“If I Could Stop Sleeping I Would”

Yesterday’s live video chat with Jessica Reed Kraus was personal. We talked about what it’s like to be working moms of sons. She has four. I have two.

Jess wrote at the weekend that one of her sons had a bad accident, when a car hit him on the moped he was riding and he flipped into the air before falling on the tarmac, where he convulsed. Hours later, in the hospital, it would emerge he was, miraculously, unharmed, but not before Jess and the brother who witnessed it had feared the worst.

I know exactly what she must have felt.

When something like that happens to our kids, it stops us in our tracks and makes us question if we are doing the right thing, going at breakneck speed, following the news, making choices everyday that take us out of the family orbit and into a lane that is exhilarating, fascinating, addictive, but also, one could make the case, selfish.

Jess works harder than anyone else I know. And, like me, she loves what she does professionally. She says in our conversation that she wishes she didn’t need to take time out to sleep!! (I, on the other hand, love my sleep!)

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Putin Believes Trump Will Be Back

Mikhail Zygar never ceases to astonish me with his reporting on the Kremlin and analysis of the war in Ukraine.

The Russian journalist and author or The Last Pioneer newsletter told me earlier that Putin likely won’t be disappointed by Trump’s recent disparaging remarks about being disappointed in him and his failure to show up for peace talks, nor his claim on Truth Social that Kyiv can reclaim its lost territory in the war.

As proof, Mikhail quoted a post on Telegram by former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, mocking Trump’s “alternate reality”.

Medvedev’s post concludes about Trump: “I have no doubt that he’ll make another U-turn. He always does. He’ll probably ask the green pianist sign the capitulation in a couple of days. Or maybe fly to Mars with Musk, freshly forgiven. Or do something else very important—something that just might earn him a Nobel Prize.”

Mikhail points out – not for the first time – that Putin doesn’t need to win the war, to accomplish victory; he just needs it to keep going.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Could President Trump Have Vetoed Rupert Murdoch’s Attendance At The Banquet?

Here’s why it’s helpful to have the encyclopedic Hugo Vickers on hand to explain why Trump’s second State visit to the UK is so remarkable.

He explains:

The visit originated in an unusually performative moment when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer handed an invitation from King Charles to Trump in the Oval Office to diffuse tensions around Ukraine.
It has carried on in the made-for-TV vein. Instead of arriving by car, as is the norm, the Trumps descended from a helicopter into Windsor Great Park and then got into a carriage procession, that was only visible to a TV audience, for security reasons.
Wednesday is for pageantry, which appeals to Trump; Thursday is for politics, which could be thornier.
Inside Windsor Castle, Trump is likely sleeping in the same bedroom that the late Queen once gave to Ronald and Nancy Reagan. In order to make Reagan feel comfortable, she took the trouble of installing a shower – which is more hassle than you might imagine in a British castle.
The people who projected a photo of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein onto Windsor Castle have been arrested. Hugo thinks they probably got the idea from a more benign Christmas scene that was projected there during the holidays.
Trump will have been completely insulated from scenes of the protest in London.
We discuss the significance of both the slimmed-down monarchy and the slimmed-down Trump family on this visit.
What was the significance of Rupert Murdoch’s attendance at the banquet? Could Trump have vetoed him, given his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal? If he didn’t, why not? Is it possible a truce of sorts was brokered over canapes?
It was surprising to Hugo, that King Charles mentioned Ukraine in his toast. The King is not supposed to be political. But Charles has gone off-piste before.
Hugo is glad that Prince Harry and his father saw each other last week. Could the Prince be thinking of sending his children to school in the UK?
Hugo and I take opposite sides of a bet on that one.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Epstein’s Birthday Book Triggers Difficult Memories

I spent Tuesday reading and re-reading Epstein’s birthday book.

Yes, as others have pointed out the whole package is misogynistic and lewd, and it beggars belief that the alleged Trump artwork, is not by Trump.

But it’s the jokes about my 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein by Alan Dershowitz and Leon Black – and I suspect a veiled allusion to it by Mort Zuckerman – that are personally triggering.

They bring back memories I have long tried to suppress, about a truly hideous time in my life, when I worked night and day to get to the bottom of something I could sense was evil, only to get outmaneuvered by Epstein, who was supported, it turns out, by a cabal of guys, who joked about my efforts to expose him and his crimes.

The pages took me back to a wintry morning in early 2003 when I decided to take a cab uptown to the hospital because I hadn’t been able to sleep. I felt a throbbing pain in my lower back, and I felt unwell in general. But I’d felt so unwell in general in this pregnancy, stressed and overwrought for months, mostly because of harassment and threats from Jeffrey Epstein, that this day didn’t feel much different. My babies were not due for another two and a half months.

But by the time I got to the hospital, I was screaming.

Next thing I knew, I was in a ward, surrounded by an army of doctors and nurses who were shouting at each other. “Do this,” “Do that,” “Someone hold her still. She’s got to get an epidural…”

“Can’t you give me an injection to stop the labor?” I asked someone… “It’s too late,” I was told. “You are fully dilated and I see a head.”

My husband arrived just as someone told me, “We are cutting you now.” He grabbed my hand. I’ve never felt so relieved and afraid at the same time. This couldn’t be happening, I kept thinking. But it was.

I glimpsed Baby A, who looked like a little martian, and then Baby B, who I already knew was way, way too small. Then they were gone. I had no idea where. Seconds later, I threw up and passed out.

When I woke up, I was hooked up to drips, in a small dark room off of the labor ward and I looked straight into the anxious face of my doctor, Robert Sassoon, who had lived too far away to get there in time for the birth.

“Oh My God,” I said to him. “What a fuck up.”

In that moment, I realized two dismal things simultaneously:

I had just given birth in a dramatic and completely horrifying manner at just 30 weeks, to two tiny babies, weighing 2lbs and 3lbs respectively, who now faced an uphill battle to survive. I did not know if they would make it, and, if they did, in what shape.
Jeffrey Epstein had won. He had told me he’d curse my unborn children – and, it now seemed, he had done so successfully. What else might he now do to harm them further?

You are not supposed to feel terrible despair when you give birth. But that’s what I felt.

Read the rest of the article on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Trump’s Reaction to The Epstein Survivors’ Press Conference Was Way Weirder Than You Think

What was Donald Trump thinking when he responded so truculently to a reporter’s question about yesterday’s poignant, powerful and non-political Epstein survivor press conference and called it a “Democrat hoax”?

It’s baffling.

And not just because nothing about yesterday’s proceedings was remotely partisan or political. In fact, I’d posit that it’s hard to think of a more uplifting display of unity on the Capitol steps, even if the impetus behind it stemmed from unfathomable abuse and suffering.

But what’s a far bigger head-scratcher in my mind is that Trump has a personal history – in a good way, as far as I know – with the first Epstein survivor to speak: Anouska De Georgiou.

De Georgiou, 48, is the dazzling, articulate British-born blonde who runs the Kintsugi Foundation, a transitional residential facility in Los Angeles.

Yesterday, she described not only how she suffered abuse from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell for over a decade but how she was then followed, stalked and threatened – even with death – if she ever talked about what happened. Giving birth to her daughter, she said, was what ultimately gave her the courage to turn around and fight.

Yesterday marked the first time that De Georgiou has said publicly that she has “testified’. I’ve been given permission to explain that she was one of the four key witnesses in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial in which she testified under the pseudonym, Kate. She alluded to this yesterday, because she has very good reason, given recent events:

Read the rest of the article on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Joy Ann Reid Responds to MAGA’s Rage, Tears, and Hysteria After She Called Out Right-wing Mediocracy

Thank you Zev Shalev, Ellie Leonard, Cathy R. Payne, Pamela, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali and Joy-Ann Reid! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Watch the whole conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Should Vanity Fair Put Melania Trump On The Cover?

Hey Everyone,

I was thrilled to chat today with new substacker, Kate Brower, the author of many books, including the New York Times bestseller: The Residence (now a major Netflix TV series) and First Women.

We discuss the peculiarity of Melania Trump’s letter to Vladimir Putin; and the possibility that the First Lady is much more influential in this administration than polls suggest. Is she an “accidental feminist?” asks Kate, citing the significance of the fact that Melania broke with tradition and refused Jill Biden’s invitation to tea.

We also get into this President’s micromanaging of the re-design of the Rose Garden and the White House, which is so extensive parts of it won’t be finished by the time his term ends. (Or, perhaps I should say, this term ends, because, as you know, that’s a question).

And, we debate the controversy supposedly raging at Vanity Fair: should the new editor, Mark Guiducci put Melania on the cover? (Some of the staff have reportedly threatened to walk out if he does).

Watch the rest of the conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

“Steve Witkoff is the new Lev Parnas”

Hey Everyone,

Many of you know I have a soft spot for Lev Parnas, whom I met when I was working at CNN in 2019, soon after he’d been arrested for campaign finance violations. It emerged that Trump and a bunch of cronies, including Rudy Giuliani, had told Parnas to go to Ukraine and try to dig up dirt on the Bidens as part of a “shadow diplomacy”. Yet, when Lev was arrested, they suddenly had amnesia about it and hung him out to dry.

“Lev who?” was the party line – until, it emerged that the canny Lev had got photographic and video evidence of being in rooms with “the Big Guy” as he once called Trump. He had recorded a conversation in which he talked about trying to oust the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch as part of the campaign to dig up dirt on the Bidens.

I remember feeling very sorry for Parnas, who is immensely charismatic, as you can see in this video – and who was just as sunny when he was under a lot of pressure.

I remember watching him in court, his pregnant wife Svetlana by his side, as his lawyer tried, unsuccessfully, to get him out of house arrest while on bail. He wound up being sentenced to 20 month in prison. But in all that time, in his many conversations with me, he never lost his sense of humor or his verve for life.

Watch the full conversation and read the full write-up on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Mikhail Zygar: “This Was A Major Win For Putin…”

I was hoping for an upbeat conversation.

I was hoping that Mikhail Zygar, one of the few journalists who understands how Putin thinks, would come bouncing on to our live video chat and tell me that he was hopeful that, like Trump, he could see peace in Ukraine around the corner…

But sadly, no.

His read of the last four days is that Putin’s trip to meet Trump in Alaska brought him exactly what he wants, which is more stalling time so he can continue the forever war.

And, that the European leaders who flew into DC to flank Volodymyr Zelensky in his meeting with Trump, came cynically just for the “photo opp,” to massage Trump’s ego, and, yes, also to bolster Zelensky, but without any expectation that the talks would get anywhere practically.

Further, Mikhail asks: what happens when we get to October? “I am really scared…”

Watch the conversation and read the full write-up on Vicky Ward Investigates.

“Jeffrey Epstein Claimed Putin Was A Client” — I Discuss And Cross-Examine Findings With Former CBS News Producer Zev Shalev On Epstein’s Money And Intelligence Ties.

Hey Everyone,

I was about to write up an account of today’s interview with the host of Narrativ, Zev Shalev, when I saw he’d already done an excellent break-down on his newsletter.

So, with apologies to Zev, I am saving time and copying and pasting his below. But please, do also go to his newsletter, Narrativ, and see the excellent deep dives he’s put together, particularly this one about Robert Maxwell, which spurred me to re-listen to Chasing Ghislaine, my 2020 podcast series about Ghislaine Maxwell, her father, and Epstein. I discovered that certain things leapt out at me this time, that I hadn’t thought much about five years ago:

Here’s Zev’s write-up of our conversation, which you can also watch above:

Read Zev’s write-up and watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.