why my guest today, christo grozev, bases his investigative journalism in digital detective work. he is the lead russian investigator for bellingcat and the cause of cereal embarrassment to the kremlin with his revelations about the poisoning of alexei navalny and other russian military and intelligence operations. he says he follows the facts wherever they lead but what is his motivation? christo grozev, in washington, dc, welcome to hardtalk. thank ou for dc, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having dc, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me dc, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me on dc, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me on hardtalk. l you for having me on hardtalk. it is a pleasure. alexei navalny is famously described you once as just a bulgarian nerd with a laptop. since he said that, you become thejoint winner of an off guard, you are in the international limelight as an investigative journalist academy award. does this all make yourj
could, in the end, be meaningless. according to reporting in politico reinhart carefully reviewed signing off and considers the affidavit to be reliable. judge reinhart also notes that donald trump s legal team has not at this point filed anything, anything at all in the legal battle over the affidavit that is despite their public demands that the affidavit be made public in all of their bluster and extreme rhetoric about a supposed lack of transparency from doj. rhetoric that, of course, has led to a surge in threats against doj and the fbi. team trump s total silence on the issue in court raises even more questions about what politico terms the throw everything against the wall response to the search itself. they write this. trump and his team have not yet settled on a single approach about what may come, in. trump has often used litigation to delay and has loathed to go on offense particularly when he s likely to lose. while it is unclear whether the former president or an
there is an overriding public interest when you talk about government mandated legislation. we talk about government mandated assassinations.- government mandated assassinations. ., ., ., assassinations. how far do you believe the assassinations. how far do you believe the overriding - assassinations. how far do you believe the overriding interest| believe the overriding interest will lay and allow you to take. for example, would you and your team undertake hacking yourselves? team undertake hacking ourselves? t, t, yourselves? no. again, there would be yourselves? no. again, there would be the yourselves? no. again, there would be the exceptional - yourselves? no. again, there| would be the exceptional case when the hack would be on a fake identity email account when this person does not exist, it s a spy. this maybe sort of a borderline case but we would never actively start hacking any personal email acts accounts. hacking any personal email acts accounts- accounts.
get to the point where they i don t know if permit is the right word, but they allow the folks working this case to put the documents together to get them to a judge. the case has to be bulletproof. what does that mean? so i think that the authorization in this case was something that lisa monaco and merrick garland felt compelled to do, and when it came to a matter of national security i think the overriding interest was, yes, they had to have their ducks in a row. yes, they had to be completely sure of each and every one of their facts and the ultimate decision to go forward was one driven less by could a criminal case come out of this and more from their duty to the country, and i can see knowing lisa and