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Comey's Got the Moves · Serious Trouble

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, it's Ken White.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's Josh Barrow, and this is Serious Trouble.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, Ken,
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  SPEAKER_00: a lot of filings from James Comey,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: who has what looks like two different reasons why his case,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: the 86-47 Seashell case,
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  SPEAKER_00: should be dismissed,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: and then two additional motions trying to get information
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: that would potentially point to government misconduct.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we had kind of forgotten this one because it had been cruising along
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: without much happening.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: But James Comey's attorneys are going for a bit of shock and awe here with a blitz of motions.
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  SPEAKER_01: And they include a motion to dismiss from malicious prosecution
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  SPEAKER_01: and selective prosecution,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: a motion to dismiss under the First Amendment, a motion to...
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Malicious prosecution, is that distinct from vindictive prosecution or is that the same thing?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's colloquially.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, selective prosecution is the more precise term, but sometimes that's used.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the selective prosecution motion is basically a repeat of what Comey had filed in
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  SPEAKER_01: that prior case that got dismissed.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So recall there was that case accusing him of lying to Congress,
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  SPEAKER_01: and that was dismissed because the Infamous appointment of Lindsey Halligan
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  SPEAKER_01: to be purported U.S.
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  SPEAKER_01: attorney who then made a mess of presenting the case to the grand jury.
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  SPEAKER_01: The judge there decided that she wasn't properly appointed and dismissed the whole thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: They have not tried to revive that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Instead, they charged him under this ridiculous seashells on the beach case.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And for our listeners,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: recall this is the one where he posted an Instagram post
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: of somebody else having put 8647 in seashells on the beach,
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  SPEAKER_01: claiming it was a threat to kill the president, which it is not.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So here he goes through the same analysis he did before,
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  SPEAKER_01: saying that,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: here's all this history of him speaking about Trump,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: all the Trump Saying that he's going to go after Comey and then
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: the following indictment.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's made somewhat stronger now by the chain of events in the alleged lying
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  SPEAKER_01: to Congress case where they made this bumbling attempt to go after him,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: indicted him, and that was dismissed.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the argument is the same as before.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's really a very unusually strong, selective, or vindictive prosecution claim.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's based on the idea that there's this extremely extensive record of Trump
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  SPEAKER_01: and people in the Trump orbit I mean, that one –
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Seemed dumb, but it was not dumb on this level.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is dumb on an entirely different plane of existence.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that's going to help any selective or medictive prosecution argument if
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: the charge seems to be so transparently bogus.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first request to dismiss.
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  SPEAKER_01: The second is a request based on the face of the indictment on the grounds
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  SPEAKER_01: that what it describes is not a true threat.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what Remember,
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  SPEAKER_01: we've talked about how,
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  SPEAKER_01: in general,
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  SPEAKER_01: in federal criminal cases,
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  SPEAKER_01: you can't ask the court to dismiss it in a way that asks the judge to test
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  SPEAKER_01: the validity of the evidence before trial.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no summary judgment.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's no motion to dismiss that invites the judge to inquire about the strength of
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  SPEAKER_01: the evidence and whether or not it's going to be sufficient to convince a jury
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  SPEAKER_01: to Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: The face of the indictment itself describes facts that cannot as a matter of law be a crime.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the argument here is that the description of the 8647 itself shows that it is not
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  SPEAKER_01: a true threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: And remember,
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  SPEAKER_01: a true threat is a threat that a reasonable person familiar with
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  SPEAKER_01: the circumstances would objectively think to be a true expression of intent
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  SPEAKER_01: to do harm.
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  SPEAKER_01: You also have to prove a subjective component that the person meant for it
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  SPEAKER_01: to be taken as a threat or was reckless about that,
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  SPEAKER_01: but they're not making that argument here.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're not attacking that component.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're just saying that it's completely clear based on the undisputed facts in
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  SPEAKER_01: the indictment and judicially noticeable facts that this cannot reasonably be taken
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  SPEAKER_01: as a true threat,
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  SPEAKER_01: both because no reasonable person would see it as an expression of intent To harm
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  SPEAKER_01: the president and that even if it was a reference to violence,
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  SPEAKER_01: that it is not any kind of present threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's describing shells on the beach.
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  SPEAKER_01: No one would take it as saying, I'm going to do something.
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  SPEAKER_01: So they make the analogy to the famous case Watts,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is the kid at the Vietnam rally mouthing off about how if they ever draft me,
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  SPEAKER_01: then I'll put LBJ in my sights.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same kind of idea.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's so clearly rhetorical.
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  SPEAKER_01: So that's the second one.
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  SPEAKER_01: Those are both unusually strong motions to dismiss for this type of case.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the analogy here would be that there's no motion for summary judgment in criminal court.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is more like a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim?
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  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like the government has chosen to charge it and to disclose facts on
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  SPEAKER_01: the face of the indictment that show That doesn't state a claim.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the analogy you might use is if,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: if someone said that,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: if you do that,
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to kick your ass,
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  SPEAKER_01: generally people would take that as colloquial and not a literal threat
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  SPEAKER_01: to do violence.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so if it says that on the face of the indictment,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's a good argument that the indictment is defective and valid.
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  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't state a claim.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he's not done.
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  SPEAKER_01: He's got two more to go.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wait, sorry,
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  SPEAKER_00: before we move on to the other two, do you think the court is likely to go for that?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think sort of,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: in addition to like there's no motion for summary judgment,
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  SPEAKER_00: my sense from the way he describes this is very unusual to get an indictment tossed
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  SPEAKER_00: in this manner, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: It is, but it's a very unusual case.
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  SPEAKER_01: So – Charging him based on the 8647 and describing that on the face of
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  SPEAKER_01: the indictment is a choice.
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  SPEAKER_01: They could have just pled straight up that he made a threat against the president.
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  SPEAKER_01: They didn't have to describe or state the exact terms of the threat, but they did.
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  SPEAKER_01: And because they did,
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  SPEAKER_01: that lets the judge evaluate whether it's legally sufficient as opposed to whether
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  SPEAKER_01: the evidence is factually sufficient.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think given these two,
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  SPEAKER_01: a federal judge is more likely going to go with dismissing it
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  SPEAKER_01: because it's insufficient on the face of the indictment.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because going into,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: getting into the selective vindictive prosecution angle is a lot more work and
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  SPEAKER_01: a lot more sticky issues than the judge necessarily wants to get into.
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  SPEAKER_01: Doing the true threat analysis is pretty clean and easy,
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  SPEAKER_01: and the case law is overwhelmingly in favor of it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: Comey has dug up a few cases where cases were dismissed because the face of
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  SPEAKER_01: the indictment showed that it couldn't be a threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a plausible argument.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's just so rare because it's so rare.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's so unheard of to charge something this stupid that on its face
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  SPEAKER_00: is not a threat.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so then there's two more motions basically looking for information.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: So one of them is called a Franks motion after a Franks versus Delaware,
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  SPEAKER_01: a 1978 case that basically lays out the circumstances in which you can attack
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  SPEAKER_01: a search warrant and the results of a search warrant by saying that
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  SPEAKER_01: the government lied in the search warrant.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so here...
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  SPEAKER_01: What Comey claims is that the government went on this hunt through its own files,
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  SPEAKER_01: through FBI files and DOJ files,
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  SPEAKER_01: trying to find cases in which 86 was used as a true threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: And they found no precedent in which,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: no mob case,
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  SPEAKER_01: none of the,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: none of the RICO cases, none of that in which 86 could be taken as a true threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: They talked to somebody and just described as person one.
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  SPEAKER_01: Someone who knows Comey clearly hates him,
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  SPEAKER_01: is clearly overtly against him and said basically,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: oh, yeah, I could see how you could use that as a threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it means take him far out of town and deep six and put them six feet under.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he also says that's sheer speculation and doesn't know any support of it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so what they do is in the – they do search warrant affidavits to get all
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  SPEAKER_01: the Apple data from – What he posted and who he communicated with
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  SPEAKER_01: and also Google data,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, all your typical metadata and your communications and stuff like that.
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  SPEAKER_01: But in the search warrant affidavits,
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  SPEAKER_01: they omit that they went through all their files and they couldn't find any instance
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  SPEAKER_01: of 86 being used as a threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: Any evidence that that can be taken as a threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: And they sort of sanitized that Comey hater's statement into something
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  SPEAKER_01: where it sounded as if the person was opining that 86 was a real threat.
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  SPEAKER_01: So Comey's saying that's dishonest, that's lying to the court.
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  SPEAKER_01: Frank's motions are hard, and generally you have to show that...
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  SPEAKER_01: The false statement is material that you have to show that basically the outcome,
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  SPEAKER_01: the judge would not have issued the warrant had you disclosed what you omitted or
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  SPEAKER_01: if you had corrected the false statement.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: That can be tough because a lot of the time what the judge winds up saying is,
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  SPEAKER_01: well, even if you took out that fact, the rest was enough.
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  SPEAKER_01: Meaningfully,
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  SPEAKER_01: by the way,
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  SPEAKER_01: the standard you're held to, Josh, if you lie to the government is different.
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  SPEAKER_01: So if you lie to the government,
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  SPEAKER_01: the materiality analysis is could any government agent hypothetically ever in
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  SPEAKER_01: the history of the universe be influenced by that statement?
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  SPEAKER_01: Whereas for the government, if they lie, it's did it actually make a difference?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome to America.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, um.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: This again is a fairly strong motion because that does seem like a serious omission.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's also really there partially for flavor,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: just to make the entire thing look corrupt and bogus.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask about the – so they lied about what a term meant.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: You could lie about like this witness saw this when in fact the witness never said
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: that they saw it or that sort of thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: If a judge is evaluating a warrant application that deals with
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: a fairly colloquial term like 86,
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  SPEAKER_00: Does the judge take the FBI's word about what 86 means?
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  SPEAKER_00: Does the judge open a dictionary?
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  SPEAKER_00: Does the judge have existing personal knowledge of how people use this term
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: and evaluate it that way?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess there are all sorts of situations where you might have
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: a government agent says, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: I know that drug dealers are using this terminology as code to talk about X
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  SPEAKER_00: when they really mean Y.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's just something weird about this where it feels
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  SPEAKER_00: to me like whoever's reviewing the warrant application ought to be able to look at
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  SPEAKER_00: that and know it's bullshit.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would be the government's argument,
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  SPEAKER_01: ironically,
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  SPEAKER_01: is that our application was such bullshit that this small piece
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  SPEAKER_01: of bullshit didn't really make a material difference in it.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, absolutely.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Government agents all the time,
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  SPEAKER_01: particularly as you suggested in drug cases,
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  SPEAKER_01: opine about what slang and that type of thing means.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it is not unusual for them to say so.
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  SPEAKER_01: What you would argue here is that they knew and concealed that they found No support
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  SPEAKER_01: for this proposition whatsoever in their inquiry and that they are the ones
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  SPEAKER_01: who relied on this Comey hater and suggested that this contributes
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  SPEAKER_01: to probable cause,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: that they said, oh, I could see how you could take it as a threat.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: But they omitted the parts of the statement that showed
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: that they didn't really support that proposition.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not the strongest of the four motions,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it is embarrassing for the government that it really shows what
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: a hack job they did with this.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: The final motion is a motion to disclose all the grand jury transcripts.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this one, again, is based on the whole shooting match.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It reaches back.
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  SPEAKER_01: And in light of the lies that you see in the search warrant application and
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: the irregularities of prior grand jury proceedings, you should give us this.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, a normal administration,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: a competent Department of Justice in indicting Comey would know that they're going
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  SPEAKER_01: to be under a microscope and know that it's likely that the transcripts are going
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: to be produced.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I imagine the judge considering this motion is looking at it in the context
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: of having seen what's been happening nationally.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: We've covered a number of these grand jury cases in Chicago, but we, you know, there's been...
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Grand jury misconduct all over the place,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: some of which appears to be driven by the monomaniacal desire of Trump
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: to get his enemies indicted and some of which in the case
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: of Chicago is maybe stuff that's been going on all along
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: that is just becoming more noticeable because of this Justice Department.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I imagine in both cases is weighing on the way judges think about the question
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  SPEAKER_00: of should I inquire into what happened before the grand jury?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_01: It works on a few levels.
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  SPEAKER_01: First of all,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: the presumption of regularity of the Justice Department and
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: the grand jury process is basically gone, is extinct.
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  SPEAKER_01: Second of all,
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  SPEAKER_01: a judge has a great deal of,
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  SPEAKER_01: in effect, cover,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: for want of a better word,
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: that in allowing an inquiry,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: they are doing something that is increasingly typical and common.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so it no longer seems extreme or out of the ordinary.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the facts here are so...
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Bizarre,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: unusual,
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  SPEAKER_01: extreme,
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  SPEAKER_01: nothing that would ever happen that it really gives the judge a basis and cover
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: for doing it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that all of these – probably the Franks one is the weakest just
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: because Franks is such a hard standard to meet.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that the two motions to dismiss give the judge a very good basis to dismiss.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that this is probably not going to turn out well for the Department of Justice.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have another case where we might get a look into
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: whether there was some grand jury misconduct.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this has to do with David Hearn,
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  SPEAKER_00: the guy who,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: with his bare hands by brute force,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: ripped up the liner of the reflecting pool and destroyed it.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, an Olympian has immense physical prowess,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Josh, that more people like us can't quite appreciate.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have to quarrel with you.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's grand jury misconduct,
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: if the nature of what's going on is you basically say to the grand jury— You know,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: our case kind of sucks.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can you guys help us out?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: That seems like almost the opposite of misconduct.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: But so David Hearn has filed a motion like James Comey asking to see all
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings against him.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And remember,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: this is the case where they did it to a District of Columbia grand jury as opposed
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: to a regular federal grand jury and got District of Columbia charges
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: for maliciously destroying property.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: That charge requires that the property be worth over $1,000.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And through some machinations,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: the government turned over the testimony of one of the witnesses,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: their expert,
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  SPEAKER_01: who's some National Park Service official,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: who really did not do a good job of supporting the $1,000 because
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: the official said basically
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: the reflecting pool had substantial damage requiring repairs before Hearn got there.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was leaking a million gallons a week.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: The liner that he's accused of ripping already had a rip.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was going to have to be repaired.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It couldn't identify any repairs specifically required by Hearn's actions and that
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  SPEAKER_01: the estimate for repairs,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: which were like,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: between $6,000 and $10,000 or something like that,
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  SPEAKER_01: would have had to be done whether or not he did it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the repair cost before he did it was thousands of dollars.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: The repair cost after he did it was thousands of dollars.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And In a way,
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: you could spin this,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Josh, and I would if I were having to speak for these U.S. attorneys' offices.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you know,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: in theory and in ethics,
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: you're supposed to tell the grand jury if there's substantial exculpatory evidence
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: that contradicts the information you're giving them.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what they're doing here.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is Janine Pirro being ethical, Josh.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: She's making sure the grand jury has all the information that her piece is
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: A huge piece of shit.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: But Hearn is arguing that I should get all the transcripts
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: because they must have misinstructed the grand jury and given the wrong law
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: about proving that it's more than a thousand dollars.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's the misconduct.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or that would be the misconduct if that is in
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: fact what happened.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: That would be.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly think they may not get that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, they may not find that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: The reason being that shows a certain level of faith in grand juries,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: particularly state grand juries, that they're actually going to listen to that shit.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And just because the government star witness admitted they have no idea what
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of damages is that the grand jury would say,
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: oh, OK, then we're not going to indict.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would not be the least bit surprised if this grand jury said we don't give a shit.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Indicted.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Next.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this is fun.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your theory here is that Jeanine Pirro did her job in an ethical and appropriate way.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, I was being facetious.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're incompetent.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that probably they just threw this poor bastard from
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: the National Park Service on the stand.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Tried to get the $1,000 testimony out of the person,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: but they hadn't prepared the person and didn't know the facts.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so just blundered through it live in front of the grand jury and got terrible testimony.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the grand jury shrugged and indicted anyway.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: God bless America, Josh.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, rough times for the DOJ.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week's free episode of Serious Trouble.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's much more for paying subscribers.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: A look at some withdrawn subpoenas that the Trump administration had sent to
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: The New York Times and then appears to have thought the better of it,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: at least for now.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Also, an admission from the Department of Justice that
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: when last October they canceled certain clean energy related contracts,
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: they did so based on whether the states where those contracts were awarded had voted
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: for Trump in the last election.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is that illegal?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: We discussed that.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Also, Trump continues to have discovery trouble with the BBC.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Trump administration continues to have trouble with Epstein document production.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Justin Baldoni has learned the hard way not to sue the New York Times just
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: because you're annoyed about something they reported about you.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a new motion from that very sad prosecution of former Olympian David Hearn,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: who has more reasons to believe that the government has engaged in misconduct
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: in seeking to prosecute him over his manhandling of the liner of
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: the reflecting pool, Donald Trump's favorite reflecting pool.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: We also have an update on the Chirayurata J.P. Morgan lawsuit.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a new one, this time in federal court.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we look at Jacob Wohl and Jack Berman, who are now in the cybersecurity business.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: No legal proceeding there yet, but seems like the sort of thing that might produce one.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear all of that, go to serioustrouble.show for $6 a month or $60 a year.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear about all of those things.
• 20:28
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• 20:29
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• 20:32
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