Breaking News From The Courts: Mangione; Maduro; Kelly; Powell; Noem And More

There’s no one who has better insight as to the nitty gritty of the court cases across the country than Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News.

Last night we went through the big cases on the dockets right now.

There’s breaking news in the Luigi Mangione case, which of course, is the topic of my next book with James Patterson: In the Federal case, in which the death penalty is on the line, the Hon. Margaret Garnett changed her mind over the weekend, and now wants to hold a brief evidentiary hearing in the next two weeks about police procedure in Altoona, Pennsylvania (Mangione was arrested in a McDonalds in the town). In her minute order she has said that she just wants one witness from Altoona to explain police procedure when it comes to “securing, safeguarding and inventorying the personal property of a person arrested in a public place”.

A reminder: this is because Mangione’s defense is arguing that the Altoona police illegally searched his backpack in the McDonalds without a warrant, when it was six feet away from him. Further, they argue that the way they inventoried his stuff inside the station was improper, partly because, again minus a warrant, a policewoman opened Mangione’s journal and read some of it.

The most startling thing, though, to me was that at the end of Friday’s court hearing, both legal teams raised the topic of prospective trial dates with Judge Garnett. I had been under the impression that the State trial was going to precede the Federal one, but it seems that State is moving much more slowly.

So, it’s possible we may get a trial in federal court this year, if Judge Garnett takes the death penalty off the table. (That was the issue for Friday’s hearing. The defense is arguing that counts three and four – which is murder through use of a firearm and a firearms offense respectively – should be chucked out because they rely on a federal interstate stalking statue as the predicate, and the defense argues it isn’t applicable here, because Brian Thompson never knew he was being stalked. It’s a very technical argument, that went above the heads of many people in the courtroom.)

If Judge Garnett leaves the death penalty on the line, then we still could have a trial late in the year, or in January. So I am already gearing up to cancel Christmas this year!

Adam, meanwhile has been focused on Sen. Mark Kelly’s lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which Sen. Kelly is asking a judge to block Hegseth’s efforts to strip of his retirement benefits after Kelly took part in a video with five other lawmakers, reminding people not to follow Illegal orders. This was in the wake of Hegseth’s order to a naval captain on a drugs bust to blow survivors out of the water in the Caribbean. Adam says that suit will be heard this week.

Then there’s the back and forth between lawmakers and Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. After the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, many members of Congress showed up to visit ICE facilities over the weekend but were denied access. Noem was pushing back on a court order that expressly required ICE facilities to be open to congressional visits, saying a week’s notice was required. Now rep Joe Neguse of Colorado has filed suit against this – and back to court Noem’s reps go.

And then, there’s the extraordinary video made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell in which he revealed he’s under federal investigation because, in his view, he didn’t set interest rates as low as the President wanted.

All this before we touch on the arraignment of Nicolas Maduro and the legal challenges in that case.

I always learn so much talking with Adam.

There’s so much detail in each of these cases that you don’t get from newspaper reports.

So, if you have the time, please do watch our conversation.

I won’t see you this Wednesday due to unavoidable commitments. But I shall be back next week.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Venezuela Presents A Challenge For Marco Rubio

First: I apologize for my stinking cold.

Second: Joel Rubin who was the legislative affairs liaison to the House for John Kerry, Secretary of State under Obama, John Kerry, really knows his Foreign Policy.

Earlier today he wrote a fabulous substack: a five-point guide for the Trump team to avoid screwing up the next chapter(s) in Venezuela. And that’s what we discuss in our live video chat. Essentially his message is this: the only way to create stability, is to let Venezuela – not us – be the primary beneficiary of its oil; We need to partner with the country’s leadership and law-enforcement to help stop drug-trafficking; we need to help restore democratic governance; we need to build partnerships in the entire region; and we need not to crow while doing any of this…our adversaries are watching.

So, a lot hangs on the shoulders of Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who drove the momentum for Nicolas Maduro’s capture and who is doing the talking with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez.

Given Rubio’s personal history, it’s unlikely he wants to topple an autocracy, just to replace it with another autocracy. But we’ve seen that his boss seems focused on getting the oil, not altering the country’s governance.

So, it looks as if Rubio is going to have manage up at home as well as with Venezuela’s leaders if he wants the toppling of Maduro to make the meaningful difference he surely hoped for. That’s going to be quite the juggling act.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Why What Happened In Venezuela Will Likely Put Pressure On Putin…

Readers of this newsletter and of Mikhail’s The Last Pioneer will know that we have talked about the possibility that the US would put boots on the ground in Venezuela for months.

As Mikhail points out: we weren’t talking rubbish! He was hearing from his sources in Moscow that there was anxiety inside the Kremlin that America was serious in its bid for regime change in Caracas. I was hearing the same thing from US sources who were very close to last night’s military operation. (I reported in depth on Venezuela when I was at CNN in 2019 and 2020 and I have remained fascinated by the politics in and around the country since then).

The reason behind our particular focus: the price of oil and Russia’s dependence on it. As Mikail explains here, Putin is operating on the assumption he can ultimately get the sanctions on Russian oil eased. But if, under American operation, Venezuela’s oil supply – and its reserve – become plentiful, well then, the entire market shifts – and Russian oil becomes much less valuable. (Mikhail points out it is already trading at a steep discount).

He also points out that Putin and the Kremlin have been uncharacteristically silent about the events of last night. Why?

If Russia’s economy is weakened, well, obviously that’s a very big deal for Ukraine….

When we hear what Putin has to say about Maduro’s ousting – we’ll be back with more reporting.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

“What Did Trump Talk To Putin About For Two Hours, Given Putin Doesn’t Want Peace?”

Hey Everyone,

As you’ll hear in this conversation with my friend the Russian journalist-in-exile and fellow substacker Mikhail Zygar, New Year’s Eve is by far the biggest holiday in Russia – a time in which “magic” can happen.

It is sorely needed.

Mikhail and I chatted at lunch time, minutes after President Trump got off the phone from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for their second long conversation in 24 hours.

Between those calls, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and afterwards reportedly said he felt talks had gotten “90 per cent” towards a peace deal.

But just hours later Putin accused Zelensky of orchestrating a drone attack on one of his residences – which Zelensky denied. He accused Putin of making the false claim to deliberately sabotage the peace talks. Meanwhile Russia continued its march into Ukraine territory. And Putin and Trump had another long phone call.

So much for being “90 per cent” of the way towards peace.

Mikhail’s perspective on all this is, as usual, invaluable.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

“The Same People Keep Meeting And Nothing Happens!”

It’s been a while since Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, author of The Last Pioneer, and I caught up.

I’ve been sitting in a courtroom listening to the pre-trial hearings in the case of Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, for what feels like eternity, even though it’s only been three weeks.

The headlines regarding talks with Russia and Ukraine seem to be the same as they were when the hearings began.

Jared Kushner has entered the fray. He and Steve Witkoff will be meeting this weekend with Russian counterparts in Miami. This follows meetings with the Ukrainians; more meetings with Russians; and so on…

It feels a bit like groundhog day – and, according to Mikhail it is! Unless, he says, the US invades Venezuela, which is, reportedly, what Tucker Carlson is either prophesying or threatening…

The price of oil is the one thing that might pressure Putin to do…..something. Otherwise, says Mikhail, he has no incentive to stop the war. The war is the mechanism by which he is able to control his country.

Mikhail also explains that when Putin described the European leaders, Ukraine’s allies as “piggys’ or “little pigs” the insult was worse than might be realized by Westerners.

And he gets into the court case that has got Russians all riled up against the judicial system….

And much, much more!!!

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Adam Klasfeld And I Chew On The Luigi Mangione Pre-Trial Hearings

Thank you, as always to Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News, for a great conversation!

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Take-Aways From The Luigi Mangione Hearings

Hey Everyone,

Apologies for the silence this week. I’ve been busy!

As you know, together with James Patterson, I am writing a book on the murder of United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, who was shot dead in the middle of Manhattan on December 4th last year, allegedly by Luigi Mangione. I’m not going to share any of my exclusive reporting here, obviously, but I will give you my knee-jerk takeaways from the courtroom because what happened there is public.

I was at the kick-off of pre-trial hearings in which Mangione’s defense team is arguing that the contents of Mangione’s backpack (the gun, and the “manifesto” among them) should be inadmissible at trial, because he was locked into conversation with the arresting officers at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, before being read his Miranda rights, and his backpack was searched without a warrant.

Prosecutors are said to be bringing as many as 28 witnesses, which means, if we move at the current pace, these hearings could go on until Christmas.

Last week we saw on video that by the time Mangione was cuffed and brought out to a police car, a staggering total of 14 law enforcement officers had arrived on the scene. Prosecutors are trying to show that this was because the lead arresting officer, Patrolman Joseph Detwiler, had instantly recognized Mangione as the same person whose features were all over the news in the wake of Thompson’s murder, and that Detwiler also knew from (Fox) news that the murder weapon had not been found. In other words, their point is: the Altoona PD doesn’t normally call 14 officers to a scene for a case of a fake id, which is the official reason they were able to detain Mangione.

In court, we are currently watching the scene of the arrest from an assortment of different police bodycams, so while it’s generally fascinating, parts of it are very repetitive.

What this means for me personally, is that a. I will never be able to forget the very unappealing, sterile interior of this particular McDonalds – white tiled walls with a mustard yellow stripe that runs horizontally at the level of Mangione’s head. And b. I keep humming all the kitschy Christmas music that was being piped out while the arrest was going on!

More seriously, my chief thought so far, is this:

Read my chief thoughts so far on Vicky Ward Investigates.

Anand Giridharadas Has Read Through ALL The Epstein Emails

Yesterday, I reached out to the journalist Anand Giridharadas because he wrote a superb guest essay in the New York Times about what the latest batch of Epstein emails tells us about the true nature of the elites who comprise “The Epstein Class”. I recommend everyone read it. (It’s so good, I’ve read it multiple times).

In it, he lays out vividly how Jeffrey Epstein was able to conduct a global orchestra of plutocrats, who cared not a jot that the man who was summoning them to dinner, or to lunch, or to the Middle East, was a convicted sex offender. He shows how these guys (and they were mostly guys) sought Epstein out for contacts, for insider information of any sort, for, in a word, “edge’. And that the person with the greatest “edge” of all was Epstein, the man-in-the-middle, whose poor spelling and grammar, was probably a deliberately manipulative mind-fuck, designed to keep them all beneath him in the shallow hierarchy on this lofty plane.

You can watch our conversation above. And, yes, I’ll take Anand’s compliment: “You’re one of the only people whose name turns up in the Epstein emails in a way that makes you look better rather than worse because they’re worried about you.”

“They’re worried about you….” That’s a phrase I think all investigative journalists want to hear regarding people in power who are hiding nefarious things.

It’s cold comfort, given the hideousness of the crimes Epstein committed over so many years, but if, as it appears, I caused him even a few seconds of angst, then…good.

Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

“For The First Time We Felt People Cared About Us”

Hey Everyone,

I caught up with artist and Epstein survivor, Rina Oh, just back from what turned out to be a momentous trip to Washington DC. Just hours after the survivors gave a stirring press conference on the steps of the Capitol, both the House and Senate voted to release the Epstein files. And, earlier this evening, President Trump signed the bill. It is, as Oh, says a “victory”.

In our interview Oh details what the extraordinary, historic 48 hours was like; she describes how kind various members of the House of Representatives were to the survivors; but, also, how complicated inter-relations between the Epstein survivors sometimes is. This is something I’ve talked about repeatedly. The Epstein story is messier than people would like it to be.

In April I wrote how Oh is suing the estate of Virginia Giuffre over alleged defamation around Giuffre’s response to Oh’s assertion that Giuffre assaulted her in Epstein’s massage room. (Giuffre, you’ll remember, was frank in her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, about the fact that she recruited and abused other women and girls for Epstein. She even forgot about one of them – Carolyn Andriano, who stood up in court at Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial and described what happened to her at Virginia’s hands. Giuffre doesn’t mention Oh in her book).

Andriano died of an overdose in 2023, and Oh says she is making a bronze sculpture in her memory.

In our interview Oh goes back down memory lane, and explains how Epstein dangled money, job security, and even a studio, to help her burgeoning career as an artist, and to keep her coming back to his New York town house, and to his home in Palm Beach. It’s a tale that is, unfortunately, all too familiar, at this point.

She explains the fear she felt when he had an art work picked up at her parents’ home, because he now had her address, and she felt trapped and unable to speak out about what happened for years.

It’s a reminder that we must never forget that the point of releasing the Epstein files, is not for either party to score political points, but to ensure that the institutional power that propped Epstein up for so long, is never enabled again for such a ghastly purpose.

Wacth the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.

SPECIAL REPORT: First Vote To Release The Epstein Files

For those who missed it: watch our live panel discussion around the historic, almost unanimous House vote to release the Epstein files!

Wacth the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.