New at The Dispatch: My Interview with Bill Browder

He wrote the law Biden is using to sanction Vladimir Putin. Now he tells us what Biden should do next.

Above: Bill Browder. Image courtesy of the Hudson Institute

This morning I have a post up at The Dispatch which begins in this way:

On Saturday morning, I spoke with Bill Browder, the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, which President Biden has used to sanction Vladimir Putin and several of the oligarchs who hold his wealth in trust. In Browder’s essential book Red Notice, Browder tells a compelling tale of how he and Sergei Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million tax fraud perpetrated by Putin’s cronies, and how Magnitsky's murder in a Russian prison at the hands of Putin's thugs prompted Browder to become the force behind the Magnitsky Act. Browder has devoted his life to exposing the corruption and human rights abuses perpetrated by Putin's Russia.

In this interview, Browder spoke to me about how he thinks Magnitsky would react to the unfolding Ukraine crisis, the strengths and deficiencies of the sanctions imposed on Putin and his oligarch trustees thus far, what President Biden should do next, the importance of disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT payment network, whether the energy sector should be included in future sanctions, how he feels about the possibility that Donald Trump could again be elected president of the United States, and many other topics.

This is my second piece for The Dispatch. My first one was published in October 2020 and titled Donald Trump Turned Me Into a Mugwump—a history lesson about the candidacy of James G. Blaine in 1884, and what it told us about whether to vote for Donald Trump in 2020. (My answer was no.)

You can access today’s post here. Here is an excerpt to whet your appetite:

Is there anything else that you think President Biden should be doing to respond?

I would say that he’s actually done a pretty good job. It’s taken a little while to get to this place, but I would argue that we started with—the first sanctions announcement was, like, sanctioning anybody who did business in the Donbas [laughs]. I would have given them a two out of 10 on that. Then they came up with a pretty good list of going after Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank and various oil companies and a few oligarchs and I would have given them an eight out of 10 at that point. And then when they’ve sanctioned Vladimir Putin, they’re up to a nine out of 10. And if they were to sanction the oligarchs and remove Russia from SWIFT, that’s a 10 out of 10.

I also asked Browder how he felt when he learned in 2018 that Putin had personally asked Donald Trump to hand him over to Putin—a suggestion that Trump called an “incredible offer”—and how he felt this week watching video of Trump praising Putin as a genius for his invasion of Ukraine. In a sane world, Browder’s answer would be a wake-up call for anyone contemplating the horrific possibility of a Trump presidential run in 2024.

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas for my next newsletter, which will be delivered to the paid subscribers. For one topic, I am thinking of doing a backgrounder on Vladimir Putin. I’ve written a lot about Putin over the years, and let’s just say he has never fooled me. Another possible topic is the issue of whether Ketanji Brown Jackson would be required to recuse herself from next term’s consideration of the lawsuit alleging that Harvard discriminates against Asian applicants. The reason for her possible recusal is her service on the Harvard Board of Overseers. I’m leaning a little towards the latter topic, but if you have thoughts as to which one topic I should tackle next, I’d love to hear from you.

If you’re not a paid subscriber, I’ve added a seven-day free trial option. You can poke around the archives and have a look at over 30 posts I have written for paid subscribers, including a couple of podcasts. Kick the tires, check it out — and if you like what you see, you’ll have access to the upcoming post, whatever the topic may be. And regardless, check out the Browder interview at The Dispatch. I think you’ll like it.