The Dumbroe Doctrine, Part 2

Transcript

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

0:00:04 Liz: New Yorkers are perfectly able to get their machine guns from the southern U.S. They didn't need to get them from Venezuela.

0:00:19 Matt: One thing that they're really hammering on in the new indictment is about the cartel de las solas that very much like Antifa does not exist.

0:00:37 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. We're possibly on another episode here. We're on part two of the episode we're doing on the Don Roe Doctrine, the kidnapping of Maduro. And we had just left off on the indictment, some of the history. We found out Liz sued Venezuela. Make sure to check out part one. You can't miss that history, you know.

0:00:58 Matt: I wanted to actually be clear as a programmatic note here that I did not want to start with the indictment just because I think that if we did that, we might legitimize it. I mean, it's, again, it is potentially a legitimate indictment. I don't know enough about the circumstances. Obviously, there's a lot of facts that still have to come out in discovery and trial for us to know how legitimate this all is. But I really want to...

0:01:05 Thomas: Well, you'd assume the Biden one was, right? Or at least have a presumption of being somewhat legitimate. Are you saying the the new.

0:01:19 Matt: Oh, there wasn't a Biden one, was there?

0:01:20 Thomas: Oh, I'm sorry. When was the first of the original one? I thought there was. When Was the original?

0:01:25 Matt: That was a Trump.

0:01:25 Thomas: Oh, it's still under Trump. OK, I misremembered then.

0:01:28 Liz: The original one is March 2020, right? At the very end of the Trump administration, so.

0:01:31 Thomas: So the very end of Trump. Oh OK. I had thought in my mind for some reason. It's always weird with that. I know a lot of people do this where they think, you know, Biden was president under the start of covid. And I think I might have made a quick math mistake in my head. But OK, so it was Trump 1 .0 and of Trump 1 point 0 indictment.

0:01:49 Thomas: Was there any reason to be suspicious of that one other than just, you know, it's it's Trump people, maybe. Right.

0:01:53 Matt: Well, at the time, they were charging members of Venezuelan government, and they added in a superseding indictment that will get to Maduro and his wife and his son within the last couple of days.

0:02:02 Thomas: I just want to make a differentiation. Everything is suspect about any indictment now. So the superseding indictment. But I just wasn't sure if that original one I was under the impression that that that was kind of legit and whatever they're doing now. Now, good.

0:02:14 Liz: To be clear, the original one has Maduro in it.

0:02:16 Matt: Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, right.

0:02:16 Liz: It's the later one that adds his wife and son. Yeah.

0:02:18 Matt: It's the wife and they added more charges,

0:02:21 Liz: Yeah, so the later ones adds up. But is the original ones legitimate? I mean, it's, sure. I'm being sort of cautious because I don't want to suggest that any of the justifications for bringing this person to New York in the way in which he has been brought to New York are fair because like he's committed some crimes.

0:02:37 Thomas: Right. It's almost it's kind of irrelevant to that. Just it's very important to make clear. I think there's separate questions. It could have been a bullshit indictment because a lot that Trump does is bullshit or it could have been a totally amazing indictment. Doesn't mean we get to go kidnap someone in a foreign state. So it is an independent question. But I was curious. And in my mind, I'm glad that you cleared it up for me, because in my For some reason, I had remembered that Biden did the first one. Oh, I know why it is. It's because they said that, hey, there was an indictment. Biden never did anything about it. And I think in my mind, I blended that as Biden was the one who did the indicting.

0:02:43 Matt: But he would

0:03:08 Thomas: But I guess they're saying Trump, late Trump was an indictment and Biden, not that there's anything he could have done, but like, I think that's why I remembered it that way.

0:03:17 Liz: So that's interesting that that's sort of one of those like, oh, and Biden never did anything. So it's legitimate. Is that the idea of it? I mean, I

0:03:22 Matt: Have had to do this. He would have had to go and invade the country to get them.

0:03:23 Thomas: Yeah exactly no it's just it's a bad

0:03:23 Liz: Mean it's a big, yeah, that's, I means that's outrageous. I mean there are so many circumstances in which someone is indicted and they are abroad. That doesn't mean that we can, yeah.

0:03:31 Thomas: Argument yeah yeah

0:03:32 Matt: And we'll never be here. Think about the Russians and the election interference. Think About the Russians that funded Dave Rubin, right? I mean, nobody ever thinks they were going to get here, right ? It's kind of a political thing to put put it out there and say, you know,

0:03:38 Thomas: Yeah it's good that if they they don't have the ability you know like that's nice at least like we've taken that away if they've if they've done something bad they violated our law that sure they shouldn't be able to come here unless they're going to face

0:03:52 Liz: Well, right. And it's not just that. It's the U .S. probably secured an Interpol warrant. So if they go to any, like, probably any European country, they're in big trouble. And they will get extradited through proper means to the U.S.

0:03:58 Matt: They can grab them.

0:03:55 Thomas: Arrest right right all right well we have to take our usual first break here. But as you can already see, tons to talk about regarding this indictment and other stuff after the break. So thanks so much for everyone pledging at patreon.com/law, making this happen. Really big thanks to Matt and Liz for on short notice doing this emergency episode. And I'm excited to, a double episode even, and I'm excited to get to more of that after the break. So if you'd like to support this and be able to ask questions, many of which Matt and Elizabeth are going to answer, patreon.com/law is the place to do that. So we'll take a break and we'll get to it.

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0:04:39 Thomas: Okay, Matt. So you don't want to begin with the indictment.

0:04:41 Matt: We didn't in the first episode, we covered a whole lot of other things.

0:04:44 Thomas: You mean you didn't want to begin like the whole series with the indignation? Ah, I see. I see, gotcha.

0:04:46 Matt: Yeah, the whole, yeah, everything we're talking about. I just, I want to make sure that we laid that groundwork and I think we did pretty well. So I do want to just pick up some patron questions here. We've had so many for patron questions, really appreciate them. Just to kind of touch on what we're just talking about, General Contact Unit Problem Child, great cultural reference there, asks, is it important to emphasize that it's possible to acknowledge this is really bad and still think Maduro is shitty?

0:05:07 Liz: Yes.

0:05:07 Matt: I say that because I know that Matt has no patience for leftists who feel the need to defend the Venezuelan government. Yeah. And I guess one way to think about this is think about if he was PDD, and we have an indictment that said what PDD was doing, but he's in Venezuela, right? We can all acknowledge that sucks, but we don't get to go get him. That's just not how it works, right? You have to think of him like any other defendant.

0:05:12 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah and I think this was one of those ones where the Republicans kind of like prematurely ejaculated their stupid argument where they're like, and you see Democrats defending Maduro. They love him now and it's like not a single Democrat that I've seen did that. There's no, I've never, it's just not relevant. You don't get to,

0:05:39 Liz: Lots of Democrats have issued, like, weaker statements than the Russian government has. So, you know. Anyway.

0:05:45 Thomas: Wait, what?

0:05:45 Liz: I've just been really disappointed to see a lot of Democrats basically just say, like., Maduro is a bad guy. And say nothing further. Whereas, you now, the statement from the.

0:05:53 Thomas: Oh, as in making a statement about the illegality of the arrest. Oh, OK. Yeah. I just I just meant in terms of like no Democrats are like huge fans of Maduro now just because we do stuff in reaction and opposition to Trump. It was a made up argument that they decided to trot out ahead of time. And I don't think they ever even check. They just say whatever. Ever.

0:06:13 Liz: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, absolutely. Just say whatever. You know, like Bernie Sanders had a great statement on this, and he refers to Maduro as a brutal dictator,

0:06:13 Matt: Right, yeah. That was one of the best ones, I think.

0:06:21 Liz: But says this is completely illegal and we have to pass a war powers resolution and end an illegal military operation and reassert our constitutional responsibilities as Congress.

0:06:29 Matt: So we already talked about jurisdiction, but G. Mark had a good question about, is it really more legitimate to bring this in SDNY than it might be in Amarillo, Texas, where there are also drugs? He's making the point that maybe they would have wanted to get Matthew Kaczmarek or somebody on this, right, and get the Fifth Circuit to review it, which I can see the point there. But I think we discussed already in the last episode that SDNY makes sense because of obviously just the drug trade, but also because they're used to prosecuting.

0:06:46 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah. What a brilliant question. And other brilliant people on this show had the same question and we kind of dealt with that in episode one.

0:06:59 Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I did. Just want to make sure to acknowledge that.

0:07:03 Liz: SDNY, they've got the sophistication. They already have the indictment there. And it's not as though, I honestly don't think that any of the jurisdictional arguments are like so sophisticated, are so challenging for the Trump administration that they really need to have the court in the bag or something. Like I really don't. Like the jurisdctional argument is very easy. Jurisdiction is a nothing burger, right? It's just like cocaine that like made its way through Venezuela under Maduro, the narco trafficker made its way to the US and made its way to New York. Like, that's it. It's really, really not like this is not a twisted jurisdictional argument. I also have a pretty dim view on like any of the sovereign immunity arguments or any of the other sort of more legal arguments for dismissing this. I have a Pretty dim view on them to begin with. So I don't think that they need to have like some judges in the bag.

0:07:14 Thomas: Yeah, interesting.

0:07:20 Matt: Yeah, it is. I think that's true. So there was a question that I wanted to ask you, Liz, before we get into the indictment that multiple patrons raised about how is he going to pay for his defense and who is going to defend him?

0:08:00 Thomas: Interesting.

0:08:00 Matt: Because his money is not available to him and the Venezuelan government can't spend money here, I don't think. So how's that going to work?

0:08:06 Thomas: That's interesting. Can I tack on another before you take it, which is if he, and I don't know the exact details, but there's discussion about like, yeah, his money, If it's been seized or if it's not available to him. And I thought that was interesting just from a like due process point of view. Like if like let's say you're a drug dealer in the US who has allegedly made all your money drug dealing. Do you get access to that money for your defense? Because you would think that on one hand, it's like, oh, it struck me on the other. And it's Like, well, if you haven't been proven guilty yet, it seems like you should be able to access your money to defend yourself because hypothetically, you could be innocent. So is that any of the concern or how does that all work?

0:08:42 Liz: Honestly, It's all really, really complicated. And these are all really really good questions. So the government can basically you know, this happens comes up all the time with drug dealers, right? It comes up in my I practice as well to some extent. So in my practice as a state public defender, if a client of mine is, there are drug allegations against a client of mine and bail is set, the government will ask for something called a 72-hour surety, which more or less means that they are entitled to review any payment of bail funds to make sure that the money that is being used to pay for the bail is not the proceeds of a drug crime, right? So they get a really... So if my client's family members come in, they have to bring in their tax, all their relevant tax papers, financial papers, W -2s, 1099s. It is like that. And they have a serious meeting with the prosecutor who reviews them. So it's not like you can just show up and pay bail in cash. And this comes up all the time. This comes up also in, it came up in the Bernie Madoff case with a bunch of the people that were charged underneath him because they're

0:09:22 Thomas: Oh, wow. Oh wow. Like when you're applying for a mortgage or something. Jeez. Yeah. Right. Oh

0:09:54 Liz: All alleged as being part of this conspiracy where they made a ton of money. And so they also all had their assets significantly frozen. So these very wealthy individuals were not able to use their funds that were eventually repossessed and probably given back to people to hire attorneys. I mean, it's a complicated kind of, I think it's a complicated area, the government can absolutely freeze people's assets in order to prevent them from being used to hire an attorney. I think it's going to be a really good question as to who actually will be Maduro's attorney.

0:10:22 Thomas: Wait, is it going to be you? Is it going, he's going to have a public defender. It's going be, I

0:10:28 Liz: You know, I mean, first off, he is entitled to a public defender. And I just want to note that the federal defenders of New York are fantastic and have handled really complicated terrorist cases, terrorism cases, and I think would be highly highly capable to defend Maduro. Like they're, I mean, so they're some of the best defense lawyers in New York. I mean they're just, there's a really, really good group of federal public defenders and they do get, and the thing is like just because you're a federal public defender, like if you need to apply for, you apply to the judge for funds, but if you needs to apply for judge for fund for an expert on money laundering, an expert in narcotics distribution, things like that, any translation expenses, you know, other sort of expenses related to processing and reviewing documents that come from the government, like they can get those funds. So I don't know. You know, I think I don'T know who's going to be Nicholas Maduro's attorney. It's also possible that maybe someone in the private bar would take an interest in doing this case and the publicity associated with it. There's also the Criminal Justice Act panel. The panel attorneys, they also

0:10:39 Thomas: Bet. Hmm. Yeah what's

0:11:30 Liz: Get similar funding. So that's basically like the sort of like backup for the federal defenders. So sometimes the federal defenders can't take on a certain case because of a conflict or another reason. And there's the Criminal Justice Act. CJA attorneys are essentially public defenders. They're paid, I don't know their exact rate, it's around like $200 an hour. It's not high for a lawyer, but they take on, the CJA attorneys for SDNY are also a really outstanding group of attorneys. Some of the best attorneys in New York are CJA panel attorneys because they want to take on interesting cases that potentially go to to trial. So I think he's got a potential really good bench of attorneys. I don't know if he's going to want to, he has any ability to, I cannot imagine through all the ways that funds have been frozen and sanctions have been enacted. I do not really know how he accesses funds for an attorney and there might even be some litigation about that, but I do know.

0:12:25 Thomas: Wow.

0:12:25 Liz: I did not have that answer and I think it is a legitimate question and we are going to kind of just see this play out in real time. There aren't exact comps on this one.

0:12:32 Thomas: Don't want to be interesting, but at least we we have a lot more context to think about that.

0:12:32 Matt: So let's talk about the indictment. Start with the 2020 indictment, as we discussed, that was brought in the later Trump times. So what is the, I guess maybe quickly, what's the difference between the two before we dive in?

0:12:46 Liz: So there are a lot of things that are similar, right? I think we should kind of start and just say that a lot of these are, one is in 2020, one is in 2026. The substantial narrative is similar. It's this idea of narcoterrorism, using narcotics as a weapon to flood the U .S. A lot of overt acts that involve Nicolas Maduro engaging with FARC, other cartel organizations, et cetera, et cetera. What's notable in my view is it's the exact same set of charges. It's four charges or the four counts, I should say. So the four counts are there's this narco terrorism conspiracy charge. And the idea of this is once again, the idea is that the U .S. national security and interests are being harmed by the flood of of narcotics coming into the U. S.

0:13:35 Liz: There's a cocaine importation conspiracy, in my view, probably the strongest charge. And then there are essentially two firearms charges. And it's the same for both.

0:13:45 Thomas: Firearms charges.

0:13:47 Liz: Yeah.

0:13:47 Matt: That's a weird one. We'll have to get to that.

0:13:48 Thomas: Well, yeah, because I realize I got to put this into proper context, again, as not the lawyer here. This isn't like possession. This is like, this has got to be, oh, it is. Sorry,

0:13:54 Matt: It is. It's conspiracy to possess firearms. Yeah.

0:13:56 Thomas: I meant with the drugs. No, sorry, I didn't say my thought. I meant possession as in like, well, he's caught with some narcotics.

0:13:58 Liz: Yeah, it is. Yeah?

0:14:00 Matt: No, the guns. Oh, yeah,

0:14:07 Thomas: So, because this is like this has to be law, I assume, that affects. This is not state law. This is federal law. Kind of law, right? It's going to be a certain kind of offense that we would even bother indicting someone in another country for, right. Yeah. That's all I meant to say.

0:14:21 Matt: He wasn't just holding, right? Yeah, you got it.

0:14:24 Thomas: But you're saying the gun stuff is like a just holding thing. Oh, wow. That's crazy.

0:14:26 Matt: It is, and it's weird.

0:14:26 Liz: Yeah. I mean, the gun stuff is a little weird to me, but it's not that weird. I think what they're going to try to just say, just think about how the trial will play out, right? It's not like they say it's conspiracy to distribute machine guns throughout the US because there wasn't one and they didn't do that. It's just conspiracy to have machine guns in connection with selling selling drugs. And the idea is that like, okay, like guns are typically used in connection with drug offenses and people who sold drugs in the U .S. had guns. And this is Maduro's fault.

0:15:04 Thomas: Wow. So it's not even him personally.

0:15:05 Liz: I think that's basically the analysis.

0:15:09 Matt: That people in the conspiracy had guns, right, because that is true. I will also note that in June, one of his generals, somebody who'd been in the Venezuelan government since Chavez, Hugo Armando Barrios did enter a plea to very similar Mueller charges, but he was going back to 99 working with FARC and that most of what he was pleading to was working with Farc and Columbia, which as we discussed just recently now is the revolutionary left-wing terrorist organization that was responsible for the Colombian civil war for many years. And I've worked with many people who escaped it.

0:15:29 Thomas: Yeah, what was Fark again? Sorry. Remind me. Right.

0:15:38 Matt: And the remnants of Farc, as Liz mentioned, there was a police treaty in 2016 with Columbia, but the remnants are still terrorizing parts of Columbia. They're still basically just criminal organizations. They are no longer a political group, but one of the ways they were funding money was massive drug sales and Venezuela oil was helping with that for a while.

0:15:53 Matt: So what I can tell from the Carajal Barrios case, it goes back a little further to that. Now, of course, Maduro was in government the whole time as well, and he's being charged with some of this. But we should go through maybe and just talk about some of these counts. As you said, the first one is narco -terrorism conspiracy. And they're saying from 99 until 2025 that Maduro is involved in what we're talking about as narco terrorism, that he was supporting FARC, the Sinaloa cartel. Now, they were mentioning Tren del Agua. Let me just... Yeah, yeah, send anyone.

0:16:24 Liz: So that's a new addition. So just to kind of go through some of the comparisons, the previous indictment really focuses on FARC quite a lot. And the newer one kind of brings in like some Zetas, Trinidad del Agua, Sinaloa cartel and saying that Maduro is essentially collaborating with these individuals to bring cocaine, you know, to use lots of different kind of overt acts using Venezuelan planes to go back and forth between Mexico, trying to facilitate the provision of Venezuelans passports to narcotraffickers, all sorts of different meeting, you're having a nice little meeting on Margarita island with a petavesa plane that contains drugs a meeting in medellin with some representatives of farc it's it just it kind of goes through and and and sort of drops maduro into a lot of this sort of events happening but yeah between basically the nine you know 2010 to 2025 um and no doubt he seems to have had some well I don't know I mean it has yet to be proven but seems to there's some some pretty specific allegations as to Maduro and his involvement with various drug cartels that allegedly brought cocaine into America.

0:17:29 Matt: But I do have to point out that as we talked about on the show a couple of months ago, the National Intelligence Council and actually Mike Collins of the council was fired by Tulsi Gabbard for releasing this report. But we talked about it at the time, but Tren Del Agua, according to this intelligence report at least, could not be at least firmly connected with the Maduro government. In fact, they're fighting them in many places. Obviously, there are places where they were working in smaller ways, but yeah, right,

0:17:55 Thomas: Oh, this, yeah, refreshes on this. So they were trying to like artificially link them. And then there was a report saying no can do and basically someone whistle blew on it. Right? Oh, that's great. And usually, you know, if you fire a whistleblower, I thought bad stuff should happen to you, right? Shouldn't there be consequences for doing? No. Okay.

0:18:03 Matt: Right. And was fired. And now it's in this indictment.

0:18:11 Matt: No, no, no. It's just moving on. More business as usual with the Trump administration. But I wanted to bring that up because Trinidad and Agua, they were trying to set up in this season of the Trump administration as the new MS -13, right? As the new sort of big, bad South American gang. And And they are. I mean, I've certainly I've worked with plenty of people who have fledged Trinidad or Agua in multiple countries in South and Central America. They're getting to be pretty active and they do terrible things. But there was never really like a very firm cooperative thing here established. And I was kind of surprised, maybe I shouldn't say surprised, but I was noting that they're mentioned in the indictment along with FARC and other groups. So I thought that was interesting. And of course, that was part of the justification of hitting the boats and killing all this. Now, about 120 people have been killed in these Caribbean boat strikes was that they're they're involved with terrorism, with Transnistria, whatever else they want to. If you elevate all this stuff up to terrorism, you get to treat it very differently.

0:19:00 Matt: And that's really part of the problem here with all of this.

0:19:02 Liz: Other thing that's worth noting that we already noted before, but I just have to emphasize, is the original 2020 indictment. Honduras gets mentioned a lot more times than it does in the 2026 indictment, and that's because you've got some crack SDNY prosecutors on the case being like, like, oh, there seems to be an inconsistency here. Let's not like over, let's de -emphasize Honduras because it's a little awkward that Trump just pardoned the president that was responsible for a lot of the stuff referenced in the 2020 indictment. Yeah.

0:19:33 Matt: Much more, by the way, way more drugs coming through Honduras than anything they could prove for Venezuela.

0:19:39 Liz: So that's, FYI, they do that. So like Honduras gets mentioned, I think I did a control F and I went through the references, but Honduras get mentioned like seven or eight times in the first indictment, it gets mentioned twice in the second indictment. And a lot of the indictment is otherwise the same, by the way. Like they do parrot a lot Of the language and like, to the extent they mentioned Honduras, they just more mentioned it kind of geographically, like, oh, like drugs are being brought through Honduras. Like funny. Like, I don't know. How did that happen? Did anyone facilitate it? I wouldn't know?

0:19:54 Matt: I

0:20:06 Thomas: Jeez. I really want to know more about that one if we get a chance, because if the argument is going to be that that was unfair, and I don't even know how much they're making an argument versus just saying it, but if the argument is gonna be that was unfair Biden stuff, like, is that true? What was it? What happened? What did that guy do? And how could you?

0:20:14 Matt: Think

0:20:26 Thomas: Is there any evidence that anything was unfair?

0:20:26 Liz: Truly

0:20:29 Matt: That what was really convincing to Trump in this letter that the former Honduran president wrote him was he was talking about how he had been railroaded by the deep state in his own country, basically. Trump was very sympathetic, I think, to the idea that, you know, that it was his political enemies who had gotten him in trouble for working with his brother, the narco -terrorist.

0:20:36 Thomas: Mm hmm. So the answer is no, there's nothing. There's nothing real.

0:20:47 Liz: Confused by that one. And like, I've been trying to find answers. And I really think that this was like Trump derangement syndrome. I just think like there's he wakes up. And as I say, he's like a little more on this side of the dementia spectrum and maybe read that letter and really, really felt for the guy. I don't know. It's it's fucking weird.

0:21:03 Thomas: So just making sure.

0:21:04 Matt: It's quite a letter.

0:21:05 Thomas: So there's no there's absolutely no basis for this. What did that guy do? Did we go through that? Like, what did that actually do?

0:21:10 Matt: We did touch on this before, but his brother Tony Hernandez was a very well -known narco trafficker in Honduras, and he was working directly with him and helping to influence politics in Honduran in favor of keeping a pipeline of drugs through Honduras. So really, I've known about that for a while, just working with a lot of Hondurans. I don't think there's a lot in question. But the letter, which I think I'm going to have to link to in the show notes, because the Hernandez letter, We talked about it before his pardon, but he's talking all about senior members of the Honduran Radical Leftist Libre Party, that it was all their fault and how much he admires Trump for his conservative values and that he was also attacked by radical leftist forces and he understands what it's like.

0:21:11 Thomas: We did. Oh, OK. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, oh, my God. Standing up to the deep state. Yeah OK. So absolutely nonsense. OK, so no, no ,no truth to the idea that that was unfair. They're not, that's just Trump wanting, I think it's Trump wanting to, and now I remember when we did cover that and that, that absurd letter, but it does make sense as him wanting to just further the world building that stuff that the Democrats did was unfair or something, you know, like broadly speaking.

0:22:09 Matt: So yeah, radical leftists. Hernandez also, I just noticed looking at this letter again, he makes a point of noting that he expelled the Venezuelan ambassador because they thought there were too many Venezuelans drugs coming through, probably just because they were competing with the drugs that he was facilitating through Honduras.

0:22:23 Liz: Probably.

0:22:23 Thomas: Oh, really? So he tried to like, as another way to try to appeal to Trump. Oh, wow.

0:22:29 Matt: Because he knew about this Venezuelan stuff, yeah.

0:22:31 Thomas: Oh wow. That's interesting.

0:22:32 Matt: He had Roger Stone advising, I guess. He'd paid him some money to...

0:22:34 Thomas: So that was a really, yeah, that is a really smart bit of pandering. Wow. Fantastic. 10 out of 10 pandering, we like to rate our pandering here on opening arguments.

0:22:36 Matt: It is. Yeah. No, it's great pandering. It's world -class pandering, Olympic pandering . That's right.

0:22:45 Thomas: So what's your impression of the indictment? I guess both of you, and again, very, very consciously here, we're separating, obviously we can't kidnap someone from a foreign, blah, blah. Separate all that for now. And I'm just curious about this indictment because it will be actually really interesting to see what if he doesn't get convicted? You know, What if we have this foreign leader that we've abducted and then he gets off? I'm sure a lot of people ask what happens then. But also, what's your impression of the indictment? Does it seem legitimate? Do you think there's likelihood of him being found guilty on this or is it just too hard to know?

0:22:59 Matt: Yeah

0:23:19 Liz: I think that he's got really good defenses for three of the four charges. That is to say the darker terrorism charge. And that's because I was I was looking at the statute. Right. And the statute is whoever has engaged in conduct that, you know, is conspiring to provide anything of pecuniary value to a person or organization that has engaged or engages in some terrorist activity as defined under a different statute or terrorism, da da da. That's the narco terrorism charge. And they're going to have to prove that sales of narcotics like the fund, the money that was received was directed toward a terrorist activity. Like it's not they're gonna have to prove like harm to U .S. security, national security, like not just like a general like people got sick from drugs. Like, I mean, on that basis, like we should charge Purdue Pharma with terrorism.

0:24:07 Thomas: Maybe we should.

0:24:09 Liz: OK, that was like the first thing I've said that's made any sense to me. And, you know, in fact, in a sense, so like I think that the narco terrorism charge is difficult. And I think if you can get a really good attorney for Mr. Maduro, I think they can really disarticulate this. This is what I always say about my Manhattan juries. They're very technical people, you know, like they'll appreciate a technical argument like this guy might have done some bad things, but he did not do this. Like this is the elements of the statute. Here's what they didn't prove. This is the overreach. Right. And I think you see that, by the way, in the results for Diddy, bytheway, like that's a good example of a hyper technical Manhattan jury. So I think, you Know, so I think that like the narco terrorism charge is pretty sus. I think that the weapons charges are pretty sus because I just don't really know. Possession of machine guns.

0:24:09 Thomas: Don't start making arguments that make sense, damn it. Yeah, bad example. Okay.

0:24:56 Thomas: Can you explain those again? Yeah, what are those exactly again?

0:24:59 Liz: It's really hard for me to explain. So one of the charges, possession of machine guns and destructive devices. The other is conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. I think it's pretty challenging to say that the idea is that they used, this crew used and carried firearms in furtherance of this narcotics crime, but like they didn't do it in the US. Yeah.

0:25:01 Thomas: OK, so I'm so that's why I don't really have a good idea about it. I was wondering. Yeah, I was going to say, like, whose gun laws do you get to apply? You know, like I like I don'T if you're talking about a foreign. Huh?

0:25:23 Matt: That was

0:25:28 Liz: No, I mean, it's, it, it yeah. I think it's really, really, really challenging. And I think unless like, I think It would be one thing, as I say, I think the conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices, I think you could have some arguments there. If for example, like we were arguing that he was engaging in like exportation and distribution of machine guns in the, in the US, like that's one one thing, right? But like, no, like New Yorkers are perfectly able to get their machine guns from the Southern U .S. So they didn't need to get them from Venezuela. So I just, I don't know. Those charges are worthless to me. I think that they're very good. I mean, I think where it's going to be a little trickier is the sort of just general like you engaged in like conspiracy to import cocaine to the U. S. That does seem like a stronger charge. So that's my take.

0:25:56 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Good point. Wow. OK.

0:26:14 Matt: Mine too. And I just wanted to note that the narco -terrorism, we just want to really emphasize this. One thing that they're really hammering on in the new indictment is about the Cartel de las Solas, and that very much like Antifa does not exist, right?

0:26:26 Thomas: Hmm.

0:26:26 Matt: It's not an actual formal cartel. It's just sort of a group of high -level military officers that may have been involved or have been engaged. And there are other members of Venezuelan government charged in this indictment as well, I should mention. And so I think that's very defensible.

0:26:36 Thomas: Oh, did we kidnap them? No. OK. Weird.

0:26:39 Matt: No, but one of them already has pled guilty in a U .S. court, I don't know how we got him, but it was Hugo Armando Carvalho Barrios we were just talking about. So I do think that the narco -terrorism, there is all kinds of defensibility there.

0:26:55 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:26:56 Matt: We did have some questions about some of the defenses. We discussed sovereign immunity already, the fact that he was the head of state of Venezuela and recognized at least by Russia and China and Egypt and a number of other places, but not recognized by up to 50 countries in the world. I think, as you mentioned, there's 11th Circuit precedent on this, but the Department of State's determination as to who is the head -of -state of any given country has to control in a federal court, right? I don't think there's any way around that.

0:27:18 Liz: Yeah. I mean, that's I mean that's pretty clear. I

0:27:20 Matt: They're going to have to defer.

0:27:20 Liz: I think I was looking I looked at the I looked looked at the sort of Noriega stuff and out of the 11th circuit. And basically they say, yeah, I mean, we reject the head of state immunity claim for Noriego because the U .S. government did not recognize Noriegas Panama's ruler done dusted.

0:27:36 Matt: Yeah, easy enough. The other major defense that a lot of people were asking about, which is perfectly legitimate to ask about because you would think it would be a defense, was the fact that we illegally bombed and kidnapped him, right? That we broke into his country, killed a bunch of people, snatched him away, and brought him here to the United States. And I wanted to address that because I actually had a case, and I can't talk about it, unfortunately, because it's too specific. But I had acase that directly implicated this issue of someone where my client was arguing that he had been illegally extradited, actually just snatched and brought brought back by federal officers. And I got to learn all about our very bad precedent about this issue. And I got to tell you just very quickly about the Kerr -Frisbee doctrine going back to 1886.

0:28:11 Thomas: Kara Frisbee.

0:28:13 Matt: Kerr Frisbee, K -E -R hyphen Frisby.

0:28:15 Thomas: Ker Frisby. Is that a name?

0:28:17 Matt: Yeah, those are two different cases. There's Kerr from 1886 and Frisbe I think from 1924.

0:28:22 Thomas: So somebody threw their Frisbe over our fence and we're like, we're arresting. No. Yeah.

0:28:25 Matt: We got the Frisbie now.

0:28:26 Liz: Basically.

0:28:26 Matt: It's all ours. Yeah. So the Kerr v. Illinois in 1886 was sort of the beginning of this doctrine. And then there was a similar argument sort of domestically about somebody who's brought to Michigan. He said he was illegally brought there. But the real kicker here, the case that I want to talk about was Alvarez -Machine from 1992, the most controlling case that was talking about. And the facts are pretty bad. There was a DEA agent, Enrique Camerona, who was murdered by cartels in Mexico. And it was bad. It was a brutal murder. They tortured him. The DEA was justifiably very upset about it. And so the DEA paid some Mexican nationals to kidnap, drug, and torture the doctor that was involved in torturing this DEA agent and bring him back. And they arrested him in El Paso when he got there. Now, there's no question the DEA paid $50 ,000 for this to happen. Supreme Court completely agreed that this is something the DEA did. This was not the Mexican government or Mexican nationals deciding to do it. And he was making the very reasonable argument that you have to extradite me if you want to get me back to the US to face charges for being involved in the death of a DEA agent. And Justice Rehnquist wrote, turns out there's nothing in the rules that says you can't actually kidnap somebody. You can't just abduct them and bring them here and then deny jurisdiction. Because Mexico had the opportunity. They never knew about the Kerr -Frisbee Doctrine, and they didn't incorporate it into our extradition treaty. They didn't actually specifically write in

0:29:13 Thomas: Jesus. What?

0:29:43 Matt: That you can't kidnap somebody. And again, it's mind -blowing. It's in the decision. You can read it for yourself. Yes.

0:29:46 Thomas: That's ridiculous. Because that because then the incentive. This is insane. So the incentive is kidnap people. And like, clearly, whatever this ruling is, doesn't give a shit about that, because what would one country's treaty make any difference on that? That it should be about our actions as a as a country and as a whatever DEA, whoever it is, it shouldn't be like, well, because this specific country didn't bring up this thing, like implying that like, OK, had they done that, then it wouldn't have been OK. But maybe another country you could go ahead and like kidnap someone to that. That is terrible.

0:30:05 Matt: Right. We shouldn't be doing it. Yeah. Like every one of these extraditian treaties has to specifically say, by the way, you can just, as an alternative to extraditation, kidnap?

0:30:26 Thomas: Yeah, I guess my point is then the facts that matter in terms of can we kidnap someone in a foreign state is not about us and not about our conduct and whether or not we should be doing that. It's about, well, did they think about the bylaws over there?

0:30:35 Matt: Yep. Right. Right, right.

0:30:40 Thomas: Did they dot the D's and cross the I's or the opposite of that?

0:30:43 Matt: I mean, you think about the equivalent, obviously, if this happened in Boston, if officers just broke into your house and grabbed you without a warrant, which is obviously what he was arguing that the Fourth Amendment should apply here in some way, that case would never get to trial, would never get to court. It would be immediately suppressed. So, dismissed.

0:30:56 Thomas: Yeah. And I can see some idea that like, OK, this is two separate things. I could see like at least I would at least wonder in a case like that I would want, you know, some argument over like, OK, is this two separate Things like, you Know, hey, Your Honor, like, I don't know how this person got here, but I'm here to like charge them with the crimes and get them convicted of the crimes they're guilty of. I could see some sort of argument there, but I don't know. I just think it would create too bad of an incentive in the same way that like we can't at all legitimize illegal searches and seizures, even though we probably do to too much of an extent, because it just feels like the incentive problem is more important. Like we we would not want to give officers or, you know, now these government agents or whatever incentive to do really horrible shit because they can get away with it and they can still convict people.

0:31:42 Matt: That's exactly what Justice Stevens said in dissent. He said, there's nothing stopping us from executing people on the spot if this is what we're going to do.

0:31:47 Thomas: Geez. Yeah. Wow. And this was from before the Supreme Court was ruined to the extent it is. So it's good to know that the Supreme court has sucked for a very long time in, in less obvious ways.

0:31:58 Liz: Always been a believer in that. I just want to put that out there. Always been like before it was cool. I was it's like Supreme Court sex.

0:31:59 Matt: Before it was cool. Yeah, no, it's a really bad case. And I learned all about it when I worked on this case.

0:32:09 Liz: Yeah, it's terrible.

0:32:10 Matt: But I just wanted to mention, because you would think that should be a defense at your trial, that I was illegally kidnapped here. But no, the Supreme Court said, if you're here, you're there. We can put you on trial. It doesn't really matter how you got here, even if you got tortured along the way, as he did.

0:32:22 Thomas: God, that's awful. And so that won't even occupy what? Like any time of the trial? Like that won't even be is that something they they sort out in the sort of the pretrial stuff or whatever? Jeez.

0:32:29 Matt: So So they might try to raise it, but it's not going to go anywhere. But I mean, this is a particularly egregious one because it was the US government. It wasn't some thugs the DEA paid. It was this whole new test of the Bill Barr thing, but it's still not going anywhere, I don't think, based on that precedent.

0:32:46 Matt: I know we don't have an extradition treaty with Venezuela. So they're going to say this is the only way we could have gotten them anyway. There's no alternative. So there is that.

0:32:52 Thomas: That's interesting. I don't know. That's at least something. Yeah, yeah.

0:32:55 Liz: Mean, so what, though? It just doesn't. No, but it's so what? Like, it doesn't matter. Like, like, let me tell you, like I don't know. I have a lot of international criminal experience. There were tons of like U .S. indictments against various Swiss bankers who allegedly assisted Americans in hiding assets and evading taxes. Like I'm just saying, like it would be totally bananas for like a Delta force to parachute into Zurich and kidnap these people.

0:33:22 Liz: Like it's just, um, and Switzerland, by the way, we do have an extradition treaty with, but they will not extradite people for violations of us tax laws. So, um. Cause that's how they look, look hard out there. I can't imagine why, but nevertheless, I'm just saying it's ridiculous. Anyway, that all being said, I just want to note, cause I think we should just note this somewhere on the pod.

0:33:22 Matt: Yeah, objectively, right, kind of their thing.

0:33:29 Thomas: Oh, wow. A little little carve out there. Okay. Wow. Mm hmm.

0:33:41 Liz: There are without a doubt, many Venezuelans. And I think the voices that are loudest are going to be expat Venezuelians who are celebrating this, who are like, listen, listen, this guy is terrible. We've been dealing with corruption and all this with horrific human rights abuses and non -democratic country, all these things for the last 20, 25 years. Let's give this a chance, so on. And I don't want to diminish, frankly, anyone's experiences that is Venezuela and having experienced a really terrible government. That being said, I really could not think of a worse crew than Trump, Stephen Miller, and Marco Rubio to be

0:33:37 Matt: Yeah yeah yeah

0:34:17 Liz: Saying that they're running your country. And there's no reason to ever, ever to not be cynical about the U .S. quote unquote running a country.

0:34:25 Thomas: We didn't even get to talk about that.

0:34:27 Liz: Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, yes, that point standing alone, I'm glad that getting rid of Maduro has resulted in some level of optimism and happiness for some people. But I just this is not.

0:34:39 Thomas: It can't justify the whole thing. I think it's going to be interesting politically. And I don't care to spend a whole lot of time on punditry because it's now my least favorite thing that I notice in every other serious, quote unquote, serious show as well. Well, the American voters, they will care more about whether the economy, whatever. And so I don't care too much about that. But I only I will say that it could be a challenge just in terms of not electoral punditry, but in terms of the rule of law and the project that I think we're engaged in here, which is trying to explain what the law is and why it's important and how it should work. I worry that it's going to be hard because I think something like this, if they're able to pull this off such that they kind of did this thing, got rid of this really bad guy and, and were able to like show that a bunch of Venezuelans were super happy and whatever. I think it's going to just be, make it even harder for people are like, yeah, but shouldn't the law matter? Everybody shouldn't the law mater. And so I just worry about that. And, uh, I wonder how, how to fight that. But on the other hand, we didn't even talk about him saying the press conference. Yeah, no, we're going to be running it.

0:34:42 Matt: Please yeah

0:35:45 Thomas: We're going around the country and him saying, okay, okay, what about the opposition leader? Someone asks him. He's like, well, you know, unfortunately I just don't think she has the support. And so it's like oh, okay, so he's just making decisions about who's going to run another country. It's insane. Absolutely insane.

0:35:58 Liz: It's insane. It's insane. And like, look at look at Afghanistan. Right. Like, look at how proud Trump was of pulling ourselves out of the massive failure that was nation building in Afghanistan.

0:36:13 Thomas: Yeah. And it does seem like everybody's tried as hard as they can to move away from what Trump said there and like, no, we're not running the country. So the line will be and is, yeah, yeah.

0:36:21 Liz: Yeah. Next day, they're like JK, JK. Like everyone next day has been like, oh, but we didn't we didn't say that. Like.

0:36:27 Thomas: The line, yeah the line And like in a certain amount of fairness, I guess if they want to say, look, that was the usual Trump talking out his ass like, OK, I guess I could believe you. Like, I think there that probably is true to a certain extent, but it also could be that he's saying the quiet part out loud, which is they plan on now that they've exerted. So and here's the thing. Now that they can say to whoever the leader is, which now the current vice president seems like now they can say, hey, I'm sure would be a shame if we were to come in there and kidnap you and charge you with stuff. And abduct you, maybe they will be effectively running the country, even if they want to say they're only doing so through like some disincentive, some economic, you know, incentives and stuff like that. So who knows? It's it is absolute crazy town, though. That is just insanely illegal.

0:36:59 Matt: Obviously I've been working with Venezuelans for a long time I know a lot of Venezuelans um and I want to echo something that juan escalante has been saying he's a great activist uh just if you know any or can find any talk to some venezuela to see how they're doing how they feel about this because they're you're gonna get a lot of different opinions as liz said and a lot the people living in this country who came here came came here to get away from all of this. And many of them, as I've said before on the show, many of the Venezuelans I've worked with are what we would consider to be basically like Tea Party Republicans, or people that are just super opposed to not just socialism, but obviously Maduro's and Chavez's completely failed state, and certainly understandable, and have been persecuted for one reason or another. Many of them funded or supported opposition parties and were persecuted for it. And I feel like I'm losing my mind because just a couple of months ago, there was a New York Times piece about how the Trump administration administration and Marco Rubio were working with the Venezuelan opposition to prepare, to make sure they'd be ready to carefully come in. And now they're just pretending like that never happened.

0:38:05 Matt: And it's just, yeah, so this is getting a little bit beyond our ambit, but it is just really, it's an evolving situation. It's really complicated. And I know that most of us don't know that much about Venezuela, but we're going to learn. But I am at the same time, you know, I have to mention, we should go on and talk about some of the immigration questions we've been getting because Venezuela received temporary protected status from the United States. People in the United States who were, as of 2021, there were about 600 ,000 people that were given temporary protected status or eligible for it, I think. And that was because the Venezuelan economy had crashed at that point after COVID, after all the things that Liz was talking about. Basically, it had been in a heavy recession since 2014, but it completely crashed. We gave temporary protected state status as we do when a country is unstable and where you can't go back safely, where they weren't taking their own people back. And then Trump went to great lengths lengths to revoke it. And the Supreme Court finally allowed him to do that. And, you know, depending on how things go over the next few weeks and months, I really don't know where this is heading. You know, if there is a peaceful transition of power of some kind, that it doesn't descend into civil war, if we don't end up invading, if it doesn't become a long military slug, then there are going to be a lot of people who will be happy to go back, who will have the opportunity

0:39:09 Matt: To go Back to Their Home after many years. And I'm very happy for many of my clients who might have the chance to do That. But at the same time, if It does not go well, and who knows at this point, then we should be giving a new round of temporary protected status. AndI do not expect the Trump administration to do that after this problem they caused because they just don't believe in TPS.

0:39:24 Matt: So that's awful, but that's just one thing to note.

0:39:26 Thomas: Yeah you know I just don't think this is that hard of a thing, you know, that big of a gotcha. If it's like, look, if tomorrow somebody from the Trump administration just executes someone who is a child molester by hand, it's like, yeah, nobody's saying like, oh, no, I really love that child molest. It's just there's reasons we have laws and rules for stuff. And it's, like, it

0:39:46 Liz: There's reasons there's process and loss.

0:39:48 Thomas: Used to be pretty easy to be like two wrongs don't make a right or whatever. I don't even know if that's the right one. But, like.

0:39:53 Liz: No, it's not a bad one.

0:39:53 Thomas: Yeah. It's not that hard to separate these issues. Issues.

0:39:57 Liz: No, it's really not.

0:39:58 Thomas: And I really I can't imagine a lot of people being very happy that he's gone. And that's you know, that is what it is. It doesn't make it right. But like, sure, there's no reason that people wouldn't be happy that, you know.

0:40:06 Matt: Yep. We have to respect that. Sure.

0:40:08 Thomas: Like if a foreign government took out Trump right now, I would be like, well, I like that Trump's gone, but doesn't seem like you should be able to do that.

0:40:17 Matt: Yeah. Well, same thing with Saddam Hussein, right? Yeah.

0:40:18 Liz: Foreign government. Yeah, no, it just exactly like it's just no, exactly. No. But point being, no. It's completely right. Like I would I would I would condemn it.

0:40:19 Thomas: You know, if you're listening. No, I'm just kidding.

0:40:28 Thomas: Yep. Yep, all right. Well, we'll take a break and then we'll talk about some of the more immigration stuff and I'm sure a bunch of other random stuff that I'll ask Matt, maybe.

0:40:35 Matt: Some other closing thoughts here. So much more to talk about.

0:40:41 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:40:41 Matt: So I got a lot of great questions from patrons about immigration aspects of this. And of course, the first one that people, I think justifiably, because people have been listening closely over the course of this year. I've had a lot to say about the Alien Enemies Act and about what might happen if tensions with Venezuela increase. So we had questions from General Contact Unit Problem Child, Drew Vogel, James Hamblin, Zach R., kind of all along the same lines, and keeping the plates spinning, an interesting one as well we'll get to, all along same lines about what happens if we have something that looks like hostilities with Venezuela. Could Trump do something, is one question, similar to Japanese internment, which Japanese internment was based on the Alien Enemies act. Essentially, it was a declaration declaration that all German and Japanese citizens would be held, would have to be interned. And that order from Roosevelt we've talked about, that was during a declared state of war, obviously, with those countries. And the Alien Enemies Act does require, for what it's worth, that there either be a declaration of war from Congress or that there be some sort of hostilities or incursion in our territory, not that we started something and now we're at war with them.

0:41:38 Matt: For what it's worth, that's what it says. Now, the Fifth Circuit had come back and said, specifically to Trump, stood up to him and said that this is not something that's appropriate for the Alien and Enemies Act. You can't just say every Venezuelan in the United States can be subject to mass deportation without any due process. But that was reviewed on Bach and reversed, unfortunately, in the last couple of months. Yeah. So the Supreme Court may still be reviewing that. But the thing is that even the Fifth Circuit in that decision was saying essentially because we don't have anything that looks like hostilities. I think if you give them something that looks like hostility, and the reason I'm so concerned about the Fifth circuit is that's where most of our detention centers are, is in Texas, Louisiana, kind of across that belt. And so that could be a real problem if the Trump administration wants to start doing mass deportation. And worst case, and again, I'm not saying this is necessarily where it goes, but worst case is that you get into a situation where your only right, once you're arrested, is to make, if you're very fortunate, make a habeas claim before a federal judge. You don't get to see an immigration judge. You don'T get any other defense to your deportation, and the best that you can do is say, hey, I'M not actually Venezuelan, because there's foreseeable a circumstance here where they could just start picking up anybody who they can call Venezuelian,

0:42:41 Matt: Including U .S. citizens, potentially, essentially, and sending them wherever. So that has always been my concern with the On Enemies Act. I think under other circumstances, under another administration, I would say that's sort of an outlier concern. But at this point, who knows, right? That is something to look out for.

0:42:53 Thomas: No kidding.

0:42:54 Matt: So that is certainly, I'm glad people are asking that question, because it means I appreciate you even listening.

0:42:58 Thomas: I got a question for doing along the immigration angle. Is there a possibility he'll get picked up by ice in the courtroom and then deported?

0:43:07 Matt: That was actually, there's a question along those lines. What if he's, yeah, right.

0:43:10 Thomas: Yeah, no, there should be. Cause it's an interesting thing that I've been thinking about that I I've Been trying to figure out how to make the point because I think so many people don't understand. It's a point that, you know, you've made and I've I've tried to echo often on the show how stupid and contrary to justice it is to be abducting people who might be in the middle. They could be witnesses to crimes. They could, you know, they could be the perpetrator and we might want to see them brought to justice. But no, because of Trump's immigration agenda, they're just going to be gone. We have no idea if they're even going to face consequences necessarily where they're going to be deported to or maybe they'll face way too harsh consequences. We don't know. Right. Right. And it's kind of weird that in this instance, though, we're like, well, let's bring this criminal into the country when before it's like, wow, we got to get we're going to get rid of all of them. We got to Get rid of All the the ones that are here illegally and are the bad hombres. Well, this is a bad hombre. Right. But we're taking him in. Interesting.

0:43:52 Matt: Somebody who would never be able to get a visa under any circumstances otherwise, for multiple reasons. But Drew Vogel did ask, what is Maduro's technical legal status us right now within the immigration system, which is a great question.

0:44:09 Thomas: Hmm. That's a more precise question. Well done.

0:44:13 Matt: And the fact is that for somebody like this, we parole them in, we give them permission to be here so that we can prosecute them. That's a thing we do. And it's for the duration of the prosecution.

0:44:21 Thomas: Can he be like, yeah, I decline. You know, I don't I don' t want to impose. I don''t want to oppose. I decline your.

0:44:23 Matt: Yeah. No, thanks. All that paperwork, come on. If he is still in our custody when the US gets a new president, and that president wanted to end the prosecution, would Maduro be an asylee automatically? So if we terminate the prosecution to drop it, which I think even with another president, I don't know know. Who knows?

0:44:41 Thomas: Boy, yeah, that's God.

0:44:43 Liz: I mean, well, the thing is, like, I mean like the sort of the way that I just want to like not normalize as my dog runs at me probably screaming. I don't know if you guys heard that, but I want to not normalise like a whole new president. You'll just dismiss the prosecution like, you're not supposed to do that. Like, like, that's that, like just, just let's, let us, let

0:44:57 Matt: But no, yeah. No, no. Yes, you're

0:44:58 Thomas: No effing kidding. Great point. It shouldn't even be in our vocabulary.

0:45:03 Liz: Us not normalize that because it's like not like also, and I just want to say that like the Biden administration was under a lot of pressure to like basically tournament a whole bunch of prosecutions that were arguably politically motivated or otherwise problematic or not in keeping with their current policies. And they're like, no, like the indictment, like we're not going to interfere with the Department of Justice. We're not going to try to get the indictment.

0:45:05 Matt: Great point, Liz.

0:45:28 Thomas: Oh, yeah. That's bullshit.

0:45:28 Liz: They took some version of the moral high road.

0:45:32 Thomas: We've learned that didn't do anything. So let's go the opposite this time.

0:45:36 Liz: Exactly. So I just want to note, I just don't want to normalize, like, oh, someone new comes in, you just dismiss it. But anyway, keep going.

0:45:42 Matt: Thank you. That's a very important note.

0:45:43 Thomas: Yeah, well, that is. That's a good point. And well, but to try to apply it to the situation, I think it would be one thing if there are a bunch of prosecutions that are just bogus that Trump did. I think whoever, if a Democrat wins, I think they should dismiss those because that that's been the new rule. Let me know if I'm wrong. That's been a new rule, but something like this, it's not as though this is like a good guy who's being railroaded. So I, it becomes a little, yeah, it's like, well, I

0:45:50 Liz: Matt, this one's a little tough. This one's a little tough, let's put it that way.

0:46:06 Matt: There's enough to stick here for sure.

0:46:07 Thomas: Guess you could deport it. You could say like, no, let's deport him to face justice where he should face justice or something. Yeah. Okay. Sure.

0:46:12 Matt: Well, that's the next question.

0:46:13 Liz: Well, I don't think he's, I mean, is he facing political persecution in Venezuela

0:46:16 Thomas: I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out by

0:46:17 Matt: So he might be. He might be so that's next question,

0:46:19 Liz: That would make him an asylee.

0:46:21 Thomas: The time he's three, two, how many years are we from another president? Three, maybe be uh possibly I don't know three three plus from a new president

0:46:25 Matt: Right? Exactly. Who knows by then? Who's in charge?

0:46:28 Liz: I don't know. Maybe get him convicted and then pardon him. Do the Trump playbook. Whatever.

0:46:32 Matt: But I did want to just to play this out because it was part of the patron question was what happens if he's found not guilty. And because I just think it's an interesting question. I did meant to mention actually that Alvarez Machin, the doctor that we brought in after torturing him, he was actually found not guilt. He was acquitted after all that. Yeah. When the Supreme Court found he could be tried. Yeah, I know.

0:46:36 Thomas: Hmm wow holy shit just as a curiosity why was he found not guilty because does that mean we did something horrible to a totally innocent person or was it some amount of like jury nullification was it something you know like any idea or just don't now

0:46:55 Matt: I actually don't know. I don't have the case that well, actually. I just know he was ultimately acquitted.

0:47:04 Thomas: Oh wow that is okay pin in that that is wow horrifying fine.

0:47:06 Matt: Yeah. It's an interesting case for a lot of reasons. But I did want to note, just sort of play this out, that if he found not Guilty, he would immediately be taken into ICE custody. He'd he'd be held as a mandatory detainee because he was alleged at some point to have had some dealings with drug trafficking, which makes him mandatory no matter what, probably, very likely. And also, I think that there'd be all kinds of other arguments about why you have to hold him and then send him back. Now, as the patron notes, it's very possible that a new Venezuelan administration that, let's just say that Trump gets actually what he wants and we are greeted as liberators and we have an American -friendly regime that doesn't want him back, at that point, we'd have to deport him to a safe third country. He could actually try to claim asylum in the United States. You could see how that goes for him. If he's facing a hostile

0:47:16 Thomas: He's a bad hombre. Yeah. Boy, that'd be weird.

0:47:47 Matt: Regime that wants to... And now again, if they want to put him on trial for stuff he did in Venezuela, because he's done a lot of terrible things in Venezuela. That's not an asylum claim. You have to go back and face those charges. But if he had a legitimate political asylum claim where he's saying that, I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm just saying that he could try it. But yeah, ultimately he would be deported if he were found out guilty.

0:48:05 Matt: So let's just talk about the future of all of this. We've got a few more minutes. We had a few More questions about how we can keep any of this from happening again, which is an important question, I think. Great start. Let's do that.

0:48:11 Thomas: Oh, maybe don't elect a fascist for a second term. God.

0:48:17 Liz: Like just little future. Can we do like little future? Like kind of apparently, apparently Maduro will be appearing in SDNY tomorrow at noon. So, you know, we'll have some answers.

0:48:19 Matt: Yes, near term, as you're hearing this. Sure.

0:48:29 Liz: Maybe he'll have a lawyer. So tomorrow would be

0:48:32 Thomas: And you're going to be right, right there.

0:48:32 Liz: Monday, which maybe when you guys. Yeah, I'll be right down the street and there definitely won't be any traffic jams. The transporting of Maduro, back when they, oh my God, when they were prosecuting, what's his name? The guy who always escapes, El Chapo. Back when they Were prosecuting El Chapos, El Chopo was being transported from the same prison, MDC, into the Southern District. And at one point, or maybe one or two days, they shut down the entirety of the Brooklyn Bridge for the purposes of transport. And I swear to you, the entire city rioted. Everyone was like, this is nonsense.

0:49:00 Thomas: Oh my God. That is so good. Yeah, that's unnecessary. Come on.

0:49:05 Liz: You cannot do this. So I am curious about what the sort of situation will be in terms of security and kind of like transporting them back and forth. But I will tell you that New Yorkers will not abide by more traffic.

0:49:05 Matt: Like it's the Joker. Yeah.

0:49:06 Thomas: That's ridiculous. Wow. Yeah good. No, that makes sense. I was going to ask you, what timeline can we expect on this kind of thing? How long might Might like he just be sitting there, you know, what what factors go into how long a prosecution like this might take? Wow.

0:49:32 Liz: This is the sortof case that, of course, is going to go to trial, I would say, anywhere from one to two years from now, depending on... Oftentimes, defense will want longer delays leading up to trial. You know, more time to review discovery, gather experts, make motions. Investigations and prosecution is, are the ones ironically sort of not, not pushing for a quote unquote speedy trial and trying to like resist defense attempts to, I don't know, prepare for trial. So it's going to be depend on who his defense lawyers are and who the judges are and kind of also the nature of like how much discovery is there here. I mean, I'm sure there's going to be quite a lot of documents and things like that.

0:50:06 Matt: As we've discussed, a lot of possibilities for pretrial motions on this one, a load of unprecedented stuff potentially.

0:50:11 Thomas: Kidding. Gosh.

0:50:11 Matt: Even if we don't think that the strongest arguments, they're going to make them. And if recent precedent is any indicator, maybe the Supreme Court is interested in reviewing a presidential immunity claim. So maybe they'll hold up the entire trial to get it up there for an interlocutor appeal. Who knows?

0:50:18 Liz: So yeah.

0:50:22 Thomas: My presidential immunity claim. Why would that how would that work?

0:50:25 Matt: As we were discussing, that's one thing he's going to argue, is that he's the lawful sitting president of Venezuela and that we can't prosecute him.

0:50:31 Thomas: Oh, like the idea that like the bullshit they did for Trump would somehow apply to other leaders. Would.

0:50:35 Matt: Yeah. It turns out,

0:50:36 Liz: I don'T think there's going to BE any sort of like interlocutory appeals here, like at all. Like, okay. All All right. Just to be clear, like, just so we're not, I know that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think, no, there's not going to be any sort of any of that stuff, unfortunately.

0:50:38 Matt: No. I'm kind of joking, but yeah. I mean,

0:50:39 Thomas: Yeah. OK. Just look, the non -lawyers don't know when you're joking anymore because things are so ridiculous. Ridiculous. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Liz.

0:50:50 Matt: It could happen. Alvarez Machin was an interlacutor agent.

0:50:52 Liz: No, I really don't think so. I really, I mean, I strongly, it's very rare to see that. Like during, before a criminal trial, like I don'T remember the last time the U .S. Supreme Court has reviewed a district court decision before a trial has commenced.

0:51:03 Matt: It's a very unusual defendant.

0:51:04 Thomas: Was it Trump trial? Did they do that with one of the Trump trials?

0:51:06 Matt: Yeah, they did. That's how we got there. But who knows? And this is not a defendant that the Supreme from Gordon likes, but you know, who knows?

0:51:13 Thomas: Exactly. And that, unfortunately, is probably all that mattered in that.

0:51:16 Matt: Right. I think so. So let's, let's take a couple of questions here. Vehicular Man's Laughter, gunning for final third asks, enumerate some of the war crimes that Trump and co would face in a just world, parentheses, not this one.

0:51:27 Matt: I want to note, because I meant to mention this before when we were talking about, Liz had mentioned the UN charter from July, 1945. That was of course, when we Were planning the Nuremberg trials in July, 1945, thinking about what to do with all of these Nazis, inventing international law, international criminal law, as we know it.

0:51:40 Thomas: Boy, times haven't changed much, have they? Because we're thinking what to do with all these Nazis. What do we do with all these Nazi's, guys?

0:51:47 Matt: I Think the Nürnberg trial is a pretty pretty good model.

0:51:48 Thomas: Oh, yeah. No kidding.

0:51:48 Matt: But one of the crimes that you don't really think about, because Nuremberg, obviously, you think about the very worst things the Nazis did, which, of course, were the worst things that humans ever did to each other on an industrial scale. But the very first thing they were charged with was aggression, which is the crime of just invading another country, because Hitler did that all the time. And that is the first thing that I think that Trump and everybody involved in this decision, except everybody else, like, if they're in a just world, they should be charged with aggression the same way that Vladimir Putin should be.

0:52:13 Matt: You know, obviously, for what he did to Ukraine, it's the same thing.

0:52:14 Thomas: That's interesting. So a serious question. I know we're so used to, and we shouldn't, we shouldn't become like do any sort of learned helplessness thing because we should keep the mindset that rules should still matter and all that. So like, is there actually a possibility of let's say president AOC or whatever, you know, is There a possibility of actually prosecuting people for this? I mean, I guess the Supreme court has said that Trump can do whatever the few wants anytime, all the time, but are there any chances? Yeah.

0:52:38 Liz: Just Trump. I mean he, he probably would would be dead I mean I I think there are of course I think there are significant possibilities for oh I'm just talking about well no no I'm saying yeah

0:52:44 Matt: Jurisdictions, it is in the head, though, for this.

0:52:44 Thomas: But who, oh, for that? Well, but I thought you said, hold on. You said the UN thing was the law of the land because we ratified it, right?

0:52:53 Liz: I'm talking about doing prosecutions under u .s law under president aoc I think that's totally possible yeah

0:52:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Me too. So they could cite the UN thingy we cited, which again, you said is the law. That wasn't the ICC. That actually is the law, so what is the process for that kind of law being violated?

0:53:13 Matt: Well, I think,

0:53:13 Liz: I mean that's that that's a huge that's huge question of thinking through a process of prosecuting a previous like criminal regime I don't I don' don't have that answer for you on the, on the. But I think that there, yeah, there absolutely is a way. And I think there are ways that we can sort of prosecute them for conspiracy. I don't know that conspiracy to commit, you know, certain types of violent acts. I mean, I think that that's what you would look at. Right.

0:53:39 Liz: You'd look at the killings of Venezuelans and servants of this. Yeah.

0:53:41 Matt: Murder, certainly. Yeah.

0:53:42 Thomas: Right. Yeah, we still keep not talking about that, which is so, I keep forgetting. Wow.

0:53:46 Matt: Massive property damage, sure. Lots of other things. And kidnapping, obviously, abduction. But the crime itself of aggression would have to be prosecuted in the ICC, I believe, like the actual, the international criminal charge. And in a very just world, to answer the question here, we would form a tribunal like we did for Rwanda or for against Milosevic, right? To sort of look at all the things the Trump administration did in this way, you know, potentially even looking at domestically some of the things that we did. But that's going a little too far. But you could have a special tribunal convened internationally just for the purpose of examining US crimes. Not going to happen, but that's just to answer the hypothetical just world scenario. And that's what we got.

0:53:47 Liz: I am.

0:54:23 Thomas: On that point though, on the not going to happen, I think we need to start bending the Overton window towards justice, bending the arc of the Overton window towards justice. And we need to just start, because again, this is the one thing, the major thing about Trump and MAGA that we need to replicate is stop killing the argument for ourselves. How about we all just say, yeah, they should be, they should be prosecuted. Here's my plan when I win, here's my plan to prosecute them.

0:54:45 Matt: There should be a tribunal.

0:54:48 Thomas: I don't care if it's maybe not going to happen. Let's let that fall where it may. And let's do the part where we say, oh, this this is how it works and should work. And this is how we're going to make it work if we win. And if something happens, if shit happens, then we are very clear. And I guess I'm advocating toward whoever our, you know, our next Democratic candidates are or something, but like make very clear who stopped it and why. And be very clear about that. Like, I don't want, we don't, we've seen how much the Obama approach is as noble as it was and right in many ways, but not, but not in this era. You know, like we need to just punish people who did bad things, or at least say that we're going to do that. We can't give up ahead of time. I'm so sick of that.

0:55:29 Matt: No, and totally.

0:55:29 Liz: I agree. I totally agree.

0:55:31 Matt: And we should do it to Vladimir Putin too. I mean, there should be tribunal for Russia to look at everything that's happened with Ukraine because it's unforgivable. It should not have been on his That's right.

0:55:38 Thomas: The law isn't going to matter again until we make it. It's that we can't wait around for someone else to do it. As Democrats, I hope the party, or maybe some of the younger leaders, or it may not even age, just some of the leaders who are taking more of a proactive approach and not the old tried and false way way of going about things. I hope we can get some new energy behind this kind of thing.

0:56:00 Liz: I agree with you. And I think one of the more depressing conversations I had this year was I was speaking to a sort of never Trump style former prosecutor who was like, yeah, yeah. We should like prosecute all these people. We write like all these reports. We like do all this stuff. And then what we should do is we should pardon everybody.

0:56:18 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. What? Yeah. So dumb.

0:56:19 Liz: And he was like what? And he was like you know it's just like because otherwise they're going to do the same thing to us. I'm like they already did.

0:56:25 Thomas: They already did. God.

0:56:29 Liz: So anyway I just I hope that we can I hope that we realize that we unfortunately are in a new era of politics and like being cute and Obama like is it will result in us all dying. Yeah.

0:56:29 Thomas: Unbelievable. That's so funny. Or Merrick Garland-like.

0:56:42 Matt: So to leave on a somewhat hopeful note here to kind of end things. No, I, yeah, that's fair. You're right. You're right.

0:56:45 Liz: I like that.

0:56:45 Thomas: Well, that's hopeful. Hold on. That's hopeful. The hopeful is let's do it. You know, let's pressure everybody here. We're pretty much most people listening are taking part in like democratic politics in some way. And let's, you know, try to move that Overton window, try to make this a reality.

0:56:57 Matt: Well, and I'm going to give you a reality we can make happen next week. Next week.

0:57:01 Thomas: All right, here we go. I'm excited. Oh, next week. Damn it.

0:57:03 Liz: All right. Let's go. Wait. I didn't know about this. No.

0:57:06 Matt: Let me get the details, but this is something that we could actually do. Under the War Powers Act, the Senate has the authority and has been trying for a little while now to stop the president from doing military stuff.

0:57:06 Thomas: I want that now. Oh right. Yeah.

0:57:18 Matt: And so Tim Kaine has said he's going to be forcing a vote within a few days to block any further military action against Venezuela. And all they need is four Republicans. It's just four Republicans, I

0:57:26 Thomas: And Schumer said something that if you have the answer real quick, somehow this isn't subject to the filibuster because it's got some special status. Do you know what that is?

0:57:36 Matt: Believe because of the War Powers Act. They wanted to make it easier for the Congress to overrule the president when he's just invading countries, I think.

0:57:41 Thomas: Okay, I guess what I wasn't sure about is we're trying to pass something, but I guess the part that makes it, that you can bypass the filibuster is whatever the old War Powers Act thing is or what?

0:57:50 Liz: Yeah.

0:57:50 Matt: The War Powers Resolution. Yeah. So there's a good reason for this, obviously, that we want to expedite this consideration and make sure that we, I mean, it's just, it's good law. It makes sense.

0:57:59 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Good to know though.

0:58:01 Matt: Yeah, in terms of further military reaction, at least we can stop that much or create a constitutional crisis in the process. But let's do the right thing and pass the resolution and tell Trump he can't do anything else to Venezuela. That's common sense. It's easy stuff. And there have to be. I know this is going to sound so idealistic, but for Republicans, I would hope.

0:58:14 Thomas: I know. Are there four? You would think, you would think there's gotta be. I am. Yeah boy, there's got to be. I hope there is. Maybe I won't say there's gonna be, but he's been so unpopular. You know, he's like, I don't know. I just worry that I haven't I haven't seen much yet. So I'm worried that maybe for some reason, Republicans who might be opposing Trump on like Epstein and stuff, like aren't really going to oppose him on this. I don'T know. We'll see.

0:58:20 Liz: Four. Yeah.

0:58:24 Matt: Hey, if you live in a state and you're listening to this where you have a Republican senator, then check in and see how they're feeling about it. Because this one's worth getting out in the streets for. Because if we let them do this, this is going to be a very bad precedent for the world.

0:58:51 Thomas: What's next? And what? Yeah. What is China going to do? What is the you know, like, this is this we don't we don'T get to take a holier than thou mindset to some of these other countries when we're doing this shit, you know?

0:59:03 Matt: Yeah, no, if we're stretching self-defense to the point that we're just saying, you're selling drugs in our country, so we get to bomb you, right?

0:59:08 Thomas: Ridiculous.

0:59:09 Matt: What do you think Putin's going to do to Europe, right, I mean, if he feels the least bit threatened or says he is?

0:59:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:14 Matt: So, yeah, no,

0:59:12 Liz: Exactly. Well, yeah, absolutely

0:59:16 Thomas: Well, thank you both for doing this. I really think this is the coverage I've seen on this. It's just not good. Like, it's just it's too wishy washy. It'S it'S there's something really rotten about our media environment in a way that is is not we've gotten worse. Like it hasn't, it's not outright like sinister all the time, but there's something about this approach to the Sunday shows taking this media takes. I listened to the daily on this as well. That's just, it's not good enough. It's not cutting it.

0:59:21 Matt: I agree.

0:59:30 Liz: I totally agree yeah

0:59:44 Matt: No, it's, yeah.

0:59:44 Thomas: And I don't know what the answer is, but it's not that. And so I thank you both so much for doing this and everybody who's listening and supporting for making this happen. Cause this was really helpful to me.

0:59:54 Matt: Just have to make the point about CNN. There's a story I'm looking at right now called Inside the Operation, colon, how the US moved to capture Nicolas Maduro. Five people on this byline, and they do not mention anywhere, not even like a some experts say, nowhere does it mention

1:00:07 Thomas: No, they're just jacking off to the military bullshit.

1:00:07 Matt: That this is obviously illegal. Yeah. To the excitement of it. Yeah, right.

1:00:10 Thomas: Oh, this operation. Yeah. It was pristine.

1:00:10 Liz: Capture not kidnap I'm sorry

1:00:14 Thomas: It was lethal. And it was, what are all the stupid adjectives?

1:00:19 Matt: Kinetic! It was kinetic. Yeah, I love that.

1:00:19 Thomas: Precise, kinetic. Yeah, kinetic, assholes. So dumb.

1:00:23 Matt: And Washington Post, their first response is, well, how is this going to affect the Trump base, right? Just where are our minds? What is going on?

1:00:28 Thomas: Yeah, I'm that. God, I am so sick of that. That's maybe the worst part. Because again, I made this point, but that gets to be looked at again as objective because they're just getting to say, well, some people will say this and some people say this. Instead of get somebody to actually look into the law on this and make a firm statement as a matter of journalism legalism that, hey, this isn't legal. I don't want to hear, well, Democrats say it's not legal. I don't want to HEAR that. I want to hear, this ISN'T legal. Like, like experts who matter, who have, like, who aren't just MAGA, are clear. This is illegal.

1:00:43 Matt: Yeah, 100

1:00:58 Thomas: You know, just give me that much. Come on.

1:01:01 Matt: % of our experts agree. That's completely illegal. Here we are having

1:01:03 Thomas: Awesome. All right. Well, a big thank you again. Thanks to everyone listening. And thanks, Liz and Matt. Really appreciate this. This was, this was great.

1:01:11 Matt: Fun. Can't help it.

1:01:12 Thomas: All right. Well we'll see everyone probably, I guess, I, I don't, you know what, this threw a wrench in things. I DON'T Friday one way or the other.

1:02:02 Matt: Potentially some of the pretrial arguments that could go awry for them would be better off... Oh, I'm sorry, sorry, hold on. What is getting a call? I wasn't expecting it. I don't know why it's doing that. Sorry. Let me just, I don't even know which window that's coming from.

1:02:06 Thomas: A call or something. Was that Skype?

1:02:16 Matt: Too many windows open. Okay, there we go. All right.

1:02:18 Liz: I know, I know it sounds like skype

1:02:18 Thomas: I don't know. Yeah. I'm trying to remember like what that even is.

1:02:20 Matt: That is my mom. That was Google Voice calling me. I'll call her back.

1:02:24 Thomas: Yeah, that was a really smart bit of pandering.

1:02:26 Matt: It is? Yeah. No, it's great pandering. It's world-class pandering, wow.

1:02:28 Thomas: Wow. Fantastic. 10 out of 10 pandering!

1:02:33 Liz: Basically rioted and was like you cannot do this Walter just um knocked over my router yeah it seems to be fine

1:02:34 Thomas: Whoa, who just dropped something? Okay, what? Oh shit. Like if a foreign government took out Trump right now, I would be like, well, I like that Trump's gone, but doesn't it seem like you should be able to do that.