The popularity of true-crime podcasts like Serial created an explosion of audio content about murders and disappearances. But the true-crime boom has also elevated a lot of cranks. So Mary, a Baltimore podcast fan, was relieved last year when she found a popular true-crime podcast that actually has a claim to authority: The Prosecutors.
Launched in 2020 in the first months of the pandemic, The Prosecutors stars two actual prosecutors who go only by the names “Brett and Alice.” On the show’s first episode, the two anonymous hosts premised the podcast on the idea that they would use their legal backgrounds to offer unique takes on famous real-life mysteries.
Mary enjoyed The Prosecutors for about a month. Unlike other podcast hosts in the true-crime industry, Brett and Alice actually seemed to know what they were talking about. That sense of credibility has turned The Prosecutors into a true-crime phenomenon—it ranks around 100 on Apple’s ranking of true-crime podcasts, an impressive position in the hyper-competitive genre.
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But Mary couldn’t shake her own questions about why Brett and Alice didn’t use their full names. Their website didn’t offer much more about their identities, with both hosts looking away from the camera in their pictures. Brett’s bio described him as a “southern gentleman.”
Mary decided to launch an investigation of her own.
“If you don’t want to attach your name to it, there’s a reason why,” Mary, who asked not to use her last name for fear of online backlash, recalled thinking. “Let’s just see about this dude.”
Mary didn’t like what she discovered. A quick online search connected Mary with a thriving community of one-time fans of The Prosecutors who have since turned on the show after discovering that “Brett and Alice” are Brett Talley and Alice Lacour, well-connected members of the conservative legal elite and former Trump administration officials.
Most of that fan ire has fallen on Talley, a one-time Trump nominee to the federal bench with a history of anti-abortion and pro-gun remarks. Talley’s nomination blew up in spectacular fashion in 2017, with the American Bar Association taking the rare step of deeming him “not qualified.” A Republican senator even called his nomination an “embarrassment,” pointing out that Talley had at the time never tried a case in court.
For Mary, discovering remarks Talley made defending the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and urging people to join the National Rifle Association in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting were the final straws. She stopped listening to The Prosecutors.
“I find him actually repugnant,” Mary said. “He has no integrity in my opinion. Listening to a podcast is entertainment for me, and that’s just not how I wish to spend my time.”
Mary isn’t alone. While rumors about Talley and Lacour’s identities have circulated online for at least six months, they were confirmed in May when Apple’s podcasting app added Talley and Lacour’s full names to their podcast’s profile. Their unmasking set off a new round of criticism from their erstwhile listeners who felt betrayed that they had spent so many hours listening to members of Trumpworld. As fans of The Prosecutors mull whether they can stick with the show, the controversy has raised questions about what podcast hosts owe their listeners and whether listeners can separate a hosts’ political views from their podcast.
On Reddit, a hub for amateur sleuths, the main true-crime subreddit has started automatically locking posts about The Prosecutors because the debates grew too heated. On Apple’s podcast app, reviews of the show have filled up with one-star reviews from fans disappointed by the pair’s connection to Trump and accusing them of obscuring it with their anonymity.
“Heartbroken to know who Brett really is,” one one-star review on Apple’s podcasting app made on May 30 reads.
“If you’re a MAGA believer, at least be real and say who you are,” another reviewer wrote on May 27. “It’s insidious to purposely try to hide it.”
Both Lacour and Talley worked as recently as this spring as assistant U.S. attorneys in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama, according to court filings in federal cases where they’re listed as lawyers. The U.S. Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“Our listeners are amazing, and we appreciate them so much,” the hosts wrote in a Twitter direct message to The Daily Beast. “The show is about the cases and the victims, not politics.”
Lacour, who worked as a trial attorney in Trump’s Justice Department, is married to Edmund Lacour, Alabama’s solicitor general. Disgruntled fans of her podcast have pointed out that Edmund Lacour, who was also nominated to a federal judgeship by Trump but failed to be confirmed before Joe Biden took office, has used his position in Alabama to push for voting restrictions.
But the vast majority of fans’ criticism has been reserved for Talley, whose botched nomination in 2017 became a mini-scandal in the young administration as even Republican senators turned on Talley’s bid to fill a lifetime federal judgeship in Alabama.
Talley, then 36, was dogged by accusations that he was too inexperienced to be a judge, with opponents frequently bringing up that he had never tried a case. Other critics pointed to his unusual background as a ghost-hunter. Talley’s nomination hit an even more serious snag when he failed to disclose during the nominating process that he was married to then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn’s chief of staff. Talley eventually withdrew his own nomination after being criticized by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the lead Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Fans of The Prosecutors have cited Talley’s failure to disclose his marriage as one of their reasons for turning on him.
“My issue with him is his complete lack of integrity regarding his nomination to the federal judiciary,” one Reddit user wrote last year.
“Brett is MAGA????” another replied. “Are you kidding me?”
But Talley’s one-time listeners appear to have been most alienated by his history of controversial online remarks. Shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting, Talley wrote that his “solution would be to stop being a society of pansies and man up.” In a blog post in the wake of the shooting, Talley urged his readers to join the NRA.
“I pray that in the coming battle for our rights, they will be victorious,” he wrote.
Mary, the former listener to The Prosecutors who spoke to The Daily Beast, found Talley’s boosterism for the NRA after Sandy Hook especially galling.
“Such a sensitive time in the country, and then for him to take up for the NRA right on the heels of that, I found despicable,” she said.
James Renner, a true-crime author and podcaster who has covered some of the same cases as Lacour and Talley, praised their true-crime work in an interview with The Daily Beast. Renner said he too was initially disappointed by Talley’s political background, at first comparing him to conservative musician Eric Clapton. But then Renner changed his mind, deciding instead that Talley was some kind of renaissance man.
“He’s really more like Jack White,” Renner said, referring to the White Stripes frontman. “He’s prolific, he’s a storyteller, he’s a polymath. He’s interested in everything and he’s fascinating to talk to.”
Along with his true-crime work and ghost-hunting, Talley has written a series of well-received horror novels.
“As they do deep dives into these cases, I think it’s actually making them more liberal as time goes by,” Renner said.
But it appears that the many listeners of The Prosecutors who are unsubscribing from the show aren’t convinced. In online discussions, they cite the fact that both Talley and Edmund Lacour are members of the Federalist Society, the anti-abortion rights conservative legal group reliable conservatives throughout the federal judiciary.
“This isn't about intolerance,” wrote one Reddit user who compiled a list of articles about Talley and Lacour’s politics. “It's about the fact that Brett and Alice's husband will 100% try as hard as they can to remove abortion rights and voting rights, if they are appointed as judges.”
