Latest / Bloomberg Law / Machine Gun Charges Tossed & Tom Girardi Convicted

Transcript

Machine Gun Charges Tossed & Tom Girardi Convicted · Bloomberg Law

0:03
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
0:10
Speaker 1: It was another victory for gun control advocates at the
0:13
Speaker 1: Fourth Circuit on Friday, as the full Court rule that
0:17
Speaker 1: Maryland's gun licensing scheme is constitutional and by an overwhelming
0:22
Speaker 1: vote of fourteen to two. The gun control measure requires
0:26
Speaker 1: applicants to submit fingerprints for a background investigation, complete a
0:31
Speaker 1: four hour safety training course, and wait up to thirty
0:35
Speaker 1: days to get approval before continuing the process. More than
0:39
Speaker 1: forty other states have similar so called shall issue licensing laws,
0:44
Speaker 1: under which there's no discretion to deny a handgun license
0:48
Speaker 1: to anyone who meets the statutory requirements. Joining me is
0:52
Speaker 1: an expert in the Second Amendment, John Donahue, a professor
0:55
Speaker 1: at Stanford Law School. It's difficult to keep track of
0:59
Speaker 1: all the Second cases in the courts these days.
1:03
Speaker 2: Well, of course, the Supreme Court seems to be trying
1:08
Speaker 2: to almost deregulate all issues of gun safety, and this
1:13
Speaker 2: has become like a snowball going downhill where the gun
1:17
Speaker 2: rights groups keep insisting that they need more and more
1:21
Speaker 2: freedom to pursue you whatever purchase they want at almost
1:26
Speaker 2: whatever age. These guns can be purchased and regardless of
1:30
Speaker 2: the fletality of the weapons. And so it's really almost
1:34
Speaker 2: remarkable to me to see things that a few years
1:37
Speaker 2: ago almost everyone would consider as unassailable as necessary gun
1:42
Speaker 2: safety measures are now being challenged in court.
1:46
Speaker 1: So last Friday, the full Fourth Circuit so on Bank meeting,
1:50
Speaker 1: all the judges reversed the decision of a panel last
1:54
Speaker 1: year which had voted two to one that the law
1:57
Speaker 1: violated the Second Amendment. And it was a fourteen into
2:00
Speaker 1: two decision reversing that panel and finding the law constitutional.
2:04
Speaker 1: Will you explain the majority's reasoning in the case.
2:07
Speaker 2: So essentially, the plaintiffs in that case, who were challenging
2:12
Speaker 2: the regulations in Maryland, were saying that this was depriving
2:16
Speaker 2: them of their immediate ability to access guns. They want
2:20
Speaker 2: to be able to walk into a store and you know,
2:23
Speaker 2: just walk out with a gun, and this was imposing
2:26
Speaker 2: a licensing requirement. And essentially what the court said is,
2:31
Speaker 2: if you look to the concerns expressed by the US
2:35
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, if you have a licensing scenario that doesn't
2:40
Speaker 2: involve you know, burdensome delays in access to weaponry, that
2:45
Speaker 2: should be presumptively permissible. And so that was the language
2:50
Speaker 2: that the Court used in saying that these shall issue
2:54
Speaker 2: requirements comported with the standards that the US Supreme Court
2:58
Speaker 2: has set for the requirements of the Second Amendment.
3:02
Speaker 1: The majority they cited a footnote in the Supreme Court's
3:06
Speaker 1: Ruined decision that said, quote, nothing in our analysis shall
3:10
Speaker 1: be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the forty three
3:14
Speaker 1: states shall issue licensing regimes. In light of that footnote,
3:19
Speaker 1: how did the two judges on the first panel come
3:22
Speaker 1: out against this shall issue law because it seems pretty clear.
3:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's always a pathway to complicate Second Amendments decisions.
3:31
Speaker 2: What happened there was the Court said that footnote that
3:36
Speaker 2: you just alluded to only dealt with shall issue laws
3:40
Speaker 2: dealing with the right to carry guns, while the regulation
3:44
Speaker 2: at issue in the current case that we're talking about
3:48
Speaker 2: dealt with access to possess guns in the first instance.
3:51
Speaker 2: And so they were trying to draw distinction saying that
3:55
Speaker 2: you have greater rights to get immediate access to guns
4:00
Speaker 2: that you're going to be taking into your own home
4:02
Speaker 2: as opposed to guns that you're going to be carrying
4:04
Speaker 2: outside the home. And this court said, no, that distinction
4:08
Speaker 2: is irrelevant as long as it's a non discretionary judgment
4:13
Speaker 2: of the administrators of the law. These sort of shallish
4:17
Speaker 2: your requirements are acceptable in either domain.
4:21
Speaker 1: Maybe we should step back for a minute. And since
4:25
Speaker 1: you know, the Bruin case seems to be causing a
4:27
Speaker 1: lot of confusion in the lower courts, explain what the
4:30
Speaker 1: tests set out in the Bruin case in the majority
4:33
Speaker 1: opinion written by Clarence Thomas.
4:35
Speaker 2: So what Ruin said which has created an enormous, you know,
4:40
Speaker 2: chaos literally among courts all across the country, is it
4:44
Speaker 2: seemed to suggest if anything in any way infringes on
4:50
Speaker 2: access to guns or even accessories to guns, then a
4:55
Speaker 2: burden is then imposed on the government to come forward
5:00
Speaker 2: and assert that there were similar regulations in place in
5:04
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety one when the Second Amendment was adopted, or
5:08
Speaker 2: maybe sometime close to that. And of course, since the
5:13
Speaker 2: world has changed enormously in seventeen ninety one, the legality
5:16
Speaker 2: of weapons is vastly greater. The threats of mass shootings,
5:20
Speaker 2: which was nonexistent in seventeen ninety one, is very real today.
5:25
Speaker 2: It is sort of a nonsensical decision, but that's what
5:29
Speaker 2: the Court said, and brew In and many courts have
5:33
Speaker 2: felt very constrained by that language, even though more recently,
5:38
Speaker 2: with the Rashimi decision of just a couple of months ago,
5:41
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court seemed to be signaling that they're not
5:45
Speaker 2: going to be invoking the Bruin standard as aggressively as
5:51
Speaker 2: many of the judges who decided cases over the last
5:55
Speaker 2: two years since Brune was decided have done.
5:58
Speaker 1: And just to explain, Rahemi was a June decision by
6:02
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court upholding a federal law that bars firearm
6:07
Speaker 1: possession by people under domestic violence restraining orders. And the
6:12
Speaker 1: vote was eight to one, with Justice Clarence Thomas the
6:15
Speaker 1: loan dissenter. Turning back to the Friday Fourth Circuit decision,
6:20
Speaker 1: which is another victory for gun control advocates in the
6:23
Speaker 1: Fourth Circuit, it's the third on bank decision upholding firearms laws. Recently,
6:30
Speaker 1: one upheld regulations for assault rifles, another upheld of federal
6:34
Speaker 1: law criminalizing guns without serial numbers. And now this shall
6:38
Speaker 1: issue tell us about the decision upholding regulations for assault rifles.
6:43
Speaker 2: So this was the decision authored by Judge Harvey Wilkinson,
6:49
Speaker 2: very conservative Reagan appointed judge who I should note was
6:54
Speaker 2: very critical of the Heller decision when it was first
6:57
Speaker 2: handed down. Judge Wilkinson wrote a very condemning article of
7:02
Speaker 2: the wisdom of the Heller decision. So in some sense
7:05
Speaker 2: he is continuing to express his concerns about the Second
7:11
Speaker 2: Amendment jurisprudence that the Court has embarked upon since the
7:15
Speaker 2: Heller decision was decided in two thousand and eight. And
7:18
Speaker 2: essentially he said that weapons such as the assault rifles
7:22
Speaker 2: that were banned by the Maryland law are not protected
7:25
Speaker 2: by the Second Amendment. You do not have a constitutional
7:28
Speaker 2: right to have a weapon of that level of lethality.
7:32
Speaker 2: And I think in terms of wise public policy, that's
7:34
Speaker 2: unassailably true. If states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
7:40
Speaker 2: and Maryland wants to protect their citizens from the dangers
7:45
Speaker 2: of assault weapons, it certainly seems wise policy to allow
7:49
Speaker 2: them to do so. So.
7:50
Speaker 1: The Fourth Circuit has fifteen active judges, nine appointed by
7:55
Speaker 1: Democrats and six appointed by Republicans. The two judges who
8:00
Speaker 1: voted against the law in the first case we were
8:02
Speaker 1: talking about Republican appointees is it surprising that so many
8:06
Speaker 1: Republican appointees are agreeing with these gun control laws.
8:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you do have a little bit of a split,
8:15
Speaker 2: because you know, twenty years ago, Republicans were very pro
8:20
Speaker 2: gun safety. You know, Reagan of course endorsed the gout
8:23
Speaker 2: aal assault weapon ban, He endorsed the Brady Bill. He's
8:28
Speaker 2: as governor of California put into place restrictions on carrying
8:32
Speaker 2: of guns. So, you know, even Reagan, who was in
8:37
Speaker 2: some sense, you know, the idol of conservative Republicans, was very,
8:42
Speaker 2: very strongly in favor of gun safety regulation. But there
8:46
Speaker 2: has been this shift in the party. So some of
8:48
Speaker 2: the older judges, like Judge Wilkinson, continued to conform to
8:53
Speaker 2: earlier Republican notions about the need for protecting the citizenry.
8:57
Speaker 2: But the newer cadre of Republican judges, many of whom
9:02
Speaker 2: were appointed by President Trump, have taken on a very
9:08
Speaker 2: macho posturing that the stronger the Second Amendments is, the
9:13
Speaker 2: more they're conforming to constitutional dictates. And even though that's
9:18
Speaker 2: a very controversial position from a legal standpoint, it does
9:22
Speaker 2: seem to be a very prevalent view among younger Republican judges.
9:27
Speaker 1: What's your opinion about the constitutionality of the way the
9:32
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has been expanding gun rights.
9:36
Speaker 2: Well, I do think Bruin will go down in history
9:39
Speaker 2: as one of the most poorly reasoned and really absurd
9:44
Speaker 2: decisions handed down by the United States Supreme Court. You
9:48
Speaker 2: know there over the years. The dred Scott case is
9:51
Speaker 2: obviously something that stands out as a horrible decision, and
9:55
Speaker 2: Bruin is definitely up there. It really makes literally do
10:00
Speaker 2: sense to constrain government policy today against threats that were
10:06
Speaker 2: completely inconceivable in seventeen ninety one. I still remember one
10:11
Speaker 2: case that I worked on involving a mass shooting in
10:14
Speaker 2: Sutherland Springs, Texas, where a guy stood outside a church
10:18
Speaker 2: fired two hundred and fifty four bullets through the walls
10:20
Speaker 2: of the church and killed twenty six people inside the church.
10:24
Speaker 2: This was November twenty seventeen, and that would not be
10:28
Speaker 2: at all possible in seventeen ninety one. There was no
10:31
Speaker 2: weapon I could shoot through walls that people were carrying
10:34
Speaker 2: around and could kill twenty six people back in seventeen
10:38
Speaker 2: ninety one. So to look back to what the regulatory
10:41
Speaker 2: apparatus was at the time of the adoption of the
10:45
Speaker 2: Second Amendment really is nonsensical given the very different threats,
10:50
Speaker 2: and weaponry is getting more lethal of course all the time,
10:54
Speaker 2: while the history stays exactly the thing. So this mismatch
10:59
Speaker 2: between the growing lethality of weaponry and the history of
11:03
Speaker 2: Second Amendment regulation really renders the Brewing decision, I think
11:08
Speaker 2: an incoherent judicial standard, which I think you started to
11:12
Speaker 2: get a sense even the Supreme Court realized their mistake
11:15
Speaker 2: in their effort to cut back a little bit in
11:18
Speaker 2: the Ratheemi decision.
11:20
Speaker 1: So in the Rahemi decision in a concurring opinion, just
11:24
Speaker 1: as Katanji Brown Jackson quoted a dozen lower court opinions
11:28
Speaker 1: complaining that judges can't figure out how Brewin is supposed
11:31
Speaker 1: to work. Shouldn't the Court have taken that opportunity in
11:36
Speaker 1: Rahemi to set the standard out better, or you know,
11:40
Speaker 1: to rework breugh In in some way because the confusion continues.
11:44
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's I mean, it's disgraceful and embarrassing for
11:49
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court that they have allowed this confusion to arise.
11:54
Speaker 2: And you know, if you look across some of the
11:57
Speaker 2: articulated decisions of courts across the country explicitly condemning the
12:02
Speaker 2: Court and saying, you know, we're quite frankly afraid of
12:06
Speaker 2: what you're doing. It's almost unheard of in American history,
12:10
Speaker 2: the widespread judicial you know, astonishment at the lack of
12:16
Speaker 2: wisdom that the Supreme Court seems to be engaging in.
12:19
Speaker 1: Coming up next on the Bloomberg Lawn Show, I'll continue
12:21
Speaker 1: this conversation with Stanford law professor John Donahue, and we'll
12:26
Speaker 1: talk about a shocking decision from a Kansas judge, the
12:30
Speaker 1: first to find the federal ban on machine guns to
12:33
Speaker 1: be unconstitutional. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg.
12:39
Speaker 1: It's a decision that's shocking on many levels. In a first,
12:42
Speaker 1: a federal judge in Kansas has found that the federal
12:46
Speaker 1: ban on machine guns is unconstitutional and tossed out two
12:50
Speaker 1: machine gun possession charges against a twenty two year old man,
12:55
Speaker 1: which JAW Judge John Broomes, a Trump appointee, wrote the
12:59
Speaker 1: court that the Second Amendment applies to the weapons charged
13:03
Speaker 1: because they are bearable arms within the original meaning of
13:06
Speaker 1: the Amendment. The judge pointed out that prosecutors couldn't find
13:10
Speaker 1: a historical analog, and that there were no laws similar
13:14
Speaker 1: to the modern day ban on machine guns either in
13:17
Speaker 1: eighteenth century England or during the period around America's founding.
13:22
Speaker 1: Of course, the obvious reason for that is that the
13:25
Speaker 1: machine gun wasn't invented until eighteen eighty four. I've been
13:30
Speaker 1: talking to Professor John Donahue of Stanford Law School. So, John,
13:34
Speaker 1: the judge basically found you have a Second Amendment right
13:37
Speaker 1: to own a machine gun. How did he come up
13:39
Speaker 1: with that conclusion.
13:41
Speaker 2: Well, it's a terrible decision in every respect, except the
13:46
Speaker 2: only thing that you can say about it is it's
13:49
Speaker 2: not an absurd decision if you believe what the court
13:52
Speaker 2: said it Brewin the Brewing decision was so nonsensical it
13:56
Speaker 2: opened up the ability for plants all across the country
14:01
Speaker 2: to challenge every single conceivable gun safety measure that's been
14:05
Speaker 2: in existence, no matter how long. You know, we're talking
14:08
Speaker 2: about ninety years ago this federal law went into effect,
14:11
Speaker 2: and the aftermass of you know, the Tommy gun episodes
14:16
Speaker 2: of people getting massacred all across the country during Prohibition.
14:20
Speaker 2: So this machine gun van seems tolly unassailable in the
14:25
Speaker 2: minds of almost every judge. But after Bruin, it became,
14:30
Speaker 2: you know, a clear pathway for attacks and literally every
14:34
Speaker 2: other gun safety measure. So it was an embarrassment for
14:38
Speaker 2: the judge that he went down this path, but at
14:41
Speaker 2: least he can say, look, I was being faithful to
14:44
Speaker 2: what the Supreme Court did in Brewing and making this decision.
14:49
Speaker 2: It really was an appalling decision. I think that the
14:52
Speaker 2: Supreme Court will realize that they will look so bad
14:57
Speaker 2: if this were to be sustained, when you know people
15:00
Speaker 2: are going to be mowed down in the street app
15:02
Speaker 2: extreme levels that they will not want to have that
15:05
Speaker 2: on their plate, and they will not support this decision.
15:08
Speaker 2: But it does mean they're going to have to cut
15:10
Speaker 2: back on the language that they endorsed in Ruined.
15:14
Speaker 1: So this will go to the Tenth Circuit, which is
15:18
Speaker 1: liberal leaning. Democratic appointees outnumber Republicans by seven to five.
15:24
Speaker 1: Does it seem likely to you that the Tenth Circuit
15:27
Speaker 1: will overturn this judge's decision?
15:30
Speaker 2: I think though. You know the problem is that many
15:34
Speaker 2: of the Republican judges think the way that I can
15:38
Speaker 2: make a name for myself, you know, be the hero
15:41
Speaker 2: in the conservative circles that I dwell in now and
15:45
Speaker 2: maybe get elevated to a higher court is to take
15:48
Speaker 2: the most extreme possible Second Amendment interpretation that I can find,
15:54
Speaker 2: And of course it's helped Brett Tavanaugh make it to
15:56
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. He took some the extreme positions when
15:59
Speaker 2: he was a lower court judge and encouraged the NRA
16:02
Speaker 2: to push for his elevation by Donald Trump. And the
16:07
Speaker 2: judge in Kansas might have been taking along these same lines.
16:11
Speaker 2: But if there are enough Democratic members on the panel,
16:15
Speaker 2: and of course it doesn't necessarily have to go to
16:18
Speaker 2: an non bossed decision, so you could get you know,
16:21
Speaker 2: two or three Democratic judges on a panel exsemination. So
16:27
Speaker 2: it's unclear exactly what would happen. But this decision I
16:30
Speaker 2: think will be such a bad case in the mouths
16:34
Speaker 2: of so many judges that I think it will be
16:37
Speaker 2: overturned ultimately at the circuit court level, and the Supreme
16:41
Speaker 2: Court would probably not want to have this one come
16:44
Speaker 2: back to them.
16:46
Speaker 1: Does Bruin make all federal gun control laws subject to challenge?
16:51
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it's an absurd decision because what it
16:54
Speaker 2: says is if there's any way in which someone can
16:57
Speaker 2: argue that the particular measure infringes on, you know, the
17:02
Speaker 2: ability to get a gun, or even something related to
17:06
Speaker 2: a gun, like a magazine that enters into a gun.
17:12
Speaker 2: Then it requires the government to come forward with a
17:17
Speaker 2: strong and compelling argument that there was a historical tradition
17:21
Speaker 2: of the same type of gun regulation. And you know,
17:26
Speaker 2: obviously there were no high capacity magazines in seventeen ninety one,
17:30
Speaker 2: so there were no such restrictions. And you know, there
17:33
Speaker 2: were no restrictions on people who battered their wives and
17:36
Speaker 2: keep them from getting guns at seventeen ninety one. So
17:38
Speaker 2: that's what led the Fifth Circuit to say that the
17:41
Speaker 2: federal prohibition gun carrying by those subjects to a domestic
17:45
Speaker 2: violence restraining order was unconstitutional. Luckily, that part at least
17:49
Speaker 2: was overturned in Rahimi, But even Rahimi could have gone
17:54
Speaker 2: much farther in trying to cut back on the excesses
17:59
Speaker 2: that has invited.
18:01
Speaker 1: As far as the Fourth Circuit's decision upholding the Maryland
18:06
Speaker 1: assault weapons ban, the Third Circuit in the Seventh Circuit
18:09
Speaker 1: have also found such restrictions aren't prohibited under the Bruant approach,
18:15
Speaker 1: and the First Circuit has upheld a large capacity magazine ban,
18:19
Speaker 1: have any circuit courts ruled against assault weapons bans.
18:24
Speaker 2: There has been no such decision. On the other hand,
18:28
Speaker 2: Judge Kavanaugh, when he was on the DC Circuit, had
18:33
Speaker 2: written that the DCSOL weapon band was unconstitutional. So we
18:38
Speaker 2: know that there's at least one person on the three
18:40
Speaker 2: court who believed that, and I'm sure that Alito and
18:45
Speaker 2: Thomas would follow that particular path as well. The interesting
18:51
Speaker 2: thing is that the Fifth Circuit has shown this enormous,
18:54
Speaker 2: super zealous attachment to the most extreme version of the
18:58
Speaker 2: Second Amendment. But this issue can't come up in the
19:02
Speaker 2: Fifth Circuit because no assault weapon ban exists in the
19:06
Speaker 2: Fifth Circuit. So all of the states that have a
19:10
Speaker 2: saw weapon bans outside of the Fifth Circuit, clearly, if
19:14
Speaker 2: there were any such ban in the Fifth Circuit, they
19:17
Speaker 2: would render that decision. But the already conservative nature of
19:23
Speaker 2: those legislatures has preempted that decision from coming up before
19:28
Speaker 2: the Fifth Circuit.
19:29
Speaker 1: It's so amazing to me that in Bruin that the
19:33
Speaker 1: you know, the five justices signed on to this test
19:36
Speaker 1: that Thomas laid out. It sounded absurd upon first hearing,
19:41
Speaker 1: and it's proven to be absurd, as the lower courts
19:45
Speaker 1: try to make heads or tails of it.
19:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is absurd. You know, some of these judges
19:53
Speaker 2: of the sixth Conservatives are sort of shall we say,
19:58
Speaker 2: wacky zellets. But even Robert, who at least was a
20:03
Speaker 2: moderate Zellate, you know, has embarrassed himself enormously by signing
20:09
Speaker 2: his name on the Brilling decision. You know, this is
20:12
Speaker 2: something we will live in infamy for joining such an
20:16
Speaker 2: absurd decision. And at some point this decision will be overturned.
20:22
Speaker 2: It's going to take a while, obviously, either an expansion
20:25
Speaker 2: of the US Supreme Court or just many years until
20:28
Speaker 2: the composition of the court changes. It's hard to imagine
20:32
Speaker 2: that the sid Zealots will change their mind. But you know,
20:35
Speaker 2: if we get enough matt killing who even they might
20:39
Speaker 2: realize the folly of the Brillain decision.
20:42
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for your insights, John, that's Professor John
20:45
Speaker 1: Donahue of Stanford Law School.
20:48
Speaker 3: Mister Girardi was no champion of justice. In fact, he
20:53
Speaker 3: was a perpetrator of injustice, victimizing his own clients when
20:57
Speaker 3: they were most vulnerable and most need.
21:00
Speaker 1: Tom Girardi has gone from famous legal heavyweight to disgrace
21:05
Speaker 1: disbarred lawyer to convicted felon. Girardi was catapulted into the
21:10
Speaker 1: national limelight after the two thousand Oscar winning movie Aaron
21:14
Speaker 1: Brockovich showcased his role in getting a more than three
21:17
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars settlement from PG and E for poisoning
21:21
Speaker 1: a California town's drinking water.
21:23
Speaker 4: In the interest of putting this whole thing to rest,
21:26
Speaker 4: PG and He is willing to offer the Jensens two
21:28
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty thousand dollars for their own two hundred
21:32
Speaker 4: and fifty thousand in terms of land value out in Hinckley.
21:36
Speaker 4: Mister Masery, we feel that's a more than fair price.
21:40
Speaker 5: How About in terms of medical expenses, two hundred and
21:43
Speaker 5: fifty thousand isn't going to come close to what this
21:45
Speaker 5: family is going to have to spend on doctors.
21:47
Speaker 1: He was hailed as a pioneer of toxic tort litigation,
21:51
Speaker 1: known for getting massive settlements for his clients. This season
21:56
Speaker 1: on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and his fame
21:59
Speaker 1: was enhanced as the husband bank rolling the extravagant lifestyle
22:04
Speaker 1: of one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. His wife,
22:08
Speaker 1: Erica Girardi, I'm.
22:09
Speaker 2: An enigma wrapped in a riddle and cash.
22:12
Speaker 1: But US attorney Martina Strada says Girardi funded that extravagance
22:18
Speaker 1: by embezzling tens of millions of dollars from his clients
22:21
Speaker 1: in a ten year Ponzi scheme, and.
22:24
Speaker 3: Mister Giardi chose to take advantage those very same clients,
22:28
Speaker 3: those vulnerable people, the ones who'd gone through traumatic incidents,
22:32
Speaker 3: in order to enrich himself.
22:34
Speaker 1: A Los Angeles jury agreed and convicted Girardi of four
22:39
Speaker 1: counts of wire fraud. So, now, at age eighty five
22:42
Speaker 1: and suffering from dementia, the one's high powered lawyer is
22:46
Speaker 1: facing jail time. Joining me is Bloomberg Law correspondent Maya Spodo,
22:51
Speaker 1: who covered the trial. Maya, how did the prosecution present
22:55
Speaker 1: its case against Girardi?
22:57
Speaker 5: So the prosecution's case started rooted in the testimonies of
23:01
Speaker 5: these clients, who's missing funds made up the backbone of
23:06
Speaker 5: the charges against Girardi. And so the first witness we
23:09
Speaker 5: heard from was Joseph Rugomez. His home exploded and his
23:15
Speaker 5: body was covered in burns, and his girlfriend died in
23:18
Speaker 5: the explosion, and so we saw him limp up to
23:21
Speaker 5: the witness stand and explain how Girardi used these excuses
23:26
Speaker 5: such as a fake six point five percent interest accruing
23:30
Speaker 5: savings account and the sake excuse that he needed approval
23:34
Speaker 5: from a judge to justify stalling these payments to Rugoma.
23:38
Speaker 5: And we heard these excuses get echoed throughout the remaining
23:43
Speaker 5: clients who testified these excuses became ridiculous. There was one
23:48
Speaker 5: excuse that Girardi used where he said he was having
23:51
Speaker 5: the funds held up because he was working on a
23:54
Speaker 5: tax issue which would tax women more than men on
23:57
Speaker 5: certain personal injury settlements and he needed to work sat
24:00
Speaker 5: out with the irs. And even a lawyer at the
24:02
Speaker 5: firm who was freshly out of law school and had
24:05
Speaker 5: just passed the bar spotted that excuse and said that
24:07
Speaker 5: makes no sense. And so we started the case hearing
24:10
Speaker 5: about these excuses and the pain that they caused for clients.
24:14
Speaker 5: And then the prosecutors presented their detailed path where they
24:18
Speaker 5: followed the money, and we heard from the federal government
24:22
Speaker 5: on what these client trust bake accounts really looked like
24:25
Speaker 5: and where the funds were going. So that's how we
24:28
Speaker 5: got into more of the lavish lifestyle part. Of the case.
24:31
Speaker 1: Fans of the Real Housewives know about that extravagant lifestyle,
24:35
Speaker 1: how much did the jury learn about it?
24:37
Speaker 5: Sure saw so much money being used to purchase different
24:42
Speaker 5: categories of luxury items, such as two private jets already
24:46
Speaker 5: purchased expensive jewelry. We saw a check written directly out
24:50
Speaker 5: of one of the client trust accounts for seven hundred
24:53
Speaker 5: and fifty thousand dollars to pay for diamond earrings for
24:57
Speaker 5: his now exchanged wife, who's Eric Jane. We also saw
25:02
Speaker 5: how funds were taken from Gerardi Keith to pay for
25:07
Speaker 5: Girardi's memberships and country clubs. One of the lawyers at
25:11
Speaker 5: the firm charged property taxes to his Girardi Keith American
25:16
Speaker 5: Express card. And we also heard details about the lavish
25:22
Speaker 5: parties that were hosted on the company's dime, which had
25:27
Speaker 5: six figure entertainment budgets. There was a Super Bowl party
25:30
Speaker 5: where lawyers were given as goodie bags their own personal jerseys,
25:36
Speaker 5: and all of these parties were being hosted while some
25:39
Speaker 5: clients who were in immense pain still were not receiving
25:42
Speaker 5: all of the settlement funds that they were doe.
25:44
Speaker 1: The testimony of the client victims was very emotional at times,
25:50
Speaker 1: tell us about the most compelling testimony.
25:53
Speaker 5: So the one that I found most compelling, and also
25:55
Speaker 5: the first client witness that one of the jurors named
25:58
Speaker 5: when he spoke to report after the decision was Erica Saldana's.
26:03
Speaker 5: She showed up to court actually with COVID and had
26:07
Speaker 5: to testify remotely, but she was sobbing for much of
26:11
Speaker 5: her testimony. Had to push up her glasses twide away
26:14
Speaker 5: her tears because she was crying so hard. Her very
26:17
Speaker 5: young son was immobilized after a drunk driver crashed into
26:23
Speaker 5: Saldana's car, and she turned to Gerardi Keis for representation,
26:27
Speaker 5: but she never received from the firm the entire amount
26:31
Speaker 5: of her settlement, which she needed to purchase an accessible
26:33
Speaker 5: home for her son, And so Saldana spoke of how
26:36
Speaker 5: she spent the last year of her son's life chasing
26:39
Speaker 5: down Girardi to ask for the money she needed, and
26:42
Speaker 5: at one point Girardi even called her while she was
26:45
Speaker 5: in the hospital with her son and accused her of
26:47
Speaker 5: not being sympathetic to Girardi's own health issues he was
26:51
Speaker 5: having he said, eye cancer surgery, and she said, how
26:56
Speaker 5: can you accuse me of not being sympathetic to health issues.
26:59
Speaker 1: My son is dying, And the jury heard Girardi's own
27:03
Speaker 1: voice in voicemail messages giving his clients these excuses.
27:08
Speaker 5: Yes, one of the common refrains that he would say
27:11
Speaker 5: to clients was don't be bad to me. Don't be
27:13
Speaker 5: mad at me. I'm a good guy. He would tell clients,
27:17
Speaker 5: including Joe Rogomez, that he loved their family. This was
27:22
Speaker 5: one of the most important cases to him. He would,
27:25
Speaker 5: even into the late years of the firm, send these
27:28
Speaker 5: detailed messages where he got the facts of the case right.
27:31
Speaker 5: He knew who he was talking to, and he was
27:33
Speaker 5: just saying, please, you know, don't be mad at me.
27:36
Speaker 5: The payments are coming later, here are the reasons why
27:38
Speaker 5: they're being held up.
27:40
Speaker 1: So the prosecutor to say it was a Ponzi scheme,
27:43
Speaker 1: how did they show that?
27:44
Speaker 5: They basically showed how they said clients three settlement funds
27:49
Speaker 5: were used to pay off Client two settlement funds which
27:53
Speaker 5: were used to pay off client one settlement funds, and
27:57
Speaker 5: they had an IRS agent present in a now of
28:01
Speaker 5: bank records from the firm's client trust accounts, which showed
28:04
Speaker 5: how the settlements from later in the twenty tens were
28:08
Speaker 5: used to pay a client whose settlement was made in
28:12
Speaker 5: twenty thirteen, and the firms client trust accounts are subject
28:16
Speaker 5: to these rules that are very strict, where you can't
28:19
Speaker 5: commingle funds and you can't have a negative balance in
28:22
Speaker 5: the account, otherwise it would alert the state bar. But
28:25
Speaker 5: these transfers happened anyway.
28:27
Speaker 1: The defense tried to shift the blame to Christopher Comone,
28:30
Speaker 1: the former chief financial officer of the law firm, saying
28:34
Speaker 1: he was the one responsible for the loss of client funds,
28:38
Speaker 1: not Girardi. He's going to be tried separately in January.
28:43
Speaker 1: Why didn't that defense work?
28:45
Speaker 5: It wasn't successful because the prosecutors emphasized in closings that
28:50
Speaker 5: they have substantial evidence against Comone and that he is
28:54
Speaker 5: a co defendant in the case and he will see
28:56
Speaker 5: his day in court. The defense spent a lot of
28:59
Speaker 5: time going through records of how Comone used Gerardi Keith's
29:03
Speaker 5: funds to pay essentially shell companies that were either companies
29:08
Speaker 5: where Kimone had a leadership role or he was closely
29:11
Speaker 5: affiliated with members of these companies, And they also described
29:16
Speaker 5: how he paid twenty thousand dollars a month from the
29:19
Speaker 5: firm to his then fiance. She testified, and he purchased
29:24
Speaker 5: lavish trips for the two of them. And so the
29:27
Speaker 5: picture that the defense was trying to paint was that
29:30
Speaker 5: Chris Comone was basically taking advantage of Girardi's declining mental
29:35
Speaker 5: state and taking these funds out from under his nose.
29:38
Speaker 5: But the jury didn't ultimately.
29:40
Speaker 1: Buy that Girardi is suffering from dementia and is currently
29:45
Speaker 1: living in the memory ward of a nursing home. So
29:49
Speaker 1: I was very surprised that he took the stand, was
29:53
Speaker 1: his testimony coherent.
29:55
Speaker 5: Everyone in the audience was shocked. It was a surprise move.
29:59
Speaker 5: He got a on the stand, and at first it
30:02
Speaker 5: seemed like this was just something that has been programmed
30:06
Speaker 5: into him from years of being this formidable trial lawyer.
30:09
Speaker 5: He had all the instincts. He smiled at the jury,
30:13
Speaker 5: he addressed them when he spoke, He made jokes, he
30:16
Speaker 5: tried to banter with the prosecutor, but it became clear
30:19
Speaker 5: as he was speaking that he was getting some pretty
30:21
Speaker 5: important facts wrong. He said that he thought that Gerardi
30:25
Speaker 5: Keith Law firm was still running when it closed down
30:28
Speaker 5: and went into bankruptcy. Several years ago, and he also
30:31
Speaker 5: said he didn't know his own lawyer's name and the
30:34
Speaker 5: exact quote. This was the last question that his defender
30:37
Speaker 5: asked him. Sam Croft said, Tom, what's my name? And
30:41
Speaker 5: Girardi said, I have no idea. That mean terrible. It's
30:45
Speaker 5: one of those.
30:46
Speaker 1: Do you think his cognitive decline his dementia made him
30:50
Speaker 1: at all sympathetic.
30:51
Speaker 5: It was hard to feel sympathy after all of the
30:55
Speaker 5: clients explained exactly how this death had had ruined their lives.
31:02
Speaker 5: I think that the defenders were leaning hard into the
31:06
Speaker 5: appeal to jurors who had family members with dementia, which
31:11
Speaker 5: my grandmother has dementia, so I was thinking of her.
31:14
Speaker 5: But he talked about how his mother, who was a
31:18
Speaker 5: lawyer too, had dementia for a couple of years and
31:22
Speaker 5: eventually had to hang up the hat. And he was
31:25
Speaker 5: very emotional as he was saying this during closing arguments.
31:28
Speaker 5: But ultimately I don't think that that appeal worked. One
31:32
Speaker 5: thing that stood out to me during the trial was
31:34
Speaker 5: Girardi's appearance. He was wearing this gray blazer the whole time,
31:40
Speaker 5: and the blazer came in every day looking more crumpled.
31:44
Speaker 5: It seemed to me, and this is speculation, but it
31:47
Speaker 5: seemed like they had just thrown it into the washing
31:49
Speaker 5: machine every day, because it appeared to get smaller and
31:53
Speaker 5: more greased, and the lining was peeking out a lot
31:55
Speaker 5: more toward the end of the trial. So they were
31:58
Speaker 5: definitely either purposefully or not leaning into that appeal just
32:03
Speaker 5: using Girardi's own appearance.
32:06
Speaker 1: Did the prosecution acknowledge that Girardi has cognitive issues and
32:11
Speaker 1: how did they deal with it?
32:12
Speaker 5: Yes, they said, and now it's pretty clear that he
32:15
Speaker 5: has cognitive issues. But it's twenty twenty four now, and
32:19
Speaker 5: he didn't conduct the scheme in twenty twenty four. It
32:21
Speaker 5: was from twenty ten to twenty twenty.
32:23
Speaker 1: It was a twelve day trial and the jury came
32:26
Speaker 1: back with guilty verdicts on all counts after just four
32:31
Speaker 1: hours of deliberations. Did Girardi react when the verdict was read?
32:36
Speaker 5: He did not react as it was read in any
32:39
Speaker 5: significant way. But after he was standing up from the
32:45
Speaker 5: table and walking out, he had this kind of smile
32:48
Speaker 5: on his face that we had seen throughout the trial,
32:52
Speaker 5: which I describe as kind of wax in, and he
32:56
Speaker 5: walked out pretty steadily. One of the report orders asked
33:00
Speaker 5: him if he had comment on the verdict, and he
33:02
Speaker 5: chuckled and he said no, no, And may.
33:05
Speaker 1: You spoke to one of the jurors who said it
33:07
Speaker 1: wasn't a hard decision.
33:09
Speaker 5: He said that the facts were all there. We asked
33:12
Speaker 5: him if anyone on the jury needed to be convinced,
33:15
Speaker 5: and he said no. He's not perhaps representative of the
33:19
Speaker 5: entire group of jurors, but he made it sound like
33:22
Speaker 5: there was very little resistance inside the room.
33:25
Speaker 1: Did did jur say anything about the issue of Girardi's dementia.
33:31
Speaker 5: The juror said that they were not convinced by his
33:36
Speaker 5: neurologist testimony. They said that she met him in twenty
33:41
Speaker 5: twenty one and didn't have enough information about the case
33:45
Speaker 5: and what happened from twenty ten to twenty twenty. The
33:48
Speaker 5: juror basically said, you know, it is clear that Girardi's
33:52
Speaker 5: mind isn't all there now, but it's twenty twenty four,
33:55
Speaker 5: it's years after what happened during the charged time period.
33:59
Speaker 5: But she showed as brain scans, including one where in
34:03
Speaker 5: the late twenty tens, Girardi's hippocampus, which is very responsible
34:09
Speaker 5: for memory function, had atrophied significantly, and it was among
34:14
Speaker 5: the bottom percentiles for the size of that brain structure
34:19
Speaker 5: in people his age. But she did also at one
34:22
Speaker 5: point say that she couldn't determine whether that diagnosis that
34:28
Speaker 5: she gave him in twenty twenty one could cause her
34:31
Speaker 5: to determine that he wasn't capable of carrying out a fraud.
34:35
Speaker 1: Maybe his cognitive decline will be a mitigating factor in
34:38
Speaker 1: his sentencing, though Girardi faces decades in prison when he's
34:43
Speaker 1: sentenced on December sixth, and the US attorney said the
34:46
Speaker 1: fact that he's older doesn't mean they won't seek prison time,
34:50
Speaker 1: so we'll have to see what prosecutors ask for. Thanks
34:53
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show, Maya. That's Bloomberg
34:56
Speaker 1: Law correspondent Mayas Bodo, and that's it for this edition
34:59
Speaker 1: of the bloomb Podcast. Remember you can always get the
35:02
Speaker 1: latest legal news by subscribing and listening to the show
35:05
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast,
35:10
Speaker 1: Slash Law. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg