My guest today is Jamison Firestone, author of RULE OF LIES: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin’s Russia (Harper; June 23, 2026).

The book is a true story that reads like a spy thriller—darkly comic, violent, and unnervingly real. Rather than explaining Russia’s destruction of rule of law and democracy through politicians or oligarchs, the book tells it from the inside out: how an American lawyer walked straight into chaos and managed to live long enough to expose it.

We discuss Jamison's unusual childhood growing up in Beverly Hills with a father involved in fraudulent activities and later running a brothel, which provided unexpected protection from bullying for being gay during his teenage years. He later ended up in Russia, a country that drew his fascination, and we discuss living in the maelstrom of post-Soviet Russia, defending himself and his clients against mafia attacks, corrupt police, and armed commandos who raided his office. He shares how he was threatened, surveilled, extorted—and at one point forced to raid his own offices with a SWAT team and bug the offices of the Russian police just to stay alive. In a system where the law was a weapon, survival meant learning how to fight back.

Jamison established the first independent foreign law firm in Russia where he lived for eighteen years. He was also a member of the board of Directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. He is a co-founder along with Sir William Browder of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign which created the Magnitsky human rights and anti-corruption sanctions regimes. He also ran the Navalny 35 campaign promoting the sanctioning of corrupt oligarchs and officials identified by Alexei Navalny. He currently works on seizing 300 billion dollars of Russian state assets for the benefit of Ukraine. He has been featured on the BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, and in several documentaries.