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Defamation Claims · Serious Trouble

0:09
SPEAKER_01: Hi, it's Ken White.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: And it's Josh Barrow.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: And this is Serious Trouble.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Ken, so this week we have a number of defamation and defamation adjacent cases to cover.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: We do.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: We haven't done that much defamation lately.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to this.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of our thing, right?
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And these ones turned out well for Donald Trump and for Hunter Biden.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: So why don't we start,
0:30
SPEAKER_01: first of all,
0:30
SPEAKER_01: with,
0:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
0:31
SPEAKER_01: when we say turned out well,
0:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
0:32
SPEAKER_01: these are still at intermediate stages.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: There are no judgments or anything like that that have been issued.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: But let's start with Trump versus the Pulitzer Organization.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: There were awards that the Pulitzer Prize Commission or committee or whatever it is
0:45
SPEAKER_01: gave to The New York Times and The Washington Post for coverage of the relationship
0:49
SPEAKER_01: between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia in 2016.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: And what they're saying is basically a fair amount of the collusion allegations
0:58
SPEAKER_01: ended up being overstated.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: The Pulitzer Committee did not withdraw these prizes and therefore that's defamatory.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm surprised that this is advanced at all,
1:06
SPEAKER_01: because first of all,
1:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:07
SPEAKER_01: a Pulitzer Prize,
1:09
SPEAKER_01: isn't that one of the purest statements of opinion possible saying,
1:12
SPEAKER_01: I think this is a good piece of news coverage?
1:14
SPEAKER_01: How could that possibly be defamatory?
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a good question.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: So it would be a little harder to sue over the giving of the Pulitzer Prize,
1:22
SPEAKER_00: but that's not what Trump did.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: He challenged and criticized the Pulitzer board for having given the New York Times
1:30
SPEAKER_00: and the Washington Post the Pulitzer Prize over several articles talking about the
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Mueller investigation and the allegations that Trump colluded with Russia in
1:41
SPEAKER_00: connection with the 2016 election.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: And what they did is that they did a review and then declined to withdraw the prize
1:50
SPEAKER_00: and issued a statement about it.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: And what that statement said was that they appointed two independent reviews,
1:58
SPEAKER_00: two commissioners to review the work.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: They were conducted by individuals with no connection to the New York Times or the Washington Post.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: And they converged in their conclusions that all the contentions were false.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: there were no passages or headlines or contentions that were discredited by any of the subsequent facts.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: So Trump sued over that,
2:20
SPEAKER_00: saying basically that saying that the articles accusing me of conspiring with
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Russia are true,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: which is a defamatory statement.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And let's be clear that from the start, Trump's not going to wind up with money from this.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he means to.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: This has always been performative and harassing litigation intended to
2:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:41
SPEAKER_00: be a talking point about,
2:42
SPEAKER_00: look how I stick it to the liberal elite media and a way to engage his base and so on.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: But naturally, the Pulitzer Board filed a motion to dismiss.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: And what this judge,
2:57
SPEAKER_00: and it was a state judge in Florida,
2:59
SPEAKER_00: said,
3:00
SPEAKER_00: did a very careful examination of the law of when the
3:05
SPEAKER_00: the statement of opinion can be potentially defamatory.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: So opinions aren't categorically non-defamatory.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: An opinion can be defamatory if it relies explicitly on facts that are false.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: So I think you would be a terrible candidate for office because of your criminal conviction.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: You know,
3:22
SPEAKER_00: the I think part is opinion,
3:24
SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't cleanse the whole thing if the underlying fact is false.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: And they can be defamatory if they imply false facts or if they aren't explicit
3:34
SPEAKER_00: about the facts they rely on.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: So I've reviewed your papers, and I think your attacks cheat is an example.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: It implies something.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: So here what the judge said is that the statement from the Pulitzer board didn't
3:49
SPEAKER_00: identify who these people were,
3:51
SPEAKER_00: didn't identify what their qualifications were.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: didn't say what information they relied on in making this conclusion that none of
3:59
SPEAKER_00: the facts had been discredited.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: It didn't give the people the independent basis on which they could evaluate an opinion.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: So if you link to a newspaper story or something and say,
4:11
SPEAKER_00: based on this,
4:13
SPEAKER_00: I think this person's a liar,
4:14
SPEAKER_00: generally that's okay because you're saying what you're basing your opinion on.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Right, it's an opinion based on disclosed facts.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: But when you're vague like they were here,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: then there's a potential that you're implying false facts or that the facts you're
4:30
SPEAKER_00: relying on are false.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: So the judge let this one survive.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that Trump will carry it all the way through no matter what happens
4:40
SPEAKER_00: in November just because – he never carries his defamation cases all the way through.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: Usually they get dismissed.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he dismisses them.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: They're more of a crowd-pleasing thing.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: But for now,
4:51
SPEAKER_00: it survives,
4:53
SPEAKER_00: ironically,
4:54
SPEAKER_00: because the Pulitzer Board got itself in more trouble by doing that review and then
5:00
SPEAKER_00: putting out a somewhat vague description of it.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Now,
5:04
SPEAKER_00: I think this could have gone the other way,
5:07
SPEAKER_00: but it's not an outrageously lawless decision or anything.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And so is it basically that the ultimate – unless Trump voluntarily chooses to dismiss this case –
5:17
SPEAKER_01: Is this something where eventually there would have to be a fact finding by the
5:20
SPEAKER_01: court about whether the statements in these underlying articles in the New York
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Times and the Washington Post were true?
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Or is it a fact finding about exactly what kind of investigation the Pulitzer Commission did?
5:31
SPEAKER_01: What would the court end up looking into?
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, what you'd have eventually is maybe a motion for summary judgment after discovery.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe a trial at which the subject would be, did this imply false facts?
5:44
SPEAKER_00: So were there in fact factual statements in those articles that got the Pulitzer
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Prize that were false statements of fact as opposed to statements of analysis or
5:56
SPEAKER_00: opinion and that type of thing?
5:58
SPEAKER_00: So it's a way of sort of collaterally attacking those New York Times and Washington
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Post stories years after the statute of limitations has run on them.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: And so what are we talking about in terms of legal expenses here on both sides if
6:10
SPEAKER_01: you have a case like this that proceeds as far as this has?
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, vast.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of thousands.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Seven figures?
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of thousands on both sides, probably just up to this point and over the course of the case.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, easily seven figures combined, possibly seven figures on each side of the case.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: And then there's another suit, which was against ABC.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: And this had to do with George Stephanopoulos,
6:33
SPEAKER_01: who's conducting an interview and repeatedly made this statement that Donald Trump
6:38
SPEAKER_01: had been found liable for rape.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And listeners will recall that in the one of the E.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Jean Carroll civil cases in New York,
6:45
SPEAKER_01: there was a jury that actually found him not liable for rape,
6:48
SPEAKER_01: found him liable for sexual assault.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And there's a specific distinction between the two in the New York law that the
6:55
SPEAKER_01: that the case was considering there.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: And so Donald Trump has been saying, you know, a court, in fact, found me not liable for rape.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: And this was defamatory.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And he's suing ABC over this.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And the claim from ABC's side is that basically in a colloquial sense that,
7:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:09
SPEAKER_01: the sexual assault that he was found liable for by the court,
7:13
SPEAKER_01: people might refer to that as rape,
7:15
SPEAKER_01: even though that was not the terminology that the court was using.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: And so this is a case that's also continuing to proceed.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump passed one of the procedural hurdles there in federal court in Florida.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: So this one is about George Stephanopoulos on ABC.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: He was interviewing someone and he said like 10 times that the jury had found Trump liable for rape.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: And this was in service of going after a Republican politician who had supported
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Trump and saying,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: weren't you in fact a rape victim and how can you in good conscience support this man?
7:53
SPEAKER_00: It was Congresswoman Nancy Mace specifically from South Carolina.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Right, which is a little too George Stephanopoulos for my taste, but that's another issue.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: So this was sloppy because the whole point of a significant part of the litigation
8:10
SPEAKER_00: in that is that technically he was not found liable for the rape.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's because under New York law,
8:17
SPEAKER_00: rape is narrowly defined to – and with apologies to mean unconsensual,
8:23
SPEAKER_00: penile –
8:25
SPEAKER_00: rape and not digital or anything like that.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: And what the jury clearly believed is that Trump had, with his fingers, raped her.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's why they found him liable for sexual abuse.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: So kind of sloppy by George Stephanopoulos.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, you just referred to it as rape right there.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, exactly.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: That's a good point.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a colloquial term sometimes.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: The reason why Trump wins on this—so Trump sues Stephanopoulos, saying—
8:54
SPEAKER_00: an ABC saying, no, I was not found liable for rape.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: That's not right.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And you said it 10 times.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: What the judge here says is, well, the context is key.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: So this is in the context of Stephanopoulos talking not about what Trump did to E.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Jean Carroll,
9:12
SPEAKER_00: but to a specific legal issue,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: what the jury found.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: And
9:16
SPEAKER_00: repeating it 10 times,
9:19
SPEAKER_00: and even throwing up a headline from a paper with the content fuzzed out that
9:24
SPEAKER_00: misleadingly suggests that he was found liable for rape.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: So under those circumstances, it's not substantially true.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not the same as what happened in E.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Jean Carroll's case,
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SPEAKER_00: where she said that,
9:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:39
SPEAKER_00: I've been vindicated,
9:40
SPEAKER_00: he raped me.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Trump sues her in the second case and the judge says,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: well,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: it's substantially true in terms of describing what he did to her.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: But this is different.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: This is describing what the jury found.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: And there the jury very specifically did not find him liable for rape and found him
10:01
SPEAKER_00: liable for sexual abuse.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: The other thing the judge refused to do is to apply that doctrine called collateral estoppel,
10:09
SPEAKER_00: which can be summarized as saying,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Trump,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: you lost in this issue.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: On the other case, you can't make it the basis for your claim here.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And the judge said they aren't exactly the same issues.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: You can't apply that doctrine because,
10:22
SPEAKER_00: again,
10:23
SPEAKER_00: there the question was,
10:24
SPEAKER_00: what can E.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Jean Carroll say colloquially to describe what happened to her?
10:29
SPEAKER_00: versus what can George Stephanopoulos say specifically about what the jury found.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida Federal Court.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: It could have gone the other way too, but it's a plausible analysis.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not some bizarre Trumpian analysis.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: This is a George W. Bush appointee, but smart.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's the analysis is plausible.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Notably, this is Judge Cecilia Altnaga.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: This is the judge.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: There was a news story claiming that she had tried to encourage Eileen Cannon to
11:07
SPEAKER_01: get herself off the documents case.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: She's the chief judge in the district where Eileen Cannon is a judge.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: And so she's a Republican appointee.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: But there was this news reporting suggesting that she was trying to get that case
11:20
SPEAKER_01: away from Judge Cannon,
11:21
SPEAKER_01: something that you actually thought was inappropriate on Judge Altnaga's part to
11:25
SPEAKER_01: try to interfere with the assignment of a case.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: I did think that I thought that was outside norms.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that it getting out, which it was predictably it would.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: undermines the confidence in the judicial system by making you think that,
11:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:37
SPEAKER_00: there's a fix to decide who the judge is going to be here.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: But it certainly suggests that she's not in the tank for Trump because what she was
11:43
SPEAKER_01: doing there,
11:43
SPEAKER_01: even if it was inappropriate,
11:44
SPEAKER_01: was unfavorable to him.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of reaction to this has been outrage.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think often when there's outrage in a decision like this,
11:52
SPEAKER_00: allowing a Trump defamation case to survive is
11:55
SPEAKER_00: The outrage is justified in the sense that clearly it's a harassment suit.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Clearly it is performative litigation.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Clearly it's designed to grandstand and punish, not actually to
12:08
SPEAKER_00: remedying any harm.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless,
12:11
SPEAKER_00: you got to follow the rules and the rules here plausibly went the way the judge
12:16
SPEAKER_00: said they did.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: The judge is very clear that this doesn't mean he's going to win.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: He's still going to have to show actual malice.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: It's not clear what his damages are for the distinction between saying that you
12:26
SPEAKER_00: were found liable for rape versus found liable for sexual abuse.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we don't know that Trump is actually going to continue to pursue it.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: I suspect he may drop it after some point where it's no longer useful to him.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about that substantial truth doctrine.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: And it sort of,
12:42
SPEAKER_01: it seems to me that,
12:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:44
SPEAKER_01: wouldn't the argument for Stephanopoulos' side be that he said that there was a
12:48
SPEAKER_01: finding by the jury,
12:49
SPEAKER_01: and that's true.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: And that the finding was that Trump committed an action that people might colloquially describe as rape.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: And that's also true.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: I don't,
12:59
SPEAKER_01: why is the statement that he was found liable for rape,
13:01
SPEAKER_01: why does that necessarily imply that he's speaking within the specific legal
13:06
SPEAKER_01: standard of
13:07
SPEAKER_01: rather than using a description of the activity for which he was found liable.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Well,
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Josh,
13:12
SPEAKER_00: you've hit on a point,
13:12
SPEAKER_00: which is that the substantial truth doctrine,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: which is sometimes called the gist or the sting doctrine.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: You know,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: if the false statement is correct about the gist or the sting of the bad thing,
13:24
SPEAKER_00: then it's substantially true.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: It's a fuzzy doctrine.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: So the determination of what's substantially true,
13:31
SPEAKER_00: what's the gist or the sting,
13:33
SPEAKER_00: is a lot more subjective than a lot of areas within First Amendment law.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: So the analysis you suggested is perfectly plausible, I think.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Where I think this judge has a point is that Stephanopoulos is making a very specific factual claim.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is the jury had the ability to find Trump liable for rape, and they deliberately did not.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: So I think that you can say when you're talking about a specific legal finding,
14:02
SPEAKER_00: something like that,
14:03
SPEAKER_00: and when you repeat it 10 times,
14:05
SPEAKER_00: that there's a way that it really seems as if you're making a very specific factual
14:10
SPEAKER_00: claim as opposed to a general one that you substantially hit.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: I recall a few years ago we discussed a case where there was a substantial truth
14:17
SPEAKER_01: dispute and it had to do with someone calling someone else a felon.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, that person had only been convicted of a misdemeanor.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: And that sort of seems like another one of these situations where obviously a felon
14:26
SPEAKER_01: has a specific legal meaning.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: It's someone who's been convicted of a felony.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: But when people talk casually about criminals.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: someone might say that someone is a felon without making any actual reference
14:36
SPEAKER_01: toward whether the crime for which they were convicted was a felony or a misdemeanor.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: And I guess,
14:40
SPEAKER_01: again,
14:41
SPEAKER_01: similarly,
14:41
SPEAKER_01: that would depend on the context in which you were saying it and whether it
14:45
SPEAKER_01: appeared that you were speaking in a specifically factually legal sense versus a
14:49
SPEAKER_01: more colloquial sense about felon just meaning criminal.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: I think that's exactly right, Josh.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: And the cases have gone both ways on that exact distinction.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: So generally, I think if you're trash talking, you refer to someone as a convicted felon.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: and general idiot and so forth, there it's going to be closer to substantial truth.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: If you say after his conviction in 1998,
15:12
SPEAKER_00: he's a convicted felon based on the jury's finding,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: you couch it in legal and specific factual terms,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: it's more likely to be defamation.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Hunter Biden.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: So Hunter,
15:28
SPEAKER_01: the infamous laptop that got out and people spent a lot of time trying to figure out,
15:35
SPEAKER_01: how did this get out here?
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Is this real?
15:38
SPEAKER_01: There were accusations from Hunter's side that it had been some sort of Russian op.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: So it turned out that there really was Hunter Biden's computer and there was all
15:45
SPEAKER_01: this data that came off of it.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: And he sued a former official in the Trump administration, Garrett Ziegler,
15:52
SPEAKER_01: for publicizing certain information that came off the so-called laptop.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I guess, first of all, what are the grounds on which Hunter can bring a lawsuit over this?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not defamatory, presumably, to publish his actual data.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: And then if you steal someone's computer, that's a crime and presumably a tort.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: But if you abandon your laptop at a repair shop and never go and claim it,
16:17
SPEAKER_01: and it's unclear whether it's even your property anymore,
16:20
SPEAKER_01: What's his claim here about what he has to sue over against Mr. Ziegler?
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And one clarification.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: They're talking about the laptop, but they're also talking about the hard drive.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: And everyone seems to assume that we're talking about the hard drive in the laptop.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the way they talk about this,
16:37
SPEAKER_00: it seems almost as if the hard drive was separated or anything.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: So the hard drive may not be identical to the laptop.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: At any rate, Hunter sued here in the Central District of California, federal court.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: under two theories.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: One is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is a federal statute that's both criminal and civil.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's a statute written by Congress very badly,
17:03
SPEAKER_00: frequently misused,
17:05
SPEAKER_00: that makes it illegal to intrude into a protected computer system without
17:11
SPEAKER_00: authorization under certain circumstances.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: And there are various aggravating things that can make it more serious, like a
17:18
SPEAKER_00: doing more than $5,000 of damage or stealing protected secrets and that sort of thing.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: So Hunter sued under that, and he sued under a California equivalent statute.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: It's different in a few ways, but it's basically the same idea.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: The California statute makes it illegal to make unauthorized intrusion into a computer.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: So Hunter's theory is very explicitly avoiding defamation.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: It's saying that you intruded into this computer that's mine, you broke into it,
17:47
SPEAKER_00: You know,
17:47
SPEAKER_00: you published 180,000 emails from it,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: made them searchable,
17:51
SPEAKER_00: 10,000 pictures,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: and that's a violation of these two statutes.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: So Garrett Ziegler filed the motion to dismiss, and recently he lost.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: It was in June, but, you know, we had other things going on.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: We didn't cover it at the time.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And what the court found was that, you know, this is a motion to dismiss.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: The only issue is whether or not Hunter Biden has pled facts,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: which,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: if true,
18:15
SPEAKER_00: are sufficient to meet the requirements of the statutes.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: He has.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Garrett Zeger also filed an anti-SLAPP.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: And the judge shut this down for two reasons.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: First, a state anti-SLAPP cannot be used to take down a federal claim.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: So you can't SLAPP, anti-SLAPP a federal claim.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a disputed matter among courts?
18:34
SPEAKER_00: No.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: What you may be thinking of is it's disputed among courts whether you can use the
18:39
SPEAKER_00: anti-SLAPP statute at all in federal court.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a lawsuit in Texas,
18:45
SPEAKER_00: for instance,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: that circuit,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: the Fifth Circuit,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: doesn't allow you to use Texas's anti-SLAPP statute when you're in federal court.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: The Ninth Circuit here does.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: But the point is— But I see.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: So you can—defamation is a state law claim,
18:58
SPEAKER_01: so you can use anti-SLAPP against it,
19:00
SPEAKER_01: but the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a federal law,
19:02
SPEAKER_01: and so you can't use a state anti-SLAPP statute to fight an action under it.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: That's also why you can't use an anti-slap statute to attack a copyright or
19:11
SPEAKER_00: trademark claim,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: for instance,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: or I guess a RICO claim.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: So believe me, I've seen places where it should be done.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: So the judge says, no, you can't use that to attack the federal claim.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And as to the state claim,
19:25
SPEAKER_00: remember an anti-slap motion says,
19:27
SPEAKER_00: is this lawsuit directed at protected speech?
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And what the judge said is at the heart of the claim, the gravamen of the current claim,
19:36
SPEAKER_00: is intrusion into a computer system, not what was published.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: So if he had framed it as defamation, the anti-SLAPP would absolutely apply.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: But since he framed it as illegally intruding into a computer, then the anti-SLAPP statute doesn't apply.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: So Garrett Ziegler was very Trumpian about this ruling.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: He issued a statement saying that
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Litigating a case with a judge who was appointed by the plaintiff's daddy is never easy,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: but we will eventually prevail.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: All we've done is tell the truth.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's going to make the judge super happy.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: So he's lost that.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: This is not the only recent clash between Biden and Ziegler, by the way.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: So at Hunter Biden's gun trial, you know, where he was convicted of these crimes.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: gun charges relating to being an addict in possession of a firearm.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Garrett Ziegler attended, of course, to gloat, and because that's the kind of guy he is,
20:38
SPEAKER_00: And Hunter Biden's wife,
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Melissa Cohen Biden,
20:41
SPEAKER_00: saw him and confronted him in the hallway and said,
20:44
SPEAKER_00: you have no right to be here,
20:45
SPEAKER_00: you Nazi piece of shit.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Now, she's incorrect in the sense that he has a right to be in a public proceeding.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: The Nazi piece of shit part is a question of opinion.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Although I will say he responded to the papers by saying, I'm not a Nazi.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: I believe in the Constitution, which is...
21:01
SPEAKER_00: kind of what you would expect a Nazi piece of shit to say.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: But at any rate, that... But I assume in this context, Nazi is a term of abuse.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: And a statement of opinion.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: You know,
21:10
SPEAKER_01: like,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: if she had said you are a member of the American Nazi Party,
21:13
SPEAKER_01: that would be a factual claim that could be litigated.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: But just calling someone a Nazi generally is an insult.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, if you like to dress up as a Nazi and flog goats or whatever, that's a statement of fact.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: This is absolutely a statement of opinion,
21:27
SPEAKER_00: but it would not put...
21:28
SPEAKER_00: I would not put it past Garrett Ziegler to try to make an issue of it somehow.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: But so can I ask a venue question?
21:33
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: The claim, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim in this California state law claim against Ziegler.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: Why is it?
21:39
SPEAKER_01: Why are we in court in California at all?
21:40
SPEAKER_01: I know Hunter Biden lives in California, but the laptop was abandoned in Delaware.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: Ziegler apparently lives in Illinois.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: I know that,
21:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:48
SPEAKER_01: he's complaining that Biden,
21:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:50
SPEAKER_01: obviously there's a lot of judges on the federal bench who were appointed either by
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And that's an awkward fact in a lot of these cases.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: But it feels like it's a little odd that this is in California and he's accused of
22:01
SPEAKER_01: violating specifically a California state law,
22:03
SPEAKER_01: even though it's not clear that Ziegler did anything in the state of California.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Well,
22:07
SPEAKER_00: he did communicate into the state of California,
22:09
SPEAKER_00: and this came up in the context that Ziegler also moved to dismiss on the theory
22:14
SPEAKER_00: that the court had no personal jurisdiction over him.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: That is,
22:17
SPEAKER_00: that he could not be sued in California because he didn't live there and didn't
22:21
SPEAKER_00: have sufficient ties there.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: And the judge dismissed that on the grounds that even if even Ziegler didn't have
22:29
SPEAKER_00: substantial general ties there,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: didn't live there,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: didn't do business there,
22:33
SPEAKER_00: that he did a number of things that impacted California in the course of the
22:37
SPEAKER_00: actions he's being accused of,
22:39
SPEAKER_00: like having people reach into California to interview people to get information,
22:43
SPEAKER_00: communicating about what he had made available to people in California,
22:48
SPEAKER_00: that type of thing.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: So the venue is a little bit flexible,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: and it can rely on a number of different factors,
22:55
SPEAKER_00: one of which is where the defendant or the plaintiff lives.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: So that was enough to make venue.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's clear that Ziegler will continue to push the idea that California is not the right place.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: But for now, he's lost that.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And then there's other Hunter Biden news,
23:10
SPEAKER_01: which is that Judge Eileen Cannon dismissed the documents case against Donald Trump,
23:15
SPEAKER_01: saying that there's no legal authority to appoint a special counsel,
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Jack Smith,
23:20
SPEAKER_01: who's overseeing that case.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: She's not technically in violation of any controlling precedent,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: but this is quite different than the way that other courts that have considered
23:29
SPEAKER_01: this question have considered it.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: It's something that's likely to end up before the Supreme Court at some point,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: or certainly the appellate court in the 11th Circuit will be reviewing that.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: But now that Judge Cannon has made that ruling,
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Hunter Biden has raised his hand and said,
23:42
SPEAKER_01: hey,
23:42
SPEAKER_01: I was convicted in a case brought by a special counsel,
23:46
SPEAKER_01: David Weiss in that case.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: And so my gun conviction in Delaware should also be thrown out.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: But it's this is not even in the same circuit as Judge Cannon.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: So like how seriously are the courts going to take this claim that,
23:57
SPEAKER_01: hey,
23:57
SPEAKER_01: a federal court in Florida did this.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: You should do it for me, too.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Not very.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: So,
24:01
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
24:01
SPEAKER_00: he's trying to throw out his conviction in Delaware and he's trying to dismiss his
24:07
SPEAKER_00: the tax case in California.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Two different places, two different circuits, unlikely to be sympathetic to Judge Cannon's logic there.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: He's making his record so that he's made this claim in case other courts later,
24:22
SPEAKER_00: maybe the Supreme Court,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: agree with it.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: But I think you're right.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he was prosecuted by – he's being prosecuted by David Weiss, who was the Trump-appointed –
24:35
SPEAKER_00: U.S.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: attorney for the District of Delaware.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: Still is the U.S.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: attorney for the District of Delaware, by the way.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: There's an argument to be made that David Weiss is different than Jack Smith
24:46
SPEAKER_00: because of the position he held at the time he was appointed and the lines of
24:51
SPEAKER_00: supervision and control over him that weren't necessarily there for Jack Smith.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: To make that argument,
24:57
SPEAKER_00: you have to delve into Judge Cannon's Clarence Thomas fanfic to an extent that a
25:04
SPEAKER_00: court may not want to do.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: I think it's just much more likely that the courts in Delaware and California will
25:09
SPEAKER_00: just say,
25:11
SPEAKER_00: no,
25:11
SPEAKER_00: every court other than Judge Cannon and a concurrence by Judge Thomas has rejected this.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: We reject it, too.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: And then it's not going anywhere, probably in either circuit, unless it gets up to the Supreme Court.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: where I think it's very likely that if it gets there,
25:26
SPEAKER_00: that the Supreme Court will agree with Judge Cannon.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: And so when you say he's making his record,
25:30
SPEAKER_01: in case several years from now,
25:32
SPEAKER_01: the Supreme Court makes this favorable ruling,
25:34
SPEAKER_01: he needed to get on the record now so that he could press that claim?
25:37
SPEAKER_00: He can't take advantage of new law later if he didn't try to take advantage of it now.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: These are people we haven't talked about in several years.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: These were both he was an FBI agent.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: She was an attorney at the FBI.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: They were involved in some of the Trump Russia investigations, and they were also having an affair.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: And they're embarrassing text messages related to both their professional work and
26:06
SPEAKER_01: their affair ended up being made public as part of the political controversy around
26:12
SPEAKER_01: the Russia investigation into Trump.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And this had significant negative professional and personal consequences for them.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: They ended up being terminated from their government employment.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: And so they have both sued the federal government, saying they were mistreated as employees.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: And they have partially settled their cases, and they're getting a substantial payout.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: And then Strzok has more claims to press on top of that.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: They sued under the Privacy Act, basically saying that the government had revealed what
26:40
SPEAKER_00: private things that it had no business of revealing,
26:43
SPEAKER_00: that the texts were not actually government documents and there was no basis to
26:49
SPEAKER_00: reveal them.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's being settled.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And Page is getting $800,000 and Strzok is getting $1.2 million.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Strzok still has also a case claiming that he was wrongfully terminated.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: for political reasons.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
27:06
SPEAKER_00: these people,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: you might remember,
27:08
SPEAKER_00: it's been a few years now,
27:09
SPEAKER_00: but they were absolutely turned into a big thing by the Republicans and by Trump.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: They were reviled in the press.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: All sorts of creepy things were said about them.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: And yes,
27:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
27:20
SPEAKER_00: they're government employees and they say things about Trump that suggest they
27:23
SPEAKER_00: think he's terrible,
27:24
SPEAKER_00: but I suspect a whole lot of government authorities said that about any president
27:29
SPEAKER_00: by text.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: So they were reviled, they were threatened, and probably...
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Most humiliatingly at all,
27:36
SPEAKER_00: they've been played in skits and in some sort of movie by Dean Cain and Christy Swanson,
27:43
SPEAKER_00: respectively,
27:44
SPEAKER_00: which I think no American should have to endure.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: He was Superman.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: So they did a skit with those two, I think, at the Republican convention in 2020.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: This strongly suggests that the evidence was very bad for the government about the
28:00
SPEAKER_00: motives in releasing these things.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: when it came out that the settlement was going to happen,
28:07
SPEAKER_00: the Republicans in Congress hauled Merrick Garland in and started grilling him and saying,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: basically,
28:14
SPEAKER_00: why are you going to settle with these people?
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Are you telling me that, you know,
28:18
SPEAKER_00: All I have to do to make a million dollars is trash talk the president by text and blah, blah, blah.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: And Garland stood by and said,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: look,
28:25
SPEAKER_00: the Privacy Act doesn't distinguish between information we like and information we
28:29
SPEAKER_00: don't like.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: If somebody in the government discloses personal information that is protected by
28:34
SPEAKER_00: the Privacy Act,
28:35
SPEAKER_00: that's the way the law is.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: So every indication is that the evidence they found about the motivations for DOJ
28:42
SPEAKER_00: for releasing this text was terrible for the government and that they would likely win.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: So you don't think that the decisions about whether to settle these sorts of cases
28:50
SPEAKER_01: is governed at all by the extent to which the administration is sympathetic or
28:53
SPEAKER_01: unsympathetic to the person who's advancing the claim?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: to some extent, but not to a controlling extent.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure it plays a role, but DOJ doesn't want to hand out government money.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: And they are very hard bargainers in settling things,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: including cases which are completely outrageous and you think the person should get money.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And DOJ routinely fights very hard against cases brought
29:19
SPEAKER_00: by people who were wronged by the prior administration,
29:23
SPEAKER_00: even if the prior administration was the other party.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: So is it a factor in their minds?
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I suspect it is.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: But is it simply, oh, we like those guys, let's give them $2 million?
29:32
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not the way it works.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Finally this week, let's talk about Judge Arthur Engeron.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: I think we can call him long-suffering at this point.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we could have called him that a couple of years ago, Josh.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: So long suffering New York state judge Arthur Engeron,
29:46
SPEAKER_01: who presided over the civil case brought by the New York attorney general against
29:51
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump and various Trump entities and his children related to certain
29:55
SPEAKER_01: business frauds.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: There has been a motion for him to recuse at this point,
30:01
SPEAKER_01: basically saying that he had an inappropriate ex-party meeting.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: But what Judge Engeron says was this so-called ex-party meeting was,
30:09
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
30:10
SPEAKER_01: some random lawyer trying to harangue me on my way to the parking lot with some
30:16
SPEAKER_01: cockamamie theory about what I was supposed to do in this case,
30:18
SPEAKER_01: offering me unsolicited advice that I very much did not want.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: And that certainly does not call for my recusal.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, some judicial opinions just scream long suffering.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: They just convey...
30:32
SPEAKER_00: this judge thinking, why didn't I go to medical school?
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Because this is bullshit.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: And this is one of those opinions.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: So in May,
30:40
SPEAKER_00: I guess a lawyer named Adam Lightman Bailey,
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Esquire,
30:46
SPEAKER_00: who Judge Engeron is careful to say with no connection to this case,
30:52
SPEAKER_00: he says that he was riding an elevator down to the main floor,
30:57
SPEAKER_00: Judge Engeron was,
30:58
SPEAKER_00: and this guy started haranguing him
31:02
SPEAKER_00: about a particular law that was at issue in the case.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: And Engeron knew him as an acquaintance, but his vehement speech took me aback.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: I simply told him he was wrong.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: He trailed after me, still droning on as I descended the judge's stairs to the street level.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: I entered my vehicle without saying another word except perhaps goodbye and departed.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: So this is a picture of this Bailey guy as just kind of a officious asshole who
31:32
SPEAKER_00: tries to,
31:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: corner a judge to yell at him about his interpretation of the case.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: And Engron goes on to sort of complain,
31:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:41
SPEAKER_00: in fact,
31:42
SPEAKER_00: since I took this case,
31:43
SPEAKER_00: all sorts of assholes come up to me in the street and tell me their opinion about it.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: And I don't like it.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: My favorite part of this,
31:50
SPEAKER_01: the best dig at Bailey in here is he says,
31:52
SPEAKER_01: I certainly did not need a landlord tenant lawyer ranting about it.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes, in legal circles, that would be quite a dig.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: So,
32:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Trump's lawyers,
32:04
SPEAKER_00: after this was reported in the New York Post or someplace,
32:09
SPEAKER_00: file a motion saying,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: oh,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: well,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: we need to have a discovery process to find out exactly what Bailey said to you.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And you should recuse yourself because you've been, you know, influenced by him.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: And the judge is like, I was not influenced at all.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Judge Engeron, he's clearly feeling that the trial's over.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: feeling a little more comfortable letting it all hang out a little bit more.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: So he lists,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: the defendant said,
32:33
SPEAKER_00: well,
32:33
SPEAKER_00: it's clear that you're biased because look at all these sources that say you must
32:36
SPEAKER_00: be biased now and that you're
32:38
SPEAKER_00: Neutrality can be taken into question.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: And so Angeron lists,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: oh yeah,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: you mean the Wall Street Journal op-ed,
32:46
SPEAKER_00: the National Review,
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Newsmax,
32:48
SPEAKER_00: the New York Post,
32:50
SPEAKER_00: YouTube videos,
32:52
SPEAKER_00: and the Vala conspiracy.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: And that,
32:54
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
32:54
SPEAKER_00: is an extremely brutal insult to the Vala conspiracy,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: which is a well-regarded conspiracy.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, this was kind of an encounter with a buffoonish lawyer.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: seized upon buffoonishly by Trump's lawyers.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: And now Judge Engeron is very much in the why do I have to put up with this shit type of mode.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: So I certainly get that.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: He is long suffering.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: One thing that we've discussed some in the context of the YSL RICO case,
33:35
SPEAKER_01: the other disaster of a RICO case down in Atlanta where Judge Earl Glanville has recused.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: is that,
33:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
33:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go back deep into the first legal problems that arose with Judge Glanville,
33:46
SPEAKER_01: but the reason he ended up having to recuse himself or being ordered to recuse
33:49
SPEAKER_01: himself was basically that he was becoming too much of an advocate for himself,
33:53
SPEAKER_01: too argumentative with the parties over his position,
33:56
SPEAKER_01: whether he needed to recuse,
33:57
SPEAKER_01: and that basically was why he needed to recuse.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: Is there any risk of that here with Judge Engeron,
34:01
SPEAKER_01: that even if this is a complete nonsense claim about why to recuse,
34:05
SPEAKER_01: if you offer this sort of caustic
34:08
SPEAKER_01: ruling about why you're not recusing, does that itself create an issue?
34:11
SPEAKER_00: No.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: The one in Georgia, first of all, the Georgia law and New York law are somewhat different.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Second of all,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: in Georgia,
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I really think that ruling by the other judge was kind of a kindness to a colleague.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: So framing it as, well, you got a little too involved,
34:26
SPEAKER_00: In defending yourself, that's why we're letting you off the hook.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: This is a catastrophe because you're an idiot.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: You did everything wrong.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Because as the chief judge, after all, you don't really want to say that to the chief judge.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Here,
34:39
SPEAKER_00: I think he is just sort of narrating what happened,
34:43
SPEAKER_00: and he's not really – it would be different if he were being accused of misconduct,
34:49
SPEAKER_00: and he got very involved in making –
34:52
SPEAKER_00: arguments factually about that, that might create more of an appearance.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, isn't this an accusation of misconduct?
34:57
SPEAKER_01: It's a ridiculous accusation of misconduct.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: But I thought it's the accusation is that he had an ex parte meeting that he wasn't
35:02
SPEAKER_01: supposed to and didn't report it.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: the funny thing is,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: it's basically the same accusation as against Judge Glanville,
35:07
SPEAKER_01: except Judge Glanville actually did the thing he was accused of doing.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, Judge Glanville set up the ex parte meeting.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Not exactly, because here their argument wasn't so much that, you know, you committed misconduct as
35:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, this person approached you and gave you information and that biased you.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: So there's less agency there.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
35:26
SPEAKER_00: certainly you could see a world in which Judge Engeron gets so irritated by this
35:31
SPEAKER_00: that he crosses some line.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: It's becoming an advocate for himself.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: I think he'll probably pull back from that crevasse.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: I think we can leave it there this week.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Ken, thank you so much for speaking with me.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Josh.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: Serious Trouble is created and produced by Very Serious Media.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: That's me and Sarah Faye.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Jennifer Swadik mixed and produced this episode.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jennifer.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: Our theme music is by Joshua Mosier.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: See you next time.