What on Earth Is Happening in the Young Thug 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 1044. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. That over there is Matt Cameron, here for the Monday show. How are you doing, Matt?

0:00:54 Matt: Thomas, I've been spending the last couple of days listening to Atlanta Trap music, and I have never failed older or whiter. I gotta tell ya. I am...

0:01:03 Thomas: Well, this is a safe space for old white people. Unlike those other woke shows, we're allowed to be white here. That's a joke. I don't want any new listeners to think I'm serious about that. Teased it, but we're going to talk about the Young Thug trial. Now, keep in mind, there's so much and we absolutely I think what we're going to do, Matt, over on Gavel Gavel is do perhaps little like break from the the Trump Trump trial and do this. Thing? Not obviously the whole trial or whatever, but like Like, do that contempt episode over there. I think that's what we're planning now, right?

0:01:10 Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:01:37 Matt: It's something you gotta hear. It's three hours of... I mean, it's incredible, and also the lead-up to it, but, you know, we haven't been into a Fulton County courthouse in a little while, and thought it'd be good for us to make a return there.

0:01:46 Thomas: Yeah. Dust off the old badge. Yeah, was thinking about it. I was like, well, you now everything's patron content over at Gavel Gavel. But, like, we would still be doing, like bonus stuff. So, you now, we can take a little departure from Trump for a little fun bonus thing. So, we're going to try to get that done over there, but there is so much to that, that But that is also today's show because I was like, what, the number one requested thing probably was what in the world is going on.

0:01:49 Matt: Yep, yep. Yeah, everyone wants to hear about this. Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:11 Thomas: Yeah. Wait. The way, while I'm on the topic of Gavel Gavel, the Stormy Daniels testimony and cross and redirect is we've recorded that and that'll be coming out soon. Soon. And then after that is a quick hop, skip and a jump over to Michael Cohen recorded by Eli Bosnick. And we've already got some of that recorded. So that's all what's happening over there. Now, why don't we take a brief break and then get into it?

0:02:31 Matt: Almost there. Right.

0:02:37 Thomas: I want to say two things. First, I want to say you can avoid this commercial break by going to patreon.com/law.

0:02:47 Thomas: And which I'm going to leave in for now, just so I can tell you that I will take it out in the future. I took it out on the last one. The reason I hadn't is honestly, it's just because I tend to turn these things around so fast, like especially Thursday, that's just like one more thing to remember to do. But, you know, fair enough. Someone's like, hey, if it's no ads, I don't even want an ad for Patreon when I'm already patron. And yeah, fair Enough. Okay. So after this one and won't have to hear my my little plug for patreon.com/law. If you are on patreon.com/law so there you go. After this break, we'll get into it.

0:02:52 Matt: Ah, good.

0:03:08 Matt: Sure.

0:03:21 Thomas: Where do we even begin, sir? Because as old and as white as you are, I may not be older, but I might be whiter, Matt. I might be whiter. It's

0:03:30 Matt: That's very possible. I mean, I did come up in the golden age of hip hop and I do actually really enjoy it. I want to be clear up front that I really do like rap and hip hop, and I grew up on it. And I'm not one of those old guys who's sitting here saying it's not even music. I'm just saying mumble rap is not exactly music, which is what this is.

0:03:48 Matt: Maybe this is what our parents thought that all hip hop sounded like. I don't know. I after growing up on Public Enemy and Wu -Tang and Jay -Z and Tribe Called Quest and all the good classics, was just rubbing my temples thinking about how painful it is to listen to mumble rap.

0:03:48 Thomas: All music, so Hold on, it sounds like you're covering your mouth or something, or Okay, yeah, at

0:04:05 Matt: Sorry. It's fine. I mean, again, a lot of people seem to like it, but I guess that's what I wanted to start with because I think I'm going to make some assumptions about our audience, just from what I know about interacting with listeners. I think a lot of our audience are probably kind of like us, might be a little bit out of touch with what's going down with the Atlanta trap scene, uh, not be familiar even with Young Thug, who, it turns out, Young Thug and Gunna, sidekick, uh, and a number of other people in this label, are very, very influential people, uh, they're actually very well-known rappers. And I will admit straight up that I had not heard of them, and I it's probably a terrible thing to have to admit, but I'm 44 years old, I live in Boston, give me a break, I don't know, I just hadn't heard of him.

0:04:06 Thomas: Least You have an excuse, I have absolutely no excuse because I'm slightly younger. So, yeah, I got I got no excuse. You know, we talked about we actually on where there's woke talked a little bit about like, you Ben Shapiro saying rap isn't music. And then he does the rap video and all that. And I like, it's it's actually interesting because I don't know if anyone's like me.

Again, I grew up a Republican in a small, tiny shit town and very conservative, conservative, and I just did not get at all or listen to rap or hip-hop or anything, I didn't understand it, even though, by the way, a lot of those young Republican assholes did, and you to partake in the culture while they all along support things that are really, you, destructive to black Americans.

But anyway, um, just wanted to say, like, I don't get it, but I've reached the point where it's like, hey, I don't need to be Ben Shapiro and say that's not music, my music, my music. It's like, hey, that's not for me, I don't get it, I didn't, I didn't listen to it when I was growing up. I'm heard a lot of cool analysis of different stuff, and it's like, oh yeah, that sounds really amazing. I, I just, I don't get it, so I don't want to pretend that I get it, but I also recognize that, hey, it's not for me. Yeah.

0:04:45 Matt: Yeah.

0:04:54 Matt: And is, I mean, honestly, somebody like Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer. They're like the only Pulitzer ever awarded for a non-jazz or classical album. We've got great rap and hip hop happening still right now.

0:05:47 Thomas: And then he murdered Drake, if I remember correctly I think he actually

0:05:55 Matt: That's right. Publicly, several times. I mean, that is out of control. But yeah. No, I had to go back and listen to some of that actually to clear my palate. I listened to Liquid Swords. I listen to more Wu-Tang, some Outkast, just to kind of remember the stuff I like, because honestly, again, I'm just going to disclose my bias up front. I don't have anything particularly against any of these defendants. I just don't really like the music.

Not really relevant, though, because they're on trial for a RICO case, which is what we're actually talking about. So I want to talk for a minute about Georgia RICO, because this has come up before, because obviously Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and all of his cohorts down there are on trial in a RICO case. And Georgia's RICO statute is the broadest in the country. It sounds like it's probably the best for prosecutors in the the country from what I've been able to tell.

So they adopted their own RICO statute in 1980. It was modeled after the federal one, but it was designed to be broader because they were trying to go after street gangs like they alleged that this one is. It actually does not require any intent to profit, and why something like the election interference case could be charged so easily and without any questions, because it doesn't require that they were trying to make any money, they were just trying to accomplish an illegal end.

We've talked, talked about before, that Fani Willis really likes RICO, by someone who helped to write the RICO statute, he's still on call in her office. She has brought quite a few RICO cases. She bragged when she came in that she had brought within a couple of years more RICO cases than her office had brought in the decades before that.

And her very first RICO case as a young prosecutor, I don't know if this came up in the other episodes we talked about, but I wanted to mention it because it is really unusual. It was against teachers and school administrators. Do you know about this

0:07:23 Thomas: No.

0:07:23 Matt: Case? Did we talk about this? Oh, yeah.

0:07:23 Thomas: I don't think we did. Oh,

0:07:25 Matt: Yeah. No, this could be another episode, but this was apparently a pretty popular prosecution at the time. It got her the fame and got her elected eventually. But this was her first big name case, and there's a special report in 2011, the judge's governor concluded that 178 educators, including more than three dozen principals and a superintendent, had participated in organized and systematic misconduct to alter test scores for funding the schools. So the teachers' defense was obviously that they wanted to keep their schools open and they wanted to help these kids pass. And Fannie Willis took it on as a public safety thing. And she said, if you're allowing kids to pass, they shouldn't pass. And if you'RE bumping up these test scores, you'RE actually creating gang members. That That was a pretty harsh stance, but I know that's where she was standing on it.

0:07:49 Thomas: Oh wow, oh well come on creating gang members wow

0:08:10 Matt: Yep, you're sending people to the streets, and that's what's going to welcome them, and that's it, yeah. And so these teachers, and there was an allegation that some of these teachers were getting cash incentives to do these, that they were kind of getting together and having parties, basically, and altering test scores, you

0:08:22 Thomas: Wow Yeah, that is pretty serious, that's you know, definitely criminal, but then the part where you're linking it to adding gang members. Like I don't, that just seems unnecessary. What is the point of that?

0:08:27 Matt: Yeah, yeah, a little much. This whole episode is a good reminder that Fani Willis is not necessarily a hero. It's something I've tried to make the point before.

0:08:36 Thomas: Yeah. You know, I've been thinking about mentioning, you know, it's like, let's not do the Michael Avenatti thing, you Know, or it's, like, ah, take it on Trump. They're a hero. And I don't think too many of our audience fell for that. But, you, know, some of them did. And, you took a while to maybe see. And already, I'm not a huge fan of prosecutors. Cuters. No offense to your partner.

0:08:43 Matt: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. No.

0:08:57 Thomas: But yeah, from what I'm hearing from this case and now this teacher one, it's like, boy, she seems small C conservative maybe in a way that I'm not comfortable with, or at least on criminal justice issues, maybe. I don't know.

0:09:07 Matt: Yeah, she really does believe that these things are the answer to street violence, to these really broad, and not just street violence by the way, we're talking of course about this administration scandal, but then this is actually worse. This is actually worst than the teachers thing. I'm sure, and I want to do another episode.

0:09:25 Thomas: Sorry, what's worse, The Young Thug thing, or oh,

0:09:27 Matt: Know what I'm about to tell you. So I'm sure, yeah, no, this is really bad. This is another episode, this has actually been requested, I wantto make sure we talk about it at some point, maybe when it moves along a little further, but this is Cop City. So yeah, forest offenders. We've got 61 people who've been charged in a RICO case, it's the largest RICO case ever brought against environmentalist protesters.

0:09:28 Thomas: God, another thing? Oh, No, Oh, Is This Cop City I keep seeing that mentioned and When everything's a nail, no, when you're, when you're really that's not it? When what is it when you're, when you're holding a RICO hammer, everything's RICO nail, or something thing like that, I can't figure it out, but anyway, geez. Lots of RICOing going on. Come

0:09:49 Matt: Yep. Yeah, no. That's it. It Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, now That one, uh, we'll post the link to that, to all these indictments, but the forest defenders, when I was just looking through, I mean, it includes things like, you know, and further into the conspiracy, it talks about blog posts and like hundred-dollar donations. And, you know, there were also talk, there's talk about property damage, somebody took a shot at a cop at some point, but again, what you're doing with these RICO things is, and the reason prosecutors love RICO, of course, is the minimum sentence for a RICO conviction is five years, max 20. You can roll up people that did things like donate a hundred dollars, and you can get them to turn on whoever they know and give what they know because they're facing a five-year mandatory minimum if they are found to be in furtherance of whatever the conspiracy is. So really, really strong stuff. It's abusive, honestly. It's prosecutorial

0:10:13 Thomas: On, yeah,

0:10:45 Matt: Abuse.

0:10:45 Thomas: Well, and I hate that it has to be in the conversation now, that it's like, see, Trump's getting railroaded by this RICO stuff, and it's okay, but like, if you're in a conspiracy to take down our democracy and steal the presidency, the most important position we have in our stupid country, you're just trying to steal it, that feels like that's pretty serious. I feel like that, that, understand I the, you know, like, yeah, let's get them. Let's get the people who are involved in conspiracy. And it sucks to have the same prosecutor also, like, people who are donating a hundred dollars to a thing, like, come on. It just, it feels like it cheapens the Trump stuff.

0:10:52 Matt: No. Right.

0:11:20 Matt: Does. And it's interesting to look at sort of the cross-section of RICO just in terms of the pending cases out of this office, out of the Fulton County DA, because obviously we've got Trump, we've got Cop City, you've got the teachers in the past, and then you've got this case we're going to talk about today, which is the YSL prosecution.

0:11:38 Thomas: Just want to put for the record, we're not going into Cop City. I actually don't know the full story. I keep wanting to tell, ask you to do it. So just if anyone's like, I don't know what that is. Yeah. I don't actually either right now. So don't Worry. We don't have, have time to get into it today, we

0:11:42 Matt: Yeah. Oh, sure. Okay. One, well, sentence, we have protesters who are protecting a particularly vulnerable forest that was going to be turned into a gigantic, gigantic, uh, police training center, and so there's been a lot of activism around that, and uh, that's, that's what this RICO is about, but

0:12:01 Thomas: And that's as bad as trying to steal our democracy, like You're trying to prevent, you, the destruction of some important land for, you, training cops, weird.

0:12:04 Matt: Or Altering test scores or being a street gang, apparently these are all the same weapon that we can use against every one of these Things, so yeah, it is. So YSL, which again, because I'm 44 years old and I live in Boston, I had never heard of this, but YSL is, uh, on who you ask, it's either Young Stoner Life or Young Slime Life. And the former is the name of the label. So this is another thing that I've learned this week, is that you can actually still make a lot of money running a music label in 2024. That was news to me.

Checked with somebody in the industry who said that most of what labels do now is just licensing, which makes sense. So this label founded by Young Thug, who again, from Atlanta, has a pretty impressive background, came from pretty hard circumstances and got his start around 2012. Was mentored by Future. And the first time when I heard him, I thought he sounded exactly like Future. It's very strange to me. There's a real emperor's new clothes. I'm sorry to keep doing this, but I'm just going to say this one more time. The New York Times wrote that Young Thug combines defiant psychedelic experimentalism in voice, melody, lyricism, and fashion with a hard street edge and a sneaky pop sensibility, and um, I disagree, but this is

0:12:13 Thomas: What?

0:12:40 Thomas: Oh, Okay.

0:13:13 Matt: The music podcast I just think it sounds really derivative honestly of other trap music but okay that's

0:13:13 Thomas: I I Have No opinion. Go After Matt, everyone, down with Matt, down with Matt. I, for one, am ambivalent on whatever your feelings are about Young Thug, oh.

0:13:19 Matt: Okay I So YSL is a label, as I said, founded by Young Thug that has a number of other very influential Atlanta artists on it, including Gunna, who's going to come up later. Again, just for context, Young Thug has ended up, he's been on SNL, he has worked with Elton John, with Childish Gambino, they won a Grammy together. Dressed as Gunna for Halloween. These people are out there in the culture in ways that, again, are not on my radar. Trial made news a couple of weeks ago for what we're going to be talking about, what happened at this contempt hearing with Young Thug's attorney Brian Steele. And that was the the first time it was even on my radar at all. I'm a little embarrassed to say it because it's actually, even apart from the cultural import, this is actually now the longest running proceeding in Georgia criminal history. It has been, yeah, 18 months. The jury selection alone was 10 months just to get a jury.

0:13:41 Thomas: Wow.

0:14:08 Thomas: What? Wow. I Didn't know that, holy crap.

0:14:15 Matt: Yeah, yeah. All Kinds of complications. The whole case was derailed early on because it turned out a key witness was lying to them, and they had to restructure the, the whole case. Young Thug has been held since May 2022, and he's been arrested. He's been in custody since then in the Fulton County Jail on Rice Street, which is one of the worst in the country from everything I've heard. That's something we might have talked about in one of the Fani Willis episodes, actually. But major criticism of Fani Willis has been that that jail has been left to rot, and the people in it are suffering pretty badly.

0:14:17 Thomas: Geez.

0:14:43 Thomas: And he was just obviously denied bail because the charges Are So serious, or, oh.

0:14:47 Matt: Yeah, well. And because of his lyrics, actually, which is something I want to talk about. But because he's being painted as the kingpin of a criminal organization. And basically, they're saying that the label is not exactly a front, but just sort of like a collateral organization next to Young Slime Life, which is the actual gang. And so this indictment is 88 pages. It includes 28 people. Remember that the Trump indictment, and how conservatives are jumping up and down about how it included tweets, and it included phone calls and things that are not crimes, right, so this is a similar kind of thing where you've got a lot of the different counts here include things like social media posts, you got Instagram, you get pictures, people doing gang signs, saying things that sound like threats. It's hard not to see some of these things as threats. About how it's wartime and how we're going to war, flashing blood signs. That's part of the allegation is that YSL is actually a Bloods affiliate and that they've been kind of keeping it under the cover of this label.

0:14:51 Thomas: For, okay, they Have an affiliate system, huh, like

0:15:42 Matt: Don't know if there's kickbacks or what, but franchise splits.

0:15:43 Thomas: A Franchise Uh, like, like a Wendy's, all right.

0:15:48 Matt: A lot of people caught up in this. And the reason this trial is taking so long is the same reason that Trump's RICO trial was taking so long. You might remember we were kind of joking about the way that all the attorneys jump up and down to do their little five-minute thing, because that's how it works in these RICO trials.

0:16:01 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:16:02 Matt: So every attorney for every defendant gets to participate and gets to file their motions and make their objections. Actually, we do have a couple of our favorite characters from Fulton County are going to come up in this trial, including Steve Sato, represented Gunner in his plea. Yeah, no, superstar Steve Sado. Merchant will make a cameo appearance shortly, But to tease that. That. But looking at this indictment, though, it includes just such a broad range of stuff, these 28 people. And Brian Steele, the defense attorney in this case for Young Thug, is saying that his client doesn't even know some of these people, that he's never met or talked to some of those people, which is not impossible in a conspiracy case, but it's a little strange.

Includes things like assault, attempted murder, a couple of murders, got a lot of firearm possession, a lot drug dealing. For some reason, there's drug possession in several cases as being cited as in furtherance of the conspiracy. I'm not sure a personal possession falls into that. Somebody took a shot at one point at Lil Wayne, which seems like a bad idea, that's in there.

Whole thing, though, kind of spiraled out after a drive-by of Donovan Thomas, whose street name was Peanut or Big Nut, and was gunned down in January 2015, and he was associated with a rival Inglewood family. Atlanta, the Ingleweed family is associated with Young Thug's arch rival, YFN Lucci, who actually has his own RICO proceedings going, I think they're mostly done by now, that's a whole other thing we're not going to have time for. So there's a lot of characters here, there's lot of

0:16:04 Thomas: Wow. Really? Wow. Really? Jeez.

0:17:21 Matt: Different things happening

0:17:21 Thomas: I was going to say no one with ADHD can have a street gang empire. I'd just be like, so wait, who's the who do I hate again? What am I? Oh, oh, yeah, that's the guy that I look. I'm out of the business. I'm sorry. I can't keep it straight. I don't remember who shot who or what. But wow.

0:17:37 Matt: Need a corkboard with string for this one, you really do too. I just got to piece it together. To talk for a second about the use of lyrics in this case, because it's particularly interesting, the First Amendment issues here. This is, as far as I know, the first criminal RICO trial to introduce an NPR Tiny Desk concert, as evidence.

0:17:54 Thomas: I mean, there've been some bad Tiny Desk concerts, but I don't think any of them have been in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy before.

0:18:01 Matt: Actually, never criminally bad. I will say, I watched the entire Tiny Desk concert for Young Thug and it was the best thing I've seen out of Young Thug. I actually really liked it. He's playing with a band. And I could become more of a Young Thug fan if there's more of that. I don't know. But the prosecution was actually pushing at that point to remove the NPR logo, which I thought was really interesting, from the Tiny Desk concert, because they didn't want the jury to see that he'd been on NPR, basically, that he was associated with this very staunch white brand, I guess. I'm not sure.

0:18:26 Thomas: Yeah. That like would legitimize them. And yeah, actually that sense. Honestly, boy, there's, I mean obviously is all over this thing in million different ways.

0:18:31 Matt: No, it's... Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

0:18:35 Thomas: You

0:18:36 Matt: And two coastal white guys that are not going to claim to understand Southern hip hop or anything of the cultural issues that are going on here. But I can certainly see the racism, especially when you're talking about the lyrics, because the defense filed a motion early on asking asking the judge to keep the prosecution from using any of the defendant's lyrics against him. And the judge denied that motion and said that kind of case by case, he would go to see if it was okay. And I will just sort of give you an idea of some of the lyrics that have become an issue, just so we can talk about this, because this has become an issue around the country that we do have, you know, there's a difference between, you so so if I were just to record a song where I was like, Thomas Smith, you know, on June 30th, I'm going to come burn your house down, like, that's a threat, like

0:19:14 Thomas: Yeah. I was just going to say like right off the bat, unless this is something like I young thug Doug, in furtherance of this conspiracy, do solemnly pledge that I will commit this crime. Like, unless it's that, I'm already a little skeptical of using lyrics as evidence. Just just saying.

0:19:26 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, I I'm actually reading Rap on Trial right now, which is a great book on this subject. I can't report back too much. I'm not done with it. But it's,

0:19:37 Thomas: Oh, well, is there is a problem that, you know, dates back to the invention of rap? I'm guessing.

0:19:42 Matt: Yeah, pretty much, especially in the 90s, it became, when there's a lot of, you know, remember, there's all this scare around gangster rap and which, and in New York, even right now, we've got drill rap, which Eric Adams went to war with. And drill rap honestly does contain, from what I've heard of it, like specific threats against specific people. You are getting into more of actual criminal territory. Territory. Can't actually just make a threat to harm somebody and put a beat behind it and get away with it. But at the same time, we do not want prosecution introducing art against somebody as criminal evidence when it's just sort of generally talking about their lives and about where they come from. At one point, one of the DAs in this was saying that some of this is a little extreme, but they were saying, what if you put the Turner Diaries to background music, right? White nationalist threats, right. What if you... Willis compared some of this to a shooter's manifesto, right, that would be used as evidence if somebody was planning

0:19:48 Thomas: Of course. Yeah.

0:20:05 Thomas: Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough? Yeah.

0:20:34 Thomas: Interesting.

0:20:35 Matt: A mass shooting and they'd written him a manifesto.

0:20:35 Thomas: Interesting. You might use a shooter's manifesto, but I don't know that you're usually using that as proof that they did the shooting. Usually it's like, well, they did the shooting and that's evidence of like their what their motive or their whatever or might be used in sentencing or my you know, it's it's so the part that I'm worried about is are we using this as proof that they did something, you know, because that's that's me as thin ice in terms of just freedom of expression and and that kind of stuff.

0:21:03 Matt: No. Judge specifically found from the bench, they're not prosecuting your clients because of the songs they wrote. They're using the songs to prove other things your clients may have been involved in, I don't think it's an attack on free speech. And I want to mention some of the lyrics in question here, because this is, like I said, one of the reasons he was denied bond. I don't think he was going to get bond anyway. He said things like, mess with me and I'll put you in a wheelchair, right? Just like typical kind of braggadocio that you'd expect from hip hop for decades. But no.

0:21:26 Thomas: Yeah. Sorry, that's nothing.

0:21:28 Matt: Also specifically, though, unfortunately for him, said two things that may relate to this case. I never killed anybody, buddy, but I've got something to do with that body. Not great. Not great. I mean, it's, and then it gets worse, because I think this is in the same song. But he references 100 rounds in a Tahoe and Donovan Thomas was shot in a Chevy Tahoe.

0:21:32 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, fair.

0:21:50 Thomas: But I'm going to guess like, I don't know, Johnny Cash referenced real stuff, you reference events in the in your your surroundings, right? I mean, or is it done in such a way that they can somehow tell that he's a part of it?

0:21:59 Matt: For sure. Yeah. Johnny Cash gets brought up a lot in these conversations, because obviously, he did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, except he didn't. Nobody actually thinks he he did that. It'd actually be pretty funny if he had done that, and that was just a confession, but we can't ask him now.

0:22:07 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't think it'd be that funny, Matt. We have a man who's dead.

0:22:17 Matt: It's true, I guess. It just, you know, I wouldn't.

0:22:19 Thomas: Down with Matt. Down. I don't

0:22:23 Matt: Funny in the sense that...

0:22:23 Thomas: Know why I'm just getting you canceled this this week yeah

0:22:25 Matt: I think I can handle that myself, thank you. Yeah, funny in the since that nobody actually took Johnny Cash seriously, right? I mean, he was a badass. Johnny Cash was awesome, but nobody actually thought that he shot somebody. But he didn't have to think that.

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0:24:18 Matt: Was a really interesting study that was done a while back. I should mention, I'm drawing a little bit because I had to get the factual background on this case very quickly. I listened to the, there's a podcast called King Slime. It's very good. That covers a lot of this factual background of this trial. They mentioned a study that I went and looked up where people were shown lyrics and told that they were a country song. They were shown rap, right? And so when the rap lyrics were presented as a country song, they thought that was okay.

0:24:37 Thomas: Yep. Uh. -huh. Yeah.

0:24:41 Matt: And then conversely, they showed somebody the lyrics to A Boy Named Sue, which is of course a very silly song. A Boy Name Sue has a whole verse about how he's going to walk up and split your face open and put you on the ground. And it's like a very explicit threat of violence. And when they were told that was a hip hop song, they said they thought that was dangerous. So it certainly is contextual.

0:24:46 Thomas: What?

0:24:59 Thomas: Do you know Yeah.

0:25:00 Matt: Yeah, it's Contextual and who's saying it and who's listening to it. And of course, what color the person making the art is certainly has a lot to do with a lot of it. So this is pretty sensitive. I am fully in support of artists, obviously, being able to do almost anything they want to do. There's actually now federal legislation directly because of this, the RAP Act, Restoring Artistic Protections. Actually took a look at this.

I wanted to, we'll link to it, but I think it's a pretty good idea. It would actually amend the federal rules of evidence. It would add Rule 416 to the rules of evidence and accept as provided in subsection B, which is a list of exceptions, evidence of defendant's creative artistic expression whether original or derivative is not admissible against such defendant and then it provides a list of exceptions uh if the defendant intended a literal meaning right if you're literally talking about committing a crime um that creative expression refers to the specific facts of the crime alleged right it looks you can make enough of a connection and I think in this case they would say the Tahoe thing might be enough to allow that

0:25:00 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:25:50 Matt: In but uh

0:25:51 Thomas: Yeah. And That's interesting. I mean, I do think that makes sense to me. Like, I think there obviously would be exceptions. Like, you can't, I can way some white supremacist asshole may may put their manifesto to music. Like, I could actually see that happening.

0:25:52 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. You have to yeah Oh, No, there's... there's That's a thing. That's the whole genre. Casey actually did a research project on it in college about white supremacist punk. Yeah. I support not using this stuff against people. And I think it's especially bad when you're talking about Black artists in court having the stuff thrown back in their faces. And honestly, it's a little strange too, because after presenting this way for all this time, Thug, his defense has to be in court that he's what they call a studio gangster, right? He's like somebody who just makes the music in the studio and doesn't really do these things. So that's kind of a hit to your reputation too.

0:26:09 Thomas: Cool. Yeah. Oh boy. That's a interesting, I don't, uh, apologies for this comparison, but that is Trump -esque in that he's got to be considered, both with his reputation and the trial going on, which is very, very interesting.

0:26:40 Matt: Yes. Totally. Yeah. A similar the 21 Savage, which I'd love to do another episode on. There's so many different things to talk about here, but I was actually briefly the international expert on the 21 Savage case because I was the only person who knew who he was who also knew anything about immigration law, but that's a whole other episode.

0:26:57 Thomas: Even know who that is. All right.

0:26:59 Matt: Let's see see it again. Here we are.

0:27:01 Thomas: Know Savage Garden. Is that the founder of Savage Garden?

0:27:03 Matt: Same thing. You got it. That's right. The Australian, yeah, it's pretty boys. Yeah. So, let's get to opening statements. And then I want to get to the real main event here, which is the hearing everybody wants to talk about. Yeah. In the opening statements, there was... So Brian Steele seems like a very, very good defense attorney. He's actually become kind of a folk hero amongst defense attorneys the last couple of weeks for obvious reasons, given what's happened to him recently. But in his opening statement, he made a very interesting claim because he's stuck with the fact that his client, the defendant, is named Young Thug.

0:27:32 Matt: Not a great look. You're kind of starting out with a deficit there. So let's play the clip of him explaining that.

0:27:32 Thomas: Yeah,

0:27:38 Clip: Was not what Spiderman suggested, that meant anything subjective, something very personal, it was his hat, he could have ever made as a musical artist, to help the family, himself, and his many others, out of this endless cycle of hopelessness, be truly humbled, Humble. Under. God. That's what a thug is. My

0:28:24 Matt: I don't know if anybody actually believes that. I don't think that was ever something he'd ever said before or put forward before. And I'm not sure that that's actually... Nice try.

0:28:31 Thomas: I would, I mean, I would want to see some amount of evidence of that at all anywhere else. I'll believe it the minute there's like independent evidence that that's what he wanted it to be.

0:28:37 Matt: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly willing to give him the benefit, but it's a pretty clever way to try to make sure upfront the jury understands that your client is not actually a thug, because that's what's in trial for being. Prosecution opened with a long quote from The Jungle Book, which we, we won't play, for some reason, we decided to talk about the law of the jungle and how Young Thug leads a pack.

0:28:59 Thomas: What? Sorry.

0:29:03 Matt: I know that sounds pretty bad. Yeah.

0:29:03 Thomas: Are you serious? Jungle Book? We're not playing that?

0:29:10 Matt: Well, that's pretty boring, but yeah. Will note that the prosecution team is Black, as is the judge. I think that's relevant for here, just so we're understanding the full picture, since we're not showing video here. So one of the big guys in NYSL, his name is Kenneth Copeland. He goes by Lil Woody. And he was already immunized by the prosecution. He made some kind of deal. And He was scheduled to testify on June 7th. And And he took the Fifth in one of the funnier ways that I've seen somebody ever take the Fifth, probably the funniest way. Let's play that. That's

0:29:11 Thomas: Okay. Well, Yeah, Do

0:29:42 Clip: Mr. Copeland, good afternoon. Do you want to be here? Ma'am? Do you wanna be here ? I'm here. Okay. Wait, are you gonna let me ask you some questions? Okay. How old are you? Four. Okay, what is wrong with me? I'm an adult. And when you say you're an adult, what number and years are you ? I keep it short. Ladies and gentlemen, can I get you to step outside to your headquarters, the jury location, please?

0:30:12 Matt: So, yeah, he's not talking.

0:30:12 Thomas: Wow, won't even answer his age, huh? That's

0:30:15 Matt: Yeah, that's obviously not a Fifth Amendment issue. The fact is he's immunized, right? So he has to testify. That's a deal that he's made. Made. And if testify, he can be held in contempt, which is what the judge immediately does, because it's clear that he's not going anywhere. He's not gonna be testifying. The judge orders him held in content for the weekend, tells him to think about it. And at that point, there some real questions about what happened. We don't know exactly for sure what happened, but we do know that there was a meeting held between Kenneth Copeland, that witness who was refusing to testify. The prosecution...

0:30:21 Thomas: Right. Yeah, we've talked Oh, shit, his name's Kenneth Copeland, the same as that insane preacher guy, you don't know Kenneth Copeland? Hold, I wrong, that insane, you don't know that guy's crazy? It haunts my dreams. I've only seen it in like memes, and I'm scared of him. He's a hundred years old, he's circulatory system runs on money, because that's all those assholes do is just take believers' money. It is truly terrifying. So, okay, his namesake is that guy? Oh,

0:30:46 Matt: Oh, I don't think I know that guy. You're right. Televangelist. Wow. Picture is terrifying. So I'm guessing that the other Kenneth Copeland doesn't go by Lil anything. Lil Woody refuses to testify and is taken back by the judge to have a little conversation about that. And the very strange thing about this that no one seems to be able to understand is that this judge, who's a very experienced trial judge who's been on the bench since 2004, met with the witness and the witness's attorney and the prosecution without the defense. Huge problem. I mean, that's a mistrial. You can't do that. You can't have an ex parte meeting at all ever in a criminal case. This is a witness who's still under oath.

He's still in the middle of testifying and The judge has just held him in contempt. We're in the middle of proceedings. This is not like the... For example, if the prosecution came forward and said, "Actually, we've learned some new evidence. We've got to apply for a search warrant for somebody else" in the middle of this case, I guess that could happen. Search warrants are automatically ex parte. Obviously, they're not something the other party has any say in. There are other emergency, emergency circumstances where it's possible, maybe, where you could have an ex parte hearing like this. And I wasn't looking into Georgia law because I was trying to find an answer, because no one has given me a suitable answer as to how this might have possibly been justified.

0:31:47 Thomas: Back up and just, uh, the OA manner, if, if you don't mind, just explaining the basics of this. So, you're, who's not allowed with whom, and why, and what?

0:32:19 Matt: Well, as Attorneys, it's really drilled into us. I mean, even if I run into a judge socially, right, just at a retirement party or whatever, want to be very careful that we're not talking about business. And the judges are very careful about that too, that we don't want to talk about cases without the other party around.

Even if it was just casually talking about maybe, you know, an upcoming case, even if it's something completely incidental, of incidental or funny about like, something the witness said or something the witnesses was wearing, right? It's still like, You want to be very careful. It was just really very carefully inculcated in all of us that it is very bad legally, ethically have conversations about the case without both parties present.

Now you can go back into of the judge's chambers and have that conversation, but you got to have the defense present. Only thing, I was talking this out with Casey, I've been thinking about it for days. The only thing I could think of up front that she said maybe would be that if there was a credible threat on the witness from the defendant or somebody associated with the defendant. But even then, when I was looking into it, it seems like that's not necessarily justification for an ex parte hearing. And nobody has said anything like that. It would feel like given how much fire

0:33:20 Matt: The judge has come under for this, he would have said that there's a good reason.

0:33:10 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Is if you invite the other lawyer that somehow helps the threat, is that what it would be? Like,

0:33:29 Matt: If they hear all the details about who said what or whatever, because that's going to help for their defense if they're charged with witness intimidation.

0:33:36 Thomas: But you're, you thinking if that were the case, we'd know about it. Okay.

0:33:40 Matt: Like, we would. It's certainly possible. When I see something like this, and I'm enough of a contrarian just by nature that this show makes a lot of sense for me, because when I see a headline, I like to try to get behind it. When I see people complaining very loudly about something, I try to see if they are wrong. And my first thought when I saw this was, well, the judge has to have a reason. I looked him up. I mean, he's a very well -respected judge. Like I said, 2004, he's been in that court. He's a brigadier general who's overseen...

0:33:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:06 Thomas: If this was Eileen Cannon, I'd be like, "Yeah, okay, she doesn't know which end of the judge hammer to use." But if it's somebody, yeah, no, I'm with you, because like, this was very quickly, um, going to get to the actual video that went, that viral. But the fact that they had this meeting, like, very quickly, the consensus online was, "This judge is insane, what is he doing, corruption, something," and Yeah, like, what I mean, there's, I, I understand, look, wanting to look for some other explanation because that just is crazy, that that a judge, a seasoned judge, would do this. Geez.

0:34:07 Matt: Right. Yeah, of course. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Lost his mind.

0:34:34 Matt: Yeah? No. Up his background, it's very respectable. He has had years of military service as a judge advocate. He did, oversaw human rights abuses in Afghanistan. He's been a prosecutor, he's been defense attorney, he's a civil litigator, knows his way around. And this is very basic stuff. I mean, having an ex parte hearing in the middle of a massive RICO trial is like a surgeon just cutting off the wrong limb and then acting like you don't know what's wrong. It's complete. It's complete malpractice.

0:35:05 Matt: Yeah, absolutely could be because the defense has a very good reason to believe that there's a reason that was ex parte. And when you have a witness who was taking the fifth and trying to get out of testifying, and then he shows up again, and after he's had this meeting with the judge, he is reluctantly testifying. He did go on to testify for another day or two. Want to know what the judge told him. And you want to to know what happened in that room. And the judge did say that they took a court reporter in and you can read the transcript when the case is done, which is also a very strange thing to do. Yeah, I know.

0:35:01 Thomas: So, Like, mistrial material, yeah.

0:35:23 Thomas: What Why when the the case is done because In the Trump case, we're getting the, all that stuff, weren't we, the transcripts for it, like, basically everything? Oh.

0:35:32 Matt: On appeal, presumably. Anything like this where they went back into chambers.

0:35:41 Thomas: Fair.

0:35:41 Matt: Georgia does it a little different, I think, too.

0:35:41 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha. Wow.

0:35:43 Matt: This was requested by the prosecution. And you're going to hear the judge explain this in a clip we're going to play a little bit, and you can hear him explain himself, but nothing he says makes sense to me. And he's saying it so blithely as if it's just like a completely normal thing to do. So Brian Steele, defense attorney for Young Thug, finds out about this hearing the same day and people knew something was up because the court was supposed to start, I think, at 9 or 9 .30 and they didn't start till 11 .30. So clearly something unexpected was going on.

0:35:52 Thomas: Hmm. Sure. Yeah.

0:36:09 Matt: Defense attorney brings us to the judge and says, look, we know what happened. We know you had this meeting. What is going on? I think you need to recuse yourself. He brings a formal recusal motion later. But the judge's response, because we're not going to play all of it, but the thrust of the judge is, who told you that?

0:36:25 Thomas: Wow.

0:36:25 Matt: Never great. Yeah.

0:36:26 Thomas: And dealt with a lot of, uh, "Hey, this judge ought to recuse themselves," and, uh, when it's coming out of Trump's mouth, it's idiotic, but like, that I kind of reasonable, like, if in this set of circumstances, like, your opinion on the way that that attorney is handling this, does that sound reasonable? Yeah.

0:36:41 Matt: I think Brian Steele's doing an awesome job from everything I've seen.

0:36:43 Thomas: And for him to say, "Who snitched on me," essentially, in response to that, very weird, you would think, wow, sure.

0:36:48 Matt: We usually call that of evidence guilt other in other circumstances, right? That you know you did something wrong. Let's play this conversation So this is Judge Uriel Glanville and Defense Attorney Brian Steele.

0:36:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:59 Clip: Here's the thing. Well, I'm just... But you've got... But... You're interrupting. You need to please tell me who you got it from. I'm not asking you to summon substance and everything as of yet, okay? But I need you to tell me how you got the information. If you don't tell me where you got information, I'll hold you in contempt. I understand. I don't want to be held in contempt, but I don't want to hold you in contempt with you, but it's... But this is so sacrosanct to have a conversation in my chambers parodied to you and others.

It is that serious. Yeah, and that's why I raised it. It is so serious that we should have been there and it shouldn't have happened. So that's a whole separate issue. And that's what I'm saying. That's why ex parte conversations are recorded. Why wouldn't the ex parte? What do you mean ex parte under seal? It's ex parte. No, it's ex -parte because that's what the state asked me to do. It's just like when you asked me. It's an ex -party conversation. You've never asked us on the court or any court to meet with me in a witness.

0:37:38 Thomas: Jesus.

0:38:03 Clip: So, you're straying off the issue. I'm not. I have to do it. The issue is, the issue is how did you, who, how did she get this information? I understand the issue, I promise you, I understand it. What I'm trying to ask you is if you look at comment five, this is how I understand a law. You can't violate something and then use privilege. I mean, that's why I'm saying, how did you get the information? Just listen to what I'm trying to tell you. Okay, but see, the privilege

0:38:11 Thomas: Yikes, yikes. What Man. How would I ever stop this clip? Like, I want to just keep watching this forever.

0:38:35 Matt: Yeah. I know this so much. Well,

0:38:38 Thomas: What

0:38:37 Clip: In 1.6 would occur if you were in the right place, right time to begin with. You weren't. Let

0:38:46 Thomas: Okay.

0:38:47 Matt: We should explain a little. Yeah.

0:38:48 Thomas: Off, like, I'm not saying this is, like, you know, language expert crap, but just, like, that demeanor is like the guiltiest Demeanor I've ever heard in my life. Like, who, what in the world? That is, wow. That is somebody who did not think that anyone was going to find out about this. That's, what, I mean, to say the least.

0:38:53 Matt: Least not that day, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it's so strange. And the way he says about like, well, this is sacrosanct, it's an ex parte meeting. It's just like, what are you talking about? And the defense's response is perfect. Like, I would never ask for that. What are you saying? Like, nobody would do that. It's just like you got your hand like in the cookie jar and you're like, I'm just getting a cookie.

0:39:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:21 Matt: Like that's, yeah, right.

0:39:21 Thomas: Who told me that? Who told about this cookie jar that my hand is in currently?

0:39:26 Matt: Is fine. I can take this cookie, right? I mean it's just, this IS what he's doing. And so it's astonishing. And this is why the internet blew up. This is why defense attorneys all around around the country lost their minds watching this. This is why this became news and why everybody wants us to do it today and why I'm happy to talk about it. And what ensued from all of this, we don't have time to do today, but we will do on Gavel and Gagel, an extensive contempt hearing in which dozens of attorneys showed up. And it turns out now, I'm going to talk a little bit about Judge Glanville and contempt because I think this is particularly interesting. We are pretty tame up here in Massachusetts.

I've seen this happen once. I think I mentioned it maybe a few episodes ago, but I showed up to support a colleague who was held in contempt and detained for basically not sitting down, not concede the point because she knew that she was right. And she was. The judge was trying to do something that was illegal. And I'm proud to say it was actually the case that she was waving around was something I talked to her about the day before.

And so I showed up, and a lot of us did. And it was a very triumphant kind of moment of support for the bar. That doesn't happen very often. But apparently, it happens in Georgia enough that Ashley Merchant, who is actually the head of the Georgia Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, has a strike force. They have like a response

0:39:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit.

0:40:29 Matt: Team.

0:40:29 Thomas: Are we going to be rooting for Ashley Merchant?

0:40:31 Matt: I have to at this point. I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, she is very good at what she does. Showed up to to represent her friend Brian Steele and to do the contempt hearing kind of on a dime. Fact, though, that the Georgia Criminal Defense Lawyers Association has a Strike Team, I'm not sure how normal that is, right?

0:40:32 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Right.

0:40:47 Matt: You have to do that because judges are constantly holding criminal defense attorneys in contempt for no reason. This judge in particular, this has been such a contentious trial. I mean, these people are stuck together, right? In this lengthy proceeding longer than anybody's ever had to endure. The jury is, I feel really bad for the jury. I mean, this is a very long time to be on trial. The attorneys, the judges, the witnesses, the defense, the defendants, everybody like is all just stuck in this hell of getting through this trial. At one point, Glanville held one of the attorneys in contempt and ordered him to buy lunch for the other attorneys as his punishment, which I thought was kind of funny. Yeah, he posted a whole video on Instagram about him going to buy a lunch. The judge was very pleased with his choice of lunch.

0:40:51 Thomas: Jeez.

0:41:18 Thomas: What? Okay, but is that like ha -ha funny or is that like this is misconduct, but okay, I will buy lunch.

0:41:29 Matt: It was like, I mean, you could pay the court $250 and a fine, or you could just go buy lunch for everybody. He had already fined somebody else $250. In another more creative sentence, he actually, in lieu of any Of that, he

0:41:36 Thomas: Does the courthouse need a new wing or something? Is this like a speed trap that's funding police, whatever?

0:41:43 Matt: Fundraiser, yeah. Yeah.

0:41:44 Thomas: It's like that kind of thing maybe?

0:41:45 Matt: I think this judge just doesn't really like being argued with, from what I can tell, and it sounds like he's doing a lot of things that need to be argued with. But he did order, in a contempt order, one of the attorneys to write a 17 page essay which cited at least 10 primary secondary sources, um,

0:41:57 Thomas: Just put me in jail. I'm sorry. Put me in jail, I'm not doing it. Yeah.

0:41:59 Matt: That's What Casey said, I

0:42:01 Thomas: She's a lawyer Come on, I, wow, jail.

0:42:02 Matt: Would totally write the, I love writing essays. That's really funny. No, I would totally write the essay. I could see this happening to myself at some point. But he said that it had to be a published quality. And the defense attorney made the point he'd never published anything before. Yeah, exactly.

0:42:14 Thomas: Just put me, execute, I, death penalty, I don't know, I would rather do the death. I don't want to. I mean No, I, look, I, in the right circumstances I would love a good paper about something, but somebody sentencing me to homework is like the most demeaning thing I've ever heard of in my life. Like, I just, there's no way, like, I, there's

0:42:21 Matt: Yeah, you don't want homework. Yeah.

0:42:37 Matt: And the essay was on some kind of professional responsibility or ethics thing. So it's just kind of extra humiliating. But yeah, Yeah. So Judge Glanville certainly is not new to the concept of contempt. And he is very, very mad about this, to the point that he ended up sentencing Brian Steele to 10 consecutive weekends in the county jail. Consecutive weekends while he is on trial representing one of the apparently best known rappers in the United States. And obviously, this is a big problem for his right to counsel because it's pretty hard to prepare your case.

0:43:06 Thomas: Just what? So weekdays he's working on the trial, weekends he's in jail.

0:43:08 Matt: Right. And he made the most badass request I've ever heard out of a defense attorney. And he just straight up was like, well, if you're going to put me in, make sure I'm in with my client, I thought was great. Solidarity.

0:43:18 Thomas: No kidding.

0:43:19 Matt: Again, he doesn't get his computer. He presumably doesn't have his case files brought into the jail. So, you know, that's going to be not easy. But fortunately, the Georgia Supreme Court just last week did actually stay that order. So he doesn't have to do his time. And they're reviewing this whole thing.

0:43:29 Thomas: Would hope so. Jeez.

0:43:30 Matt: Yeah, this is such an appeal. There's so much to do here. And potentially, I think it really could be a mistrial because at this point, the judge is a witness. He's made himself a witness by being part of this ex parte hearing and then refusing to recuse himself and then confusing to explain why. There was a really cool moment too, when after he had sentenced Brian Steele, every one of the other defense attorneys basically stood up with an Iron Spartacus kind of thing. Yeah.

0:43:53 Thomas: I'm Spartacus. Yeah.

0:43:54 Matt: And they're like, no, we all agree on this. We all think that what you did was wrong and we would all push the same motion. So go ahead and do the same thing to us.

0:44:02 Thomas: I'd be the one that's like, I agree. I don't, I don'T want to go to jail. Um, I do agree, but like, okay. Mean, if you're going to put me in jail, then like, fine. I don't really agree, but like I do agree. I just don't, I don't want to do jail. Just, we're not a Spartacus guy. Sorry, I've just not, I

0:44:21 Matt: This has really thrown a wrench in a very already excruciating trial because at this point, the judge has called everything off until July 8th. There's not going to be the juries out until then. This case already, as I said, has been going on for 18 months. It's not expected to finish this year at this point. I heard one analyst say that it might be done by the Super Bowl, which I understand is usually held in January, February.

0:44:41 Matt: Is it February? Yeah, I think I know about it.

0:44:42 Thomas: Yeah, it's possibly late January or usually February, I they've extended the, actually, yeah, I stopped watching the NFL, but I think they added a week. So, yeah. It's probably February.

0:44:53 Matt: I know football like you know rap, so it works out.

0:44:55 Thomas: That's probably accurate. Yeah.

0:44:58 Matt: So tomorrow, June 25th, we're going to have another hearing, which should be very interesting. I'm going to keep tabs on this. But the judge, again, will not drop this. He is still very, very upset and wants to know who leaked this information. He's going to, he's in order to show cause, and he's gonna have a hearing tomorrow morning to have the witness, his attorney, and all representatives of the state and court security personnel that were in attendance in the meeting, they have to come up court to and tell the court why they shouldn't be held in contempt as well for disclosing this information."

0:45:09 Thomas: Really? Boy, this has Who Leaked Dobbs vibes to it, to me. Wow. A So, couple weeks, right, by the time we finally got into it?

0:45:27 Matt: Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, this kicked off on the seventh when he took the fifth.

0:45:34 Thomas: And you're saying nothing further has happened, like, with a trial because, what is it, day in, day out, this judge is being like, tell me he said it, tell him he said, tell them he said.

0:45:43 Matt: Yeah. Well, so Lilwood has actually testified, and I didn't send you this clip, but I think I should actually just play a quick clip of this, because this is a disaster. I mean, this is really bad.

0:45:51 Thomas: The witness that was met with,

0:45:53 Matt: Yeah he the way this works is if you don't, when you're immunized, if you do not cooperate as you're supposed to, and because you do not have a fifth amendment privilege when you are immunized at that point, just to be very clear about how this works, everybody. If you do not testify at that point, you'll be held in contempt and you'll get detained until you do. That's basically the state's position at that point.

0:45:53 Thomas: Okay, fair enough. Sure. Sure. Having someone explain that to him, because, you know, most people wouldn't know that. Nothing wrong with that. But what? OK, hope you don't mean the preacher Kenneth Copeland. You can't just look, man. We got to come up with a code name. Guy haunts my dreams.

0:46:13 Matt: Sure. Here's what happened when Kenneth Copeland did testify, though. Let's just play a couple seconds of this. No, I promise.

0:46:30 Clip: Time I had a different story from them, I know 100 facts, and I'm telling you now, I was not truthful. I was saying whatever they wanted me to say. I was seeing whatever I could come up with. I will, I was trying my best to convince them that I didn't do nothing, that I'm an innocent person and that people put their hands on me when they ask me about, you know what you're thinking?

You still keep asking me step by step by step by, and I'm telling you now because you asked me, was I being truthful. I knew I wasn't being truthful. So your testimony that you lied in every interview that you did in 2015? See, the way you're asking me, I don't recall that I was in any interviews, but I'm tell you now, when they was questioning me in 2015, 2014, whenever they was question me, yeah, I was lying. I was making up stories.

So when they were asking me about this right here, I was waking it up. When they were asking about this right here, I was letting go. And when it was good to me and they would let me go, I was,

0:47:30 Clip: I'm just telling you. So you recall telling every detective, every time they got me, I have told them, police, I tell y'all, whatever y' all want of you, just let me go.

0:47:39 Thomas: Strikes me as like trying to get out of jury duty, except maybe a little higher stakes, like trying To get out Of witness duty. Oh, I'm just a liar. I'm an absolute lying liar. Nothing I say is reliable. I'M the liest liar to ever lie. I' m a liar, can I go now, please? And it's like, I don't know about that. That strikes me As scary. I would be scared of that? Like, is he going to lose immunity or something? Like I, you the hell?

0:47:46 Matt: Yeah yeah.

0:48:06 Matt: Well he's also protecting himself. So as I told you, he took an Alford plea, which as we've talked about before, where you maintain your innocence but still take a plea. And Gunna was very clear through Steve Sato that he had not cooperated and would not be cooperating and absolutely was not in any way going to be involved. He's still being held up as a rat and a snitch. His career is doing pretty well, but nobody's talking to him and he's got a lot of suspicion around him in the community. And so this is the kind of thing that happens. So Copeland getting up there and saying, everything was a lie. I'm lying to you now. I am a liar. It's a lot safer for him potentially than cooperating.

0:48:13 Thomas: Oh, right.

0:48:36 Thomas: Fair.

0:48:36 Matt: But of course, big wrench in the trial. I don't know what they thought he was going to say. But again, this is all circling around this murder of Donovan Thomas, which I don't know if I made this clear before, but Young Thug's only involvement in that murder allegedly was renting the car that was used in the drive -by. That's how Rico works, right? Right? And he can be, he's part of the conspiracy. It works.

0:48:36 Thomas: Oh yeah. I feel like before Rico, wouldn't that be a problem?

0:48:56 Matt: No, absolutely.

0:48:57 Thomas: Yeah. That's

0:48:57 Matt: It's still part of conspiracy. But pressure though, I'm just saying in wrapping up all of these people who are involved in all these different ways and packaging it up this way, and including, because typically you would just have a conspiracy for murder trial. And there's been a lot of criticism of this particular proceeding of the way they did this RICO. And I remember reading this at the time when Fannie Willis used RICO to charge Trump, that this was way too elaborate, far, it was unnecessary. Was too complicated. They could have just charged people individually. And you can certainly see how that would work individually. You could charge people in a street gang case like this, but you can also see what happens when nobody wants to talk. There's no easy way to do any of this.

0:49:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:29 Thomas: Fair, okay. Yeah, what a messy situation.

0:49:32 Matt: It So that was what happened, to answer your question, since things went forward. So now the judge has stopped everything. They're going to examine his interviews. So they're going to play his interviews basically to impeach him, to be like, well, you're lying here when you said this and said this and this. Going to take forever. They're also going to be be considering considering the judge's order to show cause, and there's gonna be more talk about this ex parte hearing. This really potentially could be a mistrial of the and most extensive and complicated prosecution in Georgia of history.

0:49:33 Thomas: No Wow. All that time time wasted too. Longest.

0:49:59 Matt: Yeah. Everybody's time.

0:50:00 Thomas: Wow. Wow, the

0:50:01 Matt: Resources. Yeah. And meanwhile, the Fulton County Jail is just piling up with people being held pretrial. Yeah, right. That too. That's actually one of the defense, one ofthe co -defendants arguments, several of the co -dependents arguments have been that the Fulton County Jail was such a terrible place that people are going to say anything to avoid going there.

0:50:06 Thomas: Tourneys.

0:50:18 Thomas: Bad for the guy who was actually also named Spartacus just coincidentally. Yeah, I'm Spartacus. What are y'all doing? What's going on, guys? Get him too.

0:50:30 Matt: And we're just kind of scratching the surface of some of this stuff. I mean, there are just so many different aspects to this case that I found as I was reading through here that I thought were noteworthy, to say the least. And I think that digging into the up to the contempt hearing, which we heard a little bit of, and then the actual contempt hearing itself, it's going to be pretty interesting to really hear from that because I've heard things already just listening to as much as I have in hearing, listening to that hearing, I've read things I've never heard in court before. So, no, it is going going to be quite a while, but I just wanted to break down at least what this whole contempt thing was was about.

0:50:54 Thomas: This is, yeah, this is crazy. So we're not really to the bottom of this yet. Have just messed up? Could the judge have just met like, like whoops and now it's like well that was a big mess up and now I gotta try to no that doesn't that seems yeah

0:51:13 Matt: Feel I like it's, don't I know, I'm trying to think of some kind of analogy. Like I said, it really just feels to me like a surgeon sawing off the wrong leg. Well,

0:51:19 Thomas: It's too big of a mess up like you said, uh, at the beginning the only thing that makes sense as an explanation that could be innocent-ish is there's a credible threat of violence that they had to keep from the attorney because it might get to you thug supposedly, and then you know, like, that that's the way he's acting. That would kind of make sense, so maybe. Is there a chance they're still bad, or is it?

0:51:43 Matt: Yeah, I did look up rule 61612.10, which has to do with ex parte communications, just to see if there's some kind kind of exception. I'm trying to just find anything. Under 1B of that rule, where circumstances require ex parte communications are authorized for scheduling, administrative purposes, or emergencies that do not deal with substantive matters or issues on the merits, provided the judge reasonably believes that no party will gain procedural or tactical advantage as a result of the communication, and the judge makes provision to notify the other parties, which he didn't do here, obviously.

0:52:12 Thomas: That's what I was gonna say that a moment ago, you could at least have said, we're doing this and here's why ahead of time

0:52:17 Matt: And we'll tell you why later. Yeah. That, if it's like an actual emergency, you still have to say, we're going to go back and have this hearing. And he says, in that clip we played that the prosecution had asked him, the prosecution at one point stands up and says that it didn't matter, that it was allowed to be ex parte, because what they were discussing was civil contempt. And that's creative. But the fact is that his civil contempt order was coming out of the fact that he was refusing to testify, and the judge was having a meeting in which he was encouraging him to testify. So, you can't really say it's about the contempt necessarily. I mean, it touches on contempt, certainly. But I don't think that cuts it. And I don't think anybody else really thinks that either. So, we'll see.

0:52:18 Thomas: Wow. Wow.

0:52:51 Matt: Wouldn't be surprised if there's something else we don't know here. I'm certainly reserving that. What we do know, it's very strange and it looks very bad.

0:52:58 Thomas: Okay, well, hopefully more on that and a later Gavel Gavel, but that is fascinating and we can obviously keep tabs on the trial, you know, on both shows. The important thing is that we cancel Matt, everybody. I think that's what we hold Matt in contempt for, all his bad opinions that he expressed that I forget about. No, uh, thanks so much, Matt, for that breakdown of that. I am really looking forward to doing some more on this, because that is just... it was hard to even hit pause on that video, you were like, oh, go about a minute. I was like, no, I can't stop it. Sorry. I need to hear it.

0:53:24 Matt: Sure. It's good stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

0:53:29 Thomas: Really fascinating.

0:53:29 Matt: No, this is real drama.

0:53:30 Thomas: All right. Well, thanks so much for listening. Thanks most of all to the patrons for making this show happen. And we'll see you for some bar exam on Wednesday.

0:53:38 Matt: Right.

0:53:38 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.

0:53:55 Thomas: With matt down with mat I