Cannabis Rescheduling; Judge Cannon Stops Trump Trial

Transcript

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

0:00:45 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1031. I'm Thomas and sitting in just a pile of announcements and news and points, things to say is my co-host Matt. I am sorry Matt. You hear me? Can you here me? Are you there?

0:01:00 Matt: Just in time for allergy season. Feeling great.

0:01:01 Thomas: Yeah, hopefully you don't have an allergy to announcements because we've got a lot today. Day. So much I'm really excited for. Very excited. And we've also got some really good OA stuff to talk about. We've got the news about the marijuana reschedule, down scheduling. I don't know. I'm not sure what the correct term is. Going to tell us about that. Perhaps a take counter to one you've heard.

And then we've got updates on Judge Cannon ruining the entire idea of the rule of law, or maybe reportedly, and some other various trial updates. So that's the OA we're talking about today. That's the good stuff we have later. But okay, millions of announcements, Matt. So sorry. Okay, if you can dig a hole out of the announcements pile you're in, hand me one of them. First off, there has been obviously a big challenge in wanting to do the trial stuff, stuff, the trial transcripts, trial coverage. Also it wasn't just that, that that's easy enough. But also once we started doing this transcript, reading, it got really fun. It got really cool. People were talking about how they, wasn't something they were getting anywhere else. I I'm having a blast with it, but of course it's taking up a lot of time.

It's the kind of thing where covering it is going to eat up basically all plus more of of the like slotted time and episodes we'd have for OA. And that wasn't really going to work. That's not something that makes sense to me. At first, I thought like we'll get by by, you know, putting some of it just on Patreon or something. But it was pretty clear that it was just way more than would make sense for that.

And we'd have to basically grind all of Opening Arguments to a halt, except this trial coverage. And that's just not something I wanted to do. And so we've been trying to figure out what in the world to do about this particular question. In the meanwhile, also I've been trying to keep up with the with the transcripts that we already we already had recorded and stuff and trying to edit that because it is a challenge, it takes longer. And then I had an idea, Matt.

I, so this is kind of fun, in the spirit of, you know, also being able to talk about whatever I want, uh, because of not having being any under any any NDA or anything. I can tell you that there was a time pretty after Andrew stole everything that I thought, well, I guess I have to launch my own law show for one reason or another. And as you can imagine, I prepared to launch My Own Law Show and got a bunch of stuff done.

I didn't get 100% of the way there because for reasons I'm sure I'll get into sometime, it became clear that I couldn't do that. It was also the kind of thing I wanted to have ready because at any minute, who knows what, you know, something might've changed and I would have had to launch my own show or could have launched my own showing, would want to do that because I wanted to get back on the air covering law stuff as soon as I could.

Anyway, so I have a show ready. I have like a podcast ready. And basically everyone in the audience is probably thinking, there's no, there's no way you're not, you can't do another podcast, is impossible. Hold on. Hear me out. Hear me out, everyone. First off. Yes, I can. You can't tell me what to do. No. No, secondly, it's actually going to work out and I'll tell you why. For one, finally, now that I'm done with the legal battle, I get to cut back on other shows.

I was just doing, I was maxing out, like revving all engines as hard as possible because of just how much money I was throwing into a fire pit called lawyers. And there's more on that at patreon.com/law in that little 20 minutes I recorded, if anyone wants to hear more about that. But I get to pull back from that a little bit now. So I can pull back from SIO, not have to do so many of those. I can do fewer in a month.

I can do fewer of a few other things. And here's what I've decided. This actually is an amazing opportunity because putting this trial stuff on this other kind of enclosure, the show ready to go, this blank slate that I've had ready, allows us to return Opening Arguments to just classic Opening Arguments. Like not just in terms of what we cover, but like the schedule. And I was like, oh, that's such, that's going to be so nice.

It's going be such a nice return to like what was so fun about the show. We're going to go back to. So instead of three episodes a week of OA, we can go back to the old format, the two episodes a weak. The T3B is the end of Friday's episode for the question, and the answer is in the end of the Monday slash Tuesday episode, depending on when I released that back in the day. And we can just do it how it used to be.

And between cutting that midweek episode from OA and cutting some SIO, I'm buying myself some time to be able to do this trial coverage and stick it on this other thing. And also we've cloned Matt. That's right. Hello, Matt, to speak up in the microphone,

0:01:47 Matt: Let's do it.

0:05:46 Thomas: Please.

0:05:46 Matt: So, it's still me, and I'm still gonna talk like this. I'm sorry, Thomas, we couldn't fix it.

0:05:50 Thomas: Okay. If you both talk at the same time, maybe that'll be louder? I don't know. I'm trying to figure. No, we, have we been reaching out and we're trying to find, uh, to help with Matt, just so I'm not swamping you with too much to do. Cause I think you also in your day job still save lives, but, but

0:06:09 Matt: Still have to go to court, at least.

0:06:09 Thomas: Yeah. And so that's one part of the equation we're still working on. Um, it, I think this, this is such a great idea. And not only that, I been able to hire someone to help do the transcript part. So you don't have to hear just me and Lydia doing weird voices necessarily. I've hired someone to take over that. We've had more submissions than I could possibly ever do anything with for the auditions, but that's great. That's how you want it.

So if you don't hear from someone, don't worry. Seriously, there's so many, would have to go on trial for like every crime he ever committed to use all of those auditions, but maybe, maybe someday. And so I have, have I hired someone to handle that part of it. So that takes, you, significant chunk of the work off my plate.

And that allows, you know, Matt and I and slash perhaps other experts as we can find them to just be able to do that analysis part and not have to worry about the massive time sink that is producing the audio of those transcripts. So I am super duper excited, excited for this. And I guess that's as good a time as any to introduce that if you'd like to go hear the new show, the new Trial Transcript episodes, the name of the podcast is Gavel Gavel.

Pretty happy with it. And also the art is one of my favorite things in the world, because I think I've long had one of the best podcast art people that I've used for basically all the shows. There's Woke is one of my favorite pieces of podcast art ever done. I love it so much.

0:07:34 Matt: That is good.

0:07:35 Thomas: Anyway, Gavel Gavel is the name of the show. And for now, the Trump Trial coverage, I'll remind everybody, I know there's a lot to parse through, but the Trump Trial Transcript T3 Trump coverage is going to be on patreon.com/gavelpod. That's where you can find it for now.

Going to be on the Patreon until I can get, the you wheels up and and running everything going on the pod and eventually it'll be on a main feed available for everybody um in order to do that I have to do a lot of things I have like reconfigure, repurpose the old stuff we did, I gotta, you know, I want to do it right for the main feed, but I figured I didn't want to bog us down with all that.

I'm just simply posting the trial coverage that we're already doing um on patreon.com/gavelpod, that'll be where you can find it. And and I will remind you a bunch of times and it gives us, it frees up so much time that we don't have to be dying, making sure we're going to like finish that part of the thing in time so we can get to other OA.

0:07:35 Matt: It is a relief, and, I have to say, it is also a very exciting opportunity to have a new way to cover trials. I don't think anybody's done anything quite like this before, and we're kind of building the plan as we fly out here, but it's been exciting between what we did in Georgia, and I think we've been doing these transcripts. I just, I've never heard any kind of coverage on it.

0:08:46 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I've also, I think I'm going to commit some crimes and then see it from the inside too. Like just to get, I'll be like, this is just for research. And then I'll like rob the store or something, you know, and that'll be cool. That'll help. Of that show, another reason why the idea so much sense to me is is Gavel Gavel already like was evocative of a courtroom and it's like, oh, the focus of that show can be covering actual courtroom stuff like trials. And I know instantly you had a few that you're like, oh, we could do this one, we could du this one. It's not only gonna, because this Trump trial is not gonna last forever, yeah, it's gonna last a few more weeks probably, but it's that gonna last forever well

0:08:51 Matt: When we get the next Trump trial, we'll have to cover that. But as we'll talk about, that might be a while.

0:09:22 Thomas: Maybe as we'll talk about yeah exactly

0:09:25 Matt: It might be about. You know, here in Massachusetts, we've got Karen Reid on trial. And I've had so many people asking me if we could talk about that, cover that, we kind of want to see what happens. And obviously, we can't cover it right now with everything going on with Trump. But it's a very interesting set of issues that's never been quite like it around here. This is just one example of of the kind of sort of headline-grabbing trial that maybe you want to see what's actually going on in the courtroom, see how the lawyers are doing, what their strategies are, how the witnesses are, you know. Things you're not just going to see on court TV, even.

0:09:26 Thomas: Yeah and lots of other trials will. We'll not have to do readings on the transcript. As fun as that is, it's also, you know, it is not ideal. And we'll just be able to have actual audio. And I know, never do I learn more than when we've grabbed actual audio of actual lawyers and judges and, you know, everybody doing their job and listening and hearing like, oh, wait, what the heck was that? And it's something that, you know, Matt probably just takes for granted, is this is his job. I love that. And it makes so much sense to me that we can have Gavel Gavel be like the home for that kind of in the courtroom stuff, like in that, like just get, feel what it's like, uh, in these trials and learn about, we can even, you go back through history a little bit if we want. There's plenty of places we can go eventually, um, where we can see like, hey, what happened here? I'm not doing the OJ trial. I'm never, that's stupid. It's 400 years long. I think took years.

0:09:56 Matt: Yes, it's been done.

0:10:39 Thomas: Yeah. It's been done. We know that one, but but like stuff people might not be so familiar with. Um, did this happen? How did this person get out? It'll be interesting if we ever do do something historical that people don't know, it'd be fun to like, you you won't necessarily know know how it ends kind of thing. Like there's so much potential for this kind of coverage. And that's why it makes so much sense to me. But I will say just in case, just in case anyone listening, hey, if you're somebody who has like actual trial experience, like you direct trial courtroom, probably criminal law experience like Matt does, feel free to send an email, openarguments@gmail.com because we are looking for ways because I is going going to put so much on Matt. Like, it would be nice to be able to have someone to help share that burden.

0:10:40 Matt: Yeah.

0:11:22 Matt: Could use the help and the company. I would appreciate them. There's

0:11:24 Thomas: Yeah. So send an email, openarguments@gmail.com, if that is you and actually you and not just like, hey, you should go talk to this celebrity lawyer or something, you know, like that doesn't help. So excited for this. So if you want to get that next Trump trial transcript episode, that is April 30th in court. That was, that was that day. That was the one we were on. And we are already in production for May 2nd and May 3rd, and it's going to be so much nicer to not have to do the tedious transcript part, Matt. I can't wait for you and I to just be able to jump on and dig in. And so those will be coming quickly. That'll be at patreon.com/gavelpod.

0:12:01 Matt: Some good stuff coming.

0:12:03 Thomas: All that leaves us is just, you know, the couple odds and ends of that means this is the Friday episode of the old format, which means we'll do the question, question on Fridays, and then people can try to answer. And then we'll get the answer next week on the Monday slash Tuesday episode. And we'll also bring back the Hall of Fame, you know, and new patron shoutouts. Those are a lot of fun. I'll make sure they don't really get long or anything.

That'll be a way to do that. One more thing. I posted on patreon.com/law a question thread for anyone who wanted to ask any questions about the Smith v. Torres, the whole thing. The whole shebang. It's asked me anything about that. Doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to answer anything about that, but you can see in the post, you ask whatever you want and holy shit, it's got like 250 comments on it. Like it's, people have a lot they want to know about this.

And so if there's stuff you wanted to know, if there're questions about that whole thing you've been dying to ask, you Can hop on to patreon.com/law. If you're already a patron, you'll make sure you check it out. And please, please, please make sure you hit the heart button on questions you want to hear the answer to, because there's obviously no way I'm going to get to all of them. And it'll be good to know what to prioritize, what people want to know next. So I believe that was a lot of announcements, Matt. I'm sorry, but there's just a lot going on. I've been waiting

0:13:22 Matt: Sure.

0:13:22 Thomas: To say this. And so with all that said, let's take a brief break and then we'll get to actual opening arguments.

0:13:32 Thomas: I see thematically you got high as all get out, you're just high out of your mind right now to celebrate. I can literally see the bloodshot eyes through the computer. Uh, news for potheads. Hey, potheads.

0:13:45 Matt: Yeah. I got five on it, but that's about it.

0:13:51 Thomas: Mostly.

0:13:53 Matt: I wouldn't put much more than five bucks on this. Okay. All right. So yes, good news, bad news, mostly bad news. I got to be honest with you. News Thomas. This is the rescheduling of marijuana to schedule three is not progress and it's going to hold us up quite a lot, I think.

0:13:59 Thomas: Bad news? Oh, wow. Holy moly. I, I thought it was good news. How did I, am I, did I just misread it, or is this your people stuff? They wouldn't have heard. No,

0:14:15 Matt: So this isn't just me. I cannabis and other substances fighting against federal drug law would agree. I think that it needs to be unscheduled, that it has to be de -scheduled completely. I will say upfront, I think I've said this before, but I am a strong advocate for the legalization, full legalization of cannabis. At this point, 24 states have full legalisation, and most of the rest of them have some kind of medical program. Do think it's abysmal. It's absolutely an embarrassment to the world that it is a Schedule I substance. And just to be very clear about what that means, everybody understands. I know we have a lot of listeners who may not be as interested in federal drug scheduling as I am. It means that you have a substance that has no known medical value and that has a high risk of abuse or addiction. Does that sound like cannabis to you?

0:14:59 Thomas: I mean, we briefly touched on that at at some point, and I'm not going to pretend that people don't get addicted to cannabis in some way. Like, I know the people, I'm non -expert on this, at but all. And I'm sure I'll get argument no matter what I say. But, like, I do know people who smoke way too much pot and seemingly can't stop. But, yeah,

0:15:17 Matt: They're out there. They're out there.

0:15:18 Thomas: I Don't really it's nowhere near as dangerous as, I dunno, virtually everything else.

0:15:24 Matt: Yeah, you know what's not a Schedule I substance? Tobacco, which has no medical value and a high risk of abuse or addiction and will actually kill you, which nobody's actually ever died of the weed. Yeah, I mean, it's absurd. There's so many things. And caffeine, really, if it showed up on our shores right now, I think it would be a great I mean it might have more medical value than nicotine, but, you Know, and of course our friend alcohol as well. I've never been much of a drinker. I don't really understand the appeal, frankly, but you we've all got our vices.

0:15:26 Thomas: Oh, wow. Well, that's stupid. Mm- hmm. And don't call our, like, any sort of schedule, whatever? Yeah, okay, that's dumb. Why,

0:15:50 Matt: No, controlled. Old, it's regulated, but it's not a scheduled substance. Know, this is all pretty arbitrary. And of course, if you know anything about the history of marijuana in particular, it's directly racist. It is grounded in racism. There's no question about that. It was, Yeah, I mean, it is the point at which you had all those jazz musicians and Mexicans, you know, that were smoking and being a bad influence on our white citizens. There's that famous quote from John Ehrlichman, the Nixon ad, you ever hear that one about why they actually did it? Um,

0:16:02 Thomas: Is that not surprising? No, I, or maybe I have, but I, this isn't, I is not a topic I'm particularly well versed in. So pretend I'm not a pot smoker and and I don't have like any depth in this issue at all. As

0:16:22 Matt: Sure. Sure. Yeah, so we're here to explain things. Uh, got a lot to explain on this one, and I do want to do a full episode on on scheduling, and we'll get into a lot more of the details of legally how this works. But, uh, Ehrlichman, the Nexon aid, said, "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

0:16:34 Thomas: Soon, as we can schedule it. Oh, soon.

0:16:50 Matt: We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. So yeah,

0:16:44 Thomas: My god, okay, sorry, did he administer a truth serum? Is this like during an interrogation or something? I,

0:17:04 Matt: No, he just went, he JUST went out and said it out loud because by that point, you know, he was well out of the administration, didn't matter. But that is just, no question. I mean, the American Medical Association, just to give you the idea here, because I think there's been a lot of obfuscation, and I think a lot of intentional, I wouldn't say covering up, but maybe rewriting of history in a lot of this. Cannabis was basically legal until 1937, and the American Medical Association opposed criminalizing it because they didn't see any harm to it, really. And they wanted doctors to be free to prescribe and pharmacists free to dispense it, because you could get get a prescription for it then. The major argument against it was Anslinger, who was, no, literally, no. I mean, Harry Anslingler literally said their satanic music, jazz, and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others. Yes. Actual reefer madness. Yep.

0:17:36 Thomas: Was jazz, apparently. Apparently. Wow. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ.

0:17:56 Matt: This this is the climate. And then, so act goes into effect, and then it's not overturned until Timothy Leary gets arrested with some weed on him. And he forces the Supreme Court to overturn the tax Act. Nixon freaks out because at that point, there's this period where marijuana might be legal. And so they pass the Controlled Substances Act. And as a stopgap measure, just to kind of make sure that they get it done, they make marijuana a Schedule I pending review by a commission and the Schaeffer Commission. This is a blue ribbon panel that was put together by Nixon, former Pennsylvania Governor John Schaefer, they look into marijuana and they come back with a report explicitly saying that it's time to decriminalize it and make sure that adults can use it, that it has no real harm.

0:18:11 Thomas: God. Wow.

0:18:33 Matt: There's no reason to continue to criminalize it. It should not be a Schedule I under any circumstances. And of course, Nixon ignores that for the reasons that we just found in that quote, because it was too convenient. And he just personally loved to drink, as you might know, and he thought that marijuana was bad. He just didn't like it. So that's how we got here. That's why marijuana is a schedule one is because of Richard Nixon and his personal vendetta against the blacks and hippies.

0:18:55 Thomas: Well, and the millions of deaths it's caused. But before 1937, there was no society. We were all so high. Couldn't even manage. Nobody had jobs.

0:18:57 Matt: Yeah, right, of course. And If Nixon had just gotten high once in a while, I feel like we would have been a lot better off. But that's, yeah,

0:19:09 Thomas: Yeah, but I love it. You really can't leave it to the Nixon administration. Like there's all these things that like, had I heard when I was a kid, I would have been like, you conspiracy theorist nut job. And it's like, no, there's like a quote of the person just saying, yes, we did this for the reasons that you would possibly think are the most conspiratorial.

0:19:27 Matt: Yeah.

0:19:27 Thomas: Like weird.

0:19:28 Matt: Just right there. Yeah. Yeah. So that brings us, of course, to Joe Biden and the Biden administration. And of course as I'm sure you know about Joe Biden, it was instrumental in the 1994 crime bill, which criminalized the war on drugs to just a new level. And it's one of the many things that I think he needs to be accountable for. I think He's somewhat aware of that. This announcement this week confirming what he'd already kind of put on track. You know, this has been slowly in the works for a while now to de -schedule it from schedule one down to schedule three. I should should say reschedule, not deschedule. And Schedule 3 drugs are defined as drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. The abuse potential is less than Schedule 1 and Schedule 2, but more than 4. So examples of Schedule 4 would be Tylenol with codeine, ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone, right? Just things that you need a prescription for, but they're not going to kill you. This progress because Because you're at least acknowledging that it has medical value, but

0:19:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:20 Thomas: That doesn't sound. I'll be honest, you feel free to, uh, tell me why I'm wrong. That doesn't sound too far off of what marijuana seems to be to me.

0:20:31 Matt: I see the argument. At the same time, if we're in a society where tobacco and alcohol are also legal, but more to the point, though, the states have decided. This has already been decided. The majority of this country, if you're an American listening to this, you probably live in a place where it's legal in some form, whether it's with a card or not. And I mean, I've certainly, for the last 10, 11 years, I haven't been able to walk down the street to the marijuana store, a very nice boutique place where you can get lots of great products. And it's not regulated, and I don't have a problem with the FDA regulating it the way they do other products, but it doesn't need to be criminalized for all kinds of reasons. But Schedule 3, to be clear, it's still a crime. And of course, one of the reasons—right,

0:20:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:21:03 Thomas: For Sure. Oh. Okay. Yeah. Never mind, I, I misunderstood. With the whole scheduling stupid thing, I was like, just comparing it to those other things. I was like, yeah, I mean, it's kind of similar to those substances. But What's, is coding criminal? Wait, what, those are all criminalized in some sense? Or, oh.

0:21:16 Matt: Makes some sense. Tylenol with codeine, yeah, you have to go to Canada for that. Not legal advice, but you can buy it in Canada. So, get it. I understand why people were excited about this news. And to a degree, I am too, because it's nice to finally see the federal government catching up to the fact that it does have actual medical value. And to see the FDA and Health and Human Services willing to actually take it seriously. But at the same time, this is so frustrating because this is such a centrist -brained approach to this. It's such a lizard-brain answer to the problem.

And you have, again, if the states hadn't already voted in such numbers and passed all these bills in such members, maybe that would be different. Maybe we'd be looking at a different scenario. But we have the reality we have. And by making it a Schedule III, what you're doing is saying it needs to have a prescription. It is a prescription drug. Drug. And I think that's a problem because again, we do have an existing medical system. It's going to have to sort of come into compliance with existing FDA, DEA standards so they can handle prescriptions. It'S not that hard to get a card. I had one for a while, but it be necessary at this point.

0:21:24 Thomas: Okay. Mm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Does This, this change, the fact, okay, so one thing, and, and that you make great points, um, thing that's been really stupid is, uh, I businesses formed around this in California, at least, and I imagine it's the same in all the states. They have to be like super cash based and they can't. Have like, like there's a bunch of things that are just really dumb, where we've.

0:22:37 Thomas: Already, and as you say, if the majority of states are already doing this and yet they have, have to be in this weird, like, gray market status of like not being able to get banking the same way that other businesses can and having all these weird tax things, that have, I, that is dumb. And, and so, does this change that at all, or will that still be dumb? Oh.

0:22:34 Matt: Yep. Yep, it does actually quite a lot. That was one thing I wanted to talk talk about is 26 U.S. Code 280E, which Just totally, to start with this... portion of the U. S. Code does not allow for any tax deductions or credits, just a start with. Let's just start there.

0:22:59 Thomas: Okay. You're

0:23:08 Matt: There. So you can't run yourself like a regular business and get the regular tax exemptions that you would expect.

0:23:08 Thomas: Right. That's Incredibly stupid, so like. If You buy, um, don't know, a, a computer to do business with. It's like, you can't deduct anything?

0:23:18 Matt: Yeah. Nothing.

0:23:20 Thomas: Is that, wait, what? What is the logic behind that?

0:23:21 Matt: And that is, well, that is if your trade or business consists of trafficking and controlled substances within the meaning of Schedule 1 or 2. So if we take it down to Schedule 3, then they're out of this. But yeah, there was a way to criminalize people that sell drugs, basically, that you can'T deduct for your drug business. I'm sure there There was some other policy reason for it. But so this alone is going to save the industry billions and billions of dollars, obviously.

0:23:34 Thomas: Oh, okay. Well, that's, yeah.

0:23:46 Thomas: Well that's nice.

0:23:47 Matt: It's a start. But to your point about the banking, you know, they're still going to be hesitant because you're still in this really gray area where you're going to have 24 states that have marijuana stores that just have places you can walk in without a prescription and just buy it. And you're still talking about drug dealers, those all those people who are selling that that stuff are considered to be trafficking a controlled substance, and so banks are still going to be hesitant. I don't think that's, we should expect that's going to change, um, and

0:24:11 Thomas: Did buy a few things for a while and I think you have to use like your debit card. It was like, what, why am I using my debit card? What in the world is this? What year is it?

0:24:22 Matt: That requires some kind of hack, yeah. No. It's, it's really not, it's, yeah, it's absurd. Um, should talk a little little bit about what this announcement actually means in practice and how it plays out, and also about what Joe Biden promised versus what we're getting. And I'm sorry, again, I know that we both agree that we have a moral obligation at this point to do anything we can to stop Donald Trump, especially some of the stuff we've been hearing recently. This is a particularly frustrating issue for me, because Joe Biden said in his campaign that he would decriminalize the use of cannabis. In the same sentence, same paragraph, he said that he would reschedule it as a Schedule two at the time.

I'm not sure how you can even comport those two things together. So he was, from the beginning, he was making promises about how he was going to at least change the status one way or another, which is fine. I mean, that's, you know, he certainly, that's the minimum he can do. The easiest thing to do, as I said, would be to deschedule it, to take it off the schedule completely. But instead, what he does is he starts off in October 2022. You might remember there was this announcement, again, frankly, meaningless meaningless announcement, I'm sorry, but that he was going to pardon everybody serving sentences for federal or DC marijuana possession charges. And do you know how many people were serving sentences for federal oder DC?

0:24:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Huh.

0:25:25 Thomas: You're going to tell me it's zero, isn't it? Well,

0:25:27 Matt: Is zero. No one was released from prison because that's not really a thing. People aren't doing federal time for possession only. They did expand it later to some distribution and sale charges. But again, 6 ,500 people got the felony off the record for for the possession. That's not nothing.

0:25:42 Thomas: That's nice. Yeah.

0:25:43 Matt: That s fine. I have no problem with that. And he was of course encouraging state governors to do the same, but the blue states that want to do it have already done it, for the most part. The same time, they were starting to push this idea of the process of getting it going to actually re -examine the entire status of marijuana in the federal government. So in August 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a very lengthy recommendation to move from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. Now this recommendation goes to the DEA. And this is another issue I have with the whole thing, because the DEA has its own system of administrative courts, which we'll be talking about when we talk about drug scheduling. These administrative courts have a lot of leeway to decide what the scheduling should actually be for any given substance. This process takes forever. I was looking at some recent rescheduling. Was one for a substance I'd never heard of that took about 10 years. And it's estimated that if they really drag their feet, something like like this could take nine or 10 years.

0:26:33 Thomas: Wow.

0:26:33 Matt: And of course that requires an administration that wants to do it. You I think it's politically popular at this point. I think that they should want to do that, but you never know. You can't count on that. And it's going to cost, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars probably throughout this entire process to move this thing along. When all you could do is just take it off the schedules and say, look, the states have decided we're here.

0:26:53 Thomas: Sorry. I want to make sure I understood. So are you saying the thing Biden just announced could take 10 years to go into effect?

0:26:59 Matt: It has to go all the way through the DEA process, if there's appeals, if there is, you rescheduling. And I think they're going to be motivated to move this along faster than others. But I'm just saying, this is not a matter of months necessarily. I don't think it actually will take that long. I think there is more motivation than that. But these so often when the media makes these things, I think that people think tomorrow that there's going tobe some kind of change when you wake up.

0:27:07 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, I certainly did.

0:27:22 Matt: No, sadly. And this is just kind of one in a series of announcements about what they've been doing. And these are anonymous sources. Nobody's even come out, I don't think, publicly and said to confirm this. But the DEA is moving on this. Yeah, that was in the original announcement. Wasn't like Joe Biden came out and said it.

0:27:31 Thomas: Wait, what? Right.

0:27:36 Matt: Did get somebody to confirm it. But yeah, the Associated Press broke this. So yeah, I again, this is so frustrating, because it is May of 2024. And a lot of people are very, very mad at Joe Biden right now. And how nice would it be? How easy would it been to just come out and say, well, look at that, legalize States it. Have spoken. Let's do it. But I

0:27:57 Thomas: He can really do that all by himself? Like, else, he has to do. He could deschedule it and then done. Oh.

0:28:03 Matt: He can't. No, no. But he could make recommendation. He could push it through in that direction. He can't actually take it off the schedule himself. But there's a lot of power with the executive to make these things happen the way. And he stated where he wants it to go.

0:28:13 Thomas: Well. Wait, what is the process for that? Then.

0:28:14 Matt: So it's a long process, no matter what. Congress could actually just pass something. And that would be the easiest thing. And honestly, there isn't a bipartisan support at this point. I think that it could actually happen. Happen. Just saying that why take this weird middle ground approach when it's already illegal in so many places? Why subject it to this regime of prescriptions and criminalization? And I guess one of the other reasons I should disclose why I'm so mad about this is that you can still get deported for possession and distribution of a Schedule III substance. And if you work in a legal marijuana dispensary in Massachusetts, you can still be denied citizenship because you're a drug dealer.

0:28:42 Thomas: Cool. All.

0:28:49 Matt: And at one point, Jeff Sessions, for a few years, actually single -handedly issued an executive order saying that if you have used marijuana, if you admit to using marijuana in the five years before you apply for naturalization, we will automatically find that you are not a person of good moral character.

0:29:05 Thomas: Right, these.

0:29:06 Matt: Yeah.

0:29:06 Thomas: Idiots.

0:29:06 Matt: So enormous amounts of power to continue this Nixon bullshit, frankly. Drug scheduling is honestly, I mean, on top of obviously my everyday work, I learned about drug schooling first before I started doing this. And it was one of the things that really turned me against the federal government in a very real way, I got to tell you, because it's just way too much power. I should, of course, the Supreme Court plays into this. We can't talk about this without talking about the Supreme court, obviously, because there's a very bad decision that has upheld a lot of this as well. Gonzalez v. Raich, very strange decision because it was the liberal justices in the majority. And this is the one Thomas dissent, the one Clarence Thomas dissENT that I think I completely agree with, maybe just because of the way it came down. I know. We've talked about this before, but Clarence Thomas has a very 19th century view of the commerce clause. This case was based on the fact that even though, and the facts are infuriating, I hope I've sound as mad as I am about all of this, but in

0:29:07 Thomas: Jeez.

0:29:46 Thomas: No. Yeah. It. Happens. To.

0:30:00 Thomas: Someone who doesn't know you, imperceptible, but to me, in the audience, I'm actually scared right now. Worried. That.

0:30:06 Matt: Raging, yeah, yeah.

0:30:07 Thomas: You're going to burst a blood vessel, so.

0:30:09 Matt: Nothing sharp within my reach, I promise. Us rach the who took this to Supreme Court, had, I believe, a brain tumor, but some kind of very severe medical issue. She's still with us, I think. And uh her doctor, in in the lower court, had testified that this is the one thing that works for her. They've tried everything else. That that cannabis actually is effective. Um This federal government prosecutor in California, they took it up. And here's the Thomas dissent, which I think, just, I'll just read it very quickly, this part of it. Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has ever crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything, and the federal governor is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers. Respondent's local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is not commerce among the several states. Got it, Clarence. Can't I really argue with that.

0:30:57 Thomas: Wait, she was growing her own or something? Oh. Come. On.

0:30:59 Matt: Yep, she was. I think she had six plants.

0:31:02 Thomas: Not selling it, yeah, like. Literally, how does the federal government have any say over that? Just. Because a.

0:31:04 Matt: Just Essentially, Enrich, because it's just like marijuana itself is of such federal concern. Concerned. Stevens majority. And again, this is all justices and Scalia wrote his own concurrence because he couldn't just bring himself to join the liberal majority. Just so you can see where Stevens is coming from. Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity within the state that is not itself quote unquote commercial, in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity. And so he was drawing from Wickard v. Filburn, which is punishing a guy for growing too much wheat, even though he was just feeding it to his cows and the wheat quotas.

0:31:46 Thomas: Wheat? Oh, I was like, somebody. Just.

0:31:47 Matt: Wheat, no, too much weed.

0:31:49 Thomas: Keeps their cows high all the time? It's not. Why is this a crime? I can keep my cows really high, I.

0:31:53 Matt: If I'm going to eat them anyway, that seems kind.

0:31:54 Thomas: Was gonna. Say, yeah, you can butcher them, you can and do all God knows what, but I can't get my cows super high. What kind of government is this?

0:32:03 Matt: And again, this is at a time when California had a medical marijuana program. And you know, it's

0:32:07 Thomas: He's gotta get. Prescriptions. For each one of the cows individually. It's a huge pain in the ass.

0:32:11 Matt: Sure. I think it is actually maybe one of the places where conservatives are occasionally honest about states' rights, because this is absolutely something, you Know, we've talked about the states as a laboratory of democracy, right? And that's what O'Connor said in her dissent, essentially, is that, like, the states have spoken, this is something they want to try. O'Connor said herself, I wouldn't have upheld this law if I were in the legislature vote to make it illegal in any sense, but this is what they did and this is what they should be able to do.

That is the precedent we still have, is that the federal government, even when the states have made a clear finding with a popular vote, many of these things, including in Massachusetts, were a referendum, that the federal government can still go ahead and bust up dispensaries and arrest people for marijuana if they want to. Now, there's this sort of a not doing that.

There's a policy that has defunded any enforcement against, it's just kind of a standing policy from Congress that has now been passed on a bipartisan basis. It used to be something like the Democrats were introducing, but it keeps them from enforcing against medical programs. So at least there has been that protection. One book I can recommend for everybody is Smoke Signals, A Social History of Marijuana. A great book. I've learned a lot from it, and it has a lot of really infuriating information.

And I had not appreciated the long history of activists who went to prison and suffered badly to try to push this forward, to push his policy forward. And it's part of why I'm upset today, is because it seems like those sacrifices deserve more than a prescription. A lot of the conversation around this this week has been that we're pushing in the right direction, that finally we're undoing 100 years of damage and we're trying to push things forward and to recognize the reality of the states.

But obviously, this is actually something that I think Congress, even now, maybe might be able to agree on, because there are a lot of Republicans who are invested in the weed industry at this point. There are a Lot of Republicans coming from states where it's been legalized. And there are A lot of right-wing people who smoke weed. This is a fairly bipartisan issue at this Point. Congress could immediately just de -schedule it. That would be fine.

0:32:20 Thomas: Yeah. The. Meth laboratory of tomorrow, I.

0:33:59 Thomas: So then, how much is it valid to blame Biden for this?

0:34:02 Matt: He could also, though, he could come out and say, I don't believe at this point that there's any reason that it should be scheduled at all. And I'm going to direct my agencies to look into that and see if there's a way we can deschedule it. And maybe we get that kind of pressure going. But if Congress sees that what the executive wants to do is Schedule 3, then I don't think they have a lot of incentive necessarily to jump in. I don't know. Maybe I might be unfair a little bit

0:34:08 Thomas: Sure.

0:34:20 Thomas: I'm just trying to get it clear. Yeah, because I've always Heard that. Honestly, I've heard it for the longest time that he president, of this way predates Biden being president, but like the president could deschedule this with a stroke of the pen. And then by now, it's like, not really, I

0:34:22 Matt: Sure. Sure. No, there's quite a process to it.

0:34:33 Thomas: Plus, there, you think there's every chance the Supreme Court would mess that up too. Like, there gonna be some way they'll be like, nah, you can't do this, actually.

0:34:41 Matt: Maybe. It really depends. I guess the DEA, though, in these administrative hearings, they can take months of testimony If they want to, they can create a massive record that I think would be very hard for the Supreme Court to disagree with, because that would have to be based on actual findings at that point. And if they can support those findings, which the science is more than there, the Supreme court wouldn't have that much to say about it. I don't know.

0:35:01 Thomas: Findings that like everyone who's against this is way super lame. Like, it's it's proven that if you are in favor of criminalizing marijuana still, you're just a dweeb, man. Like, what are you doing?

0:35:13 Matt: Are my findings, but it's

0:35:14 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Scientists all agree. You suck and you're harshing our mill.

0:35:20 Matt: True. True. I mean, I have no problem with the FDA regulating these products. I've been a little concerned when I see some of these, the labeling is terrible on some of these edibles you can buy. I that a reasonable person who doesn't know a lot about marijuana might buy some of those products and consume an entire cookie or whatever when you're only supposed to eat a piece of it. I have used it for insomnia for some time, and there's an insomnia product that's labeled as an insomnia product. CBN is particularly effective, by the way, if anybody's interested in, you know, the use of THC products for this. And this has some CBN in it, but it has 50 milligrams of THCs per item. That's a lot. That is a lot, I mean, five milligrams is normal for an inedible, and 50 milligrams is an overwhelming amount.

I mean that is, like, you should know, and it doesn't really clearly tell you that very well on the front of the packaging. So I have no problem with this kind of regulation and making sure that we know where it's being grown and where it's coming from and that cartels aren't involved. That great, that's fine. I mean, the FDA can regulate alcohol the same way and send cigarettes. It you shouldn't have to be a crime. I guess that's where I'm coming from.

0:35:38 Thomas: Yes.

0:36:17 Thomas: Agree. Just trying to think of how does this work? Is this an executive agency that Congress has decided has this power, but they could pass something that just bypasses all that?

0:36:28 Matt: And that's actually always been one of my concerns about drug scheduling is that the DEA, this is a very unusual power. Typically, the executive does not have the power to create crimes. But this is one place where the executive branch can actually make something a crime without Congress's input. And that is concerning. You had like a particularly nutty president at some point, I mean, maybe like a Mormon president, right, that decided that caffeine should be criminalized. I mean this is pretty far out there, obviously, but, you nicotine under my example. It could happen, and you could have no congressional involvement.

So there's a of administrative law detail that is not particularly interesting about this, but there are a couple of options the DEA has. Take the longest, would be through the administrative law courts. It is possible that they could sidestep even the notice and comment period, which is usually required for a change like this. And there are options. It's a little strange, but under treaty obligations, there's actually an option that they can redo it through order. I know. Did that actually with Epideliacs. I don't know if I'm going to say that right. But the medication that included THC, I believe. And that was kind of an odd one. But I know that there is some other process where they can sidestep some of this, especially with the politics being what they are right now and the desire of being there. I'm just saying, worst case, if they went the full path and they went all the way through the way that they could do it, it could take years. And it's very unpredictable.

0:36:36 Thomas: Hmm.

0:37:14 Thomas: What?

0:37:44 Thomas: Make a deal. If the Republicans are going to roll back abortion laws to 1864 anyway, why don't we, you know, roll back marijuana laws to 1864 and just be like, yeah yeah

0:37:53 Matt: Yeah, 1936 even. Yeah, Let's just go for it. Yeah, there's one other little absurd thing. The FDA, as I mentioned, has already approved and the DEA signed off on a couple of products that actually have THC in them, including Marinol, which is synthetic THC. And from what I've read, Marinol is very unpleasant. It is not a fun thing to take. And it was used primarily for AIDS patients to help them deal with some of the side effects of other things. And it always seems so strange to me that the FDA was fine with something that was synthesized THC, like just pure THC, but not with the actual natural product. And the difference is that actual natural cannabis has CBD, it has terpenes, it has this really interesting blend of stuff that makes the thing that we call cannabis sativa. And just isolating THC and making it into a pill is not the solution, but they thought that was fine. Just, you know, that just that the hypocrisy and the misunderstanding and the willful misdirection and all this stuff is just very frustrating, I guess, to me, as somebody's been watching this for a while, that'd

0:38:51 Thomas: We could eventually move our government down from like average age of 84 to like 73 ish, I think we could make progress here. Um,

0:39:02 Matt: Be great. And if, uh, listening wants to run for office, if if this kind of thing motivates you the way it motivates me, then I'd love to hear from you.

0:39:08 Thomas: And Matt, I know this is us from the future a bit, because all the changes and things we're figuring out, we recorded that explainer on the marijuana rescheduling thing a few days ago. It's been a few days. I know there's been some updates and some things you want to clarify. So take it away.

0:39:24 Matt: Sure, yeah. So, it does seem like this might actually be done by Election Day. It's possible. I don't know. I mean, it really depends on how the DA wants to play it. It does seem that the DA is moving forward. The law judge who handles this could choose to have extensive hearings or not. Seem like because the administration wants this to happen, maybe they won't. We'll see. But on May 1st, just about the same time that this announcement was going forward, Schumer and the Senate Democrats introduced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which is pretty ideal as a bill. It's much more along the lines of what I would have wanted to see from the Biden administration.

I wish that Joe Biden would just throw his support behind this because it really covers a lot of the reasons that the federal government needs to tie up to make marijuana legalization reality to catch up with the states. So it would actually have the FDA start to regulate the cannabis industry. It would provide a whole host of education and VA and Indian Health Services. Everybody would kind of catch up to the reality of it in a very important way. It would also, of course, make sure that no one could ever suffer any immigration consequences, very specifically, and obviously by descheduling it, you're going to already alleviate one of the immigration consequences I'm

0:39:29 Thomas: Wow. Wow. Huh. Huh? Nice.

0:40:32 Matt: Most concerned about, and there's a lot of good restorative justice stuff to try to make up for the harm done by the war on drugs and the overreactions in the 90s, but it's just, again, it's a very good, comprehensive bill that legalizes marijuana and that moves forward, I think, in a very solid, progressive way that I don't see why Joe Biden can't just get behind it, and for the reasons I've already expressed, I'm just very concerned about about rescheduling as you know the default option and

0:40:55 Thomas: I think the point that, um, worth emphasizing about what we just listened to, uh, that I maybe didn't grasp when we record it was this, de -scheduling to schedule three or whatever the heck it is. I take your point. I think it's a good point that you don't want that to make people feel like, Oh, okay, well Well, that's that's handled. And then drop support for what this bill, which I have to imagine has at least what, 13, 14 senators supporting. No. Do you have any sense of the numbers on this?

0:41:24 Matt: Mean as Democrats are behind it but I don't know I honestly yeah I mean I feel like it could be viable in the house I don't know what the politics of it are but I just know that more and more red states and Republicans are warming up to the industry so I

0:41:25 Thomas: Oh, OK. Yeah. Well, they'll be awesome. I really. Yeah, that that's. I take that point. I think that makes a lot of sense. Something I didn't necessarily fully grasp when we recorded that. But now I'm through and editing it in hindsight. I think that's a great point. And it seems like if President Matt Cameron were, would just get fully behind this bill, right?

0:41:54 Matt: Would and I would tell the administrative agencies that we need to strongly consider descheduling I can't tell them exactly what to do they're still independent administrative agencies but you can set the tone which he did in his announcement back in October 2022, and, you know, the time we set was to review how it's scheduled, not to consider descheduling it, these things matter.

0:42:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:12 Thomas: And I think it's a good reminder, like definitely get the word out, folks, because I think there was a lot of coverage of this. And that's why in the beginning of the segment, I thought this was just a good news thing. I seriously I hadn't had time to look too deeply into it, but I thought, oh, hey, hey, good news. Great. Awesome. Amazing. Really glad that you provided that more nuanced perspective. And, I think it's important for people to get the word out on that.

0:42:33 Matt: A better way. And it's not terrible news, but I don't want it to be the future either. So, yeah.

0:42:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. All Well, time for a few updates on Trump trial stuff. I've seen so many headlines, Matt, that Judge Cannon has just like taken that whole trial and like put it under her couch and it just lives there now. And we can't find, no one can find it. I know what's going on. It sounds really bad, but what is it?

0:42:56 Matt: The phrase indefinitely postponed sounds very bad, certainly, but judges can't actually do that in the normal course of business. That's not what she's done here. But, of course, as we already know, and as we've discussed at length, she has been indefinitely postponing this thing anyway. She's been doing everything she possibly can to drag it out. She clearly doesn't want this trial to happen before the election. When I hear pundits say things like that, I feel like they're kind of imputing or they're reading into what judges are doing, but it just really, really seems like it. Because again, was scheduled for May 20th, very long from now. It was supposed to be starting trial on May 20. And of course, every time I've mentioned that date, I've said there's no way that's happening. Nobody believed that was going to happen. Of course, it wasn't going to because there's a massive stack of pre-trial motions that have been, well, maybe along with everything else under her couch, on her desk somewhere. But I kind of wonder what is going on in Fort Pierce, Florida, that she has been so occupied, because it's really like

0:42:59 Thomas: Sound bad. Yeah.

0:43:43 Thomas: She's specifically, I remember from your very excellent coverage, Matt, she's specifically a judge there because nobody gave a shit about that place, right? There's just nothing going on? I'm not sure what's so busy on her plate. Now, could it be, question, could be that she heard about the whole gavel gavel thing and she's like, you know, I want to make sure they can get that up and running, cover the other Trump trial. It could be that wow, first Patron actually can it, J underscore can she go first name, judge second? No, yeah.

0:44:02 Matt: That's True. Yeah. Well, get on their feet, cover a couple other trials, and then they can get to me, you know that must be it. Okay, um, yeah, order though, um, it's absurd because there are, as I've discussed several times, there's a number of pre-trial motions. They do need to be dealt with, but they don't need to have hearings. They don't want to be taken more seriously. A lot of these could have just been resolved on paper. And as we've discussed before, she does these scheduling orders like it's a paperless order that are just kind of in the docket. They're not something that Jack Smith can appeal.

0:44:34 Thomas: Cool.

0:44:34 Matt: So she's finding all these little ways in the margins to run this case without having to actually be accountable for it. And that is very frustrating for everybody involved. I can only imagine how Smith is feeling about all this. But just to give you a taste here, this order has a chart in it, and it goes through and explains explains exactly when all these different events are going to happen. Now, these are things that were filed in January, February, March, and they're just getting around to maybe thinking about beginning to explore having a hearing on them. I know. They include things like, the one I'm most concerned about, an evidentiary hearing of defendants' consolidated emotions to conspire discovery and to define scope of prosecution team. To define scopeofprosecutionteam. If that sounds weird, that's because it's really weird.

0:44:59 Thomas: Okay.

0:45:15 Matt: That's a weird thing to do.

0:45:15 Thomas: Thank god because that makes no sense. Yeah, yeah.

0:45:18 Matt: Yes. Yes. I mean, you'd think the prosecution team is Jack Smith's office, right? The special counsel. But no.

0:45:22 Thomas: I feel like they would decide, like, what their scope is, if that's a thing.

0:45:25 Matt: Yes. You would think. He gets to decide who to hire and fire. But what Trump has been arguing in this motion, and it's absurd, absurd, but he's saying that because the deep state is out to get him and the Biden White House is out for him, that they should, the intelligence community and the White House, to be prosecutors, essentially. That they should be part of the prosecution team, and that means that they get discovery, and it's a Brady violation if they don't turn her to discovery from all these other agencies, yeah, they're all prosecuting me.

0:45:27 Thomas: Okay, oh, my god, God, like the whole administration, like the whole government. Oh,

0:45:54 Matt: Yeah, it's so stupid. It's just so dumb. I've never heard anything like this.

0:45:55 Thomas: Come on. I'll give a credit for creativity on that one though. You know?

0:46:00 Matt: Yeah, no, I was reading the motion. I was like, wow, this is actually pretty creative stuff. Uh, the response, I mean, you can imagine the response is very good, but, uh, much time would you guess, uh, a motion like that, that might require in front of church, canon, no,

0:46:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:12 Thomas: A motion like that where it's like, okay, I want to draw, like, a, I want me to put a sticker on it. Like, hey, that's clever. You know, like a late, like one of my kids will like, stay, wow, creative. Cat, I don't know, something. But beyond that, I mean, it shouldn't take much, very long to be like, hey, that, but that's stupid, though. Really, you got to do real law stuff, so, 10 minutes, oh

0:46:31 Matt: You're right, it's going to go from June 24th to 26th, yeah, somewhere between those two things, two days and 10 minutes. That's what it deserves. Yeah, yeah. And

0:46:37 Thomas: God for like argument for like oral arguments and crap or whatever, like evidence oh my

0:46:42 Matt: Evidence, it's an evidentiary hearing, so they can call in the deep state and see how they feel about everything, get some testimony from them finally to hear from them again, just taking perfectly good jokes way too far. That's what she does. Um, to run through very quickly, though, uh, not evidentiary hearing on defendant's motion to dismiss indictment for insufficient pleading, something that could have been done in, I don't, on November. Discovery status reports, defendants Rule 16 expert disclosures. Again, something that needs to happen before trial, but there's not a lot going on in this case recently. And of course, Todd Blanche is pretty busy right now, as you might remember, having edited so many of his transcripts recently,

0:46:44 Thomas: God, our next witness last Yeah.

0:47:17 Matt: And he's supposed to be handling this too.

0:47:19 Thomas: Need him to do the VO. Ooh, have we reached out? Hey, can you record your...

0:47:23 Matt: You're on work.

0:47:24 Thomas: Yeah. Or I can have him do a different character. He's like, nah, I don't want to play that character. Give me a better one. I'm tired of being typecast as me. It's so frustrating. Every single opportunity is like, can't you play Todd Blanche? I'm like, God, it's what I always do.

0:47:25 Matt: What else are you doing tonight?

0:47:39 Matt: There's a non-evidentiary hearing on defendant Naute, that's Walt Naute and his co-defendant, the guy who moved the boxes around, on his motion to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution. And I'm wondering, like, this guy? He thinks he's being selectively and vindictively prosecuted? The toady? The sidekick? Like, you're just, nobody cares.

0:47:56 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, we don't even know who you are. I'm sorry. I wouldn't be able to select you from a lineup. I don't know how this could be selective. Like that'd be really hard to do.

0:48:01 Matt: I'm sorry. Yeah, no, really. But like, I've never even heard their name, Waltine, before. Um, yeah. Pretty much anyway, so it's absurd, as usual, as always. She has a long-winded explanation about this, and I just wanted to read you, uh, the best part of the joke. Let me make sure I can find it, yeah, oh, it's, it's not good, finally.

0:48:21 Thomas: God. And her, her writing is so stupid. I can't. Okay. Here we go. Running reminds me of in, um, I think it was like in like junior year of high school, I had an English class that was, you know, it was like really hard. It was like the teacher that was like, like the reputation of this is a a challenging course. And we had a lot of vocab, you know, we had to learn a lot of new vocab words. And it was always like, you're trying to use those words in a bunch of your essays and stuff. She just reminds me of that. But also if the words were wrong.

0:48:51 Matt: "The Court has evaluated the statutory factors set forth in the Speedy Trial Act, including the public's interest in the efficient administration of justice. Upon such review, the court finds the ends of justice served by this continuance that the last deadline specified in this order outweigh the best interest of the public and defendants in a speedy trial." So she's told in the speedy trail, day, which is a whole thing in federal, maybe in all courts, that, you know, to determine if you're getting a speed trial or not. And, "court therefore vacates the current May 2024 trial date," which no one thought was going to happen, "to be reset by, by a separate order, following resolution of the matters before this court, consistent with the defendant's right to due process and the public's interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice."

0:49:28 Thomas: My interest in job imaginable at making this trial happen.

0:49:32 Matt: Yeah, I mean, the public interest in a fair and effective administration of justice. I'm interested in seeing a trial before November. That would be great. That's what we all want because we're possibly

0:49:39 Thomas: Yeah, that would be fair. That sounds, hey Matt, That sounds fair. If I were to think of a word for it. Fair enough.

0:49:45 Matt: Efficient. It might even be efficient to get that done. Maybe we should consider being efficient. But the way that she has tripped over herself and just dragged this thing out, I mean, at this point, it is absolutely unconscionable. Like, there's no other word for it.

0:49:45 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I I know.

0:49:57 Matt: It's inexcusable. I

0:49:57 Thomas: The question everyone's been thinking this whole time, Matt, when do we get the Smith's motion to, like, can we get a new person, please? Fire this lady, like, can, how do we, is that, are we closer to that, is that happening? What do you think? Yeah.

0:50:08 Matt: Mean he can't, if he wants to take the C11 circuit, he's got to get some more meat to appear from. I mean there's nothing here, and she hasn't given him anything that he can really take it up, and he's gotta really pick his targets here. So, yeah.

0:50:12 Thomas: Boy this is frustrating. All right, yes.

0:50:21 Matt: You want some more frustration, we can go to Georgia for a minute. You might remember Judge Scott McAfee's order saying that Bonnie Morales could stay on the case as long as Nathan Reynolds will lose.

0:50:22 Thomas: Sure. Do I? His

0:50:31 Matt: You may remember them It's Jimmy Hendricks outfit, yeah. Uh, I said at the time that obviously the Georgia Appeals Court has the right to review this. Uh, we had no idea, it's kind of a crap shoot about who you're going to get when the Appeals Court decides whether or not to take it, and they have decided to take it in this term, which means that they have to, yeah.

0:50:31 Thomas: Order saying saying on his electric cello, yeah. I I feel like this is a, Matt was kind of wrong, if I'm being honest with you. What do you think? Okay.

0:50:51 Matt: Yeah. That was Off, I'll go with off, I mean, I mean, it was, you know, you can't be wrong in a prediction. You're just off. You know, I wasn't factually, well, true, but it's not a fact.

0:50:56 Thomas: Okay. You can be wrong? No, I think you can. I definitely think you'd be wrong, one could be wrong in a prediction, but yeah. It's just not, it's, it's fair to say, as long as you provided, like, the proper context of, like, well, you know, if people are, are saying, then you wouldn't do this, but, like, you never know if I, and I think I made the point, like, really, we're going to rely on a Georgia, some random assortment of judges in Georgia. So, you know, maybe between the two of us with mainly your, you, yeah, no, I meant like combine, combine us.

0:51:21 Matt: Yes, Thomas was right on that. I will say, I'll give you that. Yes,

0:51:29 Thomas: And I think we had the right picture of what was going on, but wow, that's unfortunate. So what does that do to our, to our trial and to our electric cellos? Yeah,

0:51:30 Matt: That's true. That's true? Yeah. Well, it appears that nothing else is going to happen with McAfee's courtroom. I think just out of caution, you know, he did say the trial could go forward, but obviously it'd be pretty awkward if in the middle of trial, the appeals court rules that she has to be taken off, uh, I don't think that's going to happen. I, I think that his appeal is, I think his opinion is pretty solid, but we will see. They have to decide this before November 1st because it's April term. I just checked the calendar.

0:51:51 Thomas: that'S fair. Gosh, Gosh, November. Come on, man. Is it going to be like a lot before that or like what's likely? That is so long to decide this very obvious thing.

0:52:02 Matt: Yeah. Yep. I would think. But, you know, just appeals being what they are, that's actually a pretty quick turnaround on a state appeal.

0:52:14 Thomas: Yeah, that's fair.

0:52:15 Matt: So yeah, um, so at this point that leaves only the DC case as the one that could maybe possibly foreseeably go to trial hour before November, and that's going to be on a very tight schedule. And that, of course, depends on the Supreme Court. So, not great.

0:52:30 Thomas: Boy, we're coming up snake eyes on a lot of this stuff.

0:52:33 Matt: Just what Trump wanted. Like, it's playing very well into his hands, all of this. And, you know, some of this couldn't have gone better for him, honestly.

0:52:33 Thomas: Yep. The system is designed for him to win at this particular thing, though. Like, and getting lucky with some real Trumpy ass judges.

0:52:46 Matt: This really is, I have never seen a defendant going out on so many venues at once with so much money, just a hose full of lawyers, just spraying everywhere, just law. I mean, usually you have to pick your battles when you have a legal fight, right? You have to at least decide where the triage is, but he can just spend everywhere on everything, and I think that's what we're seeing. This is really the ultimate example to me of how you can buy justice.

0:52:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

0:53:11 Matt: Hey,

0:53:10 Thomas: Will. Okay. Okay. I'm normally not the most like positive outlook person. However, I think the good news on that is I think he's just straight grifting this from Republican donors, you know? And so it does feel like, hey, okay, yes, he's successfully sold, but he's still, to your point, he still had to just really a fire hose of money, which I very well know about, but his times a billion probably of what I've experienced. And he's just taking that from Republican donors. I have to imagine that's going to compromise their ability to run elections properly or well or competently in November.

0:53:46 Matt: That's a great point. I appreciate that thought.

0:53:48 Thomas: Yeah, at least a little bit. I think so. It's got to cost them.

0:53:51 Matt: Yeah, I cut into that a bit. There's other places that probably would have wanted to spend that money.

0:53:52 Thomas: Yeah, I would think so. Right. Well, yeah, I guess he has more time to, you know, work on his arpeggios and we'll see if any new videos come up on his YouTube of what he's been doing in the meantime. No, he's a real judge. He does real stuff, I'm sure.

0:54:10 Matt: If these trials ever happen, they'll be spaced out pretty well, at least for Gabba Gabba purposes. So, there's that.

0:54:10 Thomas: Oh, that's a great time to remind people. You want to hear that trial episode? April 30th. That was that day in court. That was a fun one. Got to hear a lot of people talk about what a piece of shit Michael Cohen was like in no uncertain terms.

0:54:27 Matt: Dirty deals. We get to learn lots more about dirty deals, and how they work, very interesting stuff that's

0:54:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Find that episode on patreon.com/gavelpod. I want to remind everybody it will eventually be on a, on a public feed for now though. That's where those episodes are going. Um, so, you I understand it that not everyone can become a patron. Sorry for that. It will eventually go up for everyone. But for now, if you want to find those trial episodes, patreon dot com slash gaVEL pod. I'll link it in the show notes. And I am so excited to have opening arguments back to the original formula, the original spicy chicken formula. No, I'm vegetarian. The original Coke formula. Is that a good one or a bad one? I don't remember. I think it's the good one.

0:55:07 Matt: A good one I like that one

0:55:07 Thomas: Yeah, the new one sucked, right? And then they went back to you. Yeah. OK, so we're back to that. In order to do that, Matt, we do have to catch up through a few things because we finishing off the old format. So while today would normally, Friday's episode is normally just a T3B question. We're going to have the answer, the pending answer about the, the tenant that was a little, little radical in their approach to, you know, tenants rights. I think you could say that T3V, we'll have that answer. And then we're going to ask the question. And then from then on will be Monday answer and Friday question. So we'll have to, but for this one, it'll be a little extra because we got to get back to that. So let's get on to T3BE.

0:55:08 Matt: Yeah sure something

0:55:51 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:55:57 Thomas: Got a very disgruntled tenant. Is not gruntled.

0:56:00 Matt: We, nobody likes landlords, but this is taking it a little far, I think, we've We've gotten is so tired of the landlord's consistent failure to make necessary repairs that she decides to set her apartment on fire, uh, the facts do tell us that she warned everybody in the building, allegedly. But of course, unfortunately, there were some people that couldn't get out, some elderly tenants that ended up being burned pretty badly or injured otherwise.

0:56:04 Thomas: Yep. Yikes.

0:56:21 Matt: Agreed, though, when they were interviewed by the fire department and the police that Jenny had warned them. So the question becomes, what is the most serious crime that Jenny could be charged with? So we've got A, arson only, B, arsons and assault, C, arsen and attempted murder, murder, D, arson, assault, and attempted murder.

0:56:38 Thomas: Was a weird one.

0:56:39 Matt: It was a weird one. Now, I think we can start out just by establishing, do you think this was arson?

0:56:44 Thomas: Yeah. I think this was our, Arson's in all the answers. So going to say yes.

0:56:47 Matt: Yeah. Okay. Just want to be sure we've established that when you intentionally set something on fire, that's going to be arson. So I don't know if you need a lawyer to tell you that, but here we are. Is a bit of a trick question because the question is not what she she could be convicted of? But what is the most serious crime that she could be charged with?

0:56:52 Thomas: Yeah, well with, yeah. And I noted that and I just assumed assumed there's going to be some kind on that. Like if, if it's, if the charges were like kidnapping, then I assume that some, somebody would say something, the judge would be like, no, I don't know, but maybe not.

0:57:15 Matt: So, I mean, prosecutors can try anything. And they certainly do sometimes. And some prosecutors love to overcharge. And I think that might be kind of what they're getting at in this question.

0:57:17 Thomas: Oh, wow. The first thing I did was I decided there's no way anything is assault. So I would, I, that's How how I eliminated B. And D. So I'd wonder how how was my uh, how was my reasoning there? Yeah.

0:57:27 Matt: Great. That said, that's right? Yep. You went with arson only, which is perfectly reasonable. We've established that is arson. There's no question that's what's going on. There's possibility of charging other crimes here. And I remember when you're talking about this, you were saying you can't assault someone with a fire. You're asking that as a question. But the fact is you can. You can use dangerous weapons. This is kind of a fun fact, actually.

0:57:50 Thomas: Said Assault with A deadly weapon, and I joked a fire. Yeah.

0:57:54 Matt: And A fire can be a deadly weapon. In fact, I will tell you about some of the most fun deadly weapons that I've seen in my charging documents and in cases I've reviewed. I have seen a frozen fish used as a dangerous weapon.

0:58:03 Thomas: Well, that's a classic weapon.

0:58:04 Matt: That's, I mean, obviously, you're going to really do some damage with a frozen cud.

0:58:06 Thomas: That's That's Like one of the first weapons anyone ever used.

0:58:11 Matt: You really want to make sure it's frozen well, though. It's pretty awkward if it's not frozen. But I've seen the ocean used as a dangerous weapons. And I've see pavement used as a dangerous weapon, which is pretty creative charging. Instruments you're using to harm somebody. So assault can be. And the theory of assault here would be, obviously, that she was not trying to hurt her neighbors. It's just that this is sort of a transferred intent. You could say that she's trying to burn the property and end up burning a person. I think it's a little specious.

0:58:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, Okay. Sure. Wow. That Was another component of it. I, I didn't see any way in which there's intent there, but you're saying as long as you intended to do the thing that led to it.

0:58:45 Matt: Yeah, and it's reckless at some point. I was talking to Casey about this one, because we're going back and forth. And of course, Casey is always very concerned about what jurisdiction we're talking about. The bar doesn't care what jurisdiction we'RE talking about, we're generally talking about common law. But I think the theory of assault here would be reckless, that you'd be recklessly kind of... Because that is an option in many jurisdictions that assault Is actually still on the table. The question becomes attempted murder. Now, can we stretch this out to be an attempted murder when she warned everybody and she clearly just wanted to harm the property and not any people?

0:58:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't. Sure. Mm -hmm.

0:59:14 Matt: Is that it can be. And it can been under basic common law, sort of what's called depraved heart murder. And I think this is what the book is getting at here. Now this is a little specious, but again, we're asking what she could be charged with, maybe not convicted. I think you could make a pretty good case to the jury that this is incredibly reckless. Even if you tell people, you're still starting a fire in a large apartment building. So the idea of depraved heart murder or sort of a reckless indifference to human life, that you're doing something that is just so objectively dangerous that you should know that you might kill somebody. So Casey was saying she didn't think that would really be sustained, but you could see somebody bringing it. But the answer here is D, arson, assault, and attempted murder. It's all three.

0:59:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Boy.

0:59:53 Matt: I

0:59:54 Thomas: Yeah. I didn't get much. It's funny as I said almost everything that is important to this. Like I noted that even that. Don't know the term depraved heart. I forgot that. But I noted that exact thing because I was saying, like, if you just, you know, shoot a gun in the air or if you didn't like that kind of thing. I just yeah, I didn't I didn'T think this quite got there. But the part where it's charged and not now, is there any constraints on what you can charge?

1:00:20 Thomas: So that makes this a very dumb question.

1:00:19 Matt: Really, I mean, obviously as a defense attorney I bring a motion to dismiss immediately, right?

1:00:23 Thomas: Yeah, because you could just charge them with anything. So that's where a non -lawyer gets into trouble, because I assume you know how there's those rules of interpretation. The justices sometimes use and sometimes don't when it's convenient to them, where it's like, hey, don't interpret a law so that it's meaningless. don'T want to choose an that renders like parts of the law just like worthless, right? Isn't that something?

1:00:24 Matt: Yeah, sure. Right. Gotta mean something. I don't remember the theory that you're talking about, but I know what you mean.

1:00:45 Thomas: Yeah, it's something. And then I, so I actually just do that naturally when it comes to this, because when I look at this question, I'm like, well, if you could charge someone with anything, this question would be worthless. So it's not that. And then you're like, no, you could charge someone with anything. It's like, okay, well, that's that'll get you. I don't know. I don't know what to say. That's, uh, I think I've made the assumptions that made sense to me, not knowing it. And sometimes the bar gets you. Oh.

1:01:11 Matt: You, you did. And I, this is pretty questionable. Casey had serious issues with this question, so she's on your side for this one, for sure, uh, yeah,

1:01:16 Thomas: That's nice. Well, I doubt she's on the side of, so she probably would have picked what, B? Okay. There's

1:01:21 Matt: Yeah. That was, that was her best answer.

1:01:23 Thomas: Nobody who was on my side because I was on arson's side. Arson only side, yeah.

1:01:30 Matt: It is really a stretch to say this attempted murder, because you're saying like basically attempted recklessness, and it's a little strange. But it really depends on jurisdiction. Yeah. But yeah, you did.

1:01:36 Thomas: It's so weird that So that wasn't. Okay, I'm mad again. That was another thing I, I even puzzled through that, Matt. I even went, okay, I get when you murder somebody by, by being so reckless, but like an attempt, that's another level of, like, to say you attempted to murder someone by being completely reckless, it's like, well, you didn't attempt to murder someone. Like, like, we know in the question you weren't attempting to murder people. That's a very, very counterintuitive thingy. Okay.

1:02:07 Matt: Yeah, I really want to see the statutes and whatever jurisdiction we're looking at here, because I would be putting a motion to dismiss together pretty quickly. And I think it would probably work. But you know, really depends On the jurisdiction and the law. So yeah.

1:02:15 Thomas: I'm going to file a motion to dismiss this question, but it'll be under appeal for two years, so I will take the L for now. Well, not great. Not great.

1:02:25 Matt: Well, you're not alone, Thomas. You're not not alone because winner this week is no one, no one got this right. Not a one.

1:02:30 Thomas: Wow. That is surprising to me.

1:02:32 Matt: Has that happened often? TTB history.

1:02:34 Thomas: It has happened, but I would have figured something like this was, you know, that I I would have figured there would be some lawyer that would pick up on the like, yeah, you can can charge charge anyone with anything. And then like that, you know, like I'm surprised. Oh, okay. Well, I

1:02:46 Matt: Yeah. A lot of reasonable answers, but nobody got it.

1:02:49 Thomas: Really appreciate that, everyone. Thank you for conspiring to make me feel less dumb. But do we have any interesting thing to read? Do we have anybody to give credit to anywhere? Matt, no one getting it right is a good opportunity to shout out, Someone uh. Who's not an American who used a different, country's law to a different places law to evaluate and gives us a chance to shout that the Facebook group has started TTB now. So, uh the Facebook Group, that's facebook.com/groups/YodelLittleMountain, they're going to be posting TTB as a post each week and you can try to answer there. So it's another place to attempt to answer Thomas takes the bar exam.

1:03:25 Matt: That's Opening Arguments Community is the name of that group.

1:03:28 Thomas: Yeah. And the winner is Rari Hipkin, who says, my answer is A, in English law, you need intention to assault, even if it's just raising a fist to someone without inflicting any punches. Attempted murder. Murder requires the intention to kill, which I don't see here. And murder requires the attention to kill or the intention to do grievous bodily harm, which leads to the victim's death. Again, no intention here. So neither of these are appropriate. Yeah. Well, you know, there are so many of us who had the real right answer, which was A.

1:04:02 Matt: It's a solid answer. And I can't argue with the logic. But you know, the book is giving us D, and that's what we got.

1:04:03 Thomas: But yeah, the book can. Yeah. All right. Right. Well, congratulations, Rory. Answer. And again, go to that Facebook.com/group/YodelMountain or search Opening Arguments Community if you'd like to join in on the fun there.

1:04:20 Matt: All right. And now it's time for our next question. Rebecca, a famous violinist, signed a contract with the Grand Symphony, an esteemed music company, to perform exclusively at their annual concerts for the next three years. Due to a sudden illness, Rebecca was unable to perform, and thus delegated her performance duties to her protege Lisa, a violinist of equal skill and reputation. The Grand Symphony refused to accept Lisa's performance. Lisa sued the Grand Symphony for breach of contract. Lisa likely to succeed in her claim? A. Yes, because Rebecca was legitimately unable to perform. B. Yes. Because Lisa has equal skill and reputation C. No, because a contract for personal services cannot be delegated. D, no, because Rebecca did not fulfill her contractual obligation.

1:05:03 Thomas: Boy. Contracts. I love contracts, but they're they're often tricky because the things that tend to make it to the bar exam are the tricky parts. OK. Signed a contract with the Grand Symphony to perform exclusively at their annual concerts for the next three years. So, she's got an illness. She literally can't perform, which I think is also the technical term just in a contract, delegated her duties to a protege, equal skill and reputation. The Grand Symphony refused to accept Lisa's performance. Right.

So, I feel like I remember a lot of things that are close to this, but I don't know if I'll know the technical right answers. Now, I know in contracts, I think there's such a think is delegating, you know, if it's like finding kind of a suitable replacement type thing. And I think that is a real thing. There's also the idea that they're refusing to accept it. They might solve that right. Even if that was good breach of contract. OK, this is tricky.

All right, let me see. I'll just puzzle through the answers. So is Lisa. Oh. One tricky thing. I just because I'm name blind. I realize Lisa was suing. So Lisa is the replacement and the Grand Symphony is like nope and Lisa sues for breach of contract. Now, that's interesting, because like, huh, because there's definitely a sense in which Lisa could have been the replacement, but Rebecca could have still been the person who's like suing over it. So that's that's interested.

I guess that I guess in this world, Lisa is sort of taking over the contract. I think the reason I'm confused is the contract is for the next three years. So I would have thought this is just like subbing in for one of them. But maybe I'm to understand that she's like, I'm ill for the next three years, uh, don't, well, I guess it could be, maybe it's a really bad illness. Okay. I think that is what I'm going to assume.

So, so that would be like Lisa saying, Hey, why kind of assuming this contract now. So I'm suing cause give me, give me the money. I'm gonna perform. Okay. So will Lisa succeed in her suit for breach of contract? A, yes, because Rebecca was legitimately legitimately unable to perform. Don't think that will be the reason. I it could be, but it doesn't really strike me as the key there. I know I don't like that. I don't there's enough there.

B, yes, because Lisa has equal skill and reputation. So that could be a good answer. I think B is alive just because maybe part of the requirement of sort of delegating performance would be, it has to be equivalent. Like you can't say, hey, oh, this TV I was going to deliver you, it fell and broke. Let me give you an absolute piece of shit. Instead, you could say, hey, I'm going to replace this with an equal TV within a timely manner.

And I feel like usually in contracts, like that's like kind of okay, I think. So B is certainly plausible to me. C, no, because a contract for personal services cannot be delegated. Interesting. Interesting. A sense in which I really like that answer, but it's also the like kind of firm, broad answer that Matt usually tells me is wrong. Like maybe, maybe it can be delegated sometimes. Think there's a wrinkle here in that does delegated mean that it's accepted?

It makes sense if you sign a contract with like, I don't know, Bono to perform at a, you know, a concert and then he's like, ah, I can't make it, why don't you instead, here, Metallica is going to perform, you'd be like, well, it's not a Metallica con, like we're trying to put on a different kind of, like that makes sense to be like, you can't just sub in.

And, and honestly this isn't a musician, this is something, it does say equal skill and reputation, but, well, it does save reputation, I don't know, it strikes me that this would be the kind of thing that you can't just sub in, does delegate mean like, could it be delegated, but not accepted necessarily? Or can it not delegated might mean that like the Grand Symphony doesn't even really get the chance to refuse it.

Know that might sound a little confusing, but I promise there's a reasoning in my brain that makes sense. And we'll see if it corresponds to reality next week. Uh, so C is on the table, but I'm not sure. D, no, because Rebecca did not fulfill her contractual obligation. So that seems like the dumb answer. And who knows, it'll turn out to be the right one. But if Lisa is suing, I think there's no way she's going to lose because Rebecca did not fulfil the contractual obligation.

I feel like Lisa will lose because she can't, like Rebecca can't delegate. If Rebecca, is it's just a weird answer because if Rebecca did fulfill her contractual obligation, then Lisa doesn't exist. Lisa is never born. So I don't, I don't really know that. It's just weird answer, because the opposite doesn't make sense. You know, like it wouldn't be yes, because Rebecca did fulfil. And I don't, I don't know if that means anything, but just, it just feels awkward to me.

It feels like that doesn't seem like it would be the right logic because if she did fulfill her contractual obligation, what are we doing here? Then again, you could say her contractional obligation was to find a suitable replacement. And if Lisa, for some reason, isn't a suitable placement, then Lisa could lose for that reason. I found make sense. However, everything I have from the question here is that Lisa is a suitable replacement.

And so if Lisa loses, I think it's going to be something more like C, which is a contract for personal services cannot be delegated. I think that would be why, or else I think she would win. So I think I'm eliminating D and I think, I'm eliminated. I don't really think, don't really think it's going to turn on whether Rebecca, whether or not Rebecca was legitimately unable to perform.

It really does seem to me that you've booked an act and you, you wanted that act, you know, be it, be Rolling Stones who are 90 years old and still playing or be it whoever it is, whatever band it is, whatever thing is like you book that, you want that, it makes sense that there's a type of contract which you wouldn't be like, I, you can just send in anybody that's kind of equivalent. So I'm between and C. So can you sub in Lisa who has equal skill and reputation or can you you not delegate a contract for personal services? And I, man, I got to go with C. I mean, I feel like I'm going to get burned on this one, but it just makes sense to me that you can't just sub in, you know, if you book a celebrity for something, they can't be like, oh, well, here's somebody else who's equal. That just doesn't make sense to be. So I'm between B and C and I'm gone with C, see.

1:11:32 Matt: Right, Thomas, I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but we're playing under Charlie Daniels' Devil Went Down to Georgia rules this week. So this is your soul in the line. Look out. Yeah, well, better hope it's C. Listeners, rousing up your bows and join us on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, wherever you're going to find us. And let's get this done. Oh,

1:11:40 Thomas: Crap. I don't like that.

1:11:51 Thomas: Wow. All right.

1:11:53 Clip: Thank you for being a friend, oh yeah, travel down the road with me, say we started from the bottom now we're here girl,

1:12:02 Thomas: And in another bit of catch up, I have first to thank the Hall of Fame, which is the last quintile of April. I'm only now, sorry, it's, I know it's it's late, but don't worry. I preserved the names as they were then. And so I'm going to thank the last quintile of April. Oh, I do have to tell you this. Don't Did know if you caught this, Matt. Uh, was a patron name that was so good last time that I need need to make sure I tell you about it. I just want to make Sure you heard there was a patron who did, I use a phone with a physical keyboard.

I'm fast at text. It just, it was right after that episode. Yeah, which is so good. This is why the patron shout outs get so fun because Cause that, that is genius. I really, I really liked that one. Uh, so you got an extra shout out, but let's go to that final quintile and we'll start with, thank you to Elect Thomas Smith President, American Honkytonk Bar Association, Philip Kizer, finding the perfect analogy is like balancing a muffin on a pencil, Fred R Groothuis, resubscribe for Smith and Cameron, Milo Meadsong just filed his first cert petition. Wow. Now, Big

1:12:33 Matt: It's so good. It's multiple callbacks. Yeah, it's so good.

1:13:06 Matt: Congrats.

1:13:06 Thomas: Big Easy Blasphemy, Malaika Chandler, Malcolm the Dragon, the precious variant, RhondaTheDork.com, Chris Waltrip, and Mitchell. Our top patron is Mitchell. Long may Mitchell reign. Or not. Everyone else should try to take Mitchell out. Sorry. No offense, Mitchell. But, you like competition in our faith. I don't know. Now I also need to thank the first quartile of May. And so the Hall of Farmers, the all -term greats, on patreon.com/law, if you're at that top tier at least a month. I will thank our first quarter of them. Thank you to Two Disillusioned with Tech to get excited about AI.

1:13:42 Thomas: Misbehavior. Steve is the word is the word that you heard I'm not fast at sex but I admire their audacity what Hanrohan John Ian Goldfinch it's Ranna, quote, it's exactly the opposite of that, Justice Alito. Hadari. Yeah, that was a fantastic quote during oral arguments for sure. Logomancer, I can't wait to hear all the details. Well, make sure to go to patreon.com/law and, you know, ask a question if you haven't already or vote on a question. Audrey Arnett hates sex pests and and Podcast Thieves. Yep.

Okay, then. Sex and gender are different things, and I'm very pleased to be supporting OA again. Apprentice of Adventure, Kieran S., and Jesse D. Myers. Thank you so much, top patrons. And that second quartile will be next Friday. So thank you so mucho for supporting the show. Think we did it, Matt. We got through all. That was a lot. Lot of great coverage. It was a lot of announcements. I am really excited. This is going to be so fun going forward.

I think we've hit it all. I've got no one else to answer to besides the listeners and you and decency, which I always answer to, but no asshole that I have to include in an email to try to decide

1:14:56 Thomas: Anything. It's nice.

1:14:56 Matt: A new day it's another day thomas uh

1:14:58 Thomas: Yep. And we will see everyone for a regular Monday episode. Fantastic interview with Steve Vladek. I can't wait for you all to hear it. We'll see you then.

1:15:05 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

1:15:23 Matt: Sorry. I'm having trouble forming words. Yeah. I wish I were, honestly.

1:15:25 Thomas: So high god can't work like this anymore

1:15:31 Matt: It might actually be easier to explain this if I were I. But this

1:15:31 Thomas: Yeah all