I'm John Batchel with the New York Times investigative reporter Ken Vogel.

His book is Devils Advocates.

It's the story of all the administrations in easy reach reaching back into the 20th century.

And the way the players, the power players, the ones that are at very expensive restaurants and have

horse farms in Virginia and have paydays that are millions of dollars, how they conduct their

affairs in the 21st century. Farah, the law that was passed are restricted in the 20th century

is clearly inadequate.

It can be flouted easily. You can double talk. You can hire somebody as an interlocutor for the source of money.

So you're not directly involved. You're at a distance. All of this adds up to, is there a solution or is this the way the world is?

Ken, you've watched this again and again, and the excuse is given I roughly, I generalize,

on both sides. There was nothing wrong here. This was a political persecution. It had to do

with the election, not with the facts of the matter. And the Justice Department is being

weaponized. That was a metaphor argument.

That was a Hunter Biden argument. I imagine it could be an argument of any one of these

lobbyists. How do we respond to that, Ken? Well, I think that, unfortunately, it's getting

harder to offer a response that is convincing to the American public,

both because there's just been so, just a seemingly unending string of scandals that have, like,

come out of this space, this space being the confluence of U.S. government and politics and

foreign interests and foreign paydays. And so, you know, Trump in particular has,

has, you know, appears to have successfully convinced his supporters that you cannot trust law

enforcement entities to prosecute without, you know, without politics, to follow the facts and prosecute cases on the merits.

And we saw that with his reelection.

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