Background Briefing: September 14, 2022
The Shadow Power of Trump’s Law Firm and the Corruption of Justice
We begin with the dark side of American law embodied in the firm that helped get Donald Trump elected then govern while evading investigations as they led the right wing takeover of the courts. Meanwhile Jones Day protected opioid makers and gun companies as well as big tobacco along with Russian oligarchs, Fox News and the Catholic Church. Joining us is David Enrich, an author and the finance editor at the New York Times. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. His previous books include The Spider Network: How a Math Genius and Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off On of The Greatest Scams in History and Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, and we discuss his latest book, just out, Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice.
With Russian Gas Cut Off, the Head of the EU Vows “Putin Will Fail, Europe Will Prevail”
Then with the head of the EU vowing that “Putin will fail and Europe will prevail” as Russian gas is cut off and household energy bills skyrocket, we look into what alternative supplies might reach Western Europe to avoid a cold winter and speak with Dr. Paul Sullivan, a Senior Fellow at the Global Energy Center of the Atlantic Council. His current research focuses EU energy security, EU-Russian energy relations and Arctic energy issues and he was a full professor at the National Defense University for over 22 years where he ran the Energy Industry Study and he also taught at Georgetown, The American University in Cairo, and Yale and is now at John Hopkins University.
Will the Ukrainian Counteroffensive Rout the Russians or Provoke Putin to Use Cyber and/or Nuclear?
Then finally we assess whether the Ukrainian counteroffensive will rout the Russian invaders or provoke Putin to escalate to cyber or nuclear as the Kremlin acknowledges failures but shields Putin from blame while scapegoating Russia’s Ministry of Defense. Joining us is Emily Channell-Justice, the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A sociocultural anthropologist who has been doing research in Ukraine since 2012 and is now focusing on displaced people, her forthcoming book is, Without the State: Self-organization and political activism in Ukraine.