Behind The Scenes: What Went Into Reporting The Idaho Four

Hey Everyone,

So, as you will have noted in my live video chat with Adam Klasfeld, the copies of The Idaho Four are now finally in the warehouse! I got my paws on one on Tuesday!

So, in the run-up to publication day on July 14, the marketing begins! You can pre-order the book here.

I won’t stop reporting on the trials and corruption and all the things I usually cover here.

But I will also share with you the behind-the-scenes short videos I’m making for social media about our book on the unfathomable murders of four University of Idaho students, that give you insights into the reporting, writing and other details, including myth-busting, that you won’t get from the text alone.

If you’ve got questions for Jim and me, don’t hesitate to write to either one of us here and we’ll answer you. You can also link to his substack, Hungry Dogs.

He and I are going to be recording a video chat together that you’ll be able to watch the week after next.

Watch the full promo video and read the full text of insights on Vicky Ward Investigates.

“F— you!” Whistleblower Claims Former Trump Attorney Emil Bove Told DOJ To Ignore A Court Order

Hey Everyone,

Adam and I did our live chat a day early, because he’s in Nashville, Tennessee right now for the Kilmar Abrego Garcia hearing and I encourage you all to follow him on All Rise News. He’ll be doing a live zoom with paid subscribers at 7pm CT. There could be a very dramatic moment if Abrego is released by the judge, only to be detained by ICE.

It’s worth paying close attention to what Adam reports directly from the courtroom. A lot of it doesn’t make it into mainstream news coverage: and you’ll have a much better of understanding, of why, for example, the DOJ’s case against Garcia, claiming he is a gang member of MS-13 is so woefully thin.

Meanwhile: we kicked off yesterday, talking about today’s Senate Confirmation Hearing of former Donald Trump criminal defense attorney Emil Bove, who is up for a Federal judgeship and who was quoted by a whistle-blower literally telling the judiciary: “F—k you.”

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Viewers Would Tell Me: “The News Gives Me A Panic Attack”

Thank you Jessica Yellin, the brilliant creator of News Not Noise for last night’s live video chat. As those of you watching know, I knew Jessica a little bit when she was in New York/DC as the Chief White House correspondent for CNN. But I haven’t seen her in over a decade. So it was great to catch up!

All these years later, what an evolution she has effected! In 2013 she left CNN, wrote a satirical novel, Savage News, and then in 2018 she created the wildly successful platform on Instagram that is News Not Noise, that’s also here on substack.

I reached out to Jessica because I wanted to know how she chooses her stories for News Not Noise, and how she then figures out how to report them in a way that is meaningful and not shrill. Whatever she’s doing, it clearly works, because she has nearly 200,000 subscribers here! And that’s separate from her followers on Instagram and You Tube.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

For Whom The Government Trolls! Brad Lander’s Run-In With ICE…And Other Courtroom Dramas

Yesterday, in our weekly conversation about what’s going on in the courts, Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News walked me through yet more of the Trump administration’s unprecedented and sometimes terrifying tests of our legal system, especially around immigration.

Exhibit A is the dramatic arrest of New York mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who, as Adam points out, wields not-a-tremendous amount of power as New York City’s top accountant. But thanks to the aggressive actions of a couple of ICE agents who yanked his neck and then cuffed him in the corridor of a New York immigration court, (claiming he assaulted one of them, but possibly because he was walking out with an immigrant who had just appeared before a judge and whom they wanted to arrest), Lander could become the latest political martyr created by Trump. (Of course, Republicans claim that’s exactly what he wants, given the upcoming mayoral election in which he’s polling third, and that the whole thing was a stunt. Lander was released with no charges after a few hours, but, astonishingly, DHS made sure to troll him on X, writing: No Man Is Above The Law).

Watch the full conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates.

Adam Klasfeld and I Discuss The Trials Of Weinstein, Trump, Combs, Newsom and “Molineux”. Who? Read On…

Watch this week’s legal round-up with Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News.

Today we kicked off with the Harvey Weinstein verdict, which is just in. Sort of. The jury – which has been at loggerheads according to the foreman, arguing things that aren’t supposed to be relevant to the case – has found that Weinstein is guilty on one count of sexual assault; not guilty on another charge of assault; and still hung on the third count of rape. The judge has told them to continue to deliberate.

That that we have a jury that can’t agree on one count, and complaints that jurors are discussing Weinstein’s track record, rather than just the evidence – means that there will be an immediate appeal.

Adam mentions that the term “Molineux evidence” has appeared in the Weinstein transcripts.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates. 

Larry Summers On Trump And Harvard

This morning Larry Summers talked with me about the issues currently facing Harvard internally and externally.

I wanted to get Summer’s opinion because he’s openly critical of the Trump Administration’s authoritarian onslaught against Harvard, but he’s also been openly critical of the slowness of Harvard’s leadership to fight antisemitism on campus.

He and I last talked about Harvard on October 9th 2023, when he was very upset at then Harvard President Claudine Gay and her hypocrisy, as he saw it, by not outright condemning the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas, given that the school’s leadership had been vocal in its condemnation of the murder of George Floyd and on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Silence, in his view wasn’t good enough. There need to be “consistent standards” he says in our conversation.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates. 

The Truth About Trump And The Epstein Files

It’s not the inevitable implosion of the Musk/Trump bromance that’s cathartic, so much as the no-holds-barred manner of it. No one thought these two men were the most balanced, rational people at their best, but the crudeness of the crossfire has surely got to make all of us feel better about one thing: Musk might be the richest man in the world, and Trump the most powerful, and yet I wonder if a lot of us woke up this morning feeling relieved not to be either of them.

At the risk of damping down the fire and fray with a few cool facts, we probably need to address the question of the moment: is there any merit to Elon Musk’s bombastic assertion, made Thursday, that the reason Trump hasn’t released the Epstein files because he’s in them? (By Saturday morning, Musk had deleted his posts on the topic).

Read the rest of the article on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Live with Adam Klasfeld

Hey Everyone,

Here is last night’s conversation with Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News where we bring you up to date with the country’s major courtroom dramas.

We discuss the importance of the latest witnesses in the Sean Combs trial. They include former employees of the music mogul who have corroborated much of the testimony of the chief witness for the prosecution, Cassie Ventura, Comb’s on/off girlfriend for twenty years. This is important because unlike Ventura, who sued Combs civilly, the defense team cannot suggest their testimony is financially motivated. Adam points out that through the web of terrified assistants, including the head of HR, prosecutors are essentially painting a picture of a vast enterprise that is an analogous to organized crime in Goodfellas or The Sopranos.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Live with Adam Klasfeld

Thank you Maureen Drews, BK, KerriFlanagan, Paul kirkpatrick, and many others for tuning into my live video with Adam Klasfeld! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates. 

My Mother

Last night my mother passed away.

She was 84. And she’d been bedridden with dementia for years. She’d declined ever since had a mini stroke at 71, which in itself was flabbergasting, because nobody took greater care of herself than my mother. She exercised; she hardly drank; she took a shelf-full of “supplements” at breakfast. And when she went on vacation she brought All-Bran cereal with her, which both amused and irritated the heck out of my twin sisters and me.

Yes, she was healthy, but we suspected that vanity was the chief propulsion behind all this. She had good reason to be vain. Our mother was extraordinarily beautiful; when she entered a room, people stopped talking and stared. We even stopped talking and stared. I remember thinking one night as I watched her lacquer her hair, and spritz her perfume, that no matter how hard I tried in life – and I am a trier – I would never be able to physically compete with my mother.

Read the rest of my tribute on Vicky Ward Investigates.