OA450: A Christmas Deep-Dive into the COVID Bill

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 450. Nice round number. How you doing, Andrew?

0:01:23 Andrew: I am doing fantastic, and Thomas, not only is it episode 450, it's our Christmas Day episode. So, Merry Christmas, the last year it will be legal for me to wish you a Merry Christmas.

0:01:30 Thomas: Yeah. Gobble, gobble, go... Oh, no, that's not... Sorry. Merry Christmas. I was gonna say, yeah, get

0:01:39 Andrew: Yeah, use them up, Use they're going fast, uh.

0:01:39 Thomas: It in while you can. Ah, the things that, like, 40% of our country actually believe, and it's not even, not even a joke. They they probably believe that fun. Well, uh, Merry Christmas, everybody. Um, yeah, I hope you're, you know, as, as we've said before, our philosophy is we don't take any days off. And, uh. Sometimes you really need our pods during, uh... Because everybody else takes Christmas off. And then you're like, well, what am I listening to? You know? And I hate that. So that's... Hi.

0:01:50 Andrew: Yeah.

0:02:10 Andrew: Garbage.

0:02:11 Thomas: How... This is... Here we are. I gotta say, just by way of something that's on my mind, uh... you in a pre-segment here. I have to say, maybe it's the holiday spirit, Andrew. I'm actually happy about a thing Trump did. It's the weirdest feeling. Yeah, because you know what was happening after the total BS $600 nothing, you know stimulus bill. Everybody on the left who's super smart and just knows everything said that it's Nancy Pelosi's fault, you know, because secretly the corporate Democrats, you You know, of course, they're fine with that, too. And when you know it, Trump's like, actually, I want two thousand dollar stimulus checks. And Nancy Pelosi is like, what? OK, cool. Let's do it. Bills. I'll be on your desk in two seconds. And then all of a sudden, all these takes look as stupid as we both knew they were the whole time. And I just like that was a nice little Christmas gift from Donald Trump.

0:02:11 Andrew: Yeah.

0:02:39 Andrew: I... Yeah. Yeah.

0:03:02 Andrew: That's one way to look at it. We will certainly be talking about that. Um, I, I want to add, uh, one more just round of thanks to our amazing listeners. Um, on last Sunday, uh, we had our Grab Them by the Gavel fundraiser, and final numbers are in. Thomas, you want to take a wild guess as to how much our, and our friends listeners were Able To raise for the Asaf and Warnock campaigns?

0:03:27 Thomas: Oh, I know how much. Are you talking about both of the fundraisers combined or just ours?

0:03:30 Andrew: Uh, we could certainly talk about both of them combined, but I meant the most recent one on Sunday.

0:03:38 Thomas: Well, last I saw it, it was $85,000.

0:03:42 Andrew: That's right. $85,384.

0:03:45 Thomas: That is so awesome.

0:03:46 Andrew: I did. That is, you know, yeah,

0:03:48 Thomas: So all told, combined, our fundraisers is something in the neighborhood of $220,000? Amazing.

0:03:57 Andrew: Very, very close to a quarter of a million dollars raised by podcasters. That sounds

0:04:00 Thomas: There you go. And unlike an eighth of a million dollars, a quarter of a billion dollars sounds better. So there I'm with you. I like saying quarter of million, But anyway, we can all agree a quarter of a million dollars is amazing. I expect we can talk about this, Andrew, but I expect to be made ambassador to maybe to France or have we?

0:04:08 Andrew: Right? To you. Okay. There, Oh, Okay, Good, good. Good, Yeah, Well, This would be, this would be, uh, the Georgia Senate, so you could be ambassador to Alabama, I suppose, right? You know, there goes

0:04:29 Thomas: Oh, never mind. It's just out of the goodness of my heart, actually. Look, was nothing in it for me. I did this out of goodness of My heart. No, I didn't want anything. Well, I'll just take the gavel. I'll take the gap. Okay. Um, that was amazing. Thank you so much to everybody who joined and came. And I know, you know, not everybody's in a position to donate and that is totally understandable, especially with the completely, uh, insufficient stimulus checks being granted these days or past, um, totally understand it. People have volunteered their time though. They've, uh. And, and just, uh hanging out, being part of the chat. That was so cool too, because we love interacting with you. And that was just an all around amazing amazing success of an event. So congrats, everybody.

0:04:37 Andrew: Oh, Absolutely.

0:05:12 Andrew: Um, and you know, you can't have nice things without also having ridiculous things. So as we were getting ready to record for the show, you know, a whole brand new spate of pardons of, I'm truly horrible Human beings, uh, got handed down by Donald Trump. Um, I wonder, we finally finished airing our two-part debate with Randall Eliason. He wrote a rather scathing tweet that says, you know, Donald Trump is attempting via pardon to undo everything the Mueller investigation did, to erase it from history. I wonder if that's made him rethink any of his positions. I don't know, we'll have to ask him. No, I mean that, you know, since I like, look, I enjoyed we I thought we had a good discussion in good faith. I think lots of people enjoyed it.

0:05:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:06:02 Thomas: Probably not. Yeah,

0:06:09 Andrew: But but yeah, we we will definitely do a breakdown on how terrifying these pardons are. But that's not going to be our Christmas episode. How can we do that? We can't do that to you on Christmas.

0:06:22 Thomas: It's a joke. And what sucks is that we're all so maxed out, I barely see anybody talking about it. I saw the headline or whatever, but it's not in any discourse that I'm seeing. So I hope we can bring light to those awful corrupt pardons at some point.

0:06:39 Andrew: We we will. Absolutely.

0:06:42 Thomas: All right. Hey, one more quick announcement. Since it's 4.50, that means there's new intro quotes starting at 4.51. And Andrew already posted the thread on Patreon because he's the best. And you can go there if you're a patron and suggest intro quotes. As always, make sure there's a link with the audio because I can't go track down some line that you remember from something somewhere. There's no way I'm to do that. But if as long as there's a link involved, usually YouTube or, you know, I accept a few other links as long as they work with the easy grabber software I have. And so tell me what it is. I know there are people have been trying to get certain ones in forever. And, you Know, maybe this will be the time. So get on that, everybody.

0:07:24 Clip: The law breaking down

0:07:31 Thomas: All right, let's talk about this omnibus spending bill. Only 5,593 pages, Andrew. So I assume you probably read it only once. Or did you have time to read through it twice? Hmm.

0:07:42 Andrew: I will tell you, I have not read all 5,600 pages of it, but I have read probably a quarter of it. Like I, you know, this is this is what I do. So, yeah. And as you mentioned in the pre-show, as we are recording, Donald Trump has threatened not to sign the bill. Um, the the significance of that is if he fails to sign it by December 28th, um, that essentially becomes a pocket veto, uh, but You know, way to like leave things up in the air over Christmas by, uh, you know, not yeah, not, not, not deliberately vetoing it, uh, just sort of saying, well, maybe I'll do something else, which, um, you know, has the effect of uncertainty Uncertainty. Yeah.

0:08:16 Thomas: Oh. Yeah. Because You know what people need right now, Andrew, is uncertainty. I was, what a political genius, that Trump, gosh, yeah.

0:08:40 Andrew: So, you know, it it sounds great to say that what you want to do is increase the the checks from six hundred to two thousand dollars. But if the net effect of that is to ensure that nothing gets passed before Christmas, that that seems materially worse to me. So everything's in limbo. Look, there is there. There were more than enough votes to override a presidential veto. And and I guess I was going to. So so something like this will get passed. And I also wanted to talk, you know, we we we began in the intro segment about how the like, you know, this is all Nancy Pelosi's fault takes were just, you know, a steaming pile of hot garbage.

0:09:32 Andrew: This is the lame duck session, right, is the time of the lowest amount of leverage that you have as the opposition party that's about to take over the presidency, right? Right. Like it. This is the time in which Republicans are incentivized to pass things for which a Republican president wants to take credit. And we already saw this president doesn't want to take creditor coronavirus relief. Right. Because, you know, it's a Chinese hoax that was cooked up in a Wuhan virus factory. What like it? Who the hell knows? Right. Right. So the idea that the Democrats could have gotten much more early. No, they couldn't. And anybody saying that is is is full of nonsense.

0:10:21 Andrew: The biggest thing, and I'm going to go through sort of the major points. But the biggest thing that I haven't seen people talking about anywhere in any news breakdown of this is this is truly a stopgap bill. Right. The the deadlines that it extends are consistently extended only to March 14th of 2021. Right. And so really what this is, this is a way of doing is saying, OK, people are literally dying. And somehow we have managed to convince Republicans that that maybe isn't a thing that we want to have happen over Christmas.

0:11:04 Thomas: Probably Only because of the Georgia runoffs, by the way. I bet they wouldn't even do anything for more for that. Mm-hmm.

0:11:07 Andrew: Yeah. You are almost certainly correct. So this is designed to get us through the end of the year and the transition to the next Congress and the next president. And that then negotiations will start in earnest on day one, January 21 of the Biden administration to craft new relief because this this bill runs out second week of March. So this was only ever intended as a stopgap measure. So with all that in mind, yeah, is $600 not $600 is not enough. No one thinks that it shouldn't be conceptualized of that.

0:11:54 Andrew: This was never intended to be, you know, something that would, that would wait six months or a year or really provide, you know, any kind of long-term help. On balance, I'm going to tell you why this is probably a better bill than the original CARES Act. There are things that are worse, and I'm going to show you the one big thing that's definitely worse. But the one super bad thing about the original CARES Act that's not present in this one was a giant slush fund to bail out corporations. Right. Those over 500 employees publicly traded. You know, it just just a massive Steven Mnuchin administered slush fund.

0:12:41 Andrew: Not only is that slush fund, is there not only is there not a second slush fund, but this actually pulls back, rescinds any of the unspent funding in that first slush fund. Also, not getting a lot of credit. This bill very clearly reflects drafting that was done by Democrats, right? And that shouldn't be surprising, right, like this everything that we want that got passed, Republicans whittled it down. But think about about the difference between the way in which you write a bill, particularly a 5,593 page bill, right?

0:13:27 Andrew: The person who's doing the hard work, right, gets the benefit of how it's drafted. And, you know, Republicans weren't very interested in drafting most of these provisions and it shows. So let's talk about this. As a lot of folks have said, is appended. It's actually stuck in the middle. It begins on page 1924 of the omnibus spending bill for the year. It is Division N. It was so ramshackle, haphazard added that it's not in the table of contents and the various sub parts are not numbered consecutively. They're not named consistently. It's pretty obvious that I'm the only person that's read this thing.

0:14:17 Thomas: Well. I mean, I read, no, I didn't, I'm not gonna pretend I didn't read, I was nevermind, problem.

0:14:21 Andrew: Oh. Okay. Um. But So let's just go quickly through through what's in it. So, Title One, um, makes some Medicare adjustments and extends, and this actually goes two weeks longer than any other provision in the bill, to March 31st, you know, which, again, uh, not Not a long time. Yeah. Yeah. But that's Title I. Then we have Title II, Subtitle A. This is really, really critical. This extends the unemployment insurance benefits from 39 weeks to 50, and that's to March 14th. There is also some carryover. So if you had partial weeks, you can receive a payment as late as April 5th, but then this is Section 201A3B, quote, "No pandemic unemployment assistance shall be payable for any week beginning after April 5, 2021." So again, our lawmakers will have to get right back to work immediately in the 117th Congress passing new relief because not only will will the money run out?

0:14:40 Thomas: Solved. Yeah.

0:15:32 Andrew: But expressly, the government is prohibited from reimbursing any state for providing additional unemployment compensation after April 5th. And you may have seen this. It is true. The unemployment benefits of $600 a week from the original CARES Act that sat on top of your state qualification, that was too humane and that got reduced to $300 per week. Again, it's way better than zero, but it's Way Worse Than 600. So, you know, I would vote for this bill. I would not be satisfied with this bill, so that's Section 2A.

0:16:19 Andrew: We then move from Section 2, Subtitle A to Title 3, which involves rail workers and which I have to tell you, even I skimmed over a lot of this

0:16:30 Thomas: Just in, Andrew hates rail workers. You heard it here first. Sorry, do we still have rail work? I, oh. I thought I heard the song. I thought we got that machine that can do it faster than the guy. And so, no, okay.

0:16:32 Andrew: Yeah, right. We do. We do, Yeah, I was going to go off on a little bit of a tangent, is railway law is really, really interesting, because now the primary value to of the railroads are the land usage rights that the railroad companies own. Right. And so, for example, when you're laying fiber optic cable, there's been a tremendous amount of litigation over do the easements that the railroads own that allowed them to run the tracks back in 1845, allow them to sell sub easements to cable and telecommunication companies to lay fiber optic cable, for for example. So we could do a whole show on that.

0:17:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:31 Andrew: Not going to do that on this one. But yeah, so rail workers, Title III. Title IV is the oversight for unemployment insurance. Again, I found some interesting stuff here, but nothing I could even pretend our listeners would find interesting. Then we move from Title IV to subchapter V, has return to work reporting requirements, Just oversight, you know, more oversight for those who received additional payments and then sub chapter six, which is some more technical stuff. Then we go from sub chapter 6 to subtitle B.

0:17:31 Thomas: I'm just worried our audience is going to be just be too too hot and bothered by all this Talk, Andrew. I think you'd better slow down.

0:18:16 Andrew: And yeah, I know.

0:18:20 Thomas: If they're anything like you.

0:18:22 Andrew: Yeah. I think this is meant to go back, and it was supposed to come after Title Two, Subtitle A, but who the hell knows. Anyway, um, Subtitle B is the exact same tax credit scheme, this, these are the six hundred dollar checks, right? So exact same mechanism as the CARES Act, except that it's six $600 per person, including $600 per dependent child. It was $500 per dependent child in the last one. This starts at Section 272A on page 1966. It also lowers the maximum income cap from one hundred thousand dollars per person to seventy five thousand dollars per person. Right. So fewer people will receive these checks. And this was true about the original scheme.

0:18:22 Thomas: No,

0:19:11 Andrew: We talked about it when we broke down the CARES Act. It is specifically designed to exclude anyone without a valid Social Security number. Number. So permanent resident aliens don't get it. Dreamers don't get it, you have to have a social security number. The other thing that it excludes, and look, given the length of coronavirus, this will materially affect tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. And those are dependents who are claimed on their parents tax returns. And you're sitting there thinking like, okay, well, Well, how? OK, I guess that makes sense, right? Like if you're claiming them as a dependent, that means they're living in your house.

0:19:57 Andrew: But but consider this situation that that is somebody high school and college graduating seniors. Right. So, yeah, that they may still be living at home now because, you know, it's not the easiest thing in the world to find a house during pandemic. Um, or it, it may just be that they incurred a majority of their parents' expenses before graduating and now they're off on their own, uh, and potentially struggling and they are excluded.

0:20:31 Thomas: And you get nothing.

0:20:32 Andrew: Yeah, and, and that's the thing. The, it is the individual does not receive the check. So, um, you know, so that, that happens. Um, uh, like I said, the the valid identification number is section 272 G4A on page 1981 to 1982. Um, that sort of covers the new checks. Um, the next area, uh, where we get to, in in title three, and you might say, didn't we previously have a title to have a title three? Uh, yes, we did. Um, now we have, uh, title three. The second title three are about the new PPP loans. And, um, and and there, and again, all of this, I, I want to tell you, all ofthis represents what Democrats learned from the first round of PPP loads, right? Right.

0:21:23 Andrew: So first, is a clarification that if you took out a PPP loan and it is forgiven, that that forgiveness will not be a taxable event. And that might seem obvious, wasn't specified in the first bill. And typically, when you have a loan forgiven, the IRS treats that as income. Right. And it is. You had you used to have negative forty thousand dollars coming to you and now you have zero. That's an income of forty thousand dollars. It's going to be forgiven. Then we have some new uses to which the second set of PPP loans can be be put. And those permissible uses include constructing drive-thru windows, erecting sneeze guards and other barriers and stuff like that.

We get, now we're at page 2056, it directs the Treasury Department to create a new application. They have 24 days after the passage of the bill to create a one-page form. And that is for anybody who applied for a PPP loan that was under $150,000. And on that one page form, you will then have to say, one, much your loan was, two, how many employees you did not have to fire as a result of getting the loan, number three, how how much you spent on payroll, and then you sign it under penalty of perjury. You do not have to submit under plenty of perjury.

You don't have to submit any supporting documentation with it. And if you do that, if you fill out that one pager and you give it to your lending institution and your lending institutional, you're not on the hook for forgiving the loan, then the lending institution cannot have an enforcement action brought against them, which is, look, before people start saying, like, oh, yeah, big giveaway to the big corporation. No, no, no. Like, that will incentivize all of the banks that gave out PPP loans to forgive those loans if they were one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or less. And you sign the form. Right. And that's what you want to happen.

0:23:01 Thomas: I Believe you mean under plenty of perjury but yeah, go on, right?

0:23:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:47 Andrew: So it's it's the right result. And any individual applicant, even $150,000 or less, is still required to maintain the supporting documentation for three to four years, depending on which kind of information it is. And you, yeah,

0:24:05 Thomas: Because I do hope that maybe a Biden administration can actually staff, you know, the IRS to go after, uh, crooks who are stealing money, like all the, when you find out that, like, Tom Brady bought a jet with this stuff or, you know, every uh, Jared Kushner got a bunch of it. Like, I, I really, really hope we can go after those people for this.

0:24:14 Andrew: He did. He did. I mean, so let's be clear what this bill does with those categories. If your loan is over one hundred and fifty thousand, you will still have to prove to Your lender that you use the money appropriately, and the lender can be prosecuted, can have an IRS enforcement action taken against them if they just waive the loan and then get federal reimbursement for it without doing their due diligence. So all the big dollar loans, loans, uh, still have to go through an approval process, which is what you want, but for the small dollar loans, the incentive is for the lending institutions to forgive them and get reimbursed.

And then for the IRS, if, if there is legitimate, I was going to use the phrase legitimate fraud, which is a great oxymoron, um, but, uh, if, if their is fraud, the Iris can still go after you. You, individually, as the taxpayer, even if it's under one hundred and fifty thousand. So, yeah, if, if somebody, you know, if Jared Kushner wouldn't screw around with one hundred grand, you know, that's that's what falls out of his couch cushions. But yeah, but no, if, if there is fraud and graft, even at the under one hundred and sixty thousand dollar level. And let me be honest, right? Right. Like most of my small business clients that I shepherded through the first PPP loan process received twenty, thirty, fifty

0:24:27 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

0:25:34 Thomas: Not even worth his time, that's what his dad loaned him just to go out on a Friday night.

0:26:04 Andrew: Thousand dollars in loans to cover payroll. Right. Like one hundred and fifty is the right dividing line. But but a lot of people got a lot less.

0:26:04 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah. But also that that feels like a lot of money until you realize it's what has it been now? Nine, 10 months of payroll. Like, I mean, that's like a couple employees. That's that wasn't a lot to go around.

0:26:24 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and the more you pay your employees, right, the fewer of them that that covers.

0:26:27 Thomas: Yeah, the worse it is. Yeah? Right?

0:26:30 Andrew: Yeah, exactly. That's the treatment of past PPP loans. Then this provides one hundred and fifty billion dollars, one hundred forty five point... one hundred and forty seven point forty five billion, to be precise, in second draw PPP loans. So here's how you qualify for that. Again, Again, you heard the disclaimer at the beginning of the show, if you're a small business, call your lawyer. Like, don't take legal advice from a podcast. I might be a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer, you may not represent, you know, rely upon this. But here's basically what it does. Um, you're a business that for any individual quarter in 2020, you can show a 25% reduction as compared to the previous quarter, the same quarter from 2019, right? And, and, and what that does is that tracks for seasonal businesses, right. Like, You know, you're not saying, "Oh, look, look at how terrible my ice cream shop did in, you know, quarter one of 2020 versus the" summer of 2019, right, like it but but

0:27:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, plus, not only that, I means a lot these tech businesses have done better after, you know, during this pandemic. So yeah, maybe they shouldn't get stuff.

0:27:38 Andrew: Yeah Right, yeah, so what you do is you compare Q1 of 2020 vs Q2 of 2019, or any other quarter, if you can show a 25% reduction in gross receipts compared to a year previously, this is page 2065, you are eligible to apply for a second draw PPP loan. That second draw loan will be, you will be entitled up to two and a half times one year's payroll, or two million dollars, is smaller. Also, if you are a business that was formed on or after February 15th. Right. So then you have no prior data with which to compare. You may be eligible for 2.5 times payroll or up to $2 million.

0:28:36 Andrew: Page 2204, publicly traded entities are prohibited from receiving second draw loans. So, you know, that's a good thing. That fixed a big loophole that was in the first act. Um, the, uh, the overall cap on number of employees was reduced from 500 to 300. Um, I'd like to see that go down even more, but, um, you know, that, that again, I, uh, think a good, a good sign. Um, and those are the new second draw PPP loans. Um, The Rest of the Act, uh has a bunch of catch up stuff in it, right? Right. Twenty five billion dollars in low income rental assistance, an extension of the eviction moratorium.

0:29:25 Andrew: And this is this is real. You know, when we talk about this being a stopgap, it extends it. The federal eviction moratorium to January 31st of 2021. But, hey, at least you won't be kicked out on Christmas. Right. That's Section 502, page 2281. Under a billion dollars. So, again, like think about, you know, the sums that we've talked about. There now been eight hundred and six billion dollars in PPP loans that that have been authorized and for which lenders, lending institutions, will be reimbursed by tax dollars. Under one billion dollars is set aside in this bill for SNAP and other welfare programs. Programs.

0:29:36 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. No.

0:30:09 Andrew: Last thing, Title VIII. Well, I don't know if it's the last thing, but Title VII, sorry, I've got a lot of notes here. It's big bill. Forgives U.S. Postal Service borrowing that was in the original CARES Act. So, you know, you might recall the ongoing, we've talked about this, Republican efforts to starve the Postal service into submission. Well one of them is by treating service differently than other government agencies. And so when it borrows money, right, that gets added to the negative ledger of, oh, see, the post office owes so much money. Well, what's that like? Well, that's money they borrowed from another part of the government. Well you know that's not how, for example, that'S not how the Social Security Trust Fund is treated, right? But it is how Republicans treat the postal service so that they can try and can ostensibly show that it is insolvent.

0:30:18 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:31:09 Andrew: Title VIII, page 2388, forgives that postal service borrowing from the original CARES Act. That's a tiny amount for expanding rural broadband, so that's a good thing. Title X is what rescinds all of the unspent money in the slush fund for big businesses. So put all of that together. And again, what you see is this is the skeleton of a democratic crafted bill, right?

0:31:38 Thomas: Huh.

0:31:39 Andrew: Where the numbers greatly reduced, the numbers were reduced. But all of the changes that I could find with respect to the original bill are the kinds of things that we talked about. Well, you know, look, would I like the numbers? Sure, I'd like But this is not a Republican bill that, you know, gets Democratic sign on by, you know, doing one or two good things. This is a Democratic crafted bill to try and help middle class and struggling real Americans. And you wouldn't know that if you read news reports.

0:32:15 Thomas: Well, okay. You know, I'm seeing a lot of stuff that's like, oh, this has 80 billion in aid to Israel or something. And you're like, what?

0:32:23 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. That's because this is stuck into the omnibus spending bill. All that stuff was already there.

0:32:26 Thomas: Yeah. Sorry. Can you just explain that for the lay people here. I'm sure most people who just see this on the news or whatever, they read this and they think this is the bill. So what Congress did is they're like, we need to give some people money because everybody's dying and no one has a job and they're going to get evicted, all that. Let's come up with a bill. And then they come up with this and you're like what is this mess? What is this monstrosity? But that's not really what's going on. Perhaps we should have done this at the beginning, but we're

0:32:29 Andrew: Yeah, no, no. That's but it's it's a it's a good that's the exact right question to ask. So here's what happens is every year the the Congress passes an omnibus appropriations bill. OK. And that bill funds the federal government. And when you think about times in which we've had federal government shutdowns, it's because the parties have been unable to reach an agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the U.S. government. Right. And that's why, like, you know, the last time we had one, national parks had to shut down and stuff like that.

0:33:44 Andrew: Right? OK, so those bills are 100% independent of COVID relief bills. And what happened here was the COVID relief stuff was stuck into the middle of the general regular appropriation bill for 2020. So all of those things that you see, the $80 billion for Israel, every crazy provision, with the exception of what we're going to talk about in our wildcard segment, something that was inserted as part of the bargaining for COVID relief, leaf, it's just part of the ordinary horse trading for the appropriations bill to fund the government that goes on every single year. So, Yeah.

0:34:33 Thomas: So, This is, A stupid question, is this basically the whole federal budget in an act that they do every year, or what, like, are there multiple of these, or, okay.

0:34:43 Andrew: There, Are there, are multiple of these, but yes, that's that's

0:34:46 Thomas: So, That's why all the military bullcrap, And the jets and, The whatever's in there, it's not, Like, hey, We, Need, You, Know, what, the sick people with COVID need jets. It's like, this is, I mean, I still hate it, but I'm just saying, like, like, it's not as though this was something they came up with for this purpose. It's just this was packed into the omnibus spending bill.

0:34:47 Andrew: Exactly right. Yep. Yeah. All That stuff, Is, In there, That, Is exactly right.

0:35:08 Thomas: Still hate it, but I think that does make you, you know, but it does. I think a lot of people are out there misunderstanding what's happening here. And, you Know, it looks to a lot Of people like, oh, yeah, the Democrats caved and gave them all these jets and stuff in order to get everything. It's like, well, not really.

0:35:08 Andrew: Yeah. You You should Yeah.

0:35:25 Andrew: No. So the negotiations were over. You would have the Israel and the jets and all of that other stuff no matter what. Right. That was a separate ongoing negotiation between the House and the Senate over the course of the entire year. And and when you're sitting there thinking, wait, why was it a negotiation? Remember, a third of the members of the Republicans in Congress would just as soon not fund anything in the government that isn't the Department of Defense.

0:35:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:58 Andrew: Right. So, yeah.

0:35:58 Thomas: Yeah. By the way, let's take a minute to all remember how much we hate Rand Paul, because, oh, my God, that guy voted against it, did a speech. Oh, does money grow on trees? You know, it's so weird. I'll have to go back and check, Andrew. Maybe you remember just off the top of your head. Did he vote for or against the $1 trillion, you know, hole blown in the budget by giving tax money back to rich people? Did he for? I can't remember. Gosh, if only Only there was a record of who voted which way on that thing.

0:36:05 Andrew: Yeah.

0:36:24 Andrew: If yeah. If only there were a record of the zero Republicans that voted against that, that somehow we could keep them all straight. Yeah, that would.

0:36:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Weird that there's no talk of money trees and all the crap, you know, during that. But when we want to give people who are dying a few hundred dollars to die, but with a few hundred dollars, I guess it doesn't even do anything. But anyway, when we're going to kind of help people, oh, what is a money tree, a magic money tree? God, it's so infuriating.

0:36:45 Andrew: Yeah yeah. Yeah. And what's super weird is the net effect, right? Like every economist that's taken a look at this has said the net effect of giving people a second stimulus of $600 in late December is that almost all of that is going to be spent to retire consumer debt, right. That is they will will pay off the credit cards they have maxed out, partially pay off, the credit guards they have waxed out trying to scrape by, you know, not having a job or being drastically underemployed through the holiday season. So, you know, it's not even if you are 100 percent evil and you only want corporations to get money, a huge chunk of those of those monies are going to be turned around and given to credit card companies. So, yeah, your outrage is insufficient, is what I'm saying.

0:37:05 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, don't tell me that. That. I can ratchet it up, Andrew. I try to keep my yelling to a minimum on the show. This is me at a minimum. All right. We're going to run out of time for everything. Is there anything else we need to cover in this gigantic thingy? Well, I know it's kind of breaking news as we're recording because we're going a little early since, you know, it's Christmas and everything. But do you have any read on what Trump is trying to do? I actually don't feel like I 100 percent do have have a read on what Trump is trying to do. I feel like he doesn't care really. Um, other than maybe he'll want, he, you know, it's possible he could want his image to be a little better. You know, he's already knows he lost. He's got, you Know, maybe, maybe if he passed more stimulus, gave bigger checks to people, he'd be, youknow, more fondly remembered in his mind or something. Or is it really just sabotage? Like he's just killing the whole thing. I actually don't know. No.

0:37:52 Andrew: Nope, nope.

0:38:38 Andrew: It it feels to me like sabotage. But, you know, I I am not known for being charitable to Donald Trump and it's Christmas. So, you know, maybe maybe I should. But but now look like here's the the clear like Mitch McConnell has staked out the evil. Right. He said, I'm not going to sign on to a big, expensive bill that then can be laid on the doorstep of Donald Trump. I want to blame Democrats for having to spend money. That's why it's hacked down to sort of the bare minimum. And, you know, you force them to come back so that Mitch McConnell, like a month from now, could be like, well, I don't understand. We just spent two trillion dollars on these people. What what have they done? Right. So we know that that is the classic Republican game plan. And then the question, I think, on the Trump side is, you know, is he is he just trying to delay the process even further? Could be. Or, you Know, or it could be wanting to take credit for for bigger checks. Right.

0:39:09 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:39:47 Thomas: Legally? I

0:39:49 Andrew: That's also that's real thing.

0:39:49 Thomas: Mean, it could be. So Honestly, what's the, um, but from the legal perspective, how does this work within the bill? I've seen some talk of like, well, you know, this could just ruin everything because then they have to go back and redo it. Or can they like, I guess this will kind of reveal what Trump is after. Could they just still pass this one and then insist on another one that's just checks or like just revise the checks part of it? How much of a wrench does this throw into everything?

0:39:50 Andrew: Yeah.

0:40:12 Andrew: So here's the answer to that. You will not have a separate bill. But what the House of Representatives, I believe, will do is the middle, go to page 2036, right, and strike out $600 and replace it with $2,000 for each adult. Leave everything else in place. Right. Pass that bill. It'll have a little red sticky tab on it. Right, to say, hey, we only changed, you know, one line on one page. And then it will go into a reconciliation process, which is a joint committee between the Senate and the House that then says basically, because whenever you have a 5600 page bill like this, there are slight variations between. The version that gets passed by the House

0:40:36 Thomas: Easy peasy. Yeah.

0:41:07 Thomas: Well,

0:41:08 Andrew: And the version that gets pass by the Senate. And the point of reconciliation is to say, OK, what, what did both houses actually pass? Right. And it will be up to reconciliation to decide whether the bill they present to Donald Trump on Friday is the one with the 2000, or the one of the 600. But that decision is going to get.

0:41:34 Thomas: I mean, they try to avoid the reconciliation by passing an identical bill, right? So wouldn't the House just re-vote on that bill to save the time? Because that's long process.

0:41:38 Andrew: Right. Yeah. Well, but the the the Senate would then have to. So that so the drafting is goingto start in the House because Mitch McConnell is not going to introduce the bill in the Senate. And then the question will be whether you can.

0:41:48 Thomas: Uh-huh. Right. Well essentially the House will have passed both, so couldn't the Senate, you know, if they pass one or the other as long as it's identical, then it can just go straight to Trump, right? Okay.

0:41:59 Andrew: Right, correct. But if the Senate passes is a pretty big, is pretty big if.

0:42:08 Thomas: Yeah. And I know, and I know if we're going long, but yeah, true.

0:42:13 Andrew: And we don't even have people on the floor, so we have no idea how any of this is going to work out.

0:42:17 Thomas: I got a call BS on one. You said my rage wasn't enough for Rand Paul in his tirade, pretending it's 2009, you know, first term Obama with the, you Know, like he essentially teleported back in time and pretended that's where he was with the money trees and all that crap. Um, he, he mentioned, he goes on and on. It's a five, 5,500 page bill. Nobody's read it. Blah, blah, blah. And I'm sitting there thinking, yeah, boy, that is a lot. And he, I think he even did a tweet that was like, well, if a person reads it, you know, whatever, like a, like a high school algebra problem, uh, person reads at this rate and then blah, blah, yeah.

0:42:51 Andrew: On a train leaving Des Moines at 7 in the morning, yeah.

0:42:54 Thomas: Exactly. Containing one reader of the bill. And they, uh. And And I'm sitting there thinking, um, this is the omnibus spending bill. So you, it's not, this didn't all get drafted yesterday. It's not as though they all up, bam, we went from blank to 5,500 pages, one. And then two, you have staffers, right? And like, but amongst all the Republicans in Congress, maybe I'm wrong about this. You can tell me, um. Know, divvy up the work a little bit to where like you have enough staffers to where Where, sure, if one person were reading the bill straight through, it'd take 80 hours or whatever he said it was. How about 80 people? You know? Do we not? Yeah.

0:43:30 Andrew: Each taking an hour, yeah, look,

0:43:32 Thomas: And then briefing on what it is. I mean, it's such a pathetic excuse in my mind. Like, you don't have time or you can't figure that out? Isn't this your job?

0:43:42 Andrew: So I don't know that I can steel man Rand Paul, because that, that, that man defies stealing, um, but, uh, parts of this, right, the first is the fainting couch for, it's 5500 pages long is ridiculous in that these omnibus appropriations bills are always 3500 pages long, right. Like it's it's not like it felt like the average bill is a, a page and a half, right. And this one was, you know, out of hand, like, yeah.

0:44:06 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and if you're repassing the same ones, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, plus, if you're always passing the same, you know, it's not as though the budget drastically changes each year. It's probably like, all right, what happened with the Jets? What happened with, you Know, what I'm with this thing, what happen with that thing? And you're tracking it throughout the year, wouldn't you be right?

0:44:16 Andrew: Yes.

0:44:28 Andrew: But, but, so now let's go to the, to the flip side, which is, there is, and Common Cause has been on this for, for example, like for 30 years, there is legitimate criticism over the way that the sausage gets made, right, like I I, I, I think it is a hundred percent valid to say, hey, let's break up these bills, let's vote on everything separately, let's have things be in easily digestible chunks, um, one of the Obama era reforms, uh, was, was supposed to be, um, that, that bills had to have their public text posted to the internet 72 hours before any vote, um, I, I still think that would be a great, I mean, workaround. And the next time we had a Republican president, I guess everything would be an emergency. But like that, that would still be a great idea. Right. Like I, so, so I don't disagree with the sentiment of let's have more time and more oversight and less things smushed together. And all of those are valid concerns. None of them are reasons to vote against COVID relief. Right.

0:44:44 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah,

0:45:42 Andrew: And none of them or anything. And Rand Paul knows this. The

0:45:46 Thomas: I feel like Rand Paul's neighbor needs to have another word with him. But you'll tell me if that can stay in the show.

0:45:50 Andrew: Yeah, I Feel like I think we're probably OK on that one. Uh, yeah.

0:45:59 Thomas: OK, I just just wanted to talk to him. That's all I mean. Anyway,

0:46:02 Andrew: Yeah.

0:46:04 Clip: Thank you, Dr. Hibbert. I rest my case. You rest your case? What? Oh, no. I thought that was just a figure of speech. Case closed.

0:46:13 Thomas: All right, Andrew, this was one that I this was kind of a listener Thomas S request. I caught this. I'm sure a lot of people saw on social media clips of like Lou Dobbs, and I think there may have been a few others, but I mainly focused on the Lou Lou Dobbs one, had to run like a segment, a bizarre feeling segment that was like debunking himself regarding election fraud.

0:46:35 Andrew: It's so good. Yep.

0:46:37 Thomas: And it's been presented as like their claims are so bad that like because of a lawsuit, they've had to debunk themselves on TV. I just, this is perfect for OA. What is happening there? Is the popular conception of that that's being shared around Twitter and all that? Is that correct? Is that what's happening? Give us the breakdown.

0:46:54 Andrew: It It it is, so let's go super quick on this. Um, these are, uh, there is now one lawsuit has been filed, uh, by the CEO of Dominion. A separate lawsuit has been threatened by the CEO of Smartmatic and will get filed. OK, so the CEO of Dominion, Eric Coomer, I'm going to include the complaint in the show notes. We were going to go sort of close, but like we don't have time for that now. Now, so what I'm going to tell you is these are defamation lawsuits. And what makes it powerful is as follows. Number one, the respective CEOs of Dominion and Dominion Voting Systems, Inc.

0:47:48 Andrew: I didn't even know the whole name of the company off the top of my head. Right. And Smartmatic. These are not public figures. Right.

0:47:57 Thomas: Smart-matic.

0:47:57 Andrew: These are Mr.

0:47:58 Thomas: It sounds like a product Homer Simpson would invent, by the way, or

0:48:04 Andrew: Are, um, lawsuits about the weaponization and doxing of anybody who's gotten in the way of Sydney Powell and Q Anon and Trump supporters. It, I have to tell you, the the Dominion lawsuit, the Coomer lawsuit, uh, sues Eric Metaxas, which makes me so happy, uh, That that guy deserves every lawsuit and then some. By the way, Opening Arguments Media, LLC, a Maryland limited liability company. You want to sue us for defamation? Come at us, Eric. You sack of crap.

0:48:22 Thomas: That guy.

0:48:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:39 Andrew: So here's why it's powerful. OK, even with respect to a public figure, it is a knockThat's a slam for defamation if you published a statement that is false with either reckless disregard for its truth or knowing falsity. And so one of the reasons that you see demands for retractions is if you serve a demand that somebody retract their statement and then they do not, well, now it's super easy to establish knowing falsity.

0:49:15 Andrew: I sent you a piece of paper that proved to you this wasn't true and you refused to back down. Now, down case of knowing

0:48:52 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. Right. Well, plus,

0:49:27 Andrew: Falsely. So

0:49:27 Thomas: I'm sitting here as an American who knows a little bit about this law, but forget that for a moment. I know it's really hard to bust anyone on bad mouthing celebrities and all that, like the New York Times, we solve and standard and all that. But we're talking about some companies here. And if I know America, I feel like America would want to make it so you can't just, you know, and for good reason, like you're totally slamming. And maybe I have this wrong. Let me know. But if you're totally slamming a company as like you've failed in your, you know, business venture that you're doing and your product. I'm making claims about how there's fraud involved in it and they don't work or whatever it might be. That sounds like, you now, some tortious interference. That sounds like some tortfeasors. So, is that right?

0:50:07 Andrew: That is potentially valid. I will tell you, I was sort of surprised, right, because one of the lessons you get on day one of civil procedure is, you know, sue everybody and let God sort it out. Right. I will tell you, Eric Coomer's lawsuit is only on behalf of him individually and not on behalf half of Dominion voting systems.

0:50:30 Andrew: Um, and part of that is because it, it has enabled, but again, I, I don't understand why you wouldn't uh have both file as plaintiffs, um, but for example, right, the, the fact pattern allows you to recount the way in which the right-wing media bubble has gone after Dr. Coomer personally. And like you and I don't listen to OANN, so we miss this. But like it, the stuff they did, the stuff that Eric Metaxas repeated is pretty terrifying. Right. That, that Coomer was supposed to have had a high level call with Antifa. Right? I'm not kidding. An

0:50:20 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Huh. That's interesting.

0:51:18 Thomas: High

0:51:19 Andrew: Antifa conference call in which, yeah, yeah.

0:51:19 Thomas: Level call. A high level call with Antifa. Wow. You got through to the board of Antifa or was it, you know, the treasurer? Was CFO? What's a high-level Antifa call? Can't wait to hear about that.

0:51:35 Andrew: I was going to elide over this, but I'm going to read you. It's paragraph 50. So this is a guy named Joseph Altman, right?

0:51:42 Thomas: Was it a shareholders meeting in Antifa Inc.?

0:51:46 Andrew: He alleges that he secretly infiltrated Antifa, right. Paragraph 50, This starts at page 23. I will read this. We'll go quickly. After the results of the election were called for Joe Biden, Altman co-hosted a conservative daily podcast. On that podcast, he alleged to have learned almost two months earlier of a conspiracy to elect the president of the United States. Altman claimed he gained this information after infiltrating Antifa, which despite his interest in the election and public and prolific podcasting schedule. Boy, somebody is going to put that about us in a lawsuit one

0:51:46 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Oh, we

0:52:22 Andrew: Day. It's going to be fun. Altman apparently took No action at the time to report this alleged threat to democracy. Waiting until November 9th, 2020, Altman began his podcast saying, "Let's not sugarcoat this. We're going to expose someone inside of Dominion Voting Systems specifically related to Antifa and related to someone that is so far left and is controlling the election and his fingerprints are in every state. So I want you to understand that what we're about to show you, you have to share, the conversation will be about a man named Eric Coomer, C-O-O-M-E-R." And then he, Altman says, "I infiltrated an Antifa conference call in late September with unknown and unverified participants," the complaint notes. And Altman claimed that while on this purported call, one of these unknown participants was referred to as Eric.

0:52:22 Thomas: Earned it. My

0:53:12 Andrew: And another allegedly explained, oh, Eric, Eric is the Dominion guy. Right. Right. And Altman said, when another participant asked, what are we going to do if F and Trump wins? Eric responded, which Altman paraphrased as, don't worry about the election. Trump is not going to win. I made F-ing sure of that. Ha ha ha ha. Right. And it says it's got the transcript has, you know, insert evil laughter here.

0:53:32 Thomas: God. I can only assume this was all holograms or whatever, like one of the Star Wars prequels or whatever. Like a meeting of the, they're all there. And then, like, the infiltrator shows up and they're like, Like, oh, that is some delightfully stupid stuff.

0:53:45 Andrew: Yeah. Carrie Fisher comes on the Call. Oh yeah, oh gosh, so I I I did say earlier, Eric Coomer, Eric Coomer is not the CEO. He is the director of product strategy and security for Dominion. So, I, anyway, you read the complaint, he really, really did go after this guy personally and viciously, that Eric Trump retweeted out his face. Right. I mean, it's just, it's juste gross. Right. And, you know, don't, don't worry about the election. Trump's not going to win. I made sure of that. And, and so, yeah, if you are a gigantic multinational media corporation, you look at that and go, OK, we've been lying about Joe Biden, who's probably not going, going to sue us, um, but maybe this guy is going to sue us, and now he has, um, and a a lawsuit, uh, on behalf of, uh, Smartmatic is is coming up next, and that is why you saw Lou Dobbs, uh, debunk himself on the air, because um I mean it's just, oh

0:54:54 Thomas: Yeah. Does that do anything? I mean, if he sneaks in a little segment where he's like, someone else is saying, well, we, none of, none of this is backed up by anything, you know, if he just sneaks that, does that basically case closed, to solve it? Okay. It'll

0:55:08 Andrew: No, it does, it does not, so, so here's what that solves Right.

0:55:11 Thomas: Be part of his defense though I guess

0:55:13 Andrew: It is a defense against subsequent broadcasts. Right. To say, hey, look, you contacted us once I knew it was false. We retracted and we never said it again. But it is not a defense against the original publication, right? It is not the fact that once you definitely knew it was false, you retracted, right, you still have to prove if it's a public figure, know, where your standards were, right. Right. If it's if it's an ordinary private figure, then the standard is negligence. Right. Like you have to say, hey, we used good journalistic standards, which I'm talking about Fox News.

0:55:59 Andrew: So you heard me starting to chuckle there. Right. But like that would be the typical way in which you would defend yourself in an ordinary defamation lawsuit. Right. You would say, oh, this is a private figure here. Here's the standards we use to verify the story. We vetted it the same as every other story. We ran with it. When we learned this story might not be true, we withdrew and retracted. And that is typically the way in which you mount your defense. Right. And unless you have really good evidence with respect to the first part, then typically plaintiffs don't go forward you have a successful retraction, even if the retraction doesn't solve all of the damage to it.

0:56:45 Andrew: Right. So, you know, the CEO of Smartmatic, for example, has said was was asked by The New York Times. I'm going to include that link in the show notes. Would you settle for a retraction? And he said, is the apology going to reverse the false beliefs of tens of millions of people who believe these lies? Then I could be satisfied. So, yeah.

0:57:01 Thomas: Yeah geez I mean it's a very real harm being done, and I hope that they have to pay some consequences for it. Yeah.

0:57:12 Andrew: So I do, too. And I will tell you that that defamation is the kind of vehicle, right? Like this is this is the appropriate kind of vehicle for resolving these kinds of claims, right? Like it is, we it's why journalistic standards exist in the first place. It's not entirely why, right. One of the reasons why we have journalistic standard is because many, many journalists are professionals and are proud of their profession and strive to abide by their canons of ethics. But certainly one of the the reasons in which for-profit media companies adhere to journalistic standards of ethics is as a defense to fraud cases and so um as a as a offense to defamation cases um and so uh right like if you ask a lawyer like hey, what remedies are available to us when OAN decides to become a cargo cult of a news organization and, like, you know, they look, they, they got news in their name.

0:58:11 Andrew: They look like they're a news outfit, but, you know, they just make stuff up and put Sidney Powell on the air. One of the answers to that is, yeah, when you hurt people by trampling all over their rights, by publishing false stories without caring whether they're true or false, then, yeah. That's when people bring defamation lawsuits. And I should add, Coomer, for example, is represented by Charlie Kane, ex-big law guy, a credible lawyer who is not going to decompose during oral arguments. I wish I could read more from this lawsuit to you. So I'll link it. Will say the New York Times article that I'm going to link is also really great.

0:58:58 Andrew: It interviews somebody who is an academic who has talked about potential actual vulnerabilities in voting machines, A guy named Doug Jones, who's a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa. And he said, yeah, so Sidney Powell called me to try and get me to join their lawsuits because, you know, I've written the major academic paper on the security of voting systems.

0:59:28 Andrew: Quote, they spent an hour going point by point over claims that would wind up in a deposition. And speaking of the liaison from Sidney Powell, the cybersecurity expert, quote, he seemed sane. But every time I would ask him for evidence that would support one of these allegations, he would squirm off to a different allegation. Mr. Jones said as the conversation were on, he wondered, quote. Was someone trying to pull a Borat on me? End of quote. Quote. So apparently that's what it's like talking to to Sidney Powell's minions is well.

1:00:00 Thomas: Couldn't

1:00:01 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

1:00:03 Thomas: Alright, let's thank our new patrons at patreon.com/law. Thank you so much for joining, on lots of goodies always coming your way. Um, yeah, okay, intro quotes, we got that, picking new intro quotes, we got, uh, probably, uh, the Q&A coming up again soon, all kinds of stuff. Um, Andrew, why don't you start us off.

1:00:23 Andrew: To JohnMichael Bell, Jack Donovan, Louis Dejoy for Prison, yeah, to Deb, Susan the Great, and Maybe the Dingo ate your Roy Cohn. Take it away, Thomas.

1:00:35 Thomas: Thank you to Judy Jahoda, Adam Ridley, SUPARMAN, Mario Spam, Michael D Cloutier, or Claudia, I don't know, and Eric Zeckman. Thank you so much, new patrons.

1:00:49 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

1:00:55 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE. Porked streak. Pork'd a streak. It's never going to happen, but I can always hope. Impossible book, question number 5?

1:01:05 Andrew: Four.

1:01:06 Thomas: 4? This says 4. 4?

1:01:07 Andrew: Just four. Yeah.

1:01:08 Thomas: Oh, wow. Feels longer because I get every single one wrong One of

1:01:14 Andrew: All right, Thomas, a man was arrested as the main suspect in a murder investigation. He was brought into an interrogation room, but was not read his Miranda rights.

1:01:24 Andrew: A police officer asked the man, where were you on the night of May 2nd? The man then proceeded to confess to the murder. He also told the officer where to find the murder weapon. Weapon. The then realized that he accidentally forgot to read the man his Miranda rights. He reported his mistake to the chief, who decided to place the man in a holding cell while they searched for the weapon.The weapon was recovered. Two days later, the man was brought back into the interrogation room where he was questioned by a different officer. Prior to questioning, the officer properly read the men his Miranda rights. The man stated that he understood his rights and repeated his confession, although he left out any discussion of the murder weapon. At his trial, the man admitted that both of his statements were voluntarily made, but argued that they should each be suppressed, along with the weapon, each of were all of which were fruit of a Miranda violation, which if any pieces of evidence should be suppressed. A,

1:01:40 Thomas: These. Yeah. Oh, Wow Well, this is another one that's going to be impossible because I feel like cops get away with whatever, so it'll be fine, but also that's not how the law should work, but okay, let's see. Hmm.

1:02:27 Andrew: Right, A, both of the confessions and the weapon should be suppressed. B, the first confession and the weapon should be suppressed, but the second confession should be admitted. C, the first confession should be suppressed, but the weapon and the second confession should be admitted. Or D, both of the confessions should be suppressed, and the weapons should be admitted. All

1:02:52 Thomas: So I mean, this is a Miranda thingy, being pretty clear. It says a man was arrested, so yep, Miranda writes, um, realized he accidentally forgot, uh, reported mistake the chief, and what, they didn't really fix it. They went and found the weapon first, and then two days later, brought back proper Mirandizing, and then they just get him to say the same thing again. Gosh, I don't know how the law works on this, that's tough. Um, he said that he understood his rights and repeated his confession, although he left out any discussion of the murder weapon. That's interesting, I feel like the murder, my instincts are, A, they could get away with anything, so this doesn't matter, I, but think the thing that comp, uh, complicates it is at his trial the man admitted that both of his statements were voluntarily made.

1:03:38 Thomas: That, that complicates it. But I still think like, I even if you volunteer information, I feel like if you didn't get read your Miranda rights, it doesn't matter. Otherwise that's again, it's kind of a, a cheat to the, the Miranda rights. Um, so let's go through my instinct without fully processing those answers is it all feels bad. So I could see a question. I can see an answer being like, like none of this should count, but maybe if, if part of it counts, I would say you don't get the murder weapon part because that, that was never redone. So that's kind of my instinct. Let's see. A, both confessions and weapons should be suppressed. Okay. That's a possibility. Like it's all fruit of the poison tree thingy that you brought up before. B, the first confession and the weapon should be some suppressed, but the second confession could, should be admitted That, I, ugh, that could really be it.

1:04:25 Thomas: B is a strong contender for me. C, the first confession should be suppressed, but the weapon and the second confession. Why the weapon, though? Let me get the details on the weapon. That makes no sense. But he admitted to the weapon they used that. They found the weapon was recovered. I feel like you can't count the weapon I'm pretty strong on that. I'm going to put my foot down on that, no counting the weapon weapon. So no C. D, both the confessions should be suppressed, but the weapon should be admitted. I mean, there could be some crazy rule that you're going to tell me for that, but I'm going to eliminate C and D. I think it's pretty solidly A and B. And I think the fact that they came in and Mirandized him and he knew his rights and still repeated his confession, I think its B, the first confession, the weapon, should be suppressed, the second confession should be submitted.

1:05:19 Thomas: I'm gonna go the straightforward forward to answer. We'll see if I'm yet to get one of these. Pork the streak. Pork the streak! Okay, final answer B.

1:05:28 Andrew: Right, and if you'd like to play along with Thomas, you know how to do that. Just share out this episode on social media. Include the hashtag T3BE, include the hashtag PorkTheStreak, week include your reason, your guests, and your reasons therefore. We will pick a winner and shower that winner with never-ending fame and fortune. Fame and fortunate not guaranteed, right?

1:05:45 Thomas: Someone was asking us, like, oh, does pork the streak good or bad? I'm like, well, it depends on the streak, I mean, obviously if I have a good streak,I don't want to pork it, but if I have a bad streak,I absolutely want to Pork it. Pork away. Doing everything I can to pork over here. Well, that's our show. We hope you enjoy the very last Christmas before the evil Democrats take away your right to even say Merry Christmas. So enjoy it while it lasts, everybody.

1:05:59 Andrew: Yeah thank you Merry Christmas from us to you. Happy holidays, and we'll see you soon.

1:06:18 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

1:06:52 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.