Farewell to Pam Bondi, the worst AG in US History... SO FAR!

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Clip: Thank you.

0:00:03 Matt: The first six months, ProPublica estimates that she dismissed more than 23,000 pending cases. An entire story from the NBR website that does not mention why the Supreme Court did this. So let

0:00:32 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1251. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing?

0:00:38 Matt: It's April in Austin, Thomas, which means that it is 35 degrees outside, and I'm just ready for this to be done. I'm ready for spring. You haven't spring yet?

0:00:45 Thomas: Mail you some heat. We got plenty. I feel like we should double the number of lawyers on the show. Why? I don't know. I'm not sure why I feel that way, but we should. How's Jenessa doing? Secret stealth Jenessa guest.

0:00:58 Matt: Jenessa.

0:00:56 Jenessa: I am also trying to survive. It's not tech. They're very insistent New York is not New England. I don't fully understand why.

0:01:07 Matt: It is not. Thank you. End of discussion. You don't live in New England. If I'd known you were going to come and argue about this.

0:01:13 Jenessa: Whatever this cultural thing is, I am not in New England, but I am participating in the weather and it's not good.

0:01:20 Thomas: Know nothing about this other than why would that be? Why would it not be New England?

0:01:25 Matt: It's not culture, it is geography. Also, there is the Yankees -Red Sox divide that will forever, even though I don't care.

0:01:29 Jenessa: That might explain it.

0:01:31 Thomas: But why?

0:01:32 Matt: Yeah, that's a lot of it.

0:01:32 Thomas: But yeah, there's a geographical New England.

0:01:36 Matt: Yeah, of course there is, uh, the New England Tourism Council actually kicked out Connecticut because they didn't pay their dues, and I don't think that Connecticut's part of the part of england anyway it's

0:01:43 Thomas: Well, then it sounds like it's not geographical. It's more as much as a subscription based service. Yeah, exactly.

0:01:49 Matt: A protection racket yeah be

0:01:52 Thomas: Can I get into New England if I if I sweeten the pot, if I make it worthwhile? Well. Well, know, we thought it would be fun. There was apparently so much good election news that Jenessa wanted to come hop on the Rapid Response Friday to give us an update. Is

0:01:52 Matt: A real shame if yeah now featuring thomas smith yeah

0:02:07 Jenessa: I I have good news for you. I have some interesting stuff, and I have math, but I'll make it fun and easy. Don't worry.

0:02:15 Thomas: Well, Matt just logged out. You've lost

0:02:17 Matt: See you in a while many

0:02:19 Thomas: Me, my other lawyer, so I'm going to sue you.

0:02:24 Matt: People in my life have promised to make math fun and it's It's never worked, but maybe you can, maybe you can.

0:02:27 Jenessa: I'll try my best.

0:02:28 Thomas: Can't make something what it already is uh I'm excited um about the math than the than the election crap whatever that is uh no I'm just kidding can't wait we thought it'd be fun to do a little uh you know cross the streams to for the good news so we will take our first break which you can avoid at patreon.com/law avoid those ads they're annoying get rid of them pledge to the show. We'll take a quick break and then we'll be on with Matt and Jenessa for some fun updates. So what's the good word?

0:03:01 Jenessa: So we had some elections yesterday as recording, so it's a couple of days ago when you're hearing this. And it was Marjorie Taylor Greene's old district in Georgia so it'll be up again in November but somebody's got to represent it in the meanwhile and she did she's bounced um so they had a special to replace her um she was uh not not sticking out the rest of the term she's gone so

0:03:21 Thomas: She resign? I am so not into that.

0:03:37 Thomas: Huh? No. Now the house can't get all the stuff done that they were going to do.

0:03:44 Jenessa: I oh dear how terrible yeah

0:03:47 Matt: Was kind of a fascinating arc with MTG there. She really, cause she was a true believer. She came in as a QAnon conspiracy nut, Jewish space lasers, the whole deal. And then she actually started reading the New York times at some point and went woke. So yeah, according to the New York times journalist who was working with her, you know, interviewing with her. She actually like downloaded the New York times app, started reading it and realized that she had, yeah, no, I'm not saying she's had a full conversion. Version. I'm just saying that she started to read reality.

0:03:58 Thomas: What? Are you? Wait, are you pranking us right now? No, because of course she would still be just as anti -trans as the MAGA if you read the New York Times. But

0:04:18 Matt: Oh, yeah. This No. is not a pro -MTG comment, but this is what happened.

0:04:21 Thomas: That is. Wow. I hadn't heard that.

0:04:23 Jenessa: Has at no point apologized for like the harm caused by talking about jewish space lasers she

0:04:30 Thomas: Yeah, those need to be kept secret. You can't talk about them.

0:04:32 Jenessa: Has said she doesn't really believe in that

0:04:36 Matt: Sure. Right, right. She didn't really ever believe in it. That's right.

0:04:39 Jenessa: I don't think she's acknowledged like how that hurts people or like anti -Semitism, but she has said that she doesn't think that, you know, QAnon's real anymore. So,

0:04:50 Matt: Baby steps, baby steps.

0:04:51 Thomas: Really? I just have so little interest in that person that I haven't followed any of this. But there you go.

0:04:57 Matt: Have to say that the thing that really did radicalize her did seem to be the Epstein files, like a lot of people, I think, seeing just how complicit Trump was, because I think she actually believed he was going to do something about it somehow. She really was that person. So yeah, not giving her any more credit than she deserves, but

0:05:11 Thomas: Do something about the hymn.

0:05:15 Jenessa: Continue to maintain I think she is laundering her reputation for a run for something big. Like she is out there making campaign speeches. She is doing the like Trump said he was going to work for, you know, working class Americans and he's not doing that. He should should be doing this this this it's

0:05:29 Thomas: Well, that's what I thought it was. I thought that's all it was, but if you're telling me there's also some like New York Times, you angle to it. That's really interesting. But anyway, okay.

0:05:41 Jenessa: A little bit of both

0:05:41 Thomas: Is that so who won? What was somebody just as bad or worse?

0:05:45 Matt: What can we learn here?

0:05:47 Jenessa: Okay so her previous district right first time she won it in 2020 it went 75 25 like this is not a competitive district in 2022 midterms 2024 presidential 65 35 so I guess like it's that's a decent swing but like meaningful way. That is not a competitive district, 65 -35. Special election was 56 -44. Six years, we went from a 50 -point gap to a 12 -point gap.

0:06:20 Jenessa: Like, this is a competitive District. Do I think a Democrat is going to win this? Probably not. But they're going to have to spend money to win this District. Like, This is not safe anymore.

0:06:32 Thomas: It's also just a sign of the rising tide. Even if it's a seat that's never going to be ours, seeing it improve that much means something.

0:06:41 Jenessa: Huge. It's a one more reflection of the trend that is happening. Also, the Democrat who ran Sean Harris, it's the same person who ran in 2024. So you can't like blame it on a better Democrat or something. Thing um the republicans still won but like there were people trying to do oh no no no it there's lower turnout this is a special election it's not going to mean anything um I did the math on okay it's true the turnout's like half what you would expect in a midterm let alone a presidential I'm going to take a guess and say the people who turned out in this special election to vote for a representative in this district are probably going to turn out six months from now to vote für a repräsentative in this distrikt, they're probably going to vote pretty much the same way. The people who, the extra people, let's imagine turnout's the same as 2022, how would they have to break in order to get back to a 65 -35 split? Like, oh, this isn't real. This is not a real trend. This district will look 65 -35 again. They would have to break these new people 76 % in favor of Republicans. I don't think that's happening. This real to me. Those -turnout people would haveと be overwhelmingly Republicans, like better than this district has ever done for Republicans. Republicans.

0:08:11 Matt: It's a deep, deep red district, as I remember. I mean, you gave this numbers already, but I mean it's like up there with Matt Gaetz's was one of the most conservative in the country. And I was just wondering, I think it was Clay Fuller, I don't know if it was the district attorney who was the Republican candidate.

0:08:24 Matt: Did he have her backing, blessing? Passing? Did she appear with him?

0:08:27 Jenessa: Know, I don't actually know. I understanding is she's been just like doing her own thing. But he got a Trump endorsement.

0:08:33 Matt: See, actually, she declared she wouldn't endorse a candidate. I just looked.

0:08:36 Jenessa: Sounds like what I would have expected. Yeah so still doing the like social media podcast circuit but she She is not doing the like participating almost at all in official politics, as far as I can tell. Big swing. I doubt it'll go for a Democrat in the general in six months, but I don't think it's going back to a 65 -35 split. I don'T think it'S safe by any means. A lift to try to make that argument that this is just an illusion. I don't think so.

0:09:10 Matt: That's a theme we're seeing around the country right now, right? Of just major pickups. Even if they're not wins, they're closing the gaps.

0:09:13 Jenessa: This swing is absolutely on track for what we have seen. And that's the thing, too, is if this happened in any one race, you could attribute it to a million other factors like God knows what's going on in any One election. This keeps happening over and over and over again in different states, in different counties, in governor, mayor, Supreme Court, Like it just keeps happening everywhere. So I don't think you can dismiss this as a one off. It's a trend that's It'S getting worse as for Republicans as time goes on. Not better for them. So, ignoring this would not be smart. So we've got the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They have an election. They've got seven seats. And can have at most one person up per year. So there's usually like one election every year with a couple of gaps every once in a while. Um democrat chris taylor um know the first name is chris but this is a woman so that's maintaining our 6 -1 majority women on the wisconsin supreme court pretty cool uh us to a 5 -2 liberal majority on the Wisconsin supreme court you might remember rebecca bradley from the wisconsin Supreme Court was a very conservative justice she had a lot of really negative things to say during abortion cases and religion cases um just decided not to seek re -election she

0:10:40 Jenessa: Had some interesting comments about that choice uh was an open seat chris taylor won the democrat 60 40 in wisconsin pretty big

0:10:53 Thomas: That's a pretty 50 -50 place, right?

0:10:55 Jenessa: So there is something interesting here a lot of of headlines are like, oh my god, Trump won this state by less than 1 % and she just won it by a 20 -point gap. Oh my god. I will say this. Historically, looking back 2024, 2020 to 2020, so you look at a president or a senator, they run statewide, they tend to win by like less than 1%. It's a really close state. Looked at a state Supreme Court justice who was a Republican who won And his statewide win was less than 1%. For some reason, when Democrats win a state Supreme Court seat, they tend to win 55 -45. Almost exactly. Don't know what that's about. But in the climate where Democrats win these seats, that tends to be 55 - 45. And happened in 2020.

0:11:54 Jenessa: Correct this down a little bit. We expected her, if she was going to win, and in this climate she was, she should have won 55 -45 and she won 60 -40. It's a 10 -point gain. Like, not nothing. Not the equivalent of saying if Trump ran today, like, the Democrat would beat Trump by 20 points in Wisconsin. I don't think that would be quite accurate to say.

0:12:19 Thomas: I have to imagine that just has to do with But there's definitely going to be a certain percentage of voters that are mainly negative partisanship. And I wonder if just like Supreme Court type stuff doesn't quite engage as much motivation, you know, on that side.

0:12:32 Jenessa: There must be something like that so I think you can make a more plausible argument here that the people who turn out for this one and the people Who turn out in the midterms of the presidential are like not the same people they may behave differently or they're even the same people may behave Differently when they turn out so not read this as a 20 percent swing happened in Wisconsin. Like Wisconsin is going to continue to be a swing state, I bet. That being said, it is still a big swing. And something that's really important is it swung in every county except one. The third most Democratic county went more than before. It went from like 66 % Harris to 44 % for this Democratic. I don't know what the hell happened.

0:13:22 Thomas: That is very weird. Huh.

0:13:24 Jenessa: It's just one county that just behaved very funny.

0:13:29 Thomas: It like tiny?

0:13:31 Jenessa: It looked small on the map, which probably means it's a higher population, you know, like the, it's not a rural county, which of course, yeah, it'S a very Democratic county. I couldn't, neither of the two candidates it's lived there or worked there. Like, I couldn't find a nexus for some reason that county would act funny. Every other county swung more blue by double digits compared to 2024, and would have expected them to go a little more blue. We would not have expected red counties to go 30 points more blue like something happened and then one county acted really weird and I don't know what that's about I

0:14:15 Thomas: It's very bizarre. County just hey, let's just hate this one candidate for some reason. And maybe she just like, I don't know, did some vandalism there one time. I have

0:14:24 Jenessa: Mean they still went 44 points for her but compared to like having gone 66 points for harris

0:14:33 Thomas: Are you were saying that's the gap or wait, sorry, I might have misunderstood which thing you're saying.

0:14:37 Jenessa: So it's still overwhelmingly democratic Democratic

0:14:40 Thomas: Oh, oh, that you when you were seeing that you were staying at the split, basically like above. Oh, OK. Yeah, that's just, you know, that'S just statistics. That'S not. Yeah, I thought you were sayIng it went from like 64 percent, whatever vote for Kamala to 44%. Okay.

0:14:44 Jenessa: That's correct yes who knows no no no Harris won it by 66 point gap and one, but it was one everybody was watching. The mayor of Waukesha? Wau -ke -sha?

0:14:58 Thomas: Gotcha. I misheard that. Okay. That

0:15:07 Matt: Think it's Wakisha.

0:15:08 Jenessa: Wauke

0:15:08 Matt: Yeah. This is a big one.

0:15:09 Thomas: Waukesha.

0:15:10 Jenessa: -shah? -A -U -K -E -S -H -A. Hope I said that right. A suburb of Milwaukee. Milwaukee, you would think like, okay, cool. It's important because, well, first of all, suburbs of the major cities have very interesting political dynamics. Like the cities are very democratic. The suburbs are where, oh, are they rural or are they city? How are they going to behave? Which way are they gonna swing? And it's been consistently pretty Republican. They also have a really interesting history here where the previous mayor who just decided not to seek re -election, Sean Riley. He was a Republican. January 6th, he switched his registration to independent, endorsed Harris, said he was voting for Harris. I'm not seeking re -election. Trump is going to ruin democracy. Like he really did the things you wish a Republican would have done.

0:16:02 Thomas: That's crazy.

0:16:03 Matt: The one. One guy.

0:16:05 Thomas: He had to be run out of town.

0:16:07 Jenessa: A Democrat won the mayor seat. It's a nonpartisan election. Which just means on the ballot they didn't say this person's a democrat this person is a republican but like realistically everybody knew the affiliation of these candidates yeah

0:16:22 Thomas: The was a mayor election? They do a nonpartisan thing. That's interesting.

0:16:26 Jenessa: Places do that like a lot of places um if they elect judges they often do that the

0:16:32 Thomas: I've never, just never heard of it with a mayor.

0:16:34 Jenessa: Me either to be honest I don't quite know why but this woman who was on the city council is now the mayor um far as I went back at least until 2010 the guy before riley he like swore up and down like I don't have a party and then the second he left office he was like endorsing trump and hanging out with republican packs so like probably republican Republican? So at least since 2010, they've had a Republican mayor and they have elected themselves a Democratic mayor. And it's signaling something in this swingy state, in these suburbs that are very swingy. Something might be happening. So that's pretty interesting.

0:17:15 Matt: Highlight this for our international listeners listeners, and maybe for some of our fellow coastal elites. Wisconsin, we're talking so much about Wisconsin because it is such a swing state. As I remember, it was really close both in 2020 and 2024. It was like less than one percentage point. And 2016, yeah. So it was Trump last time and then Biden before that, from what I remember. It's a really big deal that we're seeing these kinds of trends and numbers. And the Supreme Court, I just want to be very clear about this, that 5 -2 majority, as I understand it, carries through 2030, which is a huge deal for everything, and potentially for the things that you care the most about, Jenessa, because it kind of minimizes the amount of election messing we're going to see, I hope.

0:17:26 Jenessa: And 2016. Yeah.

0:17:33 Thomas: Awesome.

0:17:45 Jenessa: Yes. Yes. Mm hmm. They keep coming up for abortion cases, but they have also ruled on quite a few cases about election protection and making sure that people can stay on the ballot, that ballot purges are not happening. Um at least through 2030 if every election for the next couple of years goes as badly as possible by 2031 they would go back to a conservative majority and there's no reason to think it's gonna go badly every time so at least to 2030 they will have a liberal majority uh it's very impactful to be holding on to that 5 -2 instead of like oh god 4 -3.

0:18:34 Matt: Chris Taylor seems awesome. She's a former Planned Parenthood attorney I saw. That's the kind of person you want up there. Good stuff.

0:18:39 Jenessa: Especially to be replacing somebody who's extremely anti -choice. And the person she ran against was someone who worked with Scott Walker, the former governor, on his anti -union campaigns and on gerrymandering in the state, like pro -gerrymandering. So So definitely good to have her not win that seat as well. Definitely a big win there. Are the three main ones I wanted to highlight. I would recommend people check out. There's quite a bit that happened in Wisconsin, and it seems to just be really positive across the board. Trend is continuing, as I have reported on before, that things are going really well. Keep up the momentum. Keep up The Fire. Dear god show up in november um this this is looking good yeah

0:19:28 Matt: Love to hear it, Jenessa.

0:19:30 Thomas: So cool. What a fun update. Looking good. We got to make sure we keep that up. And we also, I will not, yuck, you're yum. I am a little pessimistic, but I won't get into that now, but we'll just say we need to make Sure we continue this and build momentum and try to make sure that when Trump is gone, we can still maintain any kind of positive momentum because I worry about that long -term. But I'll take the good news and I really hope that we can do something major in the midterms.

0:19:54 Matt: Yes, always

0:20:02 Thomas: Thanks so much for stopping by.

0:20:01 Jenessa: Absolutely good talking to you yeah

0:20:05 Thomas: Maybe we'll see you again soon. Right, well, let's take a break and then we'll get on with the show.

0:20:04 Matt: A pleasure. All

0:20:06 Jenessa: Uh definitely soonish

0:20:16 Thomas: Matt, we saw, I think a lot of people saw some Steve Bannon related headlines, which are pretty much never good. Supreme The Court, something, something Steve Bannon struck down something, and I think people are not quite understanding this. I read a little into it. It did strike me as something that maybe use what do you think

0:20:34 Matt: A little bit. I'm actually going to try out a new feature here. I am calling it rapid response in the middle of our rapid response Friday, because sometimes the news just makes you mad. I saw a lot of people getting very mad at the Supreme Court over this news, and I would like to step in once in a while and maybe judge how mad should you be and to whom, at whom, not to whom.

0:20:58 Matt: Watch my prepositions. I am not an expert on anger, as it's pretty well known by now, but I do get very annoyed by things.

0:20:57 Thomas: Mad to you so on brand getting mad mad to mad from from you oh man I just I don't even know okay how do people do it

0:21:08 Matt: I mean, I will not say that this is not unlike getting sex advice from your priest, but I'm going to do my best here. I can see why people are annoyed about this, but I'm going to tell you you're mad at the wrong people. People you should be mad at are the Department of Justice, which is going to be the rest of this episode, not just the Bannon story. To say something because the NPR story, I was just clicking through just to see how this has been covered. An entire story from the NBR website that does not mention why the Supreme Court did this. So let me just back this up and tell you what happened and why, and why this is actually completely routine and unfortunately normal. It doesn't mean it's good, to be clear. We don't like it. It's normal. Happened here, of course, is that Steve Bannon was convicted for contempt of Congress. We talked about this a few months ago when he he was challenging his sentence. Thought it was kind of an interesting appeal, but was essentially arguing against the state of the law and trying to say that he didn't go to the January 6th committee because his lawyers told him that he did not have to and that he was privileged,

0:22:00 Matt: And that defense has already been tried and does not work. The D.C. Circuit did not like it. So he was trying to get a cert petition going to the Supreme Court to have them review this question, an interesting question. There are some things to look at there, but But in the meantime, the Department of Justice did what it's been doing with a lot of Trump's friends and allies and donors, as we'll talk about later.

0:22:00 Thomas: January 6th uh people and Yeah.

0:22:21 Matt: To dismiss before one J. Nichols, as recently portrayed by Thomas Smith on Gabble Gabble. Judge Nichols. Yes, we know him well now. Is responsible because, obviously, he originally oversaw this trial. Filed this motion to dissimise the indictment with him. And he's the person who ultimately has to do it if they're going to do it. In February, the Trump administration filed its brief saying you should accept cert so that you can remand it for the explicit purpose of sending it back because we're filing a motion to dismiss in the interest of justice. This is the prosecutor show. Now judge Nichols can have a hearing and ask a lot of questions. Like if you remember what happened with the Eric items indictment, right? Where that was ultimately dismissed, but it was, there was a lot question at the time for good reason about why this has being dismissed, who was responsible for having it dismissed, what the motives were. And Judge Nichols could have that hearing, and I think he should, because it's clearly being done for a friend of Trump's. The Supreme Court can't do that because all they can really do is the government saying, we filed this motion below. It's our case. We We want to dismiss it. I don't think the Supreme court really has a lot of authority to take cert and try to decide whether or not it should be remanded at this point. I think it just has to be remmanded. How that works. Did want to point out that the same day that they did this for Steve Bannon, they also did it for Alexander Sittenfield, who's a Cincinnati City Council member. He was convicted of bribery in 2022, pretty much exactly the same kind of thing, a fraud, white collar kind of thing, where they were granting cert for the purpose of remanding it so the Trump administration could dismiss the case, presumably for some kind of corrupt reasons.

0:23:50 Matt: He this is routine. And in its brief, the Trump administration pointed out how routine it is by naming a bunch of cases where it's happened recently.

0:23:56 Thomas: It's all theirs. This is routine. We routinely pardon and drop prosecutions of corrupt people. Happens literally all the time.

0:24:05 Matt: So that's what happened. Oh, I wanted to mention as well that there was one amicus brief filed into the Steve Bannon cert proceedings. And I think we could go for a few years without you guessing who filed it. It's amazing. It is really funny. Just think of who really cares.

0:24:16 Thomas: Man. Man, huh, amicus brief. So who cares about being able to say, like, oh, I didn't show up for questioning because, I don't know, the Clintons? Give me a hint.

0:24:31 Matt: It's Iowa. It's the state of Iowa.

0:24:33 Thomas: Oh, the state. Okay, I wouldn't have gotten there.

0:24:36 Matt: The entire state of Iowa rose up as one to protect Steve Bannon and I wanted to mention this because I think that people who live in Iowa should know what their attorney general is getting up to and wasting time doing things like this.

0:24:39 Thomas: What in the world? Oh, my God, yeah.

0:24:47 Matt: Brenna Bird is the current Republican AG in Iowa. She worked for Steve King for a while, so you can guess her politics. But whole brief was not only a waste of time because they're going to do what they're gonna do because of this motion to dismiss, mess. But it's outdated. I mean, she's making this argument. It's a straight up MAGA argument that the subpoena itself was invalid because they didn't like the way the January 6th committee was put together. DC Circuit already reviewed this in May.

0:25:10 Thomas: Sorry, you don't get to do that. You don't get to just not show up for a subpoena because you don't like the thing.

0:25:12 Matt: It's a subpoENA. Right. Because this whole committee is out of order. Yeah, pretty

0:25:18 Thomas: If the freaking Clintons couldn't pull that off, why, you

0:25:23 Matt: Of the Bannon prosecution. I'd be interested to see if Nichols actually has a a hearing.

0:25:27 Thomas: Feel like my Clinton's guest was like, you Know, kind of creative, right? You know, I did not predict it would be a freaking state. It doesn't even make any sense. Oh, we're worried that the state of Iowa will get called in to testify. All of us.

0:25:30 Matt: Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah she had some weird explanation about why it mattered to Iowa but it was really just political obviously. This is what Republicans AGs do. That's the Bannon story. Let's talk a little bit more about the Department of Justice broadly because we haven't had time quite yet with everything going on to say goodbye to Pamela Bondi, 14 months, the longest-lived Attorney General since the 60s.

0:25:58 Thomas: RIP. Really? I would have thought Trump had one.

0:26:04 Matt: Somehow his made it longer.

0:26:06 Thomas: Oh, do you not count the one at the end of Trump one because he. Resigned. Right. And then there would have been someone right at the end of his term. But would think that would be a pretty short one, but maybe not. Oh did they not fill it maybe they left it did

0:26:15 Matt: I checked on this. The shortest tenure was about 75 days in the 1860s, in terms terms of Senate -confirmed stays in office. I think that's what it is. So So shortest tenure in 60 years.

0:26:25 Thomas: Yeah that makes sense mm

0:26:28 Matt: To look back at Bondi a little bit because it's not hard to make the argument. I mean, obviously with Kristi Noem, we could easily say she was the worst DHS secretary because there's only been like 10 of them. We've had a lot of attorneys general. Now, I don't know every one of their names. I don' t know every on of their histories. But I've lived through this one, and I think it's really bad. I just wanted to review, just give a quick rundown of what she's been up to and kind of where she's coming from and how Pain Body came to be. Went back and looked at a bar complaint that was filed last June, and it's kind of amazing to think about how much stuff is stacked up on top of everything else since last June. Of progressive lawyers filed a very detailed bar complaint in Florida, and the Florida Bar came back and said, we can't actually investigate sitting officials. We just come on back when she's out. And so now they're doing that. And they're reconvening to see if they should either refile the same one or add. And I've got some suggestions

0:27:25 Matt: To things they could add since last June. But to remind everybody, though, Pam Bondi was the Florida Attorney General for quite a while. And before that, she was a prosecutor and a state prosecutor. And it sounds like she was fairly unexceptional. She wasn't all that bad or all that good at it.

0:27:19 Thomas: I forgot

0:27:40 Matt: Oh, yeah. Yeah, many years, 18 years of experience as a prosecutor. She didn't let Like, Christy, now I'm coming out of nowhere, you know, just having been a governor of a small state. But I thought it was kind of funny that her nicknames have included both the Paminator and Pamby. These are very different.

0:27:39 Thomas: Had actual experience yeah

0:27:56 Matt: Pambi. Yeah, very different personas. Kind of looking over the course of her career, that there is definitely a theme of pay for play. And, you Now, some really bad stuff came out about a company called Lender Processing Services that had donated to her campaign fund, basically got their investigation killed. They'd robo -signed something like a million fake documents to the point that I think I read that one of the signers was actually named Bogus or something. Like it was like nobody was watching the job, but these were for foreclosures. So this is real harm that's being done to people. They're like basically automated foreclosters that nobody's watching or actually signing off on. They finally reached a big settlement later, but she took a campaign donation and that that case really disappeared. Cleared of wrongdoing in that, just to be fair, but it doesn't look good. But the thing that really, I think, turned the tide for Pam Bondi was 2013. I went back and looked at the timeline of this. The donation from Trump, you probably heard something about this, but It's really hard not to see how this began her down the path that she ended up on now, because it's pretty straightforward. I mean, in August 2013, Attorney General of New York, Eric Schneider, announced that they were going to be filing a a $14 million lawsuit. He was inviting other AGs to join in. And she was taking a look at that. That was, again, mid -August 2013. September 17th, the Bondi PAC called And Justice for All, that had just been formed a few weeks before, receives a $25,000 check from a Trump charity. Charity, it's very important. Charities

0:27:56 Thomas: Huh yeah Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

0:29:22 Matt: Can't give to political campaigns. And the charity later tried to claim that it was a total accounting mistake and they'd meant to give it to some charity in Kansas that has a similar name. Yeah.

0:29:34 Thomas: Plausible.

0:29:35 Matt: Later fined $2,500 for this $25,000 donation because they shouldn't have made it.

0:29:39 Thomas: I'll teach him.

0:29:40 Matt: Pretty good return though, because he got Pam Bondi for the rest of his life, apparently. Bay Times. They've done years of great reporting on Bondi. It's where I'm getting most of this here, but got emails and it came out of discovery because the, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington crew did sue to get that information and got some emails in which it was pretty clear that they were screening out a lot of these Trump complaints because there were a couple dozen complaints that she should have gone forward on to join the suit. It wouldn't have been that hard for them to join this national suit against Trump University.

0:30:07 Thomas: Sorry. When was this?

0:30:09 Matt: Is 2013.

0:30:10 Thomas: All the way, way back when? Oh, okay. I didn't realize.

0:30:12 Matt: This is kind of the beginning of her relationship with Trump because six months later, after she takes this check, he a fundraiser at Mar -a -Lago for her re -election. And it just goes from there. One of those moments where you can just sort of see it and you can see the from there. And then she gets tapped to help Trump with impeachment defense because she's been doing a lot of Fox News spots. And of course, we know that's how he gets his favorite people, just watching Fox News. And her entire job, I went back and looked at some of the stuff she's doing with the impeachment. She's making the argument, the MAGA argument that it was actually the Bidens who were corrupt with Ukraine, not Trump. This is all the Ukraine impeachment. That was pretty much her role.

0:30:48 Thomas: A, yeah, it makes sense because legally, if someone else did something, then you do. It's fine.

0:30:51 Matt: That's right. Then you can't be impeached. That's in the Constitution. She's good on TV. Trump likes her on TV, right?

0:30:59 Thomas: Surprised why you don't use the defense. Well, Nixon did whatever. Like, you know, like if you can just say like someone else did a thing, why don't you use ones that were actually proven? You know, Bill Clinton, you know?

0:31:09 Matt: Yeah. Worked one way or another, obviously, but it was always going to work because it's an impeachment. Went in for the election fraud stuff, got Trump's attention there, and then she became the litigation chair for America First Legal, which is of course, Stephen Miller's right -wing litigation outfit. Pretty typical kind of MAGA course. And she made it pretty clear to Trump that she was the person that could do whatever he wanted and would go after his enemies, which is his main qualification for an attorney general.

0:31:34 Matt: It's the thing he was mostly looking for.

0:31:35 Thomas: She did.

0:31:36 Matt: I mean, that's what he was looking for, in terms of suggestions for things they might want to add coming up to her term now in the 14 months that we've been suffering through.

0:31:38 Thomas: To her word. This bar complaint thing you're talking talking about

0:31:46 Matt: I just have some ideas. Is interesting. I learned about a few things. I just was going through trying to find everything that she's done because it's so hard to keep track. Even we do not have that time now.

0:31:53 Thomas: Matt we don't have that we only have like another

0:31:57 Matt: I'm giving you the drive -by here.

0:31:57 Thomas: Half hour max yeah geez our next 12 part series no

0:32:01 Matt: Right. To name one thing we haven't even been able to touch on yet. Have you heard about the grand conspiracy grand jury? Calling it the the grand conspiracy, folks. Is literally attempting to prosecute the deep state. It's trying to prosecue all of Trump's enemies at once. And they're trying to do like this grand unified theory of conspiracy that goes across three presidential administrations and includes the Clintons.

0:32:08 Thomas: What is that oh wow it's just everybody we don'T like your honor please everybody we DON'T like put them in jail or something

0:32:26 Matt: And that's right. Of course, if you really want to take down DC, there is only one place to do it. You know where that is. Fort Pierce, Florida, man. That's it. We're going to Fort Pierce to take take down the deep state.

0:32:37 Thomas: It's like I don't even understand this joke boy every time it's going to be like a like a state related thing versus iowa what?

0:32:43 Matt: Not over this time. No, it's of course, as regular listeners know, there is only one federal judge in Fort Pierce, Florida, and that is Eileen Cannon. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Canones, brought this intentionally before Judge Cannon, knowing that she would do whatever. And so of course she's granted a whole bunch of subpoenas to pull in all of these people. It's a big mess. But of course this is what you get because one of the things that Trump directed was this weaponization working group, which I Ed Martin is working on now. Bondi's had her hand in all of that. She's part of all of this. Speaking of Eileen Cannon, I also noted that she accidentally, or maybe on purpose, I don't know, Jimmy Raskin thinks it might have been an accident, a trench of stuff that she released. And Raskins said it was a very selective release. It was not what the Oversight Committee was looking for. But she accidentally released a memo from 2023 in which the FBI concluded that that in the classified documents case, Donald Trump had kept documents that were helpful for his business interests specifically, which is not something we knew before. I just wanted to note that.

0:33:45 Matt: That's a big one. It's not something I had a chance to talk about. Yeah, back to the main theme here, though, that she's working as Trump's enforcer. And the reason that she was fired was because she could not produce actual indictments or convictions of any of these people that he wanted her to indict and convict. I had heard a possible report that that it might have actually been because of the thing that got through to the Raskin committee. Is certainly possible because that really shouldn't have come out. But just to remind everybody, she attempted to prosecute at Trump's behest, James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Jerome Powell. We just learned that for the last couple...

0:34:20 Matt: Yeah, right, exactly. Anybody who's ever wronged him.

0:34:20 Thomas: Trump's fifth grade teacher. That guy

0:34:25 Matt: Obviously, yep.

0:34:25 Thomas: Who cut him off in traffic that one time.

0:34:27 Matt: Anybody who might have thrown a sandwich at the wrong person. Person. Then I think just as importantly, ending prosecutions into people like Eric Adams and Steve Bannon and Tom Holman, right? That should have gone somewhere. We just found out just this week that for the last couple of weeks, Bondi was trying in a last ditch kind of move to get Trump to keep her on. She went after Cassidy Hutchinson, the surprise witness from the January 6th committee, you might remember, for something. We don't really even know what. It's presumably they're going to try to catch her lying to Congress on something. But this is the the civil rights division that is going after her, which is disgusting. Another one of my categories here is the way that she has completely destroyed and degraded DOJ. And it

0:35:07 Thomas: Look, from what I can see, it seems like that story Cassidy Hutchinson told might've been bullshit, but like, I don't know. She said, I heard somebody say like, it was clear what it was. It wasn't like she did anything wrong. Was was it? Yeah. She, she was upfront about that.

0:35:18 Matt: Wasn't firsthand. No, no, And she did have some valuable information about what she'd been told by McMulvaney about basically stay out of DC on January 6th. Knew. You mentioned the January 6th cases, obviously, but she dismissed a total, I had not seen this number before. This just came out last week. In the first six months, ProPublica estimates that she dismissed more than 23,000 pending cases.

0:35:41 Matt: Everything from fraud to terrorism to January 6 to a whole lot of other stuff. And of course, incredible.

0:35:40 Thomas: What, how do you even do that many? Don't have any employees. So you do

0:35:50 Matt: They did in the first sixth month.

0:35:51 Thomas: Have to do like those kinds of things. Usually you do Have to get the judge. It's like, we're talking about don't there there's procedure there. It'S not like you can just be like, take them off the list. Right.

0:35:59 Matt: Still have to file a motion, still to go through with it.

0:36:02 Thomas: S kind of a lot.

0:36:03 Matt: Doing a lot of them after conviction. Ostensible purpose of this was to make room room for immigration so they could prosecute dumbass immigration cases instead of terrorism and fraud.

0:36:12 Thomas: With the civil rights division and yeah, Yeah. Whatever. No, I guess that's not the same thing.

0:36:15 Matt: And DEI, right? Of course, we have to prosecute universities for doing DEI. Very important. I mean, the civil rights division has become, it's really sad to see that happen. It's one of the premier civil rights divisions in the world, somewhere that anybody would want to work coming out of law school, no matter where your background is.

0:36:25 Thomas: It really is. There aren't that many things as depressing, Matt, where they took something that was like one minor tool for justice and turned it into literally the opposite, like the most opposite you could be unreal

0:36:41 Matt: The way around. Yeah, going, I mean undoing consent decrees with police departments that are supposed to protect people after known bad cops are there, you know, just all of that. And then, of course, acting as Trump's fixer, like protecting him as much as possible, not just going after his enemies, but as a shield. Have to talk about Epstein files, obviously. Know that she ordered a review of the Epstein Files. Now, this is before the Epstine Transparency Act passed in November, to be fair, which the Transparecy Act specifically said that they could not excerpt or mess with anything just because somebody might be notable or it might cause them undue attention. Have an email from the Epsteins Files that I don't know if was supposed to be in here. Wasn't just Trump, because I think we've heard the news before that back in July last year, they had just an inordinate number of DOJ personnel scouring the Epstein files looking for Trump's name, which is not a good use of time. wasn'T just Trump though. They also were looking for Prince Andrew, Leon Black, Wes Wexner, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, Howard Letnick, basically people they knew would be in there. I thought that was interesting. All know by now that she sent Todd Blanch down to interview Ghislaine Maxwell. We had a great time going over that with Liz Skeen in was just a complete joke. Claimed that she had the Epstein file sitting on her desk and released that PR binder basically to MAGA influencers that had nothing. They back in July with that one and a half page memo that said nothing and released nothing. Then by the time Congress finally forced her to disclose all this stuff with the Epstein Transparency Act, she blew every deadline. She could not make a single one of the deadlines. They redactions essentially protected DOJ and powerful people, but not the victims. They left insensitive information, including victims' names. A And I want to talk about this is she's actually just said this week that she will not be coming in pursuant to a subpoena that she was just issued to talk about the Epstein files in Congress because she's no longer the attorney general. So

0:38:32 Matt: She doesn't have to. Yeah, it

0:38:34 Thomas: Well yeah there's a, it's a weird rule, the congress can only subpoena attorneys general that's a that's why you've only ever seen them just yep

0:38:42 Matt: Once you're not, you never have to talk about your job again and nothing. Yeah. It's just, of course, plenty of AGs have appeared in front of Congress, but her argument is that the subpoeno was for the attorney Attorney General. And she's not the Attorney General, but it was to her, Pamela Bondi. So she still has to come in. So they'll be fighting about that. And I do hope that she still wants to come in, there's a lot she has to answer for.

0:38:44 Thomas: That's true weird rule ah I what what a great what a greatest I've If the, you know, like president of or CEO of Enron should have thought of that. Oh, they just, you Know, wanted to arrest the CEO of Enron. That's and now I resign. So easy.

0:39:14 Matt: Easy enough. Some other guy. It's not my problem. Yeah." So just a quick reminder of the different ways that she has destroyed and degraded the Department of Justice. I just had a whole category for this when I was going through and trying to remember all the things she'd been doing and not doing. About 6,000 personnel from the DOJ have left out there are 10,000 lawyers and the personnel includes staff and lawyers, of course, but that's a huge rate of attrition. And fair, a lot of those probably would have left with Trump coming in anyway, just because people knew what they were in for. But she certainly didn't help things by releasing on her first day memo that required DOJ employees to put aside their personal convictions and just do whatever the president told them to do. No room for anything else. Pretty unusual memo. You can expect that DOJ is going to be doing things that followed the president's policy, but the wording of that memo, the way that it was put out was pretty shocking and really kind of showed us where things were going. Her, they turned the pardon system into just an openly pay-for-play. It had always been kind of low-key pay-per-plays under some administrations, but But the whole pretense is gone. It's just straight up, you find the right lobbyist and pay them.

0:40:16 Thomas: Mean, there's, yeah, there've been bad pardons pretty much every president, but it was usually like a couple, you Know, there'd be like, oh, that they waited till the end of their term and they pardoned like three people that were bad, you Know, and, and you know Democrats did it. Can't think of Obama. Did Obama have any that were that

0:40:32 Matt: I'm sure you had a couple. But

0:40:33 Thomas: Were like really bad? I can think I can remember. I definitely Clinton for sure. Biden, you know, Biden's a little arguable, but he did have some bad ones toward the end. But it's just all that. Like it's Just People. And it makes no sense. There's no no arguments for any of these, like the most fraudulent people who have ripped off and hurt so many people.

0:40:54 Thomas: And Trump's just like, yeah, yeah. For no reason. I'll pardon you. Yeah

0:40:53 Matt: It perfect sense. I mean, it's our first CEO president, so he wants to help out his friends. I mean I know you know that, but the logic is right there. But like you said, they're not even pretending. There's no mask here. And I've got a list here from the Campaign Legal Center, just a few examples, just case anybody doubts this. Got a tech executive, Trevor Milton, who was pardoned in March, 2025 after giving Trump $2 million. Walzak, nursing home executive convicted of siphoning $10 million from his employees' paychecks. Got a pardon a week, weeks after his mother contributed a million dollars to a Trump super PAC, her largest ever donation, just coincidentally. Founder of the digital finance platform, Binance, pled guilty and agreed to pay $4 and then got his pardon in October after he made a deal with the Trump family. It was very favorable to them. And on and on. I mean, it's indisputable.

0:41:43 Matt: Like you said, there's no way to miss what's going on here. And that's a disgrace. And he's got Ed Martin as the pardon attorney. And again, Pam Bondi is overseeing all of this. And in the same way that she's overseeing, all of the US attorney's offices in which they've continued to send people to court who were not U.S. attorneys, who were not properly confirmed and just were sort of hanging out in the office. That's just embarrassing in itself. To mention immigration, of course, that all immigration judges are DOJ employees in the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Know, we've been talking over the course of the past year about DHS's ridiculous legal theory that anybody who came over the border can't be released on bond by an immigration judge. DOJ fully embraced this. They worked with DHS on it. And they essentially forced immigration judges to adopt this position because, again, they're not judicial judges and they do have some control over them. And it's normal for administrations to hire and fire immigration judges who better conform to their policies. But we've seen way more firing and far more ideological firing than previous administrations, I think. Of course, on the immigration front, front. Seen all kinds of violations of court orders relating to immigration. And just in the immigration world alone, lawfare has an active tracker going. They call it the contempt tracker, where they're just looking at violations. They've estimated at this point about 362 habeas orders that have not been properly complied with. That's just immigration cases. I can only imagine all these other places that are not complying. Just so much here and and just a really inglorious career. I don't think we know for sure where she's going yet. Trump claimed to still like her, and I'm sure she'll land okay somewhere, but have you heard anything?

0:41:43 Thomas: Who knows I yeah I just really don't I I don't know what do you do let's I was going to say what christy no I'm doing but isn't she like still in the role technically yeah

0:43:22 Matt: Yeah, and Bondi will be a little while. No, actually, excuse me. I just actually got noticed that all my Bondi cases have been switched over to Blanche cases. We'll talk about that in a minute. But noem got to run the shield of the Americas. We talked about it. She got a special super secret job for herself.

0:43:35 Thomas: I I don'T really know what right trump has to to be be upset at Bondi. She did everything he asked. She's the worst attorney general of all time, but that's because she did what he wanted her to do. Is not a coincidence. Said I this after Noam, and it's even more true now. It's not a coincidence that the women are the the only ones that he's going to actually fire um really an interesting insight into the kind of you asshole that he is where it's like I think when when men suck like sometimes you know he he does eventually well he never actually fires anyone he just like has to he's too cowardly he has to like just not he's just like ghosts them or something it's weird um with men I think there's way more leeway for him to think Like, oh, OK, well, that person's probably competent. There's some other reason why something's going wrong. The minute any of the women do any like anything happens, he's just like, well. All right. Well, she can't

0:43:55 Matt: Exactly. Just Sure. Yeah,

0:44:28 Thomas: Do this job. You know, it's just such a clear, like, insight into that sexist mindset.

0:44:28 Matt: It is. It really is. And I mean, absolutely right that she did everything that she was supposed to do, but she actually could not do the impossible, which was get federal judges and grand juries to agree to prosecute people that just weren't prosecutable. That there's only so much you can do. Trump clearly doesn't understand or care that due process exists and that judges exist. And there's still plenty of good ones that aren't going to let this stuff happen. Know, again and again, that's the role she kept running into. She could not prosecute a single one of his political enemies. As far as I know, It has not gone forward yet. It hasn't worked. Blame her for that, but I totally agree that if you're going to blame somebody, you might as well blame the women. Not my opinion

0:45:03 Thomas: I'm going to clip that. Always said that off mic, but yeah

0:45:08 Matt: You've got a fun clip to take out of context now uh I wanted to make sure we're going to talk another time about todd blanch we have talked plenty about todd blanch far more than I'd like actually at this point I wantedto send you if you hadn't seen it uh his recent comments on how happy he is to be the acting attorney general he don't know if he's actually going to be nominated for the full job, but he'll certainly make the most of the time, I'm sure, while he has it. Course, former defense attorney, and as you've said before, current defense attorney. I wanted to send you this amazing clip just in case we have any doubts about his loyalties. Let's go ahead and listen to...

0:45:37 Thomas: And forever the defense attorney to trump oh

0:45:45 Clip: The greatest honor of a lifetime, and if President Trump chooses to keep me as acting, that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that is an honor, if he chooses nominate somebody else, and I go back to being the DAG, that an honor if he choose to nominates somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say thank you very much, I love you sir. So I don't have any goals or aspirations beyond that.

0:46:10 Thomas: Thank you very much I love you dad I mean sorry

0:46:13 Matt: It's pathological. It is so weird. Spent a lot of time around Trump.

0:46:19 Thomas: You you very much. I love you, sir. And then we will engage in a kiss. It'll be, it'll be sometimes cheek. If I'm really good, it might be a lips kiss.

0:46:28 Matt: So this is why I was not celebrating Pam Bundy leaving because it doesn't get any better. It only gets worse because Todd Blanche actually has a lot experience as a prosecutor. So I don't like that. A federal prosecutor, I should say.

0:46:40 Thomas: It sounds like so did she, right?

0:46:41 Matt: Is a federal prosecutor. So it is a different level, a different thing. Well, that's enough for now on Pam Bondi. I'm sure we'll be talking about her again someday, but we've got a footnote for you.

0:46:43 Thomas: Gotcha. Okay. Right. Well, um, may she rest in crap because that was truly again, I mean, it's not as bad as that time that, you know, the tarmac incident, you don't know what going to say. It's not, she wasn't quite as bad as that one time an AG was in the same physical location as the husband of a candidate for president, you

0:47:12 Matt: And might've said hi to him.

0:47:13 Thomas: Know, to think about how big a scandal that was to think. And now where we are, they're literally like swearing loyalty and all this to doing this weird stuff. You know, it's just, it'S It's hey, Matt, does the H .E. usually say, thank you, Mr. President, I love you.

0:47:30 Matt: That's a new one. That is unique to this administration, but he's been hanging around Trump a lot. You can tell because that's how he talks.

0:47:38 Thomas: That is just astonishing. All right. Well, we'll keep an eye on where she lands. You know, maybe there's some other corrupt asshole that wants her to do horribly corrupt things in charge of something. And probably.

0:47:50 Matt: Is. Be landing pretty comfortably in some board seats at the minimum. That's usually how this works. We'll see.

0:47:54 Thomas: All right, we're taking a break. And then we've got a footnote. Right well, the footnote goat, Matt has something for us. What do you have?

0:48:05 Matt: Sure do. I got a fun one. So last week, of course, we were talking about birth tourism a little bit. That was something that Dijon Sauer was talking about in front of the Supreme Court. We didn't really cover that part, but it doesn't really exist. It's a racist scare thing about again, there are occasionally wealthy people that come here to have a baby on purpose to be a citizen. But I wanted to raise something that I'm a little more concerned about, litigation tourism. So we've got a great story for you out out of New York City. Going to tell you the story of a German law student, again, Germany, not a law student in the U.S. law students named Feichl-Manz, and he was only in the US for 10 days in August of 2024. And he did everything that you should do while you're visiting New York City, you saw the Statue of Liberty, rode the subway, had some tacos in Times Square, experienced the, I guess I'm gonna say the warmth and hospitality of the NYPD, We'll find out about that in a minute. And of course, he did what any tourist should do when he filed three lawsuits seeking more than $20 million in damages while he was here. Is quite of lawsuits I want to tell you about, and have mostly wrapped up. His misadventure begins in Los Tacos in Times Square. And it's very funny the way he writes about this because he says that he has never actually had a taco in his life. He's German,

0:48:24 Thomas: Litigation tourism. Oh,

0:49:12 Matt: And he's always wanted to try a taco, one of his aspirations. I think you can get tacos in Germany. I don't know. I feel like there are Mexican people in Germany.

0:49:13 Thomas: What? Okay. Yeah. It's not like some impossible technology that can't be recreated elsewhere. But, I mean, I don't blame someone for being like, I've never had a taco. I want to see what all the fuss is about. I mean if you've never been to a taco restaurant, you're like, I've NEVER had a Taco. They're pretty great.

0:49:34 Matt: Here he is in Times Square, the height of American culture. So perfect place for a taco. Sorry, I'm being a snob, but he doesn't know better. He goes to Los Tacos in Times Square. I've never been, maybe it's great. And he loads himself up on the salsa bar. He's never had salsa before either. So maybe you can can see where this is going. Of course, the salsa is clearly labeled the way that salsa always is. And as experienced salsa consumers, we know what to expect when we look at a salsa, but he did not. So he takes a big bite into his giant loaded with salsa taco and experiences what he claims are massive burns and GI issues for quite a while.

0:50:08 Matt: It may or may not be true, but he decided that was worth $100,000 to sue the taco place, even though obviously all of the salsa was was coyly labeled, and he is the one as

0:50:16 Thomas: And, like, other humans eat it. There's no way it's like lava

0:50:19 Matt: That's point the district court judge made was like, you haven't brought in an expert or anybody else who's ever eaten the salsa. You're just telling me it didn't work for you.

0:50:29 Thomas: They're all dead that's why I can't they're charred corpses should I bring in their ashes wow

0:50:31 Matt: Survivors. Yeah. So that case, of course, was dismissed. This is interesting because he's a law student in Germany, and maybe he really thought this was a fun way to connect with American culture and to just file these suits. But this is the least ridiculous of the suits, actually. The judge obviously dismisses this, finds that he actually admitted in his complaint that he's unusually susceptible to spicy food. So he's got that on top of everything else that he knows that he has got an issue and he still does it.

0:50:58 Thomas: What's the glass thing what is that the eggshell yeah he's an eggshell plaintiff

0:51:01 Matt: The eggshell plaintiff. Yes. Classic. Yep. Four days later, oh, by the way, doesn't seek medical treatment or in any way doesn't seem to impede his ability to have a good time, the court notes. So four days later, he has a very unfortunate experience in a Walmart. And it turns out that Walmart has been discriminating very quietly against people of German origin for a very long time. Not aware of this, but Title II civil rights complaint. Again, this is another situation where I don't think anybody could possibly guess where this is going.

0:51:23 Thomas: Why Iowa did they do something again no it's gonna be freaking Vermont this time

0:51:34 Matt: No, I would stay out of this one. He probably would have found had a lot of reasons to sue Iowa if he'd visited. Would not let him connect to their Wi -Fi because he had a foreign phone number. So he decided was national origins discrimination because they're not letting people with foreign phone numbers use the Walmart Wi-Fi. And he found this was very distressing.

0:51:55 Thomas: And it's your God -given constitutional right to get on the Wi-Fi.

0:51:59 Matt: Yeah, no doubt. And district court judge did find that a person with a German phone is not a member of a protected class. So we've got that settled.

0:52:08 Thomas: But a person with Matt's kind of phone probably should be, because you need the protection.

0:52:14 Matt: Yeah, I probably shouldn't live alone. That's different. Was kind of funny because, again, he's claiming $10 million in damages. $10 billion. Just classic kind of stupid stupid plaintiff lawsuit. But the fact that he did three of these, and I'm getting to the third one, which happened on the same day. So he's still recovering from this injustice at Walmart, and he goes out for a walk in New York City and he sees, unfortunately, an assault happening. So he calls NYPD and he learns a lot about how the New York Police Department handles things when he calls the NYPD because have a lot of trouble finding him. They eventually arrive, they refuse to take a statement or investigate because there's nobody on scene and he can't really describe anything. Said that the disregard that the officers gave him, and again, these are pretty typical New York cops. I don't think he got anything different than the usual NYPD treatment. I don't know how they do things in Germany, but apparently this was distressing enough that this gave him insomnia and intrusive flashbacks and some sort of PTSD symptoms for which he sued. Million.

0:53:10 Thomas: In the television show Lost? I've never heard of intrusive flashbacks.

0:53:15 Matt: Yeah, intrusiv flashbacks. That's true.

0:53:17 Thomas: She's like, it keeps explaining my backstory, and I'm freaking tired of it. I don't need any more backstory. And then there's that season where it turns out that it's the front story, This is what happens in the future. So now I've seen my future too.

0:53:17 Matt: I've got things to do. Intrusive fleshbacks, yeah. $1 he's looking for from the NYPD, and he did finally very recently drop that lawsuit. So attempt to get $20 million million dollars and $100 ,000 out the NYPD, Los Tacos, and Walmart has failed. And he is now back in Germany, presumably finishing his law degree, and we wish him well. But that's NYC three, man zero. Sorry.

0:53:51 Thomas: Wow. So that he's just like, it's like a terrorist. I guess he's trying to wreak all kinds of, I'm going to do a new kind of terror attack. And he's like, well, that didn't work anyway. I'll be, I'll Be over here in Germany, not eating tacos.

0:53:57 Matt: Mean, be fair, if you read the news about the United States, one thing you know is we love suing people over nothing. So maybe he really thought he was just...

0:54:14 Thomas: Well, and, and if I may get conspiratorial, I think people like a good, like to spread that kind of story, maybe to get folks, uh, in the mindset that there's all these people harassing corporations with their burdensome lawsuits, you know? And so I feel like that's, that can be some motivation for that to be covered a lot.

0:54:35 Matt: Think that Walmart can handle an annoying German law student once in a while. I think they're doing okay. I think made it through this one.

0:54:40 Thomas: I actually don't really care. This is, this is, take your best, if you're suing corporations and police, like, sure.

0:54:46 Matt: Yeah. Good luck.

0:54:47 Thomas: Actually, maybe this is a social justice thing. Sorry. Tell me who again he sued. Well, the taco, okay. He was here on a social justice mission to sue the pants off of the Walmart Corporation and police along the way he got a taco. And I was like, well, okay, well I'm here. Maybe the guy was mean to him.

0:55:02 Matt: And he was only looking for 100 ,000 from the taco guys. So, I mean, you know, relatively speaking.

0:55:07 Thomas: What could that buy? Two tacos?

0:55:09 Matt: Exactly. Yeah. And 10 million each from the others. But yeah, litigation tourism. And we wonder how often this happens that people just passing through decide to launch these claims based on pretty typical American experiences like having the police be rude to you or not liking your taco.

0:55:25 Thomas: I might've missed it. Is this a chat GPT thing? Is this representing himself thing? Or do you actually find a lawyer to do this?

0:55:31 Matt: Checked on that too. It appears all of his cases were pro se, so he's putting that law degree to use. So, you know, full credit there.

0:55:37 Thomas: I do think the A .I. is going to make a bunch of pro se bullshit happen a lot. I do thing that could be a problem.

0:55:45 Matt: Yeah. And very likely he used some of that too, I didn't really take a close look at his filings. But that is a real downside, and generally speaking, a downside to the law all around. But was was a fun one anyway.

0:55:56 Thomas: What country should we go to and sue people for stuff?

0:55:58 Matt: They got a lot of money in Germany. I don't know. Return the favor.

0:56:01 Thomas: Got to go with like which courthouses look the nicest, like a sightseeing, too. You got to like, I don't know, something like that.

0:56:08 Matt: Had no idea that their sausages were full of meat. I'm very distressed.

0:56:12 Matt: Who could have known? $10 $10 million please.

0:56:16 Thomas: Right. Well, that was a fun one. Some good news. Was good all around actually yeah everything was pretty much a good story I mean I don't think of the pam bondy thing as good news just because it's like she's horrible and it was kind of a reflection of sexism that she got fired and the person replacing her is probably as bad or worse but still never bad to see an asshole lose their job I guess yeah

0:56:38 Matt: And if we keep talking about it, I'm hoping maybe that's all she's remembered for and So let's hope.

0:56:42 Thomas: Well that was fun matt thanks for the breakdown thanks for listening everybody thanks please share the show with somebody and we'll see you on Monday.

0:56:54 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments, produced by Thomas and Lydia Smith, with editing help from Peter Baird. The intro is by Thomas Smith. This outro is by Matt Cameron. Support the show at patreon.com/law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments@gmail.com. Make sure to follow our blue sky at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.

0:57:27 Matt: That this is not unlike getting sex advice from your priest, but

0:57:31 Thomas: They're all dead that's why I can't they're charred corpses should I bring in their ashes wow

0:57:32 Matt: That's right. No survivors. If you're going to blame somebody, you might as well blame the women.