campaign surrounding the invasion, the whole false flag idea, this idea that Ukrainians were committing genocide in East. And he called it, he brought it to the attention of the world. I think that you see the way he brought the Europeans on board, the sanctions that we didn’t think … Again, not all, not all, oil and gas. But I think that Biden has handled a horrible situation and shown some real leadership on it. And the other person again that you have to recognize is Zelensky.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, 100% and I wrote about that recently. I think it’s a marvel to behold. Speaking of the political consequences for Biden, I don’t know if there’s another poll that matches this, but did you see this recent poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist that has Biden’s approval rating jumping up …

Jonathan Karl:

Yup.

Preet Bharara:

… to 47 points? It was up eight points. Is Ukraine handling up? 18 points to 52%. I know it’s not an ABC poll, Jonathan.

Jonathan Karl:

Yes. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Do you credit that?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, it makes sense. He has shown some decisive leadership in a way that we hadn’t seen. I think that you saw in the State of the Union when he was applauded by Republicans as well as Democrats. There was a hell of a lot of unity in a time when we don’t see any unity. It was there was the unity that Biden promised he was going to bring. It wasn’t unity on everything obviously, but it was unity on his approach to Ukraine that’s already getting chipped away by Republican carping on domestic oil and gas production and all that. But it makes sense that this makes him more popular, rallying around the president during a time of national crisis, national security crisis. The question is, what happens as oil now, I mean gas, gasoline over $4 a gallon heads towards $5 a gallon? What happens then?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I think the policies of this is very difficult. We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Jonathan Karl after this. Speaking of politics, midterms, prediction?

Jonathan Karl:

So I think that the Republicans barring something entirely unforeseen.

Preet Bharara:

World War III?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, maybe World War III, something like that. The Republicans win the House and win it pretty decisively, but here, Preet, is I think the most important thing, is not what happens in November, is what happens over the next few months, these Republican primaries. There are Republican primaries all across the country where the future, at least the near-term future of the Republican Party is going to be decided. Donald Trump is out on a campaign of vengeance, to take out any Republicans that didn’t sufficiently support him in his efforts to overturn the presidential election and to go after any Republicans who even hinted out of support for impeachment or suggested he did something wrong in connection with January 6th.

Jonathan Karl:

And this is going to be very interesting for us. There are people … Tom Rice is the one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach. He’s from South Carolina. He’s from the reddest district of any of those 10 that voted to impeach Trump. And Trump is all in obviously supporting his opponent. I think Tom Rice has a chance to win that. Kemp, Governor Kemp in Georgia, Trump had goaded Purdue to get in the race to challenge him because Kemp didn’t overturn Georgia’s election results. I think Kemp may well win in Georgia. Lisa Murkowski voted to convict in the Senate. All signs points of her being on a glide path to winning the Republican nomination and her Senate seat back. And there’s a lot of them. I just mentioned some of the high profile ones. There are a lot of primaries to watch.

Preet Bharara:

I want to mention a couple other folks, not in the Congress, but can you explain from a political observers perspective, what on Earth Mike Pence is thinking with respect to his viability as a national candidate because he clearly hasn’t given that up?

Jonathan Karl:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

Does he remember the chanting, about the hanging?

Jonathan Karl:

It is mind blowing, but I think that way Pence sees the world is he thinks that Trump ultimately is not going to run and we’ll be a diminished force, but that will enable him to emerge.

Preet Bharara:

What’s the logic? I don’t see the logic of that. He’s closely associated with him until 14 days before the term ended and now he’s a pariah to that base. And can you win the nomination without the Trump base? Is that even mathematically possible?

Jonathan Karl:

I think the reason why he has been so reluctant to fight back and defend himself on this is that he still imagines that he emerged as the guy that can get the Trump face and once it’s clear that Trump is gone, but can we just-

Preet Bharara:

There was the gallows. There was the gallows.

Jonathan Karl:

Can we just pause for a moment though and think about this?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, please.

Jonathan Karl:

Mike Pence was the most loyal vice president in the history of the vice presidency. This is a guy that never uttered a word to suggest there was any distance between him and anything related to Donald Trump, not during the 2016 campaign when Access Hollywood tape came out, not after Charlottesville. Nothing. He never, never publicly, and by the way, I don’t believe even privately. Certainly not. He was Mr. Loyal. You might get a facial expression out of the guy every once in a while if he thought something upset him a little bit, but he stood by Trump on everything until, like you said, 14 days before the end of the Trump presidency.

Jonathan Karl:

And then he refuses too, as an act of one single man overturn a presidential, an insane request, and actually the insane request. And for that, he has made a … What does that tell you about Donald Trump and loyalty?

Preet Bharara:

No, there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing. It flows in one direction and one direction only. And that has always been true. And there are lesser examples of this. There’s Jeff Sessions. There’s Bill Barr. There’s others who basically did everything for him and they wouldn’t do that final thing.

Jonathan Karl:

There’s Chris Christie. There’s a lot. Sessions, that was probably the single most important endorsement of the 2016 Republican primaries, was Jeff Sessions giving … He’s the first significant elected official to endorse Trump and he was the guy that was Mr. Anti-Immigration.

Preet Bharara:

The first senator, right?

Jonathan Karl:

First senator. And Ted Cruz was doing everything he could to beg for that endorsement. And then, again, he turns on him, why? Because he recused himself from something he absolutely had to recuse himself from. That’s like-

Preet Bharara:

As I often say, it’s the one thing that we know for a fact that Jeff Sessions did that was completely ethical, honorable and marked with integrity.

Jonathan Karl:

It’s not a close call.

Preet Bharara:

And that the one thing that killed him in the eyes of Donald Trump. Let me mention another person who’s also trying to do this threading of the needle or straddling the divide and I wonder if you have an observation about him, Kevin McCarthy.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Long pause, long pause.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

It’s easier for … Kevin McCarthy wasn’t the vice president, so he wasn’t in the position to “betray” Trump by not overturning the election. And he said some things. All these people said some things during the melee on January 6th and the days after. Some of them have stood by those comments, Mitch McConnell to a great extent. McCarthy not. Is he threading this needle in the way that makes sense for him?

Jonathan Karl:

McCarthy is trying to do two things. He’s trying to win control of the House for the Republicans and then he’s trying to ensure that he has 218 votes to elect him speaker once that happens.

Preet Bharara:

Does he? Is the second thing in his grasp?

Jonathan Karl:

I think the second thing is likely in his grasp, depending on how big the margin is, but Donald Trump, he knows that the one person that could jeopardize that for him is Donald Trump. And Kevin McCarthy had that brass ring right in his grasp once before. He was on the verge of becoming speaker and he’d lost it by his own missteps. And he does not want to lose it again. He is driven to become speaker of the House and he believes that he cannot alienate Trump and still get the 218 votes that he needs to be speaker. So that creates all these contortions because he’s really not, he’s not a Trump-y. He’s not. And that’s why Trump will probably go after him. It was during the impeachment debate when he came out and actually said, I think the best speech for Kevin McCarthy’s career, he was actually passionate and he showed the passion and he said that-

Kevin McCarthy:

The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.

Jonathan Karl:

Now, he didn’t go the next step and vote in favor of impeachment, but he was prepared to support a censure against Donald Trump. And he also on January 6th, itself, I sent him a text message while the Capitol was under attack and said, “Where are you? Are you all right? What’s going on?” He got back to me and said he’d just been evacuated. And I said, “Can you come on ABC right now because we were obviously on live?” And it was the first direct … It was a very direct book and I literally gave him the number for the control room to call in. And he went on and he talked to George Stephanopoulos and he said that he was begging, he had been begging Trump to get out on television and to address the country and to call to his people off. And now, it’s certainly a different Kevin McCarthy.

Preet Bharara:

I wonder if you can answer this question, maybe it’s unfair, maybe it betrays something, but a lot of politicians have a big difference between how they are in private with no cameras and no recording machines, when they talk to their colleagues or they talk to a reporter like you. And there’s a difference between how they act in that context versus how they are on Meet the Press or On This Week or on CNN or in public speeches in public fora. And every politician has a different delta between their private self and how honest and candid they are and how stand up they are privately versus publicly. On the spectrum of that discordance between their private and public personas, where’s Kevin McCarthy based on you’re dealing with him?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I actually think that some of that has been seen in front of the cameras, his different positions. As I mentioned, what he said on January 6th, what he said on January 13th when he blamed the riot on Trump. He has had moments where you have seen that he really is not … This is not really a Trump Republican. And I think that when you see him come out and very clearly have to calibrate so that he maintains the support of his conference …

Preet Bharara:

He’s acting a bit.

Jonathan Karl:

… he looks uncomfortable, doesn’t it? That’s why I say-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, that’s why I asked the question.

Jonathan Karl:

And that’s why I say I think that honestly the best speech that I’ve ever seen him deliver was that one that he delivered during the impeachment debate because he truly, I think, was saying when he believed.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about your book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trumps Show. There are a lot of scoops in it, as they say, and you’re known for getting scoops. And I want to ask you about that and how that comes to pass. What is a scoop? How are we defining a scoop, so I can ask you about it?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, it’s something that we didn’t know and-

Preet Bharara:

And no one else got.

Jonathan Karl:

And that nobody else got and it is significant, it is important. It’s not just like we found out that some … It has to be important and it makes you go, “Wow, I didn’t know that.”

Preet Bharara:

Right. So let me ask you, so when you set out to write a piece or write a book, are you thinking, and be honest, Jonathan, are you thinking, “Let me get some scoops and I’ll build around the scoops,” or are you just trying to understand what went on with respect to the thing that you are investigating and reporting on. And then along the way, you get scoops and you put them in the book? What’s your orientation with respect to the almighty scoop?

Jonathan Karl:

I think it’s a real mistake to say you’re going to write a book and build it around scoops. I think it leads to a disjointed narrative. I wrote both of my books Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal because I had a story that I wanted to tell. And the scoops to me truly are secondary. Look, I have enormous respect for the … Look, I don’t know if you notice, I’m not the only person that wrote a book about Donald Trump and-

Preet Bharara:

You’re not?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, and I have enormous respect for others. I think some of the best things that Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig are tops. Obviously, Bob Woodward is Bob Woodward and-

Preet Bharara:

Don’t share the spotlight, Jonathan. I want to hear about your scoops.

Jonathan Karl:

But I just want to say that I think that one thing is different about my book from all of them is that it’s a story and it builds from the beginning. This book starts with Donald Trump getting acquitted in the impeachment, the first impeachment and the steps that he started taking immediately that I believe directly led to where we were on January 6th. So this is a story, and within the story, yes, there are scoops, but the scoops are not as important about what it tells you about why January 6th happened and what it means.

Preet Bharara:

So how do you get a scoop? Is there an attribute that you and others have of trustworthiness or do you get your sources liquored up? How does it happen? How does it happen, Jon? Tell us.

Jonathan Karl:

You have to you have to work at it and you do have to be trusted and you have to gain trust and you have to continue to be very persistent. There are different kinds of scoops in this book. Some of the scoops come in on the record interviews. I think one of the biggest scoops was Bill Barr. Bill Barr told me stuff on the record that he hadn’t ever said before and it was truly holy shit. Excuse my language. I don’t know if the podcast-

Preet Bharara:

You can do that.

Jonathan Karl:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

No, that’s all right. No FCC issues here. Do you want do you want to explain the audience the biggest scoop out of Bill Barr’s mouth because I was going to ask about him next because he’s much in the news this week too?

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah, he sure is. Well, first of all, I knew from the start that he was somebody that I really wanted to get to and I wanted to talk to. And even before Trump left the White House, I was reaching out to Barr through intermediaries to see if he would talk to me for the book. And I got, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’ll do that. Yeah, sure.” And then months went by and nothing, nothing, nothing. The guy actually lives not far from my house. I walk my dog sometimes by his house and I was tempted and I probably would have if I hadn’t eventually gotten him, but I was tempted to knock on the door, which I didn’t have to resort to that.

Jonathan Karl:

But as my deadline was approaching and I had written much of the book, I reached out to his former spokesperson, some of his top officials at the Justice Department and I got his personal cellphone and I just called it and he answered it. And I was like, “As you know, I’ve been really trying to come in and talk to you and we do this.” He’s like, “Oh, yeah. Okay. How about next week?” And I went over to his house and I spent a couple of hours with him in his study and tape recorder rolling, but it was on background, not for attribution interview. I thought it was so significant that I spent the next couple of weeks negotiating with him saying, “You’ve got to let me put this on the record.”

Jonathan Karl:

And he ultimately let me put a lot of it, the really important stuff on the record. And the scoops were he came out and he said that he had done his own little investigation within the Justice Department with the assistance of US Attorneys into the allegations that Trump had made about election fraud in Nevada, in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan and that it was all bullshit and he explained why. He explained how we looked into it. It wasn’t just that he had said … Because we know that he’d come out in December of 2020 and said, “There wasn’t significant election fraud that would have changed the election,” but this was different. He said that he actually drilled down and looked into this and explained to me how and why he had concluded these major allegations that Trump and made were total nonsense.

Jonathan Karl:

And then he described to me in detail, what he has now done in his book, I think maybe even more detail with me than he did in his book, what Trump’s reaction to all of that.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a criticism of scoops that I’m sure you’ve heard and I don’t know how much of this has been directed at you, but if you’re a reporter, and certainly, if you remember the actual government at a high level like Bill Barr and the scoops are internal to you, so that’s, I think, a different category, but people will say, “Those things should not be saved for a book and should rather be reported in real time or told to congressional committees or to prosecutors or other authorities when they become known because that is in the public interest.” What do you think of that?

Jonathan Karl:

I heard that a lot after the book came out.

Preet Bharara:

So how do you respond, sir?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the process. If I were not writing this book, if I were doing my daily job of filing reports for World News Tonight or Good Morning America or for This Week, I wouldn’t have been hounding Bill Barr for months to get an interview that would be done without television cameras in his home with my … It’s a different process. It’s an investigative process. It’s much more in depth. And if I weren’t writing the book, I wouldn’t have gotten, I wouldn’t have learned a lot of this. I learned less because I wrote the book, but here’s the other thing.

Jonathan Karl:

With Barr, by the way, I finally talked to him in the early summer. My deadline was late summer, so this was like really late in the process. And it was so significant to me that I did decide I needed to get it out immediately. So I called up Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic and I said, “I’ve got something really good, I want to …” It wasn’t the kind of thing that really fits in a minute and 30 piece on network news. So I called the Atlantic and I wrote this long article about Barr and about all of what he said to me and about the context around it. It eventually became what would become the chapter in my book. But I felt-

Preet Bharara:

Was your publisher annoyed? Was your publisher annoyed by that?

Jonathan Karl:

Well, one thing that annoyed the publisher a little bit was that the Atlantic article made a huge splash and all of the cables were doing stories on it. ABC did stories on it, particularly CNN and MSNBC were doing stories on and they were showing a graphic of the book, but I didn’t have a book cover yet. So they showed the generic cover.

Preet Bharara:

You got to get that done quick.

Jonathan Karl:

I know, really it was a generic cover just that Betrayal with a white lettering and a black background and my name and I was like, “That’s not the cover. So yeah, they were probably … But they didn’t give me too hard of a time.

Preet Bharara:

You know what’s interesting? I didn’t expect the answer you gave quite the way you gave it. I thought you were going to say not that the process of writing a book is the thing that gets me the scoop because it’s a different process and you are persistent and you have a lot of time. I thought you’re going to say and maybe this is also true, depending on the person, that one of the reasons you get a scoop for a book is because the person is only prepared to speak, knowing it’s for a book that’s not coming out for a while. Is your understanding with the subject generally and with Barr specifically?

Jonathan Karl:

That’s entirely true. It’s entirely true.

Preet Bharara:

It is true.

Jonathan Karl:

Oh, it’s entirely true. And also by the way, the process of investigative reporting for something like this is you talk to one source or one set of sources and then you use that information to go to somebody else. And then you take that information back and you build it. It’s not like you suddenly come, “Walla, I got this big scoop.” It is a long process, but I’ll give you one … I won’t give you the names, but I will give you one very specific example.

Preet Bharara:

Give us their initial.

Jonathan Karl:

Their initials-

Preet Bharara:

Just their initials.

Jonathan Karl:

Yes, yes, as a former Hill staffer, you’ll remember that reference. I have a story, there’s one of the scoops in the book, which is Donald Trump on his last day in office, January 20th, as he got on Air Force One for the last flight home to in the Mar-a-Lago, he had a phone call from Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the RNC, and she was just calling to wish him well and he lit her up and said he was leaving the Republican Party. He was going to start his own party. And she said, “You can’t do that. You’re going to betray the people that worked so hard for you.” And he’s like, “I don’t care,” and his attitude was, “If I lost, then everybody else needs to lose too.”

Jonathan Karl:

It’s all described in pretty vivid detail. My sourcing was really, really good on it. And this was an interview that happened early on on the condition that it was for the book and was going to be coming out much later. And let me tell you, the people that I spoke to, they described all that to me, would never have remotely given me the information if I’d asked them at the time the book because it was a different time. I really wanted to strike and do the reporting on this story as much as I could in the immediate aftermath while it went down, the end of the Trump … And I include the transition, not just January 6th, but all the crazy stuff that was happening in November and December.

Jonathan Karl:

So I did a lot of interviews during then that became stuff that I built on. Because people were angry at Trump. People were upset. And they spoke much more clearly than they would now as he still is.

Preet Bharara:

You timed it right.

Jonathan Karl:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Jonathan Karl, thank you for spending time with us. It’s always good to speak with you. The book is Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. Not just a lot of scoops, but as you say, a very compelling story and an important one. I hope you’ll check it out. Thanks again.

Jonathan Karl:

Thank you for having me on. It’s great to talk to you.

CONCLUSION:

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Jonathan Karl 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. I want to end the show this week with a few more words about Ukraine. As you heard, Jonathan Karl and I had a robust conversation about the geopolitics, about the domestic politics and the possible consequences of the conflict. But there’s another story too or stories, I should say, of people who have been finding ways to help the ordinary Ukrainians who are so badly in need of aid. One especially creative way people are helping has been through booking Airbnbs in Ukraine. No, not to travel there, but to put money directly into the pockets of the Ukrainian hosts that so badly needed.

Preet Bharara:

According to CBS, at least 61,000 nights were booked in Ukraine on March 2nd And 3rd with 34,000 coming from US customers. The combined value of all of those bookings? $2 million and Airbnb waived all of their guests and host fees, a spokesman for the company said, meaning they won’t profit from the rentals. There are other stories too, stories of Germans gathering at the Central Rail Station in Berlin to welcome Ukrainian refugees who may not have any plan for where they’re going. The BBC described an entire operation at the station. Food and drinks are handed out, along with SIM cards for phones, medical help for those who need it and translators, volunteers and organizers to help too. And there are hundreds of local residents and families standing there waiting to offer the Ukrainian people a roof over their heads.

Preet Bharara:

As the BBC describes, they hold up homemade signs, “Can host two people. Short or long term,” says one. Big room, one to three people. Children are welcome too for as long as you want,” says another. On the platform, a man with a megaphone asked if anyone could take 13 people and someone stepped forward as applause erupted in the station. At the same time, something else is happening at a train station in Poland. A photo went viral this week of a bunch of empty strollers left on the platform. They used to belong to Polish families and volunteers who left them there for Ukrainian parents arriving in the new country.

Preet Bharara:

And there’s another story, one you may not have heard yet, of one couple from the UK who just couldn’t stand by as the crisis unfolded. As reported by The Washington Post, Tom Littledyke, a UK pub owner, decided to load up his 16-seater minibus with essential supplies for refugees and drove over 1,000 miles from his home in West Dorset, England to the Poland-Ukraine border. He and his partner, Georgia Wellman, set up a fundraiser online with a goal of raising about $1,000 and asked his followers on social media for donations to purchase supplies. Within days, they had raised $15,000.

Preet Bharara:

Before leaving, they told their community the minibus would be left unlocked in front of their home in case neighbors wanted to leave donations. Within an hour and a half, Georgia Wellman told The Post the minibus was full. Toys, cleaning supplies, sleeping bags, thermals, you name it. Tom made the drive alone to the Ukrainian border. It took him 28 hours. And when he arrived, he saw the grave need for the transportation of refugees from the crowded train stations to the Poland-Ukraine border, so he switched gears. Instead of just delivering supplies and heading back, he started picking up groups of Ukrainians and driving them to the border so they could cross safely.

Preet Bharara:

He made multiple trips and transported 65 people, mainly women, children and elderly folks. He has since made it back to England and is already collecting donations and supplies for his next trip according to his Facebook page and you can check out how to support his efforts in the show notes to this episode. There is indeed a lot of bad going on in Ukraine right now, but all these stories serve as a reminder that even in the darkest times, there are many places to see light. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Jonathan Karl.

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 @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. Stay Tuned is presented by Café and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Separ. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. And the Cafe Team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan, Sean Walsh and Namita Shah. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara, stay tuned.