Welcome to a new episode of the Trump trials. I'm Charlie Sykes. One of the extraordinary things about 2024 and there are so many

is that the former president of the United States the leading candidate for the

Republican presidential nomination will spend much of his time in courtrooms, state courtrooms and federal

courtrooms, facing not only 91 felony counts but serious allegations of

fraud and this week once again has But serious allegations of fraud.

And this week, once again, has been an extraordinary one.

So we are very fortunate to once again be joined by our partners

from Law Fair.

Ben Wittis, editor-in-chief of Law Fair, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies

at the Brookings Institution, and the author of The Dogshirt Daily newsletter on Substack.

Ben, welcome back on the podcast.

Hey, thanks, Charlie. it's great to see you and you know another week, another bout of insanity and looking forward to chewing it all over with you.

Okay, the pattern is absolutely full, but we have to start with this.

First of all, congratulations, Ben.

Something rather extraordinary happened.

You were awarded the Golden Heart Award by the President of Ukraine for, I quote,

significant contribution to the strengthening of interstate cooperation, support of the sovereignty and territorial

integrity of Ukraine, and the popularization of the Ukrainian state in the world.

This of course is in recognition of your special military operations but congratulations

Ben I have to say I'm very rarely impressed these days but this one this one had to be pretty sweet. Tell us the story of how you got

this email that President Zlensky is going to give you this award. So it wasn't an email,

it was a phone call, and it was from a friend at the embassy here in Washington,

...