The John Bolton Indictment Is Different

The Counsel

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Politics

4.7 • 861 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Elie Honig is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and co-chief of the organized crime unit at the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted more than 100 mobsters, including members of La Cosa Nostra, and the Gambino and Genovese crime families. He went on to serve as Director of the Department of Law and Public Safety at New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. He is currently Special Counsel at Lowenstein Sandler and a CNN legal analyst. For a transcript of Elie’s note and the full archive of contributor notes, head to CAFE.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:38.6	Hey, everyone, Ellie here, wishing you a happy Friday. My God, what a week. Do I say this
0:43.5	every week? What a week? I don't know, but I mean it this week. Look, we knew the Bolton
0:47.9	indictment was going to arrive probably on Thursday, and it just has arrived as I record
0:53.6	this. And that's going to be the topic
0:55.7	of our main podcast today. But let's not even forget all the other things that happened this
0:59.8	week. We heard the first public commentary from Jack Smith, I think, since he left office. I'll have some,
1:05.8	I had some response to that on air, and maybe we'll talk about that next week. We had ongoing
1:10.7	court decisions about
1:12.1	the president's ability to lay off people during the shutdown. We had major Supreme Court
1:17.9	arguments over gerrymandering and racial discrimination in the drawing of congressional lines.
1:24.7	We had decisions about the deployment of the National Guard and ICE, and it's a lot, folks. So what we try to do every week on this podcast is pick one important thing and dig in. Obviously, Bolton had to be the story today, so we're going to get into that. But send us your thoughts, questions, and comments because we need to do a mailbag. Like, we are overdue for a mailbag, and I want to go through
1:44.8	whatever is on your mind. Maybe we'll do that as a bonus sometime soon. Send them in. Letters atcafe.com.
2:08.9	You ever get the sense that Donald Trump and John Bolton might not like each other?
2:13.3	Bolton, who served as national security advisor in the first Trump administration,
2:15.4	has publicly called the president, and I quote,
2:21.2	a danger for the republic, stunningly uninformed and unfit for office.
	...

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