Background Briefing: March 3, 2022
The Limits of Sanctions and Going After Putin’s Enablers Like Trump
We begin with a new round of sanctions against Russian oligarchs and their families announced today by the White House and speak with Dr. Louise Shelley, the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair and a University Professor at George Mason University in the Schar School of Policy and Government where she directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center that she founded. A leading expert on the relationship among terrorism, organized crime and corruption as well as human trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism with a particular focus on the former Soviet Union, she also specializes in illicit financial flows and money laundering and is the author of Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism and Dark Commerce: How a New Illicit Economy is Threatening our Future.
Ukrainian Civilians Will Increasing Become Putin’s Targets
Then we look into the urban warfare facing the Russian invaders and the civilian population of Ukraine who are increasingly Putin’s targets to bomb them out, starve them out and have them flee into neighboring countries via a corridor the Russians will create to make it easier to control what is left of the population while burdening western Europe with a refugee problem. Joining us is Thomas Mockaitis, a Professor of History at DePaul University who has taught counter-terrorism courses for the past 13 years at venues around the world as part of the U.S. Department of Defense Counter-terrorism Fellowship Program. He is the author of 6 books including New’ Terrorism: Myths and Reality, Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat and Iraq and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency. We discuss his article at The Hill, “A Ukrainian insurgency could drain Russia’s resources and will.”
A Criminal Collusion Case is Building Against Trump For Obstructing Government Operations
Then finally we examine the court filing by the January 6 Committee indicating they are building a case of criminal collusion to obstruct the functioning of government between Trump and his lawyer John Eastman in trying to get Vice President Pence to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. Joining us is Harry Litman and we discuss how engaging in criminal activity voids Eastman’s argument of lawyer-client privilege in protecting the documents he is refusing to hand over to the Committee. A former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, Harry is now a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego and the Executive Producer & host of the Talking Feds podcast and a legal affairs columnist at the Los Angeles Times.