Tired of ads interrupting your gripping investigations? Good news!

Add free listening on Amazon Music is included with your Prime Membership.

Ads shouldn't be the scariest thing about true crime podcasts.

To start listening, download the Amazon Music app or visit amazon.co.uk forward slash true crime ad free.

That's amazon.co.uk forward slash true crime ad free to catch up on the latest episodes, without the ads.

Hi, this is Josh Marshall, and this is the Josh Marshall podcast, actually a special episode of the Josh Marshall podcast.

We had our regular one yesterday, and while Kate and I were recording the episode, I guess the news broke about these warrants executed against Rudy Giuliani at his place of work, at his apartment in New York City.

And then in the first rush of news about that, it also emerged that Vicki Tonsing, who a lot of us have known about her for a couple decades, more than a couple decades, DC Power Lawyer,

a both spouse and legal partner of Joe DeGeneva, another kind of long-time GOP lawyer power player, it's still a little unclear exactly, was it a warrant of both of them, was it just her, was it her apartment, was it her cell phone, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But another warrant touching her, and just those two were a duo both personally and professionally, and they were both lawyers of record in what seems to be at the heart of this, so it's hard to imagine it's one of them and not the other.

In any case, that was a, that seemed worth worth a discussion on a few levels, you know, it's at some level, it, there's been lots of smoke about this investigation, so at one level, it should not surprise us that it is, it is heating up and one of the things that we, that we basically piece together yesterday is that, you know, this investigation.

It began back in August 2019, so a long time ago now, well back into the Trump administration, into, you know, way, way, way back under Bill Barr, so credit to Bill Barr, he didn't shut it down, but he seems to have kept it on a pretty short leash, I believe it was last summer, the prosecutors wanted to get a warrant to, I don't know if it was Juliani cell phone, or, you know, basically something like this, maybe not quite.

As much, but something like this, and the appointees at DOJ said, no, not, not doing that, and this seems to have been, this all gets pretty complicated, this seems to have been again in the summer, so it's a little unclear with that of arguably been in the window of time when there actually is DOJ, you know, policies, you don't, you don't, you sort of, you sort of lean back on really political stuff,

just assume before an election, it doesn't seem so, so it seems like they kind of, as I said, kept it on a short leash. Now, with Merrick Garland, it seems like not so short, or basically just letting the prosecutors, you know, follow the investigation.

Now, as I certainly will confess to a significant amount of shot and Freud over this, some, but both shot and Freud that we, that we should always be a little bashful about admitting, and also just, there's a lot of wrongdoing, we've been waiting for accountability for a lot of stuff for a long time.

But one thing I want to do at the, you know, first part of this episode is, let's go back and explain, remind ourselves what this is about. There's two layers of this. One is that increasingly over the last decade or so, but especially after Trump became president.

Rudy Giuliani's been going around the world to a lot of the most indemnically corrupt countries in the world, and, you know, putting out his hand, give me some money, because I'm close to the president, you know, so, so moving in the circles and playing with a lot of the sleasiest people in the world.

A lot of big money, you know, what is he, what is he actually doing? Like, you know, you hire kind of a government or a plutocrat close to a government hires Rudy for, you know, millions of dollars, what are they getting exactly?

You know, usually it's like some sort of like consulting on security and stuff like, come on. So there's a lot of stuff right there that is sort of the baseline.

But with this investigation seems to be about, is the Ukraine thing that got President Trump impeached the first time. Remember, you got to distinguish with President Trump, not the second time, the first time.

And this is one of those cases where the bad acts are really stunning in there, in there, in their depth and scope and complexity.

Often the worst parts of what he did may not be what he is actually indicted for if he is indicted, but Rudy Giuliani got together with the sleasiest and most desperate folks in Ukraine, and basically engineered an extortion plot in league with the president of the United States, you know, even now, a few months after Trump left the left office.

...