OA679: Norm Can't Stop Effing Up at Lawyering

Transcript

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

0:01:18 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 679. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew Torres, the real lawyer in the house. How are you doing?

0:01:26 Andrew: I'm good, Thomas. How are you doing?

0:01:28 Thomas: Doing well. Just very busy and tired, but that's okay.

0:01:34 Andrew: Well, you do, you know, produce all the podcasts, so, you know, and all the children.

0:01:39 Thomas: And all the children. I do produce all the children, yep.

0:01:43 Andrew: I warned you when you, you know, were about to have number of children exceeds number of hands. But, you know, there you go.

0:01:52 Thomas: Fortunately, we still both have two hands, so we're up by one. Pairs of hands. Oh, yeah, just my uh Yeah, no, I'm, I'm doing well. I'm excited for the show today. It's, it's sort of a grab bag, there's so much stuff, but also key updates on the Biden docs. I do think that's I think a lot has happened since we were able to record last on the topic, a lot has developed. And so let's see, anything else we need to announce or talk about? We got a good Law'd Awful Movies in the works, I know it's a little bit, we shoot for the middle of the month, it's it's a little late, but, you know, we'll get it out to you. Don't worry. And it's that we have something really good planned. And

0:01:56 Andrew: I just meant yours, right? Yeah, right.

0:02:08 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:30 Thomas: Yeah, I think that's that's about it for announcements. So why don't we get to it?

0:02:35 Andrew: Do it, yeah.

0:02:36 Clip: Down the law, down the law.

0:02:40 Thomas: So Biden for prison.

0:02:42 Andrew: Lock him up, um, I wanted to revisit this in a number of ways, the biggest, I think, was that we'd gotten a couple of, you know, sort of really good faith messages on Patreon that asked questions about the conversation that we had, the high level had, with Kel McClanahan at the beginning of the week. I, an expert in his field, an amateur in his field, and you've been buried in documents, crimes since I got interested in that, which, you know, been what, eight or nine months. And so we didn't really hit over, we didn't put that context into sort of the basics for people who might be kind of dropping in and out, right, a lot. A couple of people wrote in to say, hey, I thought you made a big deal about Trump commingling, right, nuclear sensitive documents with his passport and, you know, in the kitchen drawer, which we did. And we've gotten the reports that this was in a garage next to a sports car. And why is commingling a big deal for Trump and it's not a big deal for Biden? And that's a totally fair question, right?

0:02:44 Thomas: Yeah, Fair, fair. Yeah. Yeah.

0:04:03 Thomas: Valid

0:04:03 Andrew: So, yeah, I kind of want to explain that. And this gives me a way to work in, uh, shout out to our own Liz D, who's who monitors Trump on Truth Social, so, God help me, I don't have to, uh, yeah, we

0:04:04 Thomas: Question.

0:04:15 Thomas: Geez, not enough money in the world.

0:04:17 Andrew: Yeah, we need to up her hazard pay. That is for, that is for, damn, sir, all of this will fall under a single rubric, which is the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is Donald Trump still does not want to give classified documents back. So let's be clear and let's unpack the statutes that we talked about on that Kel McClanahan episode. 18 U.S.C. 793 E. N. F. F is the one that applies to Trump. No doubt about it. Right. Because it, that's the one that begins, whoever being entrusted or having lawful possession or control of any document relating to the national defense, right? That's Trump, waning days of his presidency. He has lawful position of all of these documents, right.

0:04:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:07 Andrew: Then I'm skipping over some parts of it, but having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust or lost or stolen, abstracted or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such lost, theft, abstraction, or destruction, shall be fined under this title or in prison not more than 10 years or both. Is the parallel statute, it's the paragraph before, and that applies when you don't have authorized possession of the documents. And we talked about how that could have been the case if there are documents that were in Biden's, you know, one of Biden's offices, that he moved after January 20th at noon, right, after the transition of power.

0:05:54 Andrew: So Biden will either be potentially criminally responsible under this same 793 F if he moved the documents while having lawful possession, right, that is while he was the vice president, or, if not, under 793 E. It's either one, but under both you have basically the same three elements, and, and this is the crucial part, this is the part that we left out of our Monday discussion, you have to prove all three, right? The first is that you have documents relating to the national defense, the second is, you know, that they've been taken from where they belong, and the third is you don't give them back or report them. So that third one's, yeah, it's kind of important.

So let's check in with Biden. Right. Number one, did he have documents related to the national order? Absolutely. Unequivocally. No, no doubt about it. So, that's the same between Biden and Trump. Number two, did he know that they'd been taken from where they belong? And this is the case where we've talked about how the behavior of Donald Trump in particular, you know, repeatedly stiffing the National Archives, then upon receiving a subpoena, definitely stiffing the Department of Justice on that subpoena such that they were required to get a search warrant, which he then, it seems, still not turn over all of the documents, even pursuant sort of to that search warrant.

0:06:39 Thomas: It's that third one. Yeah.

0:07:28 Andrew: And we're going to talk about that in a second. So this seems like the evidence is pretty strong against Donald Trump and kind of ambiguous against Joe Biden. And here's where the The degree of commingling comes in. Right. So the more that you have, you know, a document in a bright red folder that says confidential next to, you know, your, you know, automotive weekly magazine, right? The more that it's commingled, the more that you know like, oh, hey, you know what's not usually next to my passport and automotive magazines and the likelihood? Confidential documents relating to the national defense. So So the commingling shows that second element. And and if you want to argue, is it valid? It is valid.

0:08:13 Andrew: And it's it's a bad fact for Joe Biden that the information that continues to trickle out shows, you know, we went from, I think, 10, 11, 12 documents to now we're talking about on the on the close order of 20 documents. Right. So another six, seven, eight, nine documents have come out. They've come out in a different location. And again, you know, sort of trying to do that journalist false equivalence thing. You know, they've been described as sort of being in a garage. That looks like I'm not I'm nicht going to do an O .A. breakdown of it. Yeah, Right. But that is a bad fact for Biden.

But it will always be an immaterial bad fact unless there is some evidence that comes up that there are other documents that Biden did not want to return. Right. Guy, look, could that happen. Right. Suppose you, special counsel, heard, discovers evidence that leads them to execute a search warrant at Biden's residence. And, you, you know, discover in his nightstand, right, a bunch of confidential documents, right? Absolutely turn these into the same case, right. Right. Because then you would have pretty good, because, because, you know, at this point, it is reasonable. And certainly if you were to go before a jury and Biden's evidence would be, hey, you can't convict me under 18 U.S.

0:08:42 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Yeah, they're all oily and there's. Yeah, must

0:09:37 Andrew: C-793E because, yes, I had confidential documents. Maybe you think that I knew they were taken from where they were below. But the second that I actually knew that, in fact, it was my lawyers. I instructed them to cooperate fully and they did and they turned everything over and we've been full and transparent. And, you know, and it was just prior to that. It was just a mistake. I just didn't know. There were documents secreted away in his nightstand, you knows, presumably where he could get at them every day, that would that would defeat that inference. Yeah, well, you keep what you want in your nightstand.

0:10:09 Thomas: Have been some really good documents, yeah, that's

0:10:15 Andrew: Thomas, I'll keep what I want in mine.

0:10:16 Thomas: True. I forgot who I was talking to. Yeah,

0:10:20 Andrew: Long as he doesn't have something like that, then these cases will sort of forever be, oh, okay, you know, two out of three ain't bad, right? Like it, it, uh, it doesn't matter. There's no evidence on the most important element, which is the intent to hold onto them. And here's where we thank question mark our Dye. Is I'm not kidding. A day ago on Truth Social, a day ago, on Truth Social, Donald Trump writes, page one, the fake news media and crooked Democrats, parenthesis, that's been proven, and parenthesis, keep saying I had a large number of documents, that's in quotes, a quote, "large number of documents," end quote, in order to make the Biden classified docs look less significant. When I was in the Oval Office or elsewhere, and quote, "papers," end quote, were distributed to groups of people and me, they would often be in a striped paper folder with classified, with quote, "classified," end quote, or quote, "confidential," end quote, or another word on them. When the session was over, they would collect the the papers, but not the folders,

0:10:29 Thomas: That

0:11:27 Andrew: And I saved hundreds of them. Remember, these were just ordinary, inexpensive folders with various words printed on them, but they were a, quote, cool, end quote, keepsake. Perhaps the Gestapo, capital G to Gestapo took some of these empty folders.

0:11:35 Thomas: I saved for some reason. Oh, the Gestapo this, Gestapo. Yeah, socks.

0:11:48 Andrew: Yeah, when they raided Mar-a-Lago and counted them as a document, which they are not, It's also possible that the Trump -hating Marxist thugs, that's all in capital letters, but I will be damned if I'm going to try and read that that way, in charge will, quote, plant, end quote, documents while they're in possession of the material as president and based on the Presidential Records Act and Sox case. Put a pin in that. I did nothing wrong.

0:12:11 Thomas: Case.

0:12:11 Andrew: That's All caps. Joe did. One, of millions of people want this drooling moron to be president. I, how do you, anyway? Sorry, I just need to take a step back. If you have anybody in your life that's still a Trump support like this, these are the ramblings of somebody who is disconnected from reality. Leave alone their political bent. But anyway, that's terrifying. Fine. Number two, I don't know how much the "I thought this was a cool keepsake" is gonna work, but, you know, you keep doing you, but look like this.

0:12:12 Thomas: Hundreds.

0:12:46 Andrew: Is why hundreds I

0:12:47 Thomas: Of by the way, hundreds of, how much of it, is he a hoarder? Yeah, it's a totally inexpensive folder, like you buy it back to school day at the at the store, um, yeah But I kept hundreds of them like that. Those two things don't really match up, do they? No.

0:12:51 Andrew: It just has a word on it. Yeah Insane. And also, they're still gonna plant documents, although, you know, when there was a special master and I had the opportunity to prove beyond a doubt that nobody was planting documents, I objected to that. But pull pin out, because you laughed, and maybe you are a better lawyer than I am, or maybe I'm just stuck in my own head. But I said, quoting Trump, "as president and based on the Presidential Records Act and Sox case, I did nothing wrong. Joe did." Now, did you instantly know what he meant by the Sox case?

0:13:35 Thomas: That's why I was laughing. I was like, what the hell is that?

0:13:36 Andrew: OK, thank God. OK, because holy hell did I need help with this.

0:13:41 Thomas: Oh, wait, is it the documents Yeah, no, wait, it, what I do know, somebody tried to sneak documents out. I think it was a Bush admin person, right?

0:13:47 Andrew: Nope. Not, not that one, uh, but but you are way closer than I was. Right. So first thing I did was, because you know, I'm a lawyer, and I'm thinking, when you say the X case, right, like you mean the name of the party, you know, one of the two parties in the case. So I searched Westlaw for socks, as you spelled it, you know, S-O-C-K-S. I came up with that. I was like, socks and Bill Clinton, and socks and documents, and socks at presidential round, I'd find. Uh, I thought maybe it was Sox, and you know, it's just Trump's

0:13:48 Thomas: Oh, not that one.

0:14:02 Thomas: Yeah yeah the the famous

0:14:19 Andrew: Famous spell it Well, You know, but, you know, Dr., you know, Richard Socks, or, what, I don't know.

0:14:19 Thomas: Uh cheating scandal. The World Series, uh, yeah.

0:14:27 Andrew: Uh, that that that And so, so finally, uh, went again back to the source, uh, and asked Liz, and I'm like, do you know what the hell he means here by the Socks decision? And, going to save you the guessing in the back and forth, this is Judicial Watch versus NARA, which is a 2012 DDC, Amy Burman Jackson decision, um. If, thinking Judicial Watch verses NARA sounds like, you know, the Judicial Watch case, maybe, uh, didn't they cover that back when Trump was litigating this case in front of Judge Canada, and Florida? Indeed, did. And is why he thinks of it as the Sox case. This is Judicial Watch, the organization that, you, professionally exists to harass the Clintons, a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the original tapes and all materials

0:14:27 Thomas: No, I mean, oh.

0:15:17 Andrew: Materials related to Bill Clinton's interview with Taylor Branch at the end of his presidency. And we, again, we have discussed this case at some length. And, uh, so by filing a FOIA request with NARA, right, they said, look, these Taylor Branch tapes are very obviously going to be presidential records, and so we want you, NARA, to turn them over to us. NARA replied to the FOIA request by saying, we don't have these tapes, I don't know what you're talking about. And the reason they didn't have the tapes, and they didn't know what they were talking about, is that these were not presidential records, these were very clearly personal records, uh, conducted by and between Bill Clinton and historian Taylor Branch, uh, uh, recorded in the White House.

And the argument was, well, you know, you might have accidentally recorded some business going on in the background, and both the archives and and Jackson were like, cool, man, but like, the the determination was made that these were not presidential records, so we don't have them. So what are we even doing here? OK, that's the case. And if you're sitting there thinking, like, well, Taylor Branch's interview with Bill Clinton doesn't seem to be a confidential secret pertaining to the national defense, you would be correct.

0:15:58 Thomas: Yeah and It doesn't seem to involve socks. Oh, why why why did he

0:16:38 Andrew: What happened was Bill Clinton had the tapes in his sock drawer. That's why that I am 100 percent. I don't know. That fact is not even present in the Amy Berman Jackson decision. In other words, if you control left and you search for sock or socks, you won't find it. You will find it in the right wing coverage because I guess that makes them feel like it's more salacious. You know, like, I had a roommate in college used to hide his Playboys in his sock drawer. Right. Like I did, you know, for when the family came over, or who knows, right? Yeah, back for our younger listeners, Playboy was a magazine that featured naked, and anyway, um, they think that there's something salacious about it being in the yeah it actually historically has had very good articles and boy, when I was 12, did I read the hell out of those articles.

Um, only thing I can think of is that there's a level of, like, implied lied salaciousness there. I don't know. It's stupid to call this the Socks case. Is illustrates the kind of demented mind that we're dealing with. And I mean that in a very particular way, because the only way in which you would know that this was kept in Clinton's sock drawer would be not if you read the case, which I will link in the show notes, which is obvious, because, again, case doesn't mention socks, but rather if your only knowledge of the case comes from how it was reported on on right wing

0:16:46 Thomas: Huh? Yeah sure.

0:17:20 Thomas: It's a magazine that has very good articles that are right

0:18:02 Andrew: Media, which is 100 percent the case for Donald Trump. So Donald.

0:18:02 Thomas: Right Oh. He hasn't read the, uh, read the decision, so he hasn't gone logged into uh, what is Less law or Nexus Lexus, but do

0:18:07 Andrew: Yeah, shocker, Donald Trump, yeah, you could go to Scholar dot Google dot com and type it into. But I'm guessing he's not on Google Scholar either. So it Trump and again, that's because Tom Fitton, now in charge of Judicial Watch, has been advising Trump on the law, even though Tom Fett, not a a lawyer. So, you know, maybe maybe don't take legal advice from a moron. But in any event, Donald Trump believes that that case stands for the proposition that anything the president classifies as a personal record is a personal record, and that therefore everything he stole out of the White House was a personal record, and therefore he can't be guilty of any crime. And notice, by the way, that that is wrong at every level. Right.

0:18:59 Andrew: A, not what the case stands for. B, he didn't do that. He didn't actually declare these to be personal records. C, wouldn't matter if he had, because the statute, as we read it to you, is documents relating to the national defense. And D, his insistence that he has the right to possess these documents is actually part of why this seems like such a pretty straightforward criminal case against the former president. And bottom line for Uncle Frank, Joe Biden gave the documents back. Donald Trump still defends as of yesterday, stiffing NARA, then a subpoena, then a search warrant. And that's bottom line is what matters for purposes of establishing all three elements of 18 U.S.C. 793F is: what did you do when you became aware that you had documents relating to the national defense?

0:19:54 Andrew: And that's just night and day. And if it isn't, again, if it is, it will keep our mind open. There's a special counsel out there. I'll do it. Andrew was wrong. But every piece of evidence we have in public right now is that there's a huge difference between the two. No,

0:20:07 Thomas: You think this was a, you know, liberal media was wrong in terms of the co -mingling to go back to the original question, the coamingling not really being the thing, or how do you, how do your viewers know that you're

0:20:17 Andrew: Let me let me be clear. I'm glad you asked that as a follow up question, because I that to be clear here. The commingling does establish additional evidence towards that second element. Right. The idea that you knew that this was in a spot that it shouldn't be. Right, so indeed. Let's drill down on that for Joe Biden for 30 seconds. When the story first broke, the idea is, oh, found a dozen documents. I don't know how that happened. I didn't know where they are. I know what's going on. But whatever it is, take them back and it's fine. And at that level, sort of before the garage stuff, you might say then that with respect to Biden, the only clearly established element of 793 F that he would have met would have been that first one.

0:21:07 Andrew: Right. Having the position that that's a fact, right. Having in your possession, custody or control documents relating to the national defense, adding in that they were in this garage, they sort of went, you know, they that helps show that, you know, they were taken out of the place that you might ordinarily take them. And remember when we did the Hillary Clinton's emails, right, we talked about that, single, and this was F1, gross negligence, not F2, sort of willful refusal, uh, again, right, the underlying concern is the same in all of those cases. It was not that the person packed up the documents and uh flew across all of Alaska for a weekend bender. It was what did they do when they discovered that they accidentally had the documents. Right, oh yeah, I stuck them in a desk and then forgot about them.

0:21:57 Thomas: Not the one who's doing it, view that. Yeah. Put them in a dumpster I hit

0:21:57 Andrew: Because I was really hung over Oh, I threw them in a dumpster Yeah, right, so you, first part is an important part of establishing a potential 793F. And it is fair to say, and it is on the one hand fair for our both sides of media to say it's not a great fact for Joe Biden that these documents were commingled, were found in a garage, were found in locations where you wouldn't otherwise expect there to be top secret national documents, documents relating to the national defense. So on the one hand, I think, always apply the rules of evidence, right? Like, does the probative value of fixating on this, is that outweighed by the potentially prejudicial value? And so, you know,

0:21:59 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah of

0:22:46 Andrew: If I were covering the story, you know, it's focusing on that element when there is zero evidence of that third Third element, in view, is where it becomes misleading. And so I would just continue even in straight reporting. And again, I know I grew up in an age in which I took journalism classes in college, right? I have a degree in political communications. I had to. And so it how deeply ingrained the idea of, you know, you report on the facts of the story and you get quotes from both sides and all of that. But I humbly suggest topic for another show that we are long overdue for sort of revisiting journalistic ethics, because

0:22:46 Thomas: Course yeah Absolutely.

0:23:26 Andrew: I think they're not serving us well in the information age. Yep.

0:23:29 Thomas: I mean, because That's not, that's not the whole picture, it's what you cover matters, what you focus I, doesn't matter, that's that's the method of coverage, you know, maybe one thing to say, okay, the method of coverage can be this like kind of not unbalanced, the reason you're even covering it and the context you're putting it in is massively important, you know, we could You and I could provide reasonable on like its own reasonable coverage of every shooting in Chicago, but if that's all we do every single day of just forever, then we're going to make people think like, oh my God, it's a war zone out there, you can't even survive it, which is, you know, what Fox News does. It matters what you focus on.

But other question I want to ask, um, I'm not clear on the basics of how many times we've gone through this, because how many different documents and places have there been? Because it feels like it's, at you least three. Is there going to be more trouble for the fact that it seems to me that the lawyers said, all right, we searched everywhere, we found a spoon, sir, we got it, we're done. And then more were found after that. Does that matter?

0:23:49 Andrew: Yep. Yeah.

0:24:36 Andrew: Matter. Think about it this way. One of the things that I think will play very heavily into any criminal prosecution of Donald Trump on the facts that we know, under 18 USC 793F, is that the preposterously false certification that Trump had Evan the the cork have Christina Bob signed, right, that said, yeah, no, we looked through everything for the subpoena, we definitely didn't find it. And then we know from the search warrant affidavit that there was evidence, right, was in the possession of the DOJ at the time when they handed them, you know, a single red weld that was all taped up, right. And they're like, man, we, we have surveillance camera footage of dozens of boxes being moved around.

0:25:24 Andrew: This is an insult. Right. So that lack of cooperation with a legal document, I think, will be used to prove that Donald Trump knew that these documents were in the wrong place and knew that he was was willfully. So that's element two. And also knew that he was willful not returning them. Right. That's element three. To to that same end, the question really becomes what what do we infer about the first actor from the multiplicity of locations and from the behavior there? And I'm going to give you both sides of it after just decrying both sides. Let me give you both sides, right?

0:26:11 Andrew: The benevolent side is there aren't good protocols on restricting how presidents, vice presidents, people high up in the executive branch are using and not returning sensitive documents. And so Joe Biden was working, was working in multiple different locations over multiple different times and was careless. And we can admonish Joe Biden for his carelessness. That's obviously not criminal for all the reasons that we've always discussed on the show, dating back to Hillary Clinton's emails. But, you, we should also probably put some new standards in place. OK, that's that's beneficent interpretation of it's now three. The, the, the criminal interpretation would be, oh, Joe Biden is deliberately parsing and giving technically correct but inaccurate answers to try and throw investigative authorities off the scent of the secret documents that he'd like to still maintain.

Tape. Now, right now, I don't think we have any evidence for that second interpretation. But I could imagine that evidence being developed. And if that evidence developed, then, you know, again, as we've always said, that would change my mind on whether there's a crime. Right now, it would be rank speculation. I mean, there's literally zero evidence at this point that that was why, you know, you have sort of these recurring series. And notice that I had to finesse the facts a little bit, even to answer it that way, because you do not have a situation with Trump, you have a situation of the government discovering, NARA discovering the documents are missing. Okay, now

0:27:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:48 Andrew: I've got to go to Trump. Now I'm going to ask, oh, he's lied? All right, fine. He's jerked us around for a year? Okay, we're done. Go to DOJ. And then DOJ says, hey, give it back. And he jerks them around. And then it's like, all right, we are going to have to issue a subpoena. And And he lies on this opinion. That's like, fine. Now, now you've left us no choice, you know, but to but but to go get a search warrant, as opposed to as opposed to Biden's lawyers voluntarily giving this stuff up at every turn.

0:28:14 Thomas: And once it's true that a mistake was made, and they set out, we found them all, and then more were found, it feels like you'd still have to have some, to for it to be some criminal thing, you'd start to have something to do with it, and then you'd have to have some, you know, evidence that Biden was like, all right, don't tell him about this, but just say everything's, otherwise it's Just yeah, okay, the lawyers messed up, or somebody messed up and thought they'd searched everywhere but didn't. Yeah.

0:28:30 Andrew: Yeah, that's exactly right. But look like you could imagine. Suppose they're in a hundred locations and every time, you know, Joe Biden keeps doing the oh, sorry, we we found it. But we've now thoroughly searched the garage and they're definitely no more in the garage. Further affiant saith not, right, like, and then they're like, oh, the house next to the garage, we now found a whole bunch, but we searched the first floor of that house and they're definitely none on the first floors, and then the second floor, and then the attic, and then the basement, and then the storage shed. After a series of time, you might infer that you're being jerked around. And I guess what I would say is right now I don't think a jury would infer that they're being jerked round. And I think the fact that all of this so far has come from voluntary disclosures from the vice president and his legal team stands in contradistinction to what Trump did

0:28:51 Thomas: All Right. Well, I, I asked you every time what we're kind of waiting for next. I mean, it's just the, the special prosecutor, and I can't, I know that Andrew hasn't watched Arrested Development, one of the best comedies of all time. So every single time I think her, uh, and I'm sure so many of you out there also think that It every single time, but uh, what, what, just waiting for some sort of, for her to reach some sortof conclusion or or not. I guess if it was by the book, we're supposed to just, it's supposed to fizzle and we don't hear anything about it, right? Yeah

0:30:07 Andrew: That's that's right. And again, the better, the more ethical a prosecutor her is, boy does that sound weird, then the less we will hear about it, right? So, so there you go. It, it's that kind of comes full circle to your, you know, tingling feeling about, boy, this could be disruptive. Always be disruptive when you're in a situation where the other side has a bad faith argument and there is a black box and the people who could refute that bad faith agreement, if behaving ethically, are likely to say, well, no comment, right, unless and until there is a declination decision. But that is one of the genius moves of appointing a special counsel super early here. Yeah. Even more early than, you know, Donald Trump. And that's because, as we have discussed, if her declines to indict or recommend that the sitting president be indicted in connection with any document defense, they will issue a report that outlines that declination.

0:30:18 Thomas: I guess that's what I was saying yeah, oh

0:31:15 Andrew: So we'll have it. It will be a public document and we will be able to kind of go over it and litigate it and be done.

0:31:22 Thomas: Okay, so it won't just fizzled it is something where we should see a report, okay, so is that what should have happened with Hillary, should it have been, I guess it wasn't even a special council though

0:31:23 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, there. But that report, you know, could be a year in coming. Right. That be along ways out. I remember it took two years. Um, yeah, there was No special counsel, which, you know, arguably, I mean, again, you and play everything back. This was an investigation being supervised by the FBI. The FBI director could have been fired by President Obama. Barack Obama had endorsed Hillary Clinton as a candidate for president, president. Um, so, you know, the, I am positive that at the time Obama thought, oh man, if I announced that there's a special counsel, that the media is going to take that as I'm saying Hillary is guilty, and that's going to be awful, and I don't, you know, I'm not going to do that. Um, in retrospect, that would have been a much better outcome, right? She would had taken, taking it on the chin on the day the special counsel was announced.

0:31:36 Thomas: Huh yeah

0:32:21 Andrew: Then we wouldn't have had the drumbeat of Jim Comey leaking stuff to the press whenever he thought the race got too close or whatever. And at end of the day, you would have had a report that says, OK, we've, we've investigated everything and discharged our duties with respect to that, and here's why. And then you would have had the final kind of Comey statements, but you would have also had them in a legal context that says, this extremely careless. Extremely careless is not the standard under 18 U.S.C. 793F. And therefore, there was no decision to prosecute that is made here. And that would have been in and done. So yeah, chalk that up. It's not something, something I've ever thought about before, uh, but uh, next time you and I meet with uh Barack Obama, we can recommend that uh he time travel back to to 2015 and appoint a special counsel for for that

0:33:17 Thomas: That's the, the 25th, right, when we have that I have I have a stone, okay, yeah, well, that'll be fun we'll bring it up. All right, now time for about a billion updates on other stuff, uh Round, oh wow, yeah, lightning. Good luck, lightning round. Here we go, Andrew, you've written on uh lightning round number one. Great job, Norm. What's going on? What did he do now? What did Norm do now.

0:33:20 Andrew: Oh yeah yeah yeah good good yeah Lightning round, yep

0:33:40 Thomas: Oh, Norm?

0:33:40 Andrew: This is this is so great. This is delightful. And again, only needs a couple of seconds because the long term consequence of this will be almost certainly will be nothing, but but it really is illustrative of just how bad at the law his job, Norman Pettis, is. Do you remember in Connecticut where after being hit with a billion and a half dollars in actual impunitive damages, Norm Pattis promised that he was going to file various motions at the trial court level for vacator and remittor and we covered those? And he's like, but really where I'm going to win is on appeal, right? I'm going to prove that this jury damages award is unreasonable.

0:33:42 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:34:27 Andrew: And they're going to reverse. And, you know, that was, you know, he's like, I'm also going to file a motion for remittance. But, you know, I mean, this judge hates me. So, you know, I'm not going to win that, but I'm definitely going to win on on appeal deal.

0:34:28 Thomas: Yeah. Did he win?

0:34:41 Andrew: Well, there's a little bit of a roadblock in that, and that is Yesterday the court published this order. This is the appellate court from the state of Connecticut, and it is on the consolidated appeals in the Lafferty case. And it says, "Order, it appearing that the above above-captioned appeal has not been pursued with proper diligence, it is hereby ordered, pursuant to practice book 85-1, that the above-captioned appeal will be dismissed unless the appellants file either a court reporter's acknowledgement signed by the court reporter with an estimated date of delivery for the transcript or a certificate of completion on or before January 30th, 2023," and then adds, for good measure, and maybe this is common in these orders in Connecticut, I don't know, but I thought this was also delightful:

0:34:44 Thomas: Are you winning, son? Are you winning Norm? No

0:35:35 Andrew: "The provision of the practice book, which is the rules of procedure for lawyers in Connecticut, a practice book 62-7, which allows any papers correcting a non -complying filing to be deemed timely filed if resubmitted within 15 days, does not apply to this order." So let break down what that is. Remember, we talk about how one of the things that is almost certainly fatal to Norm's idea that, uh, the appellate courts are going to save him from having cost his client a billion and a half dollars is that the facts are as decided by the trial court, uh, here by the jury, and they will only be disturbed on appeal if clearly erroneous, whereas, you know, what the appellant courts are meant to do is evaluate the law, and the law is super favorable, we've that on a previous episode, in terms of upholding the fairness of jury verdicts.

0:36:27 Andrew: So practically what that means is when you dock in an appeal, one of the biggest delays in the appellate system is actually the transmittal of the record of the proceedings below to the appELLate court, because that's the most important document for your appeal. That is all the stuff that counts as facts for your repeal. And you can see why the appellate court needs that in order to go forward. And it appears that Norm just like forgot a hundred percent.

0:37:01 Andrew: The appeal, quote, has not been pursued with proper diligence. End of quote. That's what that means. You didn't do this thing.

0:36:58 Thomas: Way. Oh my God. He's so bad.

0:37:09 Andrew: This kind of the most important thing. And so. But, but look again, if this were, we laugh and I'm going to laugh because it's Norm Pettis, were anybody other than Alex Jones. Right. Response would be, you're not, you're not going to bounce a potentially meritorious appeal just because the lawyer forgot to call and get the transcript order. Like, come on, you're going to, let's not.

0:37:09 Thomas: He is so bad! Yeah, but I will say, boy, that lawyer sure sucks in either case. Yeah, is

0:37:36 Andrew: Yes, exactly Right. That's what we're doing. So at the end of the day, right, you ask, what consequences will will this be for Alex? This does not mean Alex that Norm is on the phone with the court transcriptionist right now and is trying to find somebody who will say, yes, I can get you.

0:37:53 Thomas: He right now? Because I thought he couldn't be a lawyer right now. Is he allowed

0:37:56 Andrew: Well, we're going to we're gonna we're going to talk about that one. That's a really, really great question. And we're gonna talk about that in a minute. It uh literally item two on the board, uh, so uh, gonna be fine, um, they're going to be able to correct it, but uh, we should all have a good hearty laugh at Norm Pattis's expense. Oh,

0:37:57 Thomas: Oh all right, sure. And not at his comedy, we're, we are laughing at you not with you, just clarifying well then let's get to the second point. You have Liz Was Wrong. All right, is it the first Liz Was Wrong segment? Cool. Uh,

0:38:17 Andrew: My God. Yeah. Definitely not, with you. Yes.

0:38:27 Andrew: Yeah, I think I was wrong along with her. So that that's just trying to take the sting out a little bit.

0:38:30 Thomas: Liz Andrew, oh, we need your celebrity couple name. Yeah, Andrew Liz, no, that doesn't work.

0:38:35 Andrew: Yeah. Oh, no, that's you have to come up with something else. Were not going to bail out Norm Pattis in his application to stay the imposition of sanctions and bar him from the practice of law for six months. And, and we're wrong on that. Applied and got an administrative stay while he appealed the court's order that we broke down, that Liz and I broke down on the show, suspending him from the practice of law for six months. And in connection with that, applied to the Connecticut Intermediate Appellate Court to stay the enforcement of that judgment. And part of the argument was, you know, look, I'm, I'm in the middle of a trial right now of a Nazi in D.C.

0:39:31 Andrew: You might have heard of him, one of the Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs. Um, what he got wasn't, well, this court strongly values the rights of Nazis to have terrible lawyers, so, you know, have at it, which, did you, know, look like, there, there is, I'm saying that in a kind of a sarcastic sort of way, no, I'm saying that in a very sarcastic sword of way, but there is a value, a state value interest in letting clients have the lawyers that they want. Right, we've talked about this in connection with, you know, do you admit Mark Randazza pro hoc vice, you know, something like that.

So I sort of evaluating those factors, what the appellate court really did was kind of the equivalent of an administrative stay to say, hey, look, we'll let you docket your appeal of that order and and raise it to us to be ascertained on the merits. And I'm going to quote directly from the order: the emergency motion for review is granted.

The relief requested is granted in part, that the January 5th, 2023 order by the trial court suspending Attorney Norman Pattis from the practice of law for six months is hereby stayed until Monday, January 23rd. If Attorney Pattis files a motion for review on or before January 23rd, 2023,

0:39:47 Thomas: Hopefully

0:40:44 Andrew: And files a writ of error in full compliance with the appellate rules on or before January 25th. So that's Monday and Wednesday. Then this emergency stay will remain in effect until the resolution of the motion for review. So in other words, yeah, I was just going to say Norm's going to be real busy for the next couple of days. Uh, hopefully, well, we'll see which one or ones he files first, that will be, maybe we'll come back to that next week to see. Oh, did he put self-interest ahead of uh perfecting Alex's sure-to-be-doomed losing appeal to the Connecticut appellate courts, or did, you know, he put his client's work first, which is what a good lawyer ought to do? So, but you know, we're talking about Norm Pattis here, so, so who

0:40:59 Thomas: He remembers to to do that, yeah. Well and plus that Alex Jones appeal has such a big chance of success, you know, you better get that in, it's worth it. All right, the lightning item number three, uh, so many more sanctions. There's so many sanctions to keep track of. All right, which sanctions now

0:41:35 Andrew: Right. Are. And all they're, are all Alex Jones related. So these are the sanctions against Andino Reynal in the Texas case. And I have this a little bit cheeky, but correct: being sanctioned twice in Texas. So uh, this order came out a couple days ago, this is in the Heslin and Lewis case in Texas, and it is in connection with what Reynolds did in that case and the first bankruptcy filed by various info wars subsidiary alphabet BS organizations. Right, might recall, because we covered this on the show, remember, filing of bankruptcy stays all claims. It's called the automatic stay.

0:41:45 Thomas: Right

0:42:31 Andrew: It instantly and immediately stops any money from coming in or going out against the bankrupt estate.

0:42:38 Thomas: It was the one weird trick that they tried to do to get out of all this

0:42:40 Andrew: Yep. Yep. Yep. And one of the things that they did with respect to that was they they named a bunch. They named three separate that are part of Alex Jones's kind of crazy corporate contraption. But they're basically shell companies. And here I want to take a slight sidebar because we've discussed this at some length already. But one of the things that you are literally trained to do as a lawyer, as a first year lawyer in your torts class, in your contracts class is the, you know, sue every hidden civil procedure is the sue everybody like God sort them out. Right. And and there's a real reason for that that comes into play when you're talking about bad faith actors like Alex Jones, where if you only sue Alex Jones personally. Right, you only Sue InfoWars corporately. Right? Might have undergone a shell game where at the end of the day, you get a judgment against InfoWars and Info Wars has no assets.

0:43:42 Andrew: Right. You get a judgement against Alex Jones and he's in personal bankruptcy. Right. One of the ways around that is, yeah, you sue everybody in the chain. And if you discover that the parties own additional companies, right, add them in to the litigation, right? That's one of the things you do very early on in a deposition if you suspect that that's going on. So, you know, you want to sue me and opening arguments. Well, the very first things your lawyers can ask me in a deprivation is, do you own any other businesses, right. Do you own other limited liability companies? Companies.

0:44:18 Thomas: Anyone else we can sue while we're at it, making

0:44:21 Andrew: Right. That's exactly. And that's and that's all that is. Yeah. Is there anyone else you can sue? So you have that kind of. So that's how that, you sue everyone, let God sort them out. That that's how that's kind of come about, because that's the the counterpunch and the way to ensure that as a plaintiff, your judgment can actually run against the party that has the money. Interact way in which that at interfaces with the bankruptcy code, though, was, you know, I mean, they found like you described it as sort of the one weird trick. They're like, oh, see, here's the here's the thing. They've now sued InfoW, LLC under that principle.

0:45:00 Andrew: Info W, LLC is nothing. It was a shell company that I use. And I have no idea. I should say that this is I'm making Yeah, right. This is not actual. But X company, as it turns out, means nothing. They don't have any assets. They were part of a transaction, you know, six years ago. So I'm going to take that company into bankruptcy. Won't cause any harm to my ongoing business because the company is a non -entity. And it stops the whole litigation from going forward because they're a defendant to the litigation. Right. And so buys us some time and, you know, really torques off the other side. And, you know that what they did by taking those alphabet entities into bankruptcy. Now, if you are confident that that is in fact the case, the the counter move that Mark Bankston and did in Texas that, again, is 100 percent correct, is then you dismiss out those entities that are now bankrupt and were garbage entities from your case.

0:45:07 Thomas: Up some facts okay but

0:45:59 Andrew: Right. OK, fine. You want InfoWars LLC to be in bankruptcy. Congratulations. We're no longer suing Info W LLC. Get out. Right?

0:46:08 Thomas: He tried to do that with all of them, right, right.

0:46:11 Andrew: There were two different sets. Right, when he took InfoWars into to bankruptcy. The other option is, and this is what they did in the InfoWars bankruptcy, was to go to the bankruptcy court and ask for relief from the automatic stay, which was granted, to say, hey, we'd, to move forward with this lawsuit, and it's consistent with the bankruptcy, because this will adjudicate sort of the major debt that this bankruptcy court will need to ascertain how, how to allocate in any plan of reorganization. Right, you got a very, very good argument about why they should lift the stay, and in fact, they won. And, but that wound up actually delaying the trial by several months because you had to address that argument on the merits.

0:46:57 Andrew: And they did. So that's, that's the distinction. The reason that I am going through the procedural history in this lightning round is that one of the pieces of sanctionable behavior had to do with the fact that Andino Reynal was kind of jerking the court around with respect to this bankruptcy, bankruptcy, and that is that, and I'm going to read this from the order because I, it's important to kind of put everything into context. So page one, the court finds for the reasons expressed by the United States trustee and the plaintiffs herein that the April 2022 bankruptcy, that's of the three alphabet agencies, was undertaken in bad faith for an abusive and and improper purpose.

0:47:43 Andrew: The court also agrees with the United States trustee and the plaintiffs that the removal by InfoWars LLC, then not in bankruptcy, right, remaining, initiated 12 hours after being non -suited from this lawsuit, is a further indication of bad faith. The court finds that Mr. Raynal's finding of a notice of removal and a suggestion of bankruptcy in this court contained knowingly groundless statements insofar that they stated InfoWars LLC was a defendant in the underlying action. The court has also considered the totality of the circumstances that resulted in the unnecessary postponement of the trial, including the procedural history of the case, the timing of the removal, and the court's experience with Mr. Raynal and its assessment of the credibility of his representations. That's really, really important because the first thing here that the court is saying with respect to sanctions is, hey, I'm I'm looking at the totality of the way in which you, Mr.

0:48:37 Andrew: Raynal, have behaved in front of me, and it's reprehensible. And that's why I'm imposing these sanctions, because this first argument, the, you listed InfoWars LLC as a defendant after they had been non-suited out, is a technical error. Right, a mistake that any lawyer could make. Right, because they've been dismissed out 12 hours previously. You were just block copy pasting over, the parties to this lawsuit are, right, and then you just go back and get it from your previously, previous pleadings.

It's not really the kind of statement standing alone that I've ever seen as the basis for sanctions, but this court is, is not saying that that stands alone, this court of saying you knew what you were doing, and this is part of the evidence, right, like when you are trying to last minute get a bankruptcy court to stall an active trial, yeah, you gotta, you gotta fight that. That increases the chances that you make this kind of mistake because you have a flurry of filings, and these are all bad faith filings. And one of the concrete examples of where you were actually materially, factually incorrect, we might infer as just a error, but

0:49:55 Andrew: Turns out to be material here because of the scheme that you're engaged in. Now, the second act is, I think, puts the nail in the coffin, right? So you might be listening, Andino, right now, if you're listening, we hope you are, thinking like, oh, man, even—that's

0:49:55 Thomas: Yeah there's no reason he would be listening we're at four shows a week and like even if one of these characters has heard of our show, I like the idea that instantly they're like, well, I'm not gonna miss a single drop of the Opening Arguments podcast. Oh,

0:50:11 Andrew: True. There's none. You might Be thinking, oh man, Even—yeah, that's true, yeah, well, who knows, he might like our—maybe he plays a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, you have no idea, you, okay, um, no, so look, might be thinking like, man, even the OA guys are kind of saying, hey, that, that first one seems a little shaky, or at least a bit of a strange, the second one is not so, it says Yeah, the court finds Mr. Raynal acted without valid cause and for the sole purpose of avoiding trial. Okay, in summary to that one, the court also finds that Raynal acted in bad faith by rejecting a request to accept service of subpoena on Rob Dew. That's an InfoWars dude. The day prior to Mr. Dew signing agreements on behalf of Info Wars LLC as its 100 percent equity holder, a fact which was not disclosed to the plaintiffs until after the case was removed.

The court notes that when Rob Dew was made 100 percent equitability holder of Infowars LLC, Mr. Raynaud was obligated to supplement his client's discovery responses. Not only did Mr. Reynolds neglect to supplement discovery, but his response to plaintiffs' inquiry about the subpoena was misleading. Let's unpack that. As yeah, you see it, but I want to unpack it for the listeners.

0:50:43 Thomas: Okay, yeah

0:51:28 Andrew: As part of the shell game, Alex Jones made Rob Dew, longstanding collaborator. You know, listen to Knowledge Fight. To the deposition of Rob Do. It's amazing, amazing. Um, so they said, oh yeah, hey look, uh, I don't understand, Rob, congratulations, you're The 100 Equity Of this hunk of crap. Um, and so, okay, you're shifting people around, but, but the day before that, you did that, the plaintiff said, hey, um, we want To Serve Well

0:51:42 Thomas: You're the proud New Owner, let Us Know if anyone Else Mysteriously Owns the, the company, or Homer

0:52:00 Andrew: That two things. Number, number one, the discovery requests absolutely say provide us with all of the shareholders of all of the parties, including InfoWars LLC. And number A, discovery requests say these discovery requests are continuing in nature. So if there's a material change, you have to update your previous responses. So yeah, if you sell an entity that's being sued, you have to tell the plaintiffs who, who you've sold them to. Right. Then as part of this sort of getting wind that this was going on, Bankston sent a subpoena over to Rob Do to try and figure this out. And Raynal was like, Rob, do you, I don't know who this is. But the day before.

0:52:45 Andrew: Yeah, he's given the entire company to Rob. Do So

0:52:43 Thomas: Who Is Homer, yeah Yeah I Feel Like you'd know that Name probably to

0:52:51 Andrew: Uh Yeah So Response to plaintiff's inquiry about the subpoena was misleading is a pretty kind way To Put That, yeah, um

0:52:59 Thomas: Say the Least Boy I should have invested in sanctions, I really should, I Should have Bought a Bunch of shares Of Sanctions Yeah I'm very HODL sanctions, because man, that, I, I feel like if we could look, look at the Google Trend of just sanctions From like, I don't know, five years ago, versus Now. Oh So, this person's getting more sanctions Reynald's

0:53:03 Andrew: My God Go Long On Sanctions Yeah Could I Want So court finds that the removal was part of a scheme that was pursued for the purpose of harassment or delay and to prevent this court from proceeding with a scheduled hearing. The conduct at issue significantly interfered with the court's legitimate exercise of its core functions. What sanctions will F. Andino Raynal have to fork over? I love this is why we're getting sanctioned twice in Texas. One, well, will be assessed against right now. Number two, plaintiffs are awarded reasonable attorney's fees in connection with their motion. OK. Attorney's fees incurred in April trial preparation. And that's a lot, lot. Right. Is multiple lawyers working around the clock, getting ready to go to trial in April. Attorneys' fees incurred in the bankruptcy court related to Infowars LLC and any non -refundable fees for April trial accommodations.

0:54:11 Andrew: Right, that is renting hotels, plane tickets, you know, rental cars, storage space. This could be a significant chunk of money. Right? The court The court finds that such a sanction is just and has a rational relationship to the misconducted issue.

0:54:28 Andrew: And then I could go, plaintiffs are ordered to file their evidence, blah, blah. There's a schedule after evaluating. The court will assess the amount of the sanctions. And then there is paragraph five. There's... there's a prior case. So I'm not an expert on Texas law, but man, have I never seen this before. In addition, pursuant to the discretion of the court described in this case called Law Offices of Wendell Turley P .C. v. French, which is a 2005 Texas appellate decision, plaintiffs are conditionally awarded their appellant attorney's fees should Mr. Raynal unsuccessfully appeal this order. Order. If plaintiffs occur attorneys fees here in an unsuccessful appeal, they are order ordered to file evidence establishing such fees. Mr. Renaud may file any objection within 10 days of the filing of plaintiffs evidence.

0:55:16 Thomas: Like, oh actually, Raynal is bankrupt, so you have to drop all. I'm no long, I've, I've been no lawyer, zero I no know, no law, assets anymore, so you're gonna have to see this other LLC that's Now, me, I don't, that sounded like the court was trying to dissuade him from appealing. Did I understand That right? Wow

0:55:24 Andrew: You Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what that is. That is saying we have found that your conduct here is gross. And if if you if you want to, everybody's got a right to appeal. But but if you appeal, I'm telling you on the fact that's a that's a frivolous appeal and you're going to lose. And what's interesting to me is that my familiarity with sanctions. And this actually came about, this was litigated in the Michigan cases, right? The sanctions against the Kraken lawyers, Sidney Powell, Howard Kleinhandler, Julie Holler, that group. In federal courts, there is a very, very sharp delineation because federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. And so you cannot sanction in a trial court for conduct that occurred in the appellate court and vice versa. And that first round of sanctions also included sanctions against, oh, Gentila in connection with the appeal.

0:55:48 Thomas: Wow

0:56:40 Andrew: And, uh, litigated that and said, uh, that's not within the, the jurisdiction of the trial court, and the trial court agreed and said, yep, yep, that's right, I'm, I'm still really pissed at all of you, uh, but, but I can't, that, that's one that I, I, I could, I could only stay mad about, I can't stay mad, and also them to pay you, and also order Them to pay You, so

0:57:02 Thomas: Yeah Well I hope there's no supply chain issues with sanctions, because we're really running into, I mean, who knows how many sanctions were on that ship that got stuck in the canal, there's going to be unprecedented demand for sanctions, hopefully the supply chain can Keep up, what with, uh, you know, China's going through it right now Uh, lawyer sucks, and, uh, joins the long list of people who've been sanctioned, and once again, I, I always ask, what does this actually mean? Are they going to still be able to be a lawyer? It seems like the answer is always somehow yes. But this serious enough to where someone actually doesn't get to do the job of lawyer anymore? Or do you always get to be the lawyer? Do you always have to do that?

0:57:16 Andrew: So, yeah, Yeah. So, again, this sanctions order does not contain a referral to the Bar Commission. And so it only governs that he's going to have to pay a lot of money. Right. And this runs against him personally. Not that not that it would do. Yes. Not that it Would.

0:57:56 Thomas: Really? Raynaud personally. And he can't do any, like, get the money from the client, right? Because this is his F -up, right.

0:58:05 Andrew: He can ask. But remember, remember Alex Jones personally and free speech systems and all of the businesses are in bankruptcy. So you would have to move the bankruptcy court to lift the automatic stay to permit a payout. Right.

0:58:15 Thomas: Right. Yeah. For, for.

0:58:24 Andrew: To say, I buy.

0:58:24 Thomas: You. Being a terrible lawyer, though, I have never thought about that, but somehow in all the sanctions talk that we've done on this show, I've never thought about the fact that, like, yeah, is that personally on the lawyer, or do you pop that into the bill? Like, let's say you're not dealing with a bankrupt client, like you have just a, I don't know, a client that has money or something. Are you popping your, oh, also a line item in your bill, here's these sanctions that I got for definitely you have to pay those for me, oh.

0:58:46 Andrew: So. I deal With this is, this is great. We're to do a little, you know, don't take legal advice from a podcast, but, um, going to answer that, uh, to the very best of my ability. Um, can run against the lawyer individually, most often, right, as is in the case, let me not do that. Most often the sanctions will run against the lawyer and the lawyer's client, sort of jointly and severally, right, it's then up to you as the plaintiff to figure out where you want to get the money from. Now, in any joint and several situation, remember that there is always the recourse among the defendants to get that from each other, to turn around and sue. So in other words, if the order is entered, yep.

0:59:32 Thomas: It's just like the uh law thing, a case where you you you were recovering from somebody. I thought this was a different thing because it's like a court ordering something. I don't know. I always think that's a different...

0:59:40 Andrew: Because, yeah, you could bring a claim for unjust enrichment, right? Hey, I paid half of your debt, or I paid this debt that you should have had on your behalf, and now you owe that to me. But I have to tell you, I cannot imagine. I mean, Michael Avenatti, maybe. But like it is almost impossible for me to imagine a lawyer wanting to sue the client for not forking over the money to pay for the sanctions that the lawyer incurred in connection with the thing that the employer filed. Right. Right. I know that's that's a lot. So let me sort of unpack that a little bit. Question was, could you stick it on the bill? The answer is you could, but I can't imagine any lawyer who actually would. And uh not the least of which is

1:00:27 Thomas: Who isn't sitting in jail right now and named Michael Avenatti?

1:00:29 Andrew: Yeah right you're now you would you now get you now get your former client is going to file every bar complaint under the sun against you and will not rest until the one-legged man is brought to justice, so yeah

1:00:31 Thomas: Yeah. All right. Well, that is a lot about sanctions and I'm sure it won't be the last time we're talking about really Crappy, unethical lawyers getting sanctioned. That was a pleasure, Andrew. Andrew, thanks for, uh, not only the, uh, Biden doc deep dive but the lightning round as well. And, uh, still the slowest lightning I've ever heard of in my life, but You know what Relative To you. Yeah, well, you know, we gotta meet everyone where they are, and your lightning round relative to your normal round was slightly faster, so I appreciate it. And the audience appreciates it, and We Will see you All on Sunday night. Monday a.m., we'll see you then.

1:00:47 Andrew: True. Yeah. It's It's Ball lightning I'm a Blue dragon. Baby.

1:01:21 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.

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