He's Literally the Worst Dealmaker Ever. EVER.

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Matt: This is huge. The final deal, hundreds of billions of dollars potentially. This is giving them exactly what they want.

0:00:17 Matt: She gets a call from a blocked number. Caller identifies themselves as calling from DHS. Her spouse who picks up was told you should let her know not to do that anymore because people are doing that type of thing or getting added to a domestic terrorist watch list.

0:00:33 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1271. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing?

0:00:40 Matt: Hey, Thomas, coming to you from a city that has completely run out of beer this weekend, thanks to the Scots. Quite a party that we've had.

0:00:46 Thomas: Is that World Cup still going on?

0:00:47 Matt: It's still going and they're playing again on the day of the year that we're airing this. There's a lot more soccer to come.

0:00:48 Thomas: Not over yet? Yeah, I know. Yeah, there's a lot of games, I guess. I don't know. Nobody's telling me the schedule. I guess I got to look it up.

0:00:52 Matt: And we've already run out a beer, so it's not a good sign.

0:01:01 Matt: I'm constantly surprised. Honestly, I just know by the different jerseys that I'm seeing every day now. A bunch of Norwegians out. Very cool.

0:01:06 Thomas: Well, it's cool to be near where some of the games are played. I feel like there's nothing like immediately near me that I know of.

0:01:12 Matt: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun, except for the whole beer situation, which is real. That's not even a joke.

0:01:17 Thomas: That's crazy. That's a lot. How's that even possible?

0:01:20 Matt: Have you met Scottish people?

0:01:21 Thomas: Possible. I have, I have. That's true.

0:01:21 Matt: They're pretty great, but they really do enjoy it. No Scotland, no party. That's how it works.

0:01:26 Thomas: I've also met American capitalism. I feel like there's always there's always beer, you know

0:01:31 Matt: Yeah, we are certainly taking their money, but they seem to be having a great time and we're having a good time having them here. Always welcome back. And I certainly love Scotland myself. So we've got a good show today though. We've got A Lot to Talk About and starting with the Iran deal, which I know is going to be in the news a lot this week, but I know deal isn't really even the word. It's more of a concept of of a plan.

0:01:44 Thomas: Yeah yeah what a deal yeah it's the it's like we surrendered it's we surrendered a war that we did you know as much as trump has never been anything of what he says it's pretty incredible to be the literal worst negotiator ever like ever on a large stage that, you know, like I'm sure there, there are people who've gotten ripped off privately a little worse, but it couldn't be worse. There's, there's no sense in which we're getting a quote unquote deal of any kind that I know.

0:01:52 Matt: Yeah, that too. Yeah. Oh, no.

0:02:22 Thomas: I mean, maybe you're going to tell me differently, but this is incredible.

0:02:25 Matt: No, deal is not the word. It is actually a concept of a plan, to quote another situation the president got himself into. Because this isn't even binding. We'll talk about how weird this is in some different ways. But I actually just read the thing. Never rely on media summaries. That's what we're here for. 14 points. And I don't really understand a lot of this. So I started digging and got some interesting stuff to share. It's not really being reported right yet. We'll see how it goes. We've also got some ICE updates. And most importantly, we want to talk about the conviction and attempt to overturn the conviction of Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin. We haven't really talked about her case since the episode we did on it way back when she was arrested in her courthouse and let out in handcuffs.

0:03:01 Thomas: Yeah, it just seems nuts.

0:03:02 Matt: Yeah, it is. It is. And really interesting precedent happening here. An interesting legal question. I'll be interested to know what you think about when we get there for Hannah Dungan. And then in today's footnote, we've got the very important question. Is it actually possible to accidentally buy 60 cows?

0:03:18 Thomas: Wow.

0:03:19 Matt: There's a meme going around right now, kind of a funny thing. There's some truth to it, but it's pretty interesting. I want to make sure that people understand when they will and will not have to buy cows. That's an important part of your life. That'S what we're here for.

0:03:29 Thomas: I do remember from business school there being the stories of when people were doing, you do like futures or whatever to, you know, kind of invest in different things or bet against different things. And they accidentally let one of the things expire or whatever. And then they end up with a delivery of, you know, who knows, wheat or some crap that they're just trading on it. But then accidentally end up buying tons and tons of it.

0:03:54 Matt: That's pretty close to what we''re talking about.

0:03:55 Thomas: All right. Good times.

0:03:55 Matt: But it turns out it actually, fortunately, it is not that easy to accidentally buy cows, so that's the good news up front, but we''ll get into the details in the footnote.

0:04:00 Thomas: All right, well, I'm excited for that. Lots to talk about. I guess we better get on over to it. As long as you can carry on without beer. I don't know. I don't think of you as a big beer drinker, but I also wouldn't, I wouldn't want to ever be like without it. You know, someone was like, no more beer. I'd be like, ah, well now I want one. That makes it hard.

0:04:21 Matt: Fortunately, unlike one-fifth of the world's oil supply, I don''t have to wait on the the Strait of Hormuz to deliver my beer. We do have plenty of it here. So good thing about the head.

0:04:28 Thomas: Oh, okay. Good. Thank God. Well, then we'll, we'll continue. All right. We'll take a break. Hey, support the show, patreon .com slash law. Get the extras, get the lot awful movies and avoid those ads. Thanks so much to those who support and most of all help the show continue. That's the only reason we can do the show is because of supporters like our fine patrons. So thank you so much.

0:04:49 Thomas: All right, we'll take a break and we'll get to it.

0:04:53 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:04:53 Thomas: Let's talk about this amazing deal.

0:04:56 Matt: Yeah, pretty bad. Pretty bad. I mean, this is a memorandum of understanding. First of all, it's a 60 day ceasefire. This is not peace. This has not a final deal. This as a concept of a plan. There's a lot in here that doesn't make a lot of sense, including starting right at the top. And I was actually just comparing before we came on the version that was leaked yesterday and the version that apparently is the final version that the White House has released today that they dictated over the phone to a bunch of journalists.

0:05:20 Matt: There One of the conditions that Iran is accepting here is that Israel will no longer be invading Lebanon or doing anything to Lebanon, allegedly. Israel notably not a signatory to this agreement. So there's first line, first few words, we've got a problem going in.

0:05:33 Thomas: And that fits because Trump would totally try to offer something that somebody else, you know, just like, all right, yeah, sure. No skin off my back.

0:05:40 Matt: The original draft that we saw yesterday said that U .S. and Iran would act together with their allies in the current war, which is not anything.

0:05:48 Thomas: What?

0:05:49 Matt: Israel's being pretty clear that they're not going to be bound by anything we do anyway. But the version released today says the U .s. and iran and their allies in the current war are signing, are signing. And then you look at the bottom and Israel is not signing. It's ridiculous. It is like if I just said that Matt and Thomas are signing and I just sign it and look, we have never talked about it. I do not know. That is ridiculous.

0:06:10 Matt: Basic contract stuff. Off the bat, that is the first thing in it is we are promising a country that we have no control over, that we certainly have proven that we do not have control over is going to not do something.

0:06:19 Thomas: It's important to say how dumb Trump is. Who's doing this? Is this Marco Rubio or Vance?

0:06:26 Matt: Vence is certainly involved. Did you see Vence's explanation? I thought this was very funny actually. He was talking about how there is always negotiations. Germany and Japan negotiated negotiated. And I was like, they didn't negotiate. We bombed them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were negotiation. I mean, Japan agreed to give up their emperor as God or whatever, and Germany agreed not to have a military anymore. But those were things we forced them into. This is nothing like that. The real thing was that the agreement had to be released on June 14th. That was the really important part of all of this. That Was Trump's 80th birthday. That's why it was signed that day.

0:07:00 Matt: That's why we have such a bad deal.

0:07:01 Thomas: That doesn't even make sense. Sorry, Matt. That's not why we have such bad deal there are so many reasons why we have such a bad deal oh so

0:07:06 Matt: Well, sure. No, of course. But that's why they rushed it to announcing it on Sunday and saying that this was going to be for sure. It was, yeah.

0:07:14 Thomas: Now I'm sure it's much better then they've kind of patched it up it's a good deal yeah

0:07:19 Matt: What do you get the man who has everything? One fifth of the world's oil supply. It's pretty good. And ending a war that he started, allegedly. Or at least pausing a war. That's the thing.

0:07:25 Thomas: A straight open that was already open before he did something that caused it to not be

0:07:30 Matt: We spent hundreds of billions of dollars to get ourselves into this position. We'll talk about the Strait in a minute here. So as for the nuclear issue, the original draft said that it would be adequately addressed in a final agreement. So a concept of a plan, right? Someday. Now we've got something about a minimum methodology, something about down blending uranium on site under supervision. I don't even know if it means anything. I don't know enough about nuclear programs to know that, but you know, we're basically just like inching back toward the thing that Obama did in 2015 that Trump has been yelling about since then.

0:07:40 Thomas: Open oh okay yep and not even getting close to a deal that good wow

0:08:03 Matt: No, that isn't anywhere close. We'll compare that as we get to the end here. But the thing that really hasn't been reported enough yet is just how bad the Strait of Hormuz deal part of it is. Again, not even a deal. Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.

0:08:27 Matt: Yeah, basically, he's so desperate to get this moving again, he is giving away the shop. And again, we don't have a lot of choice. We put ourselves in this position. You and I had nothing to do with it, but here we are.

0:08:26 Thomas: 60 -day fire sale on oil everybody getting while the getting's good god yeah, it's just so perfect how dumb these people are. Like, would they just think you just bomb, you just gun, strong, strong bomb, bomb, bomb, guns, boom. Now give, now deal. And they're like, no, these idiots don't realize that like, there's a reason. I mean, this is just, could be all of our current situation summed up in a sentence. Hey, maybe there's reason things were the way they were.

0:09:04 Thomas: That's just all of politics because the entire reactionary mindset mindset is to simplify everything beyond belief to straw man and propagandize. So you think everyone empowers an idiot, a corrupt idiot, and then you get your guy in and he's like, I'm going to do things differently. Oh, whoa, it doesn't work. And all the things that were actually constraints are real. Holy shit. No way.

0:09:25 Matt: Before you know it, we're being run by corrupt idiots.

0:09:27 Thomas: The aristocrats.

0:09:29 Matt: Corrupt idiots, as far as you can see, all the way down. Yeah, it's worked out great. But the second part of it, I don't think I've, I haven't seen this really reported on. I'm not sure what it means, but it definitely means the Strait of Hormuz is not open. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman, also, you know, right there on the Strait, to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of the coastal states. They're just saying, we're going to go ahead and regulate. This is basically repudiating our position, what has always been our position with the, been the world's position. This This is an international strait that no one country or collection of countries can suspend passage or can try to charge tolls. And we're just giving it away. That's what's going on because they want this to move today. Trump is saying it's open and that's, you know, he's, as far as he's concerned with the goldfish brain, that's it. And then in 60 days, they can just go ahead and set up a completely new regime. I saw somebody making the joke about Hormuz Plus. That's going to be, he'll get the special subscription service.

0:10:27 Thomas: Oh wow. That is really good. That's is absolutely what it is. Yeah. A subscription plan for the straightforward moves. That is too real, too real Matt.

0:10:29 Matt: The shitification of everything continues, that they will sell it back to us. The thing that we were previously. And here's the headline part that has gotten the most attention because $300 billion, it's a lot of money. That's actually, in fact, the entire gross domestic product of Iran. That is $300 billion.

0:10:51 Thomas: So he's really enriching them. Now I've seen comparisons to Obama and I just want to already scream because Obama, and maybe I'm wrong, my memory is, and you can tell me, you can debunk me on the spot if you want. My memory is that we did not give them money, we unfroze assets that were theirs.

0:11:06 Matt: Their own oil revenue that they couldn't repatriate.

0:11:09 Thomas: And they had a whole propaganda thing about how actually we were paying them off and Obama, the secret Muslim, wanted to just give them money or whatever. But this is just giving them money, isn't it?

0:11:18 Matt: It is. But also, I got to wondering, if you care about this kind of thing, which we do on this show, the Constitution doesn't let the president just sign away $300 trillion. That That's just not a thing he can do. Congress needs to appropriate that if he wants to make a treaty. And also, Senate's supposed to sign off on actual treaties, but I guess we're past that. I don't know what this is. It's a memo. They're signing off on a memo."

0:11:28 Thomas: Oh, yeah. You know, I forgot to even care about that, Matt. Good point.

0:11:40 Matt: I was wondering, what is this $300 billion? Where does it come from? We're being told by J .D. Vance and others that it's not actually our money at all, which it kind of seems like it isn't. So let me just read what it says. The U .S. undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD $300 million for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I will point out they were claiming $29 billion in reparations, which is pretty believable because we did a lot of damage over there.

0:12:03 Matt: And certainly they're owed reparations. But this is more than that. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a final deal within 60 days. Always good when you have to finalize as partof a finaldeal in the thing that you're announcing as the final deal. All required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States.

0:12:21 Matt: So this and the next one are the real important parts. It's not even that we're in the original deal, it said that we're going to secure financing. And that didn't mean anything in the, the original draft leak. Like, what does that mean at all? Like we're gonna just set up deals, you know, with Saudi Arabia and Yemen?

0:12:36 Thomas: It sounds like we're making a deal to flip a house or something.

0:12:39 Matt: Right. It's not even ours.

0:12:40 Thomas: Yeah. With money. We're definitely good for it. Like, we're 100 % good for. We're going to secure financing for it,

0:12:46 Matt: That's right. And you guys can work out the rest. The important part is that last sentence, all required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the US because right now, of course, it is a felony to give money to Iran under most circumstances. The real power we have here is the US sanctions. Now I should say there there are both U .S. and U .N. sanctions. And I didn't really notice this in all of the turmoil of everything going on in the past year. But there was a snapback provision that kicked in in September in which a bunch of sanctions were actually reimposed on Iran.

0:13:14 Matt: A few U .M. member states thought that Iran had not complied with the deal that it made with the U .K. Security Council. And we had this special, very unusual enforcement provision, a snap back provision, that allowed any one of the signatories to come forward and say this isn't happening and they don't have to run up to the Security Council, there doesn't have be a resolution, they can just reimpose these sanctions. So there's the U !N. Sanctions, which we'll talk about at the end, But the U .S. sanctions, we have a lot of leverage here because we control them, obviously. We have our hands on the levers of those.

0:13:40 Matt: So the deal is what he's saying is that we're going to basically lift any sanctions that might have been in place and allow these deals to be made and allow people that might have previously not been able to do business with Iran to do a business with them. So that is a lot power that we have. And it's certainly better than just giving away $300 billion from the Treasury. But I'm getting annoyed already by the headlines that say that Trump is spending $300 billion because let's be fair, that's not what's happening. Happening. We've already spent hundreds of, well, I don't know, over $100 billion in just fighting this stupid thing for no reason. We certainly wasted plenty, but that's not happening.

0:14:10 Thomas: I'm torn, too, because like we kind of like owe them reparations, you know, so I keep having this feeling of like on one hand, it's like, wow, what a bad idiot deal. On the other hand, like they kind of deserve it.

0:14:21 Matt: We do. Yeah.

0:14:21 Thomas: Personally, I'm not that upset, but it's also just like it's so transparently stupid and a result of his low attention span, inability to understand anything and impatience and fundamentally misunderstanding the world, not relying on expertise. Everything that's Trump, everything that makes him a terrible negotiator is what makes him him. In a way, it is satisfying to see how obviously true everything we say about him is and how obviously untrue everything he says about himself is.

0:14:51 Matt: Every day, over and over. And I totally agree with you about the preparations. And certainly, you know, there's nothing we can do to replace these up to 6 ,000 people that we killed in Iran and the tens of thousands of people that were wounded. The one thing that they want more than anything, of course, is what we give them in paragraph seven, which is the U .S. will will undertake to terminate all types of sanctions against Iran, including the UN resolutions, including the inspectors for the nukes, and all unilateral US sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. This is huge. This has hundreds of billions of dollars potentially of business that they're going to be able to do now. This is giving them exactly what they want because we want that oil back. I mean, we are facing potentially catastrophic. And as it is, I think the economy is going to get hit by the end of of the year, just with the pause that we've had.

0:15:18 Thomas: What? Why would we do that? Yeah, it's going to be pretty bad.

0:15:40 Matt: You know, look at what the refiners are having to do right now. That's huge. What we're promising to do is endeavor to end sanctions. We can't control what the Security Council does. The president can't control Congress, even though he still thinks he is Congress. He can't repeal statutory sanctions, but what he can do is give a bunch of waivers and licenses to pretend that they're not there. So you can basically fake it. But waivers are still temporary, and they still have to be case by case. It's a bold statement to say that we're going to wind down or undertake to terminate all types of sanctions. And it's a It's still up to Congress and it's still up to the UN. So there is that at the end of the day.

0:16:14 Thomas: I think what's interesting is, yeah, like he probably thinks he can get or they probably think they can get away with promising something that they can't do or whatever. But Iran has shown that they're not going to just make a stupid, terrible deal for no reason. Like that's why we're here. He's been doing the stupid Lucy with the football of the deal over and over and over and is there even reason to think that this is any different than that? Do you think this one actually will stand as a quote unquote deal at least?

0:16:42 Matt: I don't know. I mean, it does give them quite a lot of what they want. And I should point out that the sanctions, they're effective. They've been dodging those with what they call the shadow fleet where they're selling to China and other places. But, you know, this is certainly going to make it easier for them to get back out of the market and unfreeze assets and all that stuff. But of course, like you just said, you can't trust any of this stuff. And you know you really can't rest it because Vance has been talking about how this agreement doesn't actually represent everything that's been discussed and potentially agreed upon. And that's never a good sign. We need need everything in writing all at once. That's the only way this is going to work. I should point out also that there is another provision which we undertake to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of Iran. This is exactly, as you said, what Obama was criticized for, was making these things available. And he did it in such a way that it looked like it was being paid his ransom because there was some releases going on at the same time. And maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. That was money that was already theirs that we were just holding. And it was not this permanent lifting that we're talking about here. It's hard to make a one -to -one comparison to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, because because obviously that was executed under peacetime. That has already expired, obviously.

0:17:44 Thomas: Sorry, expired. Didn't Trump just rip it up?

0:17:47 Matt: It formally expired in October of last year. I think that it was... That's right, we withdrew.

0:17:52 Thomas: He definitely got out of it. And then did Biden try to put it back or something?

0:17:56 Matt: It still exists.

0:17:57 Thomas: Oh yeah. There was a thing where they were like, we're, I think on their side, they're like, we're going to kind of still follow this. Right. Yeah. No, it's got a weird history.

0:18:03 Matt: The JCPOA was not just signed by the US. It was also signed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany and the European Union as a whole.

0:18:11 Thomas: Oh, hmm. Yeah, I didn't really remember that.

0:18:14 Matt: Yeah. Also China, France.

0:18:15 Thomas: Okay, so that's why they're like, well, we'll still do it even though the U .S. is just like out. So yeah, because Trump got out of it in 2018.

0:18:21 Matt: I hadn't really appreciated that either. It was a bigger plan. Of course, typical Americans, we don't realize the rest of the world is involved. There was an interesting thing that caught my eye at the end of it, where it said that they're going to have to run this deal through the Security Council, that it's going going to be endorsed by a binding Security Council resolution because it seems like it's between two countries, potentially three countries, even though they're not signing. But no, it actually does need to be run through the Security Council because of the sanctions issue and because Chapter 7, I believe, requires that in this kind of a thing that hostilities be wound down this way. Getting the Security council involved actually sort of wanders the deal. So it's not just between two countries anymore. We did the same thing with the JCPOA in 2015, where by having the UN Security Council issue a binding resolution, it is now binding on all 193 members of the UN, including Israel.

0:19:08 Matt: Even though Israel is not signing it and we're pretending that they're signing it, the resolution theoretically would bind Israel along with France and Papua New Guinea and everybody else so that they would have to not attack Iran. It's going to be a mess to pass that through the council, but that's what we're trying to do.

0:19:22 Thomas: I'm starting to think this just wasn't a good idea. There's no way anyone could have seen this coming. You know, hindsight's 50 -50. Uh I think now I'm changing my position not a good idea to do a war on iran for no

0:19:38 Matt: If we could just... Do you think a time machine would cost more than $300 billion?

0:19:39 Thomas: Reason, egg on my face, Matt, egg on my face. Oh well that's only one way to find

0:19:44 Matt: Because I think maybe we should get that project going. Yeah, let's get it going. I'm ready. Yeah. So that's my first read on this plan. It's interesting just to look behind the details, look behind headlines and see what is actually happening in this. Don't believe people are telling you that we're just spending $300 billion. At least that's one thing we're not doing. They had asked for $400 billion in reparations total. And we said no to that, obviously.

0:20:05 Thomas: Out yeah we drove a hard bargain

0:20:08 Matt: Yeah, $400 billion. So we should move on here. But that's what we got for the Iran deal so far.

0:20:13 Thomas: Yeah what are we looking for next is there even a deal I still don't even from what you're saying I don't get it what it's like concepts of a maybe of a kind of a thing yeah

0:20:23 Matt: A deal to make a deal. And it's an easy win on Trump's birthday. I mean, I guess you can pitch it as some kind of win. I know it's not, but for him, from their perspective, it's at least something. If that Strait is open, that's all he cares about. But we potentially are going to end up with lifting sanctions that were there for good reasons in many cases. I don't agree with all of them.

0:20:28 Thomas: It's not a win, Matt. This is not a win.

0:20:40 Matt: And allowing the Strait of Hormuz to be controlled by the people that are right next to it in a way that was never contemplated before. That's where we're at.

0:20:48 Thomas: Brilliant expert negotiator. The art of the deal.

0:20:51 Matt: That sounds right.

0:20:51 Thomas: The artofthedeal, Matt, alright. Well, we'll take a break and then we'll move on to other topics.

0:20:59 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:20:59 Thomas: Alright, Matt so you had some ice updates for us. Ice watch.

0:21:03 Matt: Yeah, a few. First of all, I want to play a clip here. We haven't really had a chance to listen to Mark Wayne Mullen, in our new DHS head?

0:21:10 Thomas: Haven't we? Yeah.

0:21:11 Matt: No, not nearly enough. So I've got a clip here. This kind of caught my ear because this is something I've been following for a while. And I know that OA has covered it before. And you're familiar with the idea that Biden lost hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children. But there's a really dark reason that they have been pushing this. And I want to talk about this a little bit. Let's just play the clip here of Mark Wayne, who seems to actually believe what he's saying. It's hard to believe, but he might.

0:21:37 Clip: You know, I tell people that I haven't quit smiling since I have been secretary of Department of Homeland Security, but I have to take that back because when we start digging into these cases and you start hearing the absolute horrific things that took place underneath the Biden administration under true neglect at best and criminal at worst to allow 450,000 kids to go missing throughout this country.

0:21:43 Matt: Okay, that's weird, too.

0:22:09 Thomas: Incorrect.

0:22:11 Clip: President Trump has made it a point to go find these kids.

0:22:14 Thomas: Oh yeah? Where are they?

0:22:15 Clip: Because of our partnership with HHS and DOJ, Department of Homeland Security, truly using the best of the best, which the Democrats sometimes want to demonize, because a lot of times this is ICE, this is HSI, this a CBP.

0:22:31 Thomas: Well, who lost them in the first place?

0:22:32 Clip: These individuals that the Democrats seem to want to defund, we found 146,000 kids so far.

0:22:40 Matt: Just found them.

0:22:43 Thomas: Where'd you find them?

0:22:44 Clip: We still have nearly 300,000 missing. We're investigating reports to where some of these kids claim that they were raped six to 700 times. I don't care who you are.

0:22:57 Thomas: If it was just a couple hundred, I'd be okay with it.

0:23:00 Clip: I don't care if you have kids, if you don't have kids I don' t care if your liberal, your independent you? Every leader on and do you know where we're finding the most of them?

0:23:14 Thomas: He's got me.

0:23:14 Matt: Great question, Mark Wayne. Who are we? Imagine that. Places where immigrants live.

0:23:31 Clip: That's why they're called sanctuary cities, because of President Trump's leadership, we're We have mayors like Mondami in New York who want to say, you're not welcome.

0:23:37 Matt: And we're deporting children.

0:23:43 Thomas: Mondami. Yeah.

0:23:46 Clip: As a mayor, he knows what's happening on the streets. He knows who he's harboring and at this point in abating. By saying that we can't go operate, we are going to. We're going to go find the worst of the worst. We're gonna rescue as many kids as we possibly can. We are going to enforce our nation's laws and we're gonna right the wrongs that the Biden administration turned a blind eye to. It's because of President Trump's leadership. It's horrific to what's happening right in our own country because of four years of a blind

0:24:25 Matt: I get the idea.

0:24:27 Thomas: That's, I mean, that's 112 .5 thousand a year. That's a, that'S a good clip.

0:24:32 Matt: That's a lot of children. I would think somebody might notice if all those kids were actually missing.

0:24:36 Thomas: Yeah. Debunk this on WTW about a million times, but it's also cool because it always like evolves.

0:24:40 Matt: Are you sure? Yeah. Sure.

0:24:45 Thomas: Like the number changes a million, a million. I I'm sure that one is nothing. Thing probably not even the original number for all I know

0:24:52 Matt: The thing that caught my eye was the kind of sound of freedom or QAnon angle here that's going on, where he's talking about how necessarily if we can't find them, that means they're being sexually abused, sexually trafficked. And this has become, as I'm sure you know, like a real narrative that there's like this this massive network of child sex trafficking going on from the border. No doubt there, unfortunately, there is some human sex trafficking that is involuntary, and some of it may involve children, but I've never heard of any kind of organized ring or anything like that. There's a good reason that Jeffrey Epstein was drawing from Eastern Europe and Russia, and unfortunately that's where these kinds of things can be purchased. The reason I wanted to bring this up is because they've started to repeat this point again about the missing kids. And again, just to make it clear for those who haven't listened to this before, HHS, the Health and Human Services, is the ORR division, which is responsible for processing minors at the border. They will check out the sponsor to be sure that when an unaccompanied child is at the boarder, and think about what it means. First of all, there's an unaccounted child, right? That

0:25:44 Matt: Their parents thought they're in so much danger they had to send them. Or in some cases, the parents came separately or they got separated. If the parents aren't available, they'll place them with an aunt and uncle or cousin or someone else who will be checked out first. And at that point, ORR is not a child welfare agency. They don't go back and check. They just make sure that people got to where they're going. They don'T have the extra jurisdiction to go and actually monitor these things. As soon as their address changes, they're missing, right? So that's all it takes.

0:26:06 Thomas: Yeah it just means they haven't shown up for a court date or it doesn't even mean that I saw one thing that was like it doesn't mean that they haven't been scheduled for their court date was one of

0:26:13 Matt: That's right. Yeah. Quite a few of them, hundreds of thousands probably, have not received notices to appear at all to get to courts.

0:26:17 Thomas: Them yeah so it's nothing I don't even what does that even

0:26:22 Matt: When they say they find them, that doesn't mean they find like a 12 -year -old working on a factory floor. It means that they found them at home where they're supposed to be.

0:26:27 Thomas: You mean they didn't rescue them from the sanctuary city liberal uh rape den

0:26:33 Matt: It turns out that a lot of kids end up in sanctuary cities because that's a safe place for them to be, so this is just kind of a garbled bunch of nonsense as usual, but I wanted to mention it because it ties into the AI surveillance and the enormous amounts of money that ICE is investing right now. As we know, of course, ICE is not working from a massive, massive slush fund, more money that's ever been given to one government agency. And I was especially concerned about Clearview AI, which is now using facial recognition and biometrics in the name of catching child sex traffickers, in the game of tracking down alien children, as they call them. This is really bad. ICE's dragnet, as we've been saying for a while, is not something that just non -citizens should be concerned about because they're going to use everything that's publicly available, billions of photos from the public internet, whatever's out there to scrape and to collect and to use against you. And this really starts to matter if you are someone like us who opposes ICE. And let's check out this video back from February. This is from Portland, Maine. Pretty telling admission here from an ICE officer.

0:27:29 Clip: Mind eye. It's not illegal to record. Exactly. Yeah, that's what we're doing. Yeah. Why are you taking my information down? Because we have a nice little database. Oh, good. And now you're considered a domestic terrorist. We're videotaping you? Are you crazy? So let me ask you, sir.

0:27:49 Thomas: That sounds like someone being full of shit but are you saying that's real Wow.

0:27:52 Matt: I'm saying that's real. So let's just see Todd Lyons quickly deny that any such database exists before I, of course, inevitably reveal that it does.

0:28:03 Clip: Are you surveilling U.S. citizens today? No, sir, those people protesting practicing this first amendment right photos of them data taken they're not being placed in any kind of a database there is no database for protesters sir one of your officers in maine said to one of the individuals protesting we're going to put your face in a little database what does that mean do you have a little database of americans no sir we don't Then what do you think your ICE agent was doing to this individual when he said those statements? I can't speak for that individual, sir, but I can assure you there is no database that's tracking United States citizens.

0:28:43 Matt: There you go. Of course, this just came out a few days ago. NPR got a letter that had not been made public before, in which Todd Lyons, same person that you just saw testifying, acting head of ICE, acknowledged. In response to a letter from Representative Maxwell Frost, he said pretty clearly that pretty much anybody they encounter in the field, they're going to collect biographic and biometric information and situational details. If individuals who interact with ICE officers are not arrested or detained, any information collected during those encounters is maintained consistent with applicable law. The really good news, he wants to make it very clear that what they are not doing is keeping track of who owns guns. He had a whole paragraph about that.

0:29:20 Matt: So great news. Your Second Amendment rights are safe with ICE. This is especially concerning because we've already seen it play out in a really scary way in Minneapolis and other places, but you might have heard the story of Nicole Cleland, and she's got a sworn affidavit in the Tincture litigation in Minneapolis that we've talked about before.

0:29:38 Thomas: The what litigation?

0:29:40 Matt: Tincturer was the name of the Susan Tinctures. That was the woman who was brutally arrested and had her wedding ring cut off, the whole thing. This got some attention at the time, but I just want to make sure people know what their capacities are here, because what they can actually do. This was a pretty typical ICE observer, somebody who was following a white Dodge Ram that they believed was being driven by ICE. Agent comes out of the vehicle and tells her, we've got facial recognition, that he works for CBP. She's not doing anything to impede the work, but she's being told that she is. She gets a verbal warning. And then three days later, she gets a notice that her global entry TSA pre -check has been revoked for no explanation, no other explanation.

0:30:17 Matt: This is the only reason that it could be. And it was just because she'd been found in violation of some kind of immigration or customs laws. That's all they said. She had no record. She Had no other contact with law enforcement. It couldn't be a coincidence that three days Later, this is the thing they can do because obviously that program is administered by DHS. So all they have to do is grab her face, didn't even know her name. They just grabbed her face and put it through and they were able to revoke her pre -check. Another account from Minnesota that was not in the litigation that was reported on at the time that I wanted to mention, someone who identified themselves only as Emily for the purpose of the story. ICE officer leans out the window, grabs a picture of her under similar circumstances while she's patrolling, and immediately recites her home address and tells her we're going to take you home.

0:30:57 Matt: And then she gets a call from a blocked number. Caller identifies themselves as calling from DHS. Her spouse who picks up was told you should let her know not to to do that anymore because people are doing that type of thing or getting added to a domestic terrorist watch list. You know, this is real stuff.

0:31:11 Thomas: That's not ominous at all. Jeez.

0:31:12 Matt: Not at all. No, that's just regular policing, I guess. This is just, I don't even have to say about it. But, you know, just kind of the other kicker on this is the EFF, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, has filed suit trying to get its hands around the use of administrative subpoenas. And ICE, the same way we've discussed, they can do administrative warrants. They can also do administrative subpenas in many cases. And they have many documented instances now of subpoenos to Google and Meta and other platforms, trying to unmask accounts that are critical of them. And I will say I've always done it in my own name, but I completely understand why people would want to do it in other names. But in case they're trying to figure out who my account belongs to, it does belong to me. There's a really concerning widespread use of these administrative subpoenas. It looks like being used only to go after social media critics of ICE. And that doesn't surprise me at all. We know under the first administration, they were putting together basically a database of journalists and independents and social media people that were speaking out about them and opposing them. This is exactly what you'd expect from an agency that is unchecked, that has no real restrictions. But the use of AI has been reported kind of in talking about the way they're going to be going after immigrants, because they are investing in quite a lot more, and they're going to be able to pull together massive amounts of records to track people down. But that just means all of us. As always, the things they're gonna do to immigrants, they'll do to us sooner or later. And it looks like it's already sooner. So I just wanted to put that warning out there about where things are going. When you hear it being done in the name of missing kids who aren't missing and sexual abuse victims who are not actually victims. And again, I'm not saying there aren't people who are being abused. I don't know what he's talking about, the six or 700 times thing. I desperately hope that's not true. That certainly doesn't sound true.

0:32:46 Thomas: That's not true, Matt. Here, I'll go ahead and tell you.

0:32:49 Matt: That's a nightmare.

0:32:49 Thomas: Not real.

0:32:50 Matt: These fantasy ideas, the sound of freedom thing that there's like these organized rings that you can bust up. It's just, it's pure fantasy. Not to say the child sex trafficking is not happening.

0:32:59 Thomas: Reminder, the guy who was the center of the Sound of Freedom was found to be possibly trafficking. Yeah.

0:33:06 Matt: Yeah. And all kinds of liar too. Yeah, no surprise. And again we already know who's aiding and abetting sex traffickers. He's the president. So we're good there. I don't really need any more investigation of that.

0:33:18 Thomas: You know, no, not only that, not for nothing. I know it's like even if you don't want to believe that Trump ultimately is like implicated in Epstein and maybe there's some chance that it's not as much as we would think. Something that has gone a little under the radar, but there was a massive article reporting on it out of the New Yorker on the Tate brothers.

0:33:42 Thomas: I love it because they had an actual human narrator who did it. So I was able to listen to it. It's two hours of an article that's the longest one I've ever seen like just longest normal article I've never seen it's so long about how awful these people are and what they've done and it was truly awful the only reason they're free is basically because of the trumps

0:34:05 Matt: Because we let them back in. They weren't supposed to be allowed back in?

0:34:08 Thomas: Yeah well and pressured romania to yeah to allow them to travel it's corruption all the way down and there's just just no denying it. And there's no innocent explanation. There's no anything. It's literally just this guy is somebody that the people who vote for Trump like, and that's it. That's end of calculation. Doesn't matter how evil he is or how many underage girls he's actually trafficked and raped.

0:34:37 Thomas: Doesn't even matter. It's just like, that's real, actual real, not 430,000 kids. That's a fake statistic with 700 rapes that's not real like that's all fake but the real stuff they are actively helping and they don't give a shit about all

0:34:56 Matt: Well said. And that's where we're at. But it's much more convenient to make up enemies like this than to deal with the real problems, as always. The cognitive dissonance of having to deal with the fact that after years and years and years of hearing from QAnon that the president had a secret plan to stop sex traffickers and realizing he's just been enabling all this time, I don t know how you get through that, except to get more angry, I guess, which it seems to be what they're doing.

0:35:15 Thomas: Right well um that's infuriating and stupid and you know I don't know where that goes I guess on one hand it's semi comforting to realize this myth has been around for years but it's still it feels like a powder keg you know at any time if people actually believe these things they could do really harmful things it's It's like a loaded gun. You know, I don't know what's going to happen with that.

0:35:39 Matt: And you can count on fascists to make arguments in the name of women and children while completely disrespecting women and children at all times. So that's going to continue too. They certainly don't care about the health and welfare of these kids. They just want to make sure they can find them and deport them. One more ICE -related story, just because we have not caught up on the case of Hannah Dugan, the judge who was arrested in court in Wisconsin. We talked about it for a while, but she was convicted. It was a very strange split verdict. She was actually convicted of obstruction, but acquitted of concealment.

0:35:56 Thomas: Yeah. Really curious about this. Huh.

0:36:06 Matt: And there's an interesting kind of intent element there. Are the difference between knowing that there was somebody that they were trying to get and knowing exactly who that person was and what the actual thing they were trying to him for was. When you really break down the jury verdict, it doesn't actually make a lot of sense. And I saw that one of the jurors was interviewed and said basically they figured out a way to split the baby here where they would give her the smaller conviction. The thing that she was actually convicted on, the issue that's come up now is especially interesting to me, and it is 18 U .S .C. 1505. Now, we've previously talked about things like this in the context of of the Fisher case before the Supreme Court, where it was determining whether this kind of stray provision in the McCain -Feingold Finance Act, like a banking act basically, applied to obstructing Congress.

0:36:48 Thomas: It was like Jan Sixers, right?

0:36:51 Matt: Right.

0:36:51 Thomas: Where it was like trying to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

0:36:52 Matt: Obstructing a proceeding, obstructing the certification. But whether that could have possibly extended, and they found that it did. And this is an obstruction that involves specifically the obstruction of civil proceedings. And I wanted to read the language here because this is pretty interesting. Whoever corruptly by threats or by force or by any threatening water communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States. This is a really important language, any pending proceeding, because at the time when they were going in to arrest this immigrant, they had a removal order. They had an I -200 that they were executing. They knew that he had come back. So he had at some point, I think in 2013, had been deported to Mexico. He reentered, committed allegedly a violent offense, was in court, and they flagged him as coming back to court, and they were coming in to arrest him because they knew that he had a removal order. So this is not a pending proceeding. This is an order that's already done.

0:37:45 Matt: There's an interesting question here, which we have a case now of first impression, on whether or not an ICE arrest, and this gets really technical, and I'm just going to try not to, I'm going to graze the technicality here, but there's a really interesting kind of like Schrodinger's ICE arrest going on here about exactly what is going on at any given time when you're trying to arrest somebody for immigration purposes. She's making the very reasonable point, you know, I was only convicted under this statute, and there's now Fourth Circuit precedent under this case called Hernandez. Now, she, let me tell you, the procedural posture here is she was already convicted. She's facing sentencing. In the jury instructions, when the judge was preparing the jury, the instructions that were developed partly relied on the original version of this case, Hernandez, which is not, it was an out -of -district, out -off -circuit case, but it had some relevant language. And that case was later reversed. And so she's coming back to have the entire case reconsidered because she's saying you at least relied in part on a case which has now been reversed. Hernandez found that in this case, that an ICE arrest was not a proceeding because he had a final order and they were just going to execute a final border.

0:38:44 Matt: The interesting distinction here about this statute, because this is about civil arrests. So you're talking about the SEC, you're taking about the IRS, you talking about people that are being arrested for civil violations, not necessarily crimes. And just a reminder that when you have a removal order, that's still not a crime when you're here, they're just going to go collect you. In this case there's a really interesting question because when somebody has re -entered after a removal order, you have to reinstate that order. So there's like a whole process you have go through. You potentially might have a defense to having that reinstated. But at the time when they're going to get him in that courtroom, when Hannah Dugan was aware of the situation, all they were doing was grabbing somebody who had a removal order. They had not started that reinstatement process. There was no active pending proceeding. And this is kind of what Hernandez comes down to. This statute doesn't apply to like FBI actions or other sort of regular police actions. The controlling precedent in the Seventh Circuit where this was, was about an SEC investigation which had been blocked by a court. This guy was in violation of various things he wasn't supposed to be doing. It's a really interesting kind of hair -splitting thing, and already I've seen some pretty bad headlines about it. This was kind of a Hail Mary because what they were doing for the reconsideration, and again, it's a big deal to have a reconsideration. They'd tried already to vacate the verdict, and they came back and said, look, Hernandez has been reversed, and now we have this precedent, but it's not precedent because it's in a different circuit. It'S not actually binding on the judge at all. So it was a nice try. And the logic works pretty well. And it's going to have to, and this is the first circuit to reach this conclusion that an ICE arrest is not necessarily interfering with a pending proceeding

0:40:09 Matt: If you're interfering with an ICE arrest. This is important because if they continue to use this statute in this way, they're going to be able to continue to get judges that are even close to the line on this kind of thing.

0:40:18 Thomas: Is that a thing that happens often with judges? I thought this was kind of a weird circumstance.

0:40:23 Matt: It's at least the second one that I know of ever, but I'm sure it's happened other places. The other one was in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts judge that case was dropped after she agreed to submit herself to discipline by the SJC. Yeah. Lost lost her law license and didn't have to go to jail. Dugan is still facing sentencing. She could be doing time. It is possible. She was a very well -known lawyer and had a long career behind her. And this is a really unfortunate thing. The fact that there's a circuit split about whether or not an immigration arrest actually qualifies as a proceeding.

0:40:52 Matt: And it is weird. It's not really my understanding of a proceeding, right? We're just going to execute a final order. The fact that it's even a question about it means that what's called the rule of lenity ought to apply.

0:41:00 Thomas: Yeah, you would think.

0:41:01 Matt: It gets ambiguous enough that you can't really say that a state judge could know this this is obstructing a federal proceeding. I wouldn't have guessed that.

0:41:08 Thomas: So she already tried this to get it vacated and it didn't work.

0:41:12 Matt: The headlines you're seeing recently this week are about her motion to reconsider. This is just kind of the last Hail Mary before sentencing. Because of this change with Hernandez, this case that came down recently that was reversed, it was one of the things he had cited, and the jury instructions now reversed. And they're trying to say that the logic holds, but of course, it's not binding on him. And that's what he said. It's a very long decision here that we'll link to. You can bring a motion to consider when there's a change in the law. There's other kinds of motions to vacate. There's another kinds of post -conviction relief that you can come after. But with reconsideration, it has to be either you've got the law wrong, judge, in a way that we can totally prove before we appeal you and you have a chance to fix it before we appeal to you.

0:41:42 Matt: And I've certainly won those before. Or you can say there's been a major change in the law and you need to consider that in your judgment. And so they'd previously moved to set the verdict aside. He denied that. And Hernandez, the case that was in question here, again, not in his circuit, not binding on him. Very important to make that clear. That's why it's a pretty shaky grounds for motion to reconsider because it's not actually a change in law in that circuit. They're just saying that it should be be persuasive. The facts weren't exactly in point, but they're close enough that I can see why they did it. But I think he's on pretty good ground to say Hernandez isn't controlling here. There's nothing that's actually changed and I can't reconsider.

0:42:15 Matt: That's fine, but I still think this needs to be appealed.

0:42:15 Thomas: Maybe I misunderstood. What was the first thing she filed you said that got denied? What was that based on?

0:42:22 Matt: Dugan pointed out in her original motion, the one that she's trying to have reconsidered the denial of now, that she is the first and only judge in U .S. history to stand trial in an indictment for wholly official good faith acts untainted by graft corruption or self -dealing that violated no individual constitutional right that the Reconstruction Amendments protect.

0:42:37 Matt: And it points out that the Justice Department previously dismissed under under Biden, the Massachusetts judge's case. Essentially, the original motion to set aside the verdict was purely legal, and it was just based on the idea that this shouldn't have been a crime, that these were not pending proceedings, kind of all the usual things. But this motion to reconsider was kind of a Hail Mary based onthe fact that one of the major cases that the judge had been looking at and that anybody could point to in trying to understand about whether interfering with an ICE arrest falls under this statute was reversed on appeal. So that's kind of what it came down to. I wanted to cover it now because this is pretty much the end of the line for this part of things. It's not going to go any further. She's going to have to appeal it. She'll be sentenced sometime soon, and we'll see where it goes from there because, as I said, there is a circuit split on it now, and there's a possibility that this could be seen differently. I can see both sides on this one, but I do think we need to be careful about calling a run -of -the -mill straightforward ICE arrest for somebody who has already sustained a removal order, a pending proceeding. I think that's taking a little too far.

0:43:33 Thomas: She was denied on both tries.

0:43:36 Matt: Yeah. And the headline becomes, you know, court declines to reconsider the verdict, which is true, but there's been a lot going on. And there's an interesting kind of legal thing beneath all of this that really does need to be decided. The judge came down pretty narrowly on this, but this core question really needs to get more attention. So I thought it was worth looking at today.

0:43:51 Thomas: Yeah, it's really interesting. Doesn't seem like a pending proceeding when you put it that way. It still seems like it wouldn't really be okay. Okay, again, obviously, you know, we disagree with her being charged and convicted of anything. But is it better if it's like an arrest that they're doing like that would make it okay, just by the nature of the specific law that they were using? Like if it was not a pending proceeding, but it was like an unrest, as you said that they Were trying to do, right? Didn't you say they were trying to pick them up? How would that be okay to interfere with but a pending preceding wouldn't?

0:44:17 Matt: Well, that's when you get into 18 U .S .C. 111, our good friend from the Sam's trial, which can be used for pretty much anything that you do to get in the way of an ICE arrest, but she wasn't charged with that.

0:44:35 Thomas: Okay so it'd be a question of like they would maybe recharge her with something else if they were to lose this

0:44:40 Matt: Potentially, yeah. I think they wanted this to be as broad as possible because 1505 is extremely broad. It's been interpreted it very broadly. Anything that you might do that would even force them into a foot chase, like that would Even delay them and make it harder, you know, let somebody get a head start. I think that's enough under this. The jury found that she didn't conceal him. She just impeded the arrest operations by pointing out the back door. That's where we're at. Yeah.

0:45:02 Thomas: Dang, so she's gonna get sentenced and we're not really we don't have anything the next thing will be the appeal on that I guess

0:45:08 Matt: And we'll have to see if the seventh circuit will take the same view of the fourth did. And I hope they do. I understand the point that it's going to be a pending proceeding, that they're going to be reinstating a removal order. But when they walk into that courthouse, what they have is an arrest warrant and that's all they have. And so they're really not that different from from any other agency that's carrying out an arrest, they're not in the middle of an investigation. They're at the end of one.

0:45:27 Thomas: Do you think that's her best appeal do you have to like pick one thing you know because it also just seems crazy like my appeal would be why in the world are we convicting her of this at all I don't understand does she have to pick like one avenue of

0:45:37 Matt: She's raised a lot of good issues in these motions and they're all going to be wrapped up into it.

0:45:43 Thomas: Appeal okay so there's a lot of other issues and tied

0:45:46 Matt: What they come down to is why in the world is this a conviction? Why would she charge with this? I mean, it's really what you said, but there's lots of different ways to say that.

0:45:48 Thomas: In okay okay so So she gets to like have them look at all of them eventually.

0:45:55 Matt: Yeah, the whole record will be in here and that includes this reinterpretation of Hernandez. This includes the pending proceeding thing and whether they had the right to charge her this way at all. There's plenty going on here.

0:46:06 Thomas: Yeah. Is she kind of done as a judge no matter what you think?

0:46:09 Matt: Yeah probably.

0:46:10 Thomas: Jeez, that is so crazy.

0:46:12 Matt: I I think that's what happened with Shelly Joseph here in Massachusetts.

0:46:15 Thomas: Wow. Such a weird, depressing story, but we'll keep an eye on that. All right. We need a break and we need a footnote, Matt. What do you think we'll take a quick break? And then as always, we'll hopefully be brought back up with a fun footnote.

0:46:21 Matt: We got it. Let's do it.

0:46:31 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:46:31 Thomas: All right, Matt, what do you have for us?

0:46:33 Matt: I've got this thing that was going around. I don't know if you saw this, but this is a pretty convincing image that I'm sending you right now. This is from the CME group, which handles futures contracts. You can go ahead and read.

0:46:45 Thomas: Physical delivery of live cattle.

0:46:46 Matt: Quite a notice to receive.

0:46:47 Thomas: This notice is to inform you that your account carried an open long position. Oh, that is exactly what I was talking about. Okay. Live cattle futures June 2020 through expiration June 5th, 2026 without being closed or rolled prior to the last trading day. As a result, pursuant to CME rules, a physical delivery obligation has been assigned to your account. The following livestock is currently penned and awaiting your collection of the designated delivery facility. Wow. 80,000 pounds, 60 head of cattle.

0:47:13 Matt: It's 80,000 pounds worth of cows.

0:47:18 Thomas: Boy those things weigh a lot oh

0:47:20 Matt: They do. Yeah, a few issues here. I actually, and again, I wouldn't know this. I talked to somebody, actually, that I know that used to do futures trading, and he had had a lot to say about this. This is not real. This is a fun meme that was going around, but it inspires an interesting conversation because I didn't know any of this. And the most interesting thing to start with is that cattle futures, and we'll talk about this in a second, but cattle futures are pretty much one of the only ones left where it can obligate a physical delivery if you let it expire. And that's very funny to me that this could happen. And I wanted to investigate what the likelihood is that something like this might actually happen, that you would like stick your contract in a drawer and forget about it. You end up having to buy these cows. Just a reminder, because we've talked about this in terms of the prediction markets.

0:47:32 Thomas: It's fake okay

0:48:01 Matt: Futures contracts are just trading the option to buy or sell at a certain price. And obviously, there's reasons that sellers and buyers both might want these things. I don't really understand a lot about capitalism. This is one of those things. I mean, it's just like pork bellies, orange juice on

0:47:55 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah so it could be yeah it's so like if you're counting on price is something that you grow is a hundred dollars you're planning on it and it's you're kind of all in on this one crop and like you know if the price were to tank that's really bad for you. Well, you could sell like the ability to buy it at a lower price to kind of hedge.

0:48:37 Matt: The margin.

0:48:37 Thomas: And there's a certain value to that that people do, because if it's, you know, if the price is lower, they would let it expire or whatever. It's like kind of a gamble. And if the prices higher than they would do that in order to get a deal. And it's a little more complicated than that, but that's essentially it. It kind of locks you into a position of a midpoint to kind to help spread out your risk. Otherwise, if you grow just soybeans, and it's actually a good example because I think Trump's policies have killed soybeans in many ways. You don't want to be all in on one single crop and then have the price change. But because of the nature of farming, it's not like there's a lot of mom and pop Stardew Valley farms.

0:49:15 Thomas: It's like you're just a massive like thing that does one thing.

0:49:15 Matt: What I didn't know about this position thing, the mark -to -market situation, again, I just don't know that much about trading, but my friend pointed out that this is a cash thing every day. While while you hold the position, your account is basically moving the entire time on like other things. So you like, you get money wired into your account like every day as it goes through the position. It's kind of weird. Like it just closes every night. My point is that this first thing, this wouldn't happen. You wouldn't actually have a situation because first of all, as my friend pointed out, the CMA group is not going to write to you. They're going to read to your broker and they're not goingto actually offer you the cows because you haven't bought them yet. What you bought was a margin. You have to actually pay for them. But the system is also designed, And this is the part that really kills me because, again, these are supposed to be contracts in which you're going to be buying things. The system's designed to keep you from actually ever receiving those things.

0:50:01 Matt: The broker has a rule, basically. The brokers that do these will not let them expire. They keep a hard watch on this. You can't just stick it in a drawer. So they will liquidate the contract if it's coming up. This has just never happened. It's kind of a fun thought. And I love the way that this ends, where it says, you know, arrange your physical collection. You have to provide a livestock trailer transfer documentation. It's like a horror story. You suddenly have these things.

0:50:21 Thomas: That's like a sitcom. Like, I guess we're farmers now. And then you take out the, you know, thank

0:50:23 Matt: It is. Right. Live in a condo in San Francisco, but sure. Yeah. Take some 60 cows. Futures contracts are designed, as I thought was interesting, that they can't expire and that you have to liquidate it one way or another. This isn't actually ever going to happen. I guess you can safely trade your cattle futures knowing that, or your orange juice and whatever else.

0:50:42 Thomas: God. I mean, I know this is something that has happened in the past. They probably just changed, you know, how they do it. I imagine.

0:50:48 Matt: Yeah. So this wouldn't happen. Yeah?

0:50:51 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Cause I'm sure it only takes a few times to be like, that sucks. So let's not do that. Yeah. Nobody wants your frigging cows. I'm just trading. I was just trying to, yeah. I'd like the opportunity. I would just like to be asked. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fun. So this is a kind of a fake meme that went around though, that

0:50:56 Matt: Yeah. Right. Nobody actually wanted cows. Taking a good joke way I just want the option to buy cows that's all I'm in it for yeah right just kind of my thing the chance to buy some cows yeah it got me for a minute because I thought about it I was like well yeah that kind of makes sense if it

0:51:16 Thomas: People thought was real. Yeah, it does look pretty real. Yeah.

0:51:21 Matt: Would expire yeah it does it really does and my friend was pointing out though that the units are actually 40 ,000 pounds so like this is two contracts combined apparently that doesn't really explain that very well yeah yeah this is 80 and then uh apparently the the timing on this is way off because there's like certain days when these things are settled up and this just wouldn't play out or whatever.

0:51:30 Thomas: Oh, like the standard unit or something? Huh. Wow.

0:51:41 Matt: So the person who put this together didn't know that much about it.

0:51:42 Thomas: So you talked to a real life cattle trader.

0:51:45 Matt: Somebody who used to do this kind of trading and is still familiar with it.

0:51:49 Thomas: That is funny.

0:51:49 Matt: I guess I don't know. I mean, I don'T really even know how to begin to research something like this, but I thought it was interesting. So I try to get to the experts when I can.

0:51:56 Thomas: Well, fun times. That is a good footnote. I am trying to I think, is there any cow -related pun? Good hoof note.

0:52:03 Matt: There we go.

0:52:04 Thomas: All right. Thanks for the hoof note, and thanks for listening, everybody. Oh, hey, before we go, Matt, I think we have some book club news that you might want to tease.

0:52:14 Matt: Book Club is coming up quick. Our first one, we're going to be reading Peter Kanellis' book. It's a fantastic book about Alito. It's called The Revenge for the Sixties. The really exciting news is that Peter Kanells will be joining us on OA. We're We're going to be talking to him very soon here. This is the first actual Alito biography, not to be confused with the Molly Hemingway hagiography, which is not, I can assure you, a biography. It's a very good, well -researched book. But Peter will also be joining us for book club for at least the first half hour.

0:52:38 Thomas: We should just only do books where we can get the author, actually. That's a, yeah.

0:52:41 Matt: I don't think it's that hard. I think he was happy to come and join us. And so for patrons at any level can join for this book club conversation. So be sure to read the book, check out the interview. So you'll have a lot of your initial kind of questions answered and come in with some hard -hitting questions for Peter about this great biography. I think this is an important read.

0:52:57 Thomas: And if you're not on patreon.com/law, you're now allowed to read that book.

0:53:00 Matt: That's right. That's great.

0:53:01 Thomas: Can't do it. You have to be part of the book club.

0:53:03 Matt: Patrons only.

0:53:03 Thomas: You're banned. Yeah.

0:53:04 Matt: But yeah, no, really looking forward to connecting with everybody. I love the community already that we've got going on Patreon and you know, this is going to be a lot of fun.

0:53:12 Thomas: Going to be super fun. All right, well, thanks for listing, everybody, and we'll see you really soon you just bomb you just gun strong strong bomb bomb bomb guns boom now give now deal