OA45: What Could Donald Trump's Tax Returns Tell Us? (With Guest Tony Di Fatta) - Part 1

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 45. I'm your host Thomas Smith. That over there is other host Andrew Torrez. How you doing, Andrew?

0:01:27 Andrew: I'm great, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:28 Thomas: Doing okay. Well, we've got a cool interview for you guys this week. We're going to find out all about Trump's tax return. Well, we're not finding out about his actual tax return, I wish we were, but uh, that

0:01:40 Andrew: That would be, that would be a really good show.

0:01:42 Thomas: Would be a good, that would be an exclusive, I would, uh, that, yeah, you would have heard about that already if somehow little known podcast Opening Arguments gets, uh, with, with law expert Thomas Smith and humor expert, uh, Andrew Torrez gets, uh, gets, gets inside scoop on Trump's tax statements. No, but, uh, but before we get to that, let's go ahead and get to our first listener question, shall we?

0:01:44 Andrew: Yeah.

0:02:06 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:02:13 Thomas: Jim Sabotowski asks, why does it even matter to have a look at any president's tax return, other than voyeurism? The IRS, FBI, etc., already has the power to audit and investigate fraud. Why do you think we have a right to see into any candidate's personal life to such a degree? Put aside that it's Trump, and the same questions still apply. If anyone gives to charity, etc., that's their business. Well, I'm gonna do my little mini Thomas response to that question first. Uh, I would say we don't, I think it's quite clear that we don't have a right to it. That was made clear by Trump, who just decided I'm not going to do it. So that's, that's not really a right, but, uh, ever since, what is it, the seventies, the early seventies or something, I think every president, uh、, every presidential candidate, even like of the major parties, has released their tax return as as a tradition. And so I already would say calling it a right is kind of misleading there, but why is it, Andrew, maybe the the right thing to do?

0:02:40 Andrew: Yeah, and our expert is going to get into this, obviously, in a lot more detail. I agree 100% with what you said, right? I would push back on the right language. The habit came about Because while you may remember Richard Nixon's shenanigans, you may or may not recall that Nixon's vice president before Gerald Ford was appointed was a Maryland governor named Spiro Agnew. And Spiro agnew actually resigned six months previously because of business dealings that were revealed while he was governor of Maryland. And were Very Clear straight line, you know, garden variety corruption, being paid off to overlook, business improprieties.

0:04:02 Andrew: That's why Spiro Agnew resigned. It's how Gerald Ford got to be vice president, and then was succeeded, seated Nixon to the presidency, so that the answer to bar trivia questions of the only person who was never elected to become the president. So after that, right, so your confidence in government is at an all-time low in the 1970s. You had a vice president resign for corruption, and it became the gold standard. It became best practices for candidates to release their tax returns to say, hey, look, you're not going to see, we discovered with Spiro Agnew, which was right when your governor of Maryland in 1970 or 1968, when he was governor of Maryland, right, that the salary for being governor of Marilyn was like, you know, like eight thousand dollars a year. And so all of a sudden, you know, if you have large sums of undisclosed income showing up on your tax return, that, you know, is what can help trigger an investigation.

0:04:18 Thomas: And

0:05:06 Andrew: So that was the thought process at the time. It is certainly the case that every candidate prior to Trump, every major presidential candidate has released their tax returns. We're going to find out what we learn from that in our main segment. But you learn about things other than Right. So the question says, you know, the IRS and FBI have the ability to audit and investigate fraud. But what about things that are less than fraud that nevertheless you would want to know about? Right. And so it's not hard to imagine a presidential candidate having massive ties to one organization. Think about everything that came up during the George W. Bush years about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton, which interestingly enough, Halliburtton is the successor to Brown and Root.

0:05:59 Andrew: And if you are a historical buff like I am, Brown and Root had huge ties. Kellogg, Brown, and Roots, I believe, had ties to Lyndon Johnson, right? So this is, you know, kind of a shadowy entity going back, you know, 50 years in American politics with kind of strong financial ties. But, you know, you would want to know if, if you showed sources, you you know, for speeches or things like that, or for consultancy fees from, you know consistently and in large dollar value amounts from a corporation, you want to know that as a voter, right? So that's really the point behind this becoming an article of good government. It's not that knowing the tax return solves everything.

0:06:44 Andrew: It is that it gives you more information than you would otherwise have in the absence, and that's why it became, you know, part of the part of the practice in the sort of post-Watergate, post-uh, Spiro Agnew landscape.

0:06:57 Thomas: I'd also point out that, to so sort of answer this question, Jim, Trump is the the first candidate to not release his tax returns in, you know, a long time. How's that going? But, uh, going okay, this, how's the presidency look? Scandal free? Does, I mean, I think it, you can, that that I think is evidence of, uh, maybe the importance of a candidate willing to be transparent in that way, you know, like this

0:07:14 Andrew: Yeah and and the end of the end of Jim's question, I think, uh, adds to that, which is, um, you know, again, I don't, I don't want to do too much political editorializing, people know where, where we stand on the, you know, on the president. But, you know, you do want, I think it is important to know and document, before somebody assumes a position of public service, how dedicated they are to public service. I mean, there's certainly, there's nothing wrong in this country from making as much money as possible. And you and I, know, when, you know, sort of various things came out about, you know, Trump taking that huge loss on his tax returns, like, you know, you, Thomas, we're pretty vocal in saying, let's not make a huge deal out of that, right? Like, this is a business professional instructing tax professionals to do their jobs.

0:08:14 Andrew: And, you know, and that's sort of overblown. So, you know, on the one hand, I agree with that, that, you know, there's, there's nothing wrong with using a capitalist economy to make as much money as you possibly can. But looking at how people give to charity and looking at what they do gives us some insight into their view of the role of power and the responsibilities that come with making a lot of money in a capitalist system. And, right, it certainly, you know, we've pieced together that from the outside that, you know, Trump's charitable contributions appear to be zero. And, you Now, that tells us something.

0:08:49 Thomas: Is that part of the show where I bring up the Onion article? My favorite, one of my favorite ones I saw throughout this process was, it's just a picture of like old Jimmy Carter, and it says, "You people made me give up my peanut farm before I got to be president." It's totally true, it's actually true, like Republicans went nuts over Jimny Carter's peanut farm, and now all of a sudden doesn't matter, you know, none of that, none of that matters with Trump. But anyway, it's

0:09:17 Andrew: I I I we are definitely going to link this onion article in the show notes so so there you go I Okay, so Thomas, you and I have gotten a lot of questions about Donald Trump's tax returns. And in particular, you know, I mentioned in our discussion on the emoluments clause that Norm Eisen and the CREW lawsuit, one of their stated goals in bringing the lawsuit was to compel the production of Donald Trump. Trump's taxes

0:09:21 Thomas: So good, uh, you people I love the Onion, yep, transparency, everybody, all Hmm.

0:09:59 Andrew: During discovery. So, you know, I mean, this is kind of a holy grail of liberals. Right. And and so I think it was you who asked me who asked me the question, what are we going to find in those? You know, what, you know, what could we find hypothetically? Is this, everybody on the left seems to be really focused on trying to compel their production, uh, and what is it going to tell us? And, um, and I don't know that, so, uh, what I decided to do was bring in, uh, Tony Di Fatta, who is a CPA, uh, he, uh, is the accountant for Opening Arguments.

0:10:10 Thomas: Yeah, excellent.

0:10:34 Andrew: Uh, for some of our other, uh, podcasts, for Scathing Atheist and God Awful Movies, and is an experienced CPA who has actually looked at prior presidential and presidential candidate tax returns to to help walk us through, you know, sort of answering the question, is this really a good strategy? Right. Like, what are we going to find? What not, what are we gonna find? Because, you, we don't know. But is it worth this level of attention to focus on on getting these documents? What might we hope to find? And so what we did was, yeah, we opened up to our patrons the opportunity to submit questions. As always, we got more questions than we could possibly answer.

0:11:22 Andrew: There were a bunch of legal questions I want to tackle one right at the outset to kind of set the stage. And then we'll pose those questions to Tony and hopefully we'll all learn something here. But Derek Billings asked, if the CREW lawsuit is dismissed on standing or justiciability grounds, which I think is likely to happen, will that be before or after discovery? And the answer is that will be before discovery. So That's, I mean, that's kind of the primary value of moving to dismiss, is that you relieve yourself of the burden of having to produce documents and witnesses in discovery.

So if that lawsuit is dismissed, there will be no discovery. If it goes forward, there will. So, you know, that's one of the avenues. There are others. I mean, we could talk about this in another show. There are other avenues towards trying to compel production of the tax returns. But I'd like to find out, is this worth it? Is, it, right, worth this, this being kind of a single focus of a lot of us who are, you know, sort of to the left politically. So with that in mind, you want to take it away, Thomas?

0:11:50 Thomas: Yeah sure.

0:12:34 Thomas: So Tony, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

0:12:36 Tony: Thanks for having me, guys. Doing good.

0:12:39 Thomas: Great, great. Thanks for coming on. And it sounds like Andrew took the first one for you. So there you go. One question answered. That was a freebie. But but we've got plenty more to come that I think are far more in your wheelhouse. For example, Patron Michael Michael Schaefer, and these are all patron questions, by the way, thank you guys so much for being patrons of the show. Could the use of multiple layers of LLCs obscure Trump's finances to the extent that tax returns alone may provide little to no useful information about his finances, if clarified even with a full review of returns? If tax returns were revealed in discovery, would that then lead to discovery into each entity from which he receives a K-1? So that's It's a great question from Michael Schaefer there.

0:12:48 Tony: So to answer Michael's question, I'm probably going to have to ask a question back to Andrew as well, because I'm not as familiar with the discovery process with the legal component of it. So Trump's personal tax return is just going to have a summary of, as Michael mentioned, through the K-1s of that entity's net income. It's not going to, you know, have all the details. This is what that entity sales were. This iswhat they spent in, youknow, salaries, wages, taxes,marketing. It's just goingto have,you know, a few numbers that are the net. So the detail of such LLCs that he has ownership in is going to kind of be lost.

Now, they can go another level and go after the actual entities, and there you might be able to get a little bit more of the detail into what kind of debts that entity held, what kind of transactions it has, what kinds of foreign operations it's involved in. So they'd have to go beyond just Trump's personal tax return. In looking through past presidential tax returns, say like Mitt Romney, who obviously had a lot of holdings and a lot of entities, it didn't really go beyond Mitt Romny's into what those companies were ultimately, entities he ultimately held. So you're

0:14:03 Thomas: Hmm yeah

0:14:44 Normalandrew: Only looking at a net number. So, so just so I understand Mitt Romney, he didn't produce Bain Capital's tax return. He only produced Mitt Romny's. Did produce some of the trust tax returns Hmm. That I could find online. And I'm not saying I'm an expert on Mitt Romney's tax returns, but Bain Capital's tax return, to my knowledge, I've not seen or was able to find online, so you're Yeah, only seeing right. What Bain capital paid out or what Bains Capital's K1s looked like. Like, so you get an idea, but you don't get the full picture. Right. If Yeah. That kind of you get pieces to the puzzle, but not you don'T got the whole puzzle. Yeah.

0:15:21 Thomas: Okay yeah

0:15:25 Andrew: And I would say so, in civil litigation, you are entitled to ask for, to seek the discovery of anything that is reasonably likely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, right? And admissible evidence is in turn defined as anything that is likely to make a fact that is essential to the litigation more or less true? So those are really, really broad definitions. Now that covers, you

0:15:57 Thomas: I was gonna say that sounds like you could ask for almost almost anything. And then do you have to kind of bicker over it?

0:16:00 Andrew: Can ask for almost anything, Right. But what you ask for and what you get are two separate things. Right, so, you so that's what you can ask for and you can object for asking for if somebody asks for something that is not relevant, right, like but I, I just read you, I didn't read, I gave it off the top of my head, so there, there may be some errors, but uh, the the definition of relevance is super broad, uh, but there are other grounds for objection for objecting to the production of documents, right, it could be unduly burdensome, it could be more prejudicial than, uh, informative.

And so, you know, there is a disparity between the broadness of what you can ask for versus what people are likely to produce. And then if the parties don't agree, like in discovery, the idea is that the lawyers work it out and they do their best to sort of narrow the scope of discovery to produce stuff that's relevant to the litigation without producing irrelevant stuff that requires you to undertake an unduly burdensome search, if the lawyers don't agree, then they go to the court with a motion to compel. And that is, we've asked you to give us X, you've refused to give USX, so judge, make him give usX. So all of that is a way of saying, if I were the CREW lawyer, and I've disclosed this before, but I'll disclose it again, Norm Eisen is a former partner of mine at Zuckerman Spader.

So, you know, we I think I feel pretty confident that he's going to ask the same sort of things that I would ask, because I've seen some of his discovery requests in other cases. He would likely say, produce your personal tax return, plus produce the tax returns of all entities in which you have an ownership interest.

Um, then Trump's lawyers are going to object and refuse to produce those documents on the grounds that, uh, that they're privileged, that there are relevant, that their unduly burdensome, that he has an ownership interest in 87 million entities.

0:16:06 Thomas: Right.

0:18:00 Andrew: You know, there's they're going to be all of those objections. And that will then go back to the court for the court to determine whether there is a specifically tailored way to get out kind of the entity information. And, you know, you might you could imagine, right, all entities in which Donald Trump has an ownership interest that exceeds the net value of, you know, X. I mean, I don't know, $50,000, $100,000, something like that. But so you would be able to ask. And I think a court would be likely to compel the disclosure of at least kind of that one level down, right? Like the tax returns of Trump entities in which Trump owns a significant share that amounts to a significant amount of money. Amount of money.

0:18:50 Thomas: Okay.

0:18:51 Normalandrew: So let me ask a question back to you, Andrew, would say third parties that are maybe a 10 percent owner in Trump's holdings. You know, I've got I did a deal with Trump down in some state or other country. Country. And would they be able to say, well, you know, my information's in there or, you know, I don't need people seeing what I made and I have nothing to do with Donald Trump other than this one, one business. Could they object? Excellent That question. Two things. Number one, that's an additional ground for Trump to to refuse to disclose or to request to disclose in a redacted format, right? Protecting the interests of third parties who have a statutory right under the Internal Revenue Code to keep their taxes private.

0:19:38 Andrew: It absolutely, I should have added that to the list of objections that will be made and raised before the court. And we have all seen, you when you produce a redactic document where, you know, everything is redactED except the page numbers. And and and I could see that being the case. So Trump's lawyers could raise that on the on behalf of other entities. And in addition, other individuals could be notified and then could file a third party motion to quash to say, hey, look, or for protective order that says, hey. Hey, look, you can't disclose this because it contains private information about non-parties to this lawsuit.

So one potential consequence of that is that the judge may order that certain information is disclosed only to the lawyers, or even, I've had this happen to me, is presented for an in-camera inspection, in other words, is only given to the judges, not even given to the lawyers to take a look at. And in those situations, right, you might win a legal battle, but you would lose the political battle that is at the core of this, right? Like if CREW gets Donald Trump's tax returns, but is prohibited by law from disclosing them, you know, that's not not much of a victory. So yeah, that's a really good point.

0:21:01 Thomas: All right. Let's get to our next patron question. Joel Kuhn asks, this might be obvious, but I'm not familiar with corporate taxes. Would his tax returns reveal how much he is worth, or would it just say how much he gained, lost in a calendar year? Or I've heard that it would, but I don't know if taxes at that level require you to disclose all your assets.

0:21:21 Tony: An individual tax return is not going to show, you know, Donald Trump's net worth. It's going to show his income in a given calendar year, which when you look at the 1995 tax return, I think most tax preparers that was released would say that's not really all that shocking that it have produced, you know, a big net operating loss. It's not going to have a balance sheet. It is not going to say that he has got, you know, $10 billion in a checking account at M&T.

0:21:50 Thomas: Right.

0:21:50 Normalandrew: It is only going to show the income that is produced off of those, off those entities or off those bank accounts or, you know, it may not even show. So, if a given company was a C Corp and it didn't pay out a dividend, it might not be mentioned anywhere on that return. Now, it would disclose some information if he's got some foreign ownership in corporations or partnerships abroad. There would be some disclosure if he held any of that directly. But for U.S. stuff, be minimum at best. Wanted to ask a little bit of a follow-up. Would there be a readily accessible balance sheet that would provide that information, something you could ask in discovery, or would Trump have to create that as part of the process?

0:22:39 Tony: So Trump's balance sheet, per se, or financial, is not going to be a part of the tax return. They could ask them as part of the discovery process, but that's not going to be included in the tax return. So I don't think the tax return is going to be this holy grail of Donald Trump's net worth that sometimes people are leading it out to be. It might give shed some insight. It might probe into some extra questions. But like I said, it's only the income statement. In accounting, when you look at a company's return, there's the income state. There's the balance sheet. There's a statement of cash flow. At best, the 1040, the personal return of Donald Trump, is going to be a summary of his income produced from holdings that he has that kicked off taxable events.

0:23:29 Thomas: Well, let's say, though, that he releases, because usually candidates release a few years of of tax returns. Let's say we got all the returns ever since that 1995, I think you said it was, return. You'd be able to paint a pretty good good picture of what his worth was just because you'd have more years of income to work with, right?

0:23:48 Tony: Well, obviously, if you had more pieces to a puzzle, you'd get a better picture. I don't think he's obligated to do that from a financial disclosure standpoint of running for president. Because you know what I could find on the internet, you know, most presidents were releasing only in the years prior to running for office and while they were in office. Uh One notable exception was Jeb Bush, who released like 30 some years of tax returns, which is kind of comical.

0:24:17 Thomas: And no one cared. Yeah.

0:24:19 Tony: No one cares, but it was kind of funny. Like, oh, 1981, you made like 40,000, okay, that's cool. But I don't think even if they requested it, he wouldn't be obligated unless there's some other court. So, I mean, from 1995 to 2016-15, a lot could happen. And when you're dealing with high net worth individuals, an NOL in one year, but then they have a taxable sale or a big transaction the next, that could have been wiped out in a year or two or three later. I don't know that for a fact, because, hence why we're asking the questions.

0:24:56 Tony: But, you know, I've done plenty of wealthy individuals returns. And, you know, you see, losses, losses losses. And then, you know, a big transaction, they liquidate their holdings, or they sell off something. Or, you know, they have a big stocking, I did a guy's return once that got involved in Netflix, way before any of us have heard of Netflix. And for a $50,000 investment, 10 years later, he had $1.1 million capital gain. But that certain individual also had losses from other businesses and paid little to no taxes, even though he had one point one million dollars of capital gains. So, you it could be a scenario like that where, you know, he wipes out all these losses in, you know, a specific transaction.

0:24:26 Thomas: Yeah, mm-hmm. Oh, wow.

0:25:49 Thomas: Patron Charlie asks, if someone received a large loan from a foreign non-governmental entity, let's say a Russian corporation, what information about the loan would be on the debtor's tax return if the debtor chose not to take any tax deduction associated with the loan?

0:26:06 Tony: If Donald Trump, the person, took the loan, there would be no information on his personal tax return. If one of his entities held it, there could be some information either on that return or well, actually, if If it's just straight debt, there'd be very, very little information. If they took equity in it, there could be some disclosure.

0:26:29 Thomas: What about deducting? So it's the question is whether or not they chose to like deduct any of the interest or fees or something like that, because then it might show up.

0:26:40 Tony: You're allowed to receive loans from foreign entities that would not, even if there was offsetting deductions or interest expense, there would be very little. Little.

0:26:52 Thomas: No, no paper trail on the tax return.

0:26:54 Tony: Would never be, no paper trail on the tax return, and that would not be an evasive, just would not be required to be disclosed.

0:27:02 Thomas: Yeah. OK. Good answer. So Charone Frankel asks, "Gotten into a few Twitter arguments with Trumpers who say, well, obviously Trump has not engaged in any tax evasion because we'd have heard about it on the news, like with Wesley Snipes." Is that sort of thing true? Through

0:27:03 Normalandrew: Um.

0:27:18 Tony: I've not prepared Donald Trump's tax return, so I don't know, but specifically if he's involved in tax evasion or not, I don'-

0:27:25 Thomas: But the question of if he were would we have heard of it

0:27:27 Tony: T he's not filed tax returns. I've you know, from his own comments, he's saying he's under audit. Well, well, he had to be under audit. He would have had to file a return. I'm sure, you know, given the complexity of his return, they could scrutinize it. And you probably could take positions that the IRS could, or, you know, come back and want to re-handle. But it may not even be something he's aware of. It could be so far down the food chain that he's removed of, you You know, it could be prepared by another firm who's giving, you know, a K-1 or producing information that Donald Trump's tax accountants are repairing. So, you never be limited exposure. He could have limited exposure and still be found. I don't know, guilty is the right word,

0:27:29 Thomas: Yeah. But

0:28:16 Tony: But you hit with a change or an assessment in his tax return that was unbeknownst to him.

0:28:22 Thomas: If he was doing, I guess, to just to rephrase, to make sure we got the, got the answer, you were doing something like literally, uh, you know, a Wesley Snipes level of illegal or something that was going to be criminal, would we, would we've heard about it by now? Like, would we know that he did that?

0:28:40 Tony: Most likely, I can't, I can think if somebody of Donald Trump's stature, uh, would have committed something so egregious and not have made it to the light at this point. I mean, I don't think Donald Trump's fudging his charitable donations, I think he's probably a little beyond that point. So

0:28:41 Thomas: Okay. Okay,

0:29:02 Andrew: I could go back to the previous question, because I was just thinking about this. Suppose you have this hypothetical, right? You answered the question about foreign loans, which essentially is, so long as it was to Donald Trump as an individual and he's not taking preferential tax treatment on the loans themselves, that he wouldn't have to disclose that on his tax return, and we wouldn't necessarily have to find it out. So one of the things that struck me as kind of an easy sack of money case.

Right. And Thomas and I have spoken about, you know, on our episode on the Emoluments Clause. Right, that the sort of classic example of impeachable conduct is Vladimir Putin, at some point, gave a giant sack of of money with a dollar sign on it to Donald Trump, and that under the ordinary reading of the Emoluments Clause, even if that's not bribery, because for pro quo, you have to show that Trump actually did something. For the emolluments clause you just have to show that you received a foreign benefit. So I've given that as an example of something that would be impeachable conduct and I think Republicans lined up ready to impeach the president who's gotten the proverbial big sack of money with a dollar sign on it. But one way, one really straightforward way that just occurred to me to evade that is step one, Russian state-owned bank loans Donald Trump $10 billion. Step two, said bank forgives all loan payments to Donald Trump. And so the same answer, is there any way that we could detect that kind of activity from looking at Trump's tax returns?

0:30:49 Normalandrew: What would we look for that would show that? So to answer your question in this hypothetical, the act of getting a loan is not normally a taxable event. The act of being forgiven a loan, that's called cancellation debt income. Now, whether such Russian bank or Russian's government would follow the procedures that are given out by U.S. and IRS code to issue Donald Trump a 1099-C cancellation of debt is probably unlikely. But if that were to be properly disclosed on Donald Trump's tax attorney, that would Oh, be income to be good. Good. Forgiven on that. And And failure to disclose that. Right. If I understand properly. Would absolutely be tax evasion or, not tax evasions, certainly tax avoidance, the distinction being the percentage of Donald Trump's income, which nobody really knows exactly what that would be.

0:31:42 Normalandrew: Oh, OK. So now, now let me ask them the follow up. Donald Trump has said he's under audit. I don't think the IRS has contradicted that. So if we, if we take that to be a fact in evidence, is that something the IRS agents would be able to put together? Right, like, in other words, if there was a massive loan forgiven by the Russian government, uh, is that something an agent is likely to be able to kind of put a case together that says, "Oh, look, like, boy, even for you know a rich casino owner, that it sure seems like, you know, there's an extra ten billion dollars, uh, you know, sitting around here or something like that"? And that's something that they would probably have to go to court over or argue, because I'm sure in this hypothetical situation, Donald Trump's accountants or Donald Trump would try to argue that it was a loan, and the agents would have to prove that it wasn't a loan.

0:32:33 Tony: Or it didn't meet the AFR, the applicable federal rate, you know, they're not charging enough interest, it was, in fact, not a loan. And Yeah. That's something that, you Know, lawyers could debate about or, You know, it would be defensible and they would have to have, you know, evidence to the contrary. In an audit, one of the first things IRS agents do is they pull every bank account associated with that that social security number, every federal ID. And that's something an IRS agent could find out about, hey, tell me about this $10 million or $10 billion deposit that happened here on the 14th of September or something like that. But that not necessarily have hit his tax return if he was taking the position that was a loan.

0:33:39 Tony: Statement you know that there that there you can piece together some of the pieces of the puzzle

0:33:43 Thomas: Okay next question, this should be a pretty straightforward one I think. Jeff Nathan asks, are Donald Trump's personal income taxes likely to distinguish income earned within the U.S. from income from foreign sources?

0:33:55 Tony: Yes, there would be a distinction between foreign income and U.S.-based income. There would be some forms in there that would show his income abroad and any taxes he paid abroad, and he would likely receive a tax credit offsetting U.N. income for any foreign taxes he paid for foreign-sourced income.

0:34:17 Thomas: Okay, Okay, cool. Evan Lee asks, would we be able to get a solid sense of what Trump's various holdings and his brand are worth from these returns? Not that it matters much to us, but it seems like a great deal to him. I know because there have been claims about how much his actual brand is worth and all that, like the Trump name. So would we able to be able get a sense of that from his tax return?

0:34:41 Tony: I would say probably not, really. Again, to reiterate, reiterate, an income tax return for Donald Trump is only going to show the income that flowed through to that, in that given year. And a brand is more of an intangible, a goodwill-type thing, you know, what somebody would pay to use Donald Trump's name or in a casino. It's a little more subjective, uh, and to be negotiated, and is not really something that can be derived from

0:35:10 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Oh, good question here from Heather Loveridge. There was some controversy before the election about Trump purchasing things like self-portraits using his foundation and then displaying them in his hotels. Could his tax returns confirm any part of those allegations if it was true? How big of a deal is it really? Is this just something every rich person does, use charitable donation purchases as a write-off and then gift the donation back? But

0:35:37 Tony: If that came under audit as a correction, that that would possibly be something, it would not be right per the tax code, um, you know, to be using foundation money and then putting it up in his personal, you personal businesses or his personal residence. I don't know if that's at all true or not, and maybe that's something that came up out of an audit.

0:35:56 Thomas: Would we be able to tell any of that on his tax return?

0:36:00 Tony: Well, only if there, there was an amendment, possibly for it. If the IRS had gone and caught this, there, and he had to go back and fix it. Or if there was a an amendment or a re-disclosure after the fact, that that could be something, but not in itself, in its originality, you know. Would it become to light only if there were changes to it and

0:36:20 Thomas: Got it you

0:36:25 Normalandrew: And and Why would there be a change, right? Like, why would you file an amendment in that case? The IRS either audited him, or, you know, it was, you could amend the return for lots of reasons, but say that he came to light and realized he wanted to voluntarily, you know, pull off, uh, then maybe something he was incorrectly using a charitable donation towards, and he really hadn't donated the portrait to, and he was using it for personal use, and he wanted to remove that for his return, he could possibly amend for that. So it seems like there's a theme. And this goes back to Sharon's question, that a lot of these behaviors would trigger a risk of being charged with criminal tax evasion or tax avoidance.

0:37:14 Normalandrew: And so the way in which we would wind up with a paper trail is by Donald Trump taking the steps necessary to correct the problems with tax evasion or tax avoidance, that, that, that then, that would contradict, that might contradict some of his public statements. So is that, is that a fair summary in terms of kind of the interplay between that, between those two things? Yeah, don't, you know, a tax return in itself is not going to, you an evasion, but maybe going back and fixing it, know, might highlight some foul play or things of that nature. But just self-reporting in itself is not a good idea. Not going to disclose that, you'd need to dig deeper, or you need to be more evidence.

0:38:02 Thomas: Alright, well, that does it for part one of our interview with Tony. There's gonna be plenty more, plenty more patron questions. Again, thank you kind patrons for your support, and also all those questions, that was really fun, lots more questions where that comes from on Friday's episode. In the meantime, we've got a new little segment for ya.

0:38:24 Clip: Because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. So you're not aware of any contacts during the course of the election? How many times do I have to answer this question? Can you just say yes or no on it? Russia is a ruse. I know you have to get up and ask a question so important. Russia is a ruse. Well, I'm not a crook.

0:38:42 Thomas: All right uh, time for, oh, new segment, you excited for our new segment, Andrew? Let's Hope, uh, the person we pay to do this kind of stuff, aka me, uh, made a nice intro for us. This is a new segment that I think we could do every week. It should be pretty easy, and I think it'll be applicable for roughly two years in my, in my best guess, but we'll see, uh, how good the new segment is. How close is Trump to being impeached? How, how much longer can he possibly go? So today's version of that has to do with Flynn.

Everybody will probably know, of course, we record ahead of time. So around this time that we're recording is when we found out that National Security Advisor Flynn has resigned, been kind of made to resign. There's a question over whether or not he broke the law, whether or not Trump knew what he knew. There is all that stuff. There are going around, again, drawing drawing more similarities to what, "what did they know, and when do they know it," essentially. So this kind of comes from a question that Matt Vernon sent us, and it has to do with 18 U.S.C.

0:38:48 Andrew: Am very excited for this new segment, yeah.

0:39:13 Andrew: So

0:39:59 Thomas: 1001, which I remember from previous episodes, Andrew, that's the way you usually cite the law. So that's good. That's a good sign. Matt wanted to know whether or not this could be grounds for, because the reason we decided to do this segment is basically every week, there's several questions of like, wait, well, what about this? Is this going to be the thing that gets Trump impeached? Is this gonna be the think? So we'll just do a standard segment on that now every week. So how about it, Andrew? Is the thing going to get Trump impeach?

0:40:27 Andrew: I, I like to view this as, do you remember the mountain climber on The Price Is Right, right? That would yodel and move up the ruler. And when he got to like, I think, 35, he fell off the mountain, right? And so maybe

0:40:37 Thomas: Yeah, Oh, Man, maybe I should try to find that for the intro, that back in time, everyone already heard, but anyway, we'll see, maybe they heard that and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, that's yeah, all right."

0:40:44 Andrew: They heard that. But you know, so I view each one of these that we come up with is just another step up the mountain, and eventually he will fall off the mountain. Let's just hope that the mountain is only as high as it was on The prices, Right. So 18 U.S.C. 1001, what is that? It is a prohibition on false statements, and it provides, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the government of the United States, knowingly and willfully, one, falsifies, conceals, or covers by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; two, makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or three, makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially falsely, ficticious, or fraudulence statement or entry, shall be fined under this title, in prison by not more than five years, blah blah blah. Subsection B says that previous subsection A does not apply to a party in a judicial proceeding or to the party's counsel, counsel for statements, representations, writings, or documents submitted by such party, or to a counsel or judge or magistrate in that proceeding.

And then the subsection three talks about matters within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, which is statements made to Congress. So, that, that's not, well, I suppose it could be relevant here. Says Section A shall apply only to the relevant provision is any investigation or review conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission, or office of the Congress consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.

0:42:28 Andrew: So let's put all that together. What are the key things that are relevant about this statute? The first is, Thomas, you probably noticed the A provision is knowingly and willfully. And we talked about that standard in connection with the Hillary Clinton email question, right? So you must prove that the speaker knew their statement was false or misleading and that they made it knowingly, right, with the intent to mislead. And that intent standard was the reason why we ultimately concluded that nothing with respect to Hillary Clinton's emails fell under the Espionage Act. So the same kind of heightened, even though that didn't quite have the intent standard, we contrasted that.

0:43:16 Andrew: This has that heightened standard that was in the previous provision of the Espianage Act. So number one, you've got to prove that it is a statement Trump knew to be false and that he made it with knowing falsity, with, with an intent to mislead. Number two, you have the issue of presidential immunity that we have discussed in previous episodes. So, you know, in connection with, so for example, we would want our president to be able to take this hypothetical, right? There are enemy warships off the coast of, of Delaware, right, which, yeah, and the president says something publicly, knowing that that will be heard, and knowing that may cause, uh, you know, a misdirection by our nation's enemies, right? Like, we would want the president to be able to Uh, yeah, to, to, to say something false, uh, and, you know, and, and not be prosecuted or removed from office by it. Um, so it would, it would have to be within the, the confines of the areas to which 18 U.S.C. 1001 applies, which is why I read that provision about a congressional committee. Go ahead.

0:44:10 Thomas: That makes sense, let Me ask a real life example, and maybe you can too. I'm trying to think off the top of my head, like, what's the, even though I'm guessing the answer, as always, is going to be, this won't apply to Trump and nobody will charge him with it, and even if he is breaking law, there's nothing we can do until 2018. But notwithstanding that, what would be the most likely thing right now to fall under this code? What about something like when he stated repeatedly that he has no connection to Putin, doesn't know him, doesn't know anything about Russia, whatever. And we're finding out just today, again, recorded on delay, but just today we find out that his aides during the election were in contact with Russian intelligence. Is something like that, could, could that be something that would fill these requirements? Follow-up.

0:44:35 Andrew: Well, It has to be something over which the government has jurisdiction, right? So statements into the air or at press conferences would not fall within the statute. But if they were statements made to the FBI, if they were statements made in a national security briefing, right, like, there are, I could certainly imagine a subset under which, uh, it might apply, um,

0:45:42 Thomas: Question, is this a good reason that maybe people should be investigating these things? Because then, you then he has to talk to the FBI, and then he Has to give statements to people, and then you can actually hold him accountable?

0:45:44 Andrew: Yeah, Well, then then you would have right, 18 U.S.C. 1001 C2, right? If there is a congressional hearing, uh, and he is required to provide testimony, which could be documentary testimony, then absolutely, that would then clearly apply and you would have the basis for holding those statements to scrutiny. Again, it's going to be tough because of the intentionality standard, but certainly things like categorically denying any contact when you know you have contact, yeah,

0:45:53 Thomas: Uh-huh. Yeah, that's hard to say he misremembered. Oh, I just, at the time, I thought maybe I hadn't talked to Putin, but, you Know, I did. That's a weird one. I can see, because I did see something in the story that talked about, like, you know, there is a defense for it, which is, if you do misremember, which, you know, maybe you're answering questions about something a year and a half, two years, five years ago, like that's understandable if you don't quite remember the details of what you talked about. But something like what Flynn did, which I don't know how much detail you've looked into that, but what he did, was mislead about a conversation, what, a month previous, like, very pretty recent and

0:46:32 Andrew: Yep. Yep. Right. So

0:47:06 Thomas: Pretty substantial too. Like, the, I'm not buying the I-didn't-remember defense. Interesting.

0:47:10 Andrew: I want to speak to Flynn in a minute, but to kind of give an example of the, oh, I didn't remember defense from another area of interest of mine, baseball law. In 2011, Barry Bonds was convicted of giving a false statement to a grand jury regarding his use of performance-enhancing drugs while playing baseball. And specifically there, the conviction was for giving an incomplete answer to a question, right? Right. So, what substances did you take? And then he described some of the legal substances that he took, but failed to disclose that he took additional substances that were on the banned list. Right. Yeah.

0:47:54 Thomas: Total Accident.

0:47:57 Andrew: But that yeah, but that conviction. So so he was convicted right under this section, 18 U.S.C. 1001. That's a grand jury. So a matter over which the government had jurisdiction, he made a materially false statement incomplete, right? You don't just have to lie, like you can lie by omission. And they determined from the circumstances around it that, yeah, no, that the intent standard was met, right, like he knew, you know, what was being injected into him and all of that. But that conviction was actually overturned by the Ninth Circuit on appeal. And the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals characterized that statement as a, quote, rambling, non-responsive answer to a simple question, end of quote. And and so they actually threw the burden sort of back on the prosecutor to say, hey, look, if somebody gives you a rambling answer, that's not the same as giving you a lying statement.

0:47:57 Thomas: I'm sure, man.

0:48:53 Andrew: Like, be more specific, right? You should have gotten that rambling answering. It's the job of the lawyer to go, OK, Mr. Bonds, you said you did these 13 things. Things did you inject yourself with steroids? Did anybody inject you with steroids? By steroids, I mean any substance on, you know, the the prohibited list under the uh MLBPA's uh prohibited substances list. You know, put it in front of them and say, Okay, if you're going to give this rambling answer, I want a yes or no answer. Let's go down this list, uh, you know, and point to each one, say the word yes or

0:49:25 Thomas: What is that reminding me of is that, oh, did that come up in the OJ trial when a similar thing happened, when they were originally questioning him, like, at that night, uh, when they picked him up, like, they just didn't ask him. They did, they didn't hit him hard enough with the question, so later on he was able to to kind of get by by by the fact that they hadn't asked, like, what you know, what's this glove, what were you doing, where were you that night, why did you, why did you answer the way you did on the phone, you know, and OJ answered the phone just kind of knew that his wife was dead, somehow, you know, like they didn't press him on any of this. Is that a similar kind of thing where it's sort of the responsibility of the lawyer to, or whoever it is, I guess, to actually ask these pointed questions? Yeah.

0:49:25 Andrew: No right Yeah.

0:50:09 Andrew: That's exactly right, so

0:50:10 Thomas: Interesting, yeah

0:50:11 Andrew: So kind of some color on you constitutes a misleading statement, how can you evade it, you know, what does it take to, uh, for a conviction really to stand up. Now, keeping, keep in mind, as we've said all along and we're going to continue to emphasize in this segment, what it takes for a conviction to stand up for impeachment purposes is whatever the Congress thinks constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors sufficient to remove a president. Um, so, you know, you, you circuit, some of the, you know, there will not be, if Trump is impeached and removed from office, he does not get to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, right? Um, you know, it's just, that's it, it's over. So, uh, but those are some of the guidelines around which we can look at the false statements. I would say this constitutes maybe a half a step up the mountain, right? It's not a huge move forward, but there certainly are a lot of incautious statements being thrown around. And I could see Trump doing that in a situation that would fall within the purview of the act.

0:50:34 Thomas: Uh, And, you know what, actually we had another question, and this is merely because our listenership is growing and growing, it's something that you answered during the campaign, but I, I just came to mind, maybe you can give a quick answer again, just for new listeners, but someone did ask, uh, oh, if we find out that the Russians helped Trump get elected, what happens then? You know, is is Hillary all of a sudden president? Now, you've answered this before, but lots of new listeners since then. Quick answer to that question.

0:51:42 Andrew: Yeah. And and I actually saw this on our Twitter feed today. There was, there's a popular kind of liberal meme going around that says, you know, you impeach Trump and Pence and then there's a constitutional crisis and you call for a special election. And, like, none of that's true, right? Like the, the, you absolutely could impeach Trump for, if there is sufficient evidence of his collaborating with the Russians to influence the election. As I just alluded to in the last answer, high crimes and misdemeanors are whatever the House of Representatives thinks that they are. And there would certainly be very little argument that collaborating with Russia to rig an election does not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors against the country.

0:52:30 Andrew: Could be impeached, could be removed. If that happens, you would follow the Presidential Succession Act. And so if Trump is impeached and removed from office, by the way, impeachment, you know this, is the process and not the outcome. So Bill Clinton was impeached but not removed from office. So if Trump were impeached and removed from Office, then the vice president would become president. If something were to have happened to Mike Pence, which by the way, there's zero evidence for that, right? Like Mike Pence, you can disagree with him politically and you and I both do. You can think he would make a terrible president, which I believe you andI both do, but there's no evidence whatsoever that Mike Pence has committed any crimes or, you know, much less high crimes and misdemeanors. So, you know, that's the next step.

0:53:16 Andrew: If there were some reason to exclude Pence, then, you you know, via the Presidential Succession Act, it would pass to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. So, you there's no this fantasy of we're going to kick out Trump and kick out Pence and avoid that. That's not going to happen, right? Like if you want to remove Trump and look like if you believe if it is demonstrated that the president is, you know, colluding with hostile foreign governments to enrich himself personally at the expense of of this country, you know, then my balance would say, yeah, I'd rather have President Pence than a president that is conducting that. You know, that's sort of why the standard is that high, right? Like, you have to look at it and say, we really think that there is a danger to the the republic such that, you know, it's worth getting this person out and putting in somebody who politically is to the right of Donald Trump on many issues into office.

0:54:13 Andrew: You know, we talked about last week how Donald Trump is going to maintain, enforce the Obama executive order prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ individuals, which includes transgender individuals. That's an order President Pence would absolutely strike down. Right. So, you know,

0:54:35 Thomas: Anyway, topic for another show or something or maybe for for my show, but I, I'm, I'm to the point where I would rather have President Pence, um, for for a lot of reasons, but I, it is a difficult call, it, calculation, and I don't know for sure that it, that it's the right one, but, uh, anyway, so if we were to put a summary on our inaugural, uh, how close is Trump to being impeached thing, let me ask you this, is it still just a matter of winning, you know, the House and the Senate back in 2018, like, are we still, I've seen some rumblings here and there, I don't know if you've seen this, but certain Republicans are calling for investigations. I don't know if that will will be the first step to maybe getting some sort of bipartisan thing going, but do you, in your view, are we still pretty much, he hasn't done anything that's so bad that it's incontrovertible and and we basically need control of the House and the Senate in order to to do

0:54:37 Andrew: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so

0:55:29 Thomas: This, well

0:55:29 Andrew: Far, he hasn't done anything that has moved the needle with the average Republican member of Congress. And that that I think is kind of our first of the first brick in the wall, so to speak. Right. Like what, once we see publicly, not just the kind of, you know, hand wringing or occasional, you you know, Paul Ryan, like, well, I do disagree with this, but it's not going to prevent me in any way from, you know, voting against any of Trump's appointee. Right. Like as soon as we see a real movement of real criticism from one Republican. Right. And that's all it really takes. Then, you know, we can feel like we've moved a few steps up the mountain. Right? Like that, that's it. That's a change in the political landscape. We're not there yet. Um, yeah I

0:56:13 Thomas: Let's hope that, since again we're recording this behind, by the time you're hearing this, maybe he's already impeached, maybe it's, it was so bad, maybe the investigation with Flynn, yeah that's

0:56:21 Andrew: Think I think we would have put out an emergency episode. It had that happen but we

0:56:25 Thomas: True, they wouldn't be hearing this yeah and in the emergency episode would just be that, uh, yodeler going up the mountain for like five minutes, like we'd just be all the way as soon as he's impeached, we're going to do that, like, just a just five minute celebration yodeling song, all right well thanks for, uh, thanks for that explanation, and we'll look forward to next week seeing how much closer Trump is to being impeached. Hey, Andrew, it's that time of the week when we've got to thank our new patrons.

0:56:33 Andrew: Promise you guys get out there uh yeah yep absolutely yeah Yeah, so, uh, thank you to, uh, Jared Hammond, thank you too, Colin Robinson, to Ringing Rocks Ranch, and thanks for making me say that, uh, to Teresa Gant, Aja, right, thank you to Asia Joy Schildler, to Brennan Storr, Michael Sullivan, Andrew Martin, thank you too, Josh Kramer, thank you two, You guys fuckin rock yes we do, thank you to Jayme, to Leigh Ann, and to Tor Melkevik yeah

0:57:05 Thomas: Think yeah and also I, I think you saved this one for me, Andrew, thank you to Harry Lizard Lord, uh, Karl Kohler, thank you, Christian Lobdell, Murphy Jacobs, Ludditeevilstepfatherinlaw, Logan Murphy, uh, Jessica Pulido, Becki Hayworth, Ross Jensen, Rhonda Gilbertson, Lauren French, Jordan&period,jessamine, that's a weird one, uh, Simo, A Chisholm, thank you, Aiden McCool, Sam Donow, hai too, thank you, Zach Wheatley, Robert Poe, sorry, Schofield Miller, Russell Tanton, Ian Marlier, or Marlier, we never know, uh, Cameron Hall and Brian Gwinner, thank you, you guys very much for your new pledges, yeah

0:57:33 Andrew: Thank you all very much you

0:58:21 Thomas: Once again, blown away by your support, and we're getting ever closer to our $1,750 goal, which is a bonus show every month that's all listener questions. We've got more than enough questions make that happen. That'll be for patrons only, so you're going to want to get in on that.

0:58:38 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:58:45 Thomas: Righty, it's time to find out.

0:58:47 Andrew: You know what time it is.

0:58:48 Thomas: Yeah, I'll tell you what time it is. It's time for a very, uh, dejected and depressed Thomas to, uh, see how much further down he can slip in his, uh, in his quest for the bar. What am I now? I'm, is this six for 10? Let's see if I go seven for eleven, that'd be good, or, or if I, uh, stay on, the stuck on that six number, I'd

0:58:48 Andrew: Yeah, You may recall, this is the question about a patient who had surgery, and the technicians left two identifiable sponges in her body. She was hospitalized and then sued, as you would, the hospital and the doctor for medical malpractice. But then, while testifying, did not want to produce the MRI, but instead wanted to to, uh, testify as to what she saw on the MRI. So this question then had, uh, was, is she going to be required to produce the MRI? And there were two. She does not have to produce the MRI answers, and two, she does have to produce the MRI answers. Uh, you answered B, that she does have to, the MRI, because a lay person cannot testify as two personal observations.

0:59:57 Andrew: Um, sadly, that answer is wrong. Uh, the, the correct answer was D. So you got, you got the result, right? That she must produce the MRI records because it represents the best evidence under the best evidenced rule. You know, it was a tricky question in the sense that you had to know what the best evidence rule was.

1:00:17 Thomas: Never heard of it, so What's The best evidence Rule? Oh,

1:00:18 Andrew: So the best Evidence Rule. Yeah, it's Federal Rule of Evidence 1002. And it is a rule that.

1:00:25 Thomas: See, I Only Memorized the first 1001. I haven't, got darn it. If I had only, uh, memorized one more

1:00:31 Andrew: But, yeah, actually, the way the federal rules of evidence work is that each numbered chapter goes up by 100 for each subject. I'm sure you knew this, too. I'm just, this is, it goes without saying. I'm explaining for the audience, right? So chapter 100, 200, 300, 400, and so 1,000 is chapter 10, and it's the second rule in chapter 10. But whenever a party wants to introduce evidence to prove what the contents of a document are. So the plaintiff here is trying to prove the contents of the printout instead of producing the print out. The rule here applies. The purpose is to prevent fraud and inaccuracy. And, you know, we often talk about like from a strategic perspective, you know, what's going on in the, in these questions and in, in an actual medical malpractice trial, like the, the, the proper practice would be to have the medical expert testify about the findings on the test.

1:00:40 Thomas: Yeah, Just explaining for the audience Yeah, what

1:01:31 Andrew: And then that would put the actual document in evidence, right? So you would, you would then have somebody to authenticate, to say, okay, this is a document, I reviewed it, I recognize it as a medical test. Here's what the two sponges look like. So, uh, all of that is a way of saying that there's not really a good way to get around, uh, producing the document, um, which, which which you got your answer said She does have to produce the MRI scan because a lay person cannot testify as to personal observations. And the reason that's wrong is because, in fact, lay people can only testify as to personal observations.

1:01:56 Thomas: Did my answer say again? What is the one, I guess? Oh,

1:02:10 Andrew: Right. Yeah, um, then look, you, you know, it's, yeah.

1:02:09 Thomas: You're Right. Gosh. In my head in this game, we need

1:02:16 Andrew: Get back in the game. Um, I think you're, I think você está fazendo muito bem, uh, você precisa, você precisa subir de volta naquele bicicleta, e uh, eu sei que nós levamos as rodas de treinamento, mas eu vou ficar atrás de você e te dar um empate.

1:02:28 Thomas: You Know, we need, we need a training montage, damn it. That's the only, only way I'm gonna get back into this. So before next, uh, before next question, Yeah, before next question, definitely. Picture me, is that the one where he's, where he is in Russia, and he beats the, uh, the Russian guy? Yeah.

1:02:33 Andrew: Imagino, eu imagina Rocky IV. Yeah. Yeah, that's

1:02:46 Thomas: There we go. So picture me lifting, and lifting, like, uh, I think he lifts like a, a carriage, or some crap like a, there's, he lifts a bunch of random farm equipment, so. So picture me doing that, but in a legal way, and then I'll get back at it for question 12. Well, that being said, who's the person who cheated and got... Now, this one was very answerable. I feel like I could have gotten this one. So who's the Brilliant Listener, who future Andrew is going to tell us won this week's question?

1:02:45 Andrew: Exactly right. I want Survivor playing in the background.

1:03:17 Andrew: Yeah, I want to give a shout out to TLPB on Twitter who says question 11 equals D because the MRI is the best evidence available and also sponges don't have any feet, which is true. And then he drew us a lovely picture of a sponge with no feet. So big shout out to you, TLP. But but this week's winner is Mike Dowling. That is is at M-Y-K-D-O-W-L-I-N-G, Mike Dowling, who says, it has to be D. Whenever some rule or principle I've never heard of is mentioned, that's always the correct answer. That rule of thumb turns out to be correct this time around. We'll see how well it continues to play out as we do Thomas Takes the Bar Exam. But Mike wins it and gets it correct for this week.

1:04:02 Andrew: So congratulations to you. Give him a follow. Give him a shout out on Twitter at M-Y-K-D-O-W-L-I-N-G. And thanks for playing along. Don't you?

1:04:11 Thomas: Well, that'S all we have for today's show. Thanks so much, everyone, for listening, and thanks to our patrons, and thank you, Andrew.

1:04:17 Andrew: Yeah, thank you.

1:04:25 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.