WTW14: thefire.org Is an Absolute Joke

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:00:11 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:00:19 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: Got some predictions on and I'm going to be able to evaluate some of them.

0:00:46 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Like Barbie's going to bomb its second weekend in the box office. Patrons know what's up.

0:00:52 Thomas: Yeah. Normie's heard half of it. That was a good episode. Hon, why don't you tell us a little bit about the fire.org and I will then after that tell you a little bit about why they fucking suck.

0:00:54 Lydia: Yeah, OK.

0:01:04 Lydia: I also have a little bit about why they fucking suck.

0:01:06 Thomas: Oh, good. We're on the same team. We were a team in so many ways, more ways than one. You know, I

0:01:07 Lydia: OK. Yeah I know. All right. So FIRE stands in 1999, FIRE originally stood for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

0:01:22 Thomas: Forgot it was an acronym.

0:01:23 Lydia: Yeah. And then they rebranded in 2022 to Foundation for individual rights and expression because they wanted to broaden their mission and their impact. They were really focused on college campuses to begin with. They really kind of trying to stand up and be seen as an ACLU competitor, I think.

0:01:27 Thomas: Oh, OK.

0:01:41 Thomas: Competitor. Wow. Yeah.

0:01:43 Lydia: Just kind of like who can win the most cases.

0:01:44 Thomas: We're over to run those assholes

0:01:45 Lydia: I don't know.

0:01:45 Thomas: Out of business. Yeah, I don't know.

0:01:47 Lydia: Founded by these two men, Alan Charles Kors and a man named Harvey Silverglate.

0:01:53 Thomas: An Anheuser -Busch or what? No, I'm just kidding. I don'T think I've heard either of those names before. For. That's weird.

0:01:58 Lydia: And well, you're going to know Harvey Silverglate because he represents John freaking Eastman. Yeah. I'm going to read you some quotes. There's some good stuff. Yeah, right. Is an article on FIRE's website, by the way, and it's titled Harvey Silverglate for the defense of John Eastman. It was dot dot dot of John Eastman right now.

0:02:09 Thomas: Oh my God. Okay. Jeez.

0:02:26 Thomas: Is this? Is he defending? Let me clarify. There's a lot of times you could be defending John Eastman. Okay, right now. Yeah.

0:02:29 Lydia: Yeah. No he's literally defending him right now yep

0:02:33 Thomas: As we speak. Further question, I thought you were going to say like, they were the founders, but you know, they fucked off or something. Like you're saying they found it. They're still involved. This guy's still involved and he's still, they're bored of it. Yeah, No, they've- And uh, and so they might not be involved in the day-to-day per se, but this is being covered on their website like positively that he's, that he's defending

0:02:34 Lydia: Yep.

0:02:43 Lydia: Board like board members right. Yeah yeah.

0:02:54 Lydia: A hundred percent positively. Okay, here's some great quotes. "All press has a thing about everything Trump, and everything is slanted, and I'm appalled. You know, I was a journalist before I was a lawyer, and I still write columns for newspapers, including major national papers and local papers, and I am appalled at the quality of reporting and everything related to Trump. Ten years from now, the news media is going to do a gigantic mea culpa."

0:02:55 Thomas: Oh my God. Sure.

0:03:22 Lydia: And mind you, I am no Trump supporter. I wouldn't vote for Trump if I was being tortured. I am no Trump support.

0:03:26 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. My bad.

0:03:29 Lydia: Then he talks about the Justice Department's prosecution. Appalled that the Department of Justice under a Democratic Democratic administration appalled that they have done this to the leading Republican candidate for the presidency prior to the Republican National Convention. There is a statute of limitations that is quite lengthy and they could have waited. Obviously, I'm adding like intonation, but

0:03:53 Thomas: Want to Oh my God, I would love to use that. Uh, I murder someone and then the police arrest- you could have, there's No. Statute of limitations.

0:04:01 Lydia: Could have waited. You got

0:04:02 Thomas: You could wait forever.

0:04:02 Lydia: Plenty of time.

0:04:03 Thomas: Why didn't you wait till I was like almost dead? Guys, come on, guys. Could have waited This is amazing. Your crime is, by the way, ruining our democracy. Oh, should we wait to charge him with that until before or after he does it a fucking- again, like, should we, you know? Wow.

0:04:07 Lydia: Yeah. I consider. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Consider that what the Department of Justice is doing here to be candidate suppression. That's not their job.

0:04:34 Lydia: So the timing is appallingly bad judgment and I believe done in bad faith to keep him from being the Republican nominee for president. They realize Biden is a very weak candidate. If Biden had any common sense, he would have just said he was not running for a second term. That would have opened up the field to some excellent Democratic, younger Democratic candidates. So on top of everything else, this is an attempt to kind of fix the the election for Biden. It is appalling in every single way. So when I read that sentence, I was like, OK, it's like John Eastman 2.0. Like it's what John Eastmen's been saying. Right. They've been like trying to, you this narrative. The election's fixed. It's been stolen. Yada, yada, Yada. And then like, how are we going to accomplish our ends, I guess. Yes. The language here, I can't believe that I guess I can believe that this is being covered favorably on fire because

0:04:56 Thomas: Broken clock, fuck.

0:05:28 Thomas: Insane.

0:05:29 Lydia: Insane. Yeah. Then he says that the California Bar's disciplinary actions against John Eastman are both legally unwarranted and constitutionally unjustifiable.

0:05:41 Thomas: Does constitution govern bar? People just love to apply the constitution. Like you're Yeah, you're wait in line in Starbucks and they like give, give the drink to the guy behind you instead of yours first, and they're like, "First Amendment, due process," it's like not everything is the fucking constitution, man, just give it a rest, um, guy who, by the way, participated actively in subverting our democracy yes, one of the main guys coming up with bullshit justifications for this, and and beyond the pale for the bar of California to say, "Hey, I don't think you should be a fucking lawyer,"

0:05:46 Lydia: Everything's the First Amendment.

0:05:57 Lydia: Yeah. He characterizes the action against John Eastman as nuanced. Yeah. He was like the guy.

0:06:27 Lydia: Yeah,

0:06:28 Thomas: Man, are you kidding, what, what would get you kicked out of being a lawyer, actually I shouldn't even, I shouldn't go down that road because, um, there is no bottom actually, um, so

0:06:28 Lydia: Yeah. Nuanced. Yeah yeah. One of the founders who who continues to be involved with the organization. Yeah. And the current president and CEO is Greg Lukianoff.

0:06:40 Thomas: That's that's nuts that name, I know, yeah, yeah,

0:06:48 Lydia: Again, it's like all coming back to freedom of speech. Right. It's the First Amendment believers.

0:06:52 Thomas: Well, their idiot idea of freedom of speech, each. Yeah.

0:06:55 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah. I had mentioned earlier some of the folks that are involved with FIRE and members of their advisory council include John McWhorter and Nicholas Christakis.

0:06:56 Thomas: Oh my God. We're going to do Christakis. Do you remember who that is? Or did you look it up?

0:07:10 Lydia: I knew a little bit just because FIRE, they talk about the Christakises, the Christakisai.

0:07:12 Thomas: Yeah. He's the Yale guy. Can't wait. Yeah, we're going gonna do that one. Cause There are a few, that I covered at the time and I can't wait to do those and look back at them because that's a significant one.

0:07:18 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a current case actually, against community colleges. And so we have a friend, you know, who works for the chancellor's office for California community collages. And when I saw this pop up that FIRE is representing a network of professors who don't want to sign DEI statements, I sent it over to him and he said, yeah, I know.

0:07:43 Thomas: This is what you're wasting your time and money on. It's just so, it's pathetic, man. Absolutely pathetic.

0:07:55 Lydia: That's your little fast takeaway.

0:07:57 Thomas: Little intro.

0:07:58 Lydia: Yeah. About what fire is and what to expect.

0:08:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:01 Lydia: No.

0:08:01 Thomas: And this is not meant to be comprehensive. Mine isn't meant to become friends. We need to do a, probably a full series on fire, but, uh, I'm going to cover why they suck just purely relating to this case. This one case there's, I just want to emphasize, this is not made to be a comprehensive hence the breakdown of thefire.org. This is merely just related to this case. It's incredible. Here's what the number one thing that blows my mind about this is you heard me read when like the lawyer was like, and that's why you were rated as like one of the top 10 worst colleges

0:08:04 Lydia: No. Okay. Oh.

0:08:35 Lydia: Yeah.

0:08:35 Thomas: For, like that's some sort of threat of anything that's just like, And that's Why You Were Rated In My Diary As One Of of the worst people that I don't like. It's like, that's nothing, man. Sorry. They did that rating. Put them on that. Apparently they do that annually and it's, you know, surprise, surprise, just complete fucking bullshit, whatever they are mad at at the time. Let's remember our timeline. I'll help you. Cause I know it's hard. It was a lot for even me with all the stuff in front of me to keep it straight. They ranked them in that top 10 February 17th, 2021. note that almost nothing was resolved by then.

There the investigation wasn't resolved, the nothing was solved. And so, you might ask yourself, well, maybe there's other stuff, you know? Like, there's either, maybe they're like, oh, this is just one of a bunch of reasons why this is the worst university in terms of Free speech. No, it's just that one thing. Let me read you. They put UIC on their stupid list of top 10 worst colleges for Free speech at 17th, merely two months into that debacle. There was another article, by the way, but slightly before that, January 19th. Here's one of the letters that FIRE wrote. Again, there, asked you, FIRE, like, this has nothing to do with anything, but whatever, I

0:08:35 Lydia: Totally. Yep. Yeah. Wow. Mm. Yeah.

0:09:56 Thomas: Want to read some, uh, critical paragraphs here. Civil procedure to exam question is protected by academic freedom. Yeah, okay, like, honestly, there could be a debate about, like, if he insisted, like, "Yes, I'm going to do this," there, if he insisted, "Yes, this is definitely pedagogically necessary," they would have to have a battle about that, it would be, you know, it'd be whatever, that's not what's happening, again, that's not what's happening. He agreed to not use it. Here's what they write. This is January 19th. They know fucking nothing at this point, has been, you know, a couple of weeks after the main Events. Investigation into Kilborn's exam question violates his pedagogical autonomy, protected by the basic tenets of academic freedom to determine what material to test and how it should be tested. Rights are protected by the First Amendment, the law school's publish commitments to academic freedom, and the conditions of the University of Illinois at Chicago's accreditation in, in one of the other letters that they've written, which by the way, I love it, again he keeps saying, like, "Oh, they haven't responded," it's like, yeah, it's nothing, they don't

0:10:29 Lydia: All.

0:11:01 Thomas: Care.

0:11:01 Lydia: The Letters.

0:11:01 Thomas: It's some, it's another Karen letter, for karen.org writes a letter, uh, was January 19th, that letter, by the way, they, uh, respond, the, the school responds February 11th, that's not a high priority because these, this fucking Karens, man, they're like, whatever, here's, here's some of the highlights of their response, and again, this is just a letter back and forth from FIRE, obviously they know it's going to be publicized by thefire.org, but so, you, is just correspondence, that hun, I'm just going to, you you to evaluate whether or not you think not only Kilborn, but the fire .org people are honest in their misunderstanding about what the real issue is here, because this is literally the first letter they got back, February 11th.

Let, paragraph has some stuff about, yeah, we value academic freedom, free speech, blah, blah, they cite, like, their policies, that kind of thing, then they say, uh, university necessarily balances principles of academic freedom against other very strong commitments that are central to its mission, one commitment is to ensure a non-discriminatory, non-harassing work and learning environment for the entire campus community, another is to protect "To protect and harmonize these and many other interests, while still upholding the rights of faculty to present pedagogically relevant content, the university maintains policies and procedures for investigation where concerns are raised, facts are disputed, or interests collide. All three circumstances are present here. Concerns relating to Professor Kilbourne have been raised that go well beyond the one incident referred to in FIRE's January 19th letter.

Among other things, a different incident was reported raising safety concerns, and Professor Kilbourne was placed on paid administrative leave, which has now ended with his return to active service. Other concerns that have been brought forth relating to Professor Kilbourn are currently being investigated. This investigative work does does not focus upon Professor Kilbourn's December 2020 examination question alone. The university stands by its compliance protocols and decision to investigate these matters.

Investigation allows the university to obtain direct relevant information before taking any action involving any member of the campus community." Think this letter is really good, so actually I'm going to keep reading because I think this says a lot. "The university therefore respectfully disagrees with Fire's contention that any investigation into certain content within the Civil Procedure 2 examination administered by Professor Kilbourne violates or chills his First Amendment rights or compromises principles of academic freedom.

This matter involves multiple concerns and implicates the interests of several other constituents, including not only Professor Kilbourne, but also the employees and students who have brought confidential concerns to the university's attention. The university rejects any suggestion that this investigation violates faculty rights or constitutes a sanction. Quite to the contrary, this is precisely the kind of situation in which an investigation investigation is essential to protect the due process rights and principles of academic freedom enjoyed by Professor Kilbourne, as well as the rights of others.

Moreover, in cases where faculty believe that they do not enjoy the academic freedom, which it is the policy of our institution to maintain and encourage," listen, this poor Chancellor Michael D. and Meredith is writing to an idiot and

0:11:01 Lydia: Mm. -hm, okay. Okay. Yeah.

0:14:38 Thomas: Is like, I got to put this really slow for you, bud. To this one. Policies provide faculty with a process by which they may seek review of the matter by the faculty Senate's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. This process allows faculty to raise concerns about alleged violations of academic freedom to faculty colleagues through the university shared government system. Indeed, Indeed, Professor Kilbourne has already availed himself of this process in the present case. I hope that this letter addresses FIRE's concerns about this matter.

0:15:11 Lydia: Wow.

0:15:11 Thomas: Basically, in so many words, hey, idiots, investigation means fucking looking into it. So if the FIRE.org were at all an honest actor, actor, what do you think they should do upon receiving this letter, February 11th, 2021, when again their guy Kilbourne was suspended with pay and then came back, that was clarified in this letter that that was due to a violence thingy, this letter now says, hey man, um, other, other complaints. All they know, for all thefire.org knows, maybe he, he has a bunch of complaints about, yeah, he called me the N word. Who knows? They, they don't know because they are not They're a fucking Karen organization that's putting its little fucking myths in it to say, oh, you're definitely violating this guy's freedom. Wouldn't you think on February 11th upon receiving this letter, wouldn't you be like, oh okay, yeah. So there's other complaints, okay. So So an investigation would probably be the very fucking logical thing to do to see if those complaints have merit. And by the way, if they don't, then the very fucking thing that will clear his name.

0:15:46 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah like if I were fire if I received that letter I would do two things. I would say my bad.

0:16:31 Lydia: You're right. All right I'm gonna back off. I'm gonna cool my jets. That's the other thing I would do is I would cool my jets and I have a feeling they did not cool their jets.

0:16:37 Thomas: Yeah. I'd be like, hey, yeah, no, OK, thanks. Just want to make sure, you know.

0:16:42 Lydia: Yeah oh okay you're on On it. Okay. All right. Yeah. Sounds like you got it covered.

0:16:44 Thomas: Yeah, no. I appreciate, you Know, we're on the same page here. Yeah? Yeah. We'll circle back later. Yeah, or very, very obvious that they take Kilborn's word as gospel because for all they know, who knows what skeletons are in this investigation. The letter has made it plain there's multiple complaints, not just students but other faculty, for who, who fucking knows. And So What they proceed to do then is, on that, was February 11th they received that reply. On February 17th, six days later, they include UIC in the 10 worst colleges for free speech for just investigating this. That's it, that's all they have, have just in, again, the investigation could be the thing that says, boy, this guy actually is great, you guys are full of shit, and Kilborn is amazed. That could be what

0:16:48 Lydia: Yeah, totally. Yeah wow. Wow. Yeah he's

0:17:42 Thomas: It says for all they know.

0:17:44 Lydia: Our modern -day Galileo.

0:17:46 Thomas: I won't hear a bad word about him. It's, am in disbelief at how fucking stupid this is, like truly this is fucking stupid, I

0:17:56 Lydia: They bored? Like did they have nothing else to do? I don't know.

0:17:59 Thomas: Exactly, I don't know. It's incredible. So here we are on February 17th, and let me read the little, some of the blurb about them again, being included on the fucking list of 10 worst, call by the way, worst colleges for free speech, not for nothing, they already mentioned, yeah, also we have a process for if any teachers or, as many professors, feel like their academic freedom is being violated, and Kilbourn has started that process.

0:18:26 Lydia: Right.

0:18:27 Thomas: All fire knows, going to be like, holy shit, yeah, the process has revealed that Kilbourns academic freedom has been violated. We will make that right. Wouldn't that make them pretty good on free speech? Like if they have a good robust system of checks and balances to make sure nobody's academic freedom is infringed. Don't know No, because

0:18:46 Lydia: Yeah, it also would save a lot of money if they just kind of like let that play out first before they start spending all those lawyer hours.

0:18:53 Thomas: Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so far they're just writing letters. So it's not, you know, they haven't done that yet.

0:18:57 Lydia: Ah, well, I mean, it's billable,

0:19:00 Thomas: But it's, God, it's... I mean they, I assume they're on stat. I don't know how their fucking system works, but you're not wrong. These letters are not free to you or I.

0:19:00 Lydia: Right?

0:19:10 Lydia: Note to the listener. Is about to start yelling. This is because it is simply impossible for anyone to overstate the stupidity of what thefire.org has done here. May want to adjust your volume accordingly.

0:19:23 Thomas: Of Illinois, Chicago on the list. And the main, the one sentence kind of thing is a law professor is investigated because his exam question contained censored references to slurs in the fact pattern. Lying. God, it's not, you already know that that's not what it is. I can't take it. How is this the world we live in? I can't understand. You're just just lying, you're just liars, your plant, it's your, I read the letter, you, you know why I read that letter? Because you posted it, I read it on your site, your website, thefire.org, had the letter in which they said, hey, we're investigating a lot of stuff, there's other stuff we're investigating, and can't, I can't do it, I can't, this is why we're never going to run out of work, never going be an end to this podcast, because there's just fucking liars in the world who love to position themselves as defenders of these high up, you high minded concepts like freedom of speech, academic expression. They just lie. They don't care about the truth. They don't care.

0:19:32 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:27 Lydia: And going back all the way to when we set this up, you said, the coverage for this was so incredibly pro -Kilborn, partly because he did his little, you know, grand tour. Yeah, his little road show, um, know, allegedly by us, yes, yes, we don't know for sure, but it just seems a little, yeah.

0:20:40 Thomas: Likely did a press tour. Yeah. Allegedly by us. We're alleging that. Just coincidentally, he's constantly quoted by a bunch of sources and nobody else on the other side really is much. And

0:20:54 Lydia: So it's incredible to me because if you don't have anybody who's willing to like piece this together, all you have then is UIC feeling like they're gonna have to pull their hair out because they're going crazy, um, whenever they see this stuff posted constantly because, you know, it's just a lot of bad actors, um, people giving poor information, oh,

0:21:14 Thomas: I guess I didn't even need to read more than that one sentence. That's all. Oh, they just set up the, oh, he used the slur, but it was blotted out. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah. Blah blah. Is of paragraphs. Maybe professors have long predicted they would face pushback and potential punishments for teaching the law of sensitive topics. In 2014, Harvard Law School's Jeannie Sook Gerson wrote about, oh wait, did we look into that, yeah, what did we looked into that, oh, it is oh man, it's all coming together, that's why, oh boy, that's awesome, that's awesome, we're starting to build that fucking web, we're staring to connect the dots, I love it, we should just for fun, we actually should make a big cork, we're doing that 100% We're making a giant... Oh, it's going to be the size of our house, though. A giant corkboard with yarn, just for fun. Like, because it is that, really. Like, of is,

0:21:34 Lydia: Stop, it yeah, yep, that's uh that's going back to um, Michael Powell's Title Nine article, yeah, Genie Sook Gerson, man, yeah, we're gonna do another episode on on her, I think, because yeah, we are. I got some spreadsheets going. Okay.

0:22:10 Thomas: Right?

0:22:11 Lydia: It is.

0:22:12 Thomas: It's all... They all side each other. Anyway, I don't want to... We've already gone on for fucking 40 hours. But, continuing, about how sensitivity over sexual assault led many criminal law professors to drop the subject entirely. Entirely. She noted that ultimately victims would be the ones to suffer if lawyers weren't trained in the law because professors felt it was too risky. I know that's not true. I've not looked into it. Whatever this is, I know you're full of shit. I just know. But we'll look into it eventually. Sook Gerson's fear has been given horrifying shape by UIC. Kilbourne obliquely identified the slurs without using them. A student said she had heart palpitations. Moore called for his punishment, and the school opened an investigation. Dump, dump, dump! UIC has functionally chilled the ability of its professors to harass students who complain about them. Oh no, sorry, to teach the tough subjects. And as Sook Gerson noted, the people who will ultimately be hurt are the victims of the discrimination.

0:22:17 Lydia: More to come. So ridiculous.

0:23:12 Lydia: What? What victims? What?

0:23:15 Thomas: Are the victims of the attorney work product rule that the question was about. Oh my God, I, I can't even, I, there's so much more, but like, already the, is, look, I don't want to do the thing that people of bad faith do, specifically, and I know I'm connecting dots, they're insane here, but specifically with like female candidates for stuff, where they find one bad thing and they're like, that disqualifies. They're completely disqualified. And they're just being unfair because like every politician has a thing you could say like that just disqualifiers. But like, this is pretty disqualifying from the field of being honest at all. Like, this ist so dishonest.

0:23:25 Lydia: Oh, God. Yeah, and I think that's a really, really important thing to keep in mind, because, you know, one of the things that you asked me about was like, oh, what's their stance on Ron DeSantis, right? And when I was looking into that, you know, they're actually, you back on the Stop Woke Act out of Florida. Jonathan Haidt, you know, Greg Lukianoff's best friend, wrote specifically that, you know. It's really interesting that this organization that liberals tend to hate is the one that's having, like, the biggest impact. And so I think we need to keep this kind of stuff in mind that like, yes, obviously, Stop Woke Act in Florida is horrific. But the organization literally is lying up and down on these other cases. And they're they're not our friends.

0:24:41 Thomas: They're taking the lowest of low -hanging fruit for cred. You You know, if I complain about you and then you're like well, I just donated $200 to orphans so you hate orphans? You don't want me to help orphan? Like, no, dude, I know you're full of shit, sorry, I know your full of shit. Anyway, that isn't already incredible, I, so hard to not repeat myself, but just the timeline, the timeline, six days after receiving that letter, way before they know fucking shit about the actual investigation, which was in like July or whatever, when they actually find out about that. So again, for all they know, he fucking fucking killed somebody. Like, they just don't know, unless they just, again, for potentially biased reasons, take the word of a fucking angry white guy as gospel and just assume that the non-white people complaining about him must be lying, right? The only way you could, at all, take this course of action. Got to get to some law stuff. Let's get back.

0:24:45 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:40 Thomas: Let's get back to that timeline, so.

0:25:44 Lydia: Know, looking at the calendar, too, because that's what I'm here for, is to to tell you when the weekends fall. Um, February 11th was a, and so some poor person was working the weekend to probably update their database, to throw down UIC yeah.

0:25:48 Thomas: To get that top 10 Yeah.

0:26:01 Lydia: Yeah, in that top 10, um, because the 16th was then the Tuesday. Yeah.

0:26:02 Thomas: So Then we get, and I'm not going to retell it, but, uh, the next kind of fire event, they're corresponding here and there, they're writing their bullshit. The next thing is them claiming victory for the settlement, quote-unquote, that they reached, the conclusion, collusion, that they reached, that we have later found out, thanks to my finally reading the fine, fine print on one of the letters, um, was not an agreement at all, that was just them notifying You know, there's a great Family Guy joke, where, I think, I can't remember, it's been a while, but they enter Brian, the dog, the talking dog, in like one of those dog contest things or whatever, where they're supposed to do whatever, and the, in the middle of it, they have a fight or something, thing, and so Brian's pissed at him, and you know, he's trying to tell him what to do for the dog show, he's like, "Roll over, do the thing," and then he just starts saying, "What he's, walk away, flip me off, yeah, good dog," and he just start pretending he's telling him what he is doing, such a good joke, that's like, this

0:26:17 Lydia: -hmm acknowledging receipt, yes. Mm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:26:59 Clip: Bryan,

0:26:59 Thomas: Oh,

0:26:59 Clip: Come! Hey, don't you walk out on me! I now command you to leave! Yep, keep going! That's right! Flip me off! Good boy!

0:27:10 Thomas: You just gave me notice, written notice, of what you're requiring me? We agree. Yeah. Very well. You drive a hard bargain, but we'll take it. Just pretend that's your accomplishment. God, you got to see the photo that goes along with that, folks. It's just this, the pose that goes Along with how bullshit that claim of victory is, it's too good. It'S too good for this world. Then we get the announcement of the lawsuit, and the lawsuit, of course, is by FIRE. It's, it's, because of Wayne GM Pietro, an attorney in the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, again, that's the acronym, what it used to be, uh, legal defense fund network. "The only thing that will hold UIC accountable for its unconstitutional actions is a lawsuit." And so they sue, and you heard, I already played the, uh, confident predictions of what would happen. Um, why don't we talk about the status of the, uh, the, the whole, uh. The whole legal fight. What do you think? You

0:27:13 Lydia: We won.

0:27:31 Lydia: Yeah? Yeah.

0:28:04 Thomas: Want to. You don't know anything about this. Talk about the, how's that going? How's that? Hey buddy. Hey Kilborn buddy. How's the legal fight going? So his original complaint. I'm not the fucking lawyer, but I'll summarize, you know, I've gotten decently good at reading these complaints actually and uh I'll summarize kind of the counts like here at WTW we read the complaint from the top down.

0:28:05 Lydia: No.

0:28:29 Thomas: Count count one is, you know, violation of the First and 14th Amendment, already we heard him go through some of it, you know, it's, it's they're punishing him for his speech, um, they didn't give them due process and whatever, uh, count to violation of Illinois statutes. Now, this is exactly what I'm not going to do. There's, this is federal court. They're also suing, um, under state law, you know, so there's that kind of thing there, which you can do. Um, there's complications there that I'm not lawyerly enough to say, but I will tell you what the judge thinks of them later. So that's that, I don't need any expertise to do that. I can tell you exactly what the judge thinks of all of it. They're, you know, under state and the Constitution. So you're allowed to do that. You know, it's in federal court, all that kind of crap. Three, violation of Fifth and 14th Amendment. So this is actually the due process stuff. So, process of investigating and sanctioning plaintiff speech here involved a series of violations of due process.

0:29:20 Thomas: It's just, I mean, I read you what happened. Factual conclusions are clearly erroneous and an intentional failure to provide plaintiff with an opportunity to respond. Yeah, man, like you did, though you did respond. Just saying, like the shortcomings in that investigation process violate due process and that kind of crap. They try to say, like, the due process principle of clarity is especially demanding and a more stringent vagueness test applies they And might be right about that principle, but, like, are First Amendment freedoms really at stake here? We'll see what the judge says. Okay, so here's one that's a little important. Paragraph 75. The finding by OAE that plaintiff is guilty of, quote, harassment is based upon an assertion is hidden from plaintiff and is arbitrary and capricious and, as OAE admits, is broader than applicable law. Man, you wouldn't have a thing called a policy if you could only have law. Am I crazy?

0:29:33 Lydia: No Yeah, I mean, there's... there's plenty more things to govern behavior and and uh, expectations and stuff. Yeah.

0:30:20 Thomas: Yeah, it's broader than – well, of course it's broad. They can't have policy that's like, actually, you can murder. That's our policy here. That what, what would, no, you can only say, not only can you not murder, you can't even like kind of murder, you know, like, or something. You can contemplate murder, things that aren't going to be against the law per se, but are going to be the university policy. Of course that's True, but but he says, such an admission, that's an admission, admits it's broader than law applicable, such an admission runs afoul of both the federal and state protections of free speech. No, it doesn't. But punishing plaintiff for violation of a policy with no stated and substance advanced notice or guidance is an arbitrary and capricious abuse of authority. It is important that I'm bringing this up. So, this claim is, you, the word harassment is too vague and it's not defined, so he couldn't have kind of known what he needed to not do, essentially.

0:30:27 Lydia: Mm. -Hmm. Mm.

0:31:11 Thomas: Count. Four. And and these are they're all restated. Uh, defendant is named individually and in their official capacity, all that crap. So, you know, it adds up count wise, but they're That's, that's how they normally do these things. So count four is defamation. These are pretty funny because a one of them is based on what like journalists said. So they're like, you defame me here. Look how this journalist said that I, called you black people cockroaches. So pin in that.

0:31:11 Lydia: -Hm, and UIC is responsible for that?

0:31:38 Thomas: Exactly. Pin in that. Count five, false light, false light. Again, I want to emphasize, a hundred percent, I'm not a lawyer, there's not a law show, but false light kind of, it's sort of repeats the defamation stuff. Like it's kind of a little redundant, but it's another count, you know, that makes sense, whatever. I did read, uh, I think the judge says that like, if the defamation fails, then the false light fails, I think is what it is.

It might go the other way, but I don't remember. IED, intentional infliction of emotional distress. And for that, he says the abrupt cancellation of the classes and banning them from contact with students in the middle of all that, blah, blah. Defendants also publicly, publicly attributed inflammatory race -based comments to plaintiff and knowingly allowed others, knowingly aloud others to attribute extreme. Think about that standard. Knowingly allowed others to contribute extreme and inflammatory race based comments to plaintiff in the public domain.

So they have a duty, like, to to monitor the public domain and like stop people from misinterpreting what they said. That, I mean, not a lawyer, it seems wrong. For relief is possibly interesting here and that's, law dogs will recognize, we're at the end here. Sorry, I'm boring you with a legal complaint, but I'm trying to set up as little as possible to make the points I need to make. Here's what he wants.

He wants a declaratory judgment that defendants' punishment and compulsion of plaintiff speech violates the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the University of Illinois statutes, along with an order of specific performance requiring defendants to abide by their contractual obligations of freedom of speech and academic freedom to plaintiff under the University of Illinois Statutes.

Issuing a permanent injunction barring defendants from enforcing the anti -discrimination policy in a way that violates faculty and student rights under the First, Fifth, and Foureenth Amendments and the University of Illinois Statutes. Award to plaintiff compensatory and punitive damages against defendants for their violations of his rights and consequent harm inflicted upon him by reason of their actions in an amount of not less than $100,000. Note, word to plaintif, his reasonable costs and expenses of this action, including attorney's fees.

An award to plaintiff all other and further relief to which, which the court finds plaintiff is entitled. So that's pretty, pretty normal there. So that is what he wants. I would like to once again remind you of the extreme confidence he had. Not only is he not settling, they could not even come up with a settlement that he would accept. He needs to teach these people what the law

0:31:39 Lydia: Yeah.

0:34:02 Lydia: Discovery?

0:34:02 Thomas: Is, and he is not going to rest until this is, and he even notes his, case you might not be the most extreme, but the college's reaction is the most extreme of all the examples in his mind, which is fucking insane. Naturally, the next thing that kind of happens in these things is what?

0:34:19 Lydia: Counter Complaint.

0:34:20 Thomas: Motion to dismiss and maybe a counter complaint, but there isn't a counter complain here. It's just a motion to discuss. That's the first thing you do. Not going to go through the motion to Dismiss. Tell you why I'm not going to go through this much. It's because it's the side that I agree with and I'm not a lawyer. So I can't really tell where obviously they're they're not a hundred percent right on everything.

0:34:38 Lydia: Sure.

0:34:38 Thomas: That's not really how these things work. They're going to lose on some arguments. So I'm, I'm a lawyer enough to tell you like, oh, this was a good argument. This was a bad argument because I'm not a law and it's pretty complicated stuff, honestly. So I am not really going to read you their I to dismiss. I I have read it several times. It's fun. It's good. It, it makes me feel good. Cause a lot of it is about how dumb his complaint is, but, but that that would be true even if it weren't, probably because I'm not a lawyer. So, uh, but the good news is I don't need to do that because, um, we hire people to do this in our society and that's a fucking judge, and the judge has ruled on that motion to dismiss after some, you know, more back and forth. There's some additional briefs filed, I can go through the ruling, um, this happened 1/15/23, so pretty recent.

0:34:58 Lydia: It feels compelling, but you don't necessarily have an informed take. Yeah, yeah.

0:35:25 Lydia: Okay. Yep.

0:35:27 Thomas: I naturally, what's going to happen is the judge is going to say, "Holy shit, you are literally Galileo." First off, first off, it's an honor, sir. First off, Mr. Kilburn, I can I just say it's a honor to meet you?

0:35:32 Lydia: Yeah it's an honor. Yes. Should you take my robes now, sir? Now that you have arrived.

0:35:41 Thomas: Yeah. Here's my gavel. Tell you what, what do you want to bang, bang it at the end of it, you do it. You do the honors. You're such a fucking brilliant guy. You just fucking amazing. No, I mean, I'm going to kind of long story short it here. Doesn't get completely dismissed. Say that in fairness. I'll tell you what does and what doesn't roughly speaking. Mind you, dismissing a lawsuit is a pretty high bar. What you get to do in the court, will assume you're telling the truth about basically all the facts. They'll just assume you'RE right about it and then say, okay, even if you'RE write about it, have a real case here? Like, have you actually pled properly as to what violates the law?

And surprisingly, for non-lawyers listening, like, often the answer is no. Like, there's plenty of like, well, even if everything you said is true, there's no violation of law here because you misunderstand what the law is and how it applies. So, mind it's a high bar to get stuff dismissed, but a of this dismissed. Got I would say roughly, I mean, it is hard to quantify, but I do not know, 80% of the cases dismissed, which is pretty inconsistent with his confidence earlier. So, it, part of it is, and this is something you people might know just kind of, I do know, from fucking civics class, the state can only be sued when it agrees to be sued in general.

0:35:50 Lydia: God okay okay that's significant wow right

0:37:03 Thomas: Um, and so basically everything in their official capacity is dismissed. Some, you there. There's like this ex parte Young exception that can, that let you, you know, sue the state for different things. I'm not, again, not a lawyer, not going to go through it, I vaguely remember that has to do with, like, you know, stopping them from violating the law continuously on you. And note that was why I kind of read what he wanted. Ex parte Young, I believe, has something to do with, like, well, if they're just going to be constantly breaking the law against you, like ongoing violations of federal law, then you can sue a state for that. Because the state, and by the state, I don't mean like the state as in the whole federal government.

I mean, an individual state, it's kind of a separation of powers thing to sue a state in federal court, like you're suing literally the state because state university in federal court, that's not really allowed with, with a few exceptions, you know, because that would, would be then you getting the federal government to tell the state what to do. And by default, you can't do that. There are exceptions when you can, but that's just kind of how our government works.

Like we have states for some reason, I don't, you know, even if you don't agree with any of this, like states have some amount of sovereignty and you can't just say, hey, federal government, I don't like what they're doing, you know, make them do something else, unless you have good reason for that. And one of the reasons would be ongoing violation of your federal rights, essentially.

And some other, you know, there's other stuff, again, I'm not a lawyer, but like, this doesn't apply because what you asked for is like a declaration that you're right, essentially, like they want the federal judge to be like, yeah, man, you're the best. You're right. Which is not,

0:37:03 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah

0:38:39 Thomas: That's not what that is. That's not the same thing. It's not even, you know, like, oh, they continue to violate my rights. He kind of said like, I don't want them to sometime in the future, maybe enforce this policy on me, which is not the same thing. That's actually, that's just a perspective, like, oh, maybe I'll have a case later on. And the, you know, the courts are like, nah, man, like come back to us when you have a cause. Unless they were doing a continuous action that was like, I don't know, my rights are currently being violated in a, like, permanent state because of this policy, then, okay, sure. But not like, oh, they might enforce it in a way that's bad later. So that's why some amount of this is dismissed. The court notes pretty early on in the background section, it's not just the fucking exam question. They, they mentioned, they don't say that sentence, but they mentioned, like, paragraph two is like the email and the attack letter and the, you know, the Zoom call.

0:39:01 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:32 Thomas: Like, it mentions all that pretty early on, I think, importantly. It reminds us, helpfully, that a motion to dismiss challenges the sufficiency of the complaint, not its merits, accepts as true all well-pleaded facts in the plaintiff's complaint, and draws all reasonable inferences from those facts in plaintiff's favor. Again, this is a high standard because you're just, if you lose, you're done. You're out. You don't get to do anything. The court starts by basically dismissing all the First Amendment bullshit, because none of the speech involves matters of public concern, which is kind of important. A teacher was making a political speech and, like, yeah, people should be allowed to unionize. And then there, the university was like, well, fuck you, you're now fired or something, you know, that's one thing. But if, if a teacher emails a student and is like, hey, I'm disappointed, you know?

0:39:49 Lydia: Hmm. Okay. Yeah.

0:40:23 Thomas: Like, does, or whatever, you know, that's not free speech in the same way. That's your private interaction, or, not even private. That is your interaction as, like, an employee with a student. Free speech does not apply all the time, everywhere. Like, First Amendment protections, it applies to two specific things. You know, it applies to like, we want university professors to be able to have, like, political views and express them outside of campus, and, you know, there's more to it than that. But the judge says, essentially, none of the speech involved here is matters of public concern at all. All the First Amendment retaliation claim stuff is dismissed.

0:40:38 Lydia: Yeah yeah.

0:40:56 Lydia: That makes sense.

0:40:58 Thomas: Next thing is kind of like this compelled speech, the idea that doing any of these trainings is... it's compelled speech because that makes you sign on to the, like, the goals of the university. And it's just such fucking complaining nonsense. But, like, again, the judge has to consider, like, is this even a thing? If I accept all your facts as true. And in this, the defendants kind of complain about the fact that he has failed to identify any speech that they compelled him to make.

But the judge is like, well, I don't see any reason why he has to necessarily. And the court hasn't... the court has to believe that requiring Kilbourne to express, quote, commitment to certain goals would not constitute compelled speech. So, again, construing everything in his favor, the judge is allowing that claim to go forward. On the due process stuff, the judge's not having it. Talks about the two percent raise and he's like, buddy, that's like taking away, you know, something that you had. You know, an essential component of a procedural due process claim is a protected property or liberty interest.

So it says a plaintiff, quote, must have more than a unilateral expectation of the claimed interest. He, quote, must instead have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it, quote. Kilbourne bears the burden of demonstrating that he possesses a protected property interest. Although Kilbourne may have expected a raise, he has not established a legitimate claim of entitlement to one. He supports his claim by arguing that defendants provided the merit raise to all other faculty members and that it amounted to a significant sum. These facts do not suffice to establish a protected property interest.

0:41:47 Lydia: Yeah...yeah...yeah, yeah...hmm...yeah.

0:42:37 Lydia: Man.

0:42:37 Thomas: That, that one's gone. Kilbourne cannot proceed with due process claim on that basis. Now, remember the harassment thing I brought up earlier? Surprisingly skates by on this one. So, because he alleged that the undefined term, quote, "harassment," unconstitutional for being vague or whatever, Kilbourne's allegations, quote, "suffice to put defendants on notice of the claim against them," and is all courts require at this stage. Uh, the bottom line on this is because, quote, because defendants have not moved to dismiss Kilbourne's due process claim based on the constitutionality of the policy, which I think is the judge giving a little hint, hint, like, Hey, you could have done this.

0:43:13 Thomas: Kilbourne may proceed with his claim on that basis against defendants in their individual and official capacities. So that one survives. I mean, in my opinion, that's pretty fucking weak. Like, we all know what harassment is. That's a pretty common word, you know? So, yes, you skated by a motion to dismiss on that because everything's construed in your favor. But personally, I don't really have optimism about him prevailing on that claim. But the defamation one is interesting. And the judge is not a fan of the argument that, like, some reporters saying the wrong thing, that the college is guilty of defamation.

Because, just, like, backs and quotes what the school actually said, and it's like, here's what they actually said. And it's fine. You can't sue for defamation because someone else might have said a thing that sounds different. Defamation stuff gets dismissed in part and allowed to proceed in part. It says, in sum, Kilbourne may proceed with his defamation claims based on only the following statements or group of statements. One, his actions interfered with black students' participation in the university's academic program and therefore constituted harassing conduct. And two, he expressed, quote, overtly intimidating and threatening reactions to students who criticized his in-class comments and exam questions.

And three, he made, quote, inappropriate comments in class. And four, his reactions created intimidation and fears of physical safety and retaliation. Now, once again, to note, those are the ones he's allowed to proceed on because he, like, pled them properly. But if you listen to all those things, truth is an absolute defense here. And all those things sound pretty fucking true to me. Like, I cannot imagine him prevailing on these claims, but he gets to go through with them.

So, oh, what I said about the false light claims earlier is true. That's where I picked it up. So he can also proceed with the false light claims based on the same statements. And the judge quotes, when a false light invasion of privacy claim follows an unsuccessful defamation claim, the false light claim must also fail. So basically, if the defamation stuff fails,

0:43:01 Lydia: -hmm yeah yeah and yeah interesting gotcha

0:45:12 Thomas: That'll fail. And then the intentional infliction of emotional distress, that is completely dismissed because he never alleged anything that's even close to, like, extreme and outrageous conduct. You know, it's just not even close. So that's dismissed. So the defendants move for Rule 11 sanctions, and that is very, I think, pretty rare that didn't go through, so that would mean, like, this, I'm not a lawyer, but essentially, like, this complaint is so bad that you're in trouble or something, or you, you know, have to pay.

So, like, that's a very high burden because this, this is interesting, because the court, um, is not like a complete exoneration. And I skimmed over this at first because I figured, like, yeah, I mean, these are rare, these Rule 11 sanctions. So I honestly, once again, because I'm the fucking optimist, apparently I was, saw that the judge dismissed him, so I just didn't think anything of it.

But now, upon the fourth time of reading this, I'm noticing, like, this was a closer call than I thought, which I think says quite a lot. So Rule 11 sanctions serve to deter baseless filings in the district court. And Rule 11, an attorney certifies that, to the best of her knowledge, information, and belief formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances, the contentions she makes in a filing are, quote, not being presented for any improper purpose. Essentially just setting the standard there.

It's got, you can't have, like, knowingly lied about stuff, that kind of thing. Judge says, defendants specifically argue, and this is, this is funny, listen to this, specifically argue that Kilbourne and his attorneys violated Rule 11, which requires that evidentiary support exist for factual contentions. They based their argument on the fact that Kilbourne and his attorneys erroneously assert that Kilbourne does not know whether he has sufficiently completed his training program or will return to teaching in

0:45:18 Lydia: Right

0:46:53 Thomas: Light of the fact, listen to this, that defendants informed Kilbourne and UIC students that Kilbourne had completed the program and was scheduled to teach two courses in the fall of 2022.

0:46:52 Lydia: What

0:47:04 Thomas: '22, included this information in emails sent to Kilbourne and to UIC students months before Kilbourne filed his response brief. But after he filed his amended complaint, defendants contend that these contrary statements carry significance because they underlie the basis of Kilbourne's official capacity claims. Although the court finds that the 11th Amendment bars Kilbourne's compelled speech claim against defendants in their official capacities, the court does not find that Kilbourne's conduct warrants the imposition of sanctions. This is especially so given the early stage of litigation. Court notes that several documents appended to the party's sanctions briefs appear to indicate that Kilbourne may have included arguments in his response brief that do not sound in fact. Interesting that it says that, I think it would be that are not sound in fact, but I don't know. However, the court still finds sanctions inappropriate at this early stage and denies defendant's motion for sanctions. But listen to this, hun, if Kilbourne elects to file a second amended complaint and persists in presenting potentially spurious allegations, the court will entertain a renewed motion for sanctions at that time and may hold an evidentiary hearing.

0:47:03 Lydia: So Wow.

0:48:12 Thomas: That's, yeah, so that's, normal circumstances, if you filed a complaint in good faith, this would just be like, nah, this is fine, dismissed for, for Rule 11 sanctions, you know, because again, that's a high burden, that means, like, not only no, but fuck, you know, like, you lied, and the judge is like, it's not not that, yeah and and the Judge specifically warns him, if you'd fucking do this again, like, yeah, okay, then I will entertain it, so yeah, he, even the judge is seeing that Kilbourne is knowingly lying, but it's just not quite enough to do sanctions, which is a pretty serious thing. So here's the conclusory paragraph. For the foregoing reasons, the court grants in part and denies in part defendant's motion to dismiss. The court grants without prejudice defendant's motion to dismiss Kilbourne's First Amendment retaliation claim against all defendants and his compelled speech claims against defendants in their official capacities. The court also grants defendant's motion to dismiss Kilbourne's claim for IIED without prejudice. Kilbourne may proceed in part with all other claims as discussed thoroughly above. The court denies motion for sanctions.

0:48:21 Lydia: Yeah. The judge is like, I'm kind of seeing what you're doing here and knock it off. Yeah, totally.

0:49:16 Lydia: Did FIRE post an article and say, we won?

0:49:19 Thomas: I'm so glad you asked, hun, because yet another thing I just noticed recently, again, I never know when I'm done because I clicked on a link that I didn't think about.

0:49:28 Lydia: It's always the links within the article.

0:49:29 Thomas: Yeah, I This is interesting because I had all the FIRE stuff up, obviously, and then I just saw for whatever reason, I saw, like, on the side, you know, where it's like just kind of a basic website navigation thing where they've, like, coalesced all the things about this case. And I clicked on case news because I was like, oh, I want to see how they've reacted to like the fact that this mostly got dismissed. Here's what I see. I see, in chronological order from the beginning, you know, FIRE warns University of Chicago, January, February, it's kind of stuff I've already read you, you then February 17th, FIRE presents 10 worst colleges, you know, there's that. And then University of Chicago reneges. All this is before the complaint, which is funny because this is the case news. 27th, lawsuit, professor suspended for redacted slurs in law school exam, sues university. That's one I've already covered. And then there's only one more item. And that item is 10 worst colleges for free speech, 2022.

0:49:48 Lydia: Yeah. Uh -huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah they're just like pretending it doesn't exist.

0:50:25 Thomas: That's it. And so the latest news is that they kept the same fucking bullshit for 2022, and it's just like, yeah, now we're suing. And that's it. There's no other news after that. Isn't that curious? You might say, oh, maybe they haven't updated. Well, if I look at the case overview, hun, it says case status closed.

0:50:27 Lydia: Uh Closed?

0:50:45 Thomas: Yep, closed.

0:50:47 Lydia: Is closed about this?

0:50:48 Thomas: Well, I'll tell you what's closed about this. After, you know, getting his ass handed to him, essentially, in my opinion, Kilbourne changed lawyers and is no longer represented by FIRE.

0:50:49 Lydia: Okay.

0:50:59 Thomas: Because, yeah, it's a loser of a case, man. He's just pursuing, here's how they diplomatically put it, or whatever, last paragraph of their status. It's only, case overview is only three paragraphs. The lawsuit seeks a court order to stop UIC from enforcing its training mandate, as well as compensatory and punitive damages for that and the other unconstitutional harms inflicted by UIC. Kilbourne amended the lawsuit to add additional claims through his own attorney and is no longer represented by a FIRE attorney. Dirty, so case that is closed, because mind you, they could have said, well, they're still, you know, they still might prevail on some of the stuff, like, closed, it's just closed, that

0:51:02 Lydia: My God! Wow.

0:51:36 Lydia: You think Kilborn thought, man, fire sucks. I'm going to go get another guy. Or do you think fire was like, hey, this does not look good. And we should probably, you know, pursue the

0:51:47 Thomas: Think it's I think this is the second thing I think I Think would Be Fire Being Like Yeah, I, I haven't seen anything, but it's Like, I think there's a case of a lot of the staff that was dismissed is probably the stuff that they would have wanted to, you know, their whole selling point is First Amendment, amendment, due Process.

0:51:50 Lydia: Second one. And then Kilborn was like how dare you. Yeah.

0:52:04 Thomas: And like pretty much all that stuff got dismissed. I mean, there's some stuff, but like, okay. The constitutional vagueness of the word harassment, is that where you want to put your fucking, I'm

0:52:03 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah that has nothing to do with their mission.

0:52:14 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean maybe it does, like, the vagueness of that, but this is a loser, man. I think they're, like, this shit. I don't know, hon, I don't know if you know this trivia fact. This shit is fucking expensive. It's really expen - Like, mind

0:52:15 Lydia: Oh, I know. I was going to say, how much money do you think they spent on this? Jeez.

0:52:30 Thomas: -blowing, oh my God, this could be a million dollars. Not even joking.

0:52:33 Lydia: Oh, my God. A mess.

0:52:36 Thomas: And I would imagine FIRE is like, I think we're kind of done supporting the nothing that this is. Good luck, buddy.

0:52:39 Lydia: Yeah. Exhausted all our funds.

0:52:42 Thomas: Yeah, good luck, bud. It's nothing. It's a loser. But they're not going to admit they were wrong about anything or anything like that.

0:52:43 Lydia: Yeah, no, no. No, absolutely not.

0:52:48 Thomas: They would never do that.

0:52:50 Lydia: That would be attorney work product. Thanks.

0:52:56 Thomas: Nice one, hun. It makes no sense, but it's great. That's my favorite kind of joke. I love those ones. Ask him, hey, so were you lying and you were full of shit this whole time? Nah, it's privilege. Can't reveal that, sorry. I passed that test that had the fucking racial slur in it. That's how I know. Another thing I love about our show, hun, is we are subscribing to a lot of updates on things, you know, like to a lot of alerts.

0:53:10 Lydia: Yeah.

0:53:24 Lydia: We are. Yeah.

0:53:25 Thomas: We're going to get all kinds of alerts. I've said this case is ongoing. I wish it were finished because I don't think it's going to go very far in my professional legal opinion.

0:53:25 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. And like tie that little bow, you know, and just kind of, you know, literally have it closed, put it in the bookcase and move on to the next. But we'll we'll keep an eye on it. Yeah.

0:53:42 Thomas: The latest thing in the docket is June 2nd. So pretty recent and that was the like response kind for the motion to dismiss. So they went back and forth on a new motion to dismiss, um, the new kind what's left of the claims, you know? And so for all we know, the whole shit could get dismissed. I mean, maybe not. Cause, again, motion to dismiss, high bar. You may get to the discovery phase on something. I have no idea, again, not a lawyer, but, um, I am looking forward to the next time I get to read a court's opinion on this fucking idiot. Uh, because I don't think it's going very far.

0:53:47 Lydia: OK. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah.

0:54:14 Lydia: He paying out of pocket now?

0:54:15 Thomas: He has to be.

0:54:16 Lydia: Because he doesn't have that legal fund, right.

0:54:18 Thomas: Did he crowdfund? I, you didn't see it. I didn't turn up anything on that. Yeah, so, uh, the point of this, uh, is UIC, thefire.org is a piece of shit, and they backed a loser. They lied actively about it. They filed a complaint so bad that, like, the judge was like, it's not, not sanctionable. I'll say, I'll say that, you know, this is not good in my professional opinion. Uh, and they suck. I'm going to tease the final installment of this series by telling you that, due to a random comment I saw somewhere, where someone said he has a bit of a history with racism because one time he had to pay attorney's fees for his conduct in this case. And

0:54:20 Lydia: I haven't seen anything regarding crowdfunding. Yeah.

0:54:36 Lydia: Totally. Hmm. Yeah.

0:54:57 Thomas: It was bad. And I saw that, and I was like, all right, is someone bullshitting? And this is a random comment. But, mind you, it was, I think it was a Black attorney who was, like, chiming in. I never know if anybody's honest about who they are online, but it was someone saying they, they were a Black attorney who was like, fuck this guy, and he has a history of this because of this case. Said what the case was. So I proceeded to search and search and search, but I don't understand how that works for cases.

So then I proceeded to ask the opening arguments group about it and someone was kind enough to help me. And, sorry, thank you so much for this, uh, of this amazing, upstanding citizen and lawyer, I was able to get the full text of, I was thinking, okay, there's so many reasons this could be wrong. Maybe it's a different Jason Kilbourne. Maybe, you know, maybe he was the lawyer, but he wasn't the person who did the bad shit that they're saying. You know, like, I need to make sure I track this down before I just go ahead and say what this is. And, hun, it is fucking great.

0:55:08 Lydia: Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Oh.

0:55:55 Thomas: So nothing

0:55:55 Lydia: My god, I know nothing about this, folks, I am.

0:55:58 Thomas: I cannot wait that and more in our final installment where I truly just drive home how big a piece of shit this guy is. And there's a lot we need to go over about this whole case in sort of the conclusion episode. So, looking, I can't believe you're still in suspense, hun, it's gonna be amazing, you're gonna want to hear this, everybody, trust me, it's, uh, whatever, you're going to think it's made up, it's not, it's in a fucking court document, and so there you go.

0:56:24 Lydia: It's In when Thomas spills the tea. Oh.

0:56:27 Thomas: So T and the T could have been a good name for a podcast.

0:56:28 Lydia: Next Project.

0:56:50 Thomas: You know what idiom I'm referencing? Thank you.

0:56:52 Lydia: Clock right twice A day. Yeah.

0:56:54 Thomas: Okay. I have to check because one time I said as the crow flies and you didn't know what I was talking about.

0:56:56 Lydia: Yes. I didn't know. Yeah, it's fine.

0:56:59 Thomas: Okay,