Dear readers,
John Bolton has been indicted, and unlike with some of the president’s other enemies, the charges against him do not look slapdash or politically motivated. He should be very afraid that this indictment, which arose out of an investigation that gathered steam during the Biden administration, will stick. Bolton is charged with mishandling classified information — mostly, writing down contemporaneous notes of sensitive meetings he attended as National Security Adviser, and then emailing them to his wife and daughter over nonsecure platforms, apparently as part of a process for writing a book. Not great! Oh, and prosecutors say Iran hacked those emails. Oops! Plus, when Pete Hegseth’s Signal scandal happened, Bolton went on national television and made a bunch of statements making clear that he understands that it’s illegal to mishandle classified information. Oh, bother!
As Ken and I discuss, Bolton will likely allege vindictive prosecution, and the president has given him some ammunition, what with all those public statements demanding that his enemies be prosecuted. But the government will have a strong argument in response: whatever animus the president may feel, this investigation was proceeding through normal channels, it predated Trump’s return to office, and has been happily pursued by career prosecutors with no axes to grind. James Comey, on the other hand, has already made a strong argument that he would not have been prosecuted but for Trump’s vindictiveness — and that his indictment is defective for other reasons besides.
That, and a look at Trump’s apparent demand that the Justice Department pay him $230 million for the indignity of being prosecuted, is what we cover on this week’s free episode.
Paying subscribers also get a dive into two wild NBA-related indictments that came down this week in the Eastern District of New York. One indictment alleges that conspirators, including Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and also members of four of New York’s Italian mafia families, ran rigged poker games to fleece unsuspecting players out of millions of dollars. The other alleges a conspiracy to fraudulently bet on NBA games — or more specifically, on propositions about NBA games — through the use of inside information. Both of these cases have crazy factual details, and the NBA betting one also involves some interesting, novel legal issues. Both seem likely to eventually be the subject of movies.
Also this week: an update on lawsuits over National Guard deployments (and some theories about why an unfavorable ruling for Gavin Newsom did not get a rehearing en banc), a look at the case demanding that Speaker Mike Johnson hurry up and seat the Democrat who won a special election in Arizona several weeks ago, and an update on Hunter Biden-related litigation.
Want to hear all that? You know what to do.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
P.S. Did you know I have a new weekly politics podcast with Megan McArdle and Ben Dreyfuss? It’s called Central Air. This week, we had a really interesting conversation with Matt Yglesias about Democrats’ great difficulty with immigration politics. Hit this button to check out the episode and follow us on Substack!
