Welcome back to the Dursho. I'm broadcasting once again from Israel. I'm here for just a couple more days and participating in a really interesting and important debate in Israel about the Israeli Supreme Court.

It's the mirror image of what's happening in America in the United States.

The left wants to cut back on the power and jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Some people want to pack the court on the left. Some people want to have age limits or term limits.

They don't like the fact that the Supreme Court is moving to the right. In Israel it's exactly the opposite. It's the right that wants.

The Supreme Court wants to tell the Supreme Court because they think the Israel Supreme Court is moving too much to the to the left. It's in the nature of Supreme courts in judicial review that half the people will always be upset with the decisions of the court because Supreme courts are counter majoritarian.

They're not supposed to just reflect the will of the people. They're supposed to reflect the rule of law and there's different interpretations as to what's the rule of law. But it's a fascinating debate and I've spoken about the issue with the Prime Minister of Israel, with President of Israel, with leading academic legal officials and I was in a conference today about it.

Let's come back to the United States actually, not only to the United States, but to Russia as well. Today I want to talk about the exchange that occurred after our last show last week between Brittany Griner, great, great WNBA superstar basketball player.

And this merchant of death named Victor Bout who was prosecuted and convicted of selling arms that were used to kill innocent people and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He actually served about 40% of that before he was released.

It's not as if he was released after just six months. He served a considerable amount of time and so did Griner. She served not that much, but she served nine months or so. Before she was released and of course her crime wasn't really a crime. She may have brought in some vapes which had maybe a little bit of passage.

That's a slap on the wrist. And if she weren't an American WNBA superstar, she would have either been told to go home, or she would have gotten, you know, a week in prison or a month in prison or a fine. But obviously Putin saw hostage and he held her hostage and he wanted the release of this guy, Bout of Boca, an ASA's name.

And he got what he wanted. Now everything is political in America and everything is partisan in America. And so Donald Trump announced yesterday that he had been offered the deal to let this guy Paul Whalen, who was also in prison. This is before Brittany Griner was in prison. There was an American who was in prison for what seemed like a phony, phony charge.

And the Russians offered to free him an exchange for the freeing of Bout and Trump said, no, I'm not going to do that. He said, I wouldn't have freed anybody for that, the merchant of death deserves to stake in prison.

So, you know, everything, everything becomes partisan. So Whalen still in prison, his family is seeking to have him released Griner and others are pushing for his release. And there's another American in prison, a guy whose name is Mark Fogel, who was a schoolteacher.

And he was arrested for very similar charges, Griner was arrested for a tiny amount of marijuana legal in the United States and not legal in Russia.

But again, he got like 14 years sentence or something like that, clearly he's being held a hostage. And the question is, what trades will be taking place. Now I have a lot of experience in this, probably more experience than almost anybody.

I have arranged spy trades. The most prominent of which, of course, was the great Anatoly Shoransky, Natan Shoransky.

He was arrested on phony charges, spying for the United States, actually facing the death penalty.

I got persuaded Jimmy Carter, who was then president, to make a rare announcement that which presidents don't make, they usually don't deny whether or not a person was a spy for America.

But Jimmy Carter, making a public announcement saying, no, he's, he's inquired deep into the CIA and he can represent for sure that Shoransky was not a spy had no connection to the CIA, but the Soviets kept him there.

Anyway, and then one day, this isn't really an interesting story, one day a professor from East Germany, who was visiting, I don't remember MIT or Harvard or Tufts, one of the major schools in the Boston area, got arrested for spying for East Germany, which meant, of course, the Soviet Union, against the United States.

And I got a call from the East German spy trader, if you ever saw the film, Bridge of Spies, that's the guy, as they was Wolfgang Vogel, the guy I dealt with.

And he asked me to help him, his East German guy get a lawyer, so I did. I got people I know who were excellent lawyers to represent this guy.

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