Episode 2: Unpacking Trump's legal problems with Joyce Vance

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and welcome to Episode 3 of The love, journalism Show. There are now also two bonus tracks from this interview with former US attorney Joyce Vance available here and here.

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Here’s a secret about all the hard work that went into covering the Robert Mueller beat at Politico. To help decipher every twist in the legal drama I would frequently blast out a single email to a bunch of former federal prosecutors and other legal experts seeking instant commentary and analysis.

My editors and I called it The Bat Signal.

Enter Joyce Vance, a former Obama-era US attorney who frequently responded with simple on-the-record layman explanations that unpacked the confusing legal briefs and other investigative or court-themed drama that might otherwise look or read like a foreign language.

Maybe you’ve seen her on TV? She answers the NBC and MSNBC equivalent of a Bat Signal as one of the network’s legal analysts. She also does a version of this on her own via Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance, a Substack I turn to frequently for updates on all-things-legal-involving-Donald-Trump.

Joyce joined me on Friday morning from her home in Alabama to give The love, journalism Show’s listeners a rundown on where things stand on the many Trump-related cases that can be a bit dizzying to track. We discussed the latest on the Fulton County investigation in Georgia surrounding Trump’s phone call to state officials surrounding the 2020 presidential election and the “mysterious” interplay that is happening between the state probe and the separate federal investigations surrounding Trump now under the command of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

I hope our conversation helps anyone interested in learning about the US legal system and provides some perspective on what may seem like the never-ending Trump show.

There’s more from our chat still to come too. I’ll soon share the heart-warming backstory behind the chicken coop, and subscribers watch out for bonus tracks.