Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the standoff between Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser Professor Christine Ford who wants an FBI investigation before testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee which President Trump is denying her offering the most flimsy of excuses. Eric Segall, a Professor of Law at Georgia State University and author of “Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges” joins us to discuss whether Professor Ford’s lawyers are overplaying their hand in making demands on the U.S. Senate whose members are notorious for guarding their privileges and protocols. With Senator Graham warning bluntly that if Professor Ford does not show to testify on Monday, the Committee will go ahead and vote on Wednesday, we assess the chances of a compromise since the excuses for not having a quick investigation by the FBI then a hearing don’t add up. But in the meantime Professor Ford has had to go into hiding due to death threats, hacking and impersonation online, and with the senile patriarch Senator Hatch already calling her “mixed up”, a repeat of the treatment Anita Hill got might not play too well in the #MeToo era and further erode the chances of Republican women remaining loyal to Donald Trump’s GOP at the polls in November.

Part 2

Then we examine the looming collision if not a constitutional crisis resulting from President Trump’s order to declassify secret work product of on on-going investigation in which the president himself might be a target. Andy Wright, a Senior Fellow and Founding Editor of Just Security who served in the White House as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama and also worked in Congress conducting oversight of U.S. national security matters, joins us. We will discuss the possibility that both the Director of the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence will be forced to resign to protect intelligence sources and methods from a cynical attempt by Trump to bolster a conspiracy theory cooked up by Fox News and the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the deal Russia’s President Putin has made with Turkey’s President Erdogan to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe by setting up a buffer zone on Turkey’s southern border for three million Syrian citizens trapped with the remnants of the jihadist opposition to the Assad regime. An expert on U.S.-Turkey relations, Aaron Stein, a Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Hariri Center for the Middle East, joins us to assess whether the plan is workable and how much the U.S. has been sidelined in the region by Russia’s diplomatic initiatives.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford going public and offering to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and take a lie detector test to support her charge that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge held her down as Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her in the upstairs bedroom of a home where Kavanaugh and his classmates at Georgetown Prep were having an alcohol-fueled party.  Deborah Tuerkheimer, a Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and a former Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan who is the author of numerous articles on rape and domestic violence, joins us to assess whether Kavanaugh will take a lie detector test since the issue before the Senate is likely to no longer be about sexual assault or attempted rape but lying about whether the incident happened or not. We also examine the credibility of denials by Mark Judge who has written two books about his teenage years at Georgetown Prep “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk” and “God and Man at Georgetown Prep”, which chronicle being “completely annihilated” while trying to “hook up”. The only likely reference to Kavanaugh in Judge’s writing comes in a passage where a girl at a party asked Judge “Do you know Bart O’Kavanaugh? I heard he puked in someone’s car the other night”. To which Judge replies “Yeah he passed out on his way back from a party”.

Part 2

Then we look into the court filings in the Manafort plea deal with Robert Mueller to assess the extent to which Manafort was working for Russia against American interests and speak with Craig Unger, the author of the new book just out “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia”. He joins us to discuss how Manafort was not on the Ukrainian payroll but on Putin’s payroll all along with the only other person having stronger ties to Russia and the Russian mob being Manafort’s boss, Donald Trump.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with James Thurber, the University Distinguished Professor of Government at American University whose latest book is “Congress and Diaspora Politics: The Influence of Ethnic and Foreign Lobbying”. He joins us to discuss how much Robert Mueller is bringing attention to FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act which Congress passed in 1938 to go after pro-Nazi propagandists. Since then it has been allowed to languish as K-Street super-lobbyists like Manafort brazenly ignored it, until Trump’s former campaign manager was just about to be tried under it and made his recent plea deal with Mueller.