Fani Willis vs. Trump: The Nazis Strike Back
Mark your calendars! Tristan Snell, the prosecutor who led New York State's case against Trump and Trump University and the author of Taking Down Trump: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully, will join Andrea for a live-taping of Gaslit Nation for our community of listeners on February 12 at noon ET. An event link will be sent to our Patreon community at the Truth-teller level or higher on the day of the event. To join us, sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
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Republicans have once again refused to stop Trump: Nikki Haley lost the New Hampshire primary, and the Trump Klan is moving ahead towards the GOP nomination. Why might that be? According to Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, one in twenty-five people are sociopaths. Trump’s cult has galvanized and emboldened them, unleashing a toxic sludge that threatens to drown our democracy.
In this week’s episode, Andrea is joined by Olga Lautman, a Russian mafia expert and co-host of the Kremlin Files podcast, to discuss why Republicans are goose-stepping in line to support a shameless wannabe dictator, why the media continues to fail us and normalize this dangerous career criminal and Russian asset, and what can be done about it.
Andrea and Olga also debate over the growing attacks against Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Georgia DA who built a strong case against Trump and his goon squad for trying to overturn our election in 2020. Michael Roman, one of the 18 co-defendants in her case and a professional GOP opposition researcher, is trying to get Willis removed, which would put the entire case in jeopardy. Without any evidence, Roman claims that Willis is in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a lawyer she hired to her team of prosecutors. (Who cares!) This is a clear case of disinformation warfare to help Trump once again escape accountability. While there’s nothing illegal done by Willis or Wade, this is the new “Hunter Biden’s laptop” – red meat for the Fox News echo chamber. Check the show notes for trusted sources that cut through the gaslighting against Willis, who must remain in her post.
As for who will actually stop Trump, that’s us and our Gaslit Nation phone banks this fall.
Download Transcript
OPENING CLIP: Natasha Alford, author of American Negra, and anchor of The Grio https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1747731236196614497?t=VhKn8V81n1j_qz6Hi-er6Q&s=19
New York Times: Trump Prosecutor in Georgia Seeks to Avoid Testifying in Colleague’s Divorce Case. Fani T. Willis was subpoenaed in the divorce case of a colleague she hired to manage the Trump prosecution in Georgia, with whom she is accused of having a romantic relationship.
FROM THE ARTICLE: “The filing also stated that [Nathan Wade’s soon to be ex wife] Ms. Wade had ‘conspired’ with ‘interested parties’ in the Trump case ‘to annoy, embarrass and oppress’ Ms. Willis. It noted that Ms. Willis had been subpoenaed around the same time that Mr. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, filed motions seeking to unseal the divorce records and, in the Trump case, to remove the two prosecutors. The filing also said that Ms. Wade had acknowledged having an affair with a longtime friend of Mr. Wade’s, and that the couple had agreed their marriage was ‘irretrievably broken’ as early as 2017, before Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis had met.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/us/fani-willis-trump-georgia-prosecutors.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20240118&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta®i_id=48614702&segment_id=155695&user_id=097a378032011d6e8be1570cdce0a176
Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post: Fani Willis's Gift to Trump: “As a legal matter, the allegations about a romantic relationship between Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis and the chief prosecutor in the election interference case against former president Donald Trump are irrelevant. Even if all the claims are true, they wouldn’t imperil the prosecution or justify dismissing the indictment, as one of Trump’s co-defendants is seeking.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/22/fani-willis-gift-trump/
7 questions about the future of Fani Willis in the Georgia election interference case https://www.wabe.org/7-questions-about-the-future-of-fani-willis-in-the-georgia-election-interference-case/
Steve Bannon Thought Trump Had Early Dementia and Pushed to Remove Him, '60 Minutes' Producer Claims https://people.com/politics/steve-bannon-thought-donald-trump-had-early-stage-dementia-book-claims/
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President - Updated and Expanded with New Essays https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-dangerous-case-of-donald-trump-37-psychiatrists-and-mental-health-experts-assess-a-president-updated-and-expanded-with-new-essays-updated-expande-/20868798?ean=9781250212863
AI Reveals Dementia in Trump Speeches https://thedemlabs.org/2024/01/20/ai-reveals-dementia-in-trump-speeches/
Trump co-defendant alleges Georgia DA and prosecutor in relationship but offers no proof https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/09/georgia-trump-case-fani-willis-relationship-prosecutor
South Carolina natives Nikki Haley and Tim Scott's complicated history on display as they battle for GOP nomination https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/south-carolina-natives-nikki-haley-tim-scotts-complicated/story?id=104253045
The Sociopath Next Door by Harvard Psychologist Martha Stout https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-sociopath-next-door-martha-stout/15279323?ean=9780767915823
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CNN Commentator:
She never actually says—DeSantis says it—and I’m surprised at that because that’s part of our proud history as Republicans.
CNN Host:
The fight against slavery.
CNN Commentator:
Well, the struggle—
Natasha Alford:
Can I just say something though? I mean, you talk about this as if it is the past. We are looking at, we’ve covered stories where people have died, have been killed because of racism. Jacksonville, Florida, the Dollar Tree shooting. I mean, this is happening right now. And this is not just the Black community, right? The Japanese internment. I mean, those families and descendants are still here. My last name is Alford not because my family chose that last name. That is the name of the slaveholding family that owned us. I know the plantation that we are from in South Carolina and I am here. My father desegregated a school. He remembers those things. So why do we have to talk about it as if it is the past? This is right now. The pain is real. The survivors of racism, we are here. Right? And so if you don’t have a message around that, that talks about the future, that talks about the present, you can not lead this country.
CNN Commentator:
Well, Republicans do have a message around it and that is—
Natasha Alford:
It’s to ignore it. It’s to say that we are color blind, which does not solve the problem.
CNN Commentator:
No, but it is to say that we are undoubtedly a better and stronger nation on this front today than we were 10, 20, 40, 50, 150, 180 years ago. We are undoubtedly better as an American people than we ever have been and that will be true again tomorrow.
Natasha Alford:
But why is that? Why is it? It’s not because we ignored it. It’s because people called out what was uncomfortable and they challenged that status quo and they said, “We need to live up to what the American Dream actually is.” Those were the people who were demonized. We just celebrated Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was killed. He was killed. He was not considered a favorite or a darling of America because he stood up against racism, against poverty, and actually the greatest threat was that he was uniting poor white people with poor People of Color. That was the greatest threat to America, was that he was willing to bring us together. So again, we have to move past talking about this as if it is history, as if it’s not happening right now. And when the Republican party does this color blind thing, you’re gaslighting people. And they’re gonna react to that and they’re gonna show it at the polls.
[opening theme music up and under]
Andrea (00:02:42)
Alright, everyone, welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a writer... You know what, I'm a journalist and a filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, the film the Kremlin does not want you to see because it's about Stalin's genocide in Ukraine, which Putin is continuing today to try to cement his legacy as the next Stalin and live forever in the enslaved minds of the Russian people. So be sure to watch that movie and make your Russian friends too, who escaped abroad and are kind of laying low, to watch it too, okay? Because we need them to wake up. And with me is Olga Lautman, the lady of steel. I'm grateful to Olga Lautman. Humanity should be grateful to Olga Lautman because she is fighting the good fight. I know this woman, I know what she does in her off time, and it's what she does when you hear her on this show. She is fighting the Russian mafia through and through. God bless you, Olga. And our opening clip was Natasha Alford, author of American Negra and Anchor of the Griot, fact-checking Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley for claiming in a recent GOP debate that America is I'm going to take a few minutes to get back to you in fact not a racist country and has moved past that into colorblindness or whatever.
Andrea Chalupa (00:04:10):
And Trump's cult is stronger than ever. So we're here to fact check all that. But first, before we get into our big discussion, big announcement, this is hot off the press: There's going to be a special live taping of Gaslit Nation Monday, February 12th at 12 PM Eastern for our Patreon community featuring Tristan Snell, the lawyer that successfully prosecuted Trump for the Ponzi scheme or whatever the legal term is that was Trump University. And Tristan's gonna be here talking about his new book, Taking Down Trump: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully. So obviously we all have a lot of questions for Tristan Snell, the lawyer who successfully went up against Donald Trump. And he has a case here. You know, the book says, “12 rules for prosecuting Trump.” And I want to know, where is the prison sentence? That's going to be like my first question. And then if you are in our Gaslit Nation community, come ask a question in the chat. I'm very thrilled for this conversation and I'm excited about Tristan's book. So check it out, pre-order your copy today and join us for the live taping February 12th at 12 PM Eastern.
Andrea Chalupa (00:05:26):
There will be details on how to join that in the show notes for this week's episode. Alright, Olga. So there's a lot happening obviously on the Trump front because he's still around. He's not in prison. He's still haunting public spaces all over. He was just giving some rally in New Hampshire where he mixed up the names of Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley by blaming Nikki Haley for the security failure of January 6th, nevermind that it wasn't just a security failure, it was a full-on violent attempted coup to overthrow our democracy; one that he not just incited, but his entire goon squad from his team of now disbarred lawyers had a war room right next door to the White House in the Willard Hotel, which was up the street from the US Capitol that was being stormed by Trump's mob.
Andrea Chalupa (00:06.22):
And they had this all in operation. They were doing, like, pre-Stop the Steal rallies with the Proud Boys and Roger Stone and so on. And, you know, my point is that, just to clarify, I know we're all… Media is making a big deal of Trump getting Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi confused, but I wanna point people to the real story here. What is he getting confused over? Who's at fault for January 6th. Who's at fault for January 6th? The traitor in chief that literally tried to violently overthrow our democracy in a coup that was like the Beer Hall putsch, what Hitler tried to get away with, right? In the 1920s in Germany. Same energy, same level of horrifying stakes there. And so yeah, I just wanna center everybody in what the real story is with that gaffe. But what Olga and I are about to discuss, which I wanna get her thoughts on it is this: Everyone makes a big deal. Everyone is memeing out, right? They're going full-on Hillary Clinton's emails over Biden and his age. It's just a dead horse meme that everyone's beating. But I want to just point out some things.
Andrea Chalupa (00:07:38):
Ira Rosen, a former 60 Minutes producer, in his book, Taking Clock: Behind the Scenes of 60 Minutes, in that book, he discussed how he has some inside information, how Bannon believed that Trump had dementia, that Bannon was trying to rally Robert Mercer, like, the big far-right donor class, get the cabinet the cabinet officials to come out, pull the trigger on the 25th amendment because Bannon believed that Trump was mentally unfit, right? Maybe that was Bannon just being bitter because Ivanka and Jared finally pushed him out of the White House. But there's all these… We already know that Trump's unfit, right? Anybody who's listened to this show knows that Trump's unfit. But lately, he's been gaffing it up. He said that Biden's going to lead us into World War Two. Sure, we all kind of have typos every now and then when we talk. But then he goes and says that President Biden is President Obama and so on and so on it goes. We don't need these slurs or whatever. Obviously, he's exhausted. He's running for office. If I were him or anybody running for president, I would be doing the same thing. I do it here on this show and our tenacious editors just pick it out of the audio and I sound brilliant, right? So if you've ever been blown away ever, I hope there's at least one episode out there of Gaslit Nation that you're like, “Wow, that was wonderful!” That's… The magic's in the editing. Let me just tell you. So I don't blame any public figure, even a Nazi, for slurring their speech or just getting people confused. It happens.
Andrea Chalupa (00:09:09):
We know that Trump's mentally unfit to be president of the United States. We know that Trump, I mean, first of all, he's a criminal. He's a serial sexual assaulter, raper, whatever, you know? He's a Russian asset. He's got the golden handcuffs for Chinese dirty money. He's got Orbán, Victor Orbán's agents all around him trying to get him reelected. I mean, he is a cesspool of crimes that are a threat to not just our country, our national security, our very democracy, but their world. But sure, I will explore for a minute here the talk of the week, which is dementia, “Is Trump slipping?” And, you know, there's that book where a bunch of mental health experts looked at, you know, the case of… What was the book? The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists, Mental Health Experts Assess a President. So all sorts of psychiatrists, all sorts of mental health experts have looked at Trump and come up with their own assessments because he's notorious for just having no attention span, for repeating the same stories. These are all reports from those who are close around him. And he's just in another world, right? Just like Putin, just like Angela Merkel got off the phone with Putin during the early years of Ukraine's war and Angela Merkel reported to her close associates that Putin's on another planet. He's just in another reality. I agree that someone like Trump, who is surrounded by yes men, who's a mob boss figure, yeah, he's absolutely in some of his own reality. He's a criminal and he's an adult who's fully responsible for his decades of crime. So a question to you, Olga: Why does the media beat on about President Biden's age and whether he's too old or not to be president when Trump is clearly unfit to be out in public, certainly anywhere near a school playground?
Olga Lautman (00:10:59)
First of all, the worst part of everything I have to say is the media's coverage of Trump. You have them on one hand jumping on every breaking news story, the more horrific and the more criminal it is, whether it's stealing our national security secrets and showing them and handing them to random people, or him being involved in the insurrection, or him sitting in the Oval Office actually excited to see people tearing down and breaking the Capitol. So with that, they break these stories, but at the same time, they treat this as a normal election. They refuse to point out that he's a dictator. And one of the things that I, you know, my biggest pet peeve is how they continue to talk even now about 2028. So on one hand, they're having a conversation about, “Oh, do you think he's a dictator?” He said he's a dictator. He is putting people in his apparatus that if he does get back in the White House, he will immediately rule like a dictator. But at the same time, they're talking about 2028. Where has a dictator ever gone into power for four years?
Olga Lautman (00:12:19):
If he gets into power this time, there will be no 2028. The only way power will leave him is if he gives it over to someone in his family or someone, you know, around him. So the media really needs to wake up and understand the dangers as he even goes against them. And as far as whether he has dementia or not, I mean, the guy is a sociopath. Dictators are sociopaths. They're not normal. They see the world in a different way. Every single dictator has stories, whether it was Saddam Hussein who liked to watch executions, whether it's Putin who gets off on executions, whether it's, you know other dictators, they have this thirst for violence, for this. They're not normal people, so of course they're going to see the world in a different way. But the media has a very big role to play because they really need to wake people up. You cannot report and have pundits discuss whether he's a dictator or not and at the same time hype up the Iowa caucus. I mean, for God's sakes, 55,000 people voted for Trump in the Iowa caucus. 55,000. This country is 350 million and then over 200 million registered voters.
Olga Lautman (00:13:40):
55,000? This is what you're hyping him up as if that's it? You know, so they really need to take this threat very seriously because they will also pay very quickly. Once Trump gets in this time… Look, when he got in in 2016, he didn't know anything about government. He didn't understand the bureaucracy involved. We had a lot of people in the government who, you know, were loyal to the constitution, loyal to democracy, loyal to keeping this country, you know, from falling into an autocracy. And they pretty much were the guardrails. This time around, Trump is already, for the past year, preparing, you know, how he will go in, which agencies he will go after in order to start weaponizing the government against anyone who is critical of him. So the second time around is way more dangerous and the same we saw with Hitler. The first time, you know, he got out of power. The second time is when he seized power and stayed in power. I don't know. The media really, again, needs to, you know, get their act together and really warn Americans of the dangers we all face because this is whether you're in politics or not in politics, this is going to affect every single American because there is not one dictator who provides, you know, free, not free… Let me repeat that. There is not one dictator who follows human rights, who makes sure that society is equal. All dictators split societies up and societies under dictators, you have the majority who falls into even deeper poverty levels. So the media really needs to wake up and start, you know, stop glorifying Trump and start warning Americans of the danger that he poses to us.
Andrea Chalupa (00:15:45):
Yeah, it's surreal. It's surreal to… It feels like a Black Mirror episode, some of this media coverage.
Olga Lautman:
It feels like we’re crazy.
Andrea Chalupa:
Ha! That's why we call it Gaslit Nation because we're fact checking the gaslighting. But one thing, when you study dictators, when you study the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures at Yale University by the psychologist Stanley Milgram that showed that people would continue to hurt other human beings if an authority figure told them to. And they just obediently, blindly followed authority. And those are the people that allow the dictator to come to power and stay in power. So when the media is out here normalizing Donald Trump, and normalizing the fact that this serial corrupt criminal who has been impeached twice, who has all sort of deeply documented dependencies, financial dependencies, on some of the worst autocratic regimes in human history, that he's out here the front runner of a major American party, that's the media abusing its power, being the authority here with its power. And you're gonna have a lot of Milgram experiment Americans across the country that are gonna blindly fall into this as though it's normal. You already see Republican officials goose-stepping already.
Olga Lautman:
One after another, they were lining up.
Andrea Chalupa:
They’re falling in line, yeah.
Olga Lautman:
Yeah, like toy soldiers.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17.22):
And this Nazi rally is going to gain steam and it's going to charge ahead and it's going to get worse and worse and it's going to incite greater political violence across the country. We just had a far-right march, like a Brooks Brother tiki torch type march. The Klan busted out their khaki pants and came to New York and were marching here just recently just a few days ago. And so you're gonna see a lot more of that and you're gonna see the mainstream media breathlessly following all of it and just legitimizing it. They did the same thing with Hitler's trial. Journalists morbidly, breathlessly covered Hitler's trial. Now, they're doing it with the speeding runaway train of Donald Trump. We're recording this on Monday, January 22nd on the eve of the New Hampshire primary for the Republican party. It tells you everything that we're not even bothering to actually wait for the primary itself to record this episode because we know Nikki Haley, whether she wins or not, it's not gonna make a difference. There just weren't enough Republicans to stop this runaway Trump train. And it just shows you again and again that there are so many people across American society, in major cities, in small towns, in so-called blue states, in so-called red states, that have no problem with Trump.
Olga Lautman (00:18:47):
And it's bigger than Trump. Their obsession with Trump is him sending a middle finger to Western institutions, to US institutions. So the more he rails against these institutions, the more these people will be loyal to him or any figure that goes against the Department of Justice or the Treasury or IRS or whatever department it is that they want to take down. So this is bigger than Trump. This is a tearing down of our institutions and institutions are the foundations of democracy. Without these institutions, without the courts, without the Department of Justice and, you know, knowing that the United States has jurors who can put their political beliefs aside and walk into a courtroom and weigh information based on evidence and come to a conclusion, once you start tainting this—and this is what he has done. From 2015, the first thing he did was go after the media. Then he went after the FBI. Then he went after the court systems. Trump's popularity only grew after he got indicted. After the first indictment and when instead of falling in line… Well, not him falling in line, instead of him acting like anyone else who would be indicted. When he said, “Yeah, you know, I'm challenging this,” but in an unorthodox way of basically saying F you to the courts, that's when you saw his popularity increase and grow in poll numbers.
Olga Lautman (0020:28):
So that's even more dangerous because it's not even just one person. It's the idea that these people, the more you threaten judges, the more you threaten politicians, the more you threaten law enforcement agents, the more these people get excited and are on board. And that becomes a very dangerous scenario in this country. And this is what dictators look for. They look for these grievances in order to amplify them, in order to tear down the system and cause so much violence and division and hatred and instability in order for them to grab onto power.
Andrea Chalupa (00:21:08):
In our line of work, in the circles that you and I travel in, right? It's journalists, it's analysts, it's activists, it's all sorts of filmmakers, you know, mostly documentarians, and of course the think tank world inevitably, and all sorts of cultural institutions, right? What I think our field, let's just call it the big tent that we're in, human rights, the world of human rights. What we don't see enough of… You and I meet a lot of lawyers in the work that we do. We meet a lot of analysts. We meet people who are authors of all sorts of chess playing books. The world's a global chess board. It's those types, right? The stuffy duddies or whatever in their club chairs, drinking their scotch, blowing their cigar smoke in our faces. But what we don't have enough of in our little clubby world is psychologists, right? People that can really say, “You want to talk about worldviews and doctrines and Kissinger, we're up against sociopaths.” We need to bring in way more mental health experts. And I'm not just talking about the much needed, underpaid, overworked mental health experts treating the generational trauma coming out of the cycles of violence of all sorts of conflict zones around the world. I'm not talking about, like, humanitarian aid workers. I'm talking about the think tank world should be staffing up these psychologists who could just straight up say, “Putin is a psychopath and here all the characteristics of it and so on.” And I just wanna give you an example of what I'm talking about. So the Harvard psychologist, Martha Stout, she wrote a book called The Sociopath Next Door that discusses, breaks down how a shocking 4% of regular people—one in 25—is a sociopath, meaning that they have no conscience whatsoever and they just don't have an ability to empathize. That's a shocking statistic.
Andrea Chalupa (00:23:07):
And so I think when we raise our children, for instance, when we're raising kids in this world, I feel like we need to normalize talking to our kids about the different personality disorders out there and how to spot them so that we can normalize the types of personalities that tend to want to try to become dictators because Donald Trump has unleashed normalizing being a toxic personality. That's why you've seen this uptick of all sorts of aggressive entitled behavior. That's why so many people willingly follow him, because they lack a conscience. It's not hard. It's really that simple. And what I'm saying is that lofty, ivory tower disciplines, like global affairs, lack basic, simple, down-to-earth thinking of cross-pollinating with experts in human nature. We need more of that in these discussions that we're having to combat this cult of sociopaths that Trump has emboldened. And that needs to be more of the discussion right now, especially leading into the media's feeding frenzy that is going to give greater rise to the second coming of the Trump Armageddon.
Olga Lautman (00:24:34):
Yeah, I agree. Another thing to point out is that every single person loyal to Trump is not necessarily a Trump, you know, loyalist, if that makes sense. You had a lot of fringe groups in America, you know, up to 2016, whether it was KKK affiliates or, you know, other white supremacists, the far-left groups. You had all these friends groups, they really never had one person to look up to. They were all fractured across the country. And here, when Trump came, he started kind of bringing these groups. They might be loyal to him, but they're using him as a vehicle for their own agenda of tearing down the government. And that's the scary part. And this is why you've seen so many fringe groups kind of fall under this umbrella. And you take any rally and you have, you know, representatives of groups that prior to this would have never even communicated with each other. And here they are all together calling for the tearing down of the institutions and the overthrow of government. You know, whereas before they would, you know, a few of them would talk about it while shooting beer cans in, like, their yard. That's also another dangerous thing because he has that ability that anyone who is disenfranchised, anyone who doesn't like the American system, who feels that immigrants are taking away from them after being brainwashed, meanwhile that's the furthest thing from the fact, he's bringing them all together. And that becomes a very big danger because these people aren't even ideologically aligned, except that they want to tear down the system, if that makes sense.
Andrea Chalupa (00:26:22):
Absolutely. Now, I want to get into the story that's picking up speed right now. And I know you and I discussed this prior to recording and we sort of fall on different sides of it. And I think a lot of people who are biting their nails following the 2024 election in America want to know what to think of this story. So let's just get into it. I'm going to share my view. You come in and you battle ax me to the face and share your view and then let's go get a beer after, alright?
Olga Lautman:
[laughs]
Andrea Chalupa:
So we're going to obviously talk about Fani Willis, what's going on there. This is how I feel about it. Remember when Trump spent all his time in the Oval Office harassing people, the DOJ and FBI and their families? He went after former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and his wife. He went after former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, always trying to harass and humiliate them over their affair. Trump put a giant target on the heads of those tasked with investigating him and his circle of Russian-linked oligarchs. Trump's harassment was obstruction of justice. Now, Trump's goon squad is going after Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis. Sleazebag Michael Roman, one of the 18 co-defendants in Fani Willis' case against Trump and his massive goon squad of election interference deniers, whatever, criminal traitors, Michael Roman claims in his own frivolous harassment lawsuit that Willis had an affair with one of her prosecutors on the Georgia case, claiming this with… I guess there's some evidence.
Andrea Chalupa (00:28:10):
There's bank statements, there's trips that Nathan Wade paid for. But now there's no confirmation or whatever, but everyone's now talking about it. Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post, who covers legal affairs for The Washington Post with her column, she claims that there's nothing illegal about any of this, that all these accusations are really all noise for the carnival. Obviously there's a growing cry among ethics/legal experts saying that this prosecutor should just step down, that Fani Willis should have known better and so on. And I know like if you stick your neck out, if you're going to go for the President of the United States, you're going to take a shot at the Führer, you better not miss. And here Fani Willis had a sort of big old gray area here with her potential/possible boyfriend or not being hired in this very hot trial that was of course going to get a lot of scrutiny. When people make mistakes or when people do stuff like this that's very human, very human, my whole attitude is always, you know, they without sin cast the first stone.
Andrea Chalupa (00:29:16):
There are so many good people across this country that should be serving in public service, that should be out there like Fani Willis, fighting the good fight. And I know there are so many good people that talk themselves out of it because they don't want to face that scrutiny and the price that you pay by being a public figure. And I know the idea is, Well, tough, deal with it. It’s just that the reality is so many of us are humans and it takes a toll trying to be superhuman. People that have to live up to that role, especially in public, especially when you're going up against a transnational mafia, it's strenuous. It could break you. It could kill you, and you don't have the right to be a messy human. You forfeit that right. And it's hard to be a saint in hell. And that's what this planet is. That's what this dimension we're all stuck in is. I forgive Fani Willis. I think that Michael Roman, who worked as the director of election operations for Trump in 2020 and was organizing all these Trump electors in states won by Biden to try to claim that election.. He was like pushing the infrastructure of the Big Lie.
Andrea Chalupa (00:30:34):
I think if Michael Roman and his lawyers were put under the microscope, we would all be throwing up on each other. You know, these guys are as dirty as they come. People that sling mud at you are dirty as hell. Fani Willis, you could say she should have known better. This is such a sensitive case. She had to be above reproach. And every non white person, every woman knows that they're not allowed to make mistakes because the minute we slip, the minute we allow ourselves to be messy and human and complex and we just aren't made of steel, it turns out, or we're tired of being strong, the minute we slip up, our mistakes tend to define us. And we don't get second chances. We don't fail up like white mediocre men. And so Fani Willis, what were you thinking? Being a Black woman, you're supposed to be non-human. You're supposed to be steel. You're supposed to be perfect, because they will get you if you're not. So that's my attitude on it. So Olga, I will kick it to you to decide whether you’re gonna still come over to my house this weekend.
Olga Lautman (00:31:40):
I will always come to your house. I have a different view. Look, when you serve, become a public servant, you serve the public. You put public interest above everything else. And in this case, we don't know all the details but from what the details are coming—and again, what Trump’s people say I frankly couldn’t care less. I always look at the evidence. And the fact that if—which is a big IF, which will be answered I'm sure within at the rate of this breaking news probably in forty eight hours—but if there was an affair prior to or an ongoing to care prior to her taking the case and she brought him on, she should have known this would have come out. And she should have put the case first because the case itself is extremely solid. The case is based on facts, on witness testimonies, you know, so the case itself is not jeopardized as it stands alone as a case. But by unethically bringing in, you know, someone that potentially she is having a relationship with, who she is, you know, his supervisor… Putting him on to try the case, now we have a very dangerous issue because this is the one state case that we really, you know, because other cases are federal. Obviously everyone knows that any president can issue pardons and it absolves criminal indictments.
Olga Lautman (00:33:24):
But state cases presidents don't have power over. And now we are in a situation that instead of talking about the case and about Trump, you know, basically being tried under the RICO statute with his defendants, co-defendants, for attempts to overthrow our election, we are talking about an affair. So right away we are already diverted to discuss an affair. And now if, you know, more details come out and she did indeed have an affair as she appointed Nathan to prosecute this case, this case is now becoming in jeopardy because now a judge can remove her or remove both of them from the case. And then we are left with the case sitting there all prepared and either looking for new prosecutors to try it, or even worse, it could be taken out of Fulton County to another district where another group of prosecutors will look. And what if it's a more friendly Trump district and they say, “You know what? Nah, we don't want to prosecute this.”?
Olga Lautman (00:34:37):
This is something that she should have thought. And I understand we all make mistakes and I agree with that. But this was something very simple to avoid. You could have easily… I mean, I frankly don't even want to know about who she's having relations with. But she could have appointed just another prosecutor. She appointed two others. She could have put someone that there's nothing that can taint the case, nothing that can be used against her in the case and that's it because if the same news came out that she potentially was having an affair with a prosecutor who's not attached to the case, it wouldn't be any news period. This wouldn't even be a discussion. It's only the fact that she put him onto the case. And now I worry a lot because that case was a very solid case and it kills me that she spent so long to put this case together, interviewing… My goodness she had hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews with witnesses.
Olga Lautman (00:53:43):
And secured some people who, you know, decided to plead guilty and basically turn on Trump and provide testimony. And now all of this is in jeopardy because of this. And I personally feel when you're a public servant, you have to think about serving the public. That has to come first and foremost. And whatever decisions you make, you have to make sure—especially with the biggest case of the century—you have to make sure everything is properly dotted, T's are crossed and there's nothing that they can come after you.
Andrea Chalupa (00:36:19):
Let me ask you a question. What if having this prosecutor, this specific one, by her side made Fani Willis a better prosecutor? What if there was… Your partners, your teammates make or break you. So what if there was an energy there that they had, a rapport that she needed in order to go up against the dragon? What if Fani Willis was Frodo and this prosecutor was her Sam?
Olga Lautman (00:36:48):
I don't buy that because she's a very strong woman. We've seen how she behaves. She is a very, very strong woman. I don't think she needs to have someone, you know, there holding her hand. I think she's like a bulldozer who can bulldoze through criminal cases. She's prosecuted tons of criminal cases successfully, big cases in Georgia.
Andrea Chalupa (00:37:10):
But this is one of the biggest legal cases in the entire world.
Olga Lautman (00:37:14):
But it is still a department policy. For the most part—private and public sector—you are not allowed to have relations especially if you're superior to someone because then you have the potential for favoritism, discussions of whether someone’s received a better salary, if they're getting better work hours. I mean, in any contract whether you sign with the private sector or the public sector, normally you cannot have with someone within your department. Co-workers can't. A manager with their employee can't, for these issues because first of all the company doesn't want to experience a lawsuit where someone can then, an employee say, “Oh, he or she sexually harassed me and I felt that they were my superior and I felt that this is what I had to do in order to keep my job or to…” You know, obviously we know what happens. And again, this is what's upsetting. This is the biggest case of the century. You are prosecuting the president—the former president—of the United States.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:25):
A transnational mob boss.
Olga Lautman (00:38:28)
Basically a mob boss and a Russian agent. You are prosecuting him in a RICO case and other defendants to overthrow our election. She should have made better judgment and made sure that there's nothing personal that can come out because we know. I mean, we know enough about Trump or frankly anyone in his circle or anyone with his personality that the first thing they do is go and dig dirt.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:59):
They go through your trash.
Olga Lautman (00:39:00):
Yeah. Either they issue death threats or they dig dirt and try to find some kind of compromising material. I mean, this is how Russia captured God knows how many people across the West: by finding or obtaining or setting up to get compromising material in order to have it dangled over these people. It's upsetting because I really like her and I really was like, “Wow, she's a superhero. Look, she is building this case. She's putting in these hours.” I just wish her case went a little bit earlier because, you know, with the schedule, it's like, okay, her case eventually might be prosecuted in the summer. But now we are left in this situation. I mean, we're going to have more evidence, but the credit card statements that came out that showed that he paid for trips, whether it's legally allowed or not, we don't know because I don't know what the state law is, whether you can use government money to pay for—
Andrea Chalupa (00:39:59):
Well, we have to be careful because Ruth Marcus, just an hour ago, right before we started recording, in Washington Post—Ruth Marcus is excellent with her legal analysis—she said that there's nothing illegal about this. From what we know so far, there's nothing illegal. So every single one of us listening has to be careful because this is a disinformation operation because they're trying to discredit her in this very damning case.
Olga Lautman (00:40:26):
I don’t know as much that their trying to discredit her as it's a scorned wife who, you know—
Andrea Chalupa (00:40:23):
No, it's Michael Roman, who's one of the co-defendants, one of 18.
Olga Lautman:
Yeah, no, I agree with that.
Andrea Chalupa:
Guess what his day job is? He's a political operative. He's a long-time Republican political operative who digs up dirt on political opponents.
Olga Lautman (00:40:47):
Exactly and the wife filed the case so he probably received, you know, some kind of information that Nathan's wife… Because she filed the case I believe last week.
Andrea Chalupa (00:40:56):
Yeah, but their marriage was already over and the wife… Oh my God, we're discussing someone's marriage now and we have democracy on the line.
Olga Lautman (00:41:05):
And this is why, with the Georgia case, this is why, you know, she should have just had better judgment because when we talk about the Georgia case, we should be talking about Trump and his frickin’ criminal goons who try to violently overthrow our democracy and our government, and who sent raging lunatics to break into the Capitol, who dispatched, you know, his operatives to force people—well, not force, some of them did it with open arms—to create fake electors in order for Pence to throw out the real electors and keep Trump in office. This is what we should be talking about; not Nathan’s marriage, when they stop being married, when they… And that's why I say that Fani should have had better judgment when she appointed the prosecutors. Frankly, I couldn’t care less who she has a relationship with. It's none of our business. But for this particular case, she should have not appointed him.
Olga Lautman (00:42:15):
And I think potentially this still can be cleaned up if the facts come out—and again, this is a big if. We have to continue waiting for more evidence. I know the court case was in seal today, the divorce case. But if everything checks out, I mean, there is still time for Nathan to step aside, for her to potentially appoint another prosecutor to try to save this case. I care about the case. I don't care about other people's relationships. I mean, this is not General Hospital where, you know, we have to worry who is doing wha. I care about the case and this was a very solid case that she built. And she really, I mean for years, put together a very solid, good, legally sound case. And I just… For us, who have been waiting for accountability, if this, God forbid, falls through because of this, I mean—
Andrea Chalupa (00:43:10):
It's not going to. It's really… The legalities of it are still fine. It's just a disinformation war.
Olga Lautman (00:43:18):
Unless a judge removes her. If the judge forces her to be recused from the case, then the case can potentially go and no one right now—
Andrea Chalupa (00:43:28):
Why would she be removed? I mean, that's the play they're going for because they're scared of Fani Willis. But in this matter, she could have said, “Look, I needed him because we have a shorthand. There's trust there. I knew that he was the right mind for this, and look how far we got together.” Everyone's talking about the money he's made. I think he was billing like $250 an hour, which… I know what New York and LA prices are. $250 an hour is not bad for a lawyer. And he was like racking up I think $600,000 or something like that. That means this man did a lot of shoe leather. He did a lot of work wearing down that shoe leather on this case. So if we're all cheering this case, shouldn't this prosecutor that Fani Willis, in her judgment, appointed get some credit to help lead us this far in this promising case that has yielded some really good things for justice in America?
Andrea Chalupa (00:44:19):
And so I will say that this is very much an operation. Michael Roman is a far-right scumbag. He is an opposition researcher. He goes through people's trash! He's the guy that you hire to dig up dirt on your enemies. And that's what he did here for his own legal benefit. And yeah, he took advantage of a wife, the prosecutor is soon-to-be ex-wife, who sounds like an asshole herself because according to the New York Times reporting, this wife cheated on him… [laughs] Yes Olga, you're going to sit through this General Hospital 101.
Olga Lautman (00:44:54):
No, I heard that his wife cheated on him, he cheated on her.
Andrea Chalupa:
Look at us. Gaslit Nation is now a gossip show.
Olga Lautman:
[laughs]
Andrea Chalupa (00:45:04):
He… The wife cheated on him with his own friend. What kind of asshole is that? And now she's coming back around to try to really, like, milk him for all he’s worth, really damage him and Fani Willis and maybe American democracy in the process. This woman sounds like she can go to hell too, along with all these other people that we've been talking about this episode.
Olga Lautman (00:45:25):
Well, we don't know what their marriage is. I never want to comment on people's marriage because we don't know who did what to whom, when, and what the marriage was. And you know, I mean, a divorce in itself is not a piece of cake. It's a very difficult thing.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's very true.
Olga Lautman:
And, you know, you don't know what happened, when it happened, why it happened. You know, obviously the media is going to pick the more salacious details out.
Andrea Chalupa (00:45:48):
Look, any woman who sides with Michael Roman, opposition researcher, Trump goon squad, proud member… That speaks to your character.
Olga Lautman (00:45:58):
Is the wife siding with him or is she just filing her divorce? I think she just filed her divorce and the media happened—with Michael Roman—to get a whiff of it.
Andrea Chalupa (00:46:10):
Well, why else would she in this divorce try to force Fani Willis to testify in her own damn divorce proceeding? And Fani Willis is like, “I have nothing to do with your marriage.”.
Olga Lautman (00:46:16):
No, anybody would, because if you are in a divorce claiming that your husband had an affair and you find, for instance, receipts of, you know, your husband spending money on the other woman, then you would try to bring her in for a deposition in order to find out what is happening. That's for your own court case. And we're not talking about Fani or, you know, him, but just in general. If I found out, you know, say my ex-husband is having an affair and I see receipts and, you know, of course I'm going to try to get everything I can out of my ex-husband by, you know, claiming—because one of the grounds for divorce, because when you file for divorce it has to actually be approved through Supreme Court, and one of the grounds is adultery. So if you prove adultery in your marriage, you know, then you can ask to be compensated for the damages suffered and lost because of the adultery. So I mean it's a divorce. It's a divorce case. Divorces are messy. People, you know, sling shit at each other in divorces.
Andrea Chalupa:
Lose their minds.
Olga Lautman:
And that's it. I don't know enough of the case, why she decided to file now or if this was in the works that she decided to file. If Mike Roman, you know, found out that she was filing and then decided, Oh, wait a minute, there's something there. Let's go dig into it.
Andrea Chalupa (00:47:45):
This is his skill. This is his trade. He trades in getting compromising information on people.
Olga Lautman (00:47:51):
But that's what you have to expect from them.
Andrea Chalupa (00:47:53):
Of course, they're authoritarians. That's what authoritarians do. Tim Snyder in his book On Tyranny, lessons for overcoming all of this nightmare, Tim Snyder, right when Trump came to power with the Kremlin's help, Tim wrote this Facebook post that became On Tyranny: A Pocket Guide for Resistance. And one of the things Tim says—and he wrote this in this very heated, nightmarish moment that we all collectively experienced when, surprise, Trump’s the winner—Tim wrote, “Get your affairs in order because they will use anything they can find to hang you.” That's what they do.
Olga Lautman (00:48:31):
Absolutely. They threaten you and your family or they run it parallel or they collect evidence to try to undermine you and damage your reputation. I mean, this is what they do. We all would have expected it and I mean, frankly, if I was prosecuting a case against Trump, I would make sure that there is not one skeleton in my closet in order to make sure that the case is bulletproof, that the case doesn't get undermined in the case something of mine from the past comes out. I have nothing hiding in the past, but the point is, you know, that's where I'm disappointed because I really had hope in the case and I still hope that it's going to go through, but it's just now we're talking about, you know, messy divorce and frickin’ some kind of a love triangle instead of a serious issue, which is a case that, you know, the former “president” of the United States used different means to try to violently overthrow our election while at the same time fabricating documents in order to serve them to the vice president to have it certified as the fake electors.
Olga Lautman (00:49:51):
I mean, these are very damning charges; unprecedented obviously in the US. We never had anyone who attempted to violently, you know, overthrow and then on top fabricate documents. And that's where the focus should be and unfortunately now we are at a point where everything is up in the air. And this is also with same thing now with Jack Smith Case because in DC we're waiting for the, you know, the appeals court to weigh in and then I'll go to the Supreme Court. So basically we have an election in November, we have a sociopathic dictator who is out for so much revenge, I mean, that he will be like literally during—if God forbid he were to win—during transition, he would already be going after people and then pretty much have a roadmap to make sure to take out every single political opponent, every judge, anyone and everyone who has scorned him. And November's right around the corner. I mean, we're in January. November is around the corner and I don't see one case in sight. And then Trump's Florida judge, who apparently is in his pocket, that case with the classified documents, we don't know when that's going through, which is absolutely outrageous because I can tell you if I had one classified document, Andrea, if you had a classified document, one, in your home, by accident, even by accident you took a folder, you would have Secret Service show up or the FBI and you would be arrested. The fact that this man took out droves of classified material and then we have a whole classified file missing on Russia's attack on the 2016 election that had sources, methods and everything else, and that the man can't even see that Trump and his loyalists are preventing a trial from taking place in an orderly manner in Florida, that's insane. Insane. It's beyond insane. And it's very worrying because now we're in November. We're at a point where we're going to have the most consequential election and we keep saying it, but unfortunately the next few elections are going to be extremely important and really will direct the future of this country. And the man who's supposed to be held accountable for many different crimes—91 indictments—and we don't know if we're going to even see him in a courtroom prior to the election. And that's very worrying.
[outro theme music, roll credits]
Andrea Chalupa (00:52:41):
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