Preet Bharara’s Café Studios, a New York based producer of podcasts, was sold to Vox Media. Café, which he co-founded, is known for Stay Tuned with Preet. The sale price was not disclosed.

In Stay Tuned, which is podcast on Thursday, Bharara chats about how law intersects with policy, politics, news, business, history, and technology with experts from those fields. It became popular during Donald Trump’s presidency with its analysis of the legal issues facing the administration. The podcast reportedly gets over two million downloads a month. Café offers other podcasts, including by Elie Honig, former Co-Head of the New York Southern District’s Organized Crime Unit

Vox Media runs more than 200 podcasts, covering news, technology, business, culture, politics, sports, and more, including a daily news podcast Today, Explained hosted by Sean Rameswaram and Decoder with Nilay Patel, editor of The Verge, which covers technology and business. It also produces online text and video content, including Vox, edited by Swati Sharma, and New York magazine. 

“Our creators are bursting at the seams with plans for more thoughtful, educational content” in partnership with Vox, Bharara said in a statement.

Cafe Studios also produced ten episodes of Doing Justice, a podcast hosted by Bharara. In each podcast episode, he explores the key elements of a case like a prosecutor, grappling with moral and legal questions: Should an elected official be allowed to run for re-election while under investigation? Can we prosecute a police officer for planning to kidnap his victims?

Doing Justice, which is available on Apple’s iTunes store, has gotten ratings of 4.9 out of 5 stars from 739 reviewers. The podcast is based on Bharara’s 2019 book Doing Justice - A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law, which is a New York Times best seller.

Some of Cafe’s content, including episodes of Stay Tuned with Preet, are available free. They generate revenue through advertisements. Advertisers see podcasts as a more useful media to promote their products and services since consumers have little choice but to listen to the ads if they want access to the content. In contrast, consumers can use ad blockers on their digital devices, to avoid ads on websites, and mute the ads they see on TV programs.

In addition to free podcasts, Café offers a subscription service which includes access to all its podcasts; a newsletter with Bharara’s weekly column; and invites to chat with Bharara and other speakers. Subscriptions, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts, start at $48 for the first year and $69 annually thereafter. Vox will explore replicating Café’s subscription service for its own podcasts and other content, Jim Bankoff, CEO of Vox told the Wall Street Journal.

“Special shoutout to my brother (Vinit Bharara) for taking a chance and making (Café) happen,” Preet Bharara tweeted while announcing Café’s sale to Vox Media. In 2017, Preet and his younger brother Vinit Bharara, a serial entrepreneur, co-founded Café as part of Vinit’s Some Spider Studios. Initially, Cafe focused on creating digital content, distributed through its website and social media. While Preet has joined Vox, continuing to run Café, and as a host and creative director, Vinit will not be part of Vox.    

Last year, Cafe was accused in a lawsuit of “stiffing a podcast producer out of more than $2 million,” The New York Post reported. The case, which is still ongoing, was filed by producers of Words Matter. It’s a podcast series hosted by Joe Lockhart, former President Bill Clinton’s press secretary, and Katie Barlow, an attorney.  Preet and Vinit Bharara deny the allegations, The Post added.

Bharara prosecuted Devyani Khobragade, an Indian diplomat

Earlier, from 2004 to 2017, Preet Bharara served as a federal prosecutor and, as U.S. Attorney, led federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. The district encompasses New York, Bronx, Westchester and four other nearby counties in New York state. As a prosecutor and U.S. Attorney, his team prosecuted: mobsters for drug trafficking, murder and other crimes; Democratic and Republican politicians; over 100 Wall Street employees for insider trading and other illegal practices – including Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge fund manager; major banks, which agreed to financial settlements over some of their errant practices. International prosecutions included some Russians charged for money-laundering, which got Bharara banned from Russia by President Vladimir Putin, and the arrest of Devyani Khobragade, a diplomat at the Indian Consulate in New York.

In 2013, Khobragade was charged and arrested by prosecutors from Bharara’s U.S. Attorney office. She paid her domestic help “Sangeeta Richard (also an Indian national) less than $1.00 an hour” though stating in legal documents that she paid $9.75 an hour, notes Bharara in his book Doing Justice.

Khobragade “clearly tried to evade U.S. law designed to protect from exploitation the domestic employees of diplomats and consular officers,” Preet Bharara said in a statement at the time of her arrest in 2013. Khobragade also allegedly caused Sangeeta and Sageeta”s spouse “to attest to false documents and be a part of her scheme to lie to U.S. government officials,” Bharara added.

Khobragade was transferred to India’s UN mission in New York and got “diplomatic immunity” from U.S. prosecution.

After Khobragade was charged, some politicians and journalists in India attacked Bharara as a “self-loathing” Indian. In his 2013 statement, Bharara notes, “One wonders why there is so much outrage about the alleged treatment of the Indian national accused of perpetrating these acts, but precious little outrage about the alleged treatment of the Indian victim and her spouse?”

Bharara’s team also prosecuted other Indian Americans: including on insider stock trading charges, Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey; Anil Kumar, a McKinsey executive; Wall Street executives Samir Barai and Mathew Martoma; and Dinesh D’Souza, a Republican and conservative writer for election campaign violations. In 2018, D’Souza was pardoned by President Donald Trump.

A growing chorus developed “in some of the ethnic press about my self-hating penchant for prosecuting Indian Americans,” Bharara writes in his book Doing Justice. “Never mind that there was overwhelming proof of their guilt; never mind that there was disproportionate membership in hedge funds of highly educated Indian professionals.”

Preet Bharara, before federal justice role

Preet Bharara describes himself on Twitter, where he has 1.7 million followers, as a “Patriotic American & proud immigrant, (Bruce) Springsteen fan. Banned by Putin, fired by Trump.” 

In 2017, President Trump fired Bharara from the U.S. Justice Department after he refused to resign as U.S. attorney. Prior to joining the department, Bharara was the chief counsel to Chuck Schumer, the Democrat U.S. Senator from New York. Earlier, Bharara worked as a white-collar defense lawyer at Shereff, Friedman, Hoffman & Goodman; and at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, both in New York. He is an adjunct professor at New York University Law School.

Preetinder (Preet) Singh Bharara, 52 years old, was born in Punjab, India. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 1970. He grew up in New Jersey and he became a U.S. citizen at age 12. Bharara attended Ranney School, a private school in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, which currently charges $35,000 in annual fees for high school students. He graduated at the head of his high school class. He attended Harvard University earning an AB in Government in 1990, and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1993.

Bharara’s father is a Sikh and his mother a Hindu. Both parents were born in Pakistan and their families fled to India at the time of the partition in 1947. The father of Bharara's wife Dalya is a Muslim while her mother is Jewish. “When my wife fasts for Yom Kippur, and my father-in-law fasts for Ramadan, I get to stuff my face with samosas all day.” Bharara said in a speech to the South Asian Bar Association of New York in 2007.  

Vinit Bharara, co-founder of Café

“No one works harder… And even though he’s a celebrity on the streets, he’s a regular guy in the office—cracking jokes,” Vinit Bharara told Forbes, referring to his brother Preet. 

In 2014, Vinit (Vinnie) Bharara founded Some Spider Studios, which he self-funded along with a partner. Based in New York, it is a media and entertainment company. It owns Scary Mummy which offers “sources of entertainment and information for millennial moms online”; and Fatherly and The Dad, sites for dads.

Earlier in 2005, Vinit Bharara and a co-founder started Quidsi, a web-based retailer of diapers and other consumer goods, which got $60 million in venture funds. In 2011, they sold Quidsi to Amazon for $545 million.

Vinit was previously the General Counsel of The Topps Company, the leading manufacturer of sports trading cards and novelty confectionary - Bazooka gum and Ring Pop, Push Pop and Baby Bottle Pop. Prior to that, he was a co-founder, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Pit, Inc. which was sold to Topps.

He was part of a team that assisted court-appointed Special Master Judah Gribetz in drafting the distribution plan for the $1.25 billion settlement reached in the class action lawsuits initiated by victims of the Nazi Holocaust against the Swiss banks, according to Crunchbase.

Vinit began his legal career at Cahill Gordon & Reindel in New York. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and got his law degree from Columbia University.

Preet and Vinit’s father is a doctor and their mother worked in the office, while also raising the brothers. On December 8, 2020, Vinit tweeted “We are lucky kids,” while retweeting this post from his older brother Preet Bharara: “55 years ago today, these two kids got married in Ghaziabad, India. The groom is 26. The bride is 19. Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad.”

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