OA19: Should Edward Snowden Be Pardoned?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 19. Quick little announcement before we get going. If you could please do us a great favor and just go to survey.libsyn.com slash open args and we'll put the link in the show notes. There's a tiny survey. It only is like 4 questions. It's going to take you 30 seconds. It will really help us out if you could fill that out. Thank you so much. Check the show notes, survey.libsyn.com. We really appreciate everyone who fills that out for us. All right. With that said, how are you doing, Andrew Torrez?

0:01:57 Andrew: I'm doing great. We just got back from the Myth Information 3 conference in Milwaukee and I know I had a great time. I met a ton of listeners and I was nice to most of them. So please

0:02:09 Thomas: Oh my gosh, I have to tell them what happened so many times. So yeah, I want to echo that. Myth information was great. It was also really, really cool to meet Andrew. We got a nice dramatic photo of our embrace. Very awkward. People were a little worried at how long we we were hugging, but you know, I stand by it. I stand bye.

0:02:11 Andrew: Go right ahead.

0:02:30 Andrew: Yeah, me too.

0:02:32 Thomas: So my favorite thing ever was I was there cause I was, I was doing a talk, but Andrew was there just to hang out and, you know embrace with me for a long time and to see the debate. And did you take it partake in the, sure.

0:02:41 Andrew: And support you. And let me add, I have said this publicly everywhere, so I doubt there are any listeners that don't know this, but your talk was awesome and totally kicked ass. And I think was by far the, you know, class of the speakers that went during the day at the conference.

0:03:00 Thomas: Ah, thank you so much.

0:03:01 Andrew: I have to say that, so, but it's true.

0:03:01 Thomas: I really appreciate it. Um, some,

0:03:04 Andrew: It was great. It were super funny. It respected the audience. It was great, it should be up on YouTube. You guys should look for it. It's really good.

0:03:11 Thomas: But yeah, well it may, it may be a little little while before it's up. But yeah, thanks for that. And also, you know, any conference planners in our audience, we're ready for your next one.

0:03:20 Andrew: Yeah, both of us would like to speak, so.

0:03:22 Thomas: Absolutely, absolutely. So what was så funny is people knew I was there just because I was in the program or whatever. So people would come up to me and most of them, not even lying, most of the like, hey, love yourself, really love opening arguments. And this happened, gosh, must have been seven times times where they're like, I love opening arms. It's so great. You and Andrew, it's good. And I'd stop and I'd just be like, you know, Andrew's three feet from you right here. Cause you were, cause Andrew was there and they're Like, no way. And they would run over to Andrew and start talking to him. It was so funny. It happened so many times. It Was my favorite thing. Oh, good.

0:03:56 Andrew: I Enjoy it, too. Like I said, it was kind of a uh a conference version of Where's Waldo, but uh, where's Andrew

0:04:02 Thomas: Cause you, you aren't out there yet. People don't know what you look like and you didn't speak. So it was just, it was so Funny though. People really enjoyed talking to you. And, uh, I enjoyed meeting listeners and all that. And I'll never get tired of people saying they like opening arguments or whatever it is that, you know, they say that they like. So thank you guys for that so much.

0:04:03 Andrew: Right I

0:04:19 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:04:27 Thomas: All right. Time to get to our first segment of the day. And that's going to be a question from Susan Barnum. You ready for this, Andrew? Can you handle it? I mean, if you can't handle this, I can always, you knows, I can give my answer, but I assume maybe she's probably interested in your answer, I'm guessing.

0:04:37 Andrew: Am. Yes, we we should do that, like in in April, we should do a backwards day where I get to ask the questions and you get to render legal advice

0:04:48 Thomas: Oh, that's a good idea. I should ask him and just pretend like, yeah, I should just totally BS an answer and just see how like close it is to the real answer. So Susan Barnum asks, I guess she's asking you, she's on jury duty and the prosecutor described beyond a reasonable doubt as a gut feeling. That's interesting. So she wants to know what you think about that.

0:04:53 Andrew: Yeah yeah and I I like this question, I actually got a couple different jury duty questions this week at the, yeah.

0:05:18 Thomas: That's that time it's that season. Oh, wait, no, that doesn't

0:05:23 Andrew: So I thought this was a good one to tackle for a couple of reasons. So the first is we have talked generally about burdens of proof on the show, but I thought it might make sense to talk about what that is and how that changes throughout the legal system. So the burden of proof is exactly what it sounds like, right, which is to say, if um, if you fail to meet your burden, then the judge votes for the other side, right?

And um, there are generally speaking three standards that are used, and then I'm going to give the law school shorthand, which I have since learned getting out of law school and actually practicing the law in no way corresponds to how they're actually applied in the real world. But it's how every lawyer is taught. So I know we have a lot of lawyers who listen to the show. We're all taught that the standards for the burden of proof correspond to certain numerical indices. And in the world, they don't at all. And I find that kind of funny. Mean, one does, right? So the first is called preponderance of the evidence. And a preponderence of the evidence standard means 50.1 to 49.9, right?

Whichever side inclines ever so slightly, uh, means, uh, that's the side that wins. If you, if you bear the preponderance, uh, of the evidence burden of proof, then you lose only if, um, the court decides that the trier fact, be it a jury or if it's a bench trial before just a judge, decides that, you know, you have sort of equal and opposing affidavits and you can't pick, right? If you say it's 50-50, or, you know, obviously if your evidence is worse than that, you lose. But so long as the evidence inclines, you know, one particle in your favor more

0:05:53 Thomas: Right oh wow yeah right right

0:07:16 Andrew: Than the other, you meet the preponderance of the evidence standard. And that's the standard that we use, as you might suspect, in civil cases. Right, so, you know, if I sue you for breach of contract, then the court is going to decide the trier of fact. I keep using that phrase, that it might be worth doing that in a future episode too, but, but basically the trial court, and whether that is in front of a civil jury or in front, the judge, is a function. Yeah. It's a function of the plaintiff, first, whether a trial by jury is available to you, and then second, whether the plaintiff's elects it. And also

0:07:38 Thomas: Right whoever's evaluating it. Yeah, who is it in a trial by combat then who's the uh trier effect I

0:07:50 Andrew: The plaintiff gets to elect that. No, it really, I mean, it's the plaintiffs choice. And there are times, right, like I have been, usually juries are considered to be plaintiff friendly. But there have been plenty of cases where I've had what I consider to be a pretty complex civil case.

And I would rather try it in front of a judge, particularly in Baltimore, If we're in federal court in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, which is the whole state, and the Northern Division, which sits in Baltimore, I know most of those judges, and I'm very, very comfortable trying the case in front of a judge, even if I represent the plaintiff, particularly if I have a complicated case, because I would rather have the judge follow the complexity of the arguments then, you know, and give up, you know, whatever advantage I think there is to be gained from trying something in front of a jury. So tiny bit of a rabbit trail there, but yes, so in a civil suit, the burden is preponderance of the evidence. That is 51%, 50.1%, 50 point zero zero zero one percent, one particle more, more likely than the other. There

0:07:54 Thomas: Feel obviously seems

0:09:05 Andrew: Is, right, yeah.

0:09:05 Thomas: A little abstract, but I get I get the meaning of it. But I mean, I don't know. I don't t know how that actually.

0:09:09 Andrew: And it just means When the importance of bearing the burden is that you cannot just presume or fail to introduce evidence, right? So that burden in a civil suit, for example, switches when you advance what's called an affirmative defense, right. Right. And an affirmative defense might be something like unjust enrichment. So I sue you for breach of contract. You claim as one of your affirmative defenses unjust enrichment, which is to say that because you didn't perform on the contract, contract, the things that I did once I no longer had a contractual obligation to you allowed me to offset or entirely offset some of my losses, right?

0:10:00 Andrew: You can do that. Because again, remember, if we take our call back to a couple of episodes ago, breach of contract is not really about moral fault. It's just about sort of apportioning the Economy. So if you could prove, hey, look, that's true. Assume for the sake of argument, now as the defendant, assume for the sake of agreement, I was breaching the contract, but because I did that, Andrew was able to reallocate resources here, here, and here, so he was able earn money that he wouldn't have been able to earn if I had performed on the contract Because They Would have Been tied Up.

0:10:09 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:10:32 Thomas: So that reminds me of like when you try to get out of a lease, if you still have a certain number of months left.

0:10:36 Andrew: Yeah, Yeah. Mitigating damages. That's exactly right. Exactly the same thing. And the whole point is, and I don't know that that was the world's best example of unjust enrichment. So go easy on me, my lawyer friends who are listening. But the point on all of that is that when you raise an affirmative defense, the burden shifts to the other side. And so you if you don't bear the burden of proof, right, you can always, you know, sort of simply dispute the other side, but where you do bear the burden of prove, you have to affirmatively introduce evidence on your side. And if you have no evidence, then prior to trial, the other side will move to summarily dismiss out or strike your affirmative defense from the complaint. So that's the that's The importance of the burden is just do you have to affirmatively introduce evidence on this point? So that's preponderance of the evidence in the metal is something called clear and convincing evidence.

0:10:38 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. OK, OK, uh-huh.

0:11:30 Andrew: This doesn't apply in a lot of situations it applies when you are contesting certain kinds of administrative findings. And in law school, we are taught that if preponderance is 50.1%, clear and convincing evidence is 75%, right? And so, in other words, there are certain cases where appeal, a court will give deference to the findings of an agency determination below. Or, you know, other situations where the law has said, we really, really want a thumb on the scale, but we don't want to go as far as beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the question and where we'll get to. And so they sort of meet in the middle and they've come up with this clear and convincing standard. It doesn't apply very often, and

0:12:20 Thomas: Yeah, I d'nt think I' ve ever heard of that one as a as a non-lawyer.

0:12:20 Andrew: Yeah, and it does come up, a good lawyer will tell you, hey, look, we bear a burden of proof here by clear and convincing evidence, which means you should probably be prepared to lose. It's tough to clear that hurdle. And then we get to beyond a reasonable doubt, which everyone has heard of because everybody Everybody watches Law and Order or some other criminal drama on TV. And that is the standard by which the prosecution has to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant. And we are told in law school that that corresponds to 90, 95, 99 percent. It depends on how aggressive your criminal law professor is. Mine, to go back to name dropping, we know this from previous episode, was noted defense attorney Alan Dershowitz. And so he defined it as ninety nine point nine percent. But, you know, you sort of put this right.

0:13:11 Thomas: He would do that, wouldn't he?

0:13:13 Andrew: Yeah, no, it was right.

0:13:14 Thomas: It's 107 percent. Oh, wow.

0:13:17 Andrew: My my criminal law class was was an awful lot of Dershowitz war stories, which were fantastic. I wouldn't trade that for the world.

0:13:23 Thomas: Yeah, that Sounds Interesting.

0:13:25 Andrew: It was very cool. It Was at the same time, as long as we're talking about how old I am. It was my first year of law school was at the same time as the OJ Simpson trial. So, that, that was immediately after the Civil War. And we had a Former football player. Yeah. Anyway, but in reality, you know, like this case in the show notes, as the questioner suggests, there is no hard and fast definition of what constitutes be beyond a reasonable doubt, uh, in terms of, uh, you know, particularly specifying, uh, a particular standard, um, so you, you can describe, you can say, you can give an instruction to the jury that says, uh, you must find. In order to find the criminal defendant guilty, you must find that person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But if you try and articulate exactly what beyond a reasonable doubt is, you actually run into trouble. And the only case that I know of is a Supreme Court case called Victor v. Nebraska, which reversed a trial court decision because that trial court required much specificity in terms of defining what beyond a reasonable doubt meant.

0:13:28 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Yeah.

0:14:46 Andrew: We've gone for a while in this segment, maybe maybe we will revisit it, but the but bottom line is the question was the prosecutor said beyond a reasonable doubt is a is a gut feeling, and I thought this was a great question, it could have been, it could have been any number of our segments, but in reality, that's perfectly reasonable for a prosecutor to say because there is no fixed definition of what constitutes constitutes a guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It is just, you can give a jury the instruction on those words, but you really can't give more specific criteria of now what beyond a reasonable doubt means is, you know, if you think X, then what, no, no. It's got to be left up to each individual to sort of interpret that as they see fit. And it's, that's, it's kind of a weird and counterintuitive result.

0:15:33 Andrew: And it's jury selection is so important, because as you can imagine, lots of people might have differing opinions as to what beyond a reasonable doubt means. And so you'll want to figure, does that mean have to eliminate eliminate all rational doubt. That you could conceive of, I don't know. And nor do any of the courts.

0:15:56 Thomas: I'm just It's really uncharacteristic Of The law to just be like, well, we don't really know what that means, but it's the most important, like, thing in all of Criminal law It's A really Weird

0:16:03 Andrew: Yeah, and it totally is. It's one of the reasons that I respond back on all the jury questions of, you know, I'm kind of jealous because I will never get to serve on a jury. I never have, and I would like to, but given the fact that I have, again, when I disclose that I'm a lawyer, I tend to get struck almost immediately.

0:16:06 Thomas: Oh Do they not Let Your Kind Uh, on there

0:16:30 Andrew: And the reason is because one side or the other is going to say, okay, well, he's going to apply much more precision on this, and And I don't want that. And usually, whether it's a criminal case, and, you know, either the prosecutor or the defense doesn't want that, or it's civil case where, you might have a very, very complex theory of the case by one side, you almost always have a situation where one party wants the jury pool to really, really, you dig their teeth in and get to the meat of everything. Thing. And the other side kind of wants the jury to, you know, look at the big picture and take a step back and that sort of thing. Um,

0:16:28 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, yeah That's Funny Yeah That makes sense, I

0:17:12 Andrew: And so if you can be easily pigeonholed as falling into one of those sides, and shockingly, you know, the Harvard lawyer gets pigeonholing to, he's probably going to overanalyze this, um, that, that I just, I just get struck And I Have Every Time I've Been sure no

0:17:24 Thomas: Thought It Was like So it's Not Like when When a cop pulls over an off-duty cop and is like, I'm not gonna give you, so it's not that, it's not lawyers like, hey, get out of here, you don't need to, you Don't Need to Do this, zero Camaraderie

0:17:33 Andrew: No There Is No There's zero professional courtesy on that, like I Get, yeah, no I get, I get traffic tickets like everybody else, which sucks And you Know, when I, when I show up, like, I can't do the, you know Will

0:17:38 Thomas: But Yeah Right Right Well But You won't know all the secret codes to be in the the correct court, though, that, you always say gold fringe on the flag, and then you, you, all the secret words and all that. So I'm sure.

0:17:51 Andrew: Right As A Lawyer, I'm Allowed to drive whatever Speed, you know, it sadly it doesn't work, um

0:17:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, I, It is really, there's always something that's bothered me. I know we've spent a lot of time on it, but the beyond a reasonable doubt, I really, that really concerns me that there's no consistent definition. And because it, I think about, you mentioned the OJ trial, just any sort of plausible plausible theory that fits the data as long as it's not aliens or something, and I, I would think people could be like, yeah, well, maybe, uh, maybe that officer did plant all the, uh, all the evidence, and even though there's good reason to see why he might not have been able to do it, maybe he could have somehow done it. It's weird to me that that can just be like, yep, reasonable doubt, so no, not guilty, you know? So it's, I don't Know how

0:18:00 Andrew: Yeah Yeah And

0:18:39 Thomas: That works

0:18:39 Andrew: That's I It, it's, it's one of of those where, you know, that the system has persisted for a long time with this kind of delicate balance of, you these crucial words are out there and nobody wants to define them with any more precision. And, you know, in sort of a callback to you of our very first discussions, right, like, this is, this is an area that lawyers understand, right? There, there are great many terms terms in the law that are just not capable of precise definition. And so when you have a Justice Scalia who says the words mean exactly what they meant in 1787 and nothing else, like, you know, we know that that's not the case. And this is sort of yet another example of where long standing, important words in the legal vernacular have remained undefined.

0:18:40 Thomas: Yeah That's I never would have thought that. All right. Wow. Learn something new every day, every week. All right, on to our main segment for the day, and that is Edward Snowden. I'm sure there's a lot we could talk about with Edward Snowden, but you've got a particular angle in mind, Andrew, and I'm really curious to hear Oh, it.

0:19:36 Andrew: Yeah, so there you go Well, I thought that the this was actually a listener suggested topic as To whether Edward Snowden should be pardoned, and just as a spoiler alert, this is Opening Argument, so I'm not going to answer that, but what I'm going to do Is Sort Of

0:20:03 Thomas: Great.

0:20:13 Thomas: Wait, spoiler alert that you're not going to answer it. I don't know if you know how spoiler, okay.

0:20:15 Andrew: Right But I'm It's An anti-spoiler But what I'm going to do is set up what, um, Snowden did and what the charges are against him, uh, and let you guys make that decision for yourself, um And this is, uh, there are a number of cases that involve, uh, the Snowden, uh, disclosures, but, um, the one that this is drawn from is ACLU versus Clapper, 783 F3-787, which is a 2015 case from the Second Circuit. And so, I mean, let me take a step back. Thomas, do you know what Edward Snowden did?

0:20:22 Thomas: Yeah. Excellent.

0:20:54 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, he leaked information about the NSA's phone surveillance program, right? Right. And the fact that it was more than allegedly now, who knows how much of my information is misleading throughout the years of when it happened or whatever, but that it was allegedly way more than they should have been authorized to do and that sort of thing. But I don't know too terribly much about whether or not he specifically didn't did it in a way that should be pardonable, or should, you know, he should he be protected as a whistleblower? I don't know any of that because, you know, I'm not an expert. So metadata

0:21:30 Andrew: Yeah. Okay. So what Edward Snowden did was as a contractor to the government, he downloaded some say millions of knowingly confidential confidential records and then fled the country. And on June 5th, 2013, he leaked to the British newspaper, The Guardian, a intelligence surveillance court order that required Verizon to produce to the NSA on an ongoing daily basis, all call detail records or telephony telephony metadata Created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad or wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. And the order then basically required Verizon to produce their call detail records every day on all telephone calls made through Verizon systems were using its services where one or both ends of the call are located in the United States. This was described in court as basically collecting the metadata from all telephone calls in the United States. Snowden only leaked the order as to Verizon, but it was strongly implied and the government has never disputed that similar similar court orders were issued to other telecommunications

0:22:07 Thomas: Yeah Other Providers

0:22:53 Andrew: Companies, Right? That order was secured. We talked about these foreign intelligence surveillance courts in a previous episode, but that was secured pursuant to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the director of the FBI or anyone he designates to make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things, including books, papers, records, documents, or other items, for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person, or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. It's 50 U.S.C. 1861(a)(1).

Okay, so so that provision of the Patriot Act The basis for this, uh, search warrant and order that was secured from these private, uh, FISA courts, uh, that, um, as we've talked about, the proceedings are private, they're ex parte, so you don't get to be present, um, and the first thing you might notice is that seems like a pretty broad interpretation of the statute Yeah And the and so that collection had been undertaken since May of 2006, and the tangible things to be produced were described as all call detail records or metadata, including comprehensive communications routing information, including but not limited to session identifying information, e.g., originating and terminating telephone numbers, communication communication device identifiers, trunk identifier, I have no idea what that means, and time and duration of call. Okay. And then the order specified that the items were to be produced to the NSA, and that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the things sought were relevant to authorized investigations to protect against international terrorism.

0:22:53 Thomas: Right, yeah Yeah Okay Yeah

0:24:42 Andrew: And so what Snowden did was essentially reveal that you had a pretty broad statute in the Patriot Act, which was then being interpreted incredibly broadly by a private court staffed entirely by appointees by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that met in secret, that made no public findings, and to which the opposing party was not entitled to have noticed that the court had even convened. And so, you know, you can see that that's a big deal.

0:25:13 Andrew: And those orders are required to be renewed every 90 days. Okay. So three months, you've got to go back to the court and renew the orders. So at the time that the lawsuit was brought, they were renewed 41 times and reauthorized, you know, most recently at the time of the lawsuit on on, you know, in early 2015.

0:25:13 Thomas: So They Were They were using

0:25:39 Andrew: Yeah, that's

0:25:39 Thomas: This FISA court to authorize all this metadata? Because I mean, this might be a stupid question, but I would think that the way it would work is you'd need, you'd, the FISA Court thing to get somebody's specific data. We have some, somebody we suspect of something, we want to, sure. We're convening without him or her here because we can't give it away and all that. We want their metadata, but you're saying they were, they were using, just a FISA court was saying, yeah, you can get all of it, or do they get, wow.

0:26:07 Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. No. So it's a really good point, because what you were describing is the typical way in which a search warrant works. Right. Which is to say, if you are a criminal suspect, police officers can go to the prosecutor in your particular case and say, "Hey, look, we've been investigating a crime. These are the facts that we have gathered that lead us to believe that there is probable cause for us to believe that Thomas Smith has committed this crime say it's a burglar right Yeah, yeah, and so, and then what they have to do consistent with the Fourth Amendment is they have go to a judge, right?

They do get to go ex parte, so you don't know, but but it is, it is a public proceeding rather than a private proceeding, because again, there's no confidential information at stake, and they have described to the judge what crime they think you've committed, what evidence that they think you have, and then the specific things that they want to go look for. And so when you see that in a cop movie of, "Hey, I, I'm gonna go get a warrant," that's what getting a warrant means. It means going to the judge, making a finding, and then the judge reviews that application, uh, and then

0:26:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:42 Thomas: I'm sure it's happened all the time.

0:26:54 Thomas: Can

0:27:24 Andrew: Will say based on

0:27:25 Thomas: You, I I'm so Sorry to, to divert you for, you can answer in 10 seconds, it's always in the movie, in the shows, it's always they call the judge at his home, it's a late hour, every time they're like, "We need this right now," and he's got, he's in a bathrobe or something, he's like got his glasses on, he's like, "Yeah, what you got?" Yeah, does that, how realistic is that?

0:27:25 Andrew: Sure Sure. Sure.

0:27:45 Andrew: That's not unrealistic. I would still say the majority, because the real world, again, remember, I'm not a criminal lawyer. So this is, you know, what I have gained osmotically from my friends who are criminal defense lawyers and prosecutors and like. In the movies, right, there's a car chase scene, and it is, you know, the destruction of the evidence is imminent. In, in real life, not often the case, right? Like, usually you're building, you're slowly building a case against somebody over time, and so there's no harm, like, you put that last piece of the puzzle together 11 o'clock at night, no harm in waiting until 8:30 the next day and go, yeah, like that'd

0:27:46 Thomas: Okay okay yeah yeah I want to see that scene we've got it, call the judge, it's late, let's, uh, let's go to sleep, let's just get some rest. Yeah.

0:28:31 Andrew: Be great This is this is all part of when we, when we hit a certain level of Patreon funding. Yeah, we've got, uh, we will produce the totally the totally realistic, uh, law movie. And it will be ungodly Boring. It would be terrible, like, it'll feature you know, it'll future overworked lawyers being like, should we go to the judge, like, are you kidding me? Like, you want to disturb Judge Gallagher at this hour? Like, a, come on, we'll see her at 10 tomorrow morning. Um, but, uh, right.

0:28:32 Thomas: Oh, yeah make realistic yeah Oh, I love it. Yeah. No, we'll make it funny. We'll making it funny. Yeah. Yeah, Oh, man, I love Love it. All right. Diversion aside.

0:29:03 Andrew: And, and let me say that there is, um, that's what the Constitution requires, right? When we say you have a Fourth Amendment right to be free in your person's homes, papers, and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, right, that's what that means, that the cops just can't come break in your door and say, "We want to route through everything." Now let me say, this is a another bit of a rabbit trail that, you know, we can't fully populate, but many of those protections have been eroded in recent years.

And in recent years, I mean in the last 30 years, that there is a situation called exigent, and circumstances in which, if is of the essence, and it is believed that there will be either imminent risk of harm to an individual or spoliation, that is destruction of evidence, that doesn't give you appropriate time to go get a warrant, then you can ignore the warrant requirement. There is, there's a heightened level of, you know, if the cops walk by, of things that they can claim are in plain sight. Um, and, and I think most critically, um, the legal remedy when the police execute, uh, an improper search warrant, where they search you without a warrant, is something called the exclusionary rule, which is to say that anything they find in that illegal search is stricken from the record,

0:30:28 Thomas: Right.

0:30:28 Andrew: And they're not allowed to use it, right? And, and that forms the basis of a lot of law drama stuff, uh, because, you know, it sort of tugs at the heartstrings of, you know, "We found the murder weapon, but," you know, "because Detective Montoya was, you know, too aggressive, this liberal judge threw it out," and you're thinking, like, "But, but they found the murder weapon." But, but in reality, right, the courts have recognized, uh, initially recognized that that an exclusionary rule is really the only thing you can do to deter warrantless entry by cops, right? Like the only things that make you, right, yeah, yeah. If you want to make sure Detective Maxson doesn't break in and just start rummaging through people's stuff, yeah

0:31:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, to deter Detective Maxson, I think, is who we should be using. Yeah? Because he will. He will. He doesn't play by the book. He's, yeah.

0:31:16 Andrew: He follows follows his own rules. And the only good deterrence is to say, okay, well, you know, Maxon's a loose cannon. We're going to throw out whatever he finds, right? If you do something less than that, then, right, then you just create a system of perverse incentives, right. So that's really clear.

However, there is now, and has been for, again, almost 30 years, a doctrine that is called the doctrine of inevitable discovery and you can probably see where this is going but essentially if you're a prosecutor and your evidence is thrown out as having been improperly secured you know improperly discovered as the result of any illegal search what you can do is construct kind of an alternate history alternate universe and say well look if we'd never done this illegal legal search we would have done this and this and this and we would've been able we would have been entitled to look for this and then we would have inevitably discovered the murder weapon because he was hiding the murder weapons you know under a blanket in the top of his closet and when we went looking for this we would have discovered this bloody knife right gutted much of

0:31:18 Thomas: Yeah that's what makes him Detective Maxon.

0:31:33 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:32:31 Andrew: The protections of the Fourth Amendment that were initially established by the Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s. So when you see that crime drama that the murder weapon is tossed out and nobody says inevitable discovery, now you can rage at the screen a little bit just like I do every time I watch that uh because the reality is um I could

0:32:51 Thomas: Yeah that's Why: maxson, can still be a loose cannon and you know what yeah, he gets The: job done all

0:32:55 Andrew: Yeah that no seriously yeah it is it is there's very little there's very little deterrence on uh aggressive searches and seizures because uh the doctrine of inevitable discovery is really used to to sort of link back up uh and get that evidence Okay. So now we're done that rabbit trail. Let's go back to Snowden. So you correctly described what getting a warrant is like. And that, I think that was the big reveal that Snowden's initial leak to the Guardian really set out to prove, which was the FISA courts were being described as, you know, well, this is like, you you know, we have to go get a wiretapping warrant. This is just like what the detectives do in a normal case, but it meets in secret because we're getting a warrant for stuff that involves confidential or classified information. And that was really how the program was pitched. And, you know what Snowden demonstrated was, it wasn't being used that way at all. It was in fact being used for large scale collection of data on, you the metadata from every phone call in the United States over a seven-year period.

0:33:18 Thomas: Right, all right well

0:34:10 Andrew: And so in this case, I'm going to sort of skip through a lot of the analysis because we talked about it, but the case held that the scope of that order violated Section 215 of the Patriot Act, that it exceeded the authority that was delegated by Congress was all set. And in fact, That remanded the case back to the district courts for further findings. We've talked about the effect of that could have brought the entire surveillance program to a close, but for the fact that while the case was pending, Congress failed to reauthorize that provision of the Patriot Act and instead passed what was called the the USA Freedom Act, which is another one of these, yeah, fantastically Orwellian names. Remember the Patriot Act was the, yeah.

0:34:56 Thomas: That sounds good yeah So it's More, we are we're more free now is that what happened okay.

0:35:02 Andrew: But remember the Patriotic was the USA Star Patriot act. And I forget, it was like protecting and terrorism, something, I don't know. But I do know what USA Freedom stands for, which it stands for.

0:35:09 Thomas: You're. Telling me it's an acronym, like- The oh my-

0:35:16 Andrew: It is uniting and strengthening America by fulfilling rights and ending eavesdropping, dragnet collection, and online monitoring act. And so the USA Freedom Act passed, it was interesting you remember the debate over reauthorizing the Patriot Act, and that's what the USA freedom act did was it reauthorized many of the provisions of the Patriot Act, but it closed this section 215.

0:35:17 Thomas: Gosh, okay. Oh My, no. No, way, don't- Can I ask- You, was- The Patriot Act, was there ever like a a time limit when they initially, uh, passed it, or so? It was Set to- okay.

0:35:49 Andrew: Yes, yes, there was a sunset provision. It was set to expire and it was allowed to expire. And it expired in June of 2015, I believe. And then the next day, Congress passed this USA Freedom Act that reauthorized many of the provisions of the Patriot Act, but changed the Section 215 in response to this ACLU versus Clapper case. First let me say that the act passed the House 338 to 88, right, which was with bipartisan support. There of those 88, there were 47 Republicans and 41 Democrats. And then it passed 67 to 32 in the Senate. But interestingly, of those 32 in the senate, that was 31 Republicans and Democrat Tammy Baldwin, an I believe. But so it was, it had bipartisan support in the House.

The dissenters were split sort of between the anti-war left and the, you libertarian anti- war right. Yeah. And then, but it was, it was much more partisan in the Senate. Every, every Democrat and about 20 Republicans voted for it in the senate. And so what the USA Freedom Act did was it left intact 180 days of the continuing monitoring program with a phase out at the end of at November 29th of 2015 and then required the government to destroy all records as soon as possible after the ACLUV Clapper case ended so as a result I said this law was changed while the case was being sent back down to the lower court And so the appellate court actually asked the parties to brief the status of the case in light of the USA Freedom Act. They did.

0:35:58 Thomas: Okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Huh.

0:37:04 Thomas: Privacy. Yeah. Interesting.

0:37:56 Andrew: And the court said, in light of this change to the law, you no longer win. We're no longer going to issue an injunction. There's nothing to do because government has changed the law. And we held that this was a violation of the authority granted by Congress. So you might ask yourself, well, what about the constitutional rights question? And in fact, the court in ACLU v. Clapper said that we declined to reach the vexing, that's their word, constitutional issue of whether that section and the data collection violates appellants' rights under the Fourth and First Amendments to the Constitution.

0:38:40 Thomas: Huh?

0:38:40 Andrew: They said the question posed by appellant's invokes one of the most difficult issues of modern jurisprudence, whether modern technology changes traditional and reasonable expectations of privacy. The Fourth Amendment issue raised here, and remember, so First Amendment, that's where they're grounding the right to privacy. We talked, we talked about that way back in our abortion cases, seven, eight, and nine, that privacy continues to be an important right, even though it's never spelled out in the Constitution. Here's yet another example of where that comes into play. And the Fourth Amendment issue that we talked about is the right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures.

And the court said, the Fourth amendment issue raised here, as we noted earlier, is a quote dispute that touches an issue on which the Supreme Court's jurisprudence is in some turmoil. Well,. And when we went down our rabbit trail, we talked a little bit about what that term was. Whatever we might ultimately conclude about the Constitution's demand in such a novel and contentious area, it is at a minimum difficult to conclude that appellants are, quote, likely to succeed in arguing that new conditions require a reconsideration of the reach of long-established precedent. And so if you remember back to our injunctive relief episode, see how this is all coming together,

0:38:59 Thomas: Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah,

0:39:50 Andrew: In a nice seamless web, um, the the plaintiffs lost on their request for injunctive relief, not because the court said we don't think you have a constitutional right to be free from this broad, you know, NSA, uh, taping of you, need to show a likelihood of success on the merits.

0:39:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:03 Thomas: Oh but because injunctions you need a very high burden where it's like likely. Uh-huh. Okay.

0:40:09 Andrew: And they said, look, you might have a good argument, right, you probably do have a good argument, but what we can't say is that you're likely to win because, right, we don't know. This is enough, this is an uncertain area of the law, so this is, a this is really good illustration of kind of how those principles kind of all come together. And so the court declined to issue an injunction. There would not be enough time, right, there's only about 180 day provision, so, you know, think back to our standing episodes, right, they just wouldn't have been enough time to continue to litigate out the validity of that 180 day period once the court said we're not going to issue an injunction, right, because, I mean, that's six months. If It would be impossible to get a trial verdict in six months, and so by the time you would get it, the program would be over and the case would be moot. So, so,

0:40:10 Thomas: We don't know. Yeah.

0:40:22 Thomas: Okay, okay, yeah,

0:41:04 Andrew: Because of Edward Snowden, the, as far as we know, that broad scale collection of all metadata from all telephone carriers has ended. That ended on November 29th of 2015. And the law has been changed. And that section 215 was not reauthorized. And we do not know of any mass scale data collection efforts that are currently underway. Now, we don't know what we do not know, but right.

0:41:33 Thomas: We does seem like there's a potential that there could be something going on. We don't know. It wouldn't be like the most unreasonable because there are some unreasonable conspiracy theories. And then there's if you thought that this kind of data mining or whatever it would be, you know, the metadata stuff was still going on, it wouldn't been the most reasonable thing to think, I would say. I don't know. My favorite part of that Was, didn't, I think I didn't realize for a second that you were talking about an injunction. So I liked where the Supreme Court was just saying, look, our job is really hard. We just, I just don't, we don't want to do it. We don't do it, is it's, it's, it's going to be really difficult to figure out what the right answer is. We quit. We're not, not doing it, but I guess that they were just saying that because to support the fact that they weren't sure what the, like, end result would be, and that therefore they can't just automatically grant the injunction, is that what it was, huh?

0:41:41 Andrew: Yep.

0:42:18 Andrew: Well, I that's Right, and and I, I would add that that argument of this is really, really hard, so you don't have to go there, uh, is an argument that lawyers make all the time, and it is not, it is not without, look, we make it all the time because it works in court, so you know, so

0:42:42 Thomas: Wait, who makes it to whom, I don't, so because that was the Supreme court, okay, good, oh.

0:42:53 Andrew: It is it isn't yeah, Well, this was, it was the second circuit, not not the Supreme Court, but But it was an appellate court, right, and it was, you know, really, really smart judges saying, oh, we don't want to figure out what this, you know, what the status of the Fourth Amendment is here, so we're going to decide on other grants. And so lawyers make, make that argument in their briefs all the time. They will say to the court, like, this particular area is a minefield, but fortunately you don't have to go there because you can decide on this doctrine, and then you won't have to reach that.

So let me give you an example. I've made this argument before. Quick, quick examples. I have done a fair number of zoning law cases, and what happens in a zoning case is that you have an administrative hearing prior to the zoning board, a decision. And so if you want to change the designation of a particular area, right, like the map will be zoned and different areas will be zoned for different things, like light industrial, heavy, heavy industrial, commercial, you know, whatever. And the purpose of zoning is to ensure uniformity throughout a district, so that, you know, tomorrow I don't buy up the house next door to yours, bulldoze it, and put up like

0:42:58 Thomas: The Second okay okay, oh.

0:43:27 Thomas: Man, yeah,

0:44:12 Andrew: A hog rendering facility, right, like that would be awful, um, and for you it'd be great, for me, for my hog rendering plant, but uh, but it'd be awful for you.

0:44:15 Thomas: Andrew's really into hog rendering. It was kind of something I learned of meeting him. He's just like, look, I got to tell you, this is my number one hobby. So yeah.

0:44:27 Andrew: So, but, you know, situations change. And, you know, particularly when it comes to, right, going from light residential to heavy industrial is not a likely change, but, you know, changing characters of neighborhoods where, you know, you might, uh, you know, initially, um, consider, like, a lot of waterfronts in downtown areas where, um, you know, 30 or 40 years ago those were the site of, you know, shipping and heavy industry and loading of, you know's, commercial vessels, and now they're the site of either, uh, you know's, waterfront houses, or, you know, waterfront restaurants and commercial areas. And so, you know, you might go and try and persuade local zoning body to change your classification, you know, to better fit with the character of the neighborhood.

0:45:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:20 Andrew: And then whatever that body decides, the court is going to give extreme deference to that. And we talked about this sort of unites back to our initial segment. And so, because of that deference, you might say in a brief, like, "Hey, you, you as the judge, you don't have to make a determination as to what the character of this downtown Baltimore is like, right? The administrative agency has already done that and you should defer to their decisions and just go on ahead, right? Does that make sense? Yeah."

0:45:54 Thomas: Yeah, well, so what you're saying is, you know, lawyers are lazy and it's best to just say, we got this all lined up for you. Someone else has already done the work or it's too hard and you shouldn't even try it. You know, you don't want to embarrass yourself. It could be a mess.

0:45:57 Andrew: Someone done the work And I've also had another area in which that often works is we talked about bankruptcy courts, and bankruptcy courts have a very limited jurisdiction. And when I was in bankruptcy court on a very complicated mixed question of was a bankrupt estate, but there was also insurance policies that were the proceeds of that estate, state, and so there were complicated insurance issues, and both sides were essentially making the argument to the bankruptcy court of, hey, look, you're a bankruptcy court, you don't need to figure out these insurance issues. They're really, really complicated, and let's pass on that. And again, that's not because of any lack of intelligence or rigor on the part of the bankruptcy court, but because, you know, there's sort of an idea of, you know, you delineate out responsibilities, and, you know, you don't want to clog up a court with determining something that's outside its area of expertise. So it's not so it's a fairly common fairly common area. So yes

0:47:10 Thomas: Yeah all right, but I gotta ask you though, I know you said, your spoiler was you weren't going to render any sort of verdict, but I really want to know your opinion. Do you have an opinion on what he did, whether or not you think it's wrong? Should he be pardoned? We got to have something.

0:47:21 Andrew: Yeah well he sure so he's there are three we will link the criminal indictment in the the show notes, he's charged with violating three provisions of the law. And the continuing theme of opening arguments, one of the provisions that he is accused of violating is 18 U.S.C.

0:47:46 Thomas: Oh, the same as Hillary's? Yeah.

0:47:50 Andrew: 793D.

0:47:51 Thomas: D.

0:47:51 Andrew: And D and E, you will remember from our Hillary episodes, are the ones that require require intent, they are the provisions are virtually identical. And, you know, are this sort of classic espionage cases. And This very, very clearly meets, you know, unlike Hillary's cases, it clearly meets the case, right? Like he went in, he knew that these were confidential documents, he deliberately removed them, and deliberately took them to another location, uh, and then deliberately disclose them to people who are not authorized to see them. Now, you think that the, uh, benefit gained outweighs the harm that was done to national security. Then the correct answer in that case, uh, in my view, is not to hope for, you know, something like jury nullification, or like, he violated that provision, that's abundantly clear, but is to, uh, hope for a presidential pardon. And The way in which a pardon works is you are implicitly accepting your guilt, but then the courts are prohibited from charging you, and the executive is prohibited from carrying out any sentence against you in connection with the crime for which you have been pardoned, um, and so That's That's

0:47:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

0:49:12 Thomas: And, but that sounds appropriate. It's like, yeah, I broke the law, but I did it on on purpose. Like, that's not the question, you know? Yeah, that makes sense, though. It seems to fit. But it's just a question of whether Obama or maybe the next president or something feels like they want to do that politically. Is that what you think it's about, really?

0:49:14 Andrew: Yeah.

0:49:29 Andrew: That's Exactly right, um, And that's, you know, um, you know, used to be pardons were something that were left to the discretion of the president, and then, you know, in in recent years, I mean, sort of beginning, there were some controversial, uh, late pardons by by the first president, Bill Clinton, uh, and since then they have become a more politically charged, uh, But

0:49:30 Thomas: Yeah. All right. Hmm. Wonder, can, if part of the problem is like they don't wanna encourage more people to do this. You know, maybe if you wanna argue Stoughton did something that was ultimately good for the people or something, but maybe the administration might be worried, like we don't want people to be leaking stuff all the time that might be, maybe under their judgment, is something that everybody needs to know, but maybe we think it's not something everybody needs to know. So we don't want to pardon Snowden to sort of encourage more of that.

0:50:20 Andrew: That's the argument that every person has to weigh out for themselves, which is, do we want an individual on their own judgment making a determination about confidential and classified information that they believe that disclosure is in the public good? In my view, that's a real question, right? Like, you could, you could have a debate between two intelligent and well-meaning people over which, you know, reasonable folks could disagree, um, The

0:50:47 Thomas: But do you Know anything about, sorry if it's outside of the scope of what you researched, but was there any other way he could have done this? Was there like a whistleblower protection he could have used or anything like that, or

0:51:00 Andrew: Way in which whistleblowing laws typically work, um, would not have been available to him, um, that, that there's no legal provision by which he could take advantage of this. And, and, you know, look, typically whistleblower statutes are meant to protect people who disclose illegal information and are, you know, retaliated against by their employer. And, and, you know, there just isn't something that covers this specific situation. And, you know if you want to sort of go back to, you know, kind of the history of, you know, nonviolent protest in this country, right Many of our greatest civil rights leaders, you know, served time, right?

0:51:12 Thomas: It's Like Security Stuff Right Yeah True, hmm.

0:51:41 Andrew: So, you know, this sort of, I am violating this law because it's the only way to achieve this objective. Well, you don't have to do that. You know, that, that there is no guarantee that, uh, the greater good means, you know, you get to come out of it, kind of consequence free. And that's, You you, again, why I think this truly fits, you know, the mission statement of Opening Arguments, right? Like, I could be persuaded, know, either way, that, you know, either this was something that, you know, there was no other way in which to make people available. You got the law changed. It was a manifest good. It ended at an unconstitutional spying program. I agree with all of that. And then, you know, at the same time, this, the kind of precedent we want to set for letting anybody sort of make their own call with respect to confidential Information.

0:51:42 Thomas: Yeah Yeah Yeah Interesting. I think that is a good Answer. I mean, I don't think that there is an easy answer for that, so interesting, thanks for that, all Duff Dyer asks, when Andrew has to show up to defend Noah, Heath, and Eli, now listeners may or may not be familiar, that's the Scathing Atheist crew, great podcast, and the Godawful movies as well, great, great podcast, when Andrew has has to show up to defend those folks against defamation charges in court, will he be allowed to say dick joke, or will he have to use a euphemism like penis or phallus?

0:52:29 Andrew: We Go, I'm

0:52:35 Clip: The law breaking down

0:53:09 Thomas: I like that we sometimes have those easier questions or segments like the 18-year-old strippers and this one. I like it. We're keeping it a little light. The law can be a little dense, can be a little, you know, slow, but these are good questions.

0:53:23 Andrew: Right, there's a short answer to this, and that is, uh, an attorney is expected to maintain decorum in the courtroom, uh,

0:53:30 Thomas: Now, I'm sure this won't be defined anywhere.

0:53:33 Andrew: Right, yeah, um, and it, and it isn't, and so, you know, that being, but that being said, I certainly, in the very, very unlikely hypothetical that the God Awful Movies slash Caving Atheist crew are ever sued for defamation.

0:53:48 Thomas: I think you underestimate one Eli Bosnick, but okay, sure. Unlikely. Quote, unquote, unlikely.

0:53:53 Andrew: There's no way right now you would just be, it would be a waste of time I mean that did the fact that everybody knows I represent them, it should be a sufficient deterrent. You know, nobody wants to, you know, right.

0:54:05 Thomas: Oh, hey, yeah. We don't want to mess with that guy.

0:54:08 Andrew: Yeah. Bring it on. Please do not take legal advice from a podcast.

0:54:14 Andrew: So yeah, so I would be expected to maintain decorum. That being said, when it is important to communicate the underlying facts of a case, I have certainly sworn in open court before, and I have done so in a case that involved use, and it turns out that there was a, there was a case of infringing trademarks, and the distinguishing characteristic of the infringement was that the trademark, the trademars themselves, were of rated adult material.

0:54:53 Thomas: I.

0:54:53 Andrew: And so the other side was contending that there was no valid either copyright or trademark, depending on the case, because of the salacious character of the market. And it turns out that that's not the case. You the same intellectual property rights attached If you have developed a product that is potentially offensive or potentially, you know, marketed only to adults. So I would certainly describe, you I have described the Godawful Movies podcast as sort of a Friars Club slash Comedy Central hard-R roast of and, And Other Pseudoscientific Movies It

0:55:35 Thomas: Just Want You To be in court And Get in a detailed like charts and graphs, so here, where Eli said this, and it'd just be just awful, like vulgar Stuff. I really, I would love that. Exhibit A, the court will see, uh, this, we've diagrammed the sentence Eli used to describe whatever, and

0:55:45 Andrew: Look.

0:55:54 Andrew: It would be critical, it would be absolutely critical. I mean, because again, you know, if you have listened to Godawful Movies, know that there is absolutely, you know, nothing that has been said on those broadcasts that is libelous in any way, that is defamatory, inflammatory in any way. But there are certainly things that are insulting. One of the things, we've gone through this in a previous episode, but one of things that is an absolute defense to defamation is if a statement is not capable of being evaluated as true or false because it's parody or because it is opinion, then by definition it cannot be defamation. And so yeah, one of the ways in which I would prove Uh, to a court that uh statements made on Godawful Movies are not capable of being proven true or false, uh, is to say, uh, you know, when you call someone You know, a particular phrase, uh, that that That Phrase.

0:56:50 Thomas: You Would Say it. Would you Say that's the Question.

0:56:55 Andrew: Oh, And I would say The phrase, right? Yeah, I would Saying, look, Like, yeah, someone is called a cock waffle, for example, that's not capable of being proven true or false, right? You Do not you Do Literally mean,

0:56:56 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I feel like I could evaluate That. Oh, No, put me In front of the judge, I'm an expert Expert witness, we have an expert Here Who's somebody who, X, with expertise and Cock waffles.

0:57:06 Andrew: Yeah, That They are Right? That You, you do not, have you know, it cannot be proven true or false that you are, you know, genitalia baked into a breakfast product, like, that's just, it's not the way it works, and the only way to establish that, I mean, you know, you sort of heard me kind of tiptoeing around it, but I mean honestly the only to establish is, you know, to use the word, to use the phrase So I I I would not hesitate to use that. I expect I might receive some admonishment, uh, from the court and have to explain that, but uh But I but I absolutely uh I Absolutely Would I

0:57:35 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. I think you might enjoy it a little bit. I think it would be enjoyable experience.

0:57:48 Andrew: I we Have talked about the what passes for humor in the Courtroom And this is, you know, if those, if those were an eight or a nine, then you know this would be a 74, but but but again you Know that's, I mean, it sort of goes back to, you know, having a duty of zealous as advocacy to defend your client. I don't think you could adequately defend podcast like that in court without being willing to explain to the judges, hey, look, you might not like this, this might not be your style of humor, but here's what it is. And that doesn't make it, it does not make make it a civil law to abuse this language.

0:57:53 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:58:03 Thomas: All right. Well, there you

0:58:33 Andrew: So there's the answer.

0:58:33 Thomas: Go. Another question Answered. Yeah, you would use it. I like it. All right, well, that's all we got for today. Of course, we need to thank our wonderful, wonderful new patrons and patrons. JapanDan, thank you. Nene's Coffee, Brandon Highland, Peter Miller, Eric Johnston, Eric Brewer. Finally, Eric, after, after we answered about a hundred of his questions. I'm glad, no, he talked to me, he said he was finally able to do it, and he was really happy about it, and we're really happy. I'm so happy that he's listening and participating and now supporting, so thanks. You Are Here, just pledged. Robert Lisiewski and Gillen Brown. Thank you, new patrons. Much appreciated. And then, of course, we've got to thank our all-time greats, our Hall of Fame patrons. Roger Metcalf, Danny Rosari, Eli Bosnick, Dave Nichols of Positively Doubtful Podcast, Dale, Steve Sigmund, Jim Grove, Desecrator, Patrick Fussell, Amanda Lipnack, la bibliotequetress, Heather L., Leon Heartly, Hunter Ash, Michael Kaylee Riser, Jeff S, Sakashite Fukusumi, Pro Panic, the Inciting Incident Podcast, and Zowie. Thank you guys so much for being our top patrons, we really appreciate it.

0:58:51 Andrew: Yeah, really?

0:59:45 Thomas: And remember, maybe you can't be a patron, but that's okay, you could go to survey.libsyn.com/openargs, fill out that survey, it will take you 10 seconds, everybody do it please, it'll help us out a lot. All right, well, uh, that does it for today's show. I believe you, Get Andrew. Oh,

1:00:05 Andrew: Good hopefully you are too

1:00:07 Thomas: I'm great, that was interesting. Thanks so much for taking us through that, and thank you listeners for your kind support and your listenership, and we look forward to every episode. So thanks, and I guess if there's nothing else to say, we'll see you next week.

1:00:28 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments with Andrew and Thomas. If you love the show and want to support future episodes, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/law. If you can't support us financially, it'd be a big help if you could leave us a five star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever podcast delivery vehicle you use. And be sure to tell all your friends about us. For questions, suggestions, and complaints, email us at openarguments@gmail.com. The show notes and links are on our website at www.openargs.com. Be sure to like our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. Until next time. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC. All rights reserved.