Unlike the cowardly Republican senators who are rolling over in the face of Kash Patel's bald-faced lies, the men and women of the Justice Department are taking their oaths of office seriously by refusing to comply with a blatantly political order to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Meanwhile, Trump is just over the moon with Vladimir Putin—even though his army is performing quite poorly on the battlefield against Ukraine. Plus, the makeup heir advising Trump on foreign policy, Emil Bove is this moment's cartoon villain, and Pizzagate's Jack Posobiec is somehow inside the administration's inner circle. Andrew Weissmann and Michael Weiss join Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Support "Orange Ribbons for Jamie" here, formed in honor of Parkland shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg Details on Zelensky offering Trump a Ukrainian boxer's championship belt Tim's playlist
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of this podcast episode?
Hey, y'all, I hope you're listening to the Bullwark Podcast with me every day. But as we're learning in the first few weeks of the Trump administration, a lot of crazy shit can happen in 24 hours. And stuff can happen after I tape. Or stuff can be really crazy and important, but not make it into the hour that I have with you guys. I don't know. Here's some examples from the last week.
Maybe Elon Musk will try to shut down an entire federal agency. Or Trump will try to turn a foreign country into the Riviera of the Middle East. Or J.D. Vance will tweet out that saying, I am a racist is not a cause for firing in this administration. When that stuff's happening, and I have a little five or ten minute rant that I want to get out. Thanks for watching.
If we're going to be suffering throughout all this, come hang out with us. Subscribe to Bulwark Takes. We'll be seeing you around. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Today is the 7th anniversary of the Parkland tragedy. I hate that we only discuss these horrors in like the couple days after they happen and then move on. So more to come on that next week.
But we've put a link to Fred Guttenberg's Orange Ribbons for Jamie charity in the show notes. Please go ahead and... Give him a little love and support and everybody else that was affected by that tragedy. But today we are jam-packed with news. In segment two, we've got Michael Weiss on Trump's negotiation or submission to Putin and Xi, whatever you want to call it. But first, he's back already.
We've got a lot of relevant news for him. It's Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel, former Justice Department prosecutor, chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of New York. He's now co-host of the MSNBC podcast, Maine Justice. He's got a newsletter on Substack. We got Weiss Weissman. If only we had Alan Weisselberg. We could have the full gamut. Panoply. Right.
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Chapter 2: Why did senior DOJ officials resign over the Eric Adams investigation?
Thank you for returning so soon. We're in a little bit of a pinch, and the news is just screaming for you, given what happened yesterday at DOJ. Six senior Justice Department officials resigned. Rather than comply with the order to drop the Eric Adams investigation, they include basically the entire public corruption unit at DOJ. Who needs that? Plus Kevin Driscoll from the criminal division.
And then most notably, the U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon. So what the fuck happened? Let's start there, Andrew.
Okay, what do we know? We know that there was a meeting last Friday with Danielle Sassoon and her deputies. She was in charge of, and her office was in charge of, the criminal case against the mayor of the city of New York, Eric Adams. It was brought about nine months ago. And the defense lawyers were there and Emil Bove was there. He is the acting deputy attorney general.
New York minute ago, he was one of the criminal defense lawyers for Donald Trump. So he is a placeholder for the Trump administration in that position. And he's going to become the number two to the number two when Tom Blanche becomes the deputy attorney general. His confirmation hearing is pending in the Senate right now. Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche.
So there's various disputes as to what happened at that meeting. But Danielle Sassoon, the head of the now former head of the Southern District of New There was sort of laid out a quid pro quo of I will sort of enforce your immigration policy in exchange for your dismissing the case. That has been disputed by Eric Adams' defense counsel. Understandable he would dispute it even if it happened.
It's possible that there's just two different versions of what happened. More on that later. That is then followed up by a directive from Eyal Bove on Monday to the Southern District of New York saying, you need to dismiss this case without prejudice. I'm not basing this on the facts or the law. I'm basing it on two things. One, The case was brought too close to the New York City primary.
That's a bogus, absurd argument. It was brought nine months before the primary. And there's zero DOJ rules about not bringing a case within nine months of a primary. So that's just a fictitious reason. And it's important that you make that judgment because it's like, why would you come up with that fictitious reason? Why not just go with the truth? if what you're doing is real.
The second reason was sort of saying the quiet part out loud, which we're used to, which was the criminal indictment is going to interfere with the mayor's ability to carry out Donald Trump's immigration policies. That seems to corroborate what Danielle Sassoon said happened on Friday.
Notably, by the way, in her letter describing what happened, she says at that meeting, her deputies took notes and Emile Bove said, at the end of the meeting said, don't take notes and confiscated them and took them. Again, why would you possibly care about somebody taking notes, which people do all the time, if nothing was being said that you in any way That was improper.
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Chapter 3: Who is Emil Bove and why is he a controversial figure?
Yeah, I do. I believe he wants peace. I believe that President Putin, when I spoke to him yesterday, I mean, I know him very well. Yeah, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn't. I think I'd like to see peace. Do you trust President Putin? I believe that, yeah, I believe that he would like to see something happen. I trust him on this subject.
Trust him on this subject.
He would tell me if he were lying. He wouldn't do the dirty on me.
Because we have such a good relationship. Totally preposterous, almost ridiculous to even take it seriously if he wasn't the president of the United States. But I am curious what you think Putin wants out of this current negotiation. Because I think it's a little opaque, right? And it kind of is related to your point about what... about the weakening on the battlefield, right?
I mean, I think that there was some thinking that maybe he didn't even really want a peace deal, you know, when Russia was pressing ahead. But maybe he kind of does want a temporary pause now. I don't know. What do you suspect? Do some Kremlinology for me.
Well, I mean, I think they want to drag this out as much as possible. A de facto ceasefire or anything that lowers the temperature. is a boon for the Russians because it allowed them to regenerate their forces. It allowed them to kind of pause and reconstitute and, you know, bring new kit to the front, dial up more North Koreans that they can send into Kursk, whatever.
I mean, but it also, frankly speaking, allowed the Ukrainians to do the same thing. I mean, Ukrainians are suffering pretty badly themselves. I mean, this is a matter of population differences. One of the big points of vulnerability for Zelensky is his refusal to,
to lower the draft age to 18 and bring more younger people to the – I mean you've got 40-something-year-olds, in some cases geriatrics, who are now in trenches in Donbass fighting on the Ukrainian side. So they have a problem with manpower. But ultimately, look, I think the Russians understand that this is going to be a process. Sure.
And so what they're trying to do is set the sort of players correctly such that they can get the maximum concessions from the American side. They don't really believe in negotiating with Ukrainians at all. Remember, Ukraine has no agency. It practically does not exist as a sovereign entity unto itself. For them, this is really a war with the United States and NATO.
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