The Back Room with Andy Ostroy

Elie Honig is CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst. He previously worked for 14 years as a federal and state prosecutor. He is also the national bestselling author of two books, “Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department” and “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It”. He writes a weekly column for New York magazine and for Cafe.com, and he hosts tw...

Pat Ryan represents New York's 18th Congressional District. An Ulster County native and West Point graduate, Congressman Ryan served two tours in Iraq. After returning home, he started a small business before being elected Ulster County Executive in 2019. In Congress, Pat serves on the House Armed Services and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees. We discuss the Iran war, Sec Def Pete Hegs...

Tara Setmayer is co-founder of the bipartisan superpac The Seneca Project. She’s a former GOP Communications Director on Capitol Hill and most recently served as a Senior Advisor for The Lincoln Project. She’s a political writer and commentator who’s appeared on MSNOW, CNN and other news outlets, The View, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Her writing has been featured on CNN.com, Bloomberg, The Dail...

Congressman James Walkinshaw represents Virginia’s 11th Congressional District. He serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its Military and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, focusing on protecting the nonpartisan civil service, supporting fair pay for federal employees, and holding the Administration accountable. He also serves on the House Homeland Security Committee and bot...

Olivia Troye spent almost 20 years in national security, working at the Pentagon, the National Counterterrorism Center under President Obama, and the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump term as Counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence. She resigned from the White House in August 2020, and went on to play a pivotal role in the election that year. Over the past decade she...

Mimi Rocah is an attorney who served as District Attorney of Westchester County, NY from 2021-2024. Prior to becoming DA, she served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for nearly 17 years where she prosecuted and oversaw cases involving violent crime, organized crime, human trafficking, sex trafficking, child exploitation, frauds and public corruption. She’s a freq...

Jaclyn “Jackie” Corin is a co-founder and Executive Director of March For Our Lives, a leading youth-led advocacy organization working to end gun violence in the United States. A survivor of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, she helped catalyze one of the largest youth protests in American history and elevate gun violence as a central national issue. In the years since, she has led high...

Isabel Vincent is an award-winning investigative journalist currently working for The New York Post and a critically acclaimed author of seven books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The Independent, Marie Claire, L’Officiel (Paris), and many other international publications. Her new book, RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise, is now on sale. 'Raccoon penis and b...

Josh Turek is running for US Senate in Iowa. He is a four-time Paralympian and two-time gold medalist for Team USA in wheelchair basketball. He’s the first permanently disabled member of the Iowa legislature and the Democrat who represents the reddest district won in 2024. He is now running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Joni Ernst. Josh and I discuss the campaig...

Since 2015 Jonathan A. Greenblatt has served as the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, more commonly knows as the ADL…and is its sixth National Director. He leads all aspects of the world’s leading anti-hate organization…whose mission since its founding in 1913 is to fight the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. In 2022, Jonathan released It Could Happ...

Adrian Fontes was elected in 2022 as Arizona's 21st Secretary of State. He’s a Marine Corps veteran who served from 1992 to 1996. After graduating from law school, he worked as a prosecutor with the Denver District Attorney and then at the Maricopa County Attorney’s office. He later led the International Prosecution Unit at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. He practiced law for 15 years befor...

Co-founder and Board Member of The Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson is a renowned political strategist, infamous award-winning ad-maker and podcast host, writer, speaker, and political commentator on MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, NPR, Real Time with Bill Maher, and various American and international news national outlets. A 30-year veteran of national Republican politics, Rick got his start in the 1988 Presid...

Andrew Goldberg is an Emmy Award-winning investigative producer, has directed 14 prime-time documentary specials for PBS, and both long and short-form segments for CBS Sunday Morning, ABC News, Live From Lincoln Center, NPR and others. His films include The Armenian Genocide, Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence, and The Iranian Americans. His work has appeared on major networks on ev...

Cait Conley is a fourth-generation Hudson Valley native, daughter of a postal worker and a construction worker, a decorated combat veteran and national security expert. And she’s running for the House in NY’s 17th Congressional district. Cait and I discuss her campaign, the June 23 primary, the goal of taking on Republican Mike Lawlor and flipping this seat in November. We also discuss the Iran wa...

Shawn Harris spent 40 years in the military and retired as an Army Brigadier General. He and his wife Karla have five children and four grandchildren. They live in Rockmart, Georgia, where together they run their first-generation grass-fed cattle farm. He's running for Congress in Georgia's 14th district, the seat vacated by Marjorie Taylor Greene. Shawn and I discuss his stellar background, his r...

Elie Honig is CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst. He previously worked for 14 years as a federal and state prosecutor. He is also the national bestselling author of two books, “Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department” and “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It”. He writes a weekly column for New York magazine and for Cafe.com, and he hosts tw...

S.E. is a nationally syndicated columnist, author, podcaster and TV commentator. She hosts Off the Cupp, a podcast which focuses on mental health, and which features interviews with celebrities and newsmakers. She is a columnist at the New York Daily News and has also been published in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Washington Post and many other publications. She is currently a p...

Jess Michaels is a 3x Founder, TEDx speaker, Advocate, and 1991 Jeffrey Epstein survivor who has lived with PTSD for 30+ years. She is founder and CEO of 3Joannes Inc and the #withyoutoo Social Safety App, which guides users to "know what to do when someone says #metoo”. Jess joins me for another critical discussion of the latest developments involving the Epstein files and the survivors' ongoing...

For three decades, Bill Kristol has been a leading participant in American political debates and a widely respected analyst of American political developments. He served in senior positions in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations and as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. He is the founding director of Defending Democracy Together, an organizatio...

Alexis Coe is a presidential historian, a senior fellow at New America, and the American history columnist at the New York Times. She's also the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington and Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis. She frequently appears on CNN, MSNOW, CBS, History, BBC, and PBS, and has been featured in a...

Graham Nash’s incredible career spans over 60 years. He’s a two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, with Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Hollies. He’s a Grammy Award winner and two-time inductee to the Songwriters Hall of Fame—as a solo artist and with CSN. With CSN and CSNY he has written and performed some of the greatest songs ever including “Marrakesh Express,” “Teach Your Children”...

Repeat Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter. And he's back in The Back Room sharing his thoughts on Trump's war of choice in Iran and what happens next. Got somethin' to say?! Email us at BackroomAndy@gmail.com Leave us a message: 845-307-7446 Twitter: @AndyOstroy Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud @ Radio Free...

Vicky Ward is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, podcaster, documentary host and producer, former CNN Senior Reporter, magazine editor at large, entrepreneur, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. She uses multi-media to deliver investigative reporting with a specialty in power, money, and corruption in the United States and abroad. Ward is the author of the bestselling Substack ne...

Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter. And he's back in The Back Room sharing his thoughts on Trump's war of choice in Iran and what happens next. Got somethin' to say?! Email us at BackroomAndy@gmail.com Leave us a message: 845-307-7446 Twitter: @AndyOstroy Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud @ Radio Free Rhinie...

Alex Vindman and his family left the Soviet Union as refugees when he was three years old. He is a retired 21-year U.S. Army combat veteran who also served as a national security expert working for presidents of both parties. He was wounded in Iraq and awarded a Purple Heart. His military service took him from the battlefield to the Pentagon and the White House, where he served as a Director on th...