Rudy Giuliani Has Lost Everything, Including His Own Lawyers

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is you mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:58 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1104. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real -life attorney Matt Cameron. How's it going?

0:01:06 Matt: Thomas, I am Christmased out, I gotta tell you. Sorry. I looking back things that weren't Trump and I realized we have not talked about Rudy Giuliani. You brought this up and there is so much to talk about. Guy has been all over the place doing things that I can't believe.

0:01:19 Thomas: Amazing every We've Got a Holiday Miracle for the Rudy Giuliani saga, every headline is like someone's doing a joke and they're just riffing. Like if you and I were coming up with competing punchlines about, oh, no, what if his car is taken from him while he's driving it And then he's got to Flintstone it and run like with a steering wheel. You know, it's like it's crazy. The stuff like he people should remember some of that. But Matt's going to review what happened. But this guy, it couldn't be happening to a worse person is the other great thing. And we're going to take you through that. We're also going to talk about the other stuff. Take you through some other stories that that is stuff that maybe has gotten missed in an otherwise really tough year. Here yeah

0:01:42 Matt: Many things. Including a very good decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in the last term. I want to make sure that we highlight that. There were a couple of them. And of course, we got A Footnote, just and you will not be surprised to learn what it is about. But you're gonna have to find out.

0:02:12 Thomas: Feet, no, I don't know, it's not feet sorry it's not okay did I name the segment or did you name the the segment, Matt. I don't think it was me.

0:02:13 Matt: It's not feet. Could you stop saying I've got a foot fetish? I'm gonna sue you for defamation. I'm the one who kept talking about my footnote fetish. This is what I get.

0:02:24 Thomas: That's right. It is a footnote fetish. Right. Well, this is going to be fun. I can't wait. Let's get to the good news and good cheer and Hey, Oh wait. Oh my gosh. I didn't even tease. So something I've done, Matt, with the other show, something Lydia and I started doing a while back, back when, for whatever reason, maybe I wasn't on this show. I don't remember what it was. It must've been a calendar thing. And we started doing a hangout with like the top patrons of the other shows. So So we get on Zoom and actually hang out. To It cross the streams. We're going across all the streams, Matt. So the the top two tiers of patrons of any of my shows, except Gerald Dad's is a different company. But I'm any of My Other Shows. So that's OA, Serious and Queer as Only, Where There's Woke, I guess Gavel Gavel as well. We'll post on Gavel gavel. Any of those shows, top top patrons. We're going to do a hangout with not just, you know, me, not just even me and Matt, but me, Matt, Lydia, and Heather Varanini.

0:03:12 Matt: Awesome.

0:03:12 Thomas: We're going do that on New Year's Eve. Not late because we know you have more fun plans. You probably got crazy party plans, you party people. I don't know. But we're doing it New Year'S Eve like day. So it'll be 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern on New Year's Eve. We're going to just hang out. We're going see how many folks are available for a Zoom hangout. And the cool thing about that is if it's four people, it's great. If it's 10 people, it's Great. If it's 30 people, it's like either way. It's fun. Like you just of kind have conversations with the folks that are there, you know, and we're also going to do some Q &A from the thread. So we'll post a Q &a thread and everybody, at least all patrons will be able to ask questions on those. But in terms of doing the actual hangout you know also can only have so many people on a zoom call. All uh going to be those top two tiers of patreon for any of basically any of my shows so it's going gonna be a lot of fun I'm so excited to finally get heather and matt and the four of us are all going to get together and have a great time answer some questions socialize it's gonna be great way to celebrate the year and go out on a fun note

0:03:12 Matt: Wait,

0:04:13 Thomas: Uh

0:04:13 Matt: I can't wait. I got to say I'm a big Heather fan. I'm excited to meet her.

0:04:16 Thomas: Who isn't who isn'T a big heather fan and it's going to be a lot of fun. So once again, just a top line reminder, just, just keep an eye on like the Patreon feed for any patrons, like the emails that you get and stuff. Have the info for you. It will be New Year's Eve, 1 p.m. Pacific. That's 4 p.m. Eastern. Can't wait to see, literally see you folks there. Some it'S going to BE great. Well, we got to take our usual break, uh, which the amazing patrons can avoid at patreon.com/live. You don't have to hear any ads, none of that crap. For everyone else, we gotta take a quick break and then we're going to get to Rudy. I just, I can't wait. It's, ah, I've saved it. I've saved it for myself for all for this very day, Matt. So, after the break we'll get to it.

0:04:56 Thomas: Alright, so how's Rudy doing, Matt? How's how's it just going for him in general, you know?

0:05:03 Matt: Don't think I've ever seen... Can you think of any other public figure who has fallen as dramatically as Rudy Giuliani? I the top all way down to the bottom. The I depth that he is now at, the depravity that we're going to outline now.

0:05:10 Thomas: Literally no. Yeah. You can think of, you can think of some Me Too things or like, but like, but it's like a different thing we're like oh they were outed as a scumbag whereas this guy's like actively falling apart in front of us for a long time you know what I mean like it's not like oh we found out one thing we cancel it which very different than like slowly over several years we're seeing this man's brain leak out of his ears in the form of hair dye and It's crazy. I can't think of another comparison.

0:05:29 Matt: Very publicly. Yeah. Absolutely. Maybe once you're America's mayor, you might just want to, I don' t know, go to the beach or something. Like, you're not going to do better. So we all know who Rudy Giuliani is, of course. He was the mayor of New York. And he was a very, very talented and accomplished prosecutor for the same district in which he's now being investigated and now being sued in the mother court, SDNY. Already been, just to remind you, disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C. for false election fraud claims. He's facing criminal charges in Arizona and Georgia for false selection fraud claims, so that's bad. That's all really bad for him, but now he is completely about to lose everything else because, as off about a couple of election workers, a mother -daughter team named Freeman, and Shay Moss and totally

0:06:27 Thomas: This famously was a battle of everything good in our society versus everything bad. You know, it was like these saintly women doing this work. They're election, election workers. Am I right? Isn't it a volunteer thing they do? I can't think of something that's more civically valuable than anyone who's just like, hey, you know, I'm going to do with my very little spare time. I probably have. Gonna volunteer to help other people vote. Nothing in it for anyone other than it's a great civic thing to do. And then we have like a monster, like the Grinch, like The Worst Person going was a battle of just everything good versus everything bad. It really was. And

0:06:39 Matt: That's right yeah, Moss and Freeman, they were election workers in 2020 in Georgia. So, you know, hot seat stuff. Rudy said some things about them, and I didn't realize until I reviewed this a little closer. Do Giuliani made these statements in a Georgia legislative committee. This was not just on Fox News or at a press conference or something. He was testifying three different times under oath, and he started going off on all these different conspiracy theories. You know, he was fully in it at this point with the election fraud stuff. And what he said specifically is that on the video, he believed that Moss and Freeman were surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine, which is obviously just super racist to begin with. Such a reckless thing to say when, like ports. And, of course, it came out at the January 6th hearings.

0:07:38 Thomas: So stupid. Ports? He called them ports?

0:07:44 Matt: Yeah, ports. Oh, this is cyber

0:07:45 Thomas: One of my favorite factoids about Rudy is that his thing was like a technology consultant.

0:07:49 Matt: Security.

0:07:49 Thomas: Yeah, cyberconsumer. They're panning around USB ports. Ports like what?

0:07:52 Matt: So true. Is just so obviously defamatory that he eventually had to concede in a filing that it was defamator per se. He didn't have a lot of choice to do anything else because it came out at the January 6th committee hearings at which they both testified that they were ginger mints, not USB ports. They were sharing and candy.

0:08:10 Thomas: They weren't USB mints, though, that you plug.

0:08:14 Matt: No. Yeah, it turns out you want a little sugar while you're doing election work. That's a long day. So, it's all been a long, long painful thing for these two women. And I just want to say that they deserve much better than this. But honestly, the way that he has treated this litigation really says a lot about what he thinks about these people and what he think about other people generally. Really, these are two black women in Atlanta, Georgia. And it's just so obvious that that he just has no regard whatsoever and doesn't think he should have to do any of this. Go through the timeline very quickly. Suit was filed in D.C. with Judge Beryl Howell. That was a lot of the January 6th cases right now. Of course, did the Trump thing where he told everybody he was going to testify. Of course, he had no intention of testifying. It wasn't ever going to happen. It would have been extra stupid for him to testify, of course, it's by default stupid for Rudy Giuliani to testify in anything, thing because just the way he talks right now but it would have been extra stupid because he was facing criminal charges in georgia for exactly the same conduct for you about the election so inevitably they would have brought out things that could have helped that case

0:09:08 Matt: Uh

0:09:07 Thomas: But is this a defamation case or

0:09:09 Matt: Yes these two women filed a defamation case in dc against him where he refused to participate in discovery at all he just would not do it just wouldn't turn over anything he was just just barely there. And then he got a default judgment, a 57 -page default judgment on August 30th, 2023. It's quite a read. We'll link to it. Let me just read a bit here from Judge Howell's decision. Reservations in Giuliani's stipulations make clear his goal to bypass the discovery process and a merits trial at which his defenses may be fully scrutinized and tested in our judicial system's time -honored adversarial process, and to delay such a fair reckoning by taking his chances on appeal based on the abbreviated record he forced on the plaintiff. Yet just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks, even potential criminal liability, nice, bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions. No matter what reservations a noncompliant party may try to artificially preserve for appeal. And what she's referencing is the stipulation that I mentioned. Now, that stipulation was a very typical kind of lawyerly stipulation where he's saying, you know, for the purpose of this case, I'm going to admit that it was defamatory per se. You could find that this was false and they're actionable. Questionable but at the end of it he said uh stipulation does not affect Giuliani's ability to seek set off offset or settlement that's fine or his argument that his statements are constitutionally protected statements so

0:09:12 Thomas: Gotcha. Gotcha. Didn't even bother trying to fight it. He's like, oh, yeah, I don't care. Not going to do any of this. But then, you you know, I don't know, Daddy Trump will get me out of it or something? What was he thinking?

0:10:33 Matt: Don't know I mean this is a civil thing it's not something he can be pardoned from it's Not really he's not making any allegations of any kind of privilege he's just saying in this stipulation but

0:10:41 Thomas: He's not? I thought you're saying he was trying preserve some appeal or something, wasn't he?

0:10:45 Matt: He's trying to preserve here is to say that the statements are constitutionally protected, which is exactly what he's waiving by stipulating that they're defamation, because defamation is not constitutionally protected speech. He's trying say it was First Amendment qualified. He's try to have it both ways.

0:10:58 Thomas: Now, I didn't remember the thing when you said it was in some sort of proceeding. I know there's a privilege where, like, if a senator gets up on the Senate and says, whatever, ever there's a privilege there that we and that yeah and it's been of thing like because he was testifying it's no

0:11:10 Matt: And debate. Yeah. No. that only applies to elected officials. Doesn't apply to witnesses.

0:11:17 Thomas: Really so if you get up there and you're you're called to testify in congress you can still be liable for defamation for anything you say which is good yeah okay good I wasn't sure if that was going to be some some annoying technicality.

0:11:29 Matt: No, he's literally, I mean this is why Howell wrote it the way she did. She's so annoyed with him because he's saying, okay, sure, this was all defamation per se, but also I'm reserving the right to say it was constitutionally protected, which you can't. It's like defamation is not constitutionally protected. He's trying to say its first amendment protected. That's all he's saying. Of course he went out in public and complained about the default judgment and said that she was totally against him and she's some kind of Democrat and that she He was treating the January 6th people so unfairly. Of course, he just didn't participate and he got to defend default judgment after filing a stipulation saying that he did it. So that's boy.

0:11:59 Thomas: Who's this lawyer? Is it him? No, he's disbarred. He can't be his own lawyer. Oh, how does that work? Hold on. If you're disbarbed, new trivia question. If you are disbarned, are you not allowed to appear pro se? Yeah. Even if you're...

0:12:13 Matt: Oh, you can, just not as a lawyer.

0:12:15 Thomas: Gotcha. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's true. That makes sense. I wasn't sure which...

0:12:17 Matt: You can't put your bar number on it, but you get the same rights as everybody else.

0:12:20 Thomas: But who is his lawyer? They must be terrible.

0:12:23 Matt: New lawyer, we're going to talk about in a minute, is amazing. Amazing but at the time he had pretty serious lawyers uh the firm of wilkie uh far law those lawyers have since left the case for reasons we're about to talk about uh his lawyers were trying very hard to work with him uh and of course he wasn't paying them you know why would you expect you to pay them uh we get to december 2023 it's a four -day jury trial and the awards are pretty significant uh read that during the plaintiff's entire closing argument, Rudy was sitting there just reading news stories on his tablet, just completely checked out. Think he'd want to appear a little bit like in front of the jury. That's the only job the jury has at this point is to figure out how much you're going to give these people.

0:12:58 Thomas: How annoying you are.

0:13:00 Matt: Exactly. Including punitive damages. So maybe you don't want to earn those punitive damage. But as it was, Ruby Freeman got 16 million approximately and 20 million for emotional distress. So that's again, 16 million for defamation, 20 million for emotional distress. Shea million for and $20 million for emotional distress. Then the jury awarded $75 million in punitive damages to them both. Yep. Right? A lot of money. $148 million.

0:13:22 Thomas: To or total total it's perfect it's the best outcome it'sthe worst person having to pay the best people is

0:13:31 Matt: As Hal pointed out in her final judgment, it wasn't even close to what they were asking for. They told jury, we're going to leave it to you, but here's what you can ask for. Just in terms of the punitive damages, they were told that they could do up to four times the amount of the compensatory damages because there was testimony about what all of this actually cost them in their lives. There's some very emotional testimony from Ruby Freeman later at the January 6th committee about how her name was ruined, like her good name, and how they'd been retrieving death threats, how this completely changed the course of their lives, so this is not trivial stuff. This is a very serious lawsuit. Making the point that this doesn't have a chance of being overturned on appeal because they didn't even get close to what they potentially could have been awarded. There's just no way when you've already conceded that these are defamatory statements, you can say that's unfair given everything that happened here. Rudy's actual assets are worth about $10 million, and immediately going to start begging poverty. But the judge in this case was so concerned about Rudy hiding his assets because she makes the point in her final judgment that he had been completely dishonest with the court, had been dodging discovery,

0:14:32 Matt: Had been doing everything he could to stay away from all all this. This is, again, law and order Rudy Giuliani, guy who brought stop and frisk to New York, who wants to be sure that people follow the law. The plaintiffs were asking very reasonably that the judge waive the 30 -day stay that would otherwise kick in. So while you're deciding whether or not to appeal on this, there's a 30 -days stay of the judgment automatically just under federal civil procedure. And it's a little unusual to have that waived, but the judge agreed to waive it and say that the judgment had to kick in immediately because his only argument against that was, well, if I wanted to, I could have already. It's literally what he argued.

0:14:32 Thomas: What

0:15:02 Matt: She did not find that convincing. Yeah.

0:15:02 Thomas: If he wanted to what he could have already oh

0:15:06 Matt: His assets. So the whole thing is, we think he's going to shift things around. We're never going to get any of this. Quite a thing to say about a guy that was once the mayor of New York. Day after this waiver, on December 21, 2023, Rudy files for bankruptcy in New York. And there is one reason that he did this, and because it triggers under 11 U.S.C. 362A, an automatic stay of all judgments against you, including the civil court judgments. So he was using this to buy a lot of time. He was arguing, of course, at this point that he was completely bankrupt, that this was more than he could ever pay. The judge eventually dismissed this and found it was essentially in bad faith.

0:15:42 Matt: Giuliani's bankruptcy protections ended on July 12th, 2024, and we're back on track. So point, at he's supposed to be turning over this long list of property. Talk about what that is. But on August 30th, Freeman and Moss filed a complaint in New York, where Rudy lives, alleging that he hasn't turned anything over. The complaint begins, defendant Rudolph W. Giuliani does not live in Florida. He is pretending to, in a brazen attempt, to shield his luxury Palm Beach condo from his creditors. So he's claiming to be a full -time resident of New York and now that it's his homestead so that he can keep it. Of course, he's living in New York, which he also needs to give that property over. So finally, after a lot of back and forth on October 22nd, 2024, Louis Lyman, a Trump appointee, by the way, orders Giuliani to hand everything over in seven days. He says, there's no excuse here. Is particularly going on about a watch. He's saying it's a family heirloom. And Lyman finds that the watch may be distinctive to defendant as an item of sentimental value, but it is not distinctive to the law. The law does not care about your watch.

0:16:36 Thomas: Matt, they win a and well -deserved judgment against this living, breathing swamp monster. And it's a lot of money and it seems to be more money than he even has. How does that normally work? I know this is not exactly your area, to say the least, because it's where it's a civil judgment and it can involve bankruptcy and all that kind of weird stuff. But kind of how does this work? If I win a judgment that's more than what someone is worth, imagine the the law says, well, we're going to get you what we can, but not, know, it's not like they're going to leave them with literally no you of anything of any kind. I imagine it's going to let you keep something, right? How does this normally work?

0:17:17 Matt: Actually executing a civil judgment of this size, even against somebody with a good deal of money, is never going to be easy, especially somebody this motivated to hide it. So the this works is the federal courts do the order. It gets registered in your jurisdiction, and then they use state court rules, essentially, to work out how it's going to being executed. So I can't really comment on how New York's going do this. I will say that there's a wide variety of stuff that is exempt. And so he's trying to make everything he can exempt, if possible, including your homestead. That's why he's trying to claim the Florida condo as his homestead. Only way that the watch, the the the judge points out, would be exempt would be if it were worth under $1 ,000, and they haven't provided any evidence that it's worth less than $1 .000. So this is just going through all of his personal possessions, trying to figure out what it is that is actually going to be turned over. Example, he's got this really nice place at 45th East 66th Street, which is actually a landmark in New York.

0:18:07 Thomas: A landmark like this is where the biggest asshole lives like this the sign that's like wow we can't believe how big an asshole this guy is

0:18:11 Matt: Someday. Yeah, someday. I looked it up, and it's a nice -looking building. Actually on the City Hall in Leuven, Belgium, which I've been to. Just kind of a weird thing there. But the other things he has to turn over is any fees owed to Giuliani from the Trump campaign, which good luck on collecting those. He can't get those. So there's a Mercedes -Benz that used to be owned by Lorne Bacall, which has been turned over, but he hasn't turned over the title. That's become very contentious. They have the car, but not the title, various items of furniture, a television. I don't know. That must be one nice TV. Of sports memorabilia signed Reggie Jackson, signed Yankee Stadium, signed Joe DiMaggio's shirt. Is a whole thing about World Series rings that were given to him that he claims actually belong to his son, not to him. This is just all the back and forth, ticky tacky stuff you'd expect to be happening.

0:18:30 Thomas: Great oh my god so he tried to do the bankruptcy thing that didn't work. He just give trash bags full of bullshit and they have or does somebody does he have to like sell them and then just give them the money? Like, who's like, he giving this stuff to when you say they have the card, you would literally mean like Ruby Freeman and Shee Moss have the car, like have these on the car or, or is it like a receiver gets it and needs it up to a whole bunch of eBay auctions, essentially. Actually.

0:19:20 Matt: The receivership in this case was actually granted a request for receivership because it's so complicated and because Rudy Giuliani is such a snake. They are actually the receivers. But initiating the receiversship process gives them many more rights in the whole thing. So, that's at least some hope there for them.

0:19:33 Thomas: Are you saying, who's the, you're saying the and Che? Oh, wow. So that means they get all the, oh, the receiver thing thing happened. I have, you know, some experience with that, but they actually got to be the receivers. So that means they just get to make all these decisions. Like I they're, in charge of like the, assets, so like they can say, well, we'll sell this. We'll not sell this we'll do whatever.

0:19:52 Thomas: Oh, wow. Okay. That's crazy. That sounds right.

0:19:55 Matt: I Right. Contents of a storage unit, which kind of an Al Capone vault kind of situation. It turned out there's nothing of value in the storage unit. A whole other side thing in the Storage Unit, which is co -owned by somebody who owns America First Warehouse, which has the most patriotic warehouse in the United States, in case you're looking for that.

0:20:08 Thomas: Good. I've been looking for a a more patriotic warehouse to add to my diet

0:20:11 Matt: I mean, these communists that keep warehouses, I've had enough. The little side stuff you could go down in this case, it could be episodes, like multiple episodes. On November 20th, Moss and Freeman go back to Howland and D .C. to let her know that he's still defaming them. Because in typical Trump style, he has to go out there and still talk about how they were passing around whatever. His podcast, which apparently he's being paid a lot of money to do, America's Mayor Live, uh he's recently like on I think 12 21 he's saying again they're passing these uh little little hard drives so at least he's not saying ports now yep that we maintain were used to fix the machines right and they say it was candy so that they put this transcript in I couldn't find the audio presumably it's been yanked but then uh of course he's complaining about the judge and saying that you know she found some sneaky way to not even let me get a trial on liability the sneaky way being I conceded apparently

0:20:37 Thomas: Mayor life no way oh my god dude you were a lawyer right like he was a lawyer way is you didn't do the side of the thing you didn's show up

0:21:05 Matt: A good one at some point and you said you did it you said in a filing that you did so you know that helps

0:21:14 Thomas: Oh, does that if he says like, well, they say it's mince and I say it's this, does that get him out of it? Or at this point, it's been adjudicated as fact that it's not. So you can't just say that per

0:21:26 Matt: Said it's pro se defamatory for him to say that that they were committing election fraud so then on November 26th, two of Giuliani's attorneys quit, the main two guys, and they say they can't ethically stay on the case. Now, the public version of this motion is redacted, so we don't now why. Giuliani, of course, files his own thing saying, well, they're just quitting because they're overwhelmed or they don't want to do it or they're compromised. At one point, yeah. He started quitting. He actually posts that they're a distorted left -wing hate organization, the law firm.

0:21:45 Thomas: I'm tired of winning. Wow, how is he dumb enough to end up with them as his lawyers? What an idiot.

0:21:58 Matt: Weird choice. Posted on X, they have seized all my money, which wasn't much. I need legal representation against these evil people. I can't buy food. I don't believe that.

0:22:10 Thomas: It's so good.

0:22:11 Matt: Will point out that was on November 26th. He doesn't appear to have starved to death yet. It is a month month later. So he was still eating food.

0:22:16 Thomas: Doing okay.

0:22:17 Matt: The amazing thing happened. So a new hero rises from the ranks at the point at which his attorneys quit. A family attorney from practices on Staten island, a huge Rudy Giuliani fan, somebody who's just like so excited to represent America's mayor, Joe Camerota, Joe this is a man after Rudy's exact heart. Goes and does the most Rudy Giuliani thing that you could do. And he holds a press conference outside the law office of the people who would just withdrew for ethical reasons.

0:22:29 Thomas: My God. Could that be? Like, kind of person is this guy? What?

0:22:50 Matt: And he says, I'm sorry. Actually, I am going to have you read this because this is good Thomas reading, I think.

0:22:57 Thomas: They get in front of this, the other firm. We will not relent. They are doing everything they can to stop Mr. Giuliani from having a formidable defense. We're not going to allow it, he said. This is not what we do in this state. It must end this The judgment does not fit the alleged facts. The firm is doing everything in its power to break an 80 -year -old patriot to its country, an American who did so many great things for us. Oh, okay. It's trying to break a patriot to his country. I didn't understand that phrasing.

0:23:27 Thomas: I think that sounds like not really an accurate description of kind of where we even are in this whole thing. The judgment doesn't fit the alleged facts. Well, but you – he already co -signed to the – he didn't he?

0:23:38 Matt: Those are the facts. Now, Camerota, he's going to keep coming up here. He's amazing. But at point, on November 7th, is hauled into court. Now what's going to happen is further down the line, the judge is going to have to unseal four lines of this motion. The rest is still redacted, but four lines because the affidavit that Rudy Giuliani files is demonstrably a lie about why his attorneys have withdrawn. So the judge says, look, I've got two competing affidavits. I've gotten something from these attorneys, which the public can't see. And I've get something from Rudy Giuliani that I'm looking at.

0:24:10 Thomas: They filed to get out of representing him is redacted. And I think that's like a protect, have the right to have counsel. And so that would be kind of messed it up if some people represent you, learn some stuff, and then blow up your spot and say, I can't do this. So it's kind of a way to protect, you in the situation, I suppose. And now what happened was Rudy fought said stuff publicly that contradicts that. And so the judge is like, well, guess I'm going to have to unredact some stuff.

0:24:33 Matt: Enough.

0:24:33 Thomas: Just enough.

0:24:33 Matt: Just enough to give you the, you know, without totally prejudicing the case. But the main thing at the the top that they said that they were withdrawing for was that he said he was not going to turn over anything on any of his devices so what are you going to do as a lawyer

0:24:34 Thomas: Fair is fair. Yeah. So he he just said, yeah, I'm not going to follow like the law, basically. And they're like, welp, of our whole job, dude. I can't do it.

0:24:50 Matt: So if you want to pay us at some point that'd be great too but yeah so then rudy gets hauled into court to explain on november 7th why he hasn't turned everything over and he claims that he doesn't know where some of it is he gets into a shouting match with the judge. And this is where we get the famous picture that everybody's now seen of Rudy Giuliani, one of the best court sketches I've ever seen.

0:25:12 Thomas: My God. No, I'm going to say the best. I'm sorry. I mean, until proven otherwise, leader submit in the clubhouse, the best courtroom sketch ever of Rudy looking somehow both insane and a caricature, but also like perfect, realistic. Like it's both those things you

0:25:15 Matt: It's fantastic. Yeah. Oh yeah. So memeable. It' so good. Yeah, no. So we've got the actual sketch artist went on TV to talk about why. So I love this. We got to play this. I've never heard of this before.

0:25:33 Thomas: Often does that happen oh that's the best oh we have to play this uh

0:25:39 Clip: Hard to describe what happened inside a New York courtroom today is anything BUT Rudy Giuliano during a tantrum. Oftentimes, it's the transcripts that tell the story, but tonight it's really these court sketches. Donald Trump's former attorney erupted after a federal judge asked why he had failed to turn over nearly $11 million worth of his personal assets to those two Georgia poll workers that he defamed and ultimately owes $148 million. Giuliani launched into an outburst and he told the judge, and I'm quoting Rudy Giuliani now, the implication that I have not been diligent about it is totally incorrect. Everything I have is tied up. I don't have a car. I don'T have a credit card. I DON'T have cash. I get my bank account that can't get my big account that would truly be mine because they put stop orders on, for example, my social security account, which I have no right to do, if it's on my business account I can't pay my bills the judge sued the floor to giuliani but then warned that the next time he speaks out a term like that court would court will have to take action given your experience in court can you just tell us what it was like inside that room today his decorum has certainly changed from when I sketched him 44 years ago as a prosecutor He's losing it. He's wild.

0:26:23 Thomas: Card you wouldn't turn over your

0:27:02 Clip: I feel bad for anyone who represents him. He blokes out orders at his lawyers who are at the podium and interrupting all the time. He's yelling at his attorneys right out there? His attorneys turning around like he doesn't know how to handle it. He's in the middle speaking to a judge at the stadium and behind him he's shouting orders. That was the attorney who just quit the day after that and now he has a new attorney and so this one tried to speak and when the judge told him he's not allowed to speak anymore after he had that burst he started shouting and then pointing at him and he said you have to represent yourself if you per se but if you haven't a lawyer I'm only going to hear one of you otherwise you can be a witness in the trial texas

0:27:32 Thomas: Oops

0:27:52 Matt: Possibly worse than Trump as a client. So yeah of the sticking points in this was like I was saying it was the title to this uh -benz and the judge points out like you were like the u .s attorney for the sdny I think you know how to figure out how to get a title for a car like basically had to say that uh yeah

0:27:55 Thomas: Be might be because so he turned over the car and then I guess now that I know that they're the receivers it's like they can't sell it without the title so it's kind of a way he's just doing everything he can to be a pain in the butt and pretending and the thing is I don't, he's playing dumb, but he might also be that dumb now. He may have lost his brain, but I also feel like he's not that dumb. I think he's kind of just doing a lot of this to be a pain in the ass.

0:28:27 Matt: Well well Well, not too long after that, on December 9th, he played super dumb in front of Judge Howell back in D .C. because now we've got this other thing where they're requesting civil contempt because he's defamed them some more. So he files pro se in D.C. and he claims that he's not able to access Pacer or the docket online. Like the basic court portal, the 10 cents a page, I guess. Yes.

0:28:53 Thomas: Cause he can't afford to like, or is

0:28:59 Matt: I think, no.

0:29:00 Thomas: That what he's saying? Or is he saying he's just not, they've, they're not, he doesn't, they don't know what he does. They've taken away my access to, is he even saying?

0:29:05 Matt: Saying I don't have access to PACER or the docket. As a pro se litigant, you do. You can get a PACER account and log in and file things. This again, an expert in cybersecurity, claiming he needs to be served by paper and that he's going to serve the court by paper, even though you have to file everything online now. So again, just keeps going, the details on this thing.

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0:31:00 Matt: Then, okay. And Moss file a request for an order to show cause. Basically, it's the 18th of December that we don't have most of the stuff we're supposed to have. This should not be this hard. We know what this property is. We get a response from Joe Camerata, a truly legendary response. It is 55 pages to this request for order to share cause. It's got some gems. Every human being has political beliefs. You know it's going to be good from here. No matter what the court's personal beliefs are, the court should recognize that you have a defendant here. You have a defendant here! This is very conversational. With an enormous judgment against him. The defendant was a republic mayor. I think he means to say republican. He was not the mayor of a republic.

0:31:41 Thomas: Sorry. Who is this? What voice is this the oh the weirdo attorney the only person who would possibly represent yeah okay you have this is this is you're not quoting like a interview this is a legal filing because

0:31:43 Matt: Is Camerata. This is yeah, Island. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is yep in federal court filed on the 19th of december oh we got here judge yeah that's right yeah court should know that one or more of plaintiff's counsels was partners with hunter biden and had been involved with in part information belief Burisma Holdings or Ukrainian issues you got to bring in Burisma Holdings very important that we get to that. Again, just on and on conspiracy theories, taking shots at the judge and talking how this judge and he went on to say this, this is a Trump appointee. Both Camerota and Giuliani have said that he's like a compromised leftist.

0:31:59 Thomas: You have a guy oh okay he come on it's so weird that

0:32:35 Matt: That he said about this guy, this is really a read, but we don't have time for everything.

0:32:38 Thomas: That document sounds magical though if there's any other gems from that one let me know

0:32:41 Matt: It is a good time. Spends pages and pages talking about the prior attorneys and how terrible they are and how they're compromised. So much. And a civil case.

0:32:51 Thomas: A certain point, can a judge be like, yeah, death penalty. I don't even, whatever this is, like, I'm not a big death penalty fan, but there should be a level of like this that you're like, nah, does anyone want this guy here still what

0:33:06 Matt: Also, defendant hopes that defendant is afforded every right under the law by this court. Okay, good start. In light of the knowledge that the defendant before this court is the person who is prosecuting the Honorable Judge's late father, Arthur Lyman's clients. Honorable Judge's late father Arthur Lyman's clients, not Lyman's clients. This thing is full of typos. When or around the time that the Honourable Judge's father Arthur Lyman passed away. So he was the US attorney at the time when apparently the judge's father was representing defendants. So that apparently is relevant to this

0:33:24 Thomas: What the hell is he even saying there matt I don't think I I don' t think and this is not your fault that's that's gobbledygook what what he's trying to do like it'd be a shame if something happened like in a legal doc brief he's like hey I hope I get good treatment statement because what was it? My

0:33:43 Matt: Thing. I you're Giuliani was the U.S. attorney when my dad was practicing, apparently. So that's that's what he's saying when your dad was practising. OK, yeah. No, that's no, it just and it keeps going and it's so long. It's 55 pages like I mean this is how he was spending his Christmas, apparently, because he filed again on the 24th.

0:34:01 Thomas: That's nothing. That isn't, that's incredible. That's how I want to spend my Christmas. If there, if ever there was a lot awful brief, that might be it so did he win that motion or yeah

0:34:16 Matt: No, we got some good excerpts here. I think we could go deep on. But anyway, so trial, that's still TBD, TBD Thomas. The bit was filed on December 24th. So presumably the judge got a break, but there's a trial coming up on the 16th of January. This is going to be some classic gavel gavel material because this is going to be litigating over all this different property and like all the outstanding issues with the enforcement and how this should all play out. And one of the things with the World Series rings, intervener Andrew Giuliani has filed because he's saying that he owns the World series rings. His attorneys have requested an hour for Andrew to testify, a half hour for Rudy Giuliani to testify and a half hours for a celebrity zookeeper named Sean Kalin to testify.

0:34:51 Thomas: What what celebrity zookeeper you can't just say things like that matt that doesn't what oh

0:35:04 Matt: He's famous on TikTok apparently. Charlie. I would presume that

0:35:10 Thomas: Fair enough now what does that have to do with anything

0:35:12 Matt: He must have just while he was, you know, taking care of a giraffe or something, he must've overheard a conversation about the words, I guess.

0:35:19 Thomas: It's like hearsay about the world series rings I don't What?

0:35:23 Matt: He is actually known to be an associate of Andrew Giuliani's for some reason. He's been involved with this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it just keeps going. I

0:35:23 Thomas: My God. That into my veins, Matt Cameron. I cannot wait. Do audio? Do we get video? Do we Get anything from that? Because I want that. We'll see. 2BD.

0:35:38 Matt: If we can, we will. For Sure. And so the last word so far from Giuliani in this this Christmas Eve filing, he attached an affidavit to Camerata's most recent response saying, the court should see that I gave everything that I could give. I gave items of furniture and sports memorabilia that were not specifically listed on the court's turnover order, but I gave them anyway to ensure that I was complying with this court's orders. Complying so hard.

0:35:41 Thomas: Delicious. So far. What are the lyrics? In the end, doesn't even matter. He He should have just started quoting something like that. That would have gave

0:36:09 Matt: It's about as legally convincing. Yeah. Yeah, so there you go. Real consequences for Rudy Giuliani are coming, and have been coming. Is what happens when you just go around making things up about election fraud.

0:36:17 Thomas: That is delightful. Also when your brain melts out of your ears and you decide that everybody's in on the conspiracy against you and the law doesn't apply to you somehow. Like, just the rules don't apply. To you. Wow.

0:36:32 Matt: Just tactics all the way. Maybe he's just spent too much time with Trump. But yeah.

0:36:36 Thomas: Ruby and Shay do, now have they gotten some money? Is the kind of thing where it's like, okay, we sold some of the bullshit and we have some money or it do they all have to happen for, I just want to know, have they, have THEY gotten to take a nice nice vacation or to have they you gotten to live it up a little at this guy's expense yet do you think okay but it's a start I'm rooting for him I hope they've gone on a cruise whatever they like to do I hopethey've gotten really to enjoy it somewhat because that's that warms the heart nothing

0:36:51 Matt: Have received quite a bit of property, apparently, but nothing that's worth that much. So a start. Least take Warren Bacall's Machete's Benz for a spin, you know, see how that drives.

0:37:05 Thomas: Says I can't drive it right all right saw the news the other day that the committee decided to release Matt Gaetz's ethics report anyway, way which seemed bizarre what is the story here what how did that happen yeah two

0:37:21 Matt: Talked We about this back at the time that they were deadlocked and didn't look like they were going to release it. House Ethics Committee is 50-50 bipartisan, which So the initial initial vote went pretty much as expected because typically speaking, as we talked about under the rules, they only release these reports for active sitting members of Congress. And so there's been a long tradition of resigning ahead of these reports, so they never come out. At the point at which he was nominated to be the Attorney General of the United States, it became much more interesting. And a lot of these details started to come out anyway, because it's a matter of public interest for the future Attorney General. And two Republicans crossed party lines and they voted again on the 10th of December.

0:37:56 Matt: Yeah, two, not just one. Dave Joyce from Ohio and Andrew Garbarino from New York. Done. Sided mit the five democrats in voting to release it. And a quote here that I've got from the committee, our job as the watchman for the Congress is to let their colleagues know when there's conduct that crosses the line. So it gives them guidance as to how they should conduct themselves going forward. So they're making an example of him, is what they're doing, as they should. Is bad. It's everything we expected, for the most part. He fired a last -minute lawsuit on Monday morning in federal court trying to stop it, but it was released later that day. There was nothing he could do.

0:38:26 Thomas: It was released okay so I guess because it was it seemed like it was going to be big news and then I don't know if everybody was the holidays or what I haven't seen a whole lot of reporting on anything specific and now my impression is you know I'm sure you've gone through it is because it's pretty much what we thought it just adds a little more like actual kind of evidence to it there's But not like he didn't kill a guy or there's no surprise, you know, like some other unknown thing. It's pretty much just the disgustingness we already kind of knew about.

0:38:53 Matt: It's all salacious, and it's prurient, frankly. I don't really want to get into it. But yes, there is evidence. There are texts. Unquestionably, this is what Matt Gaetz was doing. I really care about the drug use, to be honest. They make a big thing about the drug use while he's in Congress. Giving drugs to the 17 -year -old that you're paying for sex, we're getting into some pretty bad territory here.

0:39:13 Matt: Not great at all. Clearly knew that she was 17. I think there's much question about that. Did find that he didn't actually actually crossed state lines with her, at least, maybe with others. This is not somebody who ever should have been Attorney General. He actually said on Sunday that he's still thinking of running for governor of Florida. Maybe it's somebody who should be governor of Colorado. We'll find out.

0:39:12 Thomas: That's not great. That's not Great, Matt.

0:39:32 Matt: That bar still might be cleared, but I wouldn't vote for him. Substantial evidence that he engaged in prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, and obstruction of Congress. Chris, sounds like the Florida governor to me.

0:39:42 Thomas: Obstruction of Congress. Oh, because he didn'T turn a bunch of stuff over for that thing.

0:39:45 Matt: They made a point of saying how he was really not participating in this thing. So, yeah, more consequences, more

0:39:46 Thomas: That's right. So it came out. Yeah. Point is, though, I guess it wasn't anything that they can get him criminally on. I mean, we kind of already knew that because it hadn't happened. Right. Right? I mean, it was kind of awful, but not for some reason. Now, why isn't the 17 -year -old something criminal? Is it because of some technicality or something? Why do you think that is?

0:40:07 Matt: I think it's statute of limitations at this point, but also not a federal issue. It's something that state prosecutors have to take up.

0:40:13 Thomas: Oh, gotcha.

0:40:14 Matt: They're just saying that they established the facts of statutory rape because she was 17.

0:40:18 Thomas: It would be up to some sort of Florida state thing to do that, and that's why it's not happening? Okay. Well, that sucks.

0:40:23 Matt: The point of these ethics investigations is just to get it on the record and now we have a record for all time, 42-year-old Matt Gaetz. And whatever it's worth, it will follow. We'll see what happens.

0:40:30 Thomas: Gross yeah love it all what's next yeah

0:40:35 Matt: Well, we got some very good news. Biden heard our call, he commuted some death sentences. This is historic. This is really big. This worth celebrating. Something that we'd made a video, among other things, asking Joe Biden to do.

0:40:46 Thomas: And we're gonna say it was the video we're gonna say that did it it

0:40:48 Matt: Doubt. White House views, use. No question. Are 40 federal row death inmates and 37 of them are no longer on death row. 37 of whom have been commuted. And of course, I know we both feel very strongly about on principle, just that no one should be executed ever. Three people were excluded. I want to talk about them very quickly.

0:41:04 Matt: There's the Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Sanayev, we'll come back to in a second. Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Robert Bowers, that was a particularly bad one. And, of course, Dylann Roof, the North Carolina church shooter, who we were talking about last week, is a terrorist by any measure. On principle, I don't believe anyone should be executed. But I do understand why you would withhold these three if you're going to be commuting death sentences.

0:41:04 Thomas: Interesting oh it seems like just to avoid avoid kind of the bad press, it seems to me. There's no, there's logically consistent reason. I mean, unless, okay, unless your, your worldview is we shouldn't have the death penalty because we can never be certain. And that's like, well, well these people, we can be certain or something, you know, maybe that's how you'd morally say that's consistent. Otherwise this seems just kind of like, wow, we're going to avoid the very worst headlines, which honestly, I mean, okay. How do you feel about that? It's kind of weird, you know, but at least 37 37 is good news, but

0:41:53 Matt: Great. And And, you Know, this again, this is the first person to run a major party platform against the death penalty for president. So, You know, this Is on the way out. He's really showing at least he means it for 37 out of 40 cases. These three people are terrorists by any definition of terrorism. Obviously, you've got someone who massacred people in a synagogue, someone who massacreted people in church. And we've got somebody who bombed the Boston Marathon, which, as you know, is a very personal one for me. Know, I was here the whole time. And I want to say that I just as a general thing, I don't think the federal government should be executing anybody in a state that doesn't have the death penalty, just on the state level.

0:42:17 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

0:42:24 Matt: They shouldn't be executing everybody anyway, but we haven't had the death penalty since 1984. 1984. And in multiple polls, Bostonians said they preferred life over death in this case, people that were here that were affected directly by this. Victims' families have been a little more divided, but Bill and Denise Richard, who are amazing people, the parents of eight -year -old Martin Richard, really just so, it's so awful to hear them talk about this, but they have been really out there making a compelling case against the death penalty. And they don't, they're saying essentially just don't extend our suffering. We don't want to have to keep hearing about this. Let this guy disappear. We'll never hear from him again. I think And that's the right thing.

0:42:56 Thomas: It, but there are so many sort to not have the death penalty, and one of which is practically speaking, it's prolonging the suffering of these victims. It really is like knowing that someone it is done is done. It is life. They are never getting out. That is the end of it. You are done.

0:43:10 Matt: I mean, and what happened to Martin Richard is unspeakable. It makes me cry every time I think about it. I don't even want to talk about it." And they had to sit there through the trial and hear about it and see the pictures and talk about It.

0:43:19 Thomas: Way.

0:43:20 Matt: And they should never have to do that again. They should know, and they said that as long as the defendant's in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms and not ours. And they deserve to have their story. So, yeah. You know, again, I don't want to detract from good news.

0:43:33 Thomas: Yeah. 37 37 out of 40. Historical. I mean, sounds like there is no comparison for this. There's no other.

0:43:38 Matt: No, never never happened. Fact, as I think we talked about, Trump did the opposite and executed more people on the way out than any other president ever had. So, uh, yeah, this where we're at.

0:43:47 Thomas: Good news.

0:43:47 Matt: Good news. I wanted to highlight one great Supreme court case that we didn't get to talk about. And, you know, again, I think that we've all been abused so badly by the Supreme court at this point that there's some kind of a Stockholm syndrome here, but when they do anything nice for us, but I wanted to talk about U.S. v. Rahimi, which came out in June. We didn't get a chance. I really wanted to at the time. Is a big one because it's actually the the same statute that Hunter Biden was charged under. It's a different provision of that statute. It's 18 U.S.C. 922, and it has a long list of different reasons that you can't have a gun. Of course, famously in the Biden case, it's if you're an unlawful user or addicted to controlled substance. Very commonly, much more commonly, is if you have an outstanding restraining order. After a hearing in which there was a full decision from a judge that you you should not be around this other person because specifically involving an intimate partner or a child of that person. So the comes up to the court. Now, this is a really good test case because Zaki Rahimi is just horrible. Just

0:44:45 Thomas: So this was the guy who like shot at his like ex-girlfriend or something right right? This guy just sucked, is my memory.

0:44:50 Matt: Had quite a year in 2020. He was a drug dealer. So not only was he abusing two different women and taking shots at them, he was involved in five additional shootings in 2020, including one in a restaurant where he just didn't like the way that he was being treated at the restaurant where shot into the air.

0:45:03 Thomas: What does he think? It's the Old West or something? He uses the gun for, yeah, turn off the light and stuff.

0:45:06 Matt: Of The Simpsons where Homer's just going around with his gun for everything. Sort of reminded me of him. I mean, it's just, no, it just, and and he was a drug dealer, so of course he also took a shot with an AR -15 into one of his client's homes, customer's homes. I don't know what you call them, but

0:45:12 Thomas: What an asshole. The worst part, long story short, a really, really bad guy that's least sympathetic possible, pretty much.

0:45:24 Matt: If you want to describe somebody who should not own a gun, I think it's pretty solid here. So the Circuit was reviewing this in light, ofcourse, of Bruin, which came out two years ago, in which Clarence Thomas explained why it is that we have to apply originalism to guns again, and that we can't have any restrictions on gun ownership on the state level. Now, everybody's asking, how is this going to play out? How could this possibly work? Because there's some different reasons we restrict guns, including things like drugs and restraining orders, that were not issues necessarily in 1789. the Fifth Circuit basically held that the Bruin test, which requires that you have to show that the regulated conduct falls within the scope of the Second Amendment, literally owning a gun, and if so, whether that regulation is consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation in the United States. So Rahimi is saying, show me the part where they protected women, which of course, if nothing else, as Sotomayor points out, it was very much the other way that the law was very protective of abuse of men back then.

0:46:15 Thomas: And that was the thing about this case was was the problem is the court has ruined the law. So if you wanted to actually use the precedents that this court has set, he should just be able to keep his guns because they have ruined the lot. There's no, their thing is, well, is there a deep historical tradition of protecting women in this country? No. So who gives a shit? It's basically what their methodology absolutely has to lead to, logically speaking. But they found a way to just be like, okay, but no. No.

0:46:44 Matt: The Thomas dissent. You basically just described, this was 8 -1, Thomas was the only dissenter. Yeah, and it's great because they ripped apart the original foundation of Bruin, basically. They really walked it back. I stopped reading the Thomas dissent at the point at which he wrote at first glance, these laws targeting dangerous persons might appear relevant.

0:46:55 Thomas: Relevant.

0:47:03 Matt: He's got, he's got like 15 more pages about why the history isn't the history you think it is. Right. They went back and they found that as long as there's like an analog, it doesn't have to be an historical twin. They say, as long As there's some kind of analogy to, we do things with firearms, then the way that we might've done them now, even though there's no history of disarming abusers, know they had to go through. They after a long review of the originalist history, that in fact, there was a history of dangerous people having their guns taken away. Actually, in some cases, more than I think they would be now. So, taken together, the surety and going armed laws, which they spent pages reviewing, confirm what common sense suggests. We could have started with common sense, guys.

0:47:18 Thomas: Stupid. Yeah.

0:47:40 Matt: When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed. But they had to go back to the 18th century to decide that. They

0:47:48 Thomas: Yeah, and find some weird logic way to say, well, it doesn't have to be exact. It just has to be something that we can type in our decision that makes us feel good about what we did. And it's really just logically so weak, though. I mean, there's no actual reason for this, but OK, but good. Good that they did that.

0:47:59 Matt: It is. It is. It is good. And it's actually, what's even better, a little bonus, is in the Sotomayor concurrence, she takes a victory lap here. And she's like, well, that's great work here, guys, like, turns out Bruin is meaningless. I just want to point out the historical analysis he did kind kind of doesn't really help here. You know, this is a good distinction and I think it's going to make it harder in the future for states and individuals to argue that you can't restrict gun ownership because,

0:48:28 Thomas: Really feels like she should troll them by just being like, yeah, so we we overturned repeal, Bruin. Like it's over. We, we, cause they're trying to act like it's like, well, we found a way to make it consistent with it. But like you and I know that's, they just had to do an exception, you know, like they had to do a different kind of way. And really what has happened is they have effectively overturned this case, right?

0:48:35 Matt: Out, yeah. Big on it and they're acknowledging that now, eight to one, they're acknowledging that. And of course the guy who wrote the decision doesn't agree, but you know he's one guy fortunately.

0:48:55 Thomas: Well, that's good news, Matt.

0:48:57 Matt: That is good news. A couple other very quick good news things. The Social Security Fairness Act has just passed. And that's a very exciting one for about three million people, including myself, actually, because anybody who is married to a state or federal employee who is in a state or federal pension plan was going to get severely reduced Social Security under the previous law as a couple of days ago. Something that unions have been pushing for for a long time. Something that we didn't think was going going to happen, but it's great. It was a bipartisan thing. It just passed, and Biden should be signing it any day now. That's a good one.

0:49:23 Thomas: That a way to just like, we're going to save money by taking money away from people we think we can take money away from? Is that pretty much what that?

0:49:28 Matt: Basically. And Republicans are opposing it because they said, essentially, we thought we could take money away from these people. Claim that it's going to cause Social Security to be insolvent six months earlier than it would have been. But why are we talking about Social Security going insolent? Let's solve that. Let's not have that happen.

0:49:43 Thomas: I love the idea that that six months means anything then. Like, okay, how about we let Matt have his couple bucks, you know? Months, what difference does that make? Crazy.

0:49:53 Matt: And of people affected by this one. Both the windfall elimination provision and the government pension offset have been repealed, and those are both pretty bad for recipients and their spouses. So that's just a little piece of good news from the last week as well.

0:50:05 Thomas: News. Right, Matt. Well with that, it sounds like we only have one one thing left to do which is uh get let's get weird the footnote fetish this

0:50:12 Matt: Know you got to do it. The Fourth Circuit has joined a number of other circuits at this point in announcing something that listeners, regular listeners, will know that I'm not happy about. The Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32A5 requires courts of appeal to accept briefs in any proportional typeface so this is fonts it's december 27th we're doing fonts that's it's the last friday of the year yep that's fun yeah pretty

0:50:28 Thomas: Is fonts matt is this fonts we're doing font stuff it's the font fetish that is actually what it should be yeah

0:50:39 Matt: Much that's what we got uh the fourth circuit issued a very short order that I happened to notice on december 9th 2024 and uh uh, Garamond discrimination is what this is court has determined that certain typefaces are more legible than others accordingly to encourage the use of typefices that are easier to read today the court announces that preferred typefaces are Times New Roman, Bookman, Century Schoolbook it's a little much and georgia fine I got no problem with georgian uh choice would actually be equity which only the fifth circuit uses which is very annoying they shouldn't get to have nice things but they get to have equity which is a beautiful font designed just for lawyers uh here's the kicker the The court discourages the use of Garamond, which appears smaller and lighter than the preferred typefaces.

0:51:19 Thomas: My god this is an attack on matt on our on our friend matt what what did you do to this court did did you do something, Matt?

0:51:28 Matt: I've never appeared in the Fourth Circuit.

0:51:29 Thomas: This is feels targeted.

0:51:31 Matt: Too many Garamond briefs. I will point out, at 14 point, Garamond is perfectly legible. I know what they're saying about being smaller and later, but I mean, Century Schoolbook is, compared to that, I think it's harder on the eyes, but what are you going to do?

0:51:42 Thomas: Wow.

0:51:42 Matt: Different courts, though, have come out and specifically come out against Garamond as, no, does feel like a problem. Personal attack but uh well see here in the first circuit we can only use courier new so gross but uh that's that's where I appear so

0:51:47 Thomas: How are you? How are you holding up? I mean, what's? Yeah, I love you know, it is if I started talking about hockey teams, it would be a similar amount. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but I do. But I love it for you or I hate it for You. This seems like bad news. But I just want you to know that if not a fan of sports, you can still support your sports fan man friends and listening a ear. And in that way, I'm going to say, Matt, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know what any of these fonts are, but you said Garamond and so I said, okay, good, Garamonde. And then now this court is saying we are criminals. So I'm sad about that. Sorry, man. What can I do? We need to make another video?

0:52:35 Matt: Maybe yeah let's let's uh there are other causes I'm not saying this is there's a reason this is a footnote but you is an ongoing debate about uh fonts are most appropriate to use it is the 21st century we have other options and as long as it's 14 point 14 14 point is nice. Like you can do a lot of things at 14 point.

0:52:52 Thomas: Macklin Celebrini is really working out as the Sharks' first pick. We got the first overall pick for the first time in our franchise's history, and he's really working it out. Like, he's even better. Kid is 18. He's so good. Like, I can't even explain how good he is.

0:53:09 Matt: Assume the Sharks are a soccer team.

0:53:10 Thomas: No, ice hockey. What are you talking about? Come on. Here we go. This is the thing you don't do, Matt. I didn't minimize your stuff. I don't know what any of your fonts are. I don' t know what 14 -point really. Really, I mean, I roughly know that I adjust the font size in Word, but I don't really know what's what. Doesn't it start in like 11? I don' t know. What' here to yuck your yum.

0:53:30 Matt: Appreciate that. And I, I've listeners have been very supportive of my quirks as well. So I do appreciate that, but

0:53:34 Thomas: And here you are cracking soccer jokes about my superior sport of hockey. Come on, man.

0:53:40 Matt: Just know how much you love soccer and had to mention it.

0:53:42 Thomas: Well, I guess Matt and I are no longer friends, everyone. But other than that, good news show. Right, well, that's our show. A of stuff to, you us feel better in this year, foul year of our Lord 2024. 2024. wasn't a great one. It was not a great one. Those are some good things. I'm glad you took us through that, Matt. Another good thing that will happen just before the year ends. That'll be our live hangout. A hangout! Means That we're hanging out with the top patrons of the shows. Just keep an eye on your patron notifications and emails, folks, to see how that works. But we're going to hang out with the four of us. I can't wait. That was going to be so much fun.

0:54:17 Thomas: New Year's Eve 1pm Pacific 4pm Eastern an eye out for it, can't wait to see you all the show Matt we'll see you next time

0:54:16 Matt: Ready to hang for sure. All right, we'll see you then.

0:54:25 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.