Background Briefing (5am)

Background Briefing with Ian Masters – May 17, 2023

We begin with what could be the most damaging evidence against Trump emerging from an even more tawdry tabloid source than the porn star Stormy Daniels, in this case lurid details backed up by recorded evidence in Monday’s 70 page lawsuit brought against Rudy Giuliani in a Manhattan court by Noelle Dunphy who served as director of business operations in Giuliani’s law firm where she was expected to provide her Viagra-popping constantly drunk boss with oral sex and other sexual favors based on the promise he would pay her a million dollars a year which he failed to to do. Apparently inspired by the recent E Jean Carroll trial, Ms Dunphy has 23,000 emails of Giuliani’s communications between Trump and his top staff along with his family which Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Atlanta DA will surely find interesting in particular claims that Giuliani sought clients wanting presidential pardons at the going price of $2 million a head, bribes that would be split with Trump. Joining us is Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School and is a contributing editor at Harper’s in legal affairs and national security. He serves on the American branch of the International Law Association, and has represented a variety of journalists and whistleblowers.

Then we get an update on the debt ceiling negotiations today between congressional leaders and President Biden who is cutting short his trip after the G7 Summit in Japan scheduled for Papua New Guinea and Australia to return to Washington on Sunday in the hope a deal will be done ahead of the June first default deadline. Joining us is Thomas Kahn, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency at American University who worked in Congress for 33 years where he served as staff director and chief counsel of the House Budget Committee and played a critical role on a number of budget negotiations including Simpson/Bowles, the Biden talks, the Super Committee, the successful Balanced Budget agreement of 1997 and the enactment of the Affordable Care Act.

Then finally we examine the disappointing results in Sunday’s elections in Turkey since the kleptocratic autocrat whose economic policies have devastated the country still recovering from deadly earthquakes in which 50,000 died in part because of the corruption and cronyism of the Erdogan regime, in any fair race would have been beaten. Joining us is Aslı Bâli, a professor of law at the Yale Law School, incoming president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Previously, she served as founding faculty director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law and was the former director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.