Month: November 2022

Will Indictments of Trump That Even Bill Barr Expects, be Delayed by the Appointment of a Special Counsel?

We begin with the appointment of a special counsel by AG Merrick Garland to handle the likely prosecutions of Donald Trump in both the January 6 insurrection and Mar a Lago documents cases. Joining us to assess whether the indictment of Trump, which even Bill Barr expects, will be delayed is Frederick Baron, who formerly served as associate deputy attorney general, special assistant to the attorney general, and director of the Executive Office for National Security in the Department of Justice.

Why Did Deep Blue New York Democrats Cost Their Party the House?

Then we examine why the Democrats lost the House in a close election in which the avoidable losses in the deep blue state of New York alone cost them a majority. Joining us is Michael Li, who serves as senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where his work focuses on redistricting, voting rights, and elections. His latest report at the Brennan Center is “The Redistricting Landscape, 2021–22.”

How Big Banks Can Loot Pension Funds Due to Little Oversight From the Department of Labor

Then finally, with some pension funds taking a hit from the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, we will investigate a little known aspect of Wall Street’s ability to loot Main Street via pension funds which are hardly regulated even though the Department of Labor grants QPAM authority to Blackrock and giant banks to invest for pension funds. Joining us from the UK is John Christensen, the founder of the Tax Justice Network and former head of Government Economic Service who was a company and trust administrator in the Channel Island of Jersey and served as economic adviser to the Jersey government. Currently he is the Chair of Stamp Out Poverty. Also joining us is Jim Henry, an economist, lawyer and investigative journalist who has written extensively about global banking, debt crises, tax havens and economic development. The former chief economist at McKinsey & Co., he is the co-founder of the Institute for Access to Public Information, co-founder with David Cay Johnston of DCReport.org and is the author of Blood Bankers. Jim and John just testified in a public hearing on Thursday before the US Department of Labor arguing for stronger oversight of QPAM pension funds.