Voters Said No to MAGA. Grand Juries Have Been Saying No to DOJ for Months.

Transcript

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

0:00:32 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1311. I'm Thomas, that over there is Matt. How you doing?

0:00:38 Matt: Hey Thomas, I feel so much better than I sound right now, I'll tell you that.

0:00:42 Thomas: Yeah, I just can't believe California went blue. Whoo, unbelievable.

0:00:46 Matt: Finally.

0:00:47 Thomas: Election news.

0:00:50 Matt: What a week. What a time. What a time to be alive. Still basking in it. We had a great time, of course, with Jenessa in our live stream. First ever OA live stream, hanging out and watching the election.

0:01:00 Thomas: Well, it's definitely not the first ever OA live stream, but it was for, it was, uh, maybe the second that you and I have done. We did a q a before.

0:01:08 Matt: True. But that's in terms of reacting to live events as they happen, good times. Good good times. That was, that was great. Let's just do that every week. Yeah. Let's have a midterm every week.

0:01:13 Thomas: Yeah, that was fun, should Yeah. We do. Every Time you guys are gonna gonna elect a bunch of Democrats, we'll do it just make a deal

0:01:20 Matt: That's right. If we can just plan that out, please. Yeah. Yeah. We got plenty to discuss today because know, these people are just losing all over the place. This is really, you know, there's been a lot of talk about how this feels like the end of MAGA and like maybe MAGA really is over and obviously not going to count those chickens, but the juice is not there. That's not working.

0:01:22 Thomas: Yeah. Uh.

0:01:38 Thomas: I, I mean, I have a lot to say. I can, I can mainly keep it to, uh, serious inquiries only. But I really do think that when, when you decide to have a cult, you do run the risk, it's not all fun and games. You do run the risk sometimes if, if your cult leader is, uh, for whatever reason, dies or gone or, or is disqualified in the, in the, in the people's minds, you do run the risk of like, well, what next?

0:02:02 Matt: Yeah.

0:02:02 Thomas: Do you have a, I think you either from my experience watching documentaries on cults, uh, you either need to have like a next heir apparent that's, that everybody agrees on, and then you could probably pull it off, or I don't know, man, I'm not sure what. But like, you notice, it just, just, just do this mental exercise for a moment. Think about what a Republican talking head is gonna talk about if not that Trump's the greatest.

You know, I mean, they could do, they could do the, oh, we hate trans people and all this stuff, blah blah, blah, but Like, so much of their entire existence has has just been doing obscene things, things to Trump publicly. And what are they going to do without that? Like they, here's the other thing there. It's not like they've had a coherent worldview. That's the thing, you, once you swapped in your cult leader's you status for your entire party, it's not like you followed a logical series of policy plans, you know? So what's left over once, once that happens, You can't be like, well, we still believe in the the cause of whatever Trump says. Yeah.

0:02:32 Matt: They tried it.

0:02:59 Matt: Yeah. White supremacy is certainly a cult of its own, but

0:03:06 Thomas: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh I'm not saying they don't have any common ground, but like, when you've got, talking about the broader movement, like people were voting because of a guy, and he went every different direction policy-wise, and now they have to like pick up the pieces and figure it out. I, I think it's going to be kind of hard for them.

0:03:22 Matt: Yeah. It better be.

0:03:23 Thomas: American politics can swing, as we just saw, really really hard in two years, so we could always swing the other way. But I don't think it's gonna be super easy for them.

0:03:32 Matt: No, not at all. I mean, they've just never had a core. And obviously, Congress decided to do nothing for the last last two years. And I think we have an opportunity to show what happens when Congress does something. I mean, I was saying, why not just pass, dust off all the old dream legislation we've ever had, just pass a bill every week, just send something from DeVito every week and explain why. Universal health care, universal child care, just send it all up. Let's just do it.

0:03:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That's what I think. Yeah.

0:03:52 Matt: Show what real governance looks like. This is a fantasy, of course. We'll see. We'll see. But I do see a lot of fire under the Democrats. And as somebody pointed out, you know, I might talk about this for a minute today, but that House report that just came out about Trump and Epstein, They're not playing. Like, that is a very serious report and includes a bunch of new allegations.

0:04:05 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:04:09 Matt: And if they're going to go to that kind of speed, if that's the kind of, you thrust we're looking at, then keep it going. That sounds good to me.

0:04:15 Thomas: Yeah, that was one we were trying to maybe record some gavel gavels on. But we still see if we still want to or if we want to wait till they get the better version out when they have more power.

0:04:22 Matt: Yeah. Still plenty of news in there. But yeah, no, so much to talk about, though, because, you know, I really just want to talk about where they're going wrong, which is pretty much everywhere, and where what we can actually do with this power. It's pretty exciting.

0:04:31 Thomas: Yeah. And one more thing before we get to it, doesn't feel like the Mississippi thing is going to go our way. I feel like we're going to win that one, which is wow.

0:04:38 Matt: Yeah. That's amazing.

0:04:42 Thomas: Wow. Maybe you shouldn't just run pieces of shit who don't do anything for your candidates. You know, every once in a while, if you run some lady who's like, find a different protein and does then just, I, I, I heard and read she barely campaigned or did anything. It's like, maybe that's not a good idea. I don't know.

0:04:58 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe give people something to actually hope for.

0:04:58 Thomas: Yeah. Awesome. Good times. Well done, everybody. All right. We'll take a break, and then we'll talk about what Congress should do with the power they are going to have in a few short months.

0:05:14 Thomas: All right, Matt, where do you want to start?

0:05:15 Matt: All let's talk about some losses because obviously it's been nothing but election news for the last couple of weeks. And I just wanted to back up and talk about everything else that's been going on. So one one big thing confirmed this week out of Boston was a case that I've been watching. Let me make sure I've got her name right.

0:05:30 Thomas: Matt lost his voice cheering at the polls.

0:05:33 Matt: Know it.

0:05:34 Thomas: He was just at a polling place cheering the like a concert.

0:05:38 Matt: Yeah. I've never lost my voice for this long. It's very frustrating. So, Ksenia Petrovya, who is a Russian national who was a student here in Boston, a research student working on cancer research, as I understand it. Yeah, I don't know if you remember the story, but she was coming back through the airport last year with some frog embryos. Unfortunately, it was something her supervisor at the lab had asked her to bring back. And it's a pretty minor thing. These are frog embryos that you're not supposed to be transporting necessarily, but just a couple of them.

0:06:03 Thomas: Are they ISIS frog frog embryos or terrorist frog frogs. Are they turning the freaking frogs gay? Maybe that's what it is.

0:06:06 Matt: Yeah, right, some that's right, Top secret Boston research to turn the century gay, that's right. You know, this was very bad for her. She was held for a couple of months in Louisiana over this. She's in removal proceedings. And it was really extra bad because this is somebody who was arrested in Russia for protesting the war. So this is somebody who can't go back to Russia. Know, it really did look like, and she had filed a vindictive prosecution motion. It looked like this really was some kind of vindictive prosecution that we were purposely picking on somebody who in favor of and against our enemy, the Ukraine. Ukraine is incredible. I know. It's where we're at. So rather than litigate or vindictive prosecution motion, which usually DOJ would be happy to do, they gave up. They dropped it.

0:06:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:06:37 Thomas: Was against our ally Russia

0:06:52 Matt: And so they said they're dismissing it. They're saying, you know, it's not because we think there's anything to this vindictive prosecution motion. We just don't want to do it.

0:06:58 Thomas: We're Just, I mean, honestly, I kind of went, did they do this after the election or just recently?

0:07:03 Matt: No, the motion was just before. I think maybe Sweden would notice.

0:07:06 Thomas: I, it because I feel like there could be quite a bit, I mean, you, you got your true believers, of course, but there could be quite a few people in, in the, and around the administration are like, well, I'm not going to go to any trouble in this lame duck, you know, like I'm not going to, what am I, what am I doing here? What am I, maybe that's, maybe that's what I would do.

0:07:19 Matt: Yeah, right, right?

0:07:25 Thomas: What am I going to work hard for the Trump administration now? Sure.

0:07:30 Matt: Well, and especially as we'll talk about next segment, maybe they will be less motivated to do any of this, but I want to talk some more about the cases that just have not made it through, because that case at least made it through a grand jury. She did have the frog embryos. She texted at one point as she's going through with her supervisor about how it's not like I can eat these things. Like, I don't know what I'm going to do if they get caught. So there was some evidence that she knew she probably wasn't supposed to have them, at least by the time she got to the airport. Board. But I don't know if you caught this, because again, election news being what it was, Cassidy Hutchinson, the surprise witness from January 6th hearings, the Trump aide, White House aide, they were trying to go after her the same way they're trying to go after Letitia James and James Comey and everybody else.

0:07:58 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:08:05 Matt: And that did not get passed to grand jury as of October 27th. So Cassidy Hutchinson is not being indicted. That was brought by the Civil Rights Division, because of course, that's what the Civil Rights Division of DOJ does, protect January 6th.

0:08:08 Thomas: Nice. Yeah, sure. Sure. Unreal.

0:08:18 Matt: Trump was just saying that the stuff she said wasn't true, but she was repeating things that she had heard in good faith. And the grand jury found that. I want to point out that this has become so common that things aren't getting through the grand jury in DC that Judge Boasberg, one of our favorites from the immigration litigation we've talked about over the times here, he actually has a specific standing order. The grand juries have to CC him anytime that they do not go forward with a case. So he's keeping records, basically, of all that.

0:08:45 Matt: Yeah. Well, the Trump's attempts to Indict these kinds of people. And I just want to point out that kind of looking back over the year, so many people who did not make it through. Know, Letitia James, as I mentioned, first indictment was voided, two more times, just like with Broadview, where they tried to bring it back, bring it back, and nothing. Just would not re-indict. There's nothing there. Like, they just know it's a political prosecution. Execution we've already of course done extensive gavel gavel episodes about the Broad View six and some of our favorite characters we've ever reviewed on a transcript showing its ass just absolutely knowing that they were bringing something in front of the grand jury that they weren't supposed to doing things they weren't supposed to be doing also from just last week there There was someone, I think we don't have the name because it was somebody they declined to indict, but New York Times reported that the grand jury declined to indict somebody that DOJ had said had voted in two jurisdictions, which, as we've been following the news, is something that a lot of Republicans have been caught doing.

0:08:45 Thomas: Oh, wow. That's awesome.

0:09:39 Matt: Because they've really been trying to go for these voting prosecutions. A whole bunch of these going on, as we've talked about in Minnesota as well. But the six Democratic lawmakers, I don't think we even talked about this, but the six Democrats who who made a video saying that troops should be prepared to disregard illegal orders, right? Know, grand jury refusing to indict them.

0:09:50 Thomas: Yeah. Really? They couldn't indict for saying the Constitution?

0:09:57 Matt: Doing, yeah, encouraging troops to follow their oath, pretty much. Watch. This is, again, the lowest bar in criminal proceedings.

0:09:59 Thomas: Reciting the Constitution? Okay. What a lawless land, Matt. We're going to hell in a handbasket.

0:10:07 Matt: That's right. The lowest bar in criminal proceedings. I just want to remind people again, they can't get through this. I just want to make sure people were aware these things were happening. Happening. In terms of what's getting through the magistrate, there's something, again, from a couple of days ago. Also in DC District Court, where most of the stuff happens.

0:10:21 Thomas: Sorry, what do you mean getting through the magistrate? I actually don't

0:10:23 Matt: Okay, so this is the other... Let me back that up. So we were just talking about the grand jury. The other trick they've been trying to pull was filing what's called an information, putting that in front of a magistrate.

0:10:27 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Oh, right. Yeah. That's the sandwich trial was of that, right?

0:10:35 Matt: Right, because they proceeded that way because it was Misdemeanor. They were able to do that. That. Want to tie this into the Comey thing too, because on October 5th, just last month, the very last possible moment they could, they filed an information against Comey, James, same kind of thing, just to try to get him on some kind of transmission of national defense secret or something. But that requires an indictment. And information is something they've been trying to use over and over to get around this. Stuff, some point, you either have to do a misdemeanor by information or you have to actually bring a felony indictment, but this thing with um these two FBI agents, this is about the Hunter Biden laptop probe, this is, they're still going through this, they're still trying to find something they can get anybody on to say that this was, you know, something that shouldn't have happened, me, the

0:10:37 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. While Matt coughs, I'll say, is it too old of a reference to do "Help Me Information," that's what, you know, that one, it's The, yeah, the one that, uh, well, well, well It was, if I think you're saying that, because it's the famous clip of John playing with what's his name and then Yoko doing the thing with the mic, that's the song they're playing, know what I'm talking about? No?

0:11:21 Matt: Beetles Yeah. That Beetles I don't.

0:11:34 Thomas: No.

0:11:34 Matt: I'm sorry.

0:11:35 Thomas: Okay, hold on, you cough, I'll look that that up.

0:11:38 Matt: But I just want to point this out, because this is another one where just a scathing thing, like an hour, where the magistrate who's looking at this, this is Zia Faruqui in the D.C. district. Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing. It's not close. It's nothing. Now, these are two senior FBI counterintelligence officials, and they're being charged with lying to Congress about the role they played, the Hunter Biden investigation. Again, this is just nothing, something that just shouldn't have ever been brought, troubled is, is what the the magistrate said here, what has transpired here can't be described as anything other than weaponization, you know, that's a word that's been thrown around a lot in the last couple of years, and I'm sure it's a word that's going to be thrown a lot, over thrown a lot more, once Congress proceeds with what they should be doing against DOJ. Now, again, another big win for people that never should have been in front of a court, again and again and again, these, these are all the high-profile ones.

0:12:27 Matt: Of course, we already know about the reflecting pool case. Against the Olympic rower. So we've got, as I mentioned, James Comey. It looks like this is not going anywhere. We're not there yet, DOJ is now seeking an indictment. But they're doing this way outside of the period that they're supposed to be doing it, and they're just pushing and pushing, and nothing is working with this stuff. The previous James Comey investigation was messed up so badly because they insisted on using Lindsay Halligan in Virginia, somebody who never should have been appointed and was not supposed to be in the job. Just own goals, left and right, everything they can possibly be doing.

0:12:55 Thomas: Wait, are you saying they were still trying to use her after?

0:12:58 Matt: No, I just wanted to point out that the history of the James Comey case.

0:12:58 Thomas: Oh, okay. That would be funny.

0:13:02 Matt: Yeah, no, right. Yeah.

0:13:03 Thomas: Hey, we got more cases for you. You still don't work here, ma'am. You still don't work here.

0:13:03 Matt: Yeah. Right. Just checked. Yeah. No, still not there.

0:13:09 Thomas: Anyway, it's a Chuck Berry song.

0:13:10 Matt: That's right. Oh, of course.

0:13:12 Thomas: And yeah, in this video, they're playing them. It's It's called Memphis, Tennessee. That was my guess. But yeah, that's the video where Yoko does the weird sound and everybody gets mad at her, which, you know, fair for that one. Yoko gets blamed for stuff that she shouldn't get blamed for. That was not a good move. Just let John play with Chuck Berry, with legend Chuck Berry that he idolized. Just let him play. Just let him play.

0:13:12 Matt: Yeah. Yes, of course.

0:13:32 Matt: And pointing out too, we didn't even talk about this, but in Southern California, we had the top federal prosecutor for the District of Southern California. Same issue, unlawfully serving because they tried to stretch him out with the interim appointment. Same thing they tried to do with your Aunt Lizzie Hill again. Same thing they tried to do with Alina Habba, they just will not learn. More good news up and down the chain. I just want to make sure that we're covering it. And the fact that vindictive prosecution motions are not only being entertained in cases like Broadview, in cases like Kilmar Ábrego García, in cases like Ksenia Petrova, that we just talked about, not only being entertained, but have a really good chance of working, that, as we've continued to comment on, is incredible unto itself that they continue to work that way.

0:14:05 Thomas: Yeah. A world record that will never be broken is the number of successful those per time period.

0:14:13 Matt: Yeah. Oh. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. More great news from last week, the Trump v. Dow Jones, which is the Wall Street Journal $10 billion libel suit involving the Epstein birthday book

0:14:22 Thomas: What? Oh, yeah. In which they totally eventually revealed and it was exactly what they said it was. That one?

0:14:33 Matt: Right. I'm going to read you some of the allegations. Now, this was dismissed. Obviously, the court found that they couldn't begin to show actual malice. You have to show an unlawful prosecution against the president. And of course, they had every reason to believe this was true. They'd seen a picture of it. They talked to people who'd seen it.

0:14:48 Thomas: Oh, also because it was. Yeah.

0:14:49 Matt: And it was absolutely true, and we all knew it. But I just want to read a bit from Judge Darren Gales' decision here, because I hadn't picked up on, you know, I hadn't been following it that closely on exactly what they were actually arguing that should have happened here. Of this complaint is amazing. This is, of course, the heart of it, that you have to have actual malice. You have to really know that something is true or a reckless disregard for the truth.

0:15:13 Thomas: In attempting to plead actual malice, the amended complaint focuses on four overlapping areas. First, defendants allegedly acted with actual malice by publishing the article despite President Trump's denial of the existence of the alleged letter. OK, I didn't

0:15:26 Matt: Yeah. It's amazing. If that's how we do journalism now.

0:15:28 Thomas: Want you to do it.

0:15:29 Matt: I said it wasn't true.

0:15:30 Thomas: Yeah. OK, that's that's one theory of the case. Second, Safdar, Palazzo, Dow Jones and News Corp. That's the Wall Street Journal defendants. Man, you know, it pains me that the Wall Street Journal is actually one of the better papers now in certain ways, but that's the list of owners is like not great.

0:15:48 Matt: Know.

0:15:48 Thomas: Anyway, pre-publication investigation of the facts underlying the article was inadequate because they won, only reviewed the letter and did not have an actual copy of it in their possession.

0:15:59 Matt: They just saw it.

0:16:00 Thomas: Oh, wow. Guys, folks, folks, just so we're all clear, this was again, them writing the article or whatever it was, you know, about the letter. And there was a picture that floated at the time, and that was actually not the paper. That was somebody made that based on what they thought it would look like. And then it turned out to look, my memory is pretty much like that.

0:16:21 Matt: Pretty much. Yeah.

0:16:23 Thomas: And so imagine being like, this is defamation. We're still doing this now after it came out that it was true?

0:16:28 Matt: Yeah. This dismissal just happened.

0:16:29 Thomas: Just happened. So you're still kind of arguing in court after we all know it came out and was true? They're saying, yeah, well, it was defamation because you only reviewed the letter, you didn't actually have it. You can only publish news articles about things you possess. You know, you have to have that Indiana Jones, uh, warehouse of things or the X-Files warehouse of things. You can only publish articles about things you have. So newspapers, get, get on it. Okay, that's one. Two, should have reached out to Maxwell to verify information about the letter, but avoided communicating with her.

0:16:40 Matt: Week T, guys. Yep. Yep.

0:17:03 Matt: Known truth teller, Glenn Maxwell.

0:17:04 Thomas: Yeah. Why? Okay. And three, alternatively, did consult with Maxwell, but intentionally failed to Report what she told them. Third, the article omits, one, how the Wall Street Journal defendants obtained a copy of the letter. Does that matter? Do you have to say? You don't have to say that.

0:17:13 Matt: Kind of Funny. I

0:17:25 Thomas: Right, two, how and why the so-called letter was typewritten, what the so-called letter was typewritten.

0:17:25 Matt: Guess the the first person because it's, you know, it's a letter to Epstein from Trump.

0:17:37 Thomas: Article omits how and why the so-called letter was typewritten. Okay.

0:17:41 Matt: A weird way to put it

0:17:42 Thomas: Three. Who typed the letter? Four, how the letter was confirmed to be in the third person. Five, how the contents of the letter, including the signature, were verified, if if at all. Six, the steps the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. OK. This is a standard that no one would ever hold up. Like this is ridiculous. Steps they took to verify that President Trump signed the letter. Why the Wall Street Journal defendants did not publish the letter in the article. Again, you don't have to do any of that. Eight, President Trump's denial that he signed the letter. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they probably did include that. Right. I mean, they usually say Trump denies it. And fourth, the Wall Street Journal defendants used the September 8th article, quote, to whitewash their journalistic shortcomings. That's not an element of defamation that I know of or libel or whatever. And two, could and should have included the September 8th article's analysis in the article because the signature in the birthday book looked different than President Trump's actual signature.

0:17:42 Matt: Yeah did of course Yep

0:18:37 Thomas: Oh, boy. So how did that do, man?

0:18:40 Matt: That did not come out very well. Uh The court refers to these as conclusory statements, says this doesn't begin to get it anywhere near actual malice.

0:18:41 Thomas: Go go well. Okay. Neither actual nor malice is what I would say.

0:18:51 Matt: Exactly. Concludes very vague and sometimes inconsistent with the article itself, often irrelevant to whether defendants knew or should have known the statements in the article were purportedly false. Yeah, basically just saying, we don't like how you do journalism, but as you said, the standard they're setting for journalism here is far beyond what anybody is for journalism.

0:19:07 Thomas: Yeah. Let's apply this to Fox news. Okay. You first.

0:19:09 Matt: Exactly Yeah, so that's all good and even better, you know, there's a similar $10 billion dollar suit going against the BBC right now.

0:19:17 Thomas: Oh, this is the one where totally they F themselves because they threatened the big suit. And then it was like, oh, okay, let's go to discovery. And then they're like, well, you know, maybe, uh, maybe we don't go to discovery, right. Just yet.

0:19:25 Matt: That's right They're scheduling deposition, I believe, for the 11th or some sometime soon. And, you know, if he's not going to do the deposition, the judge made it clear it's going to be dismissed. And I don't think he's going to do the deposition. This particular suit is this $1 billion dollar suit. This is like his default defamation number, I guess, is over the way that the BBC broadcast his statements on January 6th, and he says splice them together in a way that made it look like he was encouraging people to do January 6th. Good luck with that.

0:19:55 Thomas: So just presented to them. Do you mean like them to not be like full real time? I can't think of what that would be. It just happened, you know? It's like when I trim, you know, some spaces out of our sentences. It's like, yeah, I edited it to be what it was.

0:19:56 Matt: Yeah, just ran them Yeah. Right, that's Right. Yep. But it was two different parts of the speech and he didn't like that they ran them together, but then, of course, let's do that all the time, just to summarize what somebody said, we do it all the time. Just I'm running different clips.

0:20:18 Thomas: Yeah. Did he give both those parts the speech somewhere?

0:20:23 Matt: Yeah, they were both in the same place at the ellipse, at the capital. So yeah, there you go. That should be it. Certainly based on the way that this decision just came down, this was never going to have much. But as you said, it's great that they're getting to that point where they're calling the bluff and saying, go ahead, time for discovery. Time for you to come and answer questions about what you said on January 6th and why and what happened. You want to talk about that?

0:20:23 Thomas: Uh-huh. So, yeah okay that was a good one

0:20:42 Matt: That's going nowhere. You've been over some of this with Jenessa already, but every single one of the attempts to mess with the election last week did not work. All of them. The Alaska thing, the California thing, all of these last minute things, all of these attempts to try to get alleged, you know, non-citizen voters on the run or whatever. Obviously, we know the USPS thing already died. And doesn't seem to be, as of the time of recording, any major effort to try to challenge this election. It seems like they're letting it lie because this was

0:20:49 Thomas: No the Too big to rig is a real thing. They, that's one of the better parts of this is seeing them take a look and be like, oh man, there's not really any way I can argue that, is there? Okay. I guess we just suck. All right, fine. It's been nice. I was wondering how you think the Supreme Court justices feel. They tried to rig the election to the extent they could. They stomped on voting rights, the Kalei decision, and boy, did that backfire. They stomped on voting rights with Kalei, and then we're going to pretty much, potentially, it seems like, win a Senate seat in Mississippi. You happy? Great job, guys. Well done. On

0:21:12 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:48 Matt: From what I can tell, all that redistricting, all those attempts, nothing worked. There are too many angry people.

0:21:53 Thomas: Yeah, that was always a danger. You can't gerrymander if you gerrymander under an assumption, and even a, like, a safe assumption of like, okay, let's give ourselves five points, you know, which is like a huge swing. That all fails if you lose by 15 and it becomes like even worse for them. It's, it's incredible. It's the best.

0:22:12 Matt: I mean, at this point, again, not to run another victory lap around somebody else, but we got Bonnie. But the Doomers, honestly, I do.

0:22:16 Thomas: Let's keep doing it need some cardio yep

0:22:21 Matt: I really do. I got to mention the Doomers on Blue Sky and elsewhere. And also, I just went back, and maybe we do this for Vapid Response next week, of just finding the craziest election predictions of how he's going to declare martial law, how they don't bother voting because nothing's going to matter. There's no way we can possibly win because he's going to rig the election. And it's already done.

0:22:37 Matt: It's fait accompli. But nothing. Turned out to vote, and they voted, and that's it.

0:22:23 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah Good thing we didn't listen to those assholes. You know, at least the country didn't, as a whole

0:22:44 Matt: Yeah. For sure. Being realistic about how the system actually works and what the executive can actually do and not do, especially in a national election, I think is pretty helpful. So good to keep in mind for next time. Don't listen to everybody. Again, there's lots to be dimmer about in other places, power, the culture, the zeitgeist, everything has swung our way away from MAGA. They never had the culture. They never had any kind of mass support. This was never cool to do, but here we are.

0:23:06 Thomas: Now, yeah They have the the capitalists and the billionaires and the institutional, you, leaders essentially that they managed to bend to their their will, but that's, yeah, they never, they never really had the culture. They, people started thinking they did after 2024. It was that, that was the most disturbing part about all this, where people started acting like this was the new thing everyone wanted. And it's like, clearly that wasn't what it was.

0:23:34 Matt: Yeah.

0:23:34 Thomas: It was about the price of something last time. It was about the price of something this time. Honestly, That's really is what it is. We still have a lot of culture war to fight and, and try to win for people who believe in treating trans people like humans and treating immigrants like humans, still A lot of work to be done this in the same way that, honestly, 2024 did not mean that everybody wanted to do these horrible things to immigrants. It really didn't. There's, there are those people, there's tons of them, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's a shortage of them, but the people who determine these elections are these people who don't pay attention to anything and then look at the price of the gas. It's, it's sad but true, you know.

0:23:35 Matt: Right, right, right. Yeah, And they see the reality of ICE. I I was so encouraged by how much of an election issue that became in this story.

0:24:09 Thomas: That too. That's a good point, there, it was more than just prices for, for, for this. That's absolutely true.

0:24:16 Matt: Sure. The economy is always going to be first. Still, at the end of the day, they have what, Kid Rock and Jon Voight? That's the culture? Like, they just can't win on this stuff. Before we move on, I just want to point out, of course, huge wins in ballot questions, a lot of the stuff we talked about, and I just can't stop talking about the wins. I'm sorry, Thomas. It's just still on my mind.

0:24:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I got, like I said, in the title, we got tired of winning. We got too tired. We actually finally Trump. That was from way back when. Right. That's an early Trump quote. We we we finally Trump. You made us tired of winning.

0:24:38 Matt: Just that's right. Yeah, that's right. We can't even keep track of how much we're winning. But just want to point out data centers huge losses for data centers, every time they're in the ballot, except for one place, Harwood, North Dakota. I don't know what's going on in Harwood, North Dakota, but apparently they were sold on data centers.

0:24:50 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, fine. Whatever. If it is a place where it's like, well, we don't have anything out here and people want to put a building, you know, and might bring a few jobs. Sure. We just don't want you putting them places where it's going to bother a lot of people. And, you know, I mean, I see mixed things about the water. I don't know. I'm not sure the truth of that. But like, yeah, it's like mostly here's the main thing. Mostly citizens want a say, you know, because a lot of these deals are this weird shit where like the local governments or whatever, just doing these deals without running it past anybody. And the terms are unclear. And there's like these weird confidentiality agreements where people just don't want that, you

0:25:02 Matt: Sure. 10 jobs in it Yeah.

0:25:38 Matt: And at the end of the day, doing something that might keep your kids from ever getting a job in many cases at the end of the day. Okay.

0:25:41 Thomas: Yeah, there's also that. All right. Well, let's take a break and then we'll get to what I've teased the first time. That wasn't true. Well, let's, let's talk about what we're going to do. We'll be right back.

0:25:55 Thomas: All right, Matt, what should we do? What if you're listening and you are a Senator now, what should you do?

0:26:00 Matt: I got to say, Jamie Raskin's already out of the game as he often is talking about some of this stuff. I fully trust that there is a number of these things that they will be doing, but I think everything we're going to talk about right now should be brought up one one way or another, into a special inquiry, special committee, whatever they can do in House Judiciary, whatever they can do to investigate, oversight, everything else. Because we need to make a statement at this point that so many things that have happened in the last two years are so far beyond the pale or so far beyond what a democracy does and are beyond what we want our government doing, in particular. This is not just bad governance. It's so corrupt. I got to say, I'm still thinking about our conversation, which will be airing Monday, with Matthew Cole about the Jared Kushner

0:26:02 Thomas: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You're

0:26:37 Matt: Revelations.

0:26:37 Thomas: Going to want to hear this, folks.

0:26:38 Matt: Yeah, This is really something. Thing. Having read the book now, I still can't get my head around the scope of these allegations and what it really means that Jared Kushner's control over foreign policy as a non-government employee, as somebody who's being directly paid off, almost certainly from what we're seeing. There should be a special inquiry just on Jared Kushner and what he's been getting up to And how much he affected our foreign policy. I've decided that after reading Matthew Cole's book and talking to him, that's an easy one off the bat. Let's talk about DOJ, which just needs top to bottom, them, complete look at everything they've been doing.

0:27:06 Matt: Starting with, of course, the IRS settlement, the Trump v. IRS, which we've been talking about at length. Everything about that, we know from what Judge Williams found, those findings are going to be substantiated if you get into it. We need to bring people in for testimony to talk about how those negotiations were done or not done, about how it was approached, about who was promised what, about how fund that was developed. All of this stuff, that can come out in testimony. There's no reason not to get that on the record. That's a lot of what we need to be doing. We need to talk about how they've been handling pardons. There's a new analysis here from CBS. About 70% of the clemency actions, pardons and clemency otherwise, did not go through DOJ. They went through all these private brokers, basically, that have access to Trump.

0:26:55 Thomas: Yep. Oh, yeah. Yep.

0:27:46 Matt: Of course, one of of our favorite MAGA characters, the pardon attorney.

0:27:48 Thomas: Oh, that guy. Yeah.

0:27:49 Matt: Yep, yep, in the middle of all those pardons. Really get into those pardons. I mean, there's a House Judiciary in August, something else that we really should get into. They issued a complete staff report called Pardons, Inc., in which they get into everything I'm saying here. That is what it's become. I mean, we know for sure that there are brokers that will help you get a pardon up to $3 million that you can pay. As hilarious as it was to find out that, you know, somebody wasted $50 million on Alina Habba for a four-year contract to supposedly get a pardon, you know, that's – Yeah, no, a four-year contract for doing nothing, basically, for their family business.

0:27:53 Thomas: Yeah. I Oh, wow. Wait, 50 million. That's insane.

0:28:22 Matt: So many people should be going to prison for selling pardons. Yeah. They just routed around DOJ. So again, more DOJ oversight. Why are you letting all these people and getting pardons directly from the White House without going through the pardon process?

0:28:23 Thomas: That can't be legal we're hired hired goons. What are you talking about? First off, none of us came to your subpoenas. None of us honored your subpoenas. Secondly, we're hired goons.

0:28:37 Matt: Exactly. Right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Did you not see it in the title? It's on our business cards. It's

0:28:45 Thomas: Yeah, we'll see who will talk. I don't know. Want to know, Matt, sorry to rain On anyone's parade, but is there anything that can beat the hard lock, you to use like a Magic the Gathering thing? They've got the hard lock combo of ignore subpoena slash Trump pardon, is that... is there anything beating that, that's the splinter twin combo of getting away with whatever? Can anything beat that?

0:28:51 Matt: I I don't know. I mean, we're in new territory here, but if we can show the degree of corruption, there's got to be at some point a limit to These pardons, especially when they're paid off. There's got to be some way to undo these, and there has to be some way that the statute of limitations is still going to allow us to prosecute these people and let them bring the pardon and show they got it in court. I I don't know. I

0:29:18 Thomas: We'll see? Yeah. Yeah. I think it may be that we can get people lower down, you know, like I feel like Blanche just will ignore, I mean, he's coming before, I guess, but... But I don't know if this will be a different orientation that he has toward Congress. I'm not sure. We'll have to see how that goes. I'm really interested in it. But I do think that, look, these folks have just behaved for two years now, and before that, but like mainly for two years, that there just will never be consequences.

They just behaved as though there will never, ever be such a thing as normal again. That's a hell of a gamble. You know, it's like you have to be pretty, pretty certain that society is collapsed to just do whatever, because the corruption, people I don't think people even understand how how corrupt they have been. I mean, it's just an any one. It's not an exaggeration, like any one of these things that you could rattle off for eight hours of podcasting would have been worse than Watergate, undeniably, and they just acted like, well, okay, there's never any consequences for anything, I'm not worried about it.

0:30:01 Matt: Yeah.

0:30:31 Matt: Yeah. And as we talked about, the Kushner thing is so much worse than Iran-Contra, and it echoes with it quite a lot. But yeah, no, absolutely. And the craziest thing, they're acting like there would never be another government. They would just always be in power, and we've just shown that's not true. I saw somebody saying that this is kind of what you get when you try to speed run fascism, and I think I think that you, you know, you got to lay the groundwork, not to give you fascist advice, but you skipped a bunch of steps acting

0:30:42 Thomas: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And steady wins the fascism, you

0:30:56 Matt: That's right. Not to give you advice, but the final stage of fascism is actually getting a bunch of armed gangs organized in the streets. And they've never been able to do that either. Like, we still control the streets. A merger that has kind of been under the radar that I've been following. It's a merger, sorry about my voice, Merger Justice. This is a settlement, a consent decree in June 2025 that essentially allowed Hewlett Packard Enterprise, to close a merger with something called Juniper Networks, $14 billion acquisition. DOJ had sued and tried to stop it on the way out. With the Biden administration. And it looks like this was an extremely corrupt settlement, this whole thing was allowed to be undone. By lobbyists. They just let the lobbyists handle it.

And I'm sure this is just going to be one of many things we're going to find out about in terms of antitrust, in terms of mergers, the Paramount merger, things like that, that are clearly have been manipulated one way or another by DOJ are allowed to happen. Know, people who've been fired, who are trying to get these things stopped, people who are being told to stop, right? All of these things. There could just be a whole congressional inquiry on these mergers, I think.

Obviously, we've got to have an entire congressional inquiry the political prosecutions that we were just talking about, about Casey James, James Comey, Letitia James, these FBI agents I was just talking about, the lawmakers, things where you're clearly going after opponents of Trump, people that tried to bring any kind of justice against Trump, ways that they're trying to mess with Smith and his team.

0:31:07 Thomas: Merger? Huh, no, yeah.

0:31:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:20 Matt: They can call it weaponization all they want, that we're going to try to track down the people that were doing all of this and find out who authorized this at Maine Justice, who wasn't getting involved. And we know for sure that Maine Justice was getting involved in state-level U.S. attorney decisions that had never been before, that... So much DC-led stuff. So find out who's doing what and when, I think we know, but we just need to start proving it.

Getting to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, into Minnesota, into LA, find out about who was authorizing these, who was allowing them to override court orders, who was going back and arresting people after they'd been released on habeas, as soon as they get out the door, arresting them, putting back in ICE custody again. That's another one I didn't even get to mention. We're just bringing back a Nicaraguan man now from the Central African Republic that a Minnesota judge found was completely unlawfully deported.

These things are happening to now. All these things are being undone, these targetings of journalists and protesters, with Don Lemon especially. Know, the Broadview Six obviously being front and center, but the massive spike in people being prosecuted for one way or another for allegedly interfering with ICE, just for talking about ICE, just for talking about them online. Those Antifa prosecutions in Minnesota. Who's behind all this? Like, how is this all happening? All the different ways the DOJ has misrepresented themselves to judges, going all the way back to the Eric Adams negotiations at the very beginning, which seems like five, ten years ago now, where Todd Blanche was certainly personally involved, or Emil Bove was personally involved. Can we impeach Emil Bove at this point? Because it seems Like there might be grounds for that from what I'm seeing from how he has behaved on the bench. The use of the Elaine Edmonds Act, all of these unlawfully serving U.S. attorneys, all of this stuff needs to be brought into oversight, and they could just spend the next two years just going after DOJ and taking it apart limb by limb.

All of these attempts to interfere with the elections in the last few months, especially the last few weeks, completely frivolous, not even getting started on the Epstein files, of course, which DOJ had quite a lot to do with not publishing in full, whole. The 53 pages of FBI interview material that have been withheld still, that we still don't have.

The complete failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the potential consequences for that, that Todd Blanche is out there bragging at CPAC back in March that every DOJ employee had been forced out who worked on the Trump investigations.

0:33:40 Thomas: Man.

0:34:25 Matt: The fact that you You have the Civil Rights Division being decimated and replaced, and its mission completely changed. Morgan Comey, by the way, was recently ordered reinstated.

0:34:33 Thomas: Sorry.

0:34:34 Matt: That's another one. There's so many more I didn't get to mention. We can't hold them in contempt because, obviously, criminal contempt needs a U.S. attorney to prosecute it.

0:34:42 Thomas: How does that work? We can... can we hold them in content? We could... we should do everything up to the part, yeah.

0:34:47 Matt: Them, yeah, do it. Absolutely. Now, there is inherent contempt power, too. That hasn't been used in over a century, but do that, too. Why not?

0:34:54 Thomas: Interesting.

0:34:54 Matt: Yeah, I love the idea of inherent contempt, and I think, you know, just go for it. Just try it. It's not specifically in the Constitution, but it is the thing that basically the Supreme Court found long ago needs to exist Because you have to have a situation like this sometimes where the executive is just not going to comply with Congress, no matter what they do. And there are still ways that Congress can civilly impose contempt and impose sanctions maybe on its own. Technically speaking, and I love this idea, the sergeant at arms of Congress can detain somebody, like can bring them into the Capitol and detain them and have them tried in Congress. Like it's technically possible. How does that work? I don't know. Let's find out. Let's do it.

0:35:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:31 Matt: Now's the time.

0:35:32 Thomas: Hey. Watch this, everybody, right?

0:35:35 Matt: Degree of malfeasance that we're talking about and the defiance of courts and the defiance of justice absolutely deserves a run at an errand contempt. So let's give it a try.

0:35:44 Thomas: So you're saying it's a... it's sort of a thing that is theorized to... like, it must exist because of this exact thing where if you've got a rogue DOJ who won't enforce any of this stuff, there has to be some power, otherwise that sort of breaks the system, right? Those, maybe that's the answer to the thing I was talking about.

0:36:01 Matt: Yeah, exactly. And that hasn't been tried since 1935.

0:36:04 Thomas: That's wizards of the coast coming in changing the rules, being like, all right, you can't, this combo is too powerful, we gotta... we gotta nerf one of these, uh, one of these cards. Yeah.

0:36:06 Matt: Yeah, Yeah, right. That's right. Makes sense that these committees, these oversight committees especially, would have the ability to bring people in and charge them with contempt on their own initiative. We can cut out DOJ, and I think that's well worth a try. And they can jump up and down about weaponization and going after political enemies all they want. But this is just cleanup. This is reconciliation. And this is trying to make sure that we have a full record of everything DOJ did so they can't do it again.

Because if we continue to allow DOJ to be as corrupt as it is right now, as malleable as it is right now, as much under the control of the president as it is right now, then we are set up, no matter what else happens, no matter what else Democrats can achieve, no matter who else is president, if we set this kind of precedent, we have a real problem for the rest of American history.

We talked, I think, a little bit about the August DOJ memo, where they're arguing now that outside legal advisors can be shielded, that they can not show up to Congress if they want to. They can claim privilege. We'll find out the limits of that. We'll see. Democrats have already said not going to honor they're that.

0:37:03 Thomas: That seems ridiculous.

0:37:04 Matt: And they're sending out all these third-party subpoenas to everybody who's ever contracted, lobbied, nonprofits, anybody who's working with DOJ. Get as much communications out of them as they can if DOJ won't give them up. Lots of whistleblowers, lots of former employees who would be willing to come in at this point. So doing whatever they can. But the Senate still has the control over confirmations. And that's what I'm most excited about. Out of all of this, we talked about it at the end of the night, why ever give them a judge again? Why should we do that?

0:37:28 Thomas: No. We shouldn't.

0:37:29 Matt: Any of their DOJ nominees, US attorney slots, hold those up, do whatever you can until they cooperate these investigations.

0:37:36 Thomas: Just, and just, don't, they don't get any more anything, no more anything, and if any of the losers in, Chuck Schumer, anybody don't want to do that, fire Chuck Schumer, get new leadership, please, gosh, I hope that happens, I don't know about that, it looks like there's some amount of energy toward that, but we'll see,

0:37:38 Matt: That's the way.

0:37:53 Matt: But there's just so much, and I'm just going to try to keep track of all these things as they happen, but it's an exciting time, and it's okay to be excited. It's okay to be optimistic. It feels good to be able to do it again. Understanding that we still have who we have in the White House, and the executive branch is what is going to be what it is. They're going to try to find every way they can around it, but we do still have courts that are stopping the most extreme executive actions. And I expect that will continue to happen more than ever. So the wind is at our backs here. Let's use it.

0:38:18 Thomas: All right, well, the wind is not in your throat very much, so Let's, uh, let's, let's let Matt move on to the footnote, maybe, or do you have more stuff?

0:38:21 Matt: No. Footnote. We're going to have to talk about justice for Peachy the flamingo and

0:38:29 Thomas: Let's give Matt the sweet release of the footnote, this poor guy, his voice, and then he can go cough for an hour.

0:38:34 Matt: Come back with the flamingo news.

0:38:36 Thomas: Definitely come, finally the segment I've been wanting this whole time, Matt's gonna let us do flamingo news after this. Flamingo news, huh?

0:38:48 Matt: True, I will tell you up front, because I know we have a lot of animal lovers in the audience, no flamingos were ultimately harmed in the making of this story.

0:38:54 Thomas: You know what I'm going to say? It's been too long since I thought about flamingos.

0:38:59 Matt: We got a good five minutes here to talk, to think about flamingos

0:39:00 Thomas: I saw someone, saw a random meme today that was a random thought. That's one of those things that they're like, why have I never seen a microwave commercial in my life? And I was like, you know what? Yeah. I have, I can't think of ever having seen a microwave commercial in my life. And also it's been too long since I've thought about flamingos. I think as a kid, you think about they're just those things that like, as a kid, for some reason, we all like those interesting interesting animals, you know, where you're like, yeah, flamingos, they're, they're weird in a certain way. And so kids like them. And then you grow up, no flamingos, almost zero flamingos in my life. It's good.

0:39:32 Matt: If you don't live in Florida

0:39:33 Thomas: I'm glad you bring it back.

0:39:34 Matt: No, I mean, when are you ever going to see a flamingo

0:39:34 Thomas: Yeah. And, and none of us do statistically based on the stupid election.

0:39:38 Matt: Well, you know who else hasn't seen a flamingo in a while is One Mitchell Fairbarn, a Canadian tourist, back in March of 2026, he is at the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas. And what do you do when you go to the Flamingo Casino? You look at flamingos, I guess.

0:39:39 Thomas: God. Oh, right. Lose a bunch of money. Oh no.

0:39:54 Matt: Yeah, that too. It turns out I've never been to the Flamingo Casino. I've actually never been to Vegas. Have a giant flamingo habitat full of birds. Somehow, I think they've probably changed security since then. This man, after 30 or 40 beers, think about that for a moment. That's how many beers it took for him to do this. Did what he called a silly pranky joke, which was going in and grabbing Peachy the Flamingo and abducting Peachy the Flamingo. This is all on video. No, that's no joke.

0:39:54 Thomas: Okay. Wow. Okay.

0:40:25 Matt: Just want to be clear. He grabs Peachy by the neck, abducts Peachy, takes him in the elevator, back to his hotel room, because I guess that's just a fun prank. And of course, it's the kind of prank that ends up with counts of animal cruelty.

0:40:25 Thomas: That's Yeah.

0:40:39 Matt: Prosecutors very wisely divided animal cruelty that he conducted in the habitat when he grabbed the bird and one for conduct back at the hotel. Now again, the bird has fully recovered, but I wanted to note this because this is a very appropriate animal cruelty case. Do not grab birds, don't try to move birds back to your hotel room. But his defense in this case, what he was, that he was too drunk to know what he was doing, or too drunk to mean it, he just thought it was a funny thing to do when he was drunk. And it's an interesting question about voluntary intoxication, generally speaking. Of course, I think we've talked about before, voluntary intoxication is about specific intent, not sort of general intent. Animal cruelty in Nevada is involves a general willful and malicious act. And so really all the best he could do in his closing was, well, I'd had 30 or 40 beers, and I thought it was funny at the time.

0:40:38 Thomas: 30 Or 40?

0:41:22 Matt: That's the story. That's what he said.

0:41:25 Thomas: Or 40?

0:41:26 Matt: That's not a defense.

0:41:27 Thomas: Like in the past two years, like, that, how, that's a lot.

0:41:31 Matt: I think over the course of the day, he was trying to say, 24 hours, that was a defense.

0:41:34 Thomas: I mean, look, know, I'm no stranger to some fun drinking, but that's a, that's a, that's a lot, man. You should, should not do that.

0:41:43 Matt: No, absolutely not. This is a 27-year-old flamingo, by the way. I didn't even know they lived that long.

0:41:48 Thomas: Shit. Again, I don't know enough about flamingos.

0:41:49 Matt: Yeah, yeah. They're fast in captivity, especially if they're very long-lived.

0:41:55 Thomas: What?

0:41:55 Matt: Again, fully recovered, but the vet had noted, actually, that Pichu's shown a lot of anxiety since then. Because why wouldn't you? It's a sad thing. Good news, though. We're going to have justice for Pichu, because he was convicted on one felony count and one misdemeanor count. This voluntary intoxication defense did not work. He's set for sentencing on December 1st. And I was noticing when I was looking into this story about how many animal rights people, people have been following this story pretty closely, so I thought it was worth mentioning. Do not grab birds. Do not harass flamingos. Go to the Flamingo Casino and do whatever you're going to do, but leave Peachy alone.

0:42:25 Thomas: You jerk.

0:42:27 Matt: Justice for Peachy.

0:42:28 Thomas: Okay, well, that's a good ending then. That guy doing prison time, geez.

0:42:32 Matt: Very well could be. And also, because he's not American, probably won't ever be coming back to the United States because animal cruelty is what they call a crime involving moral turpitude.

0:42:39 Thomas: Finally, a good use of that term, I agree, that is moral turpitude.

0:42:42 Matt: Yes. I actually was in court the other day and waiting my turn, and the judge was explaining to somebody somebody without a lawyer. And this really goes to show, know, why you need lawyers in immigration court, because the judge is patiently reading through the immigration charges. And again, not criminal charges, civil charges about why he's being removed. And he's explaining to the man that he's trying to get him to agree that he's been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude, and that's why he's being deported. And he's like, I don't know if I've been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. And the judge is, well, well, you have to agree that you have. He's like, I don't know what that is.

0:43:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:14 Matt: And it goes to show, like, maybe use language that we can understand that's not from the 17th century.

0:43:18 Thomas: Kidding.

0:43:19 Matt: Most people think it has something to do with removing pain, but, right, exactly. And, you know, the whole point of moral turpitude is it's supposed to be something that if you described it to somebody, pretty much anybody would agree, no, right?

0:43:21 Thomas: Judge is like, well, have you grabbed a bird recently, recently?

0:43:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:33 Matt: That's bad. It's gross. You shouldn't do it.

0:43:33 Thomas: They'd be like, ah, you should, you ought to have a specific reaction that's more, ah, I yeah, I say

0:43:38 Matt: Yeah, exactly. It shocks the conscience. That's that's the sound of your conscience being shocked, that's right, that's right, yeah.

0:43:42 Thomas: Something like That's, that's the definition.

0:43:46 Matt: But anything involving kids or animals, pretty much straight up, is gonna be, yeah, Like, easy, everybody agrees, yeah. But maybe just find another word for it, I don't know, it's about time.

0:43:49 Thomas: For sure, turpitude. City. Right, well, uh, Matt, we you release you from having to talk. Gosh, sorry about your voice, that is, that's rough. And it's been, it's been what, a couple of weeks of this?

0:44:04 Matt: And I couldn't talk before at all, so we're making progress. I'm gonna go drink some more tea and see how it goes. See?

0:44:09 Thomas: Right, well, good luck with that. Thanks for listening, everybody. Keep the good times coming. We're, uh, still paying attention to those election results, and on Monday we'll have, I'm sure, a very fun post-election Jenessa sode. Uh, I'm sure she's gonna do some victory laps and tell us anything we need to know about what's still going on, uh, counting wise and all that. So lots of fun good news to look forward to. Good stuff, everybody. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Matt.

0:44:34 Matt: You later, thanks.

0:44:38 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.

0:45:10 Thomas: It's been too long since I've thought about flamingos.

0:45:15 Matt: Do not grab birds, don't

0:45:17 Thomas: Turpitude city