OA108: State-Sponsored Patriotism In the NFL & So Much More!

Transcript

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

[0:00:02] Is that why you hit your wife? Withdrawn. Is that why you drink and pop pills? Withdrawn. Are you a virgin? Withdrawn. [0:00:19] It says here you robbed a hospital. Why'd you do that? Yeah, I'm not guilty. That's not what the other lawyer said. [0:00:30] Actually, I was going to stay in my office tonight and work on my law blog. Of course, the Bob Loblaw Law Blog. Wow. You, sir, are a mouthful. [0:00:45] The jury is instructed to disregard its own testimony. Your Honor, the prosecution rests. [0:00:54] Welcome to Opening Arguments, the podcast that pairs an inquisitive interviewer with a real-life lawyer. This podcast is sponsored by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torrez, LLC, for entertainment purposes, is not intended as legal advice, and does not form an attorney-client relationship. Don't take legal advice from a podcast. [0:01:19] Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 108. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. That over there is Andrew Torrez. How are you doing, Andrew? Well, I have not been on Twitter in an hour, so I am fantastic. [0:01:31] I'm sure this is the episode where we do the Andrew Was Wrong segment, and, uh, Adnan's actually innocent, right? Oh yeah, yeah, we are actually going to do an Andrew Wrong segment, but somehow I'm guessing it's not going to stop 10,000 people from daily calling me a money-grubbing racist, so that, that's been fun. All right, well, in today's episode we've got some great stuff for you. In the first segment, we are going to talk about Andrew being wrong, which I'm sure means Adnan, it was Jay or somebody else. I always love the Andrew Was Wrong segments. My favorite segment. In the main segment, we're going to talk about a case that you brought [0:02:11] up a while back involving how much of a black box the jury room is, like if there's outright evidence of, you know, bigotry or other stuff like that. Can the case be overturned? Can you look at it? There's an update, it looks like, to Peña Rodriguez v. Colorado, which was the case you talked about. So very curious to hear about that. And then finally, we're going to answer the question that a lot of people have had, whether or not Trump was violating the law in any way when he tried to tell NFL coaches and owners what to do and to tell people to boycott the NFL. So interesting. I genuinely don't know the answer to that. I can't wait to [0:02:51] hear your take on it because it does seem a little alarming that the president can go ahead and interfere with, like, private business and stuff and just tell people what to do. It seems, seems like, it seems yodel mountainy. There's, this is a little bit echoes of yodeling. We'll see. And with that said, though, you wanted to, uh, talk about the health care bill that looks like it might, hopefully, is DOA. Yeah, there are a couple of days left on the clock. Sunday, uh, October 1st is the deadline by which procedurally the Republicans can, uh, repeal Obamacare through the reconciliation process. Uh, after that, they're going to need 60 votes, which obviously is not, you can't get 50 [0:03:32] votes, you can't get 60 votes. So a lot of people have asked us about the latest iteration of the health care bill. It's more of the same. We talked about that in episode 80, which I'm going to link on the show notes, so go back to that. I mean, to me the most surprising aspect of the health care bill is, in order to transition people away from, from Obamacare, you have to do something. And so what this, what the previous iteration of the bill does, and what this bill does sort of even more so, is kind of sets up these massive slush funds of just unregulated money. I mean, it is literally the exact opposite of what, you know, your fiscal conservative Republicans ought to be voting for, because it creates [0:04:12] these giant pools of money that the government can just sort of give away at a whim. And the effort to flip Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski was to give Alaska more money. Yeah. I heard an even funnier part of it. There's an effort to buy off some other people. I'm blanking on the states, but I think one of them's like Louisiana and the other one might be Montana or something like that. So what they put in there was a provision that gives late adopters of the Medicaid expansion more money. So it's like that's what the language is like, oh, for states who did the Medicaid expansion late, we're going to give them some extra money, which turns out to just be two specific states. And there's no reason you would [0:04:52] need to do that. But it's that's the way they're trying to. So what they do is they write a pile of crap and then, you know, they try to buy off just as many senators as they can to get to 50. And fortunately, it's not working, it looks like. And so not worth going through line item, hopefully. The other kind of wrinkle that I saw, there is a CNN article, I'm going to link in the show notes, in which Donald Trump basically said, yeah, well, when this bill fails, I'm going to issue an executive order requiring insurance companies to offer their plans across state lines. We'll need to see what that order looks like, but I don't have any idea how that could possibly be a constitutional executive order because [0:05:32] the whole state line thing is something like, for example, the Maryland Code Insurance Article Section 10-103 requires before a person acts as an insurance producer in the state, the person must obtain a license in the kind or subdivision of insurance for which the person intends to act as an insurance producer. Right, so in other words, insurance companies are licensed by the state. Like, I, I can't just start selling insurance to people and collecting, like that would make me a mob boss, right? Which, you know, career aspirations. Yeah, I was gonna try to sell some law insurance on the, on the website. Am I not, is that, can I not, okay, I won't. Yeah, I won't do that. Pity if something happened to your law. No. [0:06:13] So now it would be possible for Congress to preempt that legislation using an expansive view of the Commerce Clause, okay, which allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It would be hilarious for the Trump administration to get behind a plan like that, because it is right-wing Republicans who for three decades have been arguing that Congress doesn't have the expansive powers under the Interstate Commerce Clause that Congress and everyone, everyone has assumed that it has had for, for 200 years. So, but leave aside the hypocrisy, Congress could do [0:06:53] that. I don't see any way you can abrogate state policies, state laws requiring insurers to be licensed in that state via an executive order. Right. You could say we're not going to federally prosecute, but like in Maryland, if a New York insurer comes in and doesn't get licensed in Maryland and starts selling insurance, quote, across state lines, Maryland could and almost certainly would still prosecute that insurance company. Don't see any way that you can just EO around that. So we'll keep an eye on it. We'll see what happens. You can – maybe it's a bluff or maybe – I don't [0:07:33] know. Did he actually say that, or was that just reporting? It was, you know, it was, it was reporting by CNN, so who knows. We'll keep an eye on it next week. Next week we'll know. But, uh, but I wanted the opportunity to, to at least, uh, say a little bit about health care. We are on it, but there's just, there's just nothing for us to analyze right now. Yeah, well, the Republican approach to this whole thing has been just embarrassing, so there's, that's a whole topic for another show. Anyway, Anyway, for another show. So if you've got that on your bingo card, let's move on to Andrew Was Wrong. Such a great segment, I love it. Such, this is the worst time of the show. I'm asking you if you know the difference between right and wrong. I discovered at a very early age [0:08:13] that if I talk long enough, I could make anything right or wrong. So either I'm God or truth is relative, and in either case, booyah. Oh, interesting. It's just the average person has a much harder time saying booyah to moral relativism. So Adnan, he's totally innocent, right? Is that, yeah, um, so a couple things that I was wrong on. First, in the Serial episode, everybody who listens to our show, I think, understood what we were doing with that show, right? Which was, we've done a pretty popular legal show for 106 episodes, and lots of people have asked us, because they listen to one kind of legal show, hey, what do you think of this other legal show? And so in the very, very beginning setup, I was describing [0:08:54] the subsequent history, and I said I agreed with the post-conviction relief and that we weren't here to talk about prosecutorial misconduct. However, in that sentence, in saying I agreed with the post-conviction relief, I misstated the grounds on which the post-conviction relief was granted. So it was for ineffective assistance of counsel. It was not over the Asia McLean alibi witness, but it was, in fact, over failure to cross-examine the state's expert who was walking through all the AT&T cell phone. Ah, okay. Now, in my mind, and again, I was wrong, I've said I was wrong, play the music again, Andrew was wrong, wrong, in my [0:09:35] mind, this makes it worse, right? Like, because being wrong about an alibi witness at least gives you a potential alibi, competing hypothesis. Being wrong about one aspect of the state's, yeah, not evidence against you, right, is, in in my view, you know, that's, that, that's sort of weird, but nevertheless, I don't, I think it's, it's important to describe that I was factually wrong. I, I think you have to judge for yourself. Colin Miller from Undisclosed said, I turned on the podcast, you got the grounds for ineffective assistance of counsel wrong, so I turned it off, and it was not worth listening. Apparently it was still worth tweeting at me 300 times, but, but not worth listening to the show. [0:10:15] Uh, you know, if that's, if that's your approach, that on the, the introduction to what was not the issue of the show that I made a mistake, all I can say is I definitely did make that mistake, because that was not the focus. Well, yeah, when you're, when your business model, or, your and I don't want to use that disparagingly, but when your podcast or what you stand for is, you know, this guy is innocent, I could see, you know, it's unfortunate, but I could see wanting to look for the opportunity to be able to just dismiss something right away and not really. Yeah. And look, I mean, let's, you know, if you want to, let's continue to be, to be as fair to [0:10:55] them as possible. We are not a true crime podcast. Right. We very explicitly said this. We are we're a law podcast. And we were evaluating the presentation of a law podcast. Right. Right. Like I was not. And, you know, when we defined what we meant by, you know, the the maybe slightly clickbaity title call back to a previous episode of Adnan obviously did it. We were in no way saying we've done a better job reconstructing. You know, that's not what we set out to do. That's not what this podcast sets out to do. I think listeners to our show knew that. That maybe [0:11:35] I'm still feeling a little sensitive from the blowback. It was really weird. It's kind of surreal to have Rabia Chowdhury curse at you and then block you. That was a weird, because I didn't even do anything. I just, yeah, I got involved in that too somehow. We extended the invitation. So for those of you who have asked, we have extended the invitation to the Undisclosed folks to come on the podcast. Don't, don't think that's gonna happen, but, uh, you know, we, we, we did, we try. So I was wrong about that, uh, second thing, arguably more important thing that I was wrong about, in that same episode when we were talking about sprinting to the end [0:12:16] Zone and starting to celebrate 10 yards too early and having the football punched out from your hands, I said that was Ronnie Lott in the superbowl Oh, my, how could I've made this mistake? It was not 49ers cornerback Ronnie Lott, but in fact Dallas Cowboys left tackle Leon Lett. And, you know, I'd assume my good, my good buddy John Budd sent a gentle correction over Facebook. Guessing this is all before my time, I don't know any of this. Again, this is like 1973 or something. Is that the Super Bowl two? No. Yeah, it's, a it was played in Sparta. No, um, no, like, I I think this was the '90s. Oh, okay. It's [0:12:56] a pretty, look up Leon Lett, don't look up Ronnie Lott. You know what's so funny, though? That very Sunday, last Sunday, I believe, unless, I mean, time is flying with this newborn, so it could have been two weeks ago. But like right after you had said that, did you see there was a play where somebody, it was the weirdest play in the world. I think it was Chicago. I know the other team was Pittsburgh. I think it was Pittsburgh and Chicago. Chicago blocked a Pittsburgh, yeah, that was two weeks ago, the guy ran it all the way back, like the blocked it and it went right into his chest, like someone else blocked it and it just hit, it hit the guy in the chest, he's like, "Oh, okay, I'll start running." And so he starts running to the end zone, it's [0:13:36] the weirdest, you know, that never happens, that almost never happens, he gets all the way to the end zone, he stops, he's like, "Oh, well, close enough," he's like one foot away, and and some amazing individual on Pittsburgh had chased him all the way down, knocks the ball out of his arms right as he's about to cross the line. Guys, NFL listeners, NFL players listening, just finish the play. Jeez, finish the play. I, I know I should save my ire for Andrew being wrong, I know that's important, we need to all embarrass Andrew as much as we can about being wrong, but come on, NFL players, just finish the play, get one inch further in the end zone, then you can celebrate, just finish the play, jeez, yeah. [0:14:16] I was busy putting, putting an 80-point beatdown on our buddy Noah Lusions in the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists. So, I saw that play on replay. It was not, unbelievable, it was great, but it was not remotely the best part of that day, which was beating Noah. Well, of course. But what a weird play. I mean, that is a bizarre confluence of events. So, Leon Lett, not Ronnie Lott. Third, Andrew was wrong. Our buddy Andrew Seidel from the Freedom of Religion Foundation, who we are going to have back on the show, published an article on Patheos disputing our conclusion in episode 102 that in the wake of Trinity Lutheran, churches are likely [0:14:56] to be able to get FEMA relief funds to rebuild their churches. And I wanted to engage with that article really quickly. I mean, I think that I have great respect for Andrew. He makes three arguments in his article. The first two are kind of variants of the same one. He says Trinity Lutheran was about rebuilding a playground and not a church itself. Yeah, that's what I tried to say, right? And you were saying, well, it doesn't matter once it's precedent, they kind of just look at what the sort of the logic of it is not necessarily, oh, this is a playground and this is something else. So therefore, right? Is that what you're saying? And related, he's got a second, which is there is a legal difference between a church and [0:15:36] a church-run playground. So I thought I would sort of engage with those two arguments by looking back at what Trinity Lutheran said, which was on page 2023. 23, they say, the claimant in Locke, and if you recall, Locke v. Davey is the case that I said, and still believe, controls and compels the opposite result from Trinity Lutheran. That was Washington State said, we're not going to let you use our limited state scholarship funds to pursue a degree in worshipful theology. In distinguishing Locke, the Trinity Lutheran case says, the claimant in Locke sought funding for an essentially religious endeavor akin to a religious calling as well as [0:16:16] an academic pursuit. An opposition to such funding to support church leaders lay at the historic core of the religion clauses. Here, nothing of the sort can be said about a program to use recycled tires to resurface playgrounds. Okay, so that's, As far as I could tell, there wasn't a citation in Andrew's article, but that's, I think, the best case argument for sort of distinguishing Trinity Lutheran on its facts. But what I would point out is the very next sentence is where Trinity Lutheran begins discussing the rights of churches. And this was the point I made in episode 102. Here's what the court says. Says. Relying on Locke, the department nonetheless emphasizes [0:16:57] Missouri's similar constitutional tradition of not furnishing taxpayer money directly to churches. But Locke took account of Washington's anti-establishment interest only after determining, as noted, that the scholarship program did not require students to choose between their religious beliefs in receiving a government benefit. As the court put it, Washington's scholarship program went a long way towards including religion in its benefits. Students in the program were free to use their scholarships at pervasively religious schools and could use a scholarship to pursue a secular degree at one institution while studying devotional theology at another. He could also use his scholarship money to attend a religious college and take devotional theology courses there. Only thing he could not do was use the scholarship to pursue [0:17:37] a degree in that subject. So that's the distinction that the Trinity Lutheran court is making. And here's how they conclude it. And I quoted this in our original episode 102. In this case, there is no dispute that Trinity Lutheran is put to the choice between being a church and receiving a government benefit. The rule is simple: no churches need apply. So in other words, the Trinity Lutheran decision does not say we're giving out the money because it's a church-run playground. The Trinity Lutheran decision very clearly says we're handing this money over to a church and we think a church shouldn't have to choose between being a church and running a [0:18:17] playground. I see, uh, or just running a secular playground. Right. So, so you're saying that same logic will be, they shouldn't have to choose between being a church and getting this hurricane relief or whatever? Exactly. Yeah, the rule is simple, no churches need apply. Right. Yeah, to, for hurricane relief. The third argument that Andrew makes is that, we, we didn't discuss, because I just realized, are you smuggling in, Andrew Seidel is wrong, and then, Andrew's, Andrew is wrong? Oh, it could be. Yeah. Yeah, Andrew was wrong. Yeah, he just snuck that in there. Yeah, it's still technically, okay. The third argument Andrew makes is that we did not consider the Establishment Clause because Trinity [0:18:57] Lutheran did not consider the Establishment Clause, because uniquely in that case, and Andrew Seidel talked about the weirdness surrounding the oral argument in that case, that both sides agreed the Establishment Clause didn't apply, even though I don't know why they would do that. Yeah. So here he's correct. But again, I'm not sure that this is going to change my view on the subject because the establishment clause is not, can we give money directly to a church? You might think it would be. That would be a really straightforward and historical view of what the establishment clause ought to mean, but it's not the way the law has been interpreted. And we've talked about the Lemon Test [0:19:37] previously, but the Lemon Test says we violate the Establishment Clause – it's after Lemon v. Kurtzman – when the law does one or more of three things that are impermissible. Number one, the law must have a secular purpose. Number two, the law's primary effect may not be to advance or to inhibit religion. And number three, the law must not be excessively entangled between government and religion. So any one of those is sufficient to invalidate. I'm going to throw out two and three right now because the arguments would be really, really attenuated. I think that that's pretty clear. But you might ask yourself, how in the hell can rebuilding a church have a secular purpose, right? And [0:20:17] the answer is the Supreme Court already teed up that argument in the Trinity Lutheran decision. And so on page 2019 to 2020, the court, citing a 70-year-old case called Everson versus Board of Education of Ewing, explained it this way. They said, "In Everson, for example, we upheld against an Establishment Clause challenge, a New Jersey law enabling a local school district to reimburse parents for the public transportation costs of sending their children to public and private schools, including parochial schools." In the course of the ruling that the Establishment Clause allowed New Jersey to extend that public benefit to all of its citizens, regardless of their religious belief, we explained that the state, quote, "cannot [0:20:57] hamper its citizens in the free exercise of their own religion. Consequently, it cannot exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, quoting from 1940s cases, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, nonbelievers, Presbyterians, or members of any other faith because of their faith or lack of it from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation. Now, I would point out you see the change in language, right? Like every First Amendment case dealing with free exercise or the Establishment Clause prior to Trinity Lutheran is focused on the citizens' rights and not the right of the church itself, which didn't exist until Trinity Lutheran. But nevertheless, like, I mean, to me, that's [0:21:38] the answer that the government is going to put in its brief with respect to the Establishment Clause and the Lemon Test. They're going to say, yeah, look, this has a secular purpose. The secular purpose is we are going to rebuild communities and we are not going to discriminate in rebuilding communities, whether the section of the community we're rebuilding has a religious character or a non-religious character. We're just going to come in and give out disaster relief in light of Trinity Lutheran, particularly having deliberately teed these issues up in the majority opinion. I stand by my opinion. I mean, this is in the Andrew's wrong segment, but you're sneaking him in. Okay. I am sneaking him in. I love, you know, [0:22:18] again, we're going to have Andrew back on the show. I think he's making good arguments here, but at the end of the day, I don't, I think the courts are going to go the other way. All right. Well, there you go. That was, you know, it was satisfying to hear that Andrew was wrong about some stuff. Thank you for that. It was very, very vital. This has been my favorite Andrew was wrong. Andrews. Maybe this week you should call this segment Andrews were wrong. [0:22:46] Andrew, update on a case that you talked about involving whether or not the jury is kind of a black box. What's going on here? Yeah. Back in episode 56, we covered the case of Peña Rodriguez versus Colorado. I called it a landmark case. And after just taking a beating in the Andrew was wrong segment, I thought this might be a good time for an Andrew was right segment. Oh, awesome. In light of Peña Rodriguez versus Colorado. So what did that case hold? That was the case that said Colorado had a jury secrecy law and the Supreme Court invalidated [0:23:27] that. And they said, look, you have a constitutional right to know if certain egregious behaviors are taking place within the jury's deliberations. And among those included racial discrimination, basically saying you need to vote guilty because, you know, this person is in Peña Rodriguez versus Colorado. The allegation was, hey, look, I know what Mexicans are like. And they just sort of, you know, take what what what they want from women. And so that's why you should vote this guy guilty of rape. Right. After Peña Rodriguez versus Colorado was handed down, that was a [0:24:07] five to three decision. That was a pre-Gorsuchian case. Then a number of folks who were on death row petitioned, then sort of faced this unique procedural posture of, can we retroactively take advantage of this rule? And let me say, that question is going to require a deep dive in a separate episode. It's really, really long. It's really, really, really complicated. We know going forward now that if you have evidence of racial discrimination in the jury room, that that is the basis for invalidating [0:24:47] a conviction. But now the question is, what if you were previously convicted and it wasn't grounds, right? It had never been decided by the Supreme Court, so it wasn't grounds to raise in a previous habeas petition, but now you're sitting there. And that is exactly the case of Keith Leroy Tharp, who was convicted of murder in Georgia in 1991. There are a number of situations surrounding this case, including the fact that Mr. Tharp has an IQ of around 70. He's even tested below 70. So he raised as part of his prior habeas petition that [0:25:28] he was not sufficiently mentally competent to be executed by the state. That was rejected by the federal courts, by the 11th Circuit, and then the Supreme Court denied cert. But he was also allegedly racially discriminated against by the jury. And so he has petitioned to reopen his federal habeas proceedings to take advantage of the rule from Peña Rodriguez versus Colorado. And let me cut to the punchline, which is that petition was denied at the trial court level, was denied by the 11th Circuit, [0:26:08] and is pending before the Supreme Court on a petition for writ of certiorari. But Mr. Tharp was also scheduled to be executed on September 26th. So his lawyers directly petitioned the Supreme Court for a stay of the execution, right? Because it obviously doesn't do much good. Like the, the, they weren't sure. And we're still, we don't know if the Supreme court is going to take a look at this. That's exactly right. Okay. So this is like in Law and Awful Movies 10, the chamber where they made it seem like you could just sort of petition forever. This is really what that's like. You get your state post-conviction relief, you get one federal [0:26:48] habeas proceeding, and then when you're scheduled to be executed, you've got to show a compelling reason. And having a petition to reopen your habeas is not an automatic grant of that stay, right? So in other words, if the Supreme Court hadn't have intervened, then his petition for writ of certiorari would be pending and Tharp would be executed. So that's literally the stakes that were here. [0:27:19] Order, because it's a one paragraph order, I'm going to read it to you anyway. The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is granted pending the disposition of the petition for writ of certiorari. Should the petition for writ of certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically, meaning then they'll execute it. In the event that the petition for writ of certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this court. And then Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Gorsuch would deny the application. So, you know, we have three justices on the Supreme Court that think. That think that it's not even appropriate to stay in execution before they've [0:27:59] even decided on the merits of the case. Unbelievable. Now, now, what, what are the merits? There's a lot, but- No, sorry. That's unbelievable. We need just, sorry, just another. There's these people, they're not saying, oh, we've looked at the merit, you know, it's not. They're saying, we're not even going to stay the execution just for the time while we look at this. Unreal. They have an affidavit from one of the jurors. Here's what the juror said under oath in his affidavit. I knew the girl who was killed, Mrs. Friedman. Her husband and his family have lived in Jones County a long time. The Freemans are what I would call a nice black family. In my experience, I have observed [0:28:39] that there are two types of black people, one black folks, and two, the N-word, for example, some of them who hang around our little store act up and carry on and I tell them, N-word, you better straighten up or get out of here fast. My wife tells me that I'm going to be shot by one of them one day if I don't quit saying that. I am an up up front, plain spoken man, though, like I said. The Freemans were nice black folks. If they had been the type Tharp is, then picking between the life or death for Tharp wouldn't have mattered so much. My feeling is, what would be the difference? As it was, because I knew the victim and her husband's family, and I knew them all to be good black folks, I felt Tharp, who wasn't in the good black folks category in my book, should [0:29:19] get the electric chair for what he did. Oh, my God. Some of the jurors voted for death because they felt that Tharp should be an example to other blacks who kill blacks. But that wasn't my reason. The others wanted blacks to know they weren't going to get away with killing each other. After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls. Integration started in Genesis. I think they were wrong. For example, look at O.J. Simpson. That white woman wouldn't have been killed if she hadn't married that black man. This is a real person? As a real person, he then argued that he had consumed a 12-pack of beer and a few shots of whiskey before signing the [0:29:59] affidavit and complained that the affidavit was, quote, "taken all out of proportion, taken out of context, and was misconstrued," which is not the thing that I would be saying if those were- Yeah, sure. Put in the proper context. I put in the proper context. I'm sure that would- Yeah. So how did, I'm just, just real quick, 'cause we don't have time, but like, how, how did this affidavit? 'Cause, so this is afterward. First off, he knew the victim, right? I thought you weren't supposed to be a juror if you. Correct. [0:30:31] What, what happened? Yeah. Well, that's part of why they have this affidavit, right? Because remember, all the racial stuff here, this was color, this was originally raised, this first affidavit was raised in his 1998 state habeas proceeding on the grounds that the juror knew the victim, right? Wow. All of the N-word stuff was coloration. Yeah, that was just subsequent, like just just kind of on the side. Didn't really. Wow. So because you're saying that that wasn't grounds to appeal or whatever, like that wasn't grounds to say that there's been jury misconduct until this new [0:31:11] rule. Peña Rodriguez. Yeah, exactly. Wow. [0:31:16] If you'd like more, Gaddy, that's the juror that we quoted from, testified that he is not against integration or against blacks. He claimed to think African-Americans are hardworking people and no more violent than other groups of individuals. He stated that he used the N-word not as a racial slur, but to describe both black and white people who are no good, who do not work or who commit crimes. Times, uh, he testified that race was not an issue at deliberations and he never used the N-word during deliberation. Ah, yeah, okay, so everything's fine. So everything is fine. So look, these three assholes who he rejected the stay, they know what they, they, I'm assuming they've [0:31:56] seen this, right? I mean, they have to. Yep. Okay, this is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. You know, it's a good thing Hillary and Trump were both just as bad, you know, we had to allow Gorsuch to be the Supreme Court nominee who was one of the three. It's because, you know, they're just as bad, just as bad emails. Yeah, unbelievable. So there is, I mean, look, I, we've, we've focused on on the three in the bottom. It is, it is, in my view, significant, uh, that Chief Justice John Roberts, who dissented in Peña Rodriguez, uh, voted with the majority to stay. That it starts to illustrate, you know, the, the principle, the, the, the lines that I'm drawing here, which is John Roberts very clearly has [0:32:36] at least some respect for Peña Rodriguez as precedent now, right? He disagreed with it. Uh, we will see how strongly when the case comes up on the merits. It's it's obvious that the court is going to grant cert, right? Like, you only need four votes to grant cert. Uh, I, I would be stunned if they didn't. There would have to be some kind of weird development to get six votes to stay execution but but not pick up four to take the case. But But that continues to be sort of the dividing line that we have said in the past between sort of truly activist judges. Look, like most Robert's opinions are not things that I agree with. Right. But I think it's worth pointing out where that line is. But you're saying he has some respect for [0:33:17] precedent. Yeah. Right. It is. Yeah, no, look, I recognize this is the law now. And if this is the law, then we ought to hear, we ought to at least consider whether we are going to hear arguments related to the application of that law. And again, I have elided entirely over the retroactivity part of it, which is just a complicated legal, and we just don't have time to do it in the show. I've got it on the whiteboard to do in the future. But my point is not that it's a knockdown case. My point is failure to issue the stay would have rendered it a nullity. He'd be dead already. He'd be dead. And I think that it is significant. I think it's significant [0:33:57] in two ways. Number one, ongoing merits for post-conviction relief for criminal defendants going forward. And number two, the recognition of Peña Rodriguez by Roberts. Did they say, was there a dissent in like an explanation or anything that I can read? I am so pissed about this. Nope. Just the one line. Just says Thomas Gorsuch and Alito would vote to deny. You wouldn't want to explain a decision like that. You know, it's not consequential. So why explain it? [0:34:29] I've never thought I would utter the phrase, to be fair to Justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas. But to be fair to Justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas. This is a one paragraph order and it is not, it is not customary, but you know, that being said, it's not, it is rare, but permissible to offer a reason to dissent here. And, and you would think that you would offer that. I can't believe this is wow. All right. Well, elections have consequences. Everyone, as the famous Andrew Torrez said in 2008, when, after he won the presidential election, uh, elections have consequences. Boy, you've fallen a long way, by the way, from being [0:35:09] elected president in 2008 to being now just doing this podcast, but that's okay. Yeah, also, you will not see pictures of me shirtless on the beach. Yeah, well, oh, well, maybe someday we will, for the opening arguments calendar, you know, that we're- Oh, oh, we can, patrons, we can make that happen, patreon.com/law. I've got enough cats, we've almost got enough pets to do one, so, you know. Yeah, we could, we could at least do, you know, a nine month, like, corporate, you know, a school year calendar. Oh, yeah, between pets, kids, and then, yeah, you're, you're, you're a kid, my kid, your cats, my, my, my puppy. Yeah, well, thanks for trying to, uh, cheer me up after, I really, I'm wanting to kill, that is this so frustrating to me, but, uh, [0:35:49] but yeah, thanks for taking us through that, um, I'm glad that this day was issued, you know, that there's that, there, at least we'll continue to follow it. Yeah. Yeah, at least while it's pending, while something's pending, and they consider it, unbelievable. All right, well, on to the, the rest of the show, because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. So you're not aware of any context during the course of the election. How many times do I have to answer this question? Can you just, 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. [0:36:23] All right, Andrew, you heard the yodeling, we've got our lederhosen on, we've uh we're, we're on the mountain, what's going on? Trump has threatened the NFL. I really, I'm going to be surprised. Now, now the answer always is, well, it might be kind of illegal, but who's going to do anything about it? But I really wouldn't. I mean, I'd be amazed if this is okay for the president to just interfere with private business in this way. But I don't know what's going on here. Yeah. So two things. Number one, now would be a good time if you were not a listener of the show. Back at episodes 57 and 58, uh, we did two plus hours on Donald [0:37:03] Trump's 1985 lawsuit against the NFL. Yeah, which, uh, I'm I'm super proud of. Yeah, and it really explains a lot, too. Like, it really gives you good background for into who he is. Yep. And And who his lawyers, a lot of those same people are still players today, right, are still a player's, small p, right? Yeah, they, teams, teams have dynastic family ownership. You know, Roger Goodell was, he was not commissioner at the time, but he was involved in the NFL. You know, it was, there's a lot of overlap still. And it's fair to say, we didn't talk about the fact that Donald Trump has subsequently tried to buy an NFL franchise [0:37:44] and appears to have been blackballed. Like, Donald Trump does not, seems to be the kind of person who harbors a grudge. And the NFL seems to be an organization against which he harbors that grudge. So if you want to learn more about that, recommend 0857 and 0858. But really, there are two questions. Well, there are a couple of different questions here. Is it a violation of the law for the president to go on national television and tell people to boycott the NFL if the NFL doesn't start firing players who refuse to stand for the national anthem? The law here is 18 U.S.C. 227, which is entitled "Wrongfully Influencing [0:38:24] a Private Entity's Employment Decisions by a Member of Congress or an Officer, Employee of the Legislative or Executive Branch." So you're like, okay, well, that seems to be, sounds right. Yeah, yeah, dead on, right? And our Seth Barrett Tillman question. Yeah, I thought of that too. In this section, the term "covered government person" means the president, vice president, and employee of the U.S. Postal Service or Postal Regulatory Commission, or any other executive branch employee, as such term is defined under section 2105 of title five of the United States Code. So clearly does apply to the president. I was really hoping there would be more case law on this, because I'm going to read the provision now to you, and you will see immediately. I thought we might get some [0:39:04] additional insight into the Seth Barrett Tillman provision on the Emoluments Clause right here's what the law says. Whoever, being a covered government person, which we just defined, with intent to influence solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation, an employment decision or employment practice of any private entity, one, takes or withholds or offers or threatens to take or withhold an official act, or two, influences or threatens or offers to influence the official act of another, other, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than 15 years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. Right? [0:39:44] So, um, but I heard in the beginning, did I hear it said like "for the political," "for political purpose or whatever it was? Say yeah, you, party purposes. Yeah, you've keyed, you've keyed in on exactly the provision that, um, that's going to be the the crux of this analysis. Uh, I was going to try and riff a little bit on, uh, because because it uses the language of "holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States" and clearly intends that phrase to mean and include the presidency, because the definition of covered person extends to the president, which argues against the Seth Baird Tillman position. Um, it's [0:40:26] not, I mean, I would be, I, I should add that there's a little bit of tongue being planted in cheek because there's a 2007 law about which there is no jurisprudence, so you know, it, that does not refute the originalist argument that those words meant something different in 1787. But I was really hoping that it would, it took me down a rabbit trail, uh, while researching this. Uh, but, um, but no, the key, as you suspect, the keywords are "solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation," and I have to, well, I've got to tell you a couple of things. Yeah, how do we define that? Yeah, well, in in the law, this is called a sole intent limitation, [0:41:06] and, uh, it was distinguished. There are only two cases that discuss this statute, 18 USC 227. One is United States versus Technodyne LLC, which totally, I think, is the name of the dance club in the first Terminator movie. It definitely sounds 80s. Yeah, 2014 case. But that case was about a criminal statute that provided penalties for people who left the United States, quote, "in order to avoid prosecution," right? And what the court did in this case was to distinguish between proving that [0:41:47] "in order to avoid prosecution" was a motive versus proving that it was the sole intent behind the action. And said, look, unless the statute very specifically says "only" or "sole," then—and here's the language of the court—it is commonplace that the law recognizes that there may be multiple motives for human behavior. Thus, a specific intent need not be the actor's sole or even primary purpose. For example, certain crimes such as bribery, tax evasion, and conspiracy are considered specific intent crimes. And what you just have to show is that, uh, it was a part of the motivating factor, uh, for, to, to prove that specific intent. [0:42:27] Right. And that makes sense. Um, because we've talked about how hard it is to prove intent. Think about how hard it is to prove not intent, right? Like, "I have only done this for this one reason." And in so doing, that Technodyne decision says, when Congress has meant to impose a sole intent limitation, it has done so expressly. See, for example, 18 U.S.C. 227A, prohibiting certain acts, certain officials from taking or influencing official acts with respect to employment decisions of a private entity with the intent to influence solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation. And then there are a couple others, you know, "consisted solely of lawful conduct," authorizing certain military construction projects if they are [0:43:07] intended solely to correct a deficiency that is life-threat. So what that tells you is it's going to be almost impossible to prove that Donald Trump acted solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation here. I'm surprised that's the only law there is. Like, as long as he's not acting on partisan basis, then he can just tell, whatever, he can just tell any business, people to try to direct people from the presidency to boycott stuff or do this or fire people, that's, that's amazing. Yeah, well, I mean, you have the anti-nepotism law, which already we know that, no, yeah, that one's got teeth. Yeah, really, really useful law there. I [0:43:47] I don't think, I, I looked up, there were, there were eight references on Lexus to 18 USC 227, uh, six of them turned out to be a prior statute that was reclassified from that, so they were, you know, the reference was just wrong. One was this Technodyne decision, uh, and the the other was a case called Cepha versus Fayette County Police, a 2012 case, which just says you can't sue for civil liability. You can't get damages under 18 U.S.C. 227. I don't think anyone has ever been successfully prosecuted under this statute. What do you know? So that's kind of that part. There were a few other interesting questions [0:44:28] that came up sort of tangentially. One was, could the NFL or could individual NFL team owners legally suspend, fine, or fire players who don't stand for the national anthem? And here I pose the question to our football and law expert and good friend of the show, Chris Christofko. And I said, "Tell me if I'm wrong." He hasn't told me if I'm wrong yet. But my take on that is the NFL is not quite an ordinary employer, right? They, they are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. So your employer probably can't, but an employer, so like just a regular everyday, you know, you go to work at an office or something, [0:45:08] they actually could put in a, some sort of policy. Like, yeah, you would have, there would be, I don't want to suggest, and and believe me, this would be a terrible policy for an employer to have. If you're an employer thinking about firing people who don't stand for the flag, I am in no way suggesting that you would be definitely immune from suit. You might run afoul of various other anti-discrimination statutes. I haven't kind of run all that to ground. But in general, so long as you're not violating specific laws with respect to protected behaviors, then you're going to be fine. Now, you know, look, so how might that play out, right? Like, what it [0:45:48] would mean is if you have a religious reason for not standing for the pledge at work and you have an employer that requires you to stand for the pledge, then I think you would have a pretty good case on Title VII grounds against that employer. But if you're just an individual making a political statement, then so long as it's applied evenly, then I think your employer probably does have the right to. But you're saying since the NFL is a different kind, since it's a collective targeting agreement, there might be some rules in the agreement that would prevent this? The NFL does not quite have the same, it's not employment at will in [0:46:29] the NFL, right? So there are grounds for which you may fire a player. But that being said, Chris has talked previously about how, you know, the commissioner has certain catch all powers that are, you know, for the good of the sport. And if you recall, this was way back in opening arguments number five, you want to talk about the blast. Wow. Yeah, the 90s. [0:47:22] with, under his expansive powers, would get a tremendous amount of pushback, would be the subject of the next CBA negotiations, and none of this is going to happen because the NFL hates Donald Trump for good reason. Yes. Yeah, well, this is interesting because I, I wasn't sure, I, I would have thought, I would have guessed that they could put something in the contract that would require them to to stand if they wanted, is that, do you think they could do that? But they would have to to agree upon it, it'd be a bargaining thing, right? Exactly. Okay. So that's why I suppose one thing, this, sorry, really quick, just Thomas opinion time. I've actually been a little annoyed at how much of the discussion has been like, well, First [0:48:02] Amendment, First Amendment. You know, like, it doesn't really, because we don't, how often if a doctor, you know, decided he wanted to do, express his political views and stuff, like, how often are we willing to entertain that? Don't we just want him to do his job? Like, I almost wish the discussion about this was less about First Amendment, First Amendment, because as you said, they could ban this in the NFL if they wanted, and it wouldn't violate the First Amendment. There isn't – correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't – First Amendment doesn't give us the right to express ourselves in any way, shape, or form that we want at any time that we want at our job necessarily. But [0:48:42] I agree with the protest. Let me be clear. I agree with the protest. I wish the discussion was more, oh, yeah, they're protesting things that ought to be protested. I wish the discussion was more on the merit of, you know, the actual protests they're doing, which is police violence, inequality, all that. I wish that was the discussion, not, well, First Amendment, you know, like it doesn't, it seems, you know, First Amendment, like that doesn't really answer anything. Like, why aren't we actually talking about the issues they're trying to bring to light? I agree with that 100%. And so I think you're going to like our very last bit, which I'm just going to bring out there. I don't have time to [0:49:22] analyze it in any sort of depth. This is Dan Abrams' Law Newz site. Now, that's Law News with a Z, so you should already be a little bit skeptical. The author of the piece here is Ilura Nanos. I know nothing about this individual. Have not vetted the claims in this article beyond kind of a surface level double checking. But the article is it's true. The government paid the NFL to stand for the national anthem and points out that from 2011 to 2014, the Department of Defense spent $5.4 million in contracts with 14 NFL teams for flag ceremonies. The National Guard [0:50:02] got in on the action to give 6.7 million to the NFL for the same kind of thing from 2013 to 2015. 2015, there's a little bit, some of the legal analysis, right? Like, so for example, there's then a paragraph that directly analogizes the NFL to a private employer, which is not correct for the reasons that we just said, but I thought this was a really interesting description. So this is real, this is not fake news. It just is, as far as I can tell, does not appear to be fake news. Now, again, the internal site that I listened to was a clip on ESPN of Stephen A. Smith, which by the way, I suffered through that, so you don't have to. Again, I want to urge a little bit of caution around this, but as far as I can tell, appears [0:50:43] to be, appears to be real news, appears to be substantiated, goes on to point out, prior to 2009, football players didn't stand on the field for the national anthem. They stayed in the locker room and they ran out onto the field when the national anthem was done. But then the Department of Defense began paying for these, uh, flag ceremonies, uh, doing the, and I know you've seen this, like, you know, returning service member proposing to fiancee, uh, kind of, those were not, those are not spontaneous, that is not just, you know, "Staff Sergeant so-and-so," called all that, those are planted. And that's another, by the way, another good point [0:51:23] someone has made in all this. I, I'm, I'm guessing most of our listeners aren't going to be on the side of Trump on this, you know, need to kneel for the flag, but another great point someone has made is like, people are trying, these NFL fans and the NFL and and conservatives are trying to make it so that what's currently happening, is that's politically neutral, you know, all this, like, flag honoree bullshit, and like all this military parade, that that's neutral, and then if you don't want to do that, you're being political. And I will point out, now I'm going to extend an olive branch to our Republicans, Dan, Dan the Conservative Man, if you're still listening, this is a joint report from Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, so Republicans, right [0:52:03] of varying stripes, uh, but, uh, but nevertheless. You know, career longstanding, if anti-Trump, Republicans. This is a 2015 joint report tackling paid patriotism, about $6.8 million of taxpayer funded contracts containing salutes, color guards, anthems, and more. In that report, McCain and Flake said they condemned the practice of paid patriotism, conducted not out of a sense of patriotism, but rather done for profit in the forms of millions of taxpayer dollars going from the Department of Defense to wealthy sports franchises. And some of the findings, the majority [0:52:43] of the contracts that we analyzed, 72 of 122, show that the DOD paid for patriotic tributes at professional football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer games. They included on-field color guard enlistment and re-enlistment ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, full field flag details, ceremonial first pitches, and puck drops. The National Guard paid teams for the quote, "opportunity to sponsor Military Appreciation right appreciation rights and to recognize its birthday. It paid the Buffalo Bills to sponsor its Salute to Service game. It even paid teams for the opportunity to perform surprise welcome home promotions for troops returning from deployments, and to recognize wounded warriors. So again, not Mother [0:53:23] Jones, not, you know, some crazy lefty, but Jeff Flake, pretty rock conservative, John McCain. We all know John McCain. And I thought it was pretty interesting, and I thought sponsored patriotism very interesting. There you go. So if you opt out of that, you're the bad guy. Hmm. Yeah. Okay, apparently you are. Uh, all right, well, that's, that's really interesting, I, thanks for covering that. I'm very depressed again to realize that we can't do anything, or Trump somehow not quite violating a law, very frustrating. We need, that he really is clear clarifying a lot of laws we do need. There's going to be, just like after Nixon, I feel like there's gonna be, there, there should be a lot of new laws for [0:54:04] things Trump thought of that no one else did. And with that said, we've got to get to our favorite segment of the day, of the week, actually, co-favorite segment of the week, and that is Top Patron Friday, Hall of Fame Patron Friday. I'll start us off. I'd like to thank Chrissy, Kaylee Reiser, just Sakashite Fukasumi this week, Heather Loveridge, Aaron Grady, Adam Lenda, Cosmos Vigilante, Soggy Pants, Stephen Boyd at DJ DJ Empirical, Sam Deneau, Eli Bosnick, Geeker41, Teresa Gomez, Armature of a Paywall, Hunter Ash, Ian and Allie, Dave Nichols of Positively Doubtful Podcast, [0:54:44] Jim Grove, Jeffrey Maynor, Keith Davies, Jaga, co-host of the Shifty Bastards Transformational Podcast, Maleka Chandler, Jesse Studd is my favorite lawyer, Andrew is a close second, POTUS supports brain damage, Matthew Vernon, camp purge.org, camp purge.org, camp purge.org, I love that squig thinger, and then camp quest.org, camp quest.org, camp quest.org. Thank you guys so much. Oh, that was good. Yep. And thank you to Tricycular Manslaughter, Philip Stromberg, the Wayward Willis Podcast, Adopt a Homeless Pet, and a Postie Clawing an Ear Docking, whom I met in Austin, Texas, that was was amazing. Wow, uh, Danny [0:55:25] Rosari, Rebecca Smells, or Ronda the Dork, Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year, Roger Metcalf, I wonder when it was, 2006, Sammy C6, Sarah, is that the, there's, there was one year they did like, uh, you know, everybody or something, or, oh yeah, it was, it was a, the mirrored cover, and it was you, for YouTube, could be, could be, could be, same one, no, no, no, no, no Batman. [0:55:50] That's amazing. Uh, Torsten Peel of nocebomart.com, now with sloth pills, I could use some of those sloth pills. Danny Baker at Combat Nonsense. And finally, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, that's good name. Thank you, Violet Page Hall, Frederick Alstromer, stop breaking the law, asshole. Cody Bond, single-payer health care will save 45,000 American lives annually, that's a paid broadcast, not a, not a statement that I've necessarily vetted, but I agree with the sentiment. Eric Johnson, Jessica Wilson, Mitchell, reasonable risk podcast has Lyme disease and will be in Salt Lake City this weekend, Thomas McCormick, Michael Ropps, [0:56:30] Carl Zippel, Conrad Michaels, and, and our top patron, Zabby. Thank you all so much. Thanks for making this segment fun for us. Yeah, that was great. Continuing to have the ongoing patron wars. I like the fact that our patrons who support other shows are starting to show up in their patron shoutouts. Yeah, you mean mine? [0:56:51] That's funny. Thank you guys. By the way, patreon.com/law. And that's a contribution, I think the level of $5 an episode to get this weekly shout out. And I just want to point out, thank you guys so much. And I hope you enjoyed the Q&A we just did, those are always so fun, uh, and also Law'd Awful Movies going to be coming out, I'm traveling, it's, I'm trying to find a time to edit that, so it could be a tiny bit late, but, but it'll, it'll be out soon, look forward to Law'd Awful Movies 11, the Trial of the Incredible Hulk, which I will say, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give away one thing, it's the best law, law movie we've done so far. Yeah, we agree, courtroom [0:57:31] Drama, the trial scene. Yeah, oh man, all right. Well, thank you guys for supporting us. Oh, no associate this firm has ever failed the bar exam, no kidding. And now it's time for my other favorite segment of the week. Now, last week I very obviously intentionally got a bar exam question wrong. I just was, I didn't, I didn't want to have to rename the segment to like the answer key takes the bar exam. It just, you know, I guess that's fair. I needed to humanize myself a little bit, I think. People were, you know, so I got that one wrong intentionally, um, but, uh, but that's okay. Hopefully people, you know, got it right, learn something, you know, from my example, my lesson. Yeah, that [0:58:11] It's, it's the best way to to really be an effective teacher. So good work. All right, Thomas, the president and sole stockholder of a small business negotiated to sell that business to an individual investor. The parties met and signed a, quote, letter agreement, which set forth the price, down payment amount, financing terms, the assets to be included, and a host of other pertinent details. The final closing date was not stated, but the purchasers left a down payment of $20,000 with the seller. The letter stated that the terms comprised their essential agreement, but that a formal document would be drafted by the party's attorneys. Before that happened, the seller returned the [0:58:52] check and refused to perform. The investor brought an equity action for specific performance to compel the sale. The equity court ruled that there was a complete and binding contract that must be specifically performed. Will the appellate court likely affirm the lower court's decision? And this is directly relevant. If you are reading this and thinking about it, and have always wondered, like, other than, uh, making sure Eli doesn't get arrested, uh, what does Andrew do on a day-to-day basis, this is the kind of stuff I do on a day-to-day basis. So, uh, so question right in my wheelhouse. Sorry, sadly said, sad. You. Yeah, I don't have as much professional experience doing this, but you know, yeah, [0:59:32] try to do what I can. All right, will the appellate court likely affirm the lower court's decision? A, no, because the closing date was left out and the attorneys were supposed to compose the final contract with all the remaining details put in. B, no, because this type of letter is basically a gentleman's agreement that is not intended to be legally binding. C, yes, because a letter of intent is legally binding if it sets forth the price, describes the business, and is signed by both parties. Or D, yes, because where the letter contains all the essential terms required for a contract, it will be enforced as a contract. Oh, I feel like this is a pretty difficult one because, you know, there's the very naive [1:00:12] legal view, which is, oh, they didn't, you know, they left something out. That's magic. If you leave something out, then no contract. But you've also covered and we've learned a lot on the show that, you know, signatures aren't magic. Contracts aren't necessarily magic. Like there's a lot of room for kind of just reasonableness in these kinds of things. So I'm trying to evaluate now, like leaving out a closing date, is that like vital enough to where this entire contracts would be void because they didn't, because they signed a letter, they laid out the agreement, the price, all the, lots of details that I think are [1:00:52] pretty meaty, you know, like pretty substantial details and they signed it. Okay, so I'm going to try to eliminate two as as usual, which I'm an expert at. If there's anything where I'm as much of an expert at as Andrew, it's eliminating two of these answers. I think pretty much like, do I get a degree for, do I get any sort of law commendation for being just as good as a real lawyer at that? There's got to be something. We already have your picture on the back of a bus. So I would say B, no, because this type of letter is basically a gentleman's agreement and is not intended to be legally binding. I would be [1:01:32] very surprised if that was the correct answer. I hope that's one of the nonsense answers. And then, so this is a tough one because the two yes answers are pretty close and one sounds to me, C sounds better to me, but it wouldn't be impossible for D to be right. But I'm going to stick with tradition and try to eliminate a yes S and a no. I'm going to eliminate D, yes, because where the letter contains all the essential terms required for a contract, it will be enforced as a contract. That sounds close though. That's not an obvious elimination, but I just think if it's a yes answer, C, which is yes, because [1:02:12] the letter of intent is legally binding if it sets forth the price, describes the business and is signed by both parties. That sounds like a better yes answer to me, but I could get burned by this one. That's, that's close. A, no, because the closing date was left out and the attorneys were supposed to compose the final contract with all the remaining details put in. That one very plainly states what I think the question obviously wants some people to answer. And maybe I should be one of those people, but I'm going to go with C, yes, because the letter of intent is legally binding, blah, blah, blah. Because I think, you know, you've both signed a letter, you've laid out, I think, what sounds to me like enough critical details to where backing out, uh, with before and you [1:02:52] know, making the sale, it sounds like that would be something the law would not want to allow you to do. Could be wrong though, this was a difficult one for me. So I'm going with the C is final answer, and I've eliminated B and D. We'll see. All right, and, uh, if you would like to play along with Thomas, uh, you know how to do that. We announce our episodes on Facebook and Twitter, Twitter, just share that out, retweet it out, quote it, include with it the hashtag TTTBE, the reasons for your answer, your answer, obviously, and we will pick a winner next week and shower that person with fame, fortune, and never-ending adulation. [1:03:33] Yeah, and maybe I need to get two in a row wrong to kind of teach everybody a lesson, so we'll see. All right, well, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks so much for patronizing. And of course, Andrew, thank you for Andrew-izing. We'll have to see you guys on Tuesday. Stop breaking the law, asshole! [1:03:56] 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. [1:04:45] This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC. All rights reserved. [1:04:57] I've got a letter here. It's a contract.