OA25: Could Jill Stein Decide the Presidency? (No.)

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. How are you doing, Andrew Torrez?

0:01:21 Andrew: I am fantastic, Thomas, how are you?

0:01:23 Thomas: I'm doing great. You know what I'm particularly excited about? You know, this is episode 25, and episode 26 will feature new lines in the intro. So it'll have new quotes from different shows that people submitted, that you've submitted. So I'm excited for that. Is there anything you're excited about in the future of Opening Arguments here?

0:01:45 Andrew: Yeah, I am excited because we just finished recording our very first ever patron-only episode of Law'd Awful Movies. Um, and we watched the worst legal movie of all time, in my opinion, which which is John Grisham's The Firm. It's unbelievably long. And the movie is, it's spectacular how bad it is at the law. We had a, I think we recorded for almost three hours. Is that right?

0:01:56 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:02:13 Thomas: It was, it was very, like, we're gonna pick a shorter one next time, but it was very long. It'll be a ton of content for you guys now. It was super fun, and I don't even know how much I can edit out, because honestly, like, I thought all of it was really good. Uh, it was funny, it was, we took you through the movie, Andrew took you through the just the horrible legal errors in it. It was, it

0:02:35 Andrew: I made an architecture joke that no one got. It was great. It was totally perfect. Perfect slash

0:02:37 Thomas: Yeah, Andrew's too smart for us. So it's, it's yeah, we had to, my brother Sam and I from Comedy Shoeshine, we had to just kind of pretend we knew what you're talking about, but we really didn't. Um, so So this will be available at first, if you read the fine print on the patreon.com/law, it's available to $2 patrons. But I think this one will eventually release it to all our patrons. But for now, you're going to want to, if You're at $1, you are going to want to bump it up to $1 to get access to the first Law'd Awful Movies. It was so funny. It was great. And you're gonna want to hear it.

0:03:13 Clip: The law breaking down

0:03:20 Thomas: Let's get to our first segment of the day, breaking down the law. All right. So, Andrew Torrez, what are the first, second, third, et cetera, circuits? How does the court structure work with that? Let's break down the Law here.

0:03:36 Andrew: Yeah, yeah, this is actually, this question has come in from a couple of different listeners. And we will often talk about Supreme Court cases on opening arguments. So let me talk a little bit about the structure of the federal court system. And and then from there, we can talk about, you know, sort of some of the other courts. So the way in which it works is state has at least one United States district court for that state. If it's a larger state, there will be multiple districts. You know, so for example, in New York, you have both the Northern District of New York and the Southern District of New York. In Maryland, we just have the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. We have two divisions, but it's really just the same court.

0:04:24 Andrew: In Texas, there are multiple courts. There's an east and a west and a north and a south. And so that court sits in the geographic area in which you're located. And the way in which you get into federal court is in one of two ways. You either have a federal cause of action, which is to say, if there is a federal law that you are accused of breaking, either civilly or or criminally. So for example, one of the things we've talked about that is a real growth area right now for plaintiff's lawyers is the Fair Labor Standards Act, which provides for mandatory overtime for employees that work over 40 hours a week. And there are some exceptions, but this is a law that to almost every employer.

0:05:11 Andrew: And because of certain aspects of the law, particular, the fee shifting provision, that law is, it's very attractive for plaintiffs to bring lawsuits because if they win, they get their fees covered, right? And so even if they settle, their settlement demands can be higher because the plaintiff's lawyer's argument to a defense lawyer, and I'm typically on the defense side of the case, would be something Like, hey, you know, we've racked up $40,000 in legal fees in addition to whatever you think the settlement value of this case is. And if we get a trial and win and get even $1 in verdict at trial, you're going to owe us the attorney's fees. So, you Know, that drives up the potential settlement values. And then we talked about this a couple of episodes ago in terms

0:05:24 Thomas: Right, right. Right. We talked about the, what, the European model versus the, yeah, okay.

0:05:58 Andrew: Of. Right, right. So that's the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. When you get sued under that, you may be sued in federal court because it's a federal law that you're accused of violating. And so that gives rise to a cause of action in federal courts. The second way in which you get into federal court is by having diversity of the parties, which is to say the plaintiff, all of, because you can have multiple plaintiffs and multiple defendants, All of the plaintiffs and all of the defendants must come from different states. And the amount in controversy must be $75,000 or more. So it must be a serious case.

And that really is a throwback to the founding of the Constitution and the idea of state sovereignty model. Model. We've got a lot of questions about the Electoral College, and we talked about that in our Trump episodes. But the notion was that if I had to sue, if I was a Marylander and I had to sue someone from Virginia, it wouldn't be fair for me to be in Virginia state court if it was a serious matter, because obviously those Homer judges are going to vote, are going to rule in favor of the hometown person. So there was a provision for federal courts in what is is called diversity jurisdiction. So serious cases, uh, parties are between different states.

0:06:34 Thomas: Another callback to an earlier topic.

0:07:24 Andrew: So that's how you get into federal court by and large. Um, there are other areas, but I'm not going to talk about them right now. Uh, cause they're really, really minor cases. Uh. You file a lawsuit or have a lawsuit filed against you in a district court in the geographic area in which you reside. Uh that case, you then get one appeal as of right to a United States Court of Appeal for the whatever circuit. And there are 11.

0:07:48 Thomas: Okay. So, that's the circuit court. So, from the district to the circuit, okay.

0:07:51 Andrew: Right, right. And so there are 11 numbered circuits in addition to the D.C. Circuit, which covers the District of Columbia. But the numbered circuits basically go geographically from east to west along along the United States. So the First Circuit covers Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, the Second Circuit, New York, and the surrounding states, the Third Circuit, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the Fourth Circuit, Maryland, and so on, all the way out. Your area is the Ninth Circuit, California, and then you kind of move back in all of, yeah, Well, I was just going to say, the the unpopulated uh mountain states, right, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, uh, and I think Kansas, are all in the 10th Circuit. And then the 11th Circuit was actually carved out of there was a deep south circuit that covered uh basically Georgia and Florida all the way west to Texas, and they split it kind of down the middle. So Alabama, Georgia, and Florida are the new 11th Circuit. And the other states, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, are the Fifth Circuit. So, and that was just because of volume, right?

0:08:22 Thomas: The 9th, yeah. I'm curious what the 10th and 11th are. I don't know.

0:09:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:07 Andrew: There were too many cases down there. So you get one appeal of right to the circuit that sits over the geographic area that includes the district court in which which your case was filed, that appeal is heard by a three judge panel, the panels rotate and they are supposed to be chosen. There's a longstanding custom because there's approval by the United States Senate, these judges are appointed for life by the president. We talked about that before, but subject to approval by the Senate. And there is kind of an informal rule that it says a geographic balance among the states that constitute the circuit. Right. So, you you don't, just the president wouldn't just pack the Fifth Circuit with Florida judges or Alabama judges.

0:09:55 Andrew: You would you would rotate that. And and I should add, by the way, we talked about the United States. The trial court is the district court for whatever state that is the court to which. President Ronald Reagan attempted to appoint Jeff Sessions in 1986, and he was rejected by a bipartisan Judiciary Committee that was actually, I believe, Arlen Specter, Republican from Pennsylvania, was the chair at the time. And and the Judiciary Committee said, yeah, you know, given his sort of marginal credentials and longstanding history of racism, we don't think this is an appropriate nomination. And and his nomination was withdrawn. He later won a Senate seat in Alabama because apparently that was not a sufficient deterrent to Alabama

0:10:13 Thomas: And it was declined for racism, right?

0:10:46 Thomas: Doesn't

0:10:46 Andrew: Voters and is and is now under consideration, where I believe has been tapped to be President Trump's attorney general. So, you know, too racist to be a federal judge, but just racist enough to be attorney general,

0:10:47 Thomas: Disqualify you in Alabama, yeah? Sure. Cool. So, let me clarify. So, a three-judge panel for each circuit, but how many judges? When you say that, it sounds like there's more judges than that per circuit. It's just you get assigned...

0:11:04 Andrew: Right. Yes. Yes, sir.

0:11:13 Thomas: How many are there?

0:11:13 Andrew: The circuit is is it varies by

0:11:16 Thomas: Well, of course, but...

0:11:16 Andrew: Circuit. There's a big pool of judges, you 15 or so in each circuit. And then they they take three judge panels to hear all of these appellate cases. And something that is is worth mentioning, we've talked about this before in the Supreme Court episode, the way in which which you lay a factual record is at trial. And then when you lose at trial and you appeal, you are bound by, by and large, the facts that were established below. And an appellate court will overturn a factual finding at the trial court level, that is the U.S. district court level when we're talking about federal court, only upon a finding that factual the determination was was clearly erroneous, which is a really, really hard burden to meet. So of the discussions, I actually got an email in response to our previous Second Amendment episode that was, talking about various factual contentions that were not alleged before the Supreme Court.

0:11:20 Thomas: Okay.

0:12:18 Andrew: And from a lawyer's perspective, all of that is really irrelevant, right? Once you get beyond the trial court level, you're not arguing the facts anymore. You're stuck with the record that the trial Court gave you.

0:12:28 Thomas: You're stuck with the facts. It's more the interpretation of the law, right? Like kind of how it's going to be applied. Okay.

0:12:32 Andrew: Exactly. That is exactly right. Um, and, and look like sometimes, I mean, that's why the standard is clearly erroneous, right? Like, Uh, it, I have been in cases where all parties have agreed that it was probably a mistake for the Court to have decided decided one way and and yet the appellate court was bound by that, right, like, I have had to argue, yeah, you know what, like, the court probably got this wrong, but it's too late for us to turn back and try and relitigate it, there's no, not enough evidence to suggest that it should be the interpretation being offered by the appellants, uh, and so therefore, you know, under, uh, know, typical appellant rules, we should go by, uh, the factual determination, uh, made at at the lower court, uh, and you know, and I won on that issue, like, that, that's, and I'm not saying I won because I'm a brilliant lawyer, which of course I am, uh, but, uh, but I did because it's, it's not really controversial, right, like, it's very, very difficult to get an appellate court, because appellant court judges say, hey, look, like, we're not trial court judges, right, like, we are here to apply the law, our expertise is not in you examining witness testimony

0:12:39 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:13:38 Andrew: And deciding if if they're truthful or not, like all of those are the kinds of things that you associate with a trial court. And so federal appellate courts are really reluctant to do that. So you get your one appeal as of right to a U.S. district, excuse me, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal for the blank circuit. And then if you lose at that level, you may file your petition for certiorari to to the United States Supreme Court.

With the exception of cases where there is an automatic right of appeal, which include death penalty cases, for example, you do not have a guaranteed right to the Supreme Court, the Supreme court gets to decide which cases it wants to take or not. The Supreme Court follows a rule of four, which is a rule of convenience, not a rule that is mandated by the Constitution, but basically says that the Supreme Court will grant petitions for certiorari if four of the nine justices, in this case four of the eight justices agree that it's worth hearing the case. So, you know, a minority can think we really, really want to hear this case Know, and take it up, but not have you know, to have the case

0:13:44 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:14:49 Andrew: Turn out a certain way. Yeah. And I should add, one uh, other thing, and this, this really is true. Like when I was first taught this in law school, I didn't quite believe it. Um. If the, if the Supreme Court refuses to grant cert in a case, um, that means that the lower court opinion stands, right? Uh, but you may also not draw any adverse inferences in a future case from the fact that the Supreme Court decided not to hear it, right? So in other words, it's not an argument the next time that issue is presented to come back and say, no, no the Supreme Court has really ruled on this because they declined to take cert in X case. Um, it it's that

0:14:49 Thomas: That makes sense, though.

0:15:27 Thomas: Interesting.

0:15:27 Andrew: The, the principle behind that is a kind of, yeah, the Supreme core can, can do whatever it wants. Like that. Don't go trying to pretend you're a Supreme court justice Torrez. Uh, you're not. That really is the case. Now, you know, can you draw overall conclusions about jurisprudence based on the kinds of cases the court takes or doesn't take? Yeah. I mean, as a commentator, you can. But you can't go into court and argue from stare decisis from prior cases. Hey, look, the Supreme Court didn't grant cert here. A court will say, yeah, well, Supreme Court can do what it wants. And so so that was that was a little surprising for me when I first learned that. So I pass that along.

0:16:04 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that either, obviously. Cool. So does that cover the court structure or is there more?

0:16:08 Andrew: At the state, yeah, that covers the federal court structure. Just a quick word at the state level, I'm not going to be able to get into all of it because every state confusingly names their courts something different. So for example, like, sometimes state trial courts, you know the equivalent of the U.S. district courts, Sometimes they're called superior courts. Sometimes they are called supreme courts. Sometimes, you know, in Maryland they're called circuit courts. Forget about the names. Most states follow a similar structure and it would go like this. At your lowest level are informal courts, traffic courts, small claims courts, things like that that are a level even below sort of the equivalent of the U.S.

0:16:59 Andrew: District Court. And those, you know, that's the interactions most people have, because if you're like me, like you get a speeding ticket from time to time and you show up in traffic court and you realize like when you show up in traffic court, right, there's none of the stuff that we've talked about on Opening Arguments, right? Like nobody's filing briefs and there are no lawyers and there's no cross-examination. There's just a kind of a board judge sitting up there saying, okay, did you really go 65 or, you know, whatever. Um, but, but you do have a right. And, and when you get your verdict from a, from a traffic court, um, the judge will tell you, hey, look, you have a right to appeal this to whatever your state's trial court is, right? Like I said, in the state of Maryland, that is called, uh, the Circuit Court for a particular geographic area.

0:17:46 Andrew: So mine, for example, I'm now living in Baltimore County. So, you know that, but it's the same thing. It's geographically determined. It's a trial court, and it is the equivalent. From there, you typically have one appeal as of right to an intermediate state appellate court. In Maryland, that is called the Court of Special Appeals. That was created in Maryland in the 1970s. It's a weird misnomer because it should obviously be called the Court of All Appeals, but it's called the court of special appeals. All of your appeals go there. You get one free shot and then you get a petition for cert to the state Supreme Court, which in Maryland is called the Courts of Appeals. So the names are different, but the structure is kind of exactly the same, which is to say you either come in at a trial court level or on appeal from a really, really informal court.

0:18:36 Andrew: You get one appeal as of right up to an intermediate appellate court, and then you get to file a cert petition to the state Supreme Court. And then there are some like we talked about in Bush v. Gore. If a state Supreme Court issue has a constitutional component to it, you may file for a petition to review the constitutional issue in the U.S. Supreme Court. So that's the only other wrinkle in moving through the state system versus moving through of the federal system. So there you go.

0:19:06 Thomas: Well, I'm just going to hire Andrew Torrez to navigate me through that. I get the basic structure, but yeah. Cool. Thanks for answering that.

0:19:12 Andrew: That's what we do. Yep.

0:19:20 Thomas: All right. And now for our main topic today, you know, we've got so many listener questions. And seriously, Andrew can back me up on this. I am blown away by our email. I just cleaned out our email inbox what felt like, you know, two weeks ago and I categorized everything and like, oh, here's some questions for Andrew to answer. And then it filled back up immediately.

0:19:41 Andrew: Yeah.

0:19:42 Thomas: We've got so many. We've decided that for this episode, we'll answer an extra question and that'll be today's episode. We'll answer three listener questions in one episode. So that's really cool. Cool. Now, lots of people have been asking about this. I would say this qualifies as a listener question, although it's it's been from everybody. We tend to get it from everybody at once. Jill Stein's recount. This has evolved a little bit, but why don't you take us through how this started? This started off as one thing and you were commenting a lot about it. And I know it's changed a little because Hillary's sort of involved. Why don't once you set that up?

0:20:05 Andrew: Right.

0:20:15 Andrew: So. This started on, uh, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I mean, literally, uh, right as I was, um, prepping vegetables for my family Thanksgiving. Which, by the way, did you have a good Thanksgiving, Thomas?

0:20:28 Thomas: I had a great Thanksgiving. I had two. I'd won one OK one and one amazing one. But that's just just because I am very biased toward my mom's cooking. It's the only thing that my family does well, Thanksgiving. It is very good, but it makes up for it because it is incredibly good. I loved it. How about you? So, you had a good one?

0:20:29 Andrew: Yeah. Nice. Nice. That's That's Awesome. Yeah, my I I I Live next door to my sister, um, whom I I Love dearly, and, uh, and my parents flew in from Florida, and so we got together with the family, uh, it was, it was fantastic, uh, and so I was prepping vegetables and the news came out that Jill, Jill Stein was seeking to raise two and a half million dollars for recounts in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. And I immediately looked up the recount laws in those three states.

0:20:50 Thomas: Oh, that is right. Yeah.

0:21:16 Andrew: And, yeah, no, seriously, like the the The news came on and I, like, put the, I put the vegetables down. I also smoked a turkey that night. So, like, yeah. I had a whole bunch of stuff going on that I put aside to go pick angry fights with Jill Stein supporters on Twitter. It was awesome. No, it, when that news came in, it immediately sent off every kind of alarm buzzer in my head that, that I have. And it did before I looked at any of the laws for reasons that are probably pretty apparent to Opening Arguments listeners. Um,

0:21:16 Thomas: Yeah, as you were washing vegetables. Vegetables in one hand.

0:21:55 Thomas: Well, I would say, let me just say, even as a non-opening arguments listener, right away, the fact that she's doing it and not Hillary is weird because you would think just, just as a normal, just the dumbest Thomas that there could be, just thinking like, wait a minute, if there was something there, then Hillary would have just done it. And I know there's been a news story that like some, you know, statistician looked at the votes in certain States and said, Ooh, these, these ones, according to CNN, they said, this, uh, certain counties that had electronic voting, those went, they, they went disproportionately to Trump. So maybe there's been some voter hacking. So, I mean, maybe that affects it a little bit, but it's still, I would think that Hillary would be most invested in the idea of her actually winning the election. So I would Think she would make, you know, do this fundraiser.

0:21:55 Andrew: We yeah go ahead, right. Right yeah So there, there are two things here, and the, the first, um, well, let me take, take the second one, uh, first. Which is to say, um, I've read the article that suggests that there are irregularities in the vote counts in those three states. Um, I would point out, as a counter-argument, that Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium, who is as lefty as they come, right? He has a uninterrupted career of supporting liberal causes. He's also the foremost expert on gerrymandering, somebody that I trust, I trust his motivations. Also, by the way, the Princeton Election Consortium model pegged a Hillary win at greater than 99 percent on Election Day. Right. So, you know, this is not somebody who is clinging to a narrative.

0:22:48 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:23:40 Andrew: Right? Right. Like when he says he's examined the data and it looks fine to him, you know, here's somebody who has a pretty vested interest in saying, no, no. Hillary did win because, I mean, you don't makes his model look really bad that Hillary lost. So I would point that out just on the factual level. I am not passing judgment on either of the factual contentions. I want to be very, very clear on that. Right. I'm a lawyer, not a statistician. So don't know anything about the fact about the factual contentions other than they did. They're disputed back and forth. But on your point, Right.

0:23:53 Thomas: Sure.

0:24:17 Andrew: Like we've talked about the concept of standing on opening arguments before. And it's the idea that courts can't issue advisory opinion.

0:24:24 Thomas: Well, and and Hold on, and I wanted to go Even one level more, uh, what's the word, ignorant of the law, you know, like more, uh, layman, I guess, than you. Like, I'm not even talking about standing, I'm talking about merely motivation and merely incentive. Like, and, and just logically, if there was something there, the first person who would want to capitalize is Hillary. But I was going to let you take the actual legal portion of that.

0:24:25 Andrew: Oh, go ahead.

0:24:52 Andrew: Well, but OK, but this this is still an opening arguments theme, right, which is to say the law often validates your common sense notions. Right. And so, yes, as a as a common sense notion, we think if you are the person that are that is hurt, right. Right, Hillary Clinton, then the person who should be filing the lawsuit should be Hillary Clinton. And that then becomes incorporated in the notion of standing by the idea that, you know, courts don't issue advisory opinions and they don't allow you to sue on somebody else's behalf, right? The idea is if you have a right that is to be vindicated, you now let that person bring that lawsuit. And if they choose not to, well, then courts aren't going to get involved. And that's, you know, that's a a check and balance inherent in the judicial system that, you know, goes all the way back to the founding of the republic.

0:24:57 Thomas: Right, right, right.

0:25:47 Andrew: Right. It what differentiates the judiciary from the other two branches of government is that they act only defensively. They cannot proactively say, boy, this seems wrong here and go ahead. Anybody can come on in and we're just going to say what what ought to happen. So I went and I looked up the election laws in those three states. And I should add, in order for any recount to matter, Hillary Clinton has to flip the results in all three states, right?

She has to flip Pennsylvania, she has to flip Wisconsin, and she has to flip Michigan. Without those three state combined, she's still shy of the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president. Um, so if you only get two, that does you as good, that does you no good, right? Um, you're in the same position you are in right now. Um, and I would add that the additional wrinkle is you're not at the outset, you are filing an administrative petition. You are saying to the state, I want you to recount the votes. Okay. So it's a little different than bringing a lawsuit. Um, and as it turns out, the, um, the Pennsylvania law actually allows any citizen to request a recount. Uh, the Wisconsin law is a

0:26:35 Thomas: Right.

0:27:01 Andrew: Little, uh, yeah, I,

0:27:00 Thomas: Hold on. Why wouldn't someone already have done that then? Just any citizen?

0:27:04 Andrew: I don't, yeah. I don't know the, I don't know the answer to that. Um, it, it and I should, I should add, um. What I did because again, this is, um know, I''ve got a right.

0:27:07 Thomas: Okay. So there's no further requirement? You're still washing vegetables at this point.

0:27:16 Andrew: I got a turkey on the smoker and I've got half chopped broccoli in my kitchen, I looked, saw the Pennsylvania law, said, oh, well, look, it says any citizen. Moved on, looked at the Wisconsin law, and the Wisconsin law says any candidate. And I said, oh, wow, let me Set that aside for a minute. I need to figure out how that works. Let me take a look at the Michigan law. And the Michigan law, however, is where you hit pay dirt. And as it so happens, you can type in MC, this is the citation, it is the Michigan Compiled Laws, MCL 168.862. You can type it into Google. I actually transposed the numbers the first time I reported this, and the transposition of the numbers, my law firm Twitter feed, is now the number two hit on Google for the transpositions. The actual law, 168.862, describes in Michigan who's eligible to ask the state for a recount. And it says this, it says a candidate for office

0:27:20 Thomas: Sure.

0:27:30 Thomas: Okay, it Makes More sense. Okay.

0:28:19 Andrew: Who believes that he or she is aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake in the canvas or returns of the votes by the election inspectors may petition for a recount of the vote's cast in any precinct or precincts as provided in this chapter. And that I stopped them. I didn't decided not to go back and look at the Wisconsin law because that is very, very clear in terms of what it means. Right. Which is to say, in order to have standing, you must not only be a candidate, but you must be a candidate who is aggrieved, and you must be a candidate who is aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake in the canvas or returns of the votes by the election inspector. OK, which is to say, at the end of the day, you must be a candidate for whom requesting a recount affects your legal rights in some way, because if it doesn't, then you have not been aggrieved by the election inspectors.

0:29:16 Andrew: Right. The first thing I did was I said, hey, Jill Stein is saying she's raising this money. She wants to use it for recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. There's no way she's getting a recount in Michigan because she's not aggrieved. And the first line of argument that I got was, what are you talking about? She lost, right?

0:29:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:35 Andrew: You can't get more aggrieved than losing, right, yeah.

0:29:35 Thomas: That's A grieving. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

0:29:38 Andrew: And to the extent that losing is being aggrieved, she was not aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake by the election officials. She was aggrieved on the account of the fact that people don't like her, right. And she got one point oh seven percent of the vote. So there's nothing just.

0:29:54 Thomas: But In terms of Uh, you know, us laymen who are arguing back with you, I mean, I didn't, because I've learned my lesson, I don't really argue with, but in terms of the people are arguing with you, they're thinking, well, she lost, so then she's kind of aggrieved, because maybe, even though it's, sure, it's uh, once she got one percent or whatever you said, maybe the recount would indicate something different. How does the law tell us that that's not officially, you know, legally speaking, uh, being aggrieved?

0:30:20 Andrew: Yeah. And the answer is because you do not have a legal right to a precise vote total in your favor. I know of no case that says that. And in fact, the cases that we cite at the end of Opening Arguments, Episode 5, with respect to Bush v. Gore, hold the exact opposite, which is to say, look, we know when you run an election that there are going to be mistakes and ballots are going going to get lost and numbers are going to be transposed. And there are just errors in the process. Right.

But the idea is, for the most part, those errors cancel each other out, or they're not significant, or they don't affect the outcome, right? And so the idea, if you were to say, so just take any normal election, right? I'm the Democratic candidate. I run for Senate. I lose to the Republican candidates 65 to 35. Right, and then I go to request a recount and the judge is going to say, and assuming that I'm in Michigan, right? The judge is going to say, well, okay, Mr. Torrez, why are you agreed? And I say, well, I really think I got an extra 500 or 5,000 votes because, you know, and here's my evidence.

And the judge is gonna say, Well, that that's going to get you to 36 or 37. How are you agree? Well, because those people voted for me, right? And, and the answer is that the court is then going to ask the crucial question, which is, what do you want this court to do, right?

0:30:51 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:31:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:52 Andrew: I can articulate a legal right that I want the court to defend, then they're going to say, well, there isn't anything left for us to do here, right, like you want us to declare that you lost by 23% instead of 25%, That's not a legally recognizable rally. You lost. Right. You know, sorry. An election law is is sparse, but it's pretty clear that you're not aggrieved if, you know, your vote total, if you're losing vote total is wrong. Wrong. Okay.

0:32:26 Thomas: And that makes sense because Because, like, if the law held us to some standard that you're, you're entitled to exactly one to one perfect accounting of every vote, we would just be mired in that forever. Like it could never end.

0:32:26 Andrew: Yeah, literally every candidate ever could

0:32:41 Thomas: Yeah, that

0:32:41 Andrew: Demand a never-ending recount until you got with, you know, with pinpoint precision, right? So we don't have that. And so then the next sort of line of argumentation, and I should be clear, did have folks that tried to argue that it says that it's a subjective standard. It is a subjective standard in Michigan. It says a candidate who believes he or she is aggrieved. And so people said, well, you know, if Jill Stein believes that she won, you know, that she really got 47 percent of the vote, but it was reported as one percent that she's allowed to go forward. And there's a couple of responses there of which your chuckle is probably the best one. Right. Like which is to say, no, like it's clear she does not believe she won Wisconsin. Excuse me. It's clear

0:32:41 Thomas: Makes sense. Got it.

0:33:31 Thomas: Yeah,

0:33:31 Andrew: She doesn't believe she won anywhere.

0:33:31 Thomas: Well, all of them. But yeah, Michigan,

0:33:33 Andrew: But it's clear, she doesn' believe she won Michigan. She's not raising money for, let's have a recount because Stein won Michigan, right? Like she's saying, let' have a recount because Hillary Clinton won Michigan So if she were to go into court and file a pleading or an affidavit in which her or her lawyers say on behalf of the Stein campaign that that they believe that they're aggrieved because they think they won Michigan, material misrepresentation before the court.

0:33:34 Thomas: Yeah, it'd be weird. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's set up though, because this is, I mean, this is potentially a bit of a big deal. I don't want to throw anything around before, uh, any accusations around before we get to sort of what your conclusion is or, or what we think a reasonable conclusion is if we do get to that point. But it is certainly something that would concern me if she's raising millions millions of dollars for something that's arguably fraudulent in a way. And I think that that you didn't I mean, we could set up the stakes a little bit like those are that that's important. You know, like it's important if it's true that she was either mistaken in what she can do or she was misleading people. But, you know, at best she was mistaken, say, but she's still raising millions millions of dollars under sort pretenses, then that's, that's a big deal, right?

0:34:02 Andrew: Yeah.

0:34:53 Andrew: And that's really why I got involved, because her campaign's press release said, we are raising money for recounts in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and in Michigan. And I kept quoting the in Michigan component once I read the law, it was clear to me that she was not going to get a recount in Michigan, and so then I actually, I was, I had someone on Twitter, this is, I don't know if he's an opening arguments listener. I hope so. Uh, it's the name Rudy Hell's a poppin. Uh, and he went to the Jill Stein website and, you um, know, me, uh, you no opening arguments are, uh tagline is don't take legal advice from a podcast.

0:35:19 Thomas: Right. Sure.

0:35:40 Andrew: So I'm a huge fan of disclaimers. Uh, And that's pretty enormous disclaimer, as far as I can, as far as I can say. I mean, basically what it says is, um, we promised to try. Uh, and if we can't do anything and we have extra money, we're going to do it on stuff that the Green Party does anyway. Um, which is essentially, um, this is a fundraiser for the Green Part. Uh, which is fine. Like, you know, it's great and all to have a fundraiser.

But I think you ought to say, if you are mad because Hillary Clinton lost and would like to donate money to the Green Party so that the Green Party can use it on election reform, and you think that the Green Party is not a bunch of incompetence tilting at windmills, then give us money. And I think that that would probably have not produced the millions of dollars that uh, we're going to use this on recounts. Did, um, so yeah, like the, the, there was that system I did want to address. We kind of moved to uh, what the Stein campaign was saying and how I responded to it. Um, there is, I thought, uh, there is a clever argument that, um, if Stein was demanding a recount, count because, uh, if she got over 5%, it would allow her ballot access in Michigan, then that could qualify as a grief, and absolutely that would,

0:39:45 Thomas: Hmm.

0:39:46 Andrew: Right. Like that would qualify as illegal right under the test that I put forward. Um, but

0:39:50 Thomas: However, she's not, I mean, she still 4% off of that. Yeah.

0:39:51 Andrew: Yeah, but she's a 1.07%, right. And she's not claiming, I want this recount to vindicate my rights as a candidate on the ballot to get to Like she's claiming I want this recount so Hillary Clinton can win. And and the problem that I have. And so now we can we can move forward. Hillary Clinton has in some cases it's not entirely clear to me, but in some places has joined in on the recount efforts. And now the recount efforts will, you know, will go forward because that's the person who suffered the injury who is agreed. So, you can draw whatever conclusions you want from sort of how things progressed. But I'm still pretty skeptical of how the entire situation unfolded, because from the very beginning, the person who had the right to demand the recounts in the three critical states was Hillary Clinton and not Jill Stein. And when I think about organizations that have been at the forefront of election reform, I don't think of the Green Party.

0:40:04 Thomas: Hmm, yeah.

0:40:58 Andrew: You can go back and look at their campaign party platform and there's stuff about public financing of elections, ballot integrity. Right. Like there are established organizations that have been working for ballot integrity for a long time. So it it it feels to me like an attempt by the Green Party to reach out to frustrated liberals who want to do something and to have them feel better by doing something by giving money to the Green Party. Uh, and, uh, I think I use the word that the, uh... the, I haven't changed any of my analysis, taken it back down, uh. Anything. I stand by everything I've said. Uh. I use the word "scam." Um. That's strong language. Uh... That, that's, that probably, if I had it to do over again, I, I don't know that I would say "scam."

0:41:48 Andrew: But I, but I really wanted to warn people, hey, look, like, this is not a, a productive use of your money. Right? Right. Like if you want if you want to demand a recount, send a letter to Hillary Clinton. Right. If you want to support election reform, send money to an organization that supports election reform. If you wanna donate money to the Green Party, donate money to the Green Party. Right. Like that's I'm not I'm not here to tell you not to be a member of the Green Party, although I think that's a tremendous waste of your time.

0:42:14 Thomas: We can, but yeah, not in

0:42:16 Andrew: But yeah.

0:42:16 Thomas: This particular episode.

0:42:18 Andrew: Right. But I think, you know, when you make a when you're when you conducting a fundraiser, I would prefer that my candidates and political parties disclose that they are conducting a fundraising and not package it as we are on the vanguard. Because I'm a candidate, I'm demanding a recount, which no, you're not doing in Michigan. And that has remained the case. People have asked, does that change if Hillary Clinton joins? It absolutely changes because Hillary Clinton is the one who's injured. But then you have to ask, was your...

0:42:45 Thomas: But still, Like, why wouldn't She have been in on it and from the beginning and like what and and was that really Jill Stein's motivation was to get Hillary Clinton to do because really like she wants to win the election more than Jill Stein wants her to win the election, I can imagine right I mean I have to imagine

0:42:47 Andrew: Yeah.

0:43:03 Andrew: I cannot imagine anybody wants to win the election more than Hillary Clinton wants to win the election.

0:43:06 Thomas: Yeah I can't imagine anyone wants Hillary Clinton to win the election More than Hillary Clinton I would hope, yeah. It doesn't make any sense. I argued with someone who had the attitude of well, let's check, check the system, check the system, do the recount, because there might have been, even if it doesn't change the outcome, what if there's hacking? We need to know. What would you say to that kind of answer?

0:43:10 Andrew: Right. Right, yes.

0:43:29 Andrew: Don't know how to answer that question, right? Because that's not what recounts do, right, you know what I mean? If you want to have, right, like there was significant investigative journalism in both 2000 and 2004 into voting machines and potential voting fraud and that sort of thing. It was a long rolling stone piece about the votes in Ohio that could have swung. And Ohio, I mean, John Kerry lost Ohio by like three percentage points, almost three percent, I think. So, you know, it was a it was sort of a long form piece and it was really, really difficult argument to make. You don't use the legal process to do That sort of thing. Right. Like you use the legal process to vindicate legal rights that you have been denied.

0:43:31 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:44:15 Thomas: Well, yeah, and another part is if we're talking about the hacking and all that, would a recount even do anything? Like, let's assume something was hacked, just for the sake of argument. Wouldn't they just be recounting the hacked votes? Like...

0:44:21 Andrew: Yeah, I. Right, I don't know, because going to sort of answer both that question and the previous question, which was why wasn't Hillary Clinton strong on this from day one? And the answer is, again, as a callback to opening arguments five, the timeline that's set here is the timeline set by the National Elections Act, which is 3 U.S.C. 1. And you may recall this from from Bush versus Gore, 3 U.S.C., 3 U.S.C. 1 et seq, which means the statutes that follow that as well. And so 3 U.S.C. 7 says that the electors shall meet and shall convey their votes on the first Monday after the second Tuesday in December. OK, and so that is on this calendar. It's actually the latest it could possibly be, but it's still December 19th. Right. So if a recount were to start today, you would have 20 days to conduct that statewide recount before the mandatory deadline set by three USC seven. And I should add, it wasn't a mandatory deadline until Bush v. Gore. Like we talked about that.

0:44:37 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:45:39 Andrew: But it is now. Right. Like the precedent's really, really clear under three USC 7. That's when the electors have to meet and have to convey their votes for president. So any recount needs to be done and the results reported before that mandatory deadline, which is to say before December 19th. So you have 19 or 20 days. You're right, I cannot imagine that you could conduct a hand paper ballot recount of the entire state of Michigan in 19 days. And I base that on our experience in Florida where it took six weeks to do a partial recount of three counties in Florida, right? At the hand, you know, hanging Chad thing in Florida. So you're right, you would be doing some kind of machine-assisted recount in that timeframe.

0:46:30 Andrew: And if there is the kind of hacking that's been alleged, don't know that a machine-assisted recount would display. Yes.

0:46:37 Thomas: So there's probably a different, better way to figure that out, hopefully, you would think. Like, if this hacking were true, it wouldn't be, this wouldn't be what you would do about it.

0:46:46 Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it's it's a terrible aspect of our system and simultaneously a good aspect of our system that the courts don't really provide relief for kinds of questions that we're asking. Like we're asking, was the election valid? And the answer to was the selection valid can be no, but nevertheless, the process was followed, right? Like, so, you know, think back to Bush v. Gore episodes, in, I think it was 08-2, we talked about aspect of the Palm Beach County ballots that never made it into any of the litigation.

0:47:31 Thomas: Right.

0:47:31 Andrew: And if you remember, Remember, that was the butterfly ballot. Right. And we have the statistical model that proves like beyond any reasonable doubt. Right. Within within a fraction of one percent that proves that tens of thousands of votes were cast in Palm Beach County for Pat Buchanan that were meant to have been cast for Al Gore. Right. That's far greater than the number of all the recounts of all The Under and Over votes and everything else put together. If you could look inside the heads of those voters, the will of the people in Palm Beach County was even more so for Al Gore than was reported. And therefore, the Will of the State of Florida should have been for Al Gore. And, therefore, The Will of The Electoral College should have had been for al gore. That's the result. Like, that's the platonic correct result.

0:47:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:20 Andrew: Correct result. But that's not the result that our system allows for. Right. Like there's... there's literally no way you could have sued to replace actual votes with no, no, these people really, really meant to vote for Al Gore. Right? Right. So, you know, so we were left with a system that said, yeah, this is probably not will of the people. But nevertheless, it's the process that's provided. And and that's where I think the good part comes in. And I know I deviate from some of my fellow liberals here. I want to comment on there's a Keith Olbermann video that's circulating. I think he did for GQ magazine that talks about the the 25th Amendment that we answered in last week's episode as part of President Trump.

0:49:05 Andrew: Right. Can can Mike Pence and the cabinet, declare Donald Trump unfit and remove him from office using the 25 th Amendment?

0:49:10 Thomas: Right? And the answer was yes, but

0:49:14 Andrew: Right.

0:49:14 Thomas: Why?

0:49:15 Andrew: Right. And and And more so and like the the the pithy way I put it on Twitter was the only thing that I think of that's what that that essentially what you're saying is I want to use Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to have Mike Pence along with Donald Trump's cabinet and Paul Paul Ryan stage a coup and depose Donald Trump and install Mike Pence as acting president. And the only thing that scares me more than President Trump is how to release him. Oh, Pence. Right. Like we don't have coups in this country, like it. Donald Trump, I didn't vote for him. I don't want him to be president. I'm going to work really, really hard to make sure he's to make certain first that the Democrats recapture the Congress in in in 2018. And that whoever the Democratic nominee is in 2020 kicks out President Trump.

0:49:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:09 Andrew: I would rather us have a president than have situation where the party that loses the election starts looking at other ways of getting into power anyway, right? Right. Like, to me, you know, that's what differentiates the United States from a lot of countries where democracy has sort of come and gone is that we really do have a rule of law.

0:50:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:30 Thomas: It's a little scary to mess with that like you do need to keep the will of the people. I do, I certainly have sympathy for people who are worried about foreign intervention and potential hacking and all that, but I suppose it sounds like this effort is not the way to deal with that in your opinion. Well,

0:50:32 Andrew: Yeah.

0:50:49 Andrew: Yeah, this is the question that I would ask. Is there any way that you could imagine that any effort could demonstrably prove Russian hacking or anything else that that show that the election was stolen from Hillary Clinton and given to Donald Trump in 19 days?

0:51:11 Thomas: I mean, but that's not exactly satisfying. I mean, it, we, I still would want, like, no, but I guess I understand, like, I, I understand that we would want, like, even if we're stuck with President Trump, like it's just a foregone conclusion. We're stuck with President Trump. I would still want, what is the best way for just our system and for America in general to acknowledge, like, assuming maybe there, like, assume there was hacking and intervention. There's got to be something we can do to at least say, okay, this happened. We're suck with Trump, but wow, we need to take care of this or something, you

0:51:14 Andrew: I didn't say it was satisfying.

0:51:37 Andrew: Yep. Here's and and

0:51:45 Thomas: Know?

0:51:46 Andrew: Here's what I would seriously propose. Suppose the situation were the reverse. Right. Suppose it is Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine taking office and there are serious allegations that they are doing so under fraud perpetrated by a foreign government. Right? Right. And we we can't prove that in the next 19 days they take office. Then we prove conclusively by, let's say, March of next year. No, no, no. There was definitely fraud and hacking and whatever.

Then I would be calling on as a Democrat, I would be calling On Tim Kaine to resign as vice president for for Clinton to appoint Donald Trump as vice president and then resign, or otherwise, if you've got to forcibly remove them from office, right, like it's a more complicated, what you would have to do is you would Have to have Tim Kaine use the 25th Amendment Clause 4 to remove Hillary Clinton, then he would become acting president, then she would appoint Donald Trump as his vice president, and he would resign, then Donald Trump would appoint Mike Pence as his vice president, right? Like, you can peaceably transfer power under the system that we have in a non-election if everybody agrees, hey, look, like, you weren't supposed to be president. And if that turns out to be the case, right, like I would expect, I mean, I know maybe this is overly optimistic,

0:52:29 Thomas: Huh? I don't think it would happen.

0:53:08 Andrew: But I would suspect that there would be Republicans who would do what I just a set, right? Who would say, you know what, like, sometimes it's more important to have a democracy than it is to win. And not going to get behind having a foreign power hijack our government. And, you Know, again, you Now, the there are a couple of examples that I look to for this, but I think that the the Nixon example is particularly instructive. Like you for a long time partisan Republicans were with Nixon. When the evidence was overwhelming, partisan Republicans broke away. It's, we do not live in an age in which there has been a tremendous amount of political courage on either side of the aisle. It, and partisanship is kind of at an all-time high. But I guess I still do believe that there is that kind of fundamental sense of, some things that transcend, that are more important than party identification.

0:53:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:05 Andrew: May be needlessly optimistic. But so there are ways of effectuating and demanding change in the event that we can prove there was fraud. I But think think, until you prove that, if you prove that, you've got to let the system play out the way the system plays out.

0:54:21 Thomas: Interesting. All right. Well, great. Thanks for taking us through that.

0:54:25 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:54:32 Thomas: Now, SeismoZombie asks, what exactly is circumstantial evidence? And why does every TV show and movie treat it as like, you know, crappy evidence that is insufficient? Tell us about that, Andrew.

0:54:48 Andrew: Um, this is a great question, and it, it ties in. I wanted to do that in this episode because it, uh, it ties into our a lot of awful movies. Yeah, you will hear if you see a movie or watch a TV show that, you know, that's circumstantial evidence. Here's the difference. Direct evidence is testimonial evidence about what you observed that relates to the crime. So I saw Thomas stab that hobo, right. That is direct testimonial evidence. Everything else other than I saw Thomas stab the hobo is circumstantial evidence, right, which is to say the blood left behind at the scene, the knife we found in Thomas's apartment, the ripped and torn clothes, the fact that the hobos owed Thomas money.

0:55:41 Andrew: Like all of those things are circumstantial evidence, which is to say that they are indirect. But it's pretty clear that as you're thinking about putting a case together, that the circumstantional evidence might be even more important than the direct testimonial evidence. Yeah, I

0:55:58 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah, because it's true. Like whoever, you Know, this zombie is that's asking us these questions, which, you Now, a very legal-minded zombie is asking. They're about to start a zombie legal firm.

0:56:08 Andrew: Like that. That we have, you know, the most well-behaved zombies listening to our show.

0:56:11 Thomas: Yeah. Well, you know, zombies need legal services too. So they're like, oh, this is an untapped market. Uh, so I, but, but they're, they're totally right. Like in TV shows, like, ah, circumstantial. That's just, oh, what's that? Uh, you knew that, uh, you were, he was gone that day and it just so happened to be the same day as the murder, whatever it is. It's like, oh circumstantional, no big deal. But it's sounding like from what you're saying that but most everything is circumstantial evidence, right? It's like there's very little that sounds like it's not.

0:56:16 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep, that's correct. And in fact, there is a Supreme Court opinion. This is Holland versus United States, 348 U.S. 121. It's a 1954 case in which the Supreme Court said that circumstantial evidence is intrinsically no different from testimonial or direct evidence evidence in terms of its admissibility or utility in a trial. There used to be a thought that among, you know, we've talked about jurisprudence before, and there used to be a though among some of the older 19th century schools of jurisprudeence that you would need, you know direct evidence in order to convict somebody of a capital crime, right? Like that that that one of the things that you might see if you watch a lot of black and white movies, know, Agatha Christie or even older types that are sort of murder mysteries is, you know, how are you going to convict somebody of murder without the body?

0:57:33 Andrew: And the reality is, um, know, that's not it. It's not an impediment. Um, and it's not, it's certainly not a legal impediment, uh, but in terms of, you you know, kind of connecting the dots. Uh, it's also not a practical trial impediment, uh, in so far as, you know, you're able to compile, uh, enough evidence. Like, you know, I mean, it would be pretty easy for us to think of, uh a situation where, you know, we never find the particular hobo, uh but we have enough circumstantial evidence tying you you know to said hobo to to convict you um so yeah So yeah.

0:58:09 Thomas: Yeah, so it's like the attitude maybe or the myth or the trope maybe comes from like, oh, there's just a couple items that link you to the murder, right, and maybe that's more what they mean when they say like, oh, just circumstantially.

0:58:22 Andrew: Well, and and and I think we've started to think about the way in which evidence is presented a little differently, right? Like so in the 1970s was when we started having um psychological studies about the reliability or lack thereof of testimonial witnesses, right? Like, and so We've all seen the, you know, count the basketballs, uh, did you see the bear run across the court? Know, type of examples where, you know, if you're focusing on one thing, you know, you would miss something completely obvious, like a man in a bear suit running across a basketball court, um, and And so yeah, right, um, and so, you know, so we've had kind of on the one hand the eyewitness testimony. And on the flip side, we've had an scientific expert testimony that connects the dots on what would be called circumstantial evidence, where, you know, finding the victim's blood and DNA typing it, you know, within, you know, a one in 50 million shot is, you know, even if that's not, even though that's not direct evidence, that's pretty powerful evidence.

0:58:39 Thomas: Good point.

0:58:56 Thomas: Killing a hobo, yeah.

0:59:34 Thomas: Right.

0:59:35 Andrew: And, it's, so I think those, I think that the actual utility of that has kind of flip-flopped and we're still kind of left with these archaic designations, um, I don't know any good trial lawyer who would use the, "That's just circumstantial" evidence uh, line in trial, so that's, uh, that's why I thought this was a fun question to take

0:59:49 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, that's great. Cause that's a, that'S a real, I think that's a real prevalent legal myth in TV and movies in a way. I mean, it's not like a hundred percent of myth, but it kind of it, like the way it's used, I think is misleading in movies and TV. So that's, no that's really cool to know. I love that. That's my favorite part about this show is proving law and order. Well, no you said Law and Order was one of the better ones, but proving, proving some of these shows wrong or lazy. Yeah, so yeah.

0:59:55 Andrew: Yeah I agree but Nothing but nothing is as wrong or as lazy as The Firm.

1:00:25 Thomas: You Guys will have to see That's it, yeah, it's amazing too because The Firm, there's so much effort was put into it and yet so much was wrong. Yeah.

1:00:34 Andrew: Verb, oh yeah, and and again, like the actors are so good, like you and I are, I, I think in a a small minority, like I, I thank that Tom Cruise is a really good actor, right? Like

1:00:38 Thomas: Yeah. I think he's good. I mean, he's he's there are certain types of actors, there's like actors who can play themselves really well, and then actors who can play characters or whatever. He's he's good at playing himself very well, I think.

1:00:46 Andrew: Yeah right right Right, um, you know, so he's good, I mean, Gene Hackman is fantastic like the supporting supporting cast is amazing particularly Wilford Brimley

1:00:59 Thomas: Yeah, they're great. They're all good. Yeah. It's a good movie. You guys have got to get on patreon.com/law and check this out. It'll be, it'll be out probably the same time as this episode. So get over there and check it out. We've But got so many new patrons to thank. I don't know if you know this, Andrew, but we've we've Got a lot of new patrons to thank. We'd better get going on it. What do you say? I would say we need to thank Cognitive Dissonance Podcast. I've heard of that. Greg Jaskiewicz, Eric, Alex Schneider, Geyer Sergith, Willard Black, Mike Grimaldi, Elizabeth Karen, Dean Smith, LPD Happy, Darren Bennett, Colin, Danny Bain, Mike Backer. Gosh, so many. Thank you guys so much for pledging. Seriously, blown away. Corky Frosto, Eric Alsman, Jeff Nathan, Satan Swampy A-Hole. All right, fair enough. They pledged. You know what? We got to read their name. They pledge.

1:01:06 Andrew: Um yeah, yep yep okay Okay.

1:02:04 Thomas: Steve Fognan, Tammy DeWall, Bob Brady, Frederick Dumont, Deborah Smith, Stephen Rodwell, Grant Grant Godin, Eric Joseph, Louis Doddsnow, Zed, that's unreadable, ZD1ABL0, okay, Nicole Shepard, Zach Halpeska, Philip Hulk, Nick Ketter, Eric and Sean Oakley, gosh, so many, I'm blown away at how many new patrons we have, thank you so much for pledging, really, we appreciate it, over at patreon.com/law, I hope you enjoy the first Lawed Awful movies. And Andrew, do you have our top patrons queued up?

1:02:45 Andrew: And as always, we want to thank our Hall of Fame patrons, and those are Dan Irizarry, Eli Bosnick, Dave Nichols of the Positively Doubtful podcast. Steve Sigmund, Jim Grove, Desecrator, Patrick Fussell, Amanda Lipnack, La Bibliotecatrice, Heather Loveridge, Leon Hartley, Geeker41, Sean Pitti, Ian and Allie, Matthew Vernon, Michael Schaefer, Hunter Ashe, Michael, Kylie Reiser, Jeff S., Sakashite Fukasumi, Propanic, Philip Stromberg, Zabby, Frederick Austremer, Sammy, and the Inciting Incident podcast. Thank you all so much for being our top patrons. We we really appreciate it. Uh, we know you're going to enjoy that, that Law'd Awful Movies, and uh, it would not, it would not be possible uh, without your support. Many of many of whom, uh, our Hall of Fame patrons have been with us, uh, from the very beginning, and we we appreciate it.

1:03:38 Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's going to be, it's plenty of content for you too. I hope you enjoy it. All right. Another great episode in the books. Thank you so much, Andrew, for taking us through all that.

1:03:46 Andrew: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

1:03:47 Thomas: All Right. See you guys next time.

1:03:47 Andrew: Yeah.

1:03:56 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.