SIO351: Ok So About That Whole 'Trump Being Arrested' Thing

Transcript

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

0:00:16 Thomas: And I'm once again joined by Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:20 Matt: I'm fantastic.

0:00:20 Thomas: Is that because Trump's locked away? He's got, he's indicted? It's all, we did it? We got him?

0:00:25 Matt: Assume. I haven't really been following the news, but do we have video of that?

0:00:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well then what are we doing here? No, we get loosied again with the football? Or, well, I guess not loosied. It would be whoever, who the hell is trying to kick the football. I know, Charlie Brown?

0:00:37 Matt: Well, it's hard to remember now, but it does turn out that a lot of the time when Donald Trump says something is going to happen, that thing does not happen. And that seems... we're here again.

0:00:43 Thomas: Yeah. Me 870,000 times. Shame on me still. Yeah, no. Well, OK, what happened? I also again, I am really not one to get excited about this sort of stuff, but it felt weird to me that he would have volunteered that and it not be anything. But what the hell do you think happened?

0:01:06 Matt: Think he's just getting people fired up, and it's working because somebody just sent Alvin Bragg some white powder and a death threat, so the direction I think was heading for. I think think he knew full well that it wasn't probably going to happen this last week. There's a lot of stuff that has to happen first. Oh, I don't know. I mean, we don't Know Anything. We really don't. And that's the ongoing theme here.

0:01:25 Matt: That'll be... Yep, check that Yeah, still don't know anything. But there's a Lot We Can Talk About, and there's A Lot of Things We Do Actually Know that have come out in the last week that are pretty interesting. Number of things we can pick up here, but I want to start with what think is a very important sort of keynote quote here from the FBI, the local prosecutors should all stop. That is Donald Trump last week. And I think that's a perfect encapsulation of where he's at. It really just all needs to stop. It must be nice to be able to say things like that.

0:01:18 Thomas: Really? Really all Right. Well, uh, Thanks for listening. Until just in, we don't know anything. So see you next time. Let's

0:01:57 Matt: Just stop prosecuting me, please. Well, No, no, that's not even a please.

0:01:59 Thomas: He's he doesn't worry about Being very precise. Everybody just cut it out. It's not. Yeah, doesn't sweat the details.

0:02:00 Matt: Yeah. Just come on. I'm done here.

0:02:06 Thomas: Interesting.

0:02:07 Matt: Let's talk about some of the things he wants to stop, um, of course with the New York case, because that's where we're all watching the most. Um, weird stuff going on at the grand jury this week. Uh, we know no arrest on Tuesday, and then suddenly they called it off on Wednesday. They were told not to show up, and they instead showed up on Thursday and they heard a different case from what we know. And this, again, is just what is reported.

0:02:21 Thomas: The Same grand jury heard a different case, or is it like a different? What's the... Do the different grand juries, and they just, you know, rent room and they're like, "Hi, are you using this?" "We're different grandeur." "Do we... Oh, we double book." How does that work? So

0:02:30 Matt: Now, this is the same special grand jury that's just for the purpose of looking at Trump crimes. And it turns out there's enough of them. They're multifarious.

0:02:46 Thomas: A different case, but it's still a Trump case? You're saying just a different Trump one, okay.

0:02:49 Matt: Yeah. It's still part of their special grand jury mandate. I mean, they already turned up like 17 charges, right, on the whole Trump organization last time.

0:02:51 Thomas: Gotcha. I don't have to do like a speeding ticket in between Trump cases or something?

0:02:59 Matt: Sure, yeah, but heard from Robert Costello on Monday, and I think that's worth talking about because, uh, Costello is a character. He's like a real classic Trump old character. We haven't seen one of these in a while. And Cohen, uh, briefly approached by Robert Costello, who's a lawyer associated with Trump who was working on all the stuff, uh, the Russia stuff, everything else, working with Giuliani back in the day. And he was approached and, you know, asked if he wanted some help. Cohen turned him down. They had a conversation about everything. Um, they both agree that there was no attorney-client privilege at this point, which is important for what, just what we're about to talk about.

And, uh, and Cohen actually, just to be totally safe, waived attorney-client privilege with Costello in 2019. We don't really know why. Maybe I don't know why, I don't understand it, I just read the document. But as part of his prosecution, just in order to be able to testify about everything, he waived and allowed Robert Costello to participate. Participate. So that waiver is still ongoing. And because otherwise it'd be pretty weird. Some of the stuff that Costello, it sounds like he said, Costello was in front of the grand jury for three hours on Monday. And, uh, you know, the grand juries being what they are, it's not like the defense attorney gets to jump in and ask you questions. It's just the prosecutor asking questions.

But the weird thing about this is that Costillo is essentially a defense witness. He's not a prosecution witness .He's showing up for Donald Trump. Um, he's showing Up for Donald Donald Trump so eagerly that it's hard to believe that he's not getting something out of this. Costello had a little press conference afterward and kind of summarized his testimony, which is not usually something you do after a grand jury testimony, but hey, why not? You know, this is where we're at right now.

0:03:29 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:04:25 Thomas: So weird. We

0:04:25 Matt: So yeah, he wants everybody to know, basically, in sum, that Michael Cohen sucks. That's what he wants you to know. That was his testimony. Money Yeah.

0:04:34 Thomas: Already know that.

0:04:35 Matt: I know you don't need three hours. I feel like we've covered that, uh, really wants you to know, Michael, that Robert Cohen can't be trusted, that he is absolutely not somebody that you can trust at all, and that I wouldn't trust, told the grand jury that this guy couldn't tell the truth if he put a gun to his head.

0:04:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:50 Matt: But apparently, Michael Cohen has flipped himself several different ways. And Costello just doesn't think he's somebody that you should trust. I'm not sure why that's really evidence. But he claims he has documents to back some of this up.

0:05:00 Thomas: Who would have made this? Just like when somebody's coming in to this grand jury, is that because the prosecutor made a decision to say, okay, we need to hear from this person? Or Or is it because he was like, "Hey, I've got information," and it's that this guy sucks? Who makes that decision?

0:05:17 Matt: Yeah, so actually the grand jury gets to make the decision. The prosecutor brings in and says, "Hey, we've got this witness that has some rebuttal evidence. Would you like to hear from them?" And they have an ethical obligation when they know that it's out there, um, at least offer it at this stage. So, uh, jury voted they wanted to hear it, and they got to hear from him and Costello. All right, I just have to talk about this for a second. Way back when he was working with Trump, that his communication with Cohen before was essentially dangling this pardon in front of custody on behalf of Trump. Yeah, he did this in a really obvious way, because Trump had actually just tweeted that day that, uh, that Michael Cohen could get a pardon publicly. He's kind of stating it.

0:05:54 Matt: Trump used to do this a lot. You might remember he would just come out and say things publicly that he couldn't necessarily say privately.

0:05:54 Thomas: Uh -huh. Yeah. Then because he said in public must not be a crime because he wasn't afraid to say in public. Bam. Bada bing, bada boom. Get away with anything.

0:06:02 Matt: Yeah, because we all saw him do it. Wouldn't just do it in front of us. No, of course not.

0:06:05 Thomas: Yeah. So it must be fine.

0:06:07 Matt: Writes Cohen and says, sleep well tonight. You have friends in high places, which is not really hard to interpret that one. And you want to guess how he explained that later? It's pretty funny.

0:06:19 Thomas: Oh, that sets me up for a lot of possibilities.

0:06:24 Thomas: Somebody, friends of Michael Cohen's were visiting Denver, the Mile High City.

0:06:30 Matt: Yeah, it's almost that stupid. Actually, you know what? Yours is smarter. Yours is better. Said that he was referencing the 1994 Garth Brooks song, Friends in Low Places.

0:06:38 Thomas: Oh, I was also going to make a joke about that, but I don't know that that is okay. What, what, but that, well, yeah, but, but that doesn't, so how did that end up being? Therefore, it's not me saying you have friends in high places.

0:06:45 Matt: Yes, that's the opposite of what the song is about, you might remember.

0:06:57 Matt: Well, because it would have been kind of shady to be offering a pardon, so he just said he was trying to make the man feel better by making a joke about a song that was definitely not about having friends in high places. I mean, that's the entire purpose of the song, is my friends hanging out in shitty bars. Not that they're in the White House. I don't know. So, right.

0:07:14 Thomas: Yeah. But what is that? Okay. Here's referencing the idiom, I've got friends in high places, meaning you have friends that are really high up. Was like, but you said the idioma because of the reality of the friend, you know, like that doesn't explain it. Oh, I was referencing the song. What? That doesn't, but you didn't just pick a song. It wasn't like 50 -50 between that and my heart will go on by from Titanic or whatever. Like there's a reason you referenced that.

0:07:37 Matt: Makes no sense. Right. Yeah, well, you know, you might remember. And it's been long enough that it's, I can almost start to forget how stupid and venal these people are. Just truly, truly stupid. Not good at crime. They're nicht gut at being shady. They just kind of come out and do this stuff. So that's who Costello is. He's the kind of guy that writes you an email that says, sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places, when he's is trying trying to pressure on behalf of the president.

0:08:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:09 Matt: That's his job, which was Cohen's job too. Too. I mean, yes, exactly.

0:08:09 Thomas: He used a top secret code. There's no way we ever could have known what he was saying unless we had one of those enigma machines we never ever could decode that.

0:08:18 Matt: Yeah. Or I guess it also requires being familiar with one of the most popular recording artists of the 1990s. But, you know, one of those two things. So, So that's Costello, and he is just not, he's not credible himself. And he's coming out, and he really wants you to know it. And He wants you know this in such a way that I think he makes it even less credible, because he's so intent on having you know that Cohen can't be trusted.

0:08:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:42 Matt: But again, it all comes back to, as we were discussing last week, why would Michael Cohen give this woman $130 ,000? And Costello didn't really have an answer for that either. But he was essentially saying that Trump didn't know about it, never knew about it. That these payments were actually illegal retainers. Who knows? I don't know.

0:08:49 Thomas: Yeah. I That's the thing, that's, that's, and the short of it, okay, yeah, he's a dishonest bro, okay, he's piece of shit, we know this. Why, okay, tell me your explanation for why he just paid Stormy Daniels that money. What is it? Give me it, um.

0:09:06 Matt: Not forthcoming. But, you know, a lot of this stuff these days is just so much for media consumption. And so the right -wingers will have something to grab onto. They just got a hook, right? And they can come out and say, well, this testimony obviously threw the grand jury. And maybe it did. I mean, it's not impossible to say that there might have been a few grand jurors who are persuaded by this. Remember, we have 23 grand jurors. We've got to get to 12.

0:09:15 Thomas: Really Uh.

0:09:32 Matt: So, yeah, I mean, that's a lot of people to persuade. And if you've got a few that start to agitate against because they think that maybe Michael Cohen is that untrustworthy, already been convicted of lying, you know, there's some points there, and that direction, the Trump world was also flooding, floating this very stupid letter. And did you see about this letter from

0:09:49 Thomas: Don't think I saw it. What was it?

0:09:51 Matt: I've got it here, and this, I mean, this is again just new heights of stupidity. This is up here with with friends in low places, because it's a letter to the FEC basically assuring them that this was not a campaign payment. Literally says, "Neither Mr. Cohen or Essential Consultants LLC made any in-kind contributions to Donald Trump for president, anchor, any other presidential campaign committee. He's not been a government employee, et cetera, etara. The payment in question does not constitute a campaign contribution or expenditure, and therefore the FEC lacks jurisdiction over this matter." So case closed. We said it.

0:10:25 Thomas: So Okay. So Michael Cohen, just a recap here, Michael Going Paid the money, the hush money, and he tried to do it for Trump and eat that bullet by saying, "There's, uh, nothing to see here. Here, I'm just paying my good friend Stormy D over here, just a routine payment, doing it. And I've even written you this letter." And then later, he says, "Yeah, I was completely fucking lying, obviously, when I did that. Why would I pay Stormy Daniels?" And then this asshole's like, "Well, if he was lying about what he was doing it, then do why I have this lie here that he told when he was doing it?"

0:10:26 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, Six Exactly, plus it's a letter, it's not an affidavit, it's not a legal filing, it's just a letter to the FEC saying we don't think this was a campaign contribution or expenditure. But guess who's, that that's up to the Fbc, that's not up to him. I was thinking, uh, you know, in 2018, I actually, I checked, uh, Idris Elba was People's Sexiest Man Alive, which, you know, no argument, that's Fine.

0:11:22 Thomas: Always in my heart. Doesn't matter that you're...

0:11:25 Matt: He, and might as well have just written to People magazine and said, "Well, I, I should have been sexiest man alive. I am in fact the sexiest man alive, right?

0:11:30 Thomas: Yeah. Case closed. No need to... And in fact, uh, this magazine doesn't have jurisdiction over that question. Uh, so yeah, good

0:11:31 Matt: And yeah, yeah, exactly. This is binding and final. Yeah, I am the sexist man alive and so that it's just as stupid as referencing a letter like that, right where you just state your opinion about something and it is their opinion. It wasn't a campaign campaign contribution and it's my opinion that it was no,

0:11:42 Thomas: Day.

0:11:51 Thomas: Yeah. And it, he already admitted that he was lying when he did that. Right. Or am I crazy? What is the gotcha here? Is that, did he write that letter like later or something like after he shouldn't have been lying about it anymore or what?

0:12:03 Matt: That was six months before he took the plea. So, you know, right.

0:12:05 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. So that's nothing. Okay. Just making sure I'm like, it's so dumb. I'm just making sure. I'm not missing anything.

0:12:07 Matt: Yeah. No, yeah, this, no, it's really stupid. I just wanted to put it to mention it because it's been out there. And I see these people on Twitter talking about how this is bulletproof evidence, that this is case closed. Like you got to believe, you know, Trump now. That's the thing. This has always been a theme with these people is like, they just need a piece of paper to cling onto. It's like the perfect phone call, right? You never actually read the perfect call. You don't want to read it. You just know that it's perfect because he said it was perfect.

0:12:12 Thomas: Right. Okay. Oh, Yeah, Yep, Yep, Yeah, You haven't You know, you have a group of a dedicated propaganda arm and a bunch of zealots who just, they all just need the barest bones of excuses and they're like, yeah, good enough for me, don't, whatever, yeah.

0:12:44 Matt: They're using this. They They really are out there using this. And so that is the stupid reason why this case might suck. I have a stupid and a smart reason.

0:12:45 Thomas: Oh, don't like that, but okay, what is it?

0:12:53 Matt: Well, we got to consider, because I've been seeing all this commentary about how, well, well, maybe this case is actually bad and we have to look at that. I examined all this. I actually did some actual bona fide legal research for this show, and I have come to the conclusion that it's still fine. But there are some untested waters here, so it's perfectly fine to...

0:12:54 Thomas: Yep, of course. Okay well, you could have left us in suspense more.

0:13:10 Matt: Well, you know, we'll let you make your own decisions here. I'm going to put out all the evidence. But so there are a few issues with this, starting with the fact that this is kind of a murky legal theory. And again, I should caveat all of this by saying we don't know what the legal theory is because we don't have an indictment. Don't know what the facts are because we haven't been sitting in the grand jury, but we know it's out there publicly. And there's a lot more out there publically than there usually would be for a grand jury. So that helps us a lot.

0:13:33 Thomas: Right. Can you restate? I think you made reference to, but I'm not sure we got into it enough for maybe some listeners. The murky legal theory allegedly is that the filing issue is normally just a nothing. But if you're doing it to commit a crime, then it's an actual big deal. And this is my understanding. Tell me if I'm wrong. And the murky issue is, well, what's the crime? And is it a state crime and something like that? Right.

0:13:42 Matt: Yes.

0:13:59 Matt: Yeah, no, there's, there'S a lot going on here. And I'll just read just briefly, and I don't want to be reading from statutes too much here, but this is the whole center of the case. So let's, let's just take a quick look. AndI got to tell you, there have been a lot of experts on New York penal code 175 coming out of the woodwork this week. I'm I'm not one of them, but I've read up enough that I feel like I know something about it, and I certainly looked at the case law. But essentially, falsifying business records has a few different degrees in New York, and the first degree one is if you basically commit it, but then on top of the committing it, when intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid and conceal or conceal the commission thereof. Let me read that again, just to be clear.

When his intent to default includes an attempt to commit other crime or or to aid or conceal the commission thereof. That's a classy felony in New York. And they really obviously need to make it a felony, both because sticking Donald Trump with a misdemeanor isn't going to look so good, and because I believe the statute of limitations of the misdeneanor would have passed. So they really have to make this a felony. They've got to stick this landing.

So there's some interesting questions here, because this is incredibly broad. Words like defraud and intent to commit another crime. And here, the things people people have been putting out. And I don't totally agree with this, but the idea being that there's there might've been intent to defraud, but it was just intent to defer ahead of an election. And that all he was doing is trying to cover up an affair. He wasn't trying to commit a crime.

He was just doing what a lot of people would do in this situation and just trying to pay somebody to go away. And That's not a crime, which is true, but there doesn't necessarily make this incompatible with a criminal offense. Defense. Really can have, as long as you can prove that any crime was intended. It's really about the intent that you have in the state of New York when you falsify a business record.

0:14:16 Thomas: Let me pause you there. I why is it falsifying a business record exactly? Is it not? So we're not dealing with the like election violation part of it because it's New York, right?

0:15:51 Matt: Because it's New York. Yeah, and we're talking about a federal election. So they can't charge a federal campaign. But now that's the other kind of weak spot here is that the SDNY and Robert Mueller both already passed on charging him with election violations relating to the Stormy Daniels payment. I think just because it's too dinky. I don't think it's because it was necessarily the worst legal theory. Think about the world in which, just because I think it is worth considering, the world in which this does come out and Stormy Danels does a press conference and says, maybe a week before the election, that this happened.

0:16:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:22 Matt: You put that on top of the Access Hollywood tape, you got something.

0:16:23 Thomas: Yeah. How is that not how is that dinky? What do you who, who declined that? What did anyone who is not a corrupt piece of shit decline that, or oh,

0:16:34 Matt: When you are looking at possible espionage and treason and all the other stuff Mueller was that kind of gets lost in the mix.

0:16:38 Thomas: You're right, we got him for that. Okay. Yeah, it's because he's, yeah. He's in jail, he's never coming out of jail for that stuff. You're right, why, why would we tack on another crime when he's just so dead to rights on all that stuff? Oh,

0:16:40 Matt: Yeah, right. Totally. Yeah. Mean, it's pretty small in the scope of what Mueller was looking at, but, uh, you know, an SDNMI I think was not brave enough to go out for something like that, but there, there's still some associated state stuff that could work, but it does need to be falsifying a business record because, you Know, obviously just lying about it to another person doesn't really matter, but in the course of a business, there's people that can lose money, there're tax implications, there are all these other issues. So,

0:17:08 Thomas: Yeah, we can't let people lose money in this country who might be business, whatever, investors or whatever. Is it is the business record, record, the fake LLC that he made or something? What's that what business's record did he falsify?

0:17:19 Matt: It's saying that it was a retainer payment, I believe, is the theory here.

0:17:21 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Gotcha, dear.

0:17:24 Matt: There could be, and again, I'm not smart enough to know exactly how this all works, but there could бытьax issues with that, or all kinds of other federal problems with completely lying about what the purpose of this payment was when you're clearly you're just flat out repaying somebody. Oh, and repaying them with interest, too, so a good deal for him.

0:17:38 Thomas: I don't I don't think you have to pay interest on retainers. Fuck, all right, I gotta, sorry, I gotta go, right, When I think it's good, It's better, never mind.

0:17:42 Matt: No, you don't. No worries. Yeah. That's just if the retainer is actually just a hush money payment. That's, I don't think you've been doing that.

0:17:52 Thomas: Oh, Thank God. Okay. Yeah.

0:17:53 Matt: Yeah, yeah, don't, don't do that. Uh, there has been a lot of talk, and I said this last week, and I, I'm willing to contradict myself on this because I've looked into this a little bit more. I was saying that if the crime is, is a federal campaign, final, finance violation, it's not totally clear, and I, maybe possibly not actually something that would be covered under the statute. But the wording of the statute, going back and winding that back, is an intent to commit another crime, which is incredibly vague. So you can imagine a situation where you have a New York company.

0:18:21 Thomas: That'd be a crime in, like, another country, I mean, that sounds like it could be anything.

0:18:26 Matt: Exactly. Right. And in Chile, like it could be in Alaska, right? I mean, there's all kinds of ways that you could use a New York company to commit a crime anywhere in the world. So it made me think about, and just by analogy, as a criminal defense attorney, among other things, made me thinking about breaking and entering, which I don't think about that often, but because I went looking just, just so you know, if you ever want to look up this stuff on a Friday night, you can look at jury instructions whenever you have questions about what an offense really is and how it works.

0:18:29 Thomas: Yeah, sure.

0:18:53 Thomas: I mean, I legitimately, that sounds, where do I find those jury instructions?

0:18:57 Matt: So you can actually get them in either word perfect or PDF. They still have been word perfect on the New York website, newyorkcourts .gov.

0:19:03 Thomas: Oh, just like the courthouse website or something, the government website.

0:19:07 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, you Can just get jury instructions and you can find out what, But basically, if you were sitting in court on trial, the judge would be telling you if you're on the jury. He'd read out these jury instructions. So I went through and read them, and they're not very helpful. I've got to say, I guess I would say this, but Massachusetts jury instructions are way better. New York's jury instructions really suck. They're just kind of restating the law in an unhelpful way. But I was thinking about this because I couldn't get any guidance about what this "another crime" thing really means. And so I checked out Massachusetts jury instructions for breaking and entering, which I know seems like it might not be related at all. But breaking and enter is one of those classic old school crimes because you have to be breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony.

0:19:07 Thomas: Oh, okay. Cool. Huh? Right.

0:19:50 Matt: That's sort of the classic way of putting it, right? Not just trying to warm up on a cold night or go to sleep somewhere. You know, to really smack somebody with this, you got to show they have intent to commit a felony. But in Massachusetts, as I believe in the common law generally, you don't actually have have to say which felony, which is kind of weird, but it's a fun little loophole. So the actual Massachusetts jury instruction, uh the commonwealth is not required to prove the defendant intended any particular felony, but it must prove but it most prove the defendant intended to commit some felony, so you had an intent to commit a crime, that makes it a lot easier to prosecute.

0:20:17 Thomas: Really? Huh? Yeah. How do you, I don't understand. How do you prove that? Is it like you find a note where they're like, damn it. I'm going to, I don'T care what felony I'M committing a felony today. I'M just feeling really Felonious. I don't, again, not specifically anyone in particular, but like, watch out, felonies. Well,

0:20:34 Matt: Right. Yeah, just Yeah. I'm gonna go manufacture a terrorist device in somebody's house or something. Yeah, I mean, who knows, right? Um, basically, if you can show that they had no good purpose for being there, uh I think that's pretty fair to infer that there's probably Some kind of, yeah. Well,

0:20:53 Thomas: Just, to, okay. Just, To make sure I understand, when you say they don't have to, their, prove that they're committing a particular felony, do you mean like on that count doesn't require you have to be trying to commit the felony of X, or do you meaning just don't know how to word it. I think there's a distinction there that I'm trying to get at, but like, what does it mean to, I guess, prove that someone was going to commit a felony, but not any specific felony?

0:21:19 Matt: You don't have to prove the elements of a given felony, right? So you don't have to show that they had, um, they're breaking in to to steal jewelry or whatever, you don't to show that they actually took anything, um, because it's really hard to prove intent anyway, but just that they had no good intent, no nothing they could explain, no rational intent. I, this is, I'm being very vague, and of course we're talking about a statute that's completely different from the New York statute, but I'm just giving you an example of something in the law.

0:21:37 Thomas: Yeah. Right. No. Yeah. I'm just trying to understand

0:21:42 Matt: Yeah. Basically,

0:21:42 Thomas: It. It would be by proving like, well, they didn't have any other good reason to be there or something. Right? Is that kind of what it would be? And they were wearing these ski masks and like, come on, we can't tell you exactly what they were doing there, but we're pretty sure it was bad, is it like that? Okay.

0:21:47 Matt: Right. Right. If and they were armed. Yeah. That kind of thing,

0:21:56 Thomas: That makes sense.

0:21:56 Matt: Like, especially if you're breaking into somebody's house at night, like, there's no good reason you should be doing that. So, um, you know, if you're breaking into a construction site because it's, it's 30 degrees outside and you need to sleep, that's different. Um, and that's pretty easy to show, I think, but, yeah, it's

0:21:57 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Gotcha, yeah. Could your defense be like, you were trying to commit like a misdemeanor? No. I was gonna litter, I swear to god, I came here, I was going to just throw something away, but not badly, but not in the right place.

0:22:17 Matt: Just trespassing. Sure. You could try that. But yeah, so I, sorry for the diversion there, but this is just kind of a way of, of analogizing. I always try to do this when I'm thinking about how to understand a statute

0:22:21 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, No, I love it, that's good, well,

0:22:27 Matt: Because you just say another crime, it doesn't say a New York crime. And it could just be that you're trying to commit federal election fraud. I still think that the question is open. And I don't think I'm the only person who thinks this from what I can tell. Have been a lot of stories recently about how defense attorneys think this is a terrible case and there's no way it can win and whatever else. But that really depends on what media outlet you're reading and what kind of story they want to tell. And it's pretty easy to find anybody who will say that this is terrible and it's not going to work, work, in the sense that it's never been used for campaign finance violations. It appears that this would be a first-time kind of thing, using this falsifying for a federal campaign violation. But it's not impossible. We also don't know what the theory actually is, but I'm just going with what sort of the mainstream sort zeitgeist thought is about this right now.

0:23:06 Thomas: That's Important So, We don't actually, who who, who decided this was, was it some media figurehead talking head that just decided this was the theory we were going to start talking about?

0:23:16 Matt: This has been the sort of general understanding, the consensus.

0:23:17 Thomas: Like the common wisdom kind of thing. Yeah.

0:23:19 Matt: Yeah. And it's the only one that makes sense, you know, just in terms of how you could actually say that writing a check that's made out to be a retainer, but isn't actually a retainor and was actually to do something else. It makes sense. Falsifying business records, that's what you're doing. So it's logical, but there's also all kinds of different ways that they can get to that. So we'll see. I'm keeping all that open, but oh, for sure.

0:23:20 Thomas: Huh. Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. There's a possibility there's something we don't know that could, you an additional thing they're doing. Okay.

0:23:43 Matt: For sure, I just wanted to address some of that because there's been so much back and forth about whether this is a good case or not. And I think that the real answer to me is just that there's so much we don't know. And even if it is a good case, it's kind of a first-time theory. So somebody has to be the first to try this stuff. But at the end of the day, you're talking about an extremely experienced prosecutor. He used to be a federal prosecutor who knows what he's doing and also knows that he's out there on a limb, out in front of the whole world doing this. So I have to hope that he has really thought this out and that he is got a team of people that have been thinking it out.

0:24:07 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Well, we also know nothing's fucking happened yet. So maybe it could be that he's like, yeah, damn it. This is not that great of a case. So nothing's going to ever happen. And we're going to do the, just, it's just another Lucy with a football and one more time, but just a bigger pain in the ass. Like they went to more trouble to not do anything.

0:24:16 Matt: Right. Yeah, Could be. No way to know. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of speculation that Costello's testimony threw him for a loop and really got him thinking that they need to step back and put up another rebuttal witness. Cohen was available on Monday to rebut Costello, his testimony, but they didn't call him. I don't know if they're just saving him and they want to come back and see what they can do, regroup. Knows? But it could also be that on Monday they're going to comeback, bring in the bills, read everything and have him sign off on these letters and get it done. We don't now. But there's some speculation about another witness. As it is, we're just going to have to wait and see on all of this. I just thought it was worth digging in because we didn't get into the legal stuff as much last time.

0:25:01 Thomas: Yeah. I thought I saw a headline that said some authorities or police or somebody was like bracing for a riot kind of thing. Like, well, we're putting out the, kind of stuff the the they did with the Supreme Court when the Dobbs decision was coming down, you know, all that stuff. Did you see that? Was that bullshit? Or yeah?

0:25:17 Matt: Yeah, no, I saw some pictures there. They've got big barriers up. Yeah, they're ready.

0:25:19 Thomas: What? Hmm. I mean, That that can't be nothing, right? I know I said that about Trump, but like, that can't be nothing, right? Am I, or unless they're just like, well, we think maybe, you know, he has riled people up, so so we'll just do this in general, like, in case.

0:25:34 Matt: It's become a Philadelphia Eagles game where there's going to be a riot, whether we win or lose, I guess. Yeah, no. It's, um, I thought the pictures, it does look very serious and let me look at the messaging. I mean, Trump was tweeting today about death and destruction that would follow. I mean death and destruction. I have to admit, that's pretty metal. I give him credit for that, but

0:25:51 Thomas: Yeah, that just reminded me of like the Bible or something like that. OK, it's going to be stars are going to fall to Earth. Cool.

0:25:55 Matt: Yeah, totally. He's biblical justice. But I mean it's funny, but it's also awful that he's coming out and just like openly saying that he thinks that his supporters will commit acts of death and distraction, um,

0:26:03 Thomas: Oh, yeah. The problem is that we've been living in this horrible reality for so long that I don't know what to do about that other than just be like, well, fuck, I don't know, you know, like, yes, that will. It's like climate change. At this point, yeah, we really should fucking do something about that, shouldn't we, and then a bunch of, you know, for some reason we don't, nothing happens and people still are willing to riot and kill for this insane asshole, and I don't know, what, what am I supposed to do other than laugh, I don't know, I'm not sure, oh.

0:26:35 Matt: For sure, and um, know, we're coming up on the 30th anniversary of Waco and Trump is going to speak there, I think, this weekend and that's the same kind of thing of like, you know, what you're doing, I mean, it's, it's, why are you going to Waco, that's, that's really strange at a time when you're facing federal charges and you're getting people riled up and telling them to consider acts of death and destruction and

0:26:41 Thomas: That's right, yeah. Can we get Janet Reno to fire up on the engine of another tank real quick. No, I don't know.

0:26:59 Matt: That's dark, but yeah. Uh, just, I mean, this stuff is just becoming so flagrant and so out there, and he's desperate, I mean, he's, he's also, the New York Times reported that he's kind of fantasizing about being led away to handcuffs, he thinks it's gonna be really good for him to get that, uh, that martyrdom. Yeah, and

0:27:14 Thomas: Really? I thought, okay, but I thought last time we were talking about reports of these, oh, he's scared shitless about this. He can't believe he actually, what was that?

0:27:25 Matt: Now he's leaning in, I guess. I don't know, but this is that

0:27:25 Thomas: I can't, yeah, or who is telling us anything and is it bullshit? That's what I want to know. That's, yeah.

0:27:27 Matt: Sure. Sure, but yeah, this latest Times report, I mean, it's, it also kind of makes sense in Trump logic, right, that he kind of thinks about it for a while and is like, all right, well, if I'm going to do it, I'm gonna do it all the way, right? Let's just lean in and get myself super arrested and look like as much of a victim as possible.

0:27:40 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's fair. He is going to have the biggest, it's going to be the biggest arrest.

0:27:48 Matt: The best one, best mugshot. Nobody's ever had a better one.

0:27:49 Thomas: Yeah. So?

0:27:51 Matt: Pretty much. So if you like, we can move on to Georgia, which

0:27:55 Thomas: I would love to go back to Georgia. That one seems again, once again, seems so fucking obvious. So what, what's new there? Oh,

0:27:57 Matt: Yeah, well, I've dug a little deeper on that too. It turns out that the delay that we're looking at right now is actually because the next actual grand jury isn't until May. Remember, I told you last week that this is a special grand jury that doesn't actually have the power to indict, unlike the New York grand jury, which does. So they have to refer it on to a proper grand jury, and she's going to have to put this up as a full grand jury case with their report, potentially with other, basically.

0:28:15 Thomas: Oh, So is there like a grand jury season or something, like they can't, they went out to the grand jury's like too green, it's not ready?

0:28:30 Matt: Yeah, this is the primaries, grand jury primaries. Now we're on, right.

0:28:34 Thomas: Sorry, we gotta, we gotta wait till that's all uh ripe. Yeah.

0:28:36 Matt: We're on. Yeah. Apparently this is timed out so that she's gonna have to prepare a full grand jury for May. This must've been the plan all along. We have to wait a little longer on that and continue to hope for something else out of New York. But in the meantime, on Monday, they did something very entertaining that I wanted to talk about. They filed a 483-page document. It was styled as a motion to quash, and you might ask a motion -to -quash what?

0:28:48 Thomas: Okay. Who's

0:29:01 Matt: The Trump team. Yeah.

0:28:59 Thomas: They The The uh the The Trump team did. Okay.

0:29:03 Matt: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you might ask a emotion -to quash a very good question. It's very unclear.

0:29:06 Thomas: Uh, A Motion to quash what, Matt? Yeah.

0:29:12 Matt: Pretty much everything. Is really more like a motion to find this whole court is out of order. We just don't like it. Please stop. Because there is nothing to quash, right? You have to actually have a document or an indictment or something to stop or a subpoena.

0:29:25 Thomas: Now This is just a general desire that something be quashed. Just quash anything. And And he said the nearest thing. Just quash it, please.

0:29:34 Matt: Know how it is. You wake up on a Monday morning and you just want, want to quash everything. It is one of the better legal words, uh, So this motion, it's nonsense. Obviously it doesn't know what it wants or what it is, but um, very short version is that it is essentially saying that the grand jury, special grand jury law is broad enough that includes civil and criminal stuff, that somehow the whole thing is invalid, they should cancel the whole special grand jury and go home. And that uh, finally, Willis really, you know, might as well just take her off the case, and take the judge off the case, too, while you're at it. You know, they should all go. It's not brought on any particular legal grounds. It's just, you know, it's just a, it's not actually addressing anything that exists.

0:29:38 Thomas: Everybody just quash up. I can't deal with it today. It is.

0:30:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:13 Matt: I think this kind of is in line with that letter I was talking about, that it's

0:30:16 Thomas: Yeah, I was just going to say that. I was writing a letter. And by the way, Trump, sexiest man alive of 2018 or whatever he said, 19.

0:30:17 Matt: Exactly right. But yeah, it is for the same purpose, though, just to get the talking points out there. And that sucks. I don't like it at all. I don't think you should be using the legal system just to g et your talking points out there . You can go on Tucker Carlson and do that.

0:30:29 Thomas: Yeah yeah. How do we what what do we do about that? What does the legal system need to do aboutthat? Or is it that like does the media need to realize that's the bullshit game happening and just be like, well, this is nothing or what do you think?

0:30:50 Matt: Because judges don't want to necessarily issue an order to show cause and say, why did you just file this in front of me, right? Because you got to give people latitude. And certainly, this is the kind of thing, when I was skimming it, I kept thinking, this Is the kind of thing you expect to see from somebody who doesn't have a lawyer, right. And we want to give people without lawyers the opportunity to file whatever nonsense they want to, because they need that protection. But at the same time, an experienced lawyer should know better than to file something like this. And maybe there should be penalties. I don't know. Maybe we should start I mean, you remember from the election law cases from 2020, there was a lot of fallout from all that. There were a lot of attorneys that ended up with sanctions.

0:30:55 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:31:23 Thomas: I mean, we covered a lot. We covered a lot

0:31:25 Matt: And yeah,

0:31:25 Thomas: Of that. A lot of sanctions, you know, but not like no. Apparently, you just cannot fucking get kicked out of being a lawyer. It just can't happen. It's impossible unless you steal money, I guess. But that that's it, which is so ironic because the normal thing they do is just just take all your money. But if you steal it, that's the one thing that they don't allow.

0:31:34 Matt: Pretty much. Pretty much. That's how you actually lose your license. Right. Right. It's when you touch client funds. You touch the stuff that you're holding on to that you are not supposed to have. You can steal money all day, apparently. I don't know. I really try not to.

0:31:55 Thomas: Okay. It needs to be harder to stay a lawyer if you suck. That's been my conclusion of the last like three years or whatever it's been is it's way too easy to continue being a lawyer once you are a piece of shit. And I just want to form a, I don't know what you do. You're the lawyer. You You figure it out. Form a are you a piece of shit committee to just reevaluate this stuff and just make it a little harder to be a dirtbag lawyer. A little bit harder.

0:32:23 Matt: You'd think that doctors can only kill so many people on purpose, right?

0:32:25 Thomas: You would think.

0:32:27 Matt: I don't know. And these state bar associations like to talk about how they have to protect the reputation of lawyering, but maybe that's the problem. It's already in the toilet. I don't know.

0:32:34 Thomas: Yeah. What reputation? Yeah, exactly.

0:32:39 Matt: Yeah, this motion, the whole thing was just kind of silly and fun, it was just a nice diversion from all of this. But there's also been a report from CNN that Fannie Willis is considering this as a RICO case, which is pretty cool. Straight -up racketeering, because there were a number of people involved in essentially a conspiracy to attempt, to attempt to fix the vote.

0:32:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah I mean it was like almost like a shakedown of the election system. It's like, hey, Georgia, you know, maybe if the election doesn't go my way, maybe, you know, I can't protect you from all the what's the typical like mafia shakedown. It was a lot like that.

0:33:13 Matt: Yeah, it'd be a real shame if we didn't find some votes, pretty much.

0:33:15 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Might as well have been saying it would be a real shame. He might have even said, honestly, he might have said something almost exactly like that who knows. He says so much dumb stuff like that third

0:33:20 Matt: Yeah, yeah, well, that's the thing. We didn't even talk about the third call last week because we got, we were talking about, yeah?

0:33:28 Thomas: Call. I thought it was revelation to me last week that there was a second call.

0:33:34 Matt: Yeah, no, the third called was actually to one of the investigators that was looking into all of this, an election official, basically telling them to cool it. So what else do you want? I mean, we're just, once again, we're in a quashing mode.

0:33:42 Thomas: Be careful. We're going to quash you too. You see

0:33:47 Matt: I came

0:33:47 Thomas: This headline that's our yeah that's our quash handiwork. You don't want that to happen to you or your family. They'll be quashed.

0:33:52 Matt: Here to quash and chew gum, et cetera. Yeah. But it's just, I mean... I think at that point, when you're actually shaking down election officials, when you are trying to get a special session of the House called by harassing the Speaker of the house, and of course, when you go to the Secretary of State and tell him to find some votes, and you've got people like Lindsey Graham out there working for you, That does start to become an actual racketeering conspiracy. I have no problem with charging that as a RICO case. And apparently the Georgia RICO statute is even broader so they can do more with it.

0:34:12 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. Jesus, the Georgia Mafia didn't realize it was a big thing over there. Wow.

0:34:26 Matt: Well, apparently Fannie Willis actually has a background in prosecuting gang cases, so it's perfect. Good fit. So yeah, exciting stuff. We have to wait a few months probably for it, but just leave

0:34:37 Thomas: Now, I'm picturing all the Godfather movies but with like a Georgia accent, because they've been living there, you know, it's like a combined Italian-Georgia thing, that'd be interesting.

0:34:46 Matt: The peaches. Yeah, I don't know. Is that a thing? Take the gun, leave the peach. Yeah. So we should probably talk about Mar-a-Lago. That's the next one.

0:34:51 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, should we? What's, what's going on there, the documents cases more and more on that, okay.

0:34:58 Matt: Yeah. There's even more. And including like minutes ago. That is the fun stuff with this. We really could talk about this every day because minutes ago more has happened. Happened. We were talking last time about this testimony from Evan Corcoran, who is a former Trump attorney, maybe even current Trump attorney but not anymore because he has to testify.

0:35:07 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, which seems fucking insane, like I don't, all these things that happen and then we move on, like, or something somebody moves on, but when your own lawyer is like now testifying against you, that doesn't happen, I'm not the lawyer, Matt, you tell me, how percent of of cases, you know, 50% of cases, 40%, 0 .0001%. That's crazy.

0:35:40 Matt: No this is, I think you could be a criminal defense attorney your entire career and never see a case where a lawyer is testifying against a client. Like that's just, yeah, it's something really has to go wrong but it just keeps going wrong with Trump for some reason. Knows? Who knows something, some kind of common denominator here, but yeah. So Corcoran, we were talking about this last time, but he was essentially in the position and it does actually appear, I will say in fairness to him, it looks like that he was being used, that he, he was not necessarily his idea that this, he's not maybe a bad guy in this, but, um, wasn't in a position of having to tell DOJ, I believe, uh, on the date when they were moving more documents out of Mar-a-Lago that everything was fine and

0:35:48 Thomas: Yeah. That's nuts. Yeah, I don't know why. Weird. Yeah? The woke left? Yeah. Mm

0:36:19 Matt: They were done. That was enough for Beryl Howell, who was the chief judge of the D.C. District Court, to say that he was involved in the commission of crime or fraud, whether it was whitting or otherwise, it doesn't matter, he was at that point an instrumentality of crime and fraud, so because of that, uh, he has to testify, he has provide his notes, and here's a big bombshell from this week, he has to provide his audio recordings. There's another weird theme in Trump lawyers that he was recording Trump on the phone, apparently, which I don't know. I don't t know why.

0:36:19 Thomas: Hmm. Right, right. Hmm. I mean, yeah, I was gonna say a minute ago, I know you're trying to say he's a patsy or whatever. But like, if you take Make that call to be Trump's lawyer. I'm already going to say at a minimum, you're like you've kidnapped. So I don't know. You're like, you know, you've been kidnapped. You're a criminal of some kind. I don't know what, but it's something. But if are the kind of person who's going to do that, recording Trump, not the worst idea. Not the worst idea because you know he's going throw you under the bus or some bullshit's going to happen. And Lordy having tapes is not the worse idea I've heard.

0:36:58 Matt: Yeah, right.

0:37:11 Matt: No, that's true. No it's true and you might remember there was some big firm that their policy when they were representing Trump, who of course it's very hard for them to find lawyers now, but they had that policy that they always had two lawyers sitting in, and they always took notes, because they just knew that he was going to change his story anytime. That's not a good sign when when you, like, as a matter of policy, hey, exactly, yeah, right, because he just will not, yeah, so, yeah. Corcoran has to testify. He actually did today, so that's exciting. We won't find out what happened from all that yet, but the fun part of all of this, the thing that I really want to talk about was that the Trump attorneys were desperate to have him not testify, because obviously they know it's going to be really bad.

0:37:24 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:37:34 Thomas: No. No. When you need a chaperone, like your, your parent has to come, they made his mom come be there with him.

0:37:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:56 Matt: They know his notes are going to be terrible, his these audio recordings are probably going to kill it, um, they sought immediately to have him excluded, and of course Trump's main thing, his main legal strategy through all of this, has always just been to delay as much as possible. Just hold out and hope, especially with these cases, because if he can delay them for absolutely Yeah, no, and he's, uh, God willing, he's only got so much time on this planet anyway. He might delay that far, but

0:38:08 Thomas: No, it's fucking worked for him so far. Yeah, right.

0:38:19 Thomas: Well, but also once he's president again, that's why he can't do anything to a city president. They're just immune from apparently all human laws of any kind. So it's, it'S, itS not a bad strategy on his part.

0:38:19 Matt: Uh uh, yep Yep. And you're in within six months of an election, then you're, you know, you're prosecuting somebody who's

0:38:31 Thomas: I can't Do anything. You can murder a man in cold fifth blood. It doesn't matter. Third

0:38:32 Matt: No absolutely can't be prosecuting someone who's running for president, it's just too important.

0:38:36 Thomas: Yeah, maybe we should just get rid of that. Like, I know. Should we just do away with. Oh, well, you see, it's it's very much like a, you know, a banana republic to be investigating political. OK, I think we're already there. I think I think we've we tried that theory. We're like, yeah, don't don't hold anyone accountable for any crime. Don't hold Trump accountable for anything. Otherwise, it might be sort of like we're investigating your opponent in a in a bad way. We tried that paradigm. And guess what? We do live in a shitty banana republic now because of that, and we don't have democracy because of that, let's try the other way. Let's just for fun, experiment the other side of that.

0:38:37 Matt: Yeah. It's so stupid. Yeah.

0:38:50 Matt: Yeah.

0:39:07 Matt: I mean, he already broke the glass here by, uh, having, you know, lock her up, right, by talking about having a political, political opponent prosecuted for no apparent reason.

0:39:20 Thomas: Right? But you see, we're just as bad if we try to prosecute someone who's committed 87 real crimes. We're just As bad as someone who said lock her up to someone who hasn't committed any crimes because I'm very smart. And that's what I say.

0:39:24 Matt: Yes.

0:39:36 Matt: So, yeah, here's the thing, try to stop this, and the appeals court that's reviewing this decision does the funniest thing that I've seen a court do in a long time. They told the defense they had until midnight to file basically a list of what they think Corcoran shouldn't be doing, and then they had until 6 a for the, for the DOJ to respond, so literally an overnight appeal. And I, this is just amazing to me, as somebody who's in a small firm, you know, basically I was solo for a long time and now I have partners, but I, I just can't imagine being able to stay up all night and then go and do my job right. But of course if you have

0:40:11 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I'm worthless if I stay up all night. I can't do any. I'm I'm worthless right now. And it's nice of you to not say anything because this baby does not let me sleep very much. And I'm very sensitive to that. So that's yeah, I agree.

0:40:21 Matt: Right. Well, and imagine if that baby were your client and keeping you up all night, because that's what this is, going on, exactly.

0:40:28 Thomas: I would No, way rather have my baby for a client than Trump.

0:40:33 Matt: I wouldn't talk back as much anyway, but yeah, so they, and just to really show off, they filed at 5:32 a.m. which I mean that extra 28 minutes they probably could have used, but I, I will admit that I have a couple of 11:59 p.m. time stamps in my, my records I'm pretty proud of. Those, uh, is incredible, though, I mean, this is absolutely amazing that basically by 6 p.m., you're saying get me this stuff by midnight and then file a response by 6 a.m. We have this expression about this rocket docket, right? But this is the ultimate rocket doocket. This is absolutely supernova, like just going so fast.

0:41:06 Thomas: So speaking of me being tired all the time. Sorry. Why did this happen? Who did what? What? This is crazy. Missed something.

0:41:12 Matt: Well, this ist because the appeals court really, really wants things to move forward. They know what Trump is doing and they know that the court needs to testify.

0:41:18 Thomas: Oh, so this is them being like, oh, this is a bullshit thing. So we're going to give you an impossible timeline Because this is all bullshit. Shit. Oh, I love that. Oh, that's fantastic. Okay. That's

0:41:24 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And it's really good. And because they know that otherwise, if they've properly stretched this out to a full appeal timeline, Corcoran might not testify for months, right? So make it happen. Just get it done. You know that he's going to testify. And, you it feels Like at this point that case is going so fast, it's going To explode if it drops below 50 miles An hour. I mean, this is absolutely just off the rails. It's great. I love it. It's fantastic. And uh, I just hope that that firm had enough cocaine for everybody because uh, that's Incredible staying Up On it, they

0:41:29 Thomas: Great.

0:41:44 Thomas: Did They Make that Happen Though they actually got met that, that wow

0:41:58 Matt: Did it, both parties did it, 5:32 a.m. .m. Yeah Yeah, you

0:42:01 Thomas: Both Parties Oh That well, that's some bullshit. I'd be like, look, okay, yeah, I get you're, you're punishing them for this nonsense, but what, we're just some government employees

0:42:11 Matt: You want to hear what show-offs they were too? They, the, I believe as a defense, they filed a motion to actually allow them to go beyond the word Limit for this, that's just, that's Spiking the football. That's too much, much. I can't take that.

0:42:16 Thomas: Yeah Did They File a motion of, you forgot to give us homework? Work, jeez.

0:42:25 Matt: Totally. Yeah, that's these nerds. That's what it is. Yeah, that that's that I just thought that was amazing. And that's really the direction this whole thing needs to go is no more bullshit. Just get through this.

0:42:30 Thomas: Yeah Hey, it's like baseball, they finally fixed baseball. It's a miracle. My brother, I'm not a huge baseball fan, but my brother is, and he's been not able to watch it ever anymore because it fucking sucked, they every Pitch takes 10 minutes, a games went on as long as cricket matches where there's like multiple day events, and now they, some genius decided, hey, you know, this sucks, let's not, not. And so they got rid of the shift. Nobody watches sports who lists. Well, actually some people do, but anyway, they got ready. It was a bunch of stuff that sucked about baseball, and it's going to be good again. If, if, and you like baseball, same deal, let's get the pitch count, but with the appeals or whatever, I don't know what the, something with the Trump time wasting, you know, the pitch count and the band, the shift and, uh, let's get this stuff moving.

0:42:47 Matt: Sure.

0:43:21 Matt: Yeah. There's no crying in federal court. Come on. Let's do it. Yeah no it's it's really good to see and I I'm not I'm still not going going to watch baseball, but it's good to hear that too.

0:43:31 Thomas: Meaning, but you know I, I, yeah, it is nice. Like back in the day, you they used to play games in like an hour. You just throw the fucking ball and then try to hit the ball. That was it. God, it's so, I really am not a baseball fan either, but I found it so fun. Like I find this interesting that someone actually made a good decision in life. Cause you know there's a whole bunch of people are like, look for the sanctity of this game, let's make it continue sucking. How can you change something to make it not fucking suck? And by the way, it is making it how it used to be. Like, but there's still the people are like, oh, you're going to change the game. You're going to, you know, change the sacred game. And yeah.

0:43:55 Matt: Right. Right, right. What else am I going to do for eight hours? Come on.

0:44:09 Thomas: Yeah. And anyone is interested in this at all, which no one is, but that's fine. I'm on the topic. Made a video that was like the difference between the new rules and the old rules. And it was, they, they juxtaposed someone literally one pitch, one pitch pitch in the time that under the current rules, they did like a whole inning because, because it was wait, wait, Wait, wait. Oh, try to pick the guy off. Wait, Wait. Oh. Try to pick just for a fucking hour. It's literally one pitch for like 10 minutes. And the new rules, it's like, no, you got to just play the goddamn game. So anyway, let's get that. But for this, or is it really compatible? Cause you just don't have to look at it at all. It could just be On. On.

0:44:30 Matt: Wow.

0:44:47 Matt: Yeah, no, I still think that baseball is fundamentally incompatible with ADHD, but maybe someday. Maybe. That's true.

0:44:57 Thomas: It's like saying white noise is incompatible with ADHD. Um, is

0:45:01 Matt: That is true. But if you actually want to follow a sport, I mean, it's just, I don't know, at least for my flavor.

0:45:06 Thomas: That? Do you think so? Wait, you have ADHD too? Oh, nice. Oh, good.

0:45:08 Matt: Yeah. I, really good to hear you're working through it, that's uh, Yeah.

0:45:13 Thomas: Oh, yeah, it's, I'm telling you, the drugs for me are just, they help so much. They won't make it so that like you don't feel a little different than everybody, for me it's just, well, I can't tell what it will do for everybody. But for me, my biggest issue is the executive dysfunction and the not being able to start stuff. And it just, they really do help with that. And they'll get me, but there's a downside too, because like it could get me hyper -focused, but on the wrong thing more.

0:45:17 Matt: Sure. Exactly. Yeah.

0:45:41 Thomas: So like, it'll help with focus, but I'll be like hyper -focused on something I really shouldn't be. So that can happen, but all in all, it's totally great. Right. And I wonder if that's why I love hockey so much, because literally every split second of that magnificent sport is an incredible interaction between two brilliant athletes who are like outsmarting each other with little fakes and moves. And my brain, I follow every detail of it. So it's like fascinating to see. It's like a mini little chess match in every little interaction. I love it.

0:45:41 Matt: Yep. Oh, Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:13 Matt: It's Soccer for me, same thing, right? It's just, it's action, like there's actually something happening most of the time. Um, So,

0:46:17 Thomas: You had me and you lost me. You lost me so hard. You mean soccer where they just run for four hours and nobody does anything? Oh, no, I'm not saying I could do it. No, I did try to watch for the last World Cup. And, you know, I can appreciate what you're saying. That's that's fair.

0:46:18 Matt: Yeah. Hey, You try it. No, I, I'm not a huge fan. To the, I really can't follow sports at all, but to the extent I can, I can at least know what's going on in soccer.

0:46:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was some bonus sports talk for the four people who would appreciate it of this audience. Anything more on this Trump nonsense. But I do love that that pitch count on the court. That's great.

0:46:40 Matt: Um, and Yeah. No, that was a great ADHD day version about ADHD, uh, but uh, yeah, no, I, I think that that about covers it for Georgia, and uh, there was even a whole other grand jury that we didn't even talk about that. I, I'm gonna be, yeah, I know, it has to do with it's Coming around to, I mean, this is a whole nother thing that's just getting going about business practices, something, something to do with Dominica, the country of Dominica. Not prepared to talk about it, but I just wanted to mention that it's out there because it's going to require me to actually learn something. Of course, there's the civil suits. Those are still happening. There was some news out of those, and it's worth taking a couple of minutes right now. Might remember there's two different civil suits that were brought by the same person regarding, it was E. Jean Carroll. It was a woman who

0:47:03 Thomas: Jeez. How many grand jurors we got on this ship anyhow. Yeah.

0:47:33 Thomas: Yeah

0:47:34 Matt: Very credibly claims that she was sexually assaulted by Trump in in a department store, and uh, it sounds very much like what has been described as his MO, basically the way he does these things, so I certainly believe her. Um, she brought a defamation suit before she was able to bring anything down, the uh, the assault, because statute of limitations had run at the time, and the statute of limitations didn't allow her to bring it, but as soon as it did, because they changed the law about statute of imitations for uh, sexual assault survivors. And And then she ended up, the long story is, short story, excuse me, she ends up with these consolidated cases, and the judge finally just said, why don't you just proceed with the one where Trump wasn't president? That might be a little easier for you. Let's go forward on the one where you can actually get him because it's really hard to see somebody while they're president for actions they took while they were president. Because he said a bunch of things about her while he was

0:47:34 Thomas: There you go yeah yeah okay

0:48:23 Matt: President.

0:48:23 Thomas: I remember, yeah, I remember covering this, it is, yeah, I mean, it is an interesting issue to say, like, are you still making the claim when you bring it up in the scopy or whatever, so I guess they're saying, fuck all that noise, here's the one we know you can pursue, just do that. Is that essentially what's happening? Well,

0:48:26 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. The lawyers were actually together. They came together and tried to get the court to consolidate these cases, and the court said, no, why don't we just postpone the other one, because you have a much better case here with the post -presidency. There's no complicated issues. It's not going to tie it up on appeal. So there's that, and that's pushing forward. Forward and then at the same time you've got uh, Leticia James and New York Attorney General has got her civil suit pushing forward against the entire Trump Organization that could actually take down uh, the Trump Organization in a real way in New York, so yeah

0:48:55 Thomas: There you don't I mean this uh, uh, in the kindest way possible. Um, so what you're saying is there's a bunch of ways that Trump is going to face consequences just tomorrow. Just it's going to be, it's just about to happen. Everybody is so close at all, man. Probably like tomorrow, Tuesday.

0:49:15 Matt: Today's the day No, I, I think he's actually going to die before, I mean, I don't know which, again, is not not the the worst, but yeah

0:49:29 Thomas: I, or I hope that, or I just die. I just, I'm tired of this. Can we just one or the other God, but, but like, but also, yes, there are a million different things that are coming to get him. It's just, it really moves slowly. Like it is astronomically slow. It's geological timescales. We're gonna have to dig up the fucking rocks and the fossils of law that have to happen in the sediment there.

0:49:55 Thomas: But But I mean, it also seems like kind of inevitable eventually, right?

0:49:35 Matt: Yeah sure yeah yeah the way these things are going. Yeah, something is inevitable eventually. I mean, we could just do a podcast on Trump suits basically, because that's, it's just going to keep going it would, nobody wants that.

0:50:06 Thomas: It'd be pretty boring to just do that. But I'm looking forward to continuing to speak to you and get the updates on these. And I do actually, I know it's crazy, but I do Actually, have some optimism about this. It's just I would I would like it to stop happening. I would as quickly as possible. I'd like to stop having to be optimistic and just have it happen. But I don't know. I'm optimistic. Seems like if you're setting up barricades and crap, that's got to mean something.

0:50:09 Matt: Yeah No, I mean, they certainly expect something is coming next week, and I think we should expect that too, but what I'd really love is to never have to think about any of this again because he's just in jail and that's just what's happened. Someday we'll get there. Yeah.

0:50:45 Thomas: Well, there's where I disagree because I will prefer to think of him frequently in jail and I'll just be like, ah, yeah, that'S awesome. Just any time, like I'll set a daily reminder to just like, like a meditation almost, you know, like, think about, imagine Trump in jail for just a moment. Ah, yeah. That's great. Good stuff.

0:50:54 Matt: That happened. Right right they're gonna have to build a wing to hold that guy, like a Magneto basically, I mean, it's just, I don't understand how they're even going to keep him, but okay.

0:51:09 Thomas: Yeah. Mag Cheeto. Yeah. All right. Let's get out of here. It's a Friday night. Thank you so much for recording on a Friday Night. Sure you've got just parties get to and so much to do. Yeah. I've got, you know, sleep to maybe get. That's the best I can say.

0:51:12 Matt: Yeah more legal research yeah well, good luck with that. All right, good night, see ya.

0:51:28 Thomas: All Right. Thanks so much, Matt.