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Who's to Judge Jeanine? · Serious Trouble

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[music]
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SPEAKER_00: Hi, it's Ken White.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's Josh Barrow, and this is Serious Trouble.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the reflecting pool this week, Ken.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a part of me that has been annoyed that this is a top story in the country
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SPEAKER_00: for weeks running.
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SPEAKER_00: The resurfacing of a pool that,
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SPEAKER_00: as the Trump administration points out,
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SPEAKER_00: has been troubled since its construction because it is a shallow pool
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SPEAKER_00: of standing water in a swamp.
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SPEAKER_00: And Trump was not able to fix it like many presidents before him.
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SPEAKER_00: The U.S.
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SPEAKER_00: Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C.,
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SPEAKER_00: led by Judge Jeanine Pirro,
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SPEAKER_00: has been very aggressive trying to deal with the vandals who were causing
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SPEAKER_00: the trouble with the pool, ripping up the liner like animals.
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SPEAKER_00: But then it turned out that actually there was...
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SPEAKER_00: And Janine Pirro has dismissed charges or got a judge dismissed charges
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SPEAKER_00: against David Hearn,
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SPEAKER_00: that former Olympic canoeist who was holding a piece of the liner.
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SPEAKER_00: And she has this long filing basically explaining that it was the fault of
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SPEAKER_00: the contractor in the Department of Interior and they kept lying to her.
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SPEAKER_00: And so she did this
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SPEAKER_00: filing about it's all interior's fault.
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SPEAKER_00: And the president was very angry,
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SPEAKER_00: said she choked and wasn't able to bring the charges she was supposed to.
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SPEAKER_00: Doug Burgum,
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SPEAKER_00: the former governor of North Dakota,
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SPEAKER_00: who's the secretary of interior, said, no, this was vandals.
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SPEAKER_00: And I can't believe the US attorneys decided not to prosecute this aggressively.
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SPEAKER_00: And this ended up with a Oval Office showdown between Janine Pirro and Doug Burgum
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SPEAKER_00: with Pirro defending herself that,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: there was no case here and she had been misled by other Trump officials
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SPEAKER_00: who were incompetent liars.
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SPEAKER_00: None of this was her fault.
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SPEAKER_00: And so far, she still has her job.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: Josh,
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SPEAKER_01: I shared your irritation that we were having to spend so much time on this story
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SPEAKER_01: until I realized, like, compared to what?
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SPEAKER_01: Like, if it weren't for this,
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SPEAKER_01: we were going to be talking about smart people doing sensible things.
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SPEAKER_01: No, no.
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SPEAKER_01: So, yes.
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SPEAKER_01: This is a complete catastrophe for the U.S. Attorney's Office and the administration.
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SPEAKER_01: So they had brought these charges against David Hearn and a half dozen other people
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SPEAKER_01: for alleged vandalism of the reflecting pool.
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SPEAKER_01: They were overwhelmingly widely ridiculed as ridiculous and obviously bogus
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SPEAKER_01: because they happened as all the press was reporting all the problems with the pool
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SPEAKER_01: and why there were problems with the pool.
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SPEAKER_01: Nobody took them seriously whatsoever.
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SPEAKER_01: The notable thing first about Pirro's motion to dismiss is that it's 20 pages
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SPEAKER_01: and it is incredibly defensive and accusatory,
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SPEAKER_01: not of the defendant, but of her colleagues in the Department of the Interior.
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SPEAKER_01: It's got pictures, Josh.
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SPEAKER_01: I have never, literally never seen any prosecutor ask a court to dismiss the charges first.
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SPEAKER_01: With screenshots of things in the motion.
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SPEAKER_01: And basically the narrative of the motion is we had the best reasons ever to charge this guy.
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SPEAKER_01: Anyone would have charged him based on what we were told.
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SPEAKER_01: And now, heavens, we found we've been betrayed and misled by the Department of Interior.
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SPEAKER_01: And here are pictures depicting all this.
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SPEAKER_01: And of course,
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SPEAKER_01: it's completely unconvincing because, I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: even before they brought the charges,
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SPEAKER_01: it was overwhelmingly reported what all the problems with the reflecting pool were.
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SPEAKER_01: So the motion that's trying to convince the judge that this is
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SPEAKER_01: a reason we're dismissing it, it just does not pass the smell test.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, did she even need to offer any explanation of why they wanted to dismiss it?
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SPEAKER_01: No.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
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SPEAKER_01: She could have done a one-pager.
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SPEAKER_01: She could have checked a box on a form to ask the court to dismiss it.
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SPEAKER_01: If she were asking the court to dismiss it without prejudice,
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SPEAKER_01: meaning we should be able to bring these charges again if we feel like it,
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SPEAKER_01: that could be a fight.
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SPEAKER_01: And then maybe you have to offer some explanation.
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SPEAKER_01: But to dismiss with prejudice?
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SPEAKER_01: No.
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SPEAKER_01: This was purely her basically deciding to gun for the Department of Interior and
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SPEAKER_01: for Doug Burgum.
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SPEAKER_01: And one sympathizes.
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SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it's a very ham-fisted job of doing so.
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SPEAKER_01: So, yes, she sets up this.
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SPEAKER_01: Titanic confrontation at the White House and there's pictures of her trundling
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SPEAKER_01: in her box of evidence on a cart,
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SPEAKER_01: trundling in this cart to the White House rather uncomfortably,
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SPEAKER_01: possibly because the box doesn't have a spout.
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SPEAKER_01: And anyway,
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SPEAKER_01: apparently there was this huge,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: angry fight in the White House where She tells the president,
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SPEAKER_01: look, you've been misled by this guy, and he told you this is what happened.
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SPEAKER_01: It wasn't.
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SPEAKER_01: It's actually the contractors.
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SPEAKER_01: And she makes the contractors,
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SPEAKER_01: by the way,
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SPEAKER_01: this company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, look terrible in her motion to dismiss.
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SPEAKER_01: She really goes after them.
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SPEAKER_01: And so – I'm deeply skeptical that even if Trump decided not to fire her
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SPEAKER_01: and momentarily was swayed that maybe it is DOI's fault and that's how he was misled
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SPEAKER_01: and poorly advised, that's going to stick.
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SPEAKER_01: Because,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: in Trump's brain,
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SPEAKER_01: the narrative that vandals hurt my pool is much more powerful
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SPEAKER_00: than I chose dumb people to advise me.
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SPEAKER_01: But the whole thing is just so deeply humiliating for a U.S. attorney to have to do this.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's so clear that she undermines herself so much in this motion.
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SPEAKER_01: Like she's trying to portray this as something that was done just the facts,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, just the facts.
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SPEAKER_01: This was the evidence.
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SPEAKER_01: But she admits that she and senior staff in the U.S.
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SPEAKER_01: Attorney's Office went to the reflecting pool to talk to Park's employees,
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SPEAKER_01: to examine the pool, which the U.S. Attorney, Josh, I have to emphasize this.
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SPEAKER_01: The United States Attorney does not inspect the scene
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SPEAKER_01: of low-level felony destruction of property cases – Well,
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SPEAKER_00: and so one interesting thing is,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: Hearn had been charged with a felony,
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SPEAKER_00: which meant he had to do at least a thousand dollars worth of damage.
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SPEAKER_00: They also dismissed various misdemeanor cases against other people
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SPEAKER_00: where there wasn't that hurdle.
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SPEAKER_00: And so was that they I guess that they couldn't even show
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SPEAKER_00: that they had done any damage to the pool.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, because their own witness basically said that the you know,
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SPEAKER_01: we covered this last week,
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SPEAKER_01: their own witness says that, well,
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SPEAKER_01: it needed to be fixed and it needed to be fixed before they did anything and
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SPEAKER_01: after they did anything.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's about the same fix.
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SPEAKER_01: So that's not a thousand dollars in damages.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of speculation about why did she do this.
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SPEAKER_01: And some of the speculation is dumb.
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SPEAKER_01: Like she did this to stay out of trouble.
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SPEAKER_01: She was afraid she'd be disbarred or attacked for wrongfully prosecuting someone,
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SPEAKER_01: which is nonsense.
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SPEAKER_01: You know, it's vanishingly rare for prosecutors anywhere to face any discipline for bogus cases.
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SPEAKER_01: My read is kind of she just got sick of getting humiliated in these cases
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SPEAKER_01: that she's bringing for political reasons and decided she didn't want
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SPEAKER_01: to get humiliated in this one anymore.
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SPEAKER_00: If so, that was a tactical error.
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SPEAKER_01: Because she's still got plenty of humiliation out of this with the president
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SPEAKER_01: the United States bashing her and calling her a weakling basically.
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SPEAKER_01: But my sense is that even Jeanine Pirro has limits to the extent to
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SPEAKER_01: which she'll get kicked around for doing stupid stuff for Donald Trump.
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SPEAKER_01: I guess.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
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SPEAKER_00: I just I still remember the Janine Pirro who announced her run for attorney general
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SPEAKER_00: of New York in 2006.
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SPEAKER_00: And there was a missing page of her speech.
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SPEAKER_00: And she just stood silently behind the podium for several minutes
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SPEAKER_00: while they went hunting for the missing page instead of her just improvising
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SPEAKER_00: a little bit there.
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SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
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SPEAKER_00: that makes me wonder about,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: how how clever she really is prepared to be when put in a difficult situation
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SPEAKER_00: in court.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, there are a limited number of things you can extemporize about Franzia, I guess.
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SPEAKER_01: But anyway, yeah, so.
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SPEAKER_01: Janine Pirro, the bottom line, comes out of this looking worse.
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SPEAKER_01: Everyone comes out of this looking worse.
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SPEAKER_01: And the reputation of the U.S.
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SPEAKER_01: Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice continues to be tainted.
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SPEAKER_00: Speaking of people looking worse,
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SPEAKER_00: Anthony Fauci,
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SPEAKER_00: whose diary we've all unfortunately gotten to read excerpts from over
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SPEAKER_00: the last couple of weeks,
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SPEAKER_01: was subpoenaed to appear before Congress.
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SPEAKER_00: Senator Rand Paul was very angry with him.
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SPEAKER_00: That's who released the diary,
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SPEAKER_00: which Rand Paul had because Anthony Fauci kept his diary on an NIH computer.
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SPEAKER_00: So don't do that.
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SPEAKER_01: Come on, he's 97 or something, Josh.
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SPEAKER_01: What do you want from the man?
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SPEAKER_00: But so Anthony Fauci was to be questioned for his grave crimes against the country or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00: And Fauci received an extensive pardon from President Biden on his way out of office.
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SPEAKER_00: And so the expectation of a lot of these Republican senators was Fauci has
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SPEAKER_00: to answer our questions because he can't be prosecuted because he's been pardoned.
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SPEAKER_00: Fauci showed up and took the fifth.
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SPEAKER_00: And but before he took the fifth,
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SPEAKER_00: he made an opening statement pushing back on some of the criticisms
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SPEAKER_00: that have been issued of him.
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SPEAKER_00: So he made the statement and then he declined to answer questions.
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SPEAKER_00: And so the question everybody has here is, are you allowed to do that?
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SPEAKER_00: Can you take the fifth when you've been pardoned?
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SPEAKER_00: And can you take the fifth if you have chosen to make an opening statement
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SPEAKER_00: before you decline to answer questions?
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SPEAKER_01: Sure.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think this would be one of those cases where the
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SPEAKER_01: The Republicans are acting like the Trump administration,
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SPEAKER_01: which is to say they can't get it out of their own way.
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SPEAKER_01: And if they had handled this remotely,
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SPEAKER_01: maturely or sensibly,
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SPEAKER_01: they could have put Fauci into some serious concerns for what he did in terms
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SPEAKER_01: of taking the fifth.
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SPEAKER_01: But that's not the way they are.
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SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, the two components here.
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SPEAKER_01: First of all, there's the component of can you take the fifth if you've been pardoned?
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SPEAKER_01: And Fauci did take the fifth, as he should have in my view.
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SPEAKER_01: And the reason I think that he can plausibly do that is that,
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SPEAKER_01: first of all,
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SPEAKER_01: the notion that he's in no legal jeopardy because he's been pardoned for
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SPEAKER_01: the things he's being questioned about is itself called into question by
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SPEAKER_01: the Republicans loudly speculating they think the pardon is – Because it was signed
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SPEAKER_01: by Autopen,
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SPEAKER_01: which is a stupid Trump narrative,
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SPEAKER_01: but the Republicans are cheerfully picking it up and bandying about,
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SPEAKER_01: including Rand Paul.
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SPEAKER_01: So if you've got the people who are questioning you,
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SPEAKER_01: loudly speculating,
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SPEAKER_01: they think the pardon of you is invalid and they may challenge it,
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SPEAKER_01: and they may ask Department of Justice to challenge it,
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SPEAKER_01: then I think that creates a cloud that at least is going to mean that
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SPEAKER_01: a federal judge is not going to say that you wrongfully invoked the Fifth Amendment
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SPEAKER_01: while that was an issue.
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SPEAKER_01: The other reason I think he can probably get away with invoking the Fifth is
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SPEAKER_01: that all of these Republican – Politicians both in Congress and in
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SPEAKER_01: the states are talking about how they're gunning for him and looking for ways
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SPEAKER_01: to prosecute him.
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SPEAKER_01: And so you had attorneys general of several states,
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SPEAKER_01: several red states basically saying that they're looking for ways to prosecute him.
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SPEAKER_01: So remember, a federal pardon can't pardon you from state crime.
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SPEAKER_01: So if he's facing state jeopardy over the events of COVID,
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SPEAKER_01: then he can absolutely take the fifth about it,
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SPEAKER_01: even if he's been federally pardoned.
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SPEAKER_01: And the sort of maniacal Republican Party has helpfully provided him with that excuse.
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SPEAKER_01: And then finally, you've got the perjury trap issue.
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SPEAKER_01: And this one is tougher.
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SPEAKER_01: So perjury trap remembers the issue where, you know, we think you're lying.
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SPEAKER_01: We think that your story about these events is untrue.
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SPEAKER_01: We're going to call you in and ask you questions under oath so that we can
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SPEAKER_01: then prosecute you for perjury when you say the things we expect you to say.
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SPEAKER_01: That's a perjury trap.
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SPEAKER_01: And so it's a little less clear whether you can take the fifth That's a little less clear.
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SPEAKER_01: If I testify truthfully,
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SPEAKER_01: you're going to think I'm lying and therefore I have a Fifth Amendment right not
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SPEAKER_01: to testify.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: It's a cloudy area.
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SPEAKER_01: I think generally you can't use a perjury trap as a get out of testifying free card.
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SPEAKER_01: But when you've got – again, this is a unique situation.
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SPEAKER_01: When you've got all these people in Congress so openly slobbering over the prospect
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SPEAKER_01: of putting them in jail, I think, again, it's going to
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SPEAKER_01: Well, but
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SPEAKER_00: isn't that also not a self-incrimination issue?
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SPEAKER_00: Because the issue is not that you will give testimony establishing that you committed a crime.
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SPEAKER_00: The issue is that you will commit a crime or you will do something that
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SPEAKER_00: the state will say was a crime.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
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SPEAKER_01: That's the counter argument that the issue isn't that you're not being compelled
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SPEAKER_01: to give a witness against yourself about something you've already done.
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SPEAKER_01: You're the theory is you're being compelled to commit what's seen as a new crime.
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SPEAKER_01: But the way this has been treated in the past is a little cloudy
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SPEAKER_01: because I think there is some fundamental understanding of the concept that if
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SPEAKER_01: the government believes X is true and you believe Y is true and they haul you in
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SPEAKER_01: and ask you,
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SPEAKER_01: is it X or Y,
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SPEAKER_01: standing ready to prosecute you if you say Y,
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SPEAKER_01: that there's an element of compelled and coerced Almost like entrapment there.
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SPEAKER_01: And so I kind of think that it's going to be difficult to overcome that with
13:42
SPEAKER_01: a federal judge sensing that basically it's a setup.
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SPEAKER_01: But it's probably not the ultimate issue here because there are better,
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SPEAKER_01: more obvious Fifth Amendment problems.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: But we've seen the perjury trap issues before in other cases.
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SPEAKER_01: We saw it in a lot of anti-terrorism cases,
13:56
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
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SPEAKER_01: where they would Go after people they suspected of being connected to terrorism,
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SPEAKER_01: haul them into the grand jury asking them questions
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SPEAKER_01: where they knew what they were going to say and then prosecuting them
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SPEAKER_01: for those answers.
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SPEAKER_01: And that generated a lot of litigation over this.
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SPEAKER_01: I think that the reason that it becomes difficult despite the sort of the flaws in
14:16
SPEAKER_01: the theory that you point out, Josh,
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SPEAKER_01: that you're not incriminating yourself against past crimes is basically the sense
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SPEAKER_01: that it's government coercion of a situation into which you're being forced
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SPEAKER_01: If not incriminating yourself in past crimes,
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SPEAKER_01: forced into committing new crimes in effect.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
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SPEAKER_01: all those are reasons why I think they're going to have real trouble establishing
14:37
SPEAKER_01: that he's wrong to take the fifth here.
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SPEAKER_01: The preliminary statement one is another problem.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: I tried to figure out where we talked about it before.
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SPEAKER_01: I think it was almost like it was in 2018 or 2019 during some of
14:52
SPEAKER_01: the congressional hearings arising out of all that.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: A couple of generations ago nonsense it feels like.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: And yes,
14:59
SPEAKER_01: so the way the Fifth Amendment works is generally you can't switch back and forth
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SPEAKER_01: between invoking it or not invoking it in the same proceeding.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: So like if you testify at one trial, you get a fresh slate with the next trial.
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SPEAKER_01: Or if you testify at your preliminary hearing, you get a fresh slate at your trial.
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SPEAKER_01: So you can be inconsistent there.
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SPEAKER_01: You can't be inconsistent in the same proceeding.
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SPEAKER_01: You can't start testifying and then take the fifth about the same issues in the same proceeding.
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SPEAKER_01: So you can't,
15:35
SPEAKER_01: as a criminal defendant, get up,
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SPEAKER_01: tell your story, and then say, I take the fifth when you try to get cross-examined.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And traditionally,
15:42
SPEAKER_01: there's been this tension about if you go to Congress and you start out
15:46
SPEAKER_01: with this bullshit self-serving political statement, Can you then take the fifth?
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SPEAKER_01: Congress has found several times that people waive their Fifth Amendment rights,
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SPEAKER_01: and it has proclaimed that after people have pulled that move.
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SPEAKER_01: It has never been,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: to my knowledge,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: adjudicated in a court in a way that has said, okay,
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SPEAKER_01: you waive the fifth,
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SPEAKER_01: then you refused to testify,
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SPEAKER_01: therefore you're convicted of, you know... What
16:13
SPEAKER_00: is it, contempt of Congress?
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, right.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: So the question would probably come down to Did the preliminary statement or any of
16:22
SPEAKER_01: the answers that were offered meaningfully engage in the subject matter on
16:28
SPEAKER_01: which you later took the fifth?
16:30
SPEAKER_01: If it was a generic,
16:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:33
SPEAKER_01: fuck all of you,
16:34
SPEAKER_01: this is bullshit type of opening, then probably that's not a waiver.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: But if it was engaging in any of the issues you're later refusing to answer,
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SPEAKER_01: that is probably a waiver and that could cause trouble for Fauci.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And so in terms of the context in which this would cause trouble,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm sure the administration would like to prosecute him.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: How would that work?
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SPEAKER_00: There would be a referral to DOJ and then DOJ would decide whether it wants to try
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SPEAKER_00: to prosecute for contempt of Congress,
17:02
SPEAKER_00: which I mean,
17:03
SPEAKER_00: which we've we had a couple of cases where people just simply didn't show up at all
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SPEAKER_00: and then got prosecuted.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't think we've seen something exactly like this where someone took the fifth
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SPEAKER_00: and that was what was the contempt of Congress.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: But I mean,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Department of Justice we have right now,
17:19
SPEAKER_01: and particularly one led by Todd Blanche in the likely event that he gets confirmed,
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SPEAKER_01: I think would be very willing to go after Fauci for this.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it would have any ethical or legal objections to that.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: I think it's only objections are likely to be prudential and
17:35
SPEAKER_01: whether it's politically a good idea.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: And Given their willingness to do things like go after Comey on the Seashells case
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SPEAKER_01: with really stupid,
17:44
SPEAKER_01: embarrassing cases,
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SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure those prudential reasons would stop them from going after Fauci.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Now, simply prosecuting him for it and convicting him of it are two very different things.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think he'd have a lot of Fifth Amendment arguments in front of the judge
18:00
SPEAKER_01: that would be very compelling and that might slow down the case.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: But the process is the punishment.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: Fauci's in his 80s.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: He's not as healthy as he used to be.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: And subjecting him to federal prosecution would sort of be the torture
18:14
SPEAKER_01: that they want to inflict on him.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Todd Blanch and whether he's going to be confirmed,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: there were a couple of Republican senators holding up his nomination in
18:24
SPEAKER_00: the Judiciary Committee,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: and they cut a deal to support him getting out of the committee.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: This is John Cornyn from Texas and Tom Tillis from North Carolina.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: And what they got is a couple of letters,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: one putting in writing that the Anti-Weaponization Fund was never created and is not
18:41
SPEAKER_00: in force.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And the other is a letter clarifying the scope of the immunity
18:49
SPEAKER_00: from IRS investigations that the president received as part of that deal,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: limiting it to past tax returns and limiting it to a specific set
18:57
SPEAKER_00: of named potential defendants rather than a vague idea that it's anything affiliated
19:02
SPEAKER_00: with Trump.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: And so they found that satisfactory enough to support his nomination.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: One thing a lot of people have been wondering is how much does this actually bind
19:09
SPEAKER_00: the Justice Department?
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Is the weaponization fund really gone?
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Can they just go create it again?
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Does the letter matter?
19:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, that's the thing.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this deal that,
19:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:20
SPEAKER_01: Tillis and Cornyn are using sort of as the fig leaf to agree to vote
19:26
SPEAKER_01: for Blanche is It just demonstrates how bogus the settlement was in the first place.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: It underlines the point of the federal judge who found that it was all a hoax
19:36
SPEAKER_01: because the Department of Justice can't just unilaterally alter the terms of
19:43
SPEAKER_01: a settlement in order to get someone confirmed.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: That's not the way settlement agreements work.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: It's a contract.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: And for the Justice Department to do that,
19:52
SPEAKER_01: to purport to say, well,
19:53
SPEAKER_01: now we are We are eliminating these terms of this agreement we entered
19:57
SPEAKER_01: into just demonstrates that it was fictitious from the start.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: And as you point out,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: if they can just unilaterally undo it,
20:07
SPEAKER_01: what stops them from unilaterally doing it again?
20:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if Todd Blanch has enough unitary authority under the president simply
20:16
SPEAKER_01: to declare this thing is no longer a thing,
20:19
SPEAKER_01: what stops them from simply declaring it is a thing?
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of a how many angels can dance on the head of a pin question
20:25
SPEAKER_01: because once you're into this realm of these bizarre administrative pronouncements
20:32
SPEAKER_01: without apparent legal basis,
20:34
SPEAKER_01: then it's kind of like, you know, of course they could do it.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Why couldn't they do it once you establish that they think they can do this sort of thing?
20:43
SPEAKER_01: We have other news out of Congress this week.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Chuck Edwards,
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Congressman from the 11th District of North Carolina,
20:49
SPEAKER_00: which is in the mountains in western North Carolina.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: We've just seen in the news this morning as we're taping on Wednesday
20:53
SPEAKER_00: that he's not going to seek reelection.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is a report that came out of
20:58
SPEAKER_00: the House Ethics Committee recommending that he be censured for sexual harassment.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: There were two young female staffers in his office that he sort of showered
21:06
SPEAKER_00: with gifts and sent, you know, late night, very personal sounding text messages to.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: One of them he promoted to be deputy chief of staff when she was very young
21:16
SPEAKER_00: and inexperienced and a very odd choice for that role.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And so one key lesson is just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: But he seems to think that he was familiar with this and he knows that to create
21:54
SPEAKER_00: a hostile work environment, what you have to do has to be severe and pervasive.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: And he's basically like, well, I stayed within the line.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And the committee is like,
22:03
SPEAKER_00: well, first of all, no, you didn't because you did so much of this stuff.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Even though none of it was a direct proposition,
22:09
SPEAKER_00: it was sort of clear to everyone what was going on and it made people in
22:12
SPEAKER_00: the office uncomfortable.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: And you knew that and you did, you possibly created an illegal hostile work environment.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: And even if it wasn't illegal,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: we have additional rules of the house that you were in violation of,
22:24
SPEAKER_00: but it may actually have been illegal.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: That was interesting to me here,
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Edwards being way too clever by half and thinking that,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: you know, well,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: if I do harassment that is not severe and pervasive,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: then that's okay and I can get away with it.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah,
22:37
SPEAKER_01: his story almost seems to be,
22:38
SPEAKER_01: and to his credit, I mean, the text of things he wrote kind of supports this.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a sexual relationship pest.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm an emotional relationship pest.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: He's sending a handwritten letter in which he states,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: and I'm quoting here,
22:54
SPEAKER_00: that you have written
22:54
SPEAKER_01: it.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week's free episode of Serious Trouble.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear more from us,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: a discussion of Representative Chuck Edwards,
23:04
SPEAKER_00: who thought he had stayed on the correct side of the line and been able
23:08
SPEAKER_00: to be inappropriate without technically being sexually harassing,
23:10
SPEAKER_00: but wasn't, you really shouldn't send an ad We'll see you next time.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: We would love to have you.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's serioustrouble.show.