Amicus | The DOJ's Prosecutorial Malpractice Keeps Spilling Out in Court

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, who brings her extensive experience trying and supervising federal criminal cases to a discussion of what the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse can teach us about justice. She suggests that the Trump administration’s eleventh-hour switchback tactic of calling for investigations of only Democrats speaks volumes about how the Justice Department is functioning these days, proving that vindictive prosecutions are the only game in town, bonus if they also have the effect of power-washing the president’s shadow from the scandal. Next, they turn to the extraordinary scenes in a Virginia courtroom this week, as the DOJ’s case against former FBI director and Trump foe James Comey seemed ready to fall apart at the seams. As this administration’s practice of political interference in legal proceedings is supercharged by dear leader’s “Dear Pam” posts to “his” AG Pam Bondi, this conversation highlights why judicial integrity and the ever-expanding ranks of judges refusing to accept lies, are among the last best hopes for equal justice under the law in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Dahlia Lithwick. This is Amicus, Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court.
0:11.7	This was me at 14 years old. I was a child. I was in ninth grade. I was hopeful for life and what the future had held for me.
0:25.9	He stole a lot for me.
0:27.3	I have a 14-year-old daughter myself, the same age I was.
0:31.9	And when I look at her, I see the little girl I used to be, the one that no one protected.
0:41.2	You're trying to somehow tie President Trump to the scandal.
0:43.2	President Trump has nothing to do with it.
0:44.5	He has said himself.
0:45.6	He has nothing to hide.
0:49.1	I can't help to be skeptical of what the agenda is.
0:53.1	What is it that the Southern District of New York right now is supposedly doing?
0:55.2	Please release the records.
1:02.3	Stop making survivors fight alone for the truth that should have protected us in this first place.
1:06.4	Even if you were going to say, okay, Southern District of New York, go look at these emails that you haven't reviewed before in combination with everything you did before. You don't say go look at
1:11.2	these three people or these four people because they are the Democrats. You say, go look,
1:15.9	see where it takes you. See where the evidence, if there's evidence in there, takes you.
1:35.4	This past week has brought yet more inklings of hope and change through legal and democratic levers,
1:41.4	but also that eerie sense that we have been here before to no effect.
1:47.3	As survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuses spoke movingly again this week, imploring the nation to take the notion of justice seriously, President Donald Trump, the dog that didn't
1:53.8	bark per Epstein, asked his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to open up a criminal investigation,
1:59.6	but only into Democrats mentioned in the emails.
2:03.6	Each step toward truth, obscured in a cloud of dust and misdirection. In a courtroom in Virginia
	...

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