Justice in the Age of Retribution with Andy McCarthy

Summary

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Justice in the Age of Retribution with Andy McCarthy

Podcast: Conversations With Coleman
Host: Coleman Hughes
Guest: Andy McCarthy (Former Chief Assistant US Attorney, National Review columnist)
Date: December 1, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores the rise of “lawfare”—the weaponization of legal systems for partisan ends—through the lens of recent, high-profile American political prosecutions. Coleman Hughes interviews Andy McCarthy, a seasoned prosecutor and legal analyst, about the blurry line between appropriate legal accountability and political vendetta. Together, they dissect cases from both sides of the political spectrum, probe the underlying cultural and legal trends, and discuss what’s needed to restore public trust in the justice system.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Andy McCarthy’s Background in Prosecution

• McCarthy describes his career as a prosecutor (04:02–09:14), notably handling major Mafia and terrorism cases, including the Blind Sheikh prosecution after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
• Quote: “In our office, [a] prosecutor is responsible for a case from the moment that it comes in… you investigate it, you take it to the grand jury, you indict it, you try it, you get it sentenced... [and] also do the appeal...” —Andy McCarthy (05:02)

2. Portrayal of the Mafia in Pop Culture

• McCarthy evaluates The Sopranos’ accuracy (09:24–10:28):
  • “The day-to-day stuff that's depicted in that program... They're really... thugs, not charming rogues.”
  • He finds Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco even closer to the truth.

3. Crime Waves: Causes and Cures

• Discussion of 1960s–90s crime spikes and subsequent decline (14:35–19:47).
  • McCarthy attributes rising crime in the 1960s to progressive criminal justice ideas and growing defendants’ rights (16:09); falling crime later was due to “intelligence-based policing” and “broken windows” reforms (17:19–18:24).
  • Quote: “I believe that the main thing that drove crime down... was intelligence-based policing. It was data-dependent... and created an ethos that laws are going to be enforced.” —Andy McCarthy (17:19–17:48)

4. Defining Lawfare vs. Legitimate Prosecution

• McCarthy offers Bill Barr’s "meat and potatoes crimes" litmus (20:24–24:05):
  • Prosecutions of public officials should be for clear, obvious, serious crimes with compelling evidence, not “elastic” legal theories stretching the law.
  • Quote: “You need to have an obvious serious crime and compelling evidence... If instead what you're doing is stretching the criminal law in order to capture vaguely criminal [acts]... then you're straying into lawfare.” —Andy McCarthy (21:43–22:08)

5. Deep Dive: Prosecutions of Donald Trump

• New York Cases:
  • Letitia James’ civil and Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecutions are called “flat out lawfare” (26:21–31:09).
  • The James case applied a consumer protection statute in an “unprecedented way” where no victims of fraud existed.
  • Quote: “That's not a fraud case. In any responsible prosecutor's office, you're not going to bring that kind of case...” —Andy McCarthy (27:39)
  • Comparison to inaction against high-profile left-leaning figures (Patrisse Cullors/BLM) as evidence of selective prosecution (31:53–33:30).
• Federal Prosecutions under Biden DOJ (Mar-a-Lago classified docs, Jan 6):
  • Acknowledgement these cases involve serious misconduct warranting investigation.
  • Critique of overcharging and manipulating trial timelines for campaign impact, turning prosecution into political weaponry (39:55–52:37).

6. Mechanisms of Lawfare

• Manipulation of legal charges, statutes, and timelines to maximize political damage while undermining due process (36:33–37:08; 51:32–52:37).
• “The plan by these prosecutors was to try Trump like rat-tat-tat... and keep him chained to courtrooms rather than campaigning...” —Andy McCarthy (51:32–51:47)

7. Political Impact: Did Lawfare Boost Trump?

• Trump’s poll numbers and party unity surged with each prosecution, which McCarthy argues was anticipated by Democratic strategists to engineer a preferable opponent, only to backfire due to unexpected SCOTUS intervention (53:41–56:01).
• Quote: “If you look at... April was Bragg’s indictment. When Bragg’s indictment is announced, Trump has a surge and he never goes backwards. It’s never a race again.” —Andy McCarthy (53:54)

8. Reciprocal Lawfare: Trump DOJ’s Retaliatory Cases

• Critique of new prosecutions against James Comey, Adam Schiff, Letitia James as “totally lawfare” and baseless (57:26–61:58).
• Motivations are less about the law and more about inflicting political pain (62:28–62:39).
• Quote: “What [Trump] mainly wants to do is make them feel the pain that he was put through.” —Andy McCarthy (62:38)

9. Restoring Rule of Law: Solutions

• McCarthy prescribes a return to “meat and potatoes” crime standards for prosecuting officials, with an “eyeball test” for whether an average person would expect to be charged in similar circumstances (63:21–64:12).
• Firm limits on public commentary by DOJ Officials: “You wouldn’t see me on nighttime cable television... It’s... a violation of due process to be talking about people who are, constitutionally speaking, presumed innocent.” (65:27–65:50)
• Warns of the cycle’s corrosive effect:
  • “A flourishing free society depends on a valid justice system... You cannot have a flourishing free society without a judicial system that works. And you can't have one that works unless it's got credibility with the public.” —Andy McCarthy (33:18–34:05)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Mafia Pop-Culture Accuracy (09:41):

  “As much as I love the Godfather movies ... I always thought Goodfellas was a much more accurate movie and Donnie Brasco... than the Godfather.” —Andy McCarthy

• On Lawfare’s Threat (33:18):

  “A flourishing free society depends on a valid justice system... If we lose the system, we can't... You cannot have a flourishing free society without a judicial system that works. And you can't have one that works unless it's got credibility with the public.” —Andy McCarthy

• On the Prosecutions’ Political Impact (53:54):

  “When Bragg’s indictment is announced, Trump has a surge and he never goes backwards. It’s never a race again.” —Andy McCarthy

• On the “Personnel Is Policy” Maxim (24:05):

  “I've always thought that you can write the most perfect rules that you can imagine, but if you have incompetent or worse people trying to enforce them, you're going to have chaos and disorder.” —Andy McCarthy

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:02 – 09:14: McCarthy’s career journey and prosecutorial philosophy
• 09:24 – 10:28: The Sopranos, Goodfellas, and Mafia realism
• 14:35 – 19:47: Crime spikes, policing strategies, and societal attitudes
• 20:24 – 24:05: Lawfare defined and “meat and potatoes” prosecutorial standards
• 26:21 – 31:09: Lawfare exemplified: James/Bragg cases against Trump
• 39:55 – 52:37: Federal prosecutions (Mar-a-Lago, Jan 6), overreach, and political calendar
• 53:41 – 56:01: Prosecutions’ effect on Trump’s nomination
• 57:26 – 61:58: Trump DOJ prosecutions of opponents, tit-for-tat Lawfare
• 63:21 – 65:50: How to restore trust in the DOJ and the rule of law

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Conclusion

This episode offers a sobering, unvarnished analysis of how prosecution is increasingly harnessed for political vendetta in America. McCarthy’s critique is not partisan but systemic, applying the “meat and potatoes” fairness standard to both left and right. He argues for returning integrity and humility to the justice system, warning that continued escalation of lawfare will corrode public trust and threaten foundational principles of American democracy.

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Transcript

[Coleman Hughes]

Every once in a while, someone makes something that feels bigger. Not another Hollywood reboot, but a story built on courage, faith and meaning. The Daily Wire did just that with their new seven part series, the Pendragon Rise of the Merlin. Based on the book series by Stephen R. Loughead. It's a retelling of the classic King Arthur legend. The first official trailer just dropped and you should go check it out. In this world, while pagan gods fall silent and empires collapse, one man's visions ignite a civilizational rebirth. Merlin becomes the bridge between myth and history and shapes the destiny of kings. The Pendragon cycle Rise of the Merlin premieres exclusively on Daily Wire January 22, 2026. Go watch the full trailer now at DailyWire.com welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Andy McCarthy. Andy is a former Chief Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, best known for leading the 1995 prosecution of the Blind Sheikh and others responsible for the 1993 World Trade center bombing. He's now a columnist and contributing editor at National Review and a co host of the McCarthy Report, a podcast where you will find, in my opinion, the.

Best legal analysis available anywhere in the podcast world.

I began this episode by asking Andy how accurate the Sopranos was. He would know.

He spent his early career going after.

The East Coast Italian mob. After that, we discussed the rising trend of political prosecutions on both the left and the right. Andy covered the prosecutions of Trump by Biden's DOJ very closely, and he's doing the same with the prosecutions that Trump's DOJ is now throwing at his political opponents. Keep in mind, this podcast was recorded before a federal judge dismissed the indictments against James Comey and Letitia James. So without further ado, Andy McCarthy, What happens when education is built around conversation, not debate? When every student is treated as a source of insight and community, as a path to wisdom? At St. John's College, students read the great books together, from Plato and Aristotle to Wolfe and Du Bois, discussing humanity's hardest questions. In small seminars, they learn to listen, question, and think together across perspectives. It's hard. It's human. It's St. John's College. The education students deserve at SJC.

EDU Andy McCarthy, thank you so much for coming on my show.

[Andy McCarthy]

Colman, it's my pleasure.

[Coleman Hughes]

As I was just telling you, I am a religious listener to your podcast at the National Review where you talk to. Forgive me, I'm blanking on the name. Who's your conversation partner there?

[Andy McCarthy]

Rich Lowry Our editor. Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

Rich Lowry, who is also great. And you have been in my mind, having listened to you probably for I don't know how many years now, actually, but many years you have been, I think the, you've had the highest batting average of fair minded legal analysis across all the matters legal in the past many years of American politics, from the prosecutions against Trump to the prosecutions Trump is perpetrating. And in my mind, I think you should feel very proud of yourself for having called balls and strikes all throughout.

[Andy McCarthy]

Well, thank you so much for that. I appreciate it.

[Coleman Hughes]

Can you talk to me a little bit about your background? How did you become a prosecutor and how have you gotten into to be a commentator on National Review?

[Andy McCarthy]

Well, I always wanted to be a lawyer.

And when I finally achieve that, I always liked the writing part of it better, even though you have to do all of it in the office I came from, I was a Prosecutor for about 20 years in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. And the philosophy in that office, unlike other prosecutors offices around the country, everybody does it and can do it differently. But in the, in our office, prosecutor is responsible for a case from the moment that it comes in the door as an investigation, meaning you investigate it, you take it to the grand jury, you indict it, you try it, you get it sentenced if there's a conviction. And then you will have to also do the appeal to the Second Circuit, which keeps everybody current on what the law is in the circuit that applies to what we do.

So it's the way the office is structured. It's geared to try to train complete.

Lawyers in the sense of having a comprehensive mastery of the different things that we have to do.

I had a very unusual and good.

Run in the office. I had an unusual path there in that most people who are hired in that office have either clerked for a federal judge or been in private practice for a couple of years before applying to the office.

I came to the office as an intern.

I had previously been a deputy U.S. marshal in the witness Protection program. And when Rudy Giuliani became the U.S. attorney in New York, he had a.

Real purpose to try to eradicate the.

Mafia in New York, which seemed like an impossibility back in those days. This is the early 1980s.

And Giuliani appreciated that if you didn't have a.

Vibrant witness protection program, the idea of trying to take the Mafia on was impractical. So as a result, he knew me, he knew who I was because I worked in that office. And they started a program when he was there where night law students could intern in the U.S. attorney's office at night, during the day, while going to law school at night.

I did that for a couple of years. I happened to get assigned to what I think is still the longest federal criminal trial in history, the Pizza Connection case. And I was responsible for.

Making discovery, among other things, to 22 defendants. And I think they just decided that it was easier to hire me than replace me at that point because what I had been doing had. I been doing it for a couple of years. So I was very lucky to be hired right into the office after I finished law school and passed the bar exam. And I got to work on those cases which were.

It was an extraordinary time to be.

A new young prosecutor because we had.

Cases on all of the so called.

Five families of Cosa Nostra, the commission of the Mafia, and the case I worked on, which was the kind of an international partnership between the Sicilian Mafia and the American Mafia to traffic in enormous amounts of narcotics.

And then I was still in the office when the World Trade center was bombed in 1993, which I really still.

Think was kind of the.

What we called radical Islam's declaration of war on.

The United States, at least this, this faction of jihadists, because it was a, it was a real message to the country that they could hit us here in the, in the financial heart of the United States. And that led to, you know, a really, it really. It changed law enforcement. I don't think it changed it for the better, by the way, but it was a new era of kind of.

Unprecedented types of prosecution.

So I, I went through the Mafia.

Phase where, you know, nobody would have.

Believed, I think, that Rudy could have eradicated the Mafia. But the mountain, the Mafia is now an epigon. After that series of prosecutions and then.

Beginning in 1993, we really.

The mission of the Justice Department and the FBI, I think went from being.

Principally law enforcement to more like an.

Intelligence agency or intelligence agencies, I suppose.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, a lot of questions here. So before we get to all the questions, I want to talk to you about, about the modern day. One fun question is, I assume you've seen the Sopranos.

[Andy McCarthy]

Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

Given your experience with the Tri State area mobile, how accurate is the Sopranos?

[Andy McCarthy]

I thought the Sopranos was pretty good. I mean the idea that the boss of a mafia family would be telling everything to a shrink is unlikely.

But I am in the category. As much as I love the Godfather movies and.

Subscribe to the theory that everything you need to Know in Life is probably in the Godfather movies someplace. I always thought Goodfellas was a much more accurate movie and Donnie Brasco is a much more accurate movie about the Mafia than the Godfather was.

Not, not as good a movie.

But in terms of their depiction of the Mafia and the Sopranos is along those lines too. The, the day to day stuff that's depicted in that program kind of shows.

That, you know, they're really, you know.

They'Re not charming rogues, they're really kind of thugs.

[Coleman Hughes]

So you said the key to Giuliani being able to break the mob was getting the witness protection program.

Right.

What was wrong about it and how did he fix it?

[Andy McCarthy]

Well, that was one part of it.

And what I meant to convey was not that there was something wrong with it necessarily. What I meant was you wouldn't have.

Been able to prosecute high level people.

In the Mafia unless you could convince witnesses with insider knowledge to testify. And the only way that you could do that is if you could satisfy them, that you actually could relocate and protect them from harm.

I think as big a part, you.

Know, we'd love to say that we put together a great witness protection program. The other thing that happened that was very important and is not, I think, as well understood is the federal narcotics laws were really beefed up in the 1980s. The sentencing, the sentences became extraordinarily harsh.

So I would say up through the 1970s or so, mobsters regarded, you know.

The occasional arrest and short stint in jail as kind of a cost of doing business. And it wasn't enough to get people to cooperate.

But when the sentences sudden suddenly start.

To be that you're looking at 20, 30, 40 years, the incentive to cooperate was much higher. And that in conjunction with the fact that we had this program which the, the legend of the program was that if you followed the rules of the Witness Protection program, you were safe. The rules are very hard to follow and a lot of people didn't follow them and, you know, came to harm in the end.

But you wouldn't have been able to.

Do the cases without, without that. I think the other reason that Giuliani was a pioneer in this area was.

Because he was the first one who.

Really understood how to use rico.

Rico, the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations.

Act, came on the books in 1971. We really in our office started to use it effectively to the point where we had all the cases against these Mafia families, RICO cases.

And what was, from a criminal law standpoint, what was revolutionary about RICO was Up until that point, if you were going to charge people with crimes, the. The crime that you had to charge.

Them with was whatever the criminal transaction was. So if it was a murder conspiracy, it was about the murder. And if it turned out that the guys had also, you know, run a gambling ring or an extortion racket or whatever, those things had to be excluded.

From the trial because they'd be prejudicial.

To the jury's consideration of whether the guy had committed the murder or not.

The the difference with RICO is it made the crime not so much the criminal activity as belonging to an entity.

Which the statute calls an enterprise that basically earns its income by patterns of criminal activity.

But the actual crime is not so much the criminal activity, it's belonging to the enterprise. And I think Rudy saw how to.

Use it in a way that hadn't been appreciated up until that point, and we used it very aggressively.

[Coleman Hughes]

So I wasn't planning to ask you this, but it occurs to me you might have a strong, informed opinion. You talk to any New Yorker that lived through the 80s, 90s and 2000s, and they pretty much will all tell you the same thing, which is that crime, the city was an absolute mess, and then Giuliani came and it all got cleaned up. Now, at the same time, there is this long standing scholarly debate about why crime started raising all rising all over America starting around the 1960s, peaked around the 90s, and then fell massively, not.

Just in New York, but everywhere.

[Andy McCarthy]

Yep.

[Coleman Hughes]

Suggesting that whatever the causes were must have been somehow national causes rather than local ones. And the standard story I hear from social scientists is sort of like a big question mark. Like we don't really know why crime went up so much, and we don't really know why. Why it went down so much. And there are a bunch of theories and people argue, but there's no definitive answer. Do you have a strong opinion on that question?

[Andy McCarthy]

Yeah, I have. My opinion is that that is just a wrong diagnosis. I think there's not really much new under the sun.

I think most of the.

Explanation for the rise in crime beginning in the 60s was the implementation of many of the same ideas that led to a rise in crime beginning around, I'd say that what you described as the lowering of crime that started in the early 1990s, that probably peaked around, I want to say, 2015, 2016, thereabouts. Many of the same ideas were tried in the 1960s. We just called them different things back then, but it was the same idea. It was the idea that the person who committed the crime didn't really have agency. And there were other underlying factors that were responsible for it. And that in conjunction with the Warren court and later the Berger court.

Markedly.

Increasing the due process rights of people who were accused of crimes gave real momentum to the implementation of these progressive ideas about law enforcement.

And I think what happened, your, your, your high watermark for crime is around 1991. I may not have the number exactly right, but I think we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 murders in New York.

[Coleman Hughes]

My recollection is like 2,900 or even 3,000. That's my recollection.

[Andy McCarthy]

And it goes down to around 200 and less than 250 by, you know, 2015, 2016, thereabouts. So what people point to is broken windows policing. And I think that certainly is a part of it because it creates a kind of an ethos that the laws.

Are going to be enforced, which if.

You actually do enforce them over time, does change people's behavior. But I believe that the main thing that drove crime down.

You know, Giuliani.

Bill Bratton, others who were in the forefront of this, talked about intelligence based policing.

We heard a lot about CompStat and.

This was a kind of a revolutionary.

Way to do policing that was data dependent.

And what these guys would do is they would look at the crime statistics every day and they would surge police to the places where there seemed to.

Be blips that indicated that there would be a rise in crime or a rise of crime could be coming.

So it was like it was intelligence based. It wasn't a case anymore where you.

Would like in a stationary way, assign cops to various places and that was their beat.

It was much more fluid and data driven. And I think particularly after 1993, where terrorism becomes a big problem in the.

Country in a way that it hadn't been in the decades before that there.

Was more of a public tolerance for.

The idea that police had to base their investigations on intelligence. I mean, this had a kind of a, I think it had a spillover effect on how you investigate crime, but people had tolerance to the idea that you couldn't sit back and wait to be hit, that we needed to actually go out and look for people who might be radicalized in the places where radicalization was believed to be happening for very good reasons.

And they had a tolerance for aggressive policing that I think over time, and.

This is part of the explanation for crime moving back up again.

I think if you have like a.

Generation, which we really did, where there's a drop in, a significant drop in crime.

Human nature wants to believe that.

That maybe we overestimated what the problem.

Was in the first place, rather than.

That the precautions that we were taking.

Against it was what actually drove the crime down.

And I think there became a reluctance to trust the police to not just the police, but law enforcement in general to do aggressive police work.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, so I want to talk about the concept of lawfare. You've been covering this beat in as much detail as I think any. Anyone in America over the past, you know, decade, at least, if not more. How would you explain what the difference is between lawfare on the one side and legitimate prosecutions of public officials for crimes that they should be prosecuted for, like at the most abstract, high level? What is the difference and where's the line?

[Andy McCarthy]

I like Bill Barr's formulation of this, which is that when it comes to public officials, we want to do meat and potatoes crimes. And what he means by that is that you can't take a position as.

A prosecutor or as the Justice Department or prosecutor's office that public officials are immune to from criminal prosecution because they.

Can do too much harm. And there are constitutional hurdles involved in.

Prosecuting some public officials. That's, you know, that's problematic enough.

But you simply can't take the position.

That when public officials commit crimes, the fact that they're public officials or candidates to be public officials is a good enough reason not to prosecute them. It's got to be a case by case basis.

But if you're going to prosecute somebody, especially under circumstances where the law enforcement apparatus is controlled by one party and.

The target of the investigation is in the other party, so that it's unavoidable, that you're going to have at least the appearance of a possibility that there's political animus rather than evidence behind the.

Case, then you need to have an obvious serious crime and compelling evidence that.

The person did it.

And if instead what you're doing is taking things that may be icky transactions but not necessarily criminal ones, and you are, in a very elastic way, stretching the criminal law in order to capture.

What may be vaguely criminal as if it was felonious under the law, then you're straying into lawfare because we get to the point then where the prosecution's being driven by arbitrary and capricious prosecutorial judgments which wouldn't be made against other people.

Whereas with serious crime, you want the public to look at that and say.

Anybody would be prosecuted for doing this, that it's not just that the person happens to be on the wrong political side. The behavior is obvious, it's criminal, it's serious, and it's worthy of prosecution.

It's hard to articulate a standard of that that you can apply to every case. And I, I've always, one of the things I've always thought.

As I, I.

Started as a young prosecutor, but, but, you know, kind of grew up in.

The office and, and as happens to everyone, you hope, you know, you get a little bit wiser over time.

You realize that efforts to articulate written standards that are going to apply to all situations usually end in frustration because things are just too fact intensive. And what really matters at the end of the day is if you have responsible people. I've always thought that you can write the most perfect rules that you can imagine, but if you have incompetent or worse people trying to enforce them, you're.

Going to have chaos and disorder. And on the other hand, if your.

Rules aren't all that great, but they're.

Okay and you have good people who.

Are enforcing them, you'll be fine.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, so I heard the phrase personnel is policy for the first time sometime in the past year or two.

[Andy McCarthy]

Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

And I've thought about it many times since because it's very true.

[Andy McCarthy]

It is true.

[Coleman Hughes]

So let's walk back through the prosecutions of President Trump that occurred under the Biden doj. There, they, they ran the gamut that some were federal prosecutions, some, some were state prosecutions, and they, they ran the gamut of this, this standard that you're sketching out of. Some seem to be serious crimes that anyone would be convicted for or rather, rather charged with, and some seem to be novel hacked together legal theories that had to be explained to the public precisely because they were so novel and rare. So can you walk me through in retrospect, now that we're past this era and we have hindsight, which of the prosecutions of Trump were unfair lawfare, and which of the prosecutions of Trump were legitimate?

[Andy McCarthy]

Well, I think even the ones that were based on serious misconduct that would.

Have been valid grist for investigation in any prosecutor's office have elements of lawfare to them.

The easiest examples of the ones that.

Are just flat out lawfare, I think, were the state prosecutions in New York, one of which was really a civilization lawsuit. So Alvin Bragg's prosecution, criminal prosecution of Trump in Manhattan, and before that, Bragg, I should have said, was the District Attorney of Manhattan, New York county, and before that, the civil fraud lawsuit brought by Letitia James against then candidate Trump, which was tried from, I think, late 2023 into early 24. And then Bragg's case was around the spring of 24.

I think those cases were flat out lawfare.

Those are cases that wouldn't have been brought against anyone else. In fact, the case that James brought, which was a big reason why I think Bragg, who was another ambitious progressive politician in New York State and in some ways a competitor in that regard of James's, the case that James brought.

Was one that the federal and the state prosecutors had refused to bring, because.

Even though there were misrepresentations about valuations in Trump's personal financial statements that were. That were relevant to loans that he took and insurance coverage she got and that sort of stuff, there was no evidence of fraud in the sense that.

No one was deceived about what Trump's assets were.

He may have had misstatements in these documents, but the documents, his documents also told his counterparties to do their own due diligence, not to take his word for it.

Nobody got defrauded. Trump paid all of his creditors and.

They liked doing business with him. They kept going back to. To do more business.

That's not a fraud case. In any responsible prosecutor's office, you're not.

Going to bring that kind of a. You know, fraud prosecutions are especially in federal, but I think in. In state prosecutors offices as well, where you're trying to vindicate people who have been. Who have lost money or property on the basis of these fraudulent schemes.

And in order to. James took a case that the prosecutors wouldn't bring criminally, and she brought it civilly. And the way that she did it was to apply in an unprecedented way a statute that's meant for consumer protection. The idea being when consumers get defrauded.

By a big fraud scheme, a lot.

Of times, you know, it's a few dollars here, a few dollars there. Nobody has the incentive to bring a.

Case because it's just too expensive to sue.

So there's a rationale in that situation.

For having the state come in and be able to prosecute the fraudster, because if you leave it to the private civil system, that person's going to be essentially immune.

So that makes sense. It doesn't make sense to apply that kind of a statute in a case where there are sophisticated financial actors on both sides whose business is to assess risk and who assess risk better than New York State does. So she took a statute that didn't belong in this situation and then applied it to sue Trump. She had the cooperation of an elected progressive Democratic judge who basically was a.

Rubber stamp for her throughout the entire proceeding.

And between Tish James and the judge, they allowed her to put on the stand experts who came up with an algorithm to figure out what the fraud.

Was, because they didn't have any victims who would come in and say, yeah, I lost X amount of money.

And the whole thing, I thought, was preposterous to the point. It was so arbitrary that in the lawsuit she asked for 250 million in damages. I believe by the time you got to the end of the case where she had proved no fraud, she said, on second thought, it's 370 million. And by the time the interest and everything else kicked in, it was half a billion for nonsense.

[Coleman Hughes]

And that's why was the idea that the bank had suffered half a half a billion in damages correct?

[Andy McCarthy]

It was.

The idea was like the banks and the insurance companies collectively, the theory was that if Trump had accurately represented the.

Valuations of his assets, they would have.

Charged different interest rates and therefore. But there was no evidence that they actually would have changed the structure of the transactions if Trump had put different.

Valuations on his personal financial statements.

[Coleman Hughes]

Isn't it, isn't it more likely, given how savvy they are, that they just said, okay, yeah, he's inflating the value of this, but we have an idea of what it's worth and we're going to give him the interest rate that we can both agree to and. But we're not going to fight him on. We're not going to make him change the paperwork. How does that benefit us?

[Andy McCarthy]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And that's why it doesn't make sense to, to take a statute that doesn't.

Apply to that situation and make it the barometer of how you judge this one.

So I think that was a complete nonsense case.

And it's not surprising that the Court of Appeals, the first Court of Appeals, which is the Appellate Division in New York, threw out the award. They've so far, Trump is going to appeal this part of it. They've so far left the judgment in place that, that he is liable for fraud, but they threw out the damages. So that's the main thing.

[Coleman Hughes]

Now, can I say one more thing about this before you go on to the cases that may be more legitimate? It's especially rich that they took this line with Trump when you just had a recent example of a public figure, namely the co founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, who had Raised all of this money, something, you know, like 70, 70 million in a year.

[Andy McCarthy]

Right.

[Coleman Hughes]

And then according to New York magazine, who did some very rigorous journalism on this, bought a $6 million house with those funds, secretly had parties in that house, spent $70,000 on private rent, private jet rentals, chartered flights, you know, paid a million dollars to her brother, a million dollars to her baby daddy for doing nothing. You know, paid a. Paid her baby daddy a hundred thousand over a hundred thousand dollars to host a Zoom event. All this stuff, some of which she is admitted to, which would seem a classic case. I don't know, I don't know the California state law or how, how the law applies here, but it would seem a classic case where each of US that donated 20 bucks to BLM Global Network Fund doesn't have an incentive to bring a case. But this is a case where an AG would fight on all, all our behalfs and they did nothing with it.

[Andy McCarthy]

Yeah, that's exactly right. And the problem is it's too easy to say, well, you know who Colors is and you know who Trump is. And then you can figure out why a Democratic attorney general or district attorney would bring the case against one and not the other.

And the problem with it is not so much the injustice that's done in.

Any one case, but I mean, this is really a bottom line sum up of lawfare in a way. But.

You know, a flourishing free society.

Depends on a valid justice system. And you can't have that without.

People.

Believing that aspirationally, at the very least. And on a case by case basis where the rubber meets the road, the law is applied fairly regardless of who the accused is. And if we lose that, if we.

Lose equal protection under the law, then.

We lose one of the bedrocks of the system. And if we lose the system, we can't.

You cannot have a flourishing free society.

Without a judicial system that works. And you can't have one that works unless it's got credibility with the public.

[Coleman Hughes]

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Okay, so take me to the other prosecutions of Trump. Were they all lawfare or were some of them legitimate?

[Andy McCarthy]

Well, I think the brag, the Bragg prosecution's flat out lawfare. The Bragg case was atrocious, essentially. Trump reimburses his lawyer for paying hush money to a porn star who credibly.

Alleges to have had a fling with Trump about 10 years before he ran for president. And then she demanded to be paid. As it got closer to the election, Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen pays her $130,000.

And Trump reimburses Cohen through the Trump.

Organization in monthly payments throughout 2017. Bragg alleges that the way that the Trump Organization booked those payments were business records, misrepresentations, which is a misdemeanor in New York, that especially on the Bragg's non prosecution policies, would never even be. They wouldn't even think about charging a case like that against the ordinary.

They generally don't do much with misdemeanors.

To begin with, but that kind of misdemeanor is not going to be prosecuted.

But because it was Trump, Bragg not only charged it as a felony.

I'll get to why in a second.

But he decided to treat every single piece of paper, the invoice, the check and the book entry as a separate felony. So he took one misdemeanor transaction, which.

Is a, you know, up to one.

Year in prison, and, and he turned it into 34 felonies, four years in prison each. So Trump, I think New York sort of caps sentences at about 20 years.

But otherwise, statutorily, Trump is looking at something in the neighborhood of like a century and a quarter in prison over this thing.

I mean, it's, and the other thing.

[Coleman Hughes]

That'S preposterous for paying a porn star that was extorting him out of his pretty much money.

[Andy McCarthy]

Pretty, yeah. And you know, the, the misdemeanor is a two year count. So these transactions, I'm sorry, a two year statute of limitations. So these transactions happen in 2017. The, the statute should have run because.

Trump gets indicted in 2023.

So by turning it into a felony, Brad gets himself under a different statute.

Of limitations that he can just barely squeeze the case in under.

And the theory of it's being a felony is that Trump misrepresented his records, his business records, in order to conceal the commission of another crime. And Bragg doesn't say in the indictment what the other crime is, and he's cagey throughout about what the other crime is. The reason for that is essentially the other crime that he accused Trump of committing was a federal campaign finance violation. Bragg doesn't have jurisdiction to enforce the federal campaign finance laws. And the two entities in the federal government that do have that jurisdiction, the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

Had investigated this and decided that it.

Wasn'T technically a campaign expenditure.

So they didn't take any action.

So the whole thing was ridiculous. And there's an, there's an unseen kind of dog that didn't bark element to it, because if any other state prosecutor had tried to enforce federal election law, particularly in a case that the Justice.

Department had investigated and tried not and.

Decided not to bring, the Biden Justice Department would have gone nuclear here. They didn't make a peep, they didn't.

Protest because it was Trump.

So I think that case was awful.

And it will be thrown out on appeal eventually. It's got, it's got, you know, we.

Could spend hours on how many legal problems there are with the case. So I think that's, that's sheer lawfare. Now, the other two cases you asked me about, the Biden, the Biden Justice.

Department cases that they brought in, Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate.

Those are investigations of serious misconduct. There are significant issues about whether it's prosecutable misconduct, but there's no doubt that it's serious misconduct. And it would have been a legitimate basis, not only would have been a legitimate basis for any prosecutor's office to look into it, but it would have been irresponsible not to look into it. So the first case and the one they really wanted to get to trial.

Was the so called January 6th case.

Which is really about Trump's stop the steal bogus claims that the 2020 election.

Was stolen, which culminates in the Capitol riot.

That's serious misconduct. The problem in our system is that it's serious misconduct, which involves Trump's exercise.

Of his executive power.

And in our system, the main check on abuses of power by the president.

Is Congress, not prosecution in the courts, which is why there was this long litigation over immunity. And the Supreme Court finally, in July of 2024, decided that Trump had absolute.

Immunity for actions that were what they.

Called in the core of his executive authority, and at least presumptive immunity, but possibly even more than that, with respect.

To anything that is a legitimate activity.

In terms of the ambit of his executive power. And.

I need to be clear about this. What I mean by that is not that the president's action is is good or that it's not an abuse of power. When I say legitimate, what I mean is the president has legitimate authority, say.

To issue a pardon if he issues.

A pardon because the person he's pardoning is a political crony. That's an abuse of power. But you can't second guess it because the president is given legitimate pardon power by the Constitution. So it's not something that you can.

Base a criminal prosecution on.

And the problem with the January 6th case is it was the effort by the Biden Justice Department to bring into the criminal justice system and correct what they regarded, and I think rightly in.

This, about this, what they regarded as.

The failure of Congress to impeach, remove.

And disqualify Trump on account of the Stop the Steal fiasco that led up to the Capitol riot.

And they also tried to do. The reason I there's lawfare elements to it is it's really Congress's responsibility. You can't do this in a case like this in the criminal system. It's too complicated given what the immunity issues are. But there's also Justice Department guidelines that say prosecutors can never take into account the election calendar. And what Smith was pushing very hard for was, was to get this case to trial in advance of the 2024 election.

Cause they hoped it would be a big, basically a big campaign ad for Democrats.

It's not to say that, like there might not be. Maybe there's a few things in there that you could eke out criminal charges on, but prosecutors are never supposed to.

Bring charges based on the calendar.

[Coleman Hughes]

Can I ask you about that? Because isn't it also true that there's a less formal rule that there's a six period before an election where you're not supposed to bring charges?

[Andy McCarthy]

So it's 60 days.

And it's, it's an unwritten rule which, you know, probably tells you what you need to know about it.

It's anything that's not written.

Remember what we talked about before is why personnel is more important than trying to write these rules.

There is an unwritten rule in the Justice Department that you should never take overt criminal investigative action with respect to.

A candidate in the last two months before an election.

I've never been a fan of even the unwritten rule because it seems to me that if you don't bring a case that deserves to be brought and that you would bring in other circumstances just because the person is running for office. And that's just as bad as taking a case that shouldn't be brought and tarring the person during the campaign. So I think you really, this is the kind of thing that needs to.

Be a judgment call, case by case.

But there is such a, there is.

This, There is this 60 day standard that the Justice Department at least tries to go by where it's not that.

You can't do anything in a case.

But you're not supposed to take overt investigative steps.

So there's a lot of things prosecutors.

And agents do that are covert. Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret. You know, some scanning of records is done with investigative secrecy. There's a lot of things that are done secretly. And then there are overt activities like you bring an indictment, which is obviously.

For all the world to see. So that's the kind of stuff you're.

Supposed to, to stay away from in the last two months.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay. And so, so both of those prosecutions were, were, were serious. There is, though, on the classified documents, one which we haven't talked about yet, this was, there's no doubt, I mean, the way that the, the Espionage act is written, there's just no doubt that they had him dead to rights on, on that issue. I, I think I'm, tell me if you think I'm wrong. But there's also, inconveniently just the example of, of Hillary Clinton's emails, which you can almost go down the list and check what she did in terms of when the emails were subpoenaed, when they were deleted, and by the plain language of the Espionage act, she could have been prosecuted for that. And as you've pointed out many times on, on your podcast, the McCarthy Report, which I highly recommend, the language that James Comey used in condemning Hillary Clinton was almost synonymous. He basically said she was negligent or she was, he used like a synonym of the words in the statute and then recommended that she not be prosecuted. So even though it's clear that that was a serious violation, well, it's very easy for a Trump supporter or a Republican to say, well, why wasn't it a serious violation when Hillary did the same thing?

[Andy McCarthy]

Right.

[Coleman Hughes]

And I thought they were always right about that argument. And then you get into this philosophical issue of, okay, well, should we balance the scales by not prosecuting in reverse, or should we insist that this is an important law and just even if there's been unfairness in the past, you've got to start, restart the race at some point, right?

[Andy McCarthy]

The Hillary example is a great example, because I thought the main failing of.

Jack Smith's Mar A Lago documents case against Trump was the fact that he grossly overcharged it. He.

Once you bring one classified documents felony charge in a case, and he brought like three dozen in that indictment, but once you bring just one, then your.

Prosecution is in the ambit of the Classified Information Procedures act.

And the, the, it takes forever to get the case to trial.

And he was trying to push to get the case to trial before the election, which was, which was nuts.

The Classified Information Procedures act requires that basically you have to litigate. It's almost like a pretrial trial of.

The trial in the sense that the.

Judge has to make a ruling not.

Only on what the government wants to.

Prove, but what the defense wants to.

Prove in the way of classified information.

She's got to make a decision about what's admissible, and then the Justice Department.

Has to decide with the intelligence community whether that information can be made public. And if it can't be, they have to propose alternatives.

It just takes forever, even if it's one charge.

And this was, of course, 36 charges.

I always thought what Smith should have done with this case, and I've said this a bunch of times, the, the real thing that I think people could have wrapped their brains around, Trump made.

All these claims about how he had the power to declassify information and, and all that jazz, which muddies the waters.

The important thing here is in June of, I think it was 20, 23, Trump gets a grand jury subpoena telling him to turn over all of the.

Documents that have classified markings on them.

And that's important that it's worded that.

Way, because the subpoena didn't say turn.

Over all the classified documents, which would.

Allow Trump to argue, well, they're not classified because I declassified them.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Andy McCarthy]

The subpoena says any documents with physical.

Classified markings on them.

So that means whether they're classified or not, whether he thinks he declassified them or not, he's got to turn them over.

Right.

So the evidence is that he gives, he gives some of them to the.

FBI and represents to them through his.

Lawyers that that's the whole bunch that he's got. And in the meantime, he's got over.

100 still at Mar A Lago, which is what they find in the search.

So I always thought with that case, if you would just put all the classified documents to the side don't charge espionage accounts and just make it a conspiracy or a scheme to obstruct a grand jury investigation. They could have gotten it to trial.

And it would have been a very strong case. But I think because of the way that Smith indicted it and he had this propensity to overcharge everything that he undid his own effort to try to get the case to trial.

But I do think it's also a lawfare exercise in the sense that in a normal environment with very complicated cases like that, you would have. You would be hard pressed to get.

One of them to trial prior to, say, October of 2024, given the. The timing of the indictments.

These prosecutors expected Trump to try four cases prior to the 2024 election under circumstances where the cases, many of them, were hundreds of miles apart, requiring him to be at different courtrooms for preliminary proceedings at the same time, which was, of course, impossible. And unlike a civil proceeding where it's up to the defendant whether he shows up for the trial or not, in a criminal proceeding, the defendant has to be present. So the plan by these prosecutors was to try Trump like rat tat tat in these cases that were going to take between a month and three months to try and keep him chained to courtrooms rather than campaigning while they use the publicity of the bad conduct that would come out of the case to.

Their advantage in the election.

So even to the extent that I think the Mar A Lago case and the January 6th case were worthy of being investigated and perhaps worthy of being.

Prosecuted, certainly in the case of the.

Mar A Lago case, the idea that you would scheme using the election calendar, which a prosecutor's not even supposed to look at, and have a plan to chain this guy to courtrooms for the entirety of the run up to the election was itself not only a crass exhibition of lawfare, but it was also, to my mind, a profound due process violation, because he's entitled to prepare his defense, and there's no. No accused who could conceivably prepare an adequate defense, meaning investigate the case and prepare your defense in the time that they gave him to, to, you know, the anticipation that these cases would all be tried before the election.

[Coleman Hughes]

Now, I remember I was commentating at CNN during this whole period, and if memory serves, you know, we would be constantly covering the new poll of the week about, you know, DeSantis. How well is DeSantis doing? How well is Nikki Haley doing? How well is Trump doing? This is before it was obvious that Trump would secure the nomination now, in my memory, Trump was not clearly leading or not even necessarily leading at all until the prosecution started coming. Now, there's obvious potential for correlation without causation there, but in my recollection, Desantis was considered, if not the front runner, then, then, then neck and neck with Trump until prosecution one, prosecution two, prosecute. And then you see Trump soar ahead in the polls as the party unites behind what they consider to be a victim of malicious prosecutions. In your opinion, is this what happened? Is this the story of how Trump secured the nomination?

[Andy McCarthy]

I don't think that there's any doubt. If you look at, if you graft it out, I wanna say April, early April was Bragg's indictment. When Bragg's indictment is announced, Trump has.

A surge and he never goes backwards. It's never a race again.

And that's the case for obvious reasons, as you say, that the party backed him and that includes the other candidates. If they wanted to be viable candidates.

They needed to go with the flow, which was that the base was very upset about these cases against Trump.

The other thing it did, I think, is it denied them any oxygen in their own right because the conversation became, they were constantly being asked, what do you think about these cases, about Trump? I mean, everything was about Trump. My own theory about this, for what.

It'S worth, and this is no mystery, I've written this any number of times.

I didn't think Trump had a prayer. I thought the defense, I think Lawfare is reprehensible, but just from a utilitarian standpoint, I thought it was a brilliant strategy. And I think from their standpoint, I, I never thought Trump could win the election because I didn't think he could get above 46. And I thought if the Lawfare plan.

Went according to plan and they got him to, to trial in at least one of the important cases, the, you know, the Jack Smith cases, I, I would have been surprised if he had gotten 41, 42, and you can't win with that.

So I thought the Democrats strategy was to use the Lawfare cases to get.

Him nominated because it had exactly the effect that you would have expected that everybody rallied behind Trump and then once he's the candidate, kill him in the election with all of these, because that's when the cases go to trial, right?

And then the audience, when you are.

First doing the law fair cases, is the Republican electorate, because it's only about the, the nomination. By the time the cases went to trial, the audience was going to be the broad electorate where Trump isn't nearly as popular.

So I thought it was a, it was a strategy that I thought was going to work. The fly in the ointment for the, for Democrats, as it turned out, was the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, because the basket that they put their eggs in.

Was Smith's January 6th case. That's the, that was the big McGilla for them. That was the one they really wanted to get to trial.

And because of the way appellate litigation works, once the supreme. Once the appeals courts took jurisdiction of.

That case to review what Judge Chutkan had decided. Judge Chutkan originally decided Trump did not have immunity.

She lost jurisdiction. She wasn't allowed to act on the case. So by the time the Supreme Court rules eight months later, there was no way she could conceive, even if the ruling had gone more in Smith's direction, there was no way they could conceivably have gotten that case to trial. And as a result, what the public knew about Lawfare turned out to be Tish James case and Alvin Bragg's case, which were preposterous. So I think that ended up hurting the Democrats more than it helped them. Whereas I still think if Smith had gotten the Mar A Lago case to trial, if he decided that's the one I'm going to go with, and forget all this classified document stuff, I'm going with the obstruction count, I think he could have gotten that case to trial, and it might have been a very different outcome.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, so let's talk a little bit now about the. The prosecutions that the Trump DOJ is bringing against Trump's enemies. You talked about the, well, I find ridiculous case against James Comey. You can explain exactly what's so ridiculous and ironic about that prosecution. But let's also talk about Letitia James and Adam Schiff. The slingshot has gone back in the other direction. Describe these prosecutions. Are they malicious, are they Lawfare or are they legitimate?

[Andy McCarthy]

No, they're totally Lawfare.

I could probably quickly say about James.

And Schiff that the misunderstanding here, which.

Shouldn'T be a misunderstanding for Trump for.

The reasons that we discussed in connection with his, with the case Tish James.

Brought, there's no doubt in that case that Trump misrepresented a number of his assets.

Right.

But that doesn't mean there was fraud. If you're an investigator. Bill Pulte, who was the guy that Trump put at the, what is it.

The Housing Finance Agency? Who's. He's the one who's digging through all these mortgage records. Right.

And finding Misrepresentations. I don't think he's a, I'm not even sure. I don't think he's a lawyer. I think he's a business guy. But I don't know if he's ever been a lawyer or a prosecutor. But to a experienced investigator, if you find misrepresentations on financial documents, that's the beginning of an investigation. They seem to think this is, this is slam dunk, we got him guilty. You know, and Trump should know better than anyone that that's not how it works. In his financial documents, he claimed his, his Trump Tower apartment was like 30,000 square feet and worth 270 something million dollars.

And in fact, it was worth, it.

Was, it's like less than 11,000 square feet. And the, I think the record comparable.

In New York at that time was around $70 million. I mean, grossly, grossly exaggerated it.

But the bottom line was no one was defrauded. So if you were going to be, if you were going to act with respect to Trump's own case, the way Trump and Pulte are acting now, you would think you had Trump on a slam dunk fraud because he misrepresented his documents. Which is what, that's what, that's what Tish James did. But you know, importantly, as we said before, the criminal prosecutors didn't go near the Trump documents case because they didn't think they could prove fraud. And the same thing is going on here. I think you have profound statute of limitations problems with James and Schiff because the federal, unless you're dealing with particularly serious crimes, the general federal criminal statute.

Of limitations is five years. And most of the stuff they're looking at with respect to Schiff and James is time barred. I mean, it's long time barred.

But the other thing is when you find misrepresentations in documents, again, it's the beginning of the investigation, not the end. And for example, Schiff says, and look.

I'm not a Schiff fan, but it is what it is.

Schiff says, my banks knew that I was a congressman from Burbank, California who lived part of the time in Burbank, California, and part of the time in, I think his place was in, I can't remember, it was Maryland or I think it was Maryland. You know, he didn't misrepresent the bank knew what he was up to. He wasn't claiming that his property on the east coast was a rental house.

Or something he was trying to flip.

Or a business operation. It was a separate home because he had a bicoastal life where he lived in two different places with his family. That's not grist for a fraud case. And in j. In the connection with James, apparently the documents are more complicated than what Pulte has represented. So there are misstatements in some documents, but with respect to the same transactions.

She seems to have stated accurately in other documents that this was not, that this was not that she wasn't.

She didn't have two separate homes that were her principal residence. And there's some storyline that I think.

She was signing as a surety for.

A niece or something like that.

You're not going to charge fraud on something like that.

I mean, it's just, it's highly, highly.

Unlikely without, like, actual fraud victims that.

You'Re going to charge fraud. But look, lawfare, sadly, the people practicing lawfare don't necessarily care whether the person, whether there's actually a case and the person gets convicted. A big objective, I mean, with respect to the way it was practiced against.

Trump, the objective was to make him unelectable. I mean, they also wanted to destroy him financially. They wanted to convict him if they could, but the main thing was to make sure he didn't become president.

And with respect to these people Trump is going after, he wants to put them through the same ringer he went through at the end of the rainbow. Does he care whether these people actually get convicted or not?

I mean, I think he'd like to see them get convicted, but what he mainly wants to do is make them feel the pain that he was put through.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, just a couple final questions for you before I let you go. If you were in charge, if you were, say, Attorney General, what changes would you make to the, the, the structure of the, you know, the, the Department of Justice so that America could get on track, get back to a situation where people trust the, the Department of Justice and end this cycle of toxic lawfare.

[Andy McCarthy]

Well, I would go back to a.

Meat and potatoes standard.

And you wouldn't see any of these cases. I mean, certainly not the, the Comey case we didn't discuss at length. But it's just, I mean, it, it's clear that that's arbitrary. I would go back to the standard that says they don't have immunity. But if it's, it's got to be a serious crime. There's got to be compelling evidence. And the eyeball test ought to be, does the average person look at this and say, if I committed this action, they would prosecute me?

If you can't say that.

And there's any hint that you're only bringing the case because it's a political enemy. If that's a compelling defense, that's a case that you don't want to bring.

And actually, I have to say, I think the Justice Department, for the most part, pre Obama days, had a pretty good track record of adhering to that standard.

I think it began Obama began the politicized prosecutions, not necessarily against political enemies. There was may have been some of that with Menendez, but against targets like the left's favorite targets. And Biden sharpened it to a really, aside from doing the stuff that Obama was doing, he also sharpened it to go right after Trump.

And now Trump, as is his want, is, you know, much more unabashed about.

Doing exactly the same things these other guys are doing, which is why it always looks worse with Trump. But that's because he doesn't care to, to pay the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Right.

I mean, he just, he's very out front.

So I would go back to what I described as Barr's meat and potato standard. I think the other thing I would do if I was Attorney General, that would be an instant change from what we have now is you wouldn't see me on nighttime cable television.

You wouldn't see me speaking to the.

Media about investigations or cases.

I would be disciplining anybody who did.

That because it's utterly unethical and a.

Violation of due process to be talking about people who are, constitutionally speaking, presumed innocent. I was trained that the Justice Department speaks in the court and you don't.

Go public about charges until you're ready to bring them formally in an indictment. Because in our system, that's the moment in time where the accused gets all the rights of the, of the Bill of Rights to defend himself, which means it's a fair fight. This stuff of, you know, going public about cases and having unbelievably, I mean.

Orwell would, would blush at this.

The idea that they have something that's called the D, the weaponization division, which.

We'Re supposed to understand as they're getting.

Rid of the weaponization of law enforcement.

Evidently by prosecuting the President's enemies on the theory that if we don't do it to them, they'll do it to.

Us when they get back in, that stuff has to stop. And I think the best argument for why it has to stop is Trump is. I don't know. He doesn't seem to be able to compute this, but I think Trump is president because of lawfare. I think a lot of moderate, the normal Americans who aren't obsessed with politics, a lot of whom had no use for Trump personally, were very turned off.

By the way he was treated and by the idea that if the Justice.

Department or the progressive prosecutors or whoever, if they could do that to somebody who is politically powerful, a business titan, et cetera, they can do it to.

Anybody, which is frightening to people.

And I would have hoped that Trump would appreciate that his retribution was winning.

And unfortunately, that hasn't been enough for him.

But I think there's a real political opportunity.

I don't know if the Republican Party is structured at the moment for somebody to grasp the nettle on this, but.

There'S a real political opportunity out there for the first person who runs against.

Lawfare and does it convincingly.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. Okay. Andy McCarthy, thank you so much for your time. Like I said before, I highly recommend if you struggle to make sense of all the prosecutions and you only have a little bit of time and you want to get a straight down the middle, no bullshit, balls and strikes analysis of all these things, listen to Andy's podcast. It's called the McCarthy Report. It's really a breath of fresh air, and it is. I'm not sure it has any true competitors in terms of the level of analysis you're going to get. So I'm a big fan. Please keep doing it. Andy, thank you so much for your time.

[Andy McCarthy]

Coleman, thank you so much. This was a pleasure.