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Transcript

Not Paid for By the US Government · Serious Trouble

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, it's Ken White.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's Josh Barrow, and this is Serious Trouble.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ken, have you seen these paid for by the U.S. government ads about how great Donald Trump is?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: You got Nicolas Maduro out, replaced him with Delcy.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We all love Delcy.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, these are ads that seem to be done by...
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: And AI, if the AI really needed to switch therapists,
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: they are really kind of grim.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we are paying for them as taxpayers.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 20 million and counting is my understanding of what the spending is on this.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so...
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the president said he was going to stop and then he didn't.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Shocking.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so now the Democratic National Committee has sued,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: saying it is illegal to use government funds
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: to run what are fundamentally campaign ads for yourself.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: They say that it's against our favorite law,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: the Administrative Procedure Act, I guess, was arbitrary and capricious to do this.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then they also say that it's ultra virus,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: that there's no federal law authorizing the president to do this.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: We've had a number of these cases that are about like, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: the president went and spent money on something that there's no law allowing him
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  SPEAKER_00: to spend money on it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can anyone get into court to litigate that?
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  SPEAKER_00: And the DNC seems like it has a relatively good argument
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: that they have standing here and that this unauthorized spending is something that
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: the courts can actually step in about.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the DNC says that this is illegal in a number of ways,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: that there are affirmative laws against using public funds for what amounts
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: to propaganda or promotion of particular political aims and things like that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And also that there's no statute permitting it to be used so that it violates
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  SPEAKER_01: the Anti-Deficiency Act and basically by being unauthorized spending.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you're right that one of the lead –
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked before about how the courts generally aren't interested
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: in hearing mere citizens like the two of us complain that
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  SPEAKER_01: the government is doing something it's not supposed to do,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: including spending money in a way that's not authorized.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: You need some sort of specific standing.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the question is,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: by saying we have to compete with this stuff in the political arena, is that enough?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is that going to give standing?
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  SPEAKER_01: And you know what deep respect I have, Josh,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: for the legitimacy and total philosophical and legal consistency
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: of standing doctrine.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's your favorite, I know.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that this will turn out with some reasoned opinion.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that's the lead big fight.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that if anyone— It's the people that
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  SPEAKER_01: the White House is basically programming against, propagandizing against.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: some of it is pretty extreme in the sense that it says,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, he's battling the deep state for the survival of America.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's basically an anti-democratic ad, more or less.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll see how that goes.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll get into the whole administrative procedure act of
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's arbitrary and capricious to do this without authorization,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's ultra virus, that sort of thing.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so assuming that the courts do find standing and they get to the merits here of,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know, is this spending legal?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: The line from the Trump administration has been these aren't campaign ads.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are public service announcements.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I can I can look at the ad and be like, that's bullshit.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But how does a court decide what the what the purpose of the ad is for legal reasons?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a great question because there's a huge amount of informational ads
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  SPEAKER_01: and there always are that talk about,
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  SPEAKER_01: look how the government is providing you services.
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  SPEAKER_01: And there's quite a spectrum between ones that are informational
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  SPEAKER_01: about here's how you could get services if you're a need citizen and ones
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  SPEAKER_01: about here's how this administration is Providing services in a superior way
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  SPEAKER_01: to crush our evil enemies on the other side, which is kind of what these ads are.
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  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah,
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  SPEAKER_01: I could see how courts are going to be reluctant to get into that sort
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  SPEAKER_01: of line drawing.
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  SPEAKER_01: However, as always...
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  SPEAKER_01: The Trump administration may have handed them sort of the famous Potter Stewart,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I know it when I see it,
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  SPEAKER_01: where they'll say wherever the line is and wherever it might be difficult to draw,
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  SPEAKER_01: this isn't difficult to draw.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is clearly mere propagandizing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile,
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  SPEAKER_00: the president has been going around the country doing these rallies,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: often in places that he won by more than 20 points, which has been interesting.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I believe he was in rural Nebraska when he talked about why the Iran war was good.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he was saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, yes,
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  SPEAKER_00: gas prices are high,
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  SPEAKER_00: but that's a small price to pay for preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
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  SPEAKER_00: They could blow up a city.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then he talked about this in a way that sort
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: of He incongruently made it sound like he was sort of talking hopefully
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  SPEAKER_00: about them blowing up some U.S. cities.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know, like blow up Los Angeles, blow up San Diego.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so Democrats have taken this as,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: him inviting our foreign enemies to attack us and have been throwing
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: the word treason around.
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  SPEAKER_00: The explanation on the president's behalf has been,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: well, he was saying that he doesn't want them to blow up Los Angeles.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's his whole point.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like he wouldn't have done this war if he wanted them to get a nuclear weapon.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've raised a sort of in-between possibility where,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe what he meant was, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: we don't want them to blow up a city, but if they do, it should be Los Angeles.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of my – first of all,
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  SPEAKER_01: this is,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: the – Pathetic fallacy,
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  SPEAKER_01: which people will recall is attributing human-like attributes and motivations
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  SPEAKER_01: to forces of nature and the sack of goo that's in Trump's head.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: But my read of it was not the one that the Democrats are sort of pushing,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is he's actually inviting Iran to nuke.
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  SPEAKER_01: I took it completely like his brain is thinking about they could,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, they could Destroy an American city.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then he's like,
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  SPEAKER_01: if they're going to do that,
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  SPEAKER_01: they should do these two that I hate because those places suck.
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  SPEAKER_01: Also, San Diego catching strays here.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, what's really mad is San Francisco.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: San Francisco, all the people I know in San Francisco are like, what the fuck, man?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why are we being left out of this?
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  SPEAKER_01: We're the other big city, Los Angeles and San Francisco, not Los Angeles and San Diego.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, whatever it is,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: and I think at the very least,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's sort of part of his pattern of talking crap about how You know,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: people in cities who don't vote for him aren't real Americans.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not treason,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is the word that's been bandied about,
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  SPEAKER_01: including by our governor,
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  SPEAKER_01: Gavin Newsom, who said that it's basically, it's dangerous if not treasonous.
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  SPEAKER_00: So even he's not quite saying it's treasonous?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, he's just throwing the word out there because that's what we do now.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's very popular these days to call Ugly,
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  SPEAKER_01: stupid, obnoxious things, treasonous, which they're not.
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  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: one of the things that the framers of the Constitution got right is
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  SPEAKER_01: that they knew there was this long history
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  SPEAKER_01: of treason being this incredibly flexible accusation that you could use
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  SPEAKER_01: against anybody for anything.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so they put this very narrow definition in the Constitution that's levying war
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  SPEAKER_01: against the United States or giving aid and comfort To its enemies,
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  SPEAKER_01: which through case law has developed to mean basically someone we're at war with
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  SPEAKER_01: and giving some sort of tangible help as opposed to just saying approving stuff
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  SPEAKER_01: about them or criticizing our country.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's very clear that the First Amendment does not allow an interpretation
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  SPEAKER_01: of treason that would apply it to Donald Trump,
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  SPEAKER_01: even if he is saying, you know, haha, Iran should nuke these cities.
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  SPEAKER_01: That would, of course, be anything that a sane nation would ditch him for.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's not treason as it's narrowed by the United States Constitution.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that's just not a close call.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it kind of just illustrates how treason is used as a sort of, you know, treason is Rico.
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  SPEAKER_01: Basically, treason is like, I don't like this and I have big feelings about it.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is a way for me to express those big feelings.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's really not.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's a good thing it's not because Trump
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  SPEAKER_01: and his administration have constantly said that Democrats are committing treason
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  SPEAKER_01: and sedition and all these other big feelings words whenever they criticize
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  SPEAKER_01: the administration.
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  SPEAKER_01: So is this horrible?
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  SPEAKER_01: Is this a sign of how low we've sunk?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_01: Is it treason?
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  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
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  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of when something becomes material support for our enemies,
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about this case out of Minnesota.
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  SPEAKER_00: This young man,
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  SPEAKER_00: Haikun Mohamud,
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  SPEAKER_00: who has been arrested for plotting an attack in the Mall of America when he bought
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: an assault rifle and He expressed his desire to go there on a particular day
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  SPEAKER_00: and shoot up the mall.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was upset that he understood Jews to own the Mall of America.
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  SPEAKER_00: He, of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: was buying the assault rifle from an undercover FBI agent,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he was arrested when this happened.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know,
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: when you have these sorts of cases,
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's a spectrum of them, right,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: in terms of, like,
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  SPEAKER_00: how likely were these people to do this sort of thing
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  SPEAKER_00: if they had not gotten involved with the FBI in the first place?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: This one seems like more concerning to me than the one with like the anarchists in
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: the desert outside Palm Springs trying to figure out how to build a bomb.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: he'd hardly be the first teenager to take an assault weapon to a crowded space
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  SPEAKER_00: and shoot a bunch of people.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he, you know, did say repeatedly that he desired to do that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's right.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think his whole history shows something you would be very concerned about
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: and you wish there was some good way to deal with.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, importantly, federal courts don't have criminal law jurisdiction over minors.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there isn't such thing as a juvenile proceeding in federal court.
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  SPEAKER_01: They don't have jurisdiction over them.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what the Department of Justice did here is they started talking
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  SPEAKER_01: to this 16-year-old in 2024 about When he's spouting all this stuff,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: they're using an undercover – or excuse me,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: a confidential source,
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  SPEAKER_01: which usually means somebody in the community who is open to feeding them stuff.
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  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes someone who themselves has been caught doing stuff wrong.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this young man is talking the sort of stuff – the sort of the –
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: The more optimistic interpretation is what 16-year-olds say,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is a lot of big trash talk.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he wants to go to Somalia.
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  SPEAKER_01: He wants to fight with al-Shabaab.
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  SPEAKER_01: He wants to kill white people.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to do all this stuff.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And meanwhile, you know, he's using his phone.
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  SPEAKER_01: He's using his Xbox controller.
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  SPEAKER_01: He's using his little brother's iPad to communicate with a confidential source.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually he gets to the point where he's talking about he can't afford to go
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: to Somalia, so he wants to do some sort of Mass casualty event here.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually they kind of bring him to the point where he manages to save up $600
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  SPEAKER_01: to buy from the FBI an assault rifle and ammunition and is scraping the last $100
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: so he can afford the ammunition.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he's going to use it to shoot up the Mall of America.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you're right that Yeah.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: To what extent is the Department of Justice kind of choosing the crime?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: How many people are out there who,
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: if sort of nudged along and given an opportunity and a price list for
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  SPEAKER_01: an assault rifle and encouragement,
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  SPEAKER_01: would get to that point and how they choose which ones?
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  SPEAKER_01: And how often do they sort of say,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to string this out until he's 18 so we can charge him and,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know, for want of a better term, pull the trigger then?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would note,
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm sure there's a fuller evidentiary record that would be seen
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: if this ends up going to trial,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: but they described the confidential informant saying to him repeatedly,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: are you sure you want to go through with this?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do this, that kind of stuff.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And statements of,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: like certitude and,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know, desire to go forward with this on the part of the defendant here.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is absolutely not an entrapment scenario,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: and they are clearly taking affirmative steps to make a record
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: that it's not entrapment.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he is very, I mean, he's all in.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it would be wrong to suggest they are He's manipulating a miner
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  SPEAKER_01: into having terroristic thoughts.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's clear those are sincerely coming from him.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But they are providing him with a path that he otherwise might not find or he might.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's really a conundrum.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's an easy answer because I think there's lots of people out here like this.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you choose which ones to go after?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do you choose, you know, are we going to troll people?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: The forums where people say extreme things.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are we going to choose people like this?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are we going to choose the people who are potential school shooters?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Who do we devote all these resources and attention?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: thoughts on what sort of person the confidential informant might be here?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like often that's someone who has been involved in the drug trade
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: and gets caught up in a criminal investigation and they send them out
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: to have other dealings with people who are in the drug trade, that sort of thing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who's the sort of person who would become a confidential informant for this sort of case?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the complaints from Muslim civil rights organizations has been that the U.S.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: government since 9-11 has consistently tried to infiltrate them,
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  SPEAKER_01: infiltrate mosques,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: infiltrate Muslim communities and try to recruit and develop institutions.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they see it as sort of, you know, playing people against each other and that sort of thing.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And often it's someone who is in that community
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  SPEAKER_01: who might have done something minor that's wrong that they then sort of flip
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: into doing stuff like this.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Often it's people who have sincere worries about people
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: in their community being radicalized and committing terrorist acts.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a wide variety of people.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile,
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: in Minnesota,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Chief Judge Patrick Schlitz is and many of the other judges who serve in the U.S.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: district courts in the District of Minnesota are under criticism from the from
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe this is not about his handling of the large penis case.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: They were okay with that,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: that Matt Khalil didn't get justice for the spreading of the nasty rumors
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: about how huge his cock is?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, apparently no one in the Trump Department of Justice is worried about,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know, people with large penises being mistreated for whatever reason.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: this has to do with the ICE cases that Patrick Schlitz has when he's not on
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: the penis beat in his courtroom.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: so you might remember that we talked about Chief District Judge Patrick Schlitz of
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: the District of Minnesota and how he's handled a bunch of these ICE cases
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: and how he's been particularly vocal.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: About how the U.S.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Attorney's Office and ICE were simply kind of ignoring court orders or failing
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: to timely release people, failing to timely provide information, stuff like that.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened is eventually after he issued some orders calling this out
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  SPEAKER_01: and criticizing it,
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  SPEAKER_01: the New York Times did a story where they interviewed a number of people
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: about these orders and about the district judge's concerns and they interviewed him.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he basically – his comments were about how this was a threat to the rule of law
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: when the government does not obey court orders and persistently doesn't do so.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: He also said for what it's worth that he thought it was for
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: the most part incompetence and staffing shortages.
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  SPEAKER_01: In other words,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: that they'd bid off more than they could chew,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: less than a sort of devoted administrative plan that we're going to defy court.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, a few other judges commented and some did so anonymously.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the Department of Justice filed a ethics complaint with the circuit,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: with the Eighth Circuit,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: asking the chief judge for an investigation and saying that they had violated
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: the canons of judicial ethics that prevents judges from Talking in public about
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: the merits of a case before them or of saying things that basically show bias
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: that they have prejudged matters before them.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So for what it's worth,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Judge Schlitz and others basically say that ethical rules allowed judges to speak
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: about issues like the rule of law and judicial independence and core rules.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Court issues like that and that the canons about bias and things like
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: that can't be construed to prevent them from talking about that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And there are – he cites to an ethical advisory opinion from the Judiciary Committee
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: on Codes of Conduct that supports that viewpoint.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean the line is a little difficult between what's an improper – Comment on
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: a case or on bias against particular litigant versus what's permitted.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about this before, Josh, in the context of motions to disqualify judges.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So usually the sort of the rules for this are written by judges for judges
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: and reflect judicial sensibilities.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So they often talk about a reasonable person,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: whether a reasonable person would take it as an indication of bias.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that reasonable person is in a construct in the mind of judges based
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: on how judges think as opposed to how you or I might think.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I suspect that the Eighth Circuit and most of the judiciary is not going
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: to respond to this and say, yeah, you're right.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: This was over the line.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it does show how the administration,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: bless its heart to the best of its ability,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: has been consistently trying to push back about any sort of independence language
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: from the judiciary.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the judges had committed some sort of ethical infraction,
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: what sort of accountability is possible?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean the circuit can discipline and create disciplinary proceedings against judges.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: They can only be removed by impeachment but they can be –
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: the circuit can recommend impeachment and they can also do lesser types
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: of limitations on them and they can disqualify them from cases.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that the – What administration is looking is they want to,
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: keep these people off any cases involving immigration is basically the message,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: which is ridiculous.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it's a big ask.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially given the volume of these cases that exist in Minnesota right now.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess the last case where we talked about this,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: where the discipline – well,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: actually,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: there was some discipline – was that judge down in the 11th Circuit who was carrying
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: on an affair in Chambers in earshot of the clerks.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that you're not supposed to do.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Different kettle of fish, right.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a weird one.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: maybe we should just talk broadly about victim statements that,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you have you have a trial.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody is convicted.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week's free episode of Serious Trouble.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have some really weird cases to cover in the full show this week for paying subscribers.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: We look at a case in Arizona where a manslaughter case,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: there was a conviction and then the There was a victim statement introduced from
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: the victim of the manslaughter,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: which of course,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: the victim of the manslaughter is dead,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: but they created an AI video and one of his relatives wrote a script for the AI
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: to speak about how he'd been impacted by being killed.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: The appeals court was not amused by this.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're not allowed to do that.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can't bring the victim from beyond the grave to speak in the court.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: We also look at a couple of whistleblower cases,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: one about international tax evasion at the IRS,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: another about Trump sending out FBI investigators because he was mad about
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: a TikTok video.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we look at the details in that UK filing about what exactly
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: the Tate brothers did that they want to try them for in the UK.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a Pretty gross stuff in some cases.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: We also look at Dolly Parton's nephew,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: who is not letting go of her business enterprises happily,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: and they're having to take him to court over that.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And finally,
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: the Shrek's penis case,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: which you may recall from some months ago,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: a blogger gadfly in Ohio who sent a rendering of naked Shrek pictures.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So news you can use.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Go to serioustrouble.show for $6 a month or $60 a year.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can get that full episode, every full episode.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: We would love to have you.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.