In this episode of the podcast, I speak with the lawyer who represents the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and has been in Ukraine for the last three years. He has a unique perspective on the situation in Ukraine, and is one of the few people in the country with a real sense of what it's like to live there.
00:05:25.600I represent opponents of the Russian government in various countries, continue to represent political opponents of Putin.
00:05:34.160It hasn't stopped the Ukrainians from launching a massive disinformation campaign against me because of my defense of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,
00:05:44.860which is the majority church of Ukraine, which Zelensky and his gang have been trying to destroy.
00:05:52.820I am on the legal team of some of the priests that they have illegally jailed.
00:05:59.060We have an individual in London who fled the country because Zelensky had literally set people to basically, I don't want to use the word liquidate him,
00:06:13.340but he had to virtually run across a border.
00:06:17.900This is a member of the RADA who, Yermak, took away his security.
00:06:23.140He had to run across the border to save his life, and his crime was speaking out against a law to destroy his church.
00:07:03.920Our church separated itself administratively 30 years ago.
00:07:09.900And every Ukrainian that's Orthodox has been baptized in our church.
00:07:15.980Five years ago, a new church was established in Ukraine.
00:07:21.380By the Poroshenko administration with the active connivance of the United States government.
00:07:29.360The State Department of the United States was involved in the establishment of the church.
00:07:33.880I believe either USAID or some other organizations have funded this state church called the OCU.
00:07:41.960This is a basically kind of a CIA operation, if you will, to set up a church that would be completely free of what they viewed as the dangerous Putin influence.
00:07:56.280So you have our State Department violating our constitution openly, engaging in the destruction of religious freedom in a foreign country, doing things absolutely illegal under our constitution.
00:08:10.480All in the name of anti-Putin activities.
00:08:17.480And because I am so very strongly against the present Russian administration, I insisted on traveling to Kiev with a bunch of my lawyers to interview.
00:08:31.360We were privileged to meet with senior members of the church, interview priests, interview lawyers, so I could fully accept the mandate to fight for a church that was being driven out of existence.
00:08:50.700This is something that's something that's not supposed to happen in the 21st century.
00:08:55.460And as a Jew who feels strongly about freedoms for my Christian brothers and sisters, as somebody who feels that religious freedom is the foundation of all our freedoms.
00:09:08.000And I believe that to the center of my being, I could not believe that the American government, a government for which I signed up for the draft on my birthday when I was 18, when we were still in Vietnam, this government could be funding the destruction of this church.
00:09:31.460So we've studied it, we've met with people who were at high levels of the U.S. government who confirmed for me that this was a U.S. government operation.
00:10:26.940And this time, when I went to the religious freedom conference, I was only allowed – they stacked the panel I was on with a priest from the other church.
00:10:40.280And they gave me basically five minutes to present my views, which were that, in fact, this other church, which, by the way, has stolen 1,500 of our churches, engaged in mobilizing –
00:11:10.300If you go to savetheuoc.com, you will see the videos of our parishioners being beaten.
00:11:15.540These are the elderly parents of people at the front fighting for the liberation and protection of Ukraine, being beaten very often by SBU, that's their secret police, wearing death masks with Nazi insignias on their arm.
00:11:35.380And let me be very clear to you that you will never hear elsewhere.
00:11:38.540There is a massive right-wing movement in Ukraine that has tremendous influence.
00:11:45.700Our newspapers were warning of this in the late teens.
00:11:51.500And once the war started, we never heard anything else.
00:11:54.800It's as if all these neo-Nazis disappeared.
00:12:27.480Because if we mention it or if I stand on a soapbox to scream that he's jailing and torturing priests, we are somehow disentitled to speak.
00:12:38.920We have this crazy adopted authoritarianism now where we as a country of institutions have made a king out of Zelensky.
00:12:51.320We have allowed him to destroy every Ukrainian institution out there that's independent.
00:12:56.960And we've turned him into a king or demigod.
00:13:00.120And I will tell you that one of the instruments that was being used to attack me, for instance, was Farah.
00:13:10.820A journalist in the Washington Post who we offered to interview all sorts of beaten priests, instead focused on me, tried to make it sound like I was in Putin's pay and somehow violated Farah.
00:13:25.120When I knew very well I had an exemption because I represent the church.
00:14:31.520I don't think he understood that we were, in fact, funding and supporting it.
00:14:36.140And there is a guy in the Ukrainian government, a Mr. Yelensky, not Zelensky, Yelensky, who's been in charge of the destruction of this church for years.
00:14:46.620But his lifeblood is to destroy this church.
00:14:51.660He helps, I'm sure he directs the SBU to jail these priests I work with.
00:17:02.780The Hudson Institute was allowed to do that.
00:17:03.940We weren't allowed to join the Hudson Institute because I think the Ukrainian propaganda machine are indirectly sponsoring these things.
00:17:12.980And what they're doing is they're running shows and movies about Russian activities, anti-evangelical activities in the Donbass, which I believe are happening and which I completely support.
00:17:28.340You know, there is no one more than me who will support evangelicals or anyone else who are being oppressed.
00:17:37.800But to sponsor this type of activity and not mention our church is a scandal.
00:17:44.760To avoid mentioning the majority church of Ukrainians and never say a word about law 3894 that destroys our church.
00:17:55.840We will not have a church in six months.
00:17:58.580Lent is here, the period before Easter, the 40 days, and it's a unique chance to get closer to God.
00:24:57.660With all of the FARA stuff that went on and with the Washington Post publishing all this stuff and with Mr. Zelensky almost literally demanding compliance from the United States under the Democrats, I was hesitating to come home.
00:25:15.300I mean, the Ukrainians had such a lock on Washington.
00:25:22.700And the Ukrainian RADA demanded that U.S. authorities investigate me because I wrote a letter to the RADA, an open and public letter, saying to every member of the RADA,
00:25:36.820If you pass a bill that destroys a church, you could be individually subject to sanctions.
00:25:46.320That is completely within my rights as an American citizen to inform a foreign legislator who is engaged in essentially criminal activities that they need to atturn to religious freedom.
00:26:02.420And it is on this basis that the Ukrainians were begging our own authorities to get involved.
00:26:09.420How did the Ukrainians, so, I mean, 15 years ago, my whole life, Ukraine, you know, it's the largest country and the most corrupt country in Europe.
00:27:43.420And, you know, I fought them and we were quite successful at exposing the false charges against some leading Russian businessmen.
00:27:55.260So I've seen them in action, but I've never seen anything as effective at developing the American narrative as the Ukrainian narrative in the United States, exerting huge levels of control over media.
00:28:10.680I mean, we had an interview with the Guardian three, three days or four days after I got back.
00:28:19.340Very, very, very competent reporter, took down notes, was in shock at what happened.
00:28:26.600The Guardian never published the story.
00:28:28.540This is the Guardian who will publish anything about anybody involving human rights.
00:28:33.180They wouldn't publish the story because it went against, there's two obstacles.
00:28:40.200One, it goes against the Russian narrative.
00:28:42.260And two, all of the guys on the ground for the Western press sell books on Ukraine.
00:28:50.820And I do wonder if there's a commercial motive in the reporting.
00:28:56.200Because if you look, and some of these guys are my friends, but I got to wonder if you look at it, no wonder they're notoriously blind to what's going on.
00:29:06.640Well, there's some kind of unspoken motive here because none of this makes any sense.
00:29:11.000I mean, Ukraine is so far outside of our orbit.
00:29:14.820Ukraine, it's not one of those countries I thought had any influence over American foreign policy or public discourse at all.
00:29:20.740And all of a sudden, you can't even say an obvious truth about the country or you get in trouble or in my case, you get fired or whatever.
00:29:33.760Look, as I said, no other country could do that no matter how sophisticated the propaganda is or almost no other.
00:29:38.840Look, I have said to myself, because I've done many, many controversial cases in my career.
00:29:50.140Nothing's ever approached this in terms of the blowback.
00:29:54.460When you say to somebody like all of these people today that are speaking out about the president's statement about 4% and they're saying, oh, that's crap, it's 60%.
00:31:50.160But you look at the guy, and you're like, there's something wrong.
00:31:52.580Well, except what's wrong is the residency seems to have with everybody in Europe.
00:31:58.460I mean, if you look at Germany, for instance, and this is another subject that as a lawyer who cares about freedom drives me crazy, which is sanctions, the Ukrainians not only have engaged in this massive propaganda campaign to dehumanize Russia.
00:32:16.400Now, that's different than saying Russia engaged in an aggressive war, which I agree with.
00:33:10.200Number two, we have consolidated the relationship between Russia and China.
00:33:16.340The very thing that Richard Nixon worked very hard never to do, we have done.
00:33:23.560We've absolutely built up the economies of all sorts of transit countries that don't help us at all by having these phony economies come up.
00:33:36.080So you're referring to Russian energy shipments.
00:35:04.300What it does is it empowers the most corrupt all over the world.
00:35:09.720We are empowering Ukrainian corruption.
00:35:12.440We are empowering the corruption of our business interests.
00:35:16.100We are doing everything to disestablish America's position.
00:35:20.640We are giving Putin the armament to get away from the dollar.
00:35:24.300We're doing everything for them to establish alternative payment systems.
00:35:28.620We are building our opponents with a sanction system that violates the rule of law, that denies people their human rights, very often some of the most industrious people going.
00:35:40.820It is the most counterproductive system we've put in place.
00:35:44.220And yet everybody's going crazy that Elon Musk is trying to engage in, I'll admit, pretty unique efforts to reduce the budget deficit.
00:35:56.220But nobody's talking about how our government is propagating, in my view, these absolutely violative sanctions all over the world that are totally destroying our rule of law and America as a safe haven for those opposed to people like Putin.
00:36:16.760And sanctioning people's children, who didn't do anything wrong, why would, you know, why would U.S. policymakers be, why would Toria Nuland want that?
00:36:27.700I mean, that just seems cruel and awful.
00:36:29.280Look, let me tell you, I'm dealing with a case in Switzerland.
00:36:32.000The Swiss are worse than the Americans now.
00:36:35.540Because they're so scared of the United States enforcement that we literally are defending children who are being attacked by the Swiss.
00:36:46.380So the whole sanction situation, this whole dehumanizing of people with Russian names that no one is speaking out against because we're all afraid.
00:36:59.340We're all in this, you know, I call it the authoritarianism of the left that we are all subject to.
00:37:10.580This, you know, wokeism, authoritarianism, this unwillingness to give the opponent a voice.
00:37:19.020But I thought that, I mean, I thought this was the key indelible lesson of the 1940s that when governments decide that some people don't have human rights because of their genetic makeup, it winds up with mass murder and it's bad for everybody.
00:37:35.520We're never going to allow any demagogue or group of demagogues to say that group right there is not entitled to human rights and we're going to hurt them.
00:38:59.140I'm sure there's U.S. government involvement.
00:39:01.700Mr. Vance, Vice President Vance spoke, spoke very well.
00:39:05.200I mean, he's, as I said before, I mean, he's set off a revolution in Europe with his speech, which I welcome, because I believe he's identified a tremendous problem in Europe in terms of freedom of speech and the basic freedoms.
00:39:25.780Although, you know, I have to say, working in Georgia, working and knowing what's happening in Trans-Denistra, you cannot minimize the threat of Vladimir Putin.
00:39:38.340So in September, we went across the country, coast to coast, 17 different cities on a nationwide live tour, and it was amazing.
00:39:45.500We brought the entire staff with us like we always do because we've all worked together for so long and enjoy traveling together.
00:39:51.480And one of our producers is a documentary filmmaker.
00:39:54.200And so he decided to make a documentary film about our trip, a full month across America with some of the most interesting people around.
00:40:02.560Different people join us every single night on Gino and Russell Brand and Bobby Kennedy and J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera.
00:40:38.660To reach a team of licensed tax professionals that can help you reduce, settle, and resolve your tax matters, go to TNUSA.com and check them out.
00:41:33.720Yeah, we had very few congressmen who would meet us.
00:41:39.240We had some very courageous lobbyists who we worked with and still work with, including a Democrat, a former Democrat, Congressman Ron Klink,
00:41:53.680who, because he's, I think, a devout Christian, has, I think, really suffered a lot reputationally by working with me.
00:42:03.960And God bless him for having the strength and courage to do that.
00:42:10.740Because, as he knows, I mean, we're completely nonpartisan.
00:42:15.480We're not actually lobbying the United States at all.
00:42:20.480We want people to talk to the Ukrainians and simply explain to the Ukrainians that this law to ban our church is unacceptable.
00:45:28.100Trying to get the Jewish refuseniks out, correct?
00:45:29.860Well, beginning, just at the beginning.
00:45:31.880I wasn't a lawyer then or doing much of anything, but I went because I knew this problem existed.
00:45:38.160I was a very, very young boy, but my father wanted me to go.
00:45:41.520I think I was one of the only guys—I think I was the first sole traveler to a place called Kishinev, Moldova.
00:45:50.460This is way back in the 70s, and was interrogated.
00:45:56.600My first interrogation by the KGB was when I was, like, 17.
00:46:00.380So I've had a long history in this region.
00:46:04.560I went to the Lavra when I was—I studied under Ukraine's greatest historian, Bodan Batsirkyu.
00:46:14.640His son is now a noted speaker and expert on Ukraine and very pro-Ukrainian and a very, very serious person.
00:46:26.640But I went there at the express direction of his father, and I went to the Lavra to just experience this incredible—I mean, the Lavra was incredible.
00:46:37.940And this has become the scene of these clashes where Zelensky's government has taken the Lavra, control of the Lavra, away from our church and handed it to the nationalist church.
00:46:50.060So there's this huge nationalism in Ukraine that is the motive behind Zelensky's destruction of my church, and it's political.
00:47:00.580Our church and the Donbass, the more Russian-speaking part of Ukraine, had supported Zelensky, but with the unfortunate aggression against Ukraine, that voter bloc is denied to him.
00:47:17.700So he has had to move much further to the xenophobic side of the Ukrainian spectrum to keep his base, and we think that's primarily some of the politics behind him agreeing to the destruction of our church.
00:47:40.140Can I ask you what may be an unanswerable question?
00:47:42.320So you were describing the effects of the Ukraine war on the West and on the United States, and it's basically knocking the U.S. from its perch, and it's causing all kinds of problems.
00:47:50.780The loss of the U.S. dollar, the alignment, the permanent now alignment between Russia and China.
00:47:55.540If you were China and you were trying to assert yourself as a global power, which they have every right to do, in my opinion, but you're trying to subvert the United States, you would do everything you could.
00:48:07.320Like, whose interest is being served in this?
00:48:09.820And it seems like the Chinese interest is being served.
00:48:12.220So if you have our entire media, our entire political establishment is all in on this thing that hurts the United States, is it possible that China has a role in that?
00:48:21.120Look, I'm somebody who, as a young man, studied China and then the Soviet Union.
00:48:27.480I do not have an animus towards China in terms of seeing them in the negative light.
00:48:38.500I think there was hope for our relationship that's been kind of destroyed.
00:48:43.460I think it's still possible, by the way, to be resurrected.
00:48:47.020But certainly it is, to some extent, in China's interest.
00:48:53.600But we never understand something that's fundamental to Xi Jinping's survival, which is he is on an economic fault line.
00:49:02.620He needs GDP growth at plus 5% to survive.
00:49:07.200A flourishing relationship with the United States could be in his interest under a different type of relationship.
00:49:49.580There's a war going on, a real war, too.
00:49:52.200And the answer, in part, is because there's huge Chinese investment in Russia, and that's solidifying a relationship based on mutual benefit, I would say, to the point where it's not going to be broken.
00:50:04.540Well, never underestimate the root antagonisms of the Chinese-Russian relationship.
00:52:04.320As you may be aware, I also represent the Congo, which is now being horribly invaded by Rwanda.
00:52:12.540And I've always wondered why the United States didn't take a stronger position there.
00:52:16.380You know, we have destabilized Africa, the entirety of Africa, with this war.
00:52:25.860And we have not addressed the fact that so much of our future is tied up in Africa, yet the entire continent is being completely destroyed.
00:52:36.560Talk to people in Zambia or some of these other countries who can't get food because the costs are now so high.
00:52:42.720We need to look at this struggle in a far broader sense.
00:52:46.940Because Ukraine is a huge producer of fertilizer.
00:53:29.240So, you know, but all of that is beyond my mandate, which is to try to save the Orthodox, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, so that it can survive for another thousand years.
00:53:43.080Well, it's, it's just interesting, though.
00:53:45.200I'm just asking these questions because I know that you represent clients in a bunch of different countries and have for almost 50 years and you travel a lot.
00:53:50.660But it does seem like this is part of the cost of a world, the West.
00:53:55.460This is not true in the East, by the way, but in the West, the only history people know is kind of a half-baked, you know, kind of a Twitter version of World War II.
00:54:03.740And everything is through the same lens.
00:54:06.240And it's like, this isn't Munich, actually, as you point out.
00:54:09.960And maybe ignorance is part, people are very inflexible in their minds.
00:54:14.500Like, you know, it's funny, as a young boy, I went to Moscow at that point, sort of pseudo-communist sympathizer as a very young man.
00:54:24.800And I remember being taken, I could not attend any city without first being taken to the war cemetery.
00:55:22.260Yes, but, you know, even in terms of using the International Criminal Court the way they have, where the court has gone to such incredible lengths with respect to this case.
00:55:38.560Again, I'm not in any way denying Russian war crimes.
00:55:43.200I'm simply saying that there's a difference between punishing wrongdoers and dehumanizing a nation and a people.
00:55:52.000And we have allowed this to get into a horrific attack on the people with the sanctions and all of that that isn't American.
00:56:06.660Have there been any media outlets at all, globally, let's just stick to the United States and Great Britain, English-speaking media, who've been willing to give you a fair hearing?
00:56:40.120The Wall Street Journal is completely cut off from us, and I would say reality.
00:56:45.560The Wall Street Journal is completely cut off from reality.
00:56:47.380The Wall Street Journal is actually every bit as dishonest as the New York Times in my read, but much stealthier about it.
00:56:53.160And it has this kind of unbreakable relationship with late middle-aged right-wingers that it uses to spew lies and stupidity and propaganda.
00:57:05.320Well, there's one editorial writer who interviewed me about the church when I was in Kyiv, and I had some hope.
00:57:13.080But then wrote a crazy story denouncing me and the church, which we managed—
00:57:23.120Yeah, yeah, which we managed to—we managed, I think, at the end of many rewrites, to get her editorial only—we moved it from terrible to very bad.
00:57:45.520No, but one of the things about the Ukraine beat is it's very often the same people saying the same things, just with different background music, again and again, in a very propagandistic way, avoiding the hard truths.
00:58:02.180I mean, these press gangs that are grabbing young men and taking them to the front get so little coverage.
00:58:12.880The fighting inside the presidential administration that we know exists gets so little coverage.
00:59:57.940It reminds me of my first day as part, privileged to be part of a major legal team in Moscow in 2003.
01:00:09.240And the lead counsel, the Russian lawyer, was a very famous Russian lawyer, brilliant, brilliant man named Padva.
01:00:18.560And I said to him, because the Russian stock market had gone down 50% after they attacked my client at that time, I said to him, well, surely, surely Mr. Putin will understand that this can't go on.
01:01:19.700This is basically alleging that what they're saying has meanings similar to what Putin says, and therefore it's a crime.
01:01:30.520People are being jailed away from their families for psycho-linguistics under Article 161 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code for essentially division, causing religious division.
01:01:49.180Now, the OCU members or those working for them with swastikas on their arms don't get charged.
01:01:57.220But our church, our folks get charged routinely.
01:02:02.320Nowinski is charged with psycho-linguistic crimes.
01:02:11.480Horrific things said about him because when he was a member of the RADA, so therefore privileged communications occurred, he had some disagreements with the government of the day.
01:02:26.580They are using Soviet texts to go after their own political opponents.
01:02:34.580And Zelensky, this man that has been virtually treated as a saint by the Europeans, is using the SBU in a manner no different than how Russian leaders have used the FSB or the KGB.
01:02:50.080No different, including the arrest and beating of priests, and our papers say nothing.
01:02:59.740It is, it is just, you, you, by the way, sir, are the only one, especially heroically, that first interview, that first interview changed and saved and delayed the passage of this law till now.
01:03:16.080And I will be forever in your debt for doing it.
01:03:18.400You've told us something that I didn't realize, which is that the U.S. government established a fake state church in a foreign country, which is obviously unconstitutional, but also Soviet.
01:03:28.060I've also noticed this other trend, which I don't really understand, but it seems equally bad, which is to try and change the culture of the Slavic country.
01:03:39.240They believe in gender roles, for example.
01:03:41.360And there does seem to have been and continue to be this effort from the U.S. State Department and maybe others in the U.S. government to kind of change the way Ukrainian society is ordered.
01:03:53.600Yes, I mean, I, you know, as I've said, I had the privilege of listening to Robert Destro, a former, I think, deputy secretary in charge of human rights, talk about some of what he saw going on.
01:04:15.040Funding for funding for, funding for atheist groups, funding for, funding for atheist groups, funding for all sorts of groups that, that certainly you could wonder if this is in the interest of the United States.
01:04:34.580I mean, I have nothing against atheists.
01:04:36.560I don't know why we would necessarily feel it was incumbent upon us to fund them, but there, there is, there's, there's an excellent book written.
01:04:48.320Like, that's actually, if you think about it, outrageous.
01:04:50.260The whole pretext for this is Russia stages illegal, unprovoked invasion three years ago, so we have to defend Ukraine from Russia.
01:04:56.000Okay, at least that makes a kind of sense, true or not.
01:04:58.940But why would you want to change the religious belief of Ukrainians or the family structure of Ukrainians?
01:05:04.640Well, their, their argument in terms of my church has been, well, your church has some relationship to Russia.
01:05:12.100So they, they continue to make the argument, even though we believe we've disproven it, that there is no link.
01:05:23.440And our government cannot control canon law.
01:05:27.060Yeah, that, that is surely outside the purview of, of any government.
01:05:31.460So it's sort of the same argument that, that a lot of Arab countries made in, during the Suez crisis in 56, they had huge Jewish populations in a lot of the, you know, Morocco and Algeria and, you know, thousand year old, multi-thousand year old Jewish populations.
01:05:43.380And they're like, let's see, you're Jewish.
01:05:45.980The Jews in this other country, Israel, did something we don't like.
01:05:48.500Therefore, we're blaming you or kicking you out.
01:05:50.620It's like, not that, because you've got the same book.
01:05:56.160And, and this is being done very scientifically in a, in a very, I would have to say, it's almost a crazed psychosis going on.
01:06:14.900And because you have these ultra right folks in Ukraine.
01:06:21.360Basically now, some of the churches have taken Maidan, the, the locus of the 2014 events, and set up shrines in, in the OCU churches to Maidan.
01:06:36.380So, they've even changed the religion itself to conform to Ukrainian nationalism.
01:06:47.400So, they're basically worshipping a CIA coup.
01:07:23.800But, our church certainly does not make any demands about stopping anybody from praying in any way they want.
01:07:32.820We are simply saying, don't steal our churches, don't jail our priests, and don't destroy the religion.
01:07:40.660And, you know, we have experts. Dr. Bremer from, I think, one of the German Catholic universities has spoken out. His Holiness the Pope has spoken out. The UN has spoken out. The U.S. Mission to the OSCE has spoken out. Human Rights Watch did a special report about our church and what's going on.
01:08:04.220This isn't just me now. When you first had me on, it was just me. Now it's the Church of England. So we have an entire world condemning the Ukrainian government. And the only people defending it are their friends in Washington.
01:08:21.580It's so shameful and disgusting. But we're clearly at an inflection point because, as you have said, the Vice President of the United States just gave this speech at the Munich Security Conference, biggest speech given in Europe in a while, I think it's fair to say, in which he, J.D. Vance, kind of reset the terms of the relationship.
01:08:41.220And so if you're Zelensky, the bottom line is you're no longer in control of Washington. So where does that leave Zelensky?
01:08:49.720You know, listen, I, you know, the information I got this morning is it's left him very angry, very addled and working to sort of form a coalition of European leaders around him.
01:09:05.800Why does he think he gets he has like a moral right to run the U.S. government? It's pretty cheeky, I'd say.
01:09:10.860Well, he seems to think he has a moral right to run the European government.
01:09:14.460And I will tell you, from trying to interact with the EU, he's right, he's running it.
01:09:21.300I mean, these people in the EU won't talk to me. And if they talk to me, they won't listen.
01:09:28.040I mean, it's incredible. He has them completely wrapped.
01:09:32.620I mean, I've he doesn't have Orban wrapped, but he has.
01:09:36.820Well, the Ukrainian government took U.S. tax dollars to try to overthrow Orban, maybe to kill him, you know.
01:09:43.880So that's a fact. So that itself, you know, Hungary is in NATO.
01:09:51.140So you can't one NATO power cannot attack another NATO power.
01:09:54.520Like what is this whole thing has just scrambled the eggs of the world?
01:09:57.940Yeah, I have no knowledge of that. All I can say is that that the information we've gotten is that the the meeting that took place and the the reestablishment of more normalized relations between the United States and Russia leading to some discussion has been.
01:10:17.800There's been there's been there's been a horrible reaction within the presidential administration, and we fear that this will cause further repression of the church.
01:10:31.120Can Zelensky with, you know, we can debate what his actual approval rating is, but I mean, I would bet my house it's not over 50.
01:12:46.500I feel it's shocking to me how alienated I am representing this church because I'm not accepting the narrative that's been accepted by others.
01:13:03.580And so my firm, myself, we are paying a terrible price.
01:13:08.980Not nearly as bad as our client who faces physical violence and the destruction of their religion.
01:13:17.040But there is no quarter being given to disputing what's going on.
01:13:25.400This guy has, he has seemed to have a complete lock on our institutions, on Washington.
01:13:52.460But it really is, the Zelensky effect is something that needs to be studied because it's incredibly unhealthy for us, number one, as a democracy.
01:14:08.640Number two, in terms of our geopolitical reckoning.
01:16:45.920We have turned criminal law into the activity of big corporate law firms.
01:16:53.880In New York, even today, there are a bunch of small firms that take on difficult cases.
01:17:07.560Brafman, Agnifolo, some of these guys in small firms taking on tough, tough, tough cases that I think of as real, you know, defenders.
01:17:20.140But the corporate titans that are doing the big cases have become entirely focused on compliance.
01:17:32.620You're somebody, I'm sure, with far more resources than a poor guy like myself.
01:17:38.200But if you engage in transnational business, you know the hassles of even moving $10 across borders.
01:17:46.280These corporate law firms are making tens of millions off of managing compliance because of, and this is a separate story, in my view, this over-regulation money laundering allegations.
01:18:04.600Money laundering is the most dangerous crime governments have ever invented because it basically criminalizes activity that very many people never knew was criminal.
01:18:18.920And you could be charged with money laundering if you've engaged in asset or money transfers when you had no idea at the time that it was criminal.
01:18:26.920They don't care about rape on a subway platform.
01:18:56.940And again, another day, I'll tell you about my use of human rights law to stop the freezing of assets and freezing of monies.
01:19:06.540That, this compliance psychology is a tremendous danger that we foster in our big firms.
01:19:13.860And that is, you know, so if you ask me after 45 years, how do you feel?
01:19:20.680It is a sense of tragedy that our basic rights have been withered away in so many events of emergency.
01:19:34.700Whenever I hear emergency or crisis, whether it's COVID, the war on terror, the war on crime, these are all events that chip away at our freedoms, and they're cumulative.
01:19:49.980They go on and on, and they further narrow the scope for our activity.
01:19:55.200And we need a dramatic rethink of all of that in order for us to be free.
01:20:01.060So, when you were a kid, when you were a young lawyer, when you were in law school, Brandenburg versus Ohio, the big speech cases, those were all very well known, right, to everybody in your class.
01:20:12.360Do you think someone graduating Yale Law now has any real sense of that?
01:20:17.160You know, I'm giving a speech Friday to 60 top law students.
01:20:26.600I think that, unfortunately, we're raising lawyers to fit into these corporate firms, this whole sort of compliance culture.
01:20:41.720And, you know, I'm probably, God help me, probably one of the only lawyers that will applaud the Trump administration for stopping FCPA enforcement.
01:20:52.580It's not that I'm in support of corruption, and it's not that I think we shouldn't come up with a system to stop it.
01:20:59.320It's that the FCPA has represented a massive commercial barrier for American business to enter Latin America and Africa.