Vicky Ward Investigates: The Podcast

Vicky Ward Investigates: The Podcast

By Vicky Ward Investigates

The inside information that gets you behind the headlines

www.vickywardinvestigates.com... more
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Best of Vicky Ward Investigates: The Podcast

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  1. Number 1: What Is Usha Vance Really Thinking?

    The conundrum that is America’s Second Lady Usha Vance keeps cropping up at dinner parties? Who is she really? Is she in heaven or is she in hell? Is she complicit in her situation or appalled by it? First Lady chronicler, Kate Brower just published an excellent Vanity Fair profile on the Second Lady and agreed to go live with me. A Yale liberal in a MAGA world We started with the basic contradictions: Usha Vance voted for Hillary Clinton and was a registered Democrat until 2022. Yet she is now the second most high-profile woman in MAGA land; She’s Hindu, yet she’s married to a man who wrote a bestselling memoir about his conversion to Catholicism and has said, publicly, that he’d like her to convert too. She’s whip-smart and accomplished; she graduated summa-cum-laude from Yale Law School, clerking for Justice John Roberts and worked in corporate law - and yet now she’s given birth to a fourth baby, plays a public supporting role, and talks about children’s books on a podcast. Her mother, Lakshmi Chilukuri, a microbiologist, isn’t just liberal-adjacent — she’s a DEI trailblazer. Dr. Chilukuri created a course at UC San Diego, officially titled “Exploring Issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Relation to Human Biology”. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Chilukuri has not been photographed anywhere near the Trump White House. So….is Usha Vance a long-suffering victim who has been forced into a trad-wife mold thanks to her ambitious husband? Or is it more complicated? According to Kate’s reporting, yes, it’s a lot more complicated. Usha’s Yale Law school friends emphatically say she is not a victim. She’s a detail-oriented meticulous thinker who is as interested in power as her husband and is content, for now at least, with the role she is playing. And yet there are quiet signs of rebellion, indications that she isn’t fully immersed in every aspect of Trump World. Kate dropped one detail in our conversation that didn’t make it into the Vanity Fair piece: Usha’s hairdresser has been urging her for a while to dye the grey streaks in her hair. She won’t. Apparently she’s comfortable in her own skin in a world that rewards exactly the opposite. Speaking of:…. We pivoted to the First Lady, who is facing a different problem — Invisibility. Where is she these days? She can’t hide behind the excuse of looking after Barron any more. And why has Melania’s foster care program working to return Ukrainian children taken by Russia raised only $2 million? And, conversely just how many millions is she raking in from licensing agreements? A LOT…. It’s unprecedented. Enjoy our conversation! Thank you Jeanne Elbe, An Mcgreevy, Robert Jaffee, Shannon Edrie, Natalie Doyle, PhD, and many others for tuning into my live video with Kate Brower! Join me for my next live video in the app. Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vickywardinvestigates.com/subscribe

    42min
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  2. Number 2: Umar Kremlev’s Troubling Back Story

    Hey Everyone, If you want to know why Don Jr. was forced to pay back Umar Kremlev, the Russian “friend of Putin” who paid for two afterparties for Don Jrs’ wedding to Bettina Anderson, you need to watch my live interview with Mikhail Zygar, the Russian journalist and author with the inside track. Here is a link to Mikhail’s fabulous post on Kremlev, which is what spurred me to invite him to do an interview on Thursday. (It was after this, apparently, that Don Jr paid the money back to Kremlev). Quick recap for anyone just catching up. ProPublica reported on September 14 that Kremlev — head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports body financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom — footed hundreds of thousands of dollars in wedding expenses at the couple’s May wedding in the Bahamas. Apparently Kremlev rented one of the private islands where the reception was held and where guests slept, covered the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event, paid through an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai. Kremlev himself was on the roughly 50-person guest list, as part of a group of Russian speakers whose presence puzzled other attendees. (Don Jr had said afterwards that the wedding had been very intimate. Just family and close friends.) Last week Mikhail revealed biographical details about Kremlev that are frankly, stunning. The U.S. coverage has mostly referred to him a “Russian oligarch.” But, according to Mikhail, that’s only the half of it. Kremlev is the “wallet” for Alexei Rubezhnoy, the current head of Putin’s Presidential Security Service — the man Mikhail describes as probably the first person to see Putin each morning and the last to say goodnight, “the most important person in the Kremlin.” Russian security officials aren’t supposed to own businesses. So, Mikhail says, they hold them through proxies. And guess who is Rubezhnoy’s “proxy”? Yes: Kremlev. Kremlev’s empire — a monopoly on Russia’s legal sports-betting market (handed to his company after Putin signed a decree restricting licenses to a single operator), and Rolf, Russia’s largest auto dealership chain, seized from a dissident businessman who’d fled to Vienna after opposing the Crimea annexation — sits, in Mikhail’s telling, in Kremlev’s name but not in his control. “Kremlev is the front,” he said. “Rubezhnoy owns nothing. He cannot do it.” Kremlev was not christened Kremlev. Born Umar Lutfuloev in Serpukhov, outside Moscow, he did two stretches in prison in his early twenties, worked as a boxing promoter, and at 28 changed his surname to Kremlev — a name that, as Mikhail pointed out, conveniently echoes “Kremlin.” He was installed as head of the Russian Boxing Federation by its supervisory board — previously chaired by a past head of Putin’s security service, now chaired by Rubezhnoy — and rose from there. It isn’t known how Kremlev and Don Jr met, but as IBA president, it was Kremlev who first raised questions about boxer Imane Khelif’s sex eligibility at the 2024 Paris Olympics, a controversy later amplified by Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling, and Trump himself. The Trumps’ well-documented boxing and UFC ties may be exactly how a man Mikhail flatly calls “mafia” ended up close enough to Don Jr. to bankroll his wedding weekend. What I still cannot fathom is why Bettina Anderson would post on Instagram “NO CONSPIRACY, NO MYSTERY” and that “friendship doesn’t require a political motive” and that the couple would “never be embarrassed or apologetic” about being grateful for friends from all over the world. With friends like this, as the saying goes, who needs enemies? If Anderson didn’t get the problem of the optics of having this guy pay for her wedding festivities, it seems her father-in-law may have. On Friday, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that “as I understand it, he paid him back” — and a person close to Don Jr. confirmed the repayment to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Congress has not sat on its laurels. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on House Oversight, opened an investigation this week seeking records on Trump Jr.’s relationship with Kremlev and the payments, and Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence, asked FBI Director Kash Patel to examine the matter. Garcia’s framing was blunt: Kremlev, who has been sanctioned by the Ukrainian government, “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the President’s son. What did he get in return? We need answers.” We do indeed. Thank you Heather Le, Don Buckter, Kerry Shaw, Shannon Edrie, Carolynn Saracino, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mikhail Zygar! Join me for my next live video in the app. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vickywardinvestigates.com/subscribe

    49min
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  3. Number 3: Bill Cohan on Leon Black, Jeffrey Epstein And the Improbable Story About Tax Advice Worth $170 Million

    Regular readers know I talk a lot about Leon Black, the billionaire financier who paid Jeffrey Epstein $170 million for “tax advice”. This week, the journalist and author Bill Cohan published Money to Burn, a biography of Black and his firm, Apollo Global Management, so of course I asked Bill to talk about what he’d uncovered with me. The book is a sprawling business bio, but the main topic of our conversation was Black’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which he gets to in the last third. Had Bill got close to understanding exactly why Black paid Epstein $170 million? It’s a question that the House Oversight Committee wants to ask Black - but, as of now, he’s refusing to return to Congress after a previous voluntary hearing was stopped short when the committee asked Black about various NDA’s he has signed with women. He argues that these NDAs - apart from one which he has turned over - had nothing to do with Epstein and are confidential. Right now he’s suing Congress for embarking on a “fishing expedition” and has refused its subpoena to return to sit for more questions. So… What did Bill find out? The bad new is he’s stuck taking Black’s word for what happened, given that Epstein is dead. And two key people - Black’s former tax lawyer Carlyn McCaffrey, and, Andy Levander, the author of an independent investigation into Black, did not talk to Bill, presumably because they’d be disbarred if they did. Further, Bill did not wind up seeing the actual tax documents that Black talks about. Black balked at this, apparently, and cited privacy. Bill says he thinks this is understandable. I don’t. My own view of this is that if Black really wants to clear up this controversy, he needs to go the extra mile and reveal everything, “privacy” be damned. The reason we care about the specific “tax advice” for which he paid Epstein an astronomical amount, is not because we are prurient. It’s because Epstein could not have pulled off his ghastly criminal enterprise without the hundreds of millions of dollars he had behind him and Black is one of the two known chief sources of this money; Leslie Wexner is the other. (Bill mentions in our interview that the financier Glenn Dubin also contributed to Epstein’s piggy bank. True. But not at the same scale as Black and Wexner.) Black and Wexner trusted Epstein sufficiently that they each handed him well north of $100 million for whatever it is he was doing for them. Black admits to Bill he wasn’t even paying attention to exactly how much he was paying Epstein for his services and was shocked to discover the full amount. I mean, wow. So, here’s what’s in the book about the improbably gargantuan fee for “tax advice”: According to Black, his original high-priced trust-and-estate attorney at the blue-chip law firm of Weil Gotshal - a woman named “Carlyn McCaffrey” - who now works at another reputable law firm, McDermott, Will and Schulte LLP, - allegedly botched something in documents, exposing Black to a potential $2 billion tax liability. Bill writes: When he [Black] confronted McCaffrey, he said, at first she denied that there was a potential problem and then conceded there was “a terrible mistake” made that could only be rectified by taking an action explicitly prevented by the documents that McCaffrey had drafted. Right there, I have a major problem with this version of events. How many top lawyers say to their clients that, yes, they have made a “terrible mistake” and its going to cost the client $2 billion? In many years of reporting about finance, I have never heard of a conversation like this. It doesn’t just sound unlikely. It sounds preposterous. It’s a lawsuit to end all lawsuits the moment the words are uttered. Because, if a law firm - especially one as well-known as Weil Gotshal - botches something and makes a $2 billion mistake for a client, they are, of course, on the hook to pay that money! That’s why they have insurance! (I phoned around my lawyer friends at top firms to get their take on this..and their off-the-cuff reaction is, yes, of course, they are on the hook, and, of course, that’s why law firms have insurance. And, yes, this story sounds like a fairytale. But without looking at the documents or speaking to McCaffrey, it’s impossible to give a definitive verdict.) Next, according to Black (and Bill), not only could Weil Gotshal not fix the “terrible mistake,” nor could lawyers at Paul, Weiss and Sullivan and Cromwell. Hmm. Again, my lawyer friends just do not buy this. One of my sources says “almost everything in tax law is reversible”. But, since Bill did not see the actual documents, he and we are left depending on Black’s word. So — as the story goes — Black turned to Epstein, who wasn’t a lawyer or an accountant, and had not even graduated college - but who had nonetheless positioned himself to Black as an expert on family offices and tax structuring and was so trusted by Back that he’d even put him on the board of his family foundation. (This, despite the fact that, per Bill, Elliot “Skip” Stein - Black’s friend who had first introduced Epstein to Black suspected that Epstein’s personal wealth in the early 1990s was mostly stolen from European families who had illegally laundered their money into the US.) Anyhoo…Epstein, according to Black, found a workaround - and Black then had Epstein’s ideas vetted by major law firms, which claimed they worked. Bill says he spoke with lawyers at these law firms - and Black’s story as far as he can tell checks out. According to Bill, once Epstein had proved himself with the tax issue, he wheedled his way into giving tax advice on Black’s purchase of jets, art, yachts, etcetera. It was money Black says he didn’t even realize he’d spent, until investigators dug it out for an independent report after Epstein’s death. Until he read it in the report, he thought he’d paid Epstein a mere $75 million or so. Bill says he pushed Black on this: And I said, oh, come on, Leon. That’s crazy. Yes, I know you think that’s crazy, Bill, but I own 93 million Apollo shares. If the stock goes up $1, that’s $93 million. If it goes up $1.50, that’s $150 million. So that’s, you know, I didn’t think about it. When you think about this exchange, it’s no wonder that many people believe the pitchforks are coming. It also partly explains why Leon Black garners zero sympathy for his protestations that he knew nothing of Epstein’s sex crimes and is therefore being unfairly hounded over this. The guy clearly neither knows nor cares how a statement like this comes across in the midst of an affordability crisis. Bill Cohan is a former investment banker and one of the very best financial journalists operating today. He’s also a friend. Which is why I wanted to talk to him about his book, which is fabulously reported and engagingly written. But I was struck reading it, at how the culture has changed dramatically. Twenty years ago there was a mass appetite for biographies like this one. In 2010 my first book, The Devil’s Casino, was about Lehman Brothers and the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, we all wanted to know what drove the Kings and Queens of Wall street, what were the characteristics behind their material success - and what caused their failures - and that of the financial system. Today, I think readers’ appetites have altered. Mine certainly has. Other than trying to understand the Epstein piece of it, I don’t care about Leon Black or how he made his money. I think that in the main we are no longer intrigued by self-made billionaires unless their wealth is created at the cutting edge of AI or industries that directly impact or alter the world we live in; in fact I’d go so far as to say we now abhor the billionaire class unless we see them using their vast wealth to improve other people’s lives in the vein of Mike Bloomberg - or even Black’s one time boss, the rehabilitated Mike Milken. My suggestion to Black (not that he’s likely to take it): If it’s as easy for him to make money as he tells Bill Cohan, why doesn’t he stop whining about being treated unfairly and repeating that he is shocked and horrified by Epstein’s crimes - and instead set up a charity to protect women and girls against sex trafficking? Not as part of an NDA settlement, or to get himself out of a congressional hearing - but just because he can afford to, and it’s the right thing to do? That, at least, would be a story I’d be interested to read. Thank you Heather Le, Jeanne Elbe, Deborah J., Marjory Button, Joanna in AZ, and many others for tuning into my live video with william cohan! Join me for my next live video in the app. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vickywardinvestigates.com/subscribe

    48min
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  4. Number 4: Live with Vicky Ward Investigates

    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vickywardinvestigates.com/subscribe

    46min
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  5. Number 5: Live with Vicky Ward Investigates

    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vickywardinvestigates.com/subscribe

    44min
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The podcast currently has 128 episodes available.