Missing Democrats Aren't Why Hegseth Wasn't Impeached. Republicans Set the Vote.

Transcript

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

0:00:36 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1313. I'm an echoey Thomas Smith. That over there is Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:43 Matt: My voice back, everybody. Just about. So, I am very happy about it.

0:00:47 Thomas: But it comes with a terrible curse. I've been cursed with an echo. It was the only way the witch would let us...

0:00:51 Matt: That's right. A little reverb on you, and I got a little gravel on me, but we're fine. We're fine. We're getting through. Enjoying the afterglow of last week. Full on.

0:01:00 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yep. I am traveling, so I'm in, and it turns out, the echoeyest possible, place that there could be. And did what I could, but it wasn't much, anyway, no one cares about that. What are we going to be talking about today, man?

0:01:11 Matt: Well, we got plenty. I want to talk about the Hegseth impeachment, which we'll be covering a little further on Gavel Gavel to get into the details, but some interesting stuff that happened in the last couple of days around the attempt to impeach Pete Hegseth. I want to talk about some of the legal things behind it and also comparing what Republican Thomas Massey filed for the impeachment to what the Democrats filed back in April. It's pretty interesting to actually look at the difference. And I think his is better, to be honest.

0:01:31 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. I have, uh, I have appreciated that guy on this.

0:01:31 Matt: I know. I know. Yeah. Epstein files and Hegseth. He's been quite good. He's got nothing to lose here. He's on his way out. So I appreciate a man with nothing to lose. So we got that. And then we have our favorite case in the world has continued to generate some incredible stuff. We're going to have to get into it and gavel gavel. We've got new stuff to read. We've got new transcripts. We have got new motions, new filings. But I got to give you the summary of what's going on in the Broadview Six case. Judge April Perry is not having any of this. As we already know from the Broadview Six case, she's already shown that the prosecution tried to redact transcripts that made it look really bad because they did things they're not supposed to do in the grand jury. And now it looks like they've covered up a whole other thing. And now we're trying to pretend like they didn't do that. And it's just getting worse and worse.

0:01:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:16 Thomas: Sorry. This is the one with the best character of all time. That one.

0:02:18 Matt: Yes, our friend, the Krakow shit guy.

0:02:20 Thomas: Was, we have a lot of favorite cases. So I was, I wasn't sure.

0:02:22 Matt: No, I think broad view sex has really rapidly become my favorite DOJ mistake of all time, because they just keep going.

0:02:28 Thomas: It's got the best characters, you know, when you're watching the movies for the Oscars, and you're thinking like, well, this one has a great individual performance, you know, but this one is more of an ensemble film how do you, yeah how do you rate and uh, there's no beating that lead character, that's truly the greatest written, greatest acted, best conceived of lead character ever, so we'll see, it's gonna be a tough fight.

0:02:35 Matt: Yes, right. A cast. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Did have some interesting times last time on Gavel Gavel getting into prosecutor Sheri Mecklenburg's motivations and looking at her acting career in the U.S. Attorney's Office. And this ties into that a little bit as well.

0:02:58 Thomas: Isn't that who it is, or

0:02:59 Matt: Sheri Mecklenburg's the prosecutor. The Krakow shit guy was the... Oh, yeah. Okay.

0:03:03 Thomas: No, I didn't mean the Krakow shit guy. I meant the prosecutor. That's who I was. I was talking

0:03:06 Matt: Sorry.

0:03:06 Thomas: About the prosecutor the whole time. Yeah.

0:03:07 Matt: Oh, yes. Yes. Of course. Of course.

0:03:08 Thomas: Sorry. They're both so good. You're right. There's, there's, it's not a solo effort. It's a, it's two amazing characters.

0:03:08 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And a whole supporting reporting cast, including Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney, who is now going to be forced to testify on Monday. He's going to be called under oath, and I don't think he can get out of it. This is going to get good. And I just want to give you a little preview of what's coming here in Broadview 6, because one of the ongoing themes for the last two years, especially for us, has been where the DOJ has gone wrong. And this case has it all. It's got everything in all the different ways the DOJ has been doing things wrong.

0:03:22 Thomas: Wow.

0:03:35 Thomas: Yeah. Gone wrong is like, when Columbus tried to find India and found some, not America, but someplace near, that's like, that's going wrong. This is like we want to go do wrong, yeah.

0:03:37 Matt: Yeah. Right. You're right. You're right. It. Now, DOJ did not develop a drinking problem.

0:03:51 Thomas: Yeah, they weren't blown off course by a wind by a foul wind, it was just, they wanted to do that.

0:03:54 Matt: Yeah, yeah. No, they just got the worst possible people in charge, including Stan Woodward, who's making an appearance on this one. We'll talk about that. And then I want to get into, I was originally going to do this as a footnote. And then the more I got dug into this case, the more I wanted to talk about the rest of what's going on here. It's possibly the most ironic lawsuit in the history of American music.

0:03:59 Thomas: Huh.

0:04:13 Thomas: Is it about the Alanis Morissette song?

0:04:15 Matt: No, it is actual irony. It is true irony.

0:04:16 Thomas: Yeah. But what if you sued, hold on, would it be ironic if you sued Alanis Morissette for not talking about irony in the the song, like, would that be ironic for

0:04:25 Matt: Yeah, that would be somewhat ironic.

0:04:27 Thomas: Like misrepresenting what irony is, yeah.

0:04:30 Matt: Yeah, it'd be more ironic than raining on your wedding day, I'll give you that, certainly. This is Elvis Presley suing because some people stole his stuff. I think that's funny.

0:04:33 Thomas: Yeah. That's an accomplishment.

0:04:39 Matt: Yeah, especially because he's dead.

0:04:40 Thomas: Yeah, I was gonna say, is this a historical one, or is he back from the grave?

0:04:44 Matt: The estate is suing an AI company called Suno that I'd never heard of that I just played around with so I could see their points. Yeah, apparently.

0:04:49 Thomas: That's the main music one Isn't it?

0:04:52 Matt: This is horrible. I hate this stuff, so I've been ignoring it.

0:04:54 Thomas: AI music should not exist.

0:04:56 Matt: You'll really see, I'm going to make that point when we get to the suit. But this is the first test of a Tennessee law called the Elvis Act that was actually, of course, named for Elvis.

0:05:06 Thomas: Confusing.

0:05:06 Matt: Not specifically to protect him, but to protect the

0:05:08 Thomas: Have you seen the Elvis Act? Yeah, no, it was a good, I mean, I didn't get to see him in Vegas before he died, was, yeah.

0:05:10 Matt: Act. Yeah, you don't really like the 2024 Elvis act. It's pretty washed up by that point. It's a fascinating legal thing here that's going on, because because this statute was specifically designed to protect not just the image and likeness of artists, and of course, Tennessee has a lot of artists, but the voice. So this is, of course, a program, a website that can generate any song you want in Elvis' voice, and they have a problem with that. And of course, Elvis made his entire career off of stealing other people's voice in music, so we'll talk about the irony inherent in all of this.

0:05:18 Thomas: Well, Okay, I guess I I don't go for that stuff, I'm sorry.

0:05:45 Matt: Uh I I'm a fan, I am, I'm a big fan of Elvis, but he, a lot of his stuff is black music. I'm gonna give you a quick history of Hound Dog, if you're not familiar with the song, the history of it, it's, it's extra, extra bad, and it's extra ironic. So, got an action packed hour here, because we have a footnote, a breaking news story that I just discovered, discovered, about what might be the craziest thing that has ever happened in the history of the bar examination anywhere in any American state.

0:06:06 Thomas: Crazier than the California thing where they like didn't

0:06:08 Matt: Way crazier. Yeah. No, this is criminally crazy. This is very bad.

0:06:09 Thomas: Oh, wow. Okay. Kardashian finally passed, huh?

0:06:14 Matt: Yeah. Well, have some very bad news potentially for a whole bunch of people who are licensed to practice law in Arkansas and some extremely confusing and serious criminal charges. I don't know why this happened. We'll debate it. We'll see what's going on, but you're going to want to hear this one. This is quite a footnote. Nothing but hits today, I think.

0:06:14 Thomas: That's the craziest thing Excited, can't wait to get to it.

0:06:36 Matt: All original.

0:06:36 Thomas: Well, uh, why don't we take our usual first break, you can support us here at patreon.com/law, we got a Law'd Awful Movies coming, oh, do we have a fun one coming. We have, in a historical, Law'd Awful TV shows, I guess, starring one Captain James T. Kirk.

0:06:44 Matt: Yeah. I still can't do my Shatner impression. I can't do any impressions, so

0:06:56 Thomas: Can't do the Shatner impression.

0:06:57 Matt: Yeah. Impression. That's a little bad.

0:07:00 Thomas: I think we have a show with William Shatner in it, and it's very weird and bad it's a law show it's it's interesting, yeah, it's half enjoyable and half really silly.

0:07:04 Matt: It is weird, I enjoyed a lot of it Is, yes, and there's, it's, it's, I'm really curious to see what you guys think about it, we will get there, uh, but it's the show actually that was supposed to make his career, and it got canceled for reasons we'll talk about, and then he got Star Trek immediately after, so he actually became Captain Kirk after this show.

0:07:15 Thomas: Yeah Boy That's a real, like, mirror universe split, like, imagine had he gotten famous for this, like, grittier law role first versus

0:07:27 Matt: That's right yeah he would have been under contract and he wouldn't have been able to do Star Trek

0:07:33 Thomas: Yeah being James C. Kirk forever, like, I don't know if that's, you know, would he have had a more serious career, I don't know, I'm not sure, like a, like a more, yeah.

0:07:34 Matt: Yeah Not a serious person, yeah.

0:07:43 Thomas: He's such a weird actor. Like he's like, at times I'm like, okay, he's fine. And then he does something. You're like, what was that? Weird. At. We haven't recorded that yet, but that's coming up very soon. patreon.com/law. Hey, share the show. Thanks so much to those who do. And we'll be right back.

0:07:48 Matt: Strange choices

0:08:00 Thomas: Hey, Matt, what's going on with the impeachment? I know that the The Republicans successfully dodged that today, right? And this is of Hegseth, of course, not, yeah.

0:08:07 Matt: Uh of course, if PS gets, with, he's the easiest target of the cabinet, and Trump, you know, between everybody certainly has, you know, extraditionally killed the most people, uh, that we know of, so Stephen Miller has probably extraditionally killed people too, know, he's a public figure, I can say that. Course, Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky, as we were discussing, very good on the Epstein files, very good on coming out against Hegseth. Know, there was this brief moment of hope last week that Republicans were so mad because they knew that the Iran war was the thing that really put them over the top, like that really caused this blue tsunami that we just saw. Not just because people hate the war universally across the board, but because of the prices and what it did to the economy.

0:08:13 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:40 Matt: Easy stuff. I mean, it's really the worst possible thing you could have done in an election year.

0:08:43 Thomas: Yes, and they they also have the easiest target, as you've said, and that allows them to do what they always do, which is, well, you know, Trump just had bad people around him. That's what happened here. He just had a bad, you know, it was a great idea to do the war, I'm sure. It was great, but he just did it wrong.

0:08:52 Matt: Right. Yeah. Of course. Right. Yeah.

0:09:00 Thomas: And so you could have even had a scapegoat.

0:09:02 Matt: Oh, for sure. And that's one of the questions here, of course, is that all the things that Massey especially is alleging here are all things that would have been done at Trump's direction.

0:09:08 Thomas: Oh, of course. But I just mean for the Republican psyche, like it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been that like anti-Trump necessarily to go ahead and do the impeachment. You could almost imagine it as a, as a way to kind of keep Trump allegiance and acknowledge the massive losses you just took.

0:09:11 Matt: Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, Oh, sure. Yeah. I think most Republicans at this point do not like PDXF. Nobody really likes him. It's pretty easy. As the Onion said last year, he has to drink his lunch alone at the Pentagon. Gone. Appreciate that, Edwin.

0:09:39 Thomas: That's really good, yeah.

0:09:41 Matt: Yeah. You can't sit with the cool kids. This is the morning that he knows the impeachment is going to be voted on.

0:09:46 Thomas: So there's a, there's an announcement, we're like, okay, is he gonna get ahead of it and just be like, "I'm done," I've, some kind of resignation where you're like, "I did, I did everything," you know, some bullshit or something, get out of it. Nope, that didn't happen.

0:09:59 Matt: The opposite of that. Yeah. So we can play the first 30 seconds or so of his getting ahead of it.

0:10:04 Clip: Good morning. I'll get right to it. What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight and it's not accountability. It's a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment. Time for one man's final days in Congress to try to do damage to this president, this country, and most irresponsibly, the warriors who defend it.

0:10:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:32 Clip: It's a farce and it's a stunt and everybody knows it. In the 250 years of our American Republic, no Secretary of War or Secretary of Defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations and in our case successful ones at that.

0:10:32 Thomas: Okay.

0:10:46 Matt: Yeah.

0:10:54 Thomas: He's got the shit he didn't grin the whole time

0:10:57 Clip: Not once. War powers resolution or not, not under Reagan in Lebanon, not under Clinton in Kosovo, not under Obama in Iraq and Syria.

0:10:58 Thomas: Successful ones is this him announcing a different war that we won

0:11:06 Matt: It goes on for 30 minutes like this. It just keeps happening.

0:11:08 Thomas: 30 Oh yeah, 25 solid minutes. Wow.

0:11:12 Matt: And he goes on to talk about how you can't have ideological people leading these institutions. And it's all about him. He's talking about himself, really. That is his response.

0:11:18 Thomas: What famous fascist definition of ideological, which means, means against me,

0:11:23 Matt: Yeah, against me, the things that I don't like. We talked about a bit, I think, back in April when the House Democrats filed articles of impeachment that really, everything in there was true, but it it was more of a press release. It was more like, here's everything that Pete Hegseth has done wrong recently, including killing fishermen and the Signal thing where he accidentally allowed a journal in a Signal chat.

0:11:40 Thomas: Really? Could just be a newsletter, like, all right, catching you up on, here's everything, all the people he's killed and things he's done.

0:11:42 Matt: Yeah, right, exactly. Realize this because it's so hard to keep track of everything that's been going on the last few months. Mike Johnson shut down the House in September avoid Massey from doing this, to make sure he didn't, because he was bringing it as a privilege resolution, which means you're not doing it through the usual way.

0:11:52 Thomas: Avoid it, right? Yeah. Right.

0:11:59 Matt: You're doing it as a matter of privilege and you get to have a vote within two days.

0:12:02 Thomas: Hold on, that is nuts, that we didn't talk more about that, but it is just a sign of how much, I don't mean us personally, but like Again, he shut down, I Is it the kind of thing where, you know, they would have been off for their, their, their annual, annual vacation anyway, or something, or

0:12:04 Matt: I know. Right. Yeah. Think it cost them 24 more days or something. And I was reading at least a quarter of the time the House should have been in business, this year they weren't because of this Johnson shit.

0:12:18 Thomas: Days. Wow.

0:12:23 Matt: It's the way he's constantly shutting down to make sure things don't happen.

0:12:26 Thomas: I'm surprised that wasn't more of a campaign message anywhere that I saw. I don't know. Cause it's just like, again, these people are so corrupt and cowardly. They'll just quit. They'll just rage quit their job rather than do what is at all ethical or legal or constitutional.

0:12:29 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Just walk away. That's right. Yeah, the Democrats were trying to introduce it in April through the usual method of putting it through committee, and it was just going to get lost, and they knew it wasn't going to happen because they're the minority party, of course, at the time.

0:12:49 Thomas: Still are for now, by the way, which is important for this

0:12:50 Matt: Yeah, for now, for the next couple months. Yep, know, they are now being handed a much better, I think, uh, set of impeachment articles. So Massey files this as a matter of privilege, as a privilege resolution, which means that it has to get a vote within two days. This is what he's trying to do in September, but now Mike Johnson can't shut him down.

0:13:04 Thomas: Wait, why can't Mike Johnson stop him? Because the new Congress isn't seated until January, obviously, so what, what change that allowed him to do this exactly?

0:13:11 Matt: Maybe I shouldn't say can't shut, shut them down. But I think that now that the election has passed, Mike Johnson has no problem coming back and basically putting a motion to send this to committee. The justification they can use is, well, we're just going to do this through the normal process. We're not going to have a straight up and down vote. We're going to have a committee take a look and maybe refine these and whatever. Of course, that means it's going to die.

0:13:27 Thomas: Okay, so they're just like wasting time until yeah gotcha

0:13:28 Matt: Yes. Just setting it over until the Democrats can file it properly. The alternative would have been a motion to table it, which would have been a lot more obvious. But at least this way, every member who voted for it can say, well, I didn't vote to stop the impeachment. I just voted to have the committee look at it. So make sure it's done right. One of the main reasons that it didn't pass, not the main reason that it didn't pass, was that 11 Democrats were not there.

0:13:47 Thomas: And this is something people are trying to use to already get us mad at Democrats, but here's the thing, the Republicans are in charge of when the vote happens, so they waited until a good time, time and did it these Democrats didn't like, uh, I don't want to come into work today, it's not that

0:13:54 Matt: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, at least one of them was medical. And I think Pelosi had a scheduled appearance. She was already in California. A couple of them said it was for traffic. One of them just said that she was denied the right to vote without explaining it. I don't know what that's about. I couldn't find any more information. One of them, unfortunately, was Haley Stevens of Michigan. No explanation given about why she wasn't there.

0:14:20 Thomas: Okay, feel free to be mad at her that's fine

0:14:21 Matt: Sure, I still am. But at the end of the day, it wouldn't have mattered because you still have to have... Massey, of course, voted for his own resolution, but there were no other Republicans who joined him. There would have had to be two more defectors to make it work. And so effectively, by having those Democrats gone, I think it doubled the number of people that would have been required to cross over because there were seven Republicans missing, saying, 11 Democrats missing.

0:14:38 Thomas: Yeah but I just saw a lot of people online being like, oh, look at that. And it's like, if if there were enough Democrats, then they wouldn't have done the vote, like they would have waited until a strategic time. I don't know who's doing it or for what reason, but it felt, and or maybe it's organic, who knows anymore, but it just felt like I saw, like, you know, all of a sudden a bunch of different posts that are like, here's the Democrats who didn't show up to vote. You're like, come on, man.

0:14:42 Matt: Yeah. No, no. Right.

0:15:02 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't have made a difference.

0:15:05 Thomas: What percentage of our ignorant country even knows that they aren't seated yet, like the new Congress isn't seated yet

0:15:10 Matt: Yeah, they're in charge. What's going on? Yeah, of So I will point out that Yasmin Ansari, she was the one who filed the articles in April. As I said, more of a press release. And I think that Massey made a really good call by removing a couple of these things, because she was talking about the way that he was doing his job for some of these things, like the way that he was handing DEI and affirmative action and and, you know, trans service members, all things, of course, that we disagree with. But implicitly and explicitly, actually, in the impeachment process, it can't just be because somebody sucks at their job. It has to be because they're actually committing some kind of crimes. And of course, he's killing people, starting an illegal war, violating the War Powers Resolution Act. Death of the 200 plus Iranian schoolgirls is one of the actual articles in the Massey one, which is very important, along with the fishermen and everyone, everyone else.

0:15:11 Thomas: Yeah yeah I do, do you think that also ridding the upper ranks of people of color is fundamentally disqualifying? I think that's a high crime and misdemeanor. Like I get what you're saying, but I think, do it all, I, trying to clear out black people from the military upper ranks is a high crime and misdemeanor. I

0:15:55 Matt: Fired so many generals but and it's still, it's hard to prove for impeachment purposes when you have legal violations of the laws of war, and then, like, how we use force, like, that, I mean, you've got, like, because you can, you can say it's a policy.

0:16:13 Thomas: Yeah, but this is all bullshit anyway, Matt. None of this is real, it's all what they ever, they vote on

0:16:15 Matt: Oh, no I agree I agree I know but I'm saying, if it goes, because if it went to a trial in the Senate, you want to have the cleanest, simplest presentation. It mired down, and like, oh, actually, I fired this guy because, you know, here's his performance from the last three years, and here's some things that I didn't like about, was on his resume, or whatever

0:16:30 Thomas: I'm so sorry to quibble, I disagree, I would love that, I I why don't you go ahead and defend the firing and hirings you made. Go ahead. And by the way, if in the end, what happens, like, first off, even when we take control, we don't have enough to guarantee an impeachment, it's possible we could get enough Republicans.

0:16:33 Matt: Well sure, that's true, hold him to it sure for the House, yeah, for the House, it'll be no problem to impeach him

0:16:51 Thomas: No and the House is a done deal, yeah, that's the, the House, we have a margin of plus 970. we're going to be fine in the House, but in the Senate, like, that's why, so this is the point I'm making, I'm sorry to quibble, I'm not trying to be a troublemaker, it's just that, but this is all pretend anyway. If there's some slim chance it's not pretend, and by that, I mean, we covered this so much in the first Trump one, the concept of impeachment is pretend. It's whatever they find impeachable. It is high crimes and misdemeanor, but you don't have to have violated the law to get impeached. We established that in Trump one. Know, we wouldn't want to like impeach anyone for bad, terrible reasons to like further undermine it. But the idea that we need to pass up on what are really disgusting things that are impeachable, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of any polite society, you know, like the idea that that you're going to rid the upper ranks of all women and people of color is just, it's disgusting.

0:16:55 Matt: Right right and trans service members, I mean, that's, that should be impeachable too.

0:17:47 Thomas: That, of course, that too. Yeah, my point is, like, with Clinton, there were some charges that he was impeached on, somebody was like, you don't have to impeach as a whole, or not as a whole, right. Isn't it a line by line kind of thing when it comes to, to that? That they can find you guilty of something, but not another thing

0:18:02 Matt: Oh, yeah. There are counts. Yeah, there's eight specific articles of impeachment here. Yeah, they can definitely go through each one of them.

0:18:08 Thomas: It's my thesis, it's my argument, Matt, that keep you, that stuff in there, but what do I matter?

0:18:12 Matt: Comparing it to the Mayorkas, Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, right? And actually, the last time that my voice was this bad, back in 2024, you and I talked about the Mayorkas impeachment, went through that one. That was a straight up policy disagreement. That was just saying, I don't like the way you're doing your job. And the Senate, in that case, dismissed those articles without a trial, because he was impeached, and it was sent up to the Senate. But they said, this is maladministration, which is exactly the thing the founder said, you're not supposed to be impeaching us on. So they just didn't even try to see what they can do, because there's no rules about impeachment. It's just Calvin Ball. That's not necessarily like a binding precedent, but with you. I think it makes sense. And I think especially the racism and the transphobia should be addressed openly and make him defend it, like you said.

0:18:22 Thomas: Yeah take us through, take us through every hiring and firing decision, I would love that, because it's disgusting. Like it is genuinely sad, too. I'm not, obviously, a big fan of the military, but you see some of these people, these women, these black, these leaders who, like, have, have this storied career, you, decades of doing the best kind of service in the military, and then this, this absolute sentient beer bottle comes in and fires them, or doesn't promote them, or all this stuff, of racism, because of racism the while thinking and projecting that it's about qualifications, or it's about, it's just, it's the most offensive thing imaginable.

0:18:48 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Straight up. I agree. It's interesting, too, when you're looking at this, because one of the articles of impeachment here is the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, right? And that's something I think Republicans don't really have a problem with. Yeah, that whole thing where we just – we killed dozens of people and kidnapped a foreign leader and brought him up to New York. The war in Yemen, which nobody in America seems to give a shit about at all, but it is very important that we're continuing to unlawfully support the Saudis in this. And then, of course, the boat strikes in the Caribbean.

A lot of this stuff is stuff that Republicans basically are fine with, but I think they're most angry about Iran and the way that's been handled, and that's the thing they're probably willing to join on. But obviously, they proved that they weren't willing to join and mass-using the Republican depot for it. Right. So I just wanted to point out, though, that I think this is overall better drafted. It is more on point.

I want to go through it a bit and gavel, gavel, and kind of look at what these articles of impeachment are and how they work, because I think it's interesting. And to compare it to things like the Mayorkas impeachment or the previous Democrats impeachment. This is all basically ready to go for the Democrats when they come into power in January.

0:19:28 Thomas: Yeah that whole thing that happened we literally don't talk about anymore and we should, we should revise it, I mean, like you said, he's done a good job, but I mean, why, again, I don't, I want us to stop being scared, Matt, stop being scared, stop, we're always doing the work for them, we're always quitting for them, we're always, oh, if we present it in this perfect way, maybe some Republicans will decide not to be fascist. I don't effing care. Make the list as long as possible because it, matter, the Republicans are going to join or they're not. And it's not really determined by how good of handwriting we have. It's really not.

0:20:39 Matt: Yeah. And the Fox News headline will still be that that Hegs is impeached for woke anyway, right? Whether it's in there or not,

0:20:43 Thomas: Yeah, totally. Totally. And if if there is some chance we get him on the Iran war and the Republicans, just convict on like one particular thing. OK, we still got to have months of hearings or trial literally about all the other terrible shit he's done.

0:20:56 Matt: Right. Yeah, Well, we'll see. We're going to keep watching it. But, you know, this was a historic moment, I think, just for all kinds of reasons this week. Not the usual kind of press release kind of impeachment. This is the real thing. Every one of the cabinet secretaries, I think, at this point. I mean, agriculture, transportation, whatever, you can find dirt on every one of them at this point in the Trump four administration. Impeach them all.

0:21:14 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:21:15 Matt: Impeach Trump too. But this is the one that absolutely needed to start with because

0:21:18 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I totally agree with that. I think starting there is good.

0:21:20 Matt: Done the most damage. So we'll keep a watch. Come back to it.

0:21:23 Thomas: All right, right, well, let's take a break, and then we're going to talk Broadview.

0:21:29 Thomas: Matt, what's our, what's our favorite, what are our favorite rascals up to now? You

0:21:34 Matt: They just can't seem to stop lying to Judge April Perry about what happened in the Broadview Six case. Just to remind everybody, of course, this was case the that involved our friend of the show, Kat Abughazaleh, and a number of other fairly politically prominent people who were attending an ICE protest where a vehicle drove through. And there was an allegation that they somehow all formed a conspiracy at the same time to impede ICE. So, of course, there was all kinds of misconduct.

You can listen to multiple episodes of Gabble Gabble, some of my favorite stuff that we've ever done, including wonderful dramatic readings of the grand jury transcripts. But everything at this point, the case was dismissed because it had to be because there was so much misconduct. But now Judge April Perry in Chicago has continued to move this forward because she's looking at sanctions.

She's looking at consequences, which is very appropriate because there are a lot of people here that knew things that were claiming they didn't know things and that were doing things that they claimed they weren't doing. It's all coming to an end on Monday, November 16th, days after you're going to hear this.

0:22:23 Thomas: Well, and remind me, was this the one where they're like, and you know what, we've gone ahead and we've, we've gone ahead and dismissed the charges? You Know, we've gone, Really felt like they're trying to like be heroes about it and, You know, we, the minute that we saw there was maybe, know, a problem, we got rid of them. So, so we're all, so we'll, you know, we're all fine here, right? Okay, see you later. Let's get, you know, and the judge is like, no.

0:22:30 Matt: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I I guess in some universe, seven months is a minute, but not in this one. Andrew Boutros was the U.S. attorney, is the U.S. attorney. This is going to be forever his legacy, I hope so, because he knew and he was very much responsible for bringing this back in front of the grand jury three times. It shouldn't have ever been brought before, but they just kept bringing it back. The real question is about what Boutros knew and when he knew it about the misconduct that was happening. I want to go deeper on a Gavel-Gavel episode to do a full catch-up because there's a lot of interesting filings to read and a lot of very dramatic things that have happened, but I wanted to give the overview because it's really worth knowing about right now. Back on March 30th, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan filed something in which he was explicitly denying on behalf of the Department of Justice that there were any communications of any nature with anyone outside the Chicago office, apart from local FBI agents, about the Broadview case. And he specifically said, "To be crystal clear."

0:22:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:38 Matt: Always great when you start your sentence that way. This specifically includes anyone in the White House and all components and offices of main justice. Now again, that's not under oath, but he's saying in the record, in a motion filing, excuse me, in a court filing, was all local, that Andrew Boucher was responsible for everything, and that Todd Blanche, nobody else ever got involved. 2nd, not that long ago, we have a new civil suit filed by a new character in this drama, one Douglas DePodesta, who was a FBI special agent who was responsible for this investigation for Broadview 6. And he was one of the scapegoats. I didn't realize this, but he was one of the people that Boutros somehow was trying to hold out and say this was all his fault, even though this is obviously the U.S. Attorney's Office that did all of this. And now he's suing the FBI and DOJ and Andrew Boutros in his personal capacity.

0:24:19 Thomas: Well, wait, yeah, because the last thing we covered was the other person who like resigned.

0:24:23 Matt: Mecklenburg. She was a scapegoat too. And she had a point about being a scapegoat. There is a blockbuster bombshell revelation in this. Not a surprise, but it is not something we knew before. I'm sending you a document here. If you can read it out to set up what you're about to read, the incident with the protest was on September 26th, 2025. And he's making allegation an in this, which I completely believe, because he was there, about something that happened on October 7th, 2025.

0:24:23 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Wow.

0:24:48 Thomas: Additionally, on October 7th, 2025, Defendant Boutros, Defendant Blanche, Defendant Patel, Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, and Special Agent in Charge DePodesta met in person in DePodesta's office located at 2111 West Roosevelt Road, Chicago, Illinois. During this meeting, Defendant Boutros discussed how with his superiors in the Department of Justice and other law enforcement officers.

0:25:14 Matt: Right, huge. So Todd Blanche was in Chicago with Kash Patel.

0:25:18 Thomas: Wow. It wasn't just like they were somewhere else. Like, literally, they came there.

0:25:20 Matt: Yeah, yeah, they're on the site. And so that's huge, because you've got the US Attorney's Office saying, no, of course, nobody in Maine, US has ever talked about it. And then we've got Todd Blanche there, personally reviewing everything.

0:25:32 Thomas: What was the point of that lie, Matt? Does that really do anything for them?

0:25:36 Matt: Well, they're trying to say this wasn't political and that this was all controlled by Boutros.

0:25:40 Thomas: We already know Todd Blanche, Todd Blanche has already done so many horrible things, like, what does this add to it, like, if if if they had just been like, yeah, no, we did it because Blanch said to do it, what, what would happen, like, what are they worried about happening?

0:25:45 Matt: He's got his hands on everything. The reason this really matters is because... So you remember that one of the things when we were reading back about the Mecklenburg stuff. So first of all, Sheri Mecklenburg's motion to intervene has been granted. So she's going to be an intervener in the case, which is getting weird. So we're going to talk about that when it happens.

0:26:01 Thomas: Who?

0:26:05 Matt: There's some Also, in the course of that, around that time, the defendants were seeking discovery about things that happened in D.C. April Perry specifically ruled, I can't find that there's any reason to believe that there were communications in D.C. And the U.S. Attorney's Office has denied it. So you can't have it. Now she is, of course, furious because it looks like, there's good reason to believe that that's not true.

0:26:23 Thomas: Could have seen that coming.

0:26:23 Matt: Who could have seen it coming? So they did file a correction back in September. They're trying to say that it was true as it relates to pre-charging decisions. But yeah,

0:26:30 Thomas: Okay, so they saw this and then tried to file a little like, let's clarify, our complete lie, it only applied to odd numbered days, yeah.

0:26:39 Matt: I mean, they never got it. I mean, I don't know. Of course, they did eventually get a charge through the, but I mean, it doesn't even matter because we know it involved pre-charging decisions because we have this meeting now on October 7th, days after the incident. They're trying to say it's privileged communication. They're say that the communication that didn't exist before, well, it exists, but it's privileged. You can't see it. They gave her a very incomplete privilege log to try to explain what these communications would be. And she didn't like that. Stan Woodward, who's now, I think, the third-in-command and has been a Trump organizational lawyer for a long time, this got really weird.

This is just in the last few days. She orders this hearing on the 16th for the US attorney and several of the subordinates to show up and testify under oath and answer questions about what actually happened. Stan Woodward filed what they called a motion for clarification on November 10th, asking for Perry to identify the legal authority for the hearing and to consider limiting or foregoing entirely this inquiry. Basically saying, do you really want to do this? Why do you think you get to do this? And she's like, like, why do I think I get to do this?

0:27:00 Thomas: Just

0:27:35 Matt: I'm the judge.

0:27:36 Thomas: Do you really want to look into all our misconduct, I mean, it's a long, it's a long way, it's a yeah it's

0:27:38 Matt: You got that kind of time, judge, really. Don't give other cases. Yeah.

0:27:43 Thomas: All the way downtown, you know, it's the, yeah. It's gas money, I don't know.

0:27:45 Matt: Right. Yeah. She's put some pretty sharp stuff on the record about how the government's professed lack of clarity about the court's inherent authority is not material to my decision.

0:27:54 Thomas: Just to say it for the non-lawyers, and and also make sure I have this right, you know, let me know, saying something's privileged is not a get out of jail free card. In terms of, you're not allowed to lie about it, like, there's a lot of stuff that's privileged, like in, you know, civil trials and whatever, and you still have to be up front about it, and there, there has to be a log of like, yeah, we had these conversations at this time.

0:28:01 Matt: Yeah. Right. Right.

0:28:14 Thomas: Here's what was broadly that it was, you know what I mean? Like you don't, yeah, exactly.

0:28:17 Matt: And the kind Right. I mean, because, right.

0:28:19 Thomas: It's, it's detailed, but you don't get to just be like, oh, sorry. I totally lied about that privilege,

0:28:25 Matt: I mean, there's no indication that the government, as she points out, and we talked about the Mecklenburg context as well. They do have a right to get government counsel when they're facing this kind of stuff. Perry makes the point that the government doesn't represent three out of four of these people. And two of them have specifically said they want to testify. So like, what are we doing here? Of course, they're going to testify. She had no patience for any of this. Multiple listeners pointed out one of her footnotes in this. Which of course everyone understands how much I enjoy footnotes.

0:28:47 Thomas: Which is like someone mentioning something that happened in a sharks game to me. It's like, yeah, no, I saw it.

0:28:52 Matt: I actually missed this one. I can't keep up with all these filings. I know. I do appreciate our listeners pointing out fun footnotes for me. It's one of my favorite things that happens. Dan Turner among other people on Blue Sky, as Stan Woodward's filing, I think it's something that is definitely worth reading for gavel gavel. We'll get to go deeper on it. He's doing this thing that, of course, as we've been talking about for years, the Trump administration does, where they pretend they don't understand the order. And they're like, well, it seems like this is optional. We don't have to do any of this, right? Footnote seven in her response here, the court uses must, and and this is in the context of they have to show up to testify, the court uses quote-unquote must in its legal sense, which is to say it is mandatory. And she cites a case from the Seventh Circuit noting that in legal terms may is permissive, whereas must is mandatory, in case you don't speak English that well.

0:28:53 Thomas: Oh, wow, man.

0:29:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:19 Thomas: I already love it. Yeah.

0:29:32 Thomas: You almost have to cite like Plato or something like uh see uh how the part is less than the whole you know it's like

0:29:34 Matt: Yeah, right, right. The nature of truth. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, good times. Well, I'm going to predict we're going to get some great transcripts out of the coming hearings here. So we'll certainly be keeping a watch on our favorite case. But that's what I got for now. We'll come back to it.

0:29:49 Thomas: So, Matt, we want to talk, uh, Elvis, how's he doing?

0:29:51 Matt: Well, not great. He's been dead a while. But his estate is very, very concerned about Suno, which I just learned about today. But apparently you already knew it was the largest AI music generation thing. I played around with Suno with the free version because I wanted to see how accurate these claims were, and they are, of course, very accurate. I'll play you just how accurate they are in a minute. But first, I'm going to play you a clip that's going to make you want to do terrible, terrible things to this person that you won't even want to say on air. It certainly did for me, at least. No offense to any of our Mikeys listening, but if you have the opportunity to go by Mike or Michael and you go by Mikey, I'm already suspicious. This is Mikey Shulman, the CEO of Suno, he is about to say some of the most disgusting bullshit I've ever heard in my life about music and musicians.

0:30:32 Thomas: God.

0:30:32 Matt: He's talking about a slightly different suit because, of course, Suno's been sued many times. This is the most interesting one of them.

0:30:37 Clip: If this lawsuit goes to trial and we lose, it's obviously not good for us. The company is not dead, but it's obviously not good for us. I don't think that's likely. I would just be thinking about, A, the game theory of what all players want here, and B, what is the best future of music for everyone? Even if you could make Suno or Suno-like companies or AI companies go away, do you really want that?

0:31:01 Clip: What if the music industry can be as big as the gaming industry? There's going to be a lot of happy people.

0:30:56 Thomas: Okay. I do want that be as

0:31:07 Clip: When we think about the future of music then how does that look, because you have existing players today, your Spotify is most namely of the world, how does that look in your ideal world? There's a few different ways. I'll tell you what I hope it is, which is that, um, there are a lot more people participating and there are a lot more experiences on tap. And so what does that mean? That means, um, we didn't just want to build, let's say, a company that makes the current crop of creators 10% faster or makes it 10% easier to make music.

0:31:07 Thomas: Big as the gaming industry well That seems like

0:31:41 Clip: If you want to impact the way a billion people experience music, you have to build something for a billion people. And so that is first and foremost, giving everybody the joys of creating music. And this is a huge departure from how it is now. It's not really enjoyable to make music now. People enjoy- Why do you say that?

0:31:41 Thomas: It would be better instrument it's not really enjoyable to make

0:31:59 Clip: It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice. You need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software, I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.

0:31:59 Thomas: Music wait I think I've seen this sorry I just

0:32:14 Matt: Yeah. Very punchable face, I gotta say, and everything he just said is very punchable, no further comment on that, yeah.

0:32:18 Thomas: Find it funny, I just find it, it's it's just

0:32:21 Matt: Well it's that AI mindset, I hate it, I hate it so much.

0:32:25 Thomas: Hey, man, you're in the wrong, like, species or something, you're, you know, you want a different thing, I was gonna say race isn't human race like you're not, you're, you're, you're, oh, who wants to learn an instrument and create beautiful sounds with their bodies and hands and minds? It's like, ah, wouldn't you rather type in make me song and then have a series of tubes make you a song? No.

0:32:31 Matt: You don't understand humans. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's not fun. It's hard. And people think that they've made a song when they do that, when you and I have spent decades of our lives learning how to play music. I mean, again, I'm proud of that, obviously. It's supposed to be work. It's supposed to be hard. I feel the same about writing. It's painful. As one of the great wits said, "the best thing about writing is having written." Right, it's the same thing with writing music. I'm sure sometimes although there is that moment when you've just like produced a piece of music and it's, you know, it can be fun to be in the zone.

0:33:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For, for me, the songwriting part is the only good part Cause then the rest is just impossible, Interesting conversation, because there have been, obviously, even before AI, so many tools that that are on that border, like, it it, like, I'm like, I get it, but it also, sometimes when I'm watching, like, oh, I'm gonna watch a tutorial on the software, that's whatever, and you're like, man, you can really just press a button and make a song now. Even before AI, that's like, all right, I guess that's, that's how that goes. So, you know, in some sense, I, again, if this were about the first thing he said, which is like making music 10 easier for everyone, it's like, okay, fine, do whatever, do that, make a new tool, there's a bunch of them, make a new DOM, make a new whatever, but again, that's still just a way for the human beings, who are the part that matters, to do art faster, which, arguably,

0:33:16 Matt: It is tedious, but

0:34:03 Thomas: You know, you can, you can agree, disagree, but whatever, people make tools for that all the time, the part where you're like, let's just bypass that entirely, entirely, and now have the, the computer make the art, it's like that's definitionally stupid, I

0:34:10 Matt: Well, And the computer is not making the art, the computer is recycling a whole lot of other art that it ate, they call it ingestion. That's what they actually call it.

0:34:21 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, so, so are we, but didn't even write his own songs.

0:34:25 Matt: Yes, but that's true, and certainly, so is all this, as we'll talk about it by the end of the segment, but Yeah.

0:34:32 Thomas: That's, you know, other people wrote songs for him.

0:34:33 Matt: Of course. A lot of adaptations of melodies and things.

0:34:36 Thomas: I don't even mean in a secret way, like that's that was the the gig back then.

0:34:38 Matt: No. Yeah. Yeah. No, of course, yeah, you're a performer. So I'm going to send you a clip from the lawsuit, this is linked actually very conveniently, they link to some Vimeo things here where they, they ran, and I'm gonna, I did one myself, but they ran some Elvis stuff. Now officially, Suno's position is that you can't say "make me a song in the style of Elvis Presley," right? You can't. But when I did that, it told me, it gave me a little message and it said, we can't do anything specifically of any artist. And then it went ahead and made me an Elvis Presley song.

0:34:56 Thomas: You can't, oh Yeah.

0:35:05 Matt: Like that sounded exactly like Elvis Presley. And it's just like, well, how about, did you mean Rockabilly? Right? Which I did, but then it made me an Elvis song. So let's just play a little clip here so you can just see how Elvis-y this is. They're doing a very straight ahead, like seeing if they can recreate and Jailhouse Rock, right? Which is one of the big Elvis songs.

0:35:12 Thomas: Channel House Rock is a song that was pretty cool for its time.

0:35:25 Matt: It's a jam.

0:35:26 Thomas: Yeah, it's, I don't know what genre you'd consider, almost like a metal or like a hard rock kind of riff, you know, with the, you know, it's like really

0:35:32 Matt: That's true. But it is rockabilly.

0:35:35 Clip: I'll shoot.

0:35:33 Thomas: Cool. You step on my blue side, shit, that's virtually what is just the song, this sucks, this is the same song, I mean, it's hard because blues progression, you know, that standard blues progression is always the same thing, but

0:35:51 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. It's always the same. And it's foundational. And of course, he's stealing Black American blues. That's just a little clip here. I'll play you mine pretty soon here when we get to the point. But

0:36:13 Thomas: That's terrible, and it's already the song, like, I, if I heard that, for the voice is wrong, it's not quite right, but if I heard that and it was in Elvis's voice, it would take me a while to to realize that wasn't just the song that I already know, you

0:36:27 Matt: Yeah. It's pretty close. As they demonstrate in some of these Vimeo clips, you can get more Elvis-y or less Elvis-y with the way you tell it to do it. And the one that I did, we'll play it pretty soon here, it came out pretty Elvis-y. But I'll talk about the suit itself. This is a very weird lawsuit, and it's based on a very interesting law. As I said, the Elvis Act, The Elvis Act was actually passed in Tennessee around his birthday. Very obviously, and this is very significant of the case, a tribute to and making sure that they could protect Tennessee artists, including Elvis. It's the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, Elvis Act. Pretty good. It's pretty good. It expands their existing rights for performers and it adds voice. So they're thinking ahead to AIs in 2024. this is a little tricky because you're talking about, as I said, a system that has ingested basically all of recorded music. They're pretty open about that. They stole pretty much everything that's ever been recorded. So when you say create a rockabilly song, Elvis is going to be in there. That's how it works.

The lawsuit is very interesting because it's brought in the Northern District of California. We're talking about a Delaware company that is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts that has stolen music from Tennessee. And they're using Tennessee law in federal court, which is very very interesting. There's like an interesting law school problem going on here. The theory as to why they're in Northern California is because they do have, they just opened a San Francisco office where apparently they're doing a lot of data mining and stealing things.

But it looks like from what I can tell in my research that they are going for this district because there's been some very, very favorable rulings in this direction from this district.

0:36:54 Thomas: Nice.

0:37:45 Matt: So obviously venue shopping a little bit, looking at Northern California precedent, there's a very interesting thing about when you get to use what they call foreign law law in a federal case. And Tennessee is foreign to California, obviously.

0:37:56 Matt: So really interesting sort of balancing test that they do to see what the interest is. This foreign law is materially different from California's. It's the first test because obviously this is the only state that has done something that includes the voice. Is there a legitimate interest in applying the Tennessee law, whether true conflict or false? And if both states have some interest, which state's interest would be more impaired? And obviously, Tennessee passed this thing in the name of Elvis, and it's supposed to protect Tennessee artists. That's the whole point of it. So I think there's a good argument that you can use Tennessee law for this reason. And the reason they're relying on Tennessee law is because that's where Elvis died. It's actually domicile at death, which governs post-mortem publicity, how you get used, how your likeness is used. I did not know that.

0:38:32 Thomas: Specifically, the toilet appellate division.

0:38:35 Matt: Yeah, that's right. But yeah, he died in Graceland in, I think, like, 42. I wasn't very old.

0:38:39 Thomas: Right, yeah, 42, you, that's so funny, I would have sworn it was older than that.

0:38:42 Matt: They established these facts really well in the pleading. It's a pretty good suit. It's an interesting read. But I've got some questions about this. Strategically, I think the thing that's most interesting about this is from what I can tell just looking around, most of these other suits have been about what users have produced or sort of the output. But they're challenging the entire site, the algorithm itself, and the fact that it exists, and that it has stolen all these things, and it's capable of producing. They're saying it doesn't really matter what it produces. You've already done something that infringes this just by creating this system.

0:39:08 Thomas: Yeah. That sounds right to me.

0:39:09 Matt: Them. The question I kind of have, though, is about the First Amendment, because they do address the First Amendment here. And they're saying, there's absolutely no reason in the First Amendment that this should exist. And that's not really true, because you can use it for parody purposes. Concerningly, you could use it for parody purposes and make a commercial with it, right? And that's obviously completely cutting the Elvis estate out of it. I want to play you the clip that I made on Suno, I had to have some fun with this. Wrote up some lyrics and this is a song called You Ain't Nothin' But A Black Box yep me too I felt dirty using it

0:39:35 Thomas: Hate this so much.

0:39:44 Clip: But a black box all the time. You ain't nothing but license and you are no friend of mine.

0:39:59 Thomas: Oh, okay, we get the solo, yeah. That pretty close to art, Matt?

0:40:01 Matt: Some solid soloing yeah it's faster yep You Ain't Never Cleared A License You Are No Friend Of Mine I wrote that myself. So that is a parody, right? I wrote those lyrics and then I put them into the parody box, into Black Box, and it generated this. If I'm just Weird Matt and I just want to make a parody song, that's completely legal. I'm already Weird Matt, but yeah. That is obviously a very obvious use of this technology is and this isn't a parody song. I'm not parodying Elvis. This is satire, to be very clear. I'm satirizing the situation in the fact that you have a machine that makes Elvis songs that is stealing Elvis songs.

0:40:27 Thomas: Weird who thinks this is cool. Just don't, I can't imagine it.

0:40:45 Matt: I know. I hated myself for doing it. I just wanted to see if it would sound like Elvis and it kind of does.

0:40:50 Thomas: No, I'm not criticizing you, yeah, no. It's perfect tie-in for the segment.

0:40:52 Matt: No, sure. Of course. It's stupid though. Like only AI bros think this is cool. They think they're actually making art and no, they don't care. Yeah. They barely know an Elvis song. And they have no respect for artists and what it takes to write and perform a song, even just to get to the point where you can perform an Elvis song. I mean, that's, that's a lot of work. But I do do have to make the point, and I really would be remiss if I didn't do this. I don't know if you ever heard the original Hound Dog. I just want to just drop a quick footnote within this story. This is Big Mama Thornton, it. I just want you to hear 30 just seconds of the original Big Mama Thornton doing this.

0:40:57 Thomas: They don't like music, do they? Right.

0:41:23 Clip: You ain't...

0:41:48 Thomas: Don't know, I think the AI version was better, I'm just kidding. No, that's great.

0:41:51 Matt: Yeah, no, that slaps, as the kids say. The amazing thing is that Elvis did not steal that that. What he stole was white people stealing Big Mama Thornton. He stole the copy of a copy. So here's Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys. This is what he heard in Vegas in 1955 or whatever. The extremely white version of Hound Dog.

0:42:13 Clip: You ain't nothing but a hound dog, a hound dog, crying all the time. I ain't nothing but a hound dog, you ain't nothing but a hound dog.

0:42:18 Thomas: Yeah, no, he definitely sold this one, yeah, it says that it was Thornton's only hit record selling over 500,000 copies,

0:42:32 Matt: Single flat fee of $500. She got no royalties or ownership rights. She's a Black woman in 1952. Was, was two 19-year-olds that wrote the song.

0:42:40 Thomas: They wrote it for her and she recorded it. Okay, so there's like 18 different layers of rights stuff. Yeah. No.

0:42:48 Matt: As always, as always.

0:42:49 Thomas: I tend to look at these things with a little more nuance than maybe the internet, in terms of stealing. There's definitely cases of just stealing music, and I want to clarify, like, when you say steal, like, what's happening here?

0:42:52 Matt: Sure. Sure. Right. She's a Black woman and she gets 500 and no ownership rights, and he's Elvis and he gets, you know, all of the royalties.

0:43:06 Thomas: That's like it being a session musician thing, where, and those kind of things, honestly, when it comes to how rights work, I think that that's more complicated than maybe people think, because this doesn't apply to whatever the 19 fricking 50, whatever, with with the racial component, I just mean in general, today in today's economy, if the job you do is session musician and you provide service A at a certain rate, and then a song you're on blows up, that's is what it is. Like, you could either have a different business model where you always want points instead of a flat fee, but you don't get to just pick the winners and be mad about not owning ownership to those and then still get paid for the losers, you know what I mean? Like, it's that's sort of the

0:43:46 Matt: Can't do it both ways, I get it.

0:43:47 Thomas: Because You can contrast, like, here's how much money the song made, and here's the 20 that this person got paid. It's like, yeah, but their thing is to do 20 gigs all the time, you

0:43:55 Matt: Sure. Well, literally, the Great Gig in the Sky, the Pink Floyd song, where it's just kind of the wailing, I mean, we haven't talked about this. Yeah.

0:44:00 Thomas: And And we've talked about it, and there's definitely argument on either side in terms of, like, well, how much was that? Was that more of a, did you actually write something there? Which I think that, that becomes, yeah, exactly.

0:44:07 Matt: Did in that case, yeah. Yeah.

0:44:09 Thomas: Yeah, no, I'm agreeing. I think that becomes more complicated.

0:44:09 Matt: Yeah. There's a lot going on in this lawsuit, and I could probably take an hour to break it down. Uh, it's it's fascinating. There's really interesting questions of law in here about the difference even between stealing it for the training and then how it comes out in the algorithm, about the domicile at death thing, about you on the right, but maybe not the conduct. You can't claim that the conduct violates it. One interesting thing I think I just noticed, is just looking at it again, is that they're seeking triple damages at the end because he was a member of the armed services, because Elvis did serve. So there is a special provision for that in the Elvis Act. Yeah, I know.

0:44:36 Thomas: That rules. Oh, that's so funny.

0:44:38 Matt: I wonder if they even put that in just for him.

0:44:40 Thomas: That's so funny.

0:44:41 Matt: The choice of law thing is actually maybe kind of weak because they don't really even cite anything. When they just say that the right for publicity primarily focuses on the state with the person at issue passed away, they've got all these footnotes about how important Elvis is and how much people love Elvis. They've got no explanation for why they should use this Tennessee law really, besides what I told you about sort of the way that federal courts have done this. A lot of interesting stuff. I think it's one of the most significant cases against AI to come come out so far. There's also a really interesting thing that just happened in Massachusetts where Jason Isbell, the singer-songwriter, filed against Suno. Suno filed something a few days before this which they said directly: Suno outputs do not reprise specific melodies from songs or someone else wrote and do not replicate the auditory characteristics of any real artist's voice. And they've never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted songs.

0:45:28 Matt: And that's just wrong. I mean, you can prove that just by doing it right now. Like I said, it'll just do do an Elvis song. They have screenshots here from previous versions of Suno, where if you put in Elvis's name, it would give you all these songs and suggestions and playlists and things and use his picture as well. So his image on top of that, right? This is obviously taking advantage of all of that in his entire body of work. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Know, in that interview, Mikey Schulman talks about how they're fully expecting to be sued. There's an investor in this lawsuit who's quoted as saying they fully expected to be sued, but he thinks it's better they got ahead of it and stole all this stuff first. They didn't have to work out licensing.

0:45:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:56 Thomas: Yeah. That's certainly how the other AI companies did it with all the books and everything.

0:45:58 Matt: Exactly. That's right. Forgiveness, not permission. That's really kind of where it's at. They got a bunch of permission later, but that doesn't help when you scraped everything first. And they still don't have permission for everybody, obviously. So anyway, a lot going on here, but I thought it was one of the most interesting AI-related things we looked at in a long time.

0:46:14 Thomas: It's super interesting. I'm obviously all for this. I think that it is really complicated because it is something that the law truly, I don't think anticipated. I mean, it's just such a crazy thing, you know, to have to specifically be like, can you put stuff into a computer that then learns it to a degree that means it can like rip it off? You know, it's just such a weird question.

0:46:34 Thomas: Like you wouldn't have thought to ask that. Music law is already outdated and weird as it is. My thing that I keep thinking is like, what is the actual market for this crap?

0:46:34 Matt: Yeah, And messy Yeah.

0:46:44 Thomas: I feel like the free market may solve this one eventually because who wants this shit? Who out there is like, you know what I need? I need a soulless computer version of a shitty Elvis song. For what? For what does it do? I guess Maybe it's just, it's so alien to me that I don't,

0:47:01 Matt: Just Because you respect music too much, I think that's your problem.

0:47:03 Thomas: No, I don't like what are you doing with that? I'm actually asking what do people, are you saying people like listen to it?

0:47:09 Matt: Could totally see like a small-time local car dealer making an Elvis song right, to About his car dealership or whatever, right, in Tennessee, right. I could see all kinds. I mean, the same reason, like, I wouldn't think that people would want to use shitty AI art either, but like, you see it all over the place now, for like, elementary school fair or whatever, just like generated by AI poster And people are just using it shamelessly as if it's real.

0:47:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And we really need to increase the shame on people doing outright AI art or music or whatever. It's one thing to use AI as a tool. I think that's just my opinion. I, it's like a bunch of tools. I do think that the company should have had to pay and should have to pay for whatever they stole. But it's another to just be like, make me art, and then use that. That's nothing. That's not anything. Thing.

0:47:52 Matt: Sure, are a bunch of tools involved, I agree, agree with that. But I remember when all this started, like way back, maybe six, seven years ago, when people were really talking about Ar generated art, I remember some idiot online saying, well, wouldn't you want to hear about another Beatles album? Don't you want AI to give you another Beatles album? But

0:48:04 Thomas: Love to hear another Beatles album. But that's not oh yeah, no, that's not another Beatles album.

0:48:06 Matt: I don't want AI to make it they're dead That's a computer album, and even if it sounds just like them

0:48:11 Thomas: I would truly love to hear another Beatles album if we lived in an alternate history where they released one more

0:48:16 Matt: They all survived, right? And if they're all live now, sure, give it a try, why not? But, you know, we've got very few Beatles left, so like, don't do, do it. It's a complete disrespect. All right, we should move on to our footnote.

0:48:18 Thomas: Yeah. Let's take that last break and then we'll, uh, move on to a footnote.

0:48:33 Matt: Right. This is nuts. So this is out of Arkansas. I'm going to send you a press release, we'll keep this one fairly quick, but it's a really interesting story. We're waiting on some context here. There's a lot I'd like to know about how this happened or what happened. This is about somebody named Nancy Givens, who was the executive director of the Supreme Supreme Court of Arkansas's Office of Professional Conduct and Programs, which means that she was in charge of the Arkansas bar examination. Very important. First of all, you'll notice on page two, they're talking about a tremendous number, 11,400 files that were deleted or rendered unavailable. They're not necessarily saying right now that she did that. What they are saying, and I think she has to have, I mean, again, she's been charged. She's presumed guilty of all these things we're going to be talking about. But this sounds pretty bad. Check out the paragraph that starts with evidence exists and

0:49:16 Thomas: Exists that Givens harvested points from a number of examinees' scores and then added them to, what the hell, Added them to other examinees' scores within the same test administration. Thus, she unilaterally elevated some examinees' scores to the minimum passing score of 270 or greater. Breck also identified at least one instance in which score alterations, examinee's, may score who otherwise would have passed, to a failing score. And in at least one instance, the individual who should have received the top score on the Arkansas bar examination had their score reduced, thereby naming another examinee as the recipient of the highest score on the exam. Okay, this is, this is war crimes. This is absolute war crimes.

0:49:23 Matt: Yep.

0:50:00 Matt: Is nuts. This is horrible.

0:50:02 Thomas: What is happening?

0:50:03 Matt: She's redistributing the points to the point that there are people who pass the exam who shouldn't have, and at least one person who failed who shouldn't have.

0:50:10 Thomas: Why would you give someone a different, the different high score? I don't, what,

0:50:13 Matt: And just moving the points around like they're a finite night resource, I don't know what's going on. I don't. But check out the bolded italicized paragraph, the horrifying thing that comes next.

0:50:23 Thomas: The vast majority of examinees who were previously informed that they had passed the Arkansas bar examination by the Office of Professional Programs did in fact pass the exam. So it's trying to make us feel better. Those examinees affected will be notified by the Office of Professional Conduct as soon as possible upon definitive confirmation of their status.

0:50:41 Matt: The vast majority is just not necessarily comforting. That means there's like maybe a couple hundred people out there. And this, by the way, we're talking about five years of bar examinations. This isn't just one.

0:50:44 Thomas: Yeah. Five years. Wow.

0:50:50 Matt: At least eight test administrations between July 2020 and July 2025. So that's potentially, if you're talking about the vast sure, what's fine, but maybe hundreds, maybe a thousand people that may have their bar licenses in jeopardy that didn't know it. This is completely unprecedented.

0:51:03 Thomas: Why did someone do this?

0:51:05 Matt: Corruption, favoritism, racism, I don't know. There's no explanation yet.

0:51:10 Matt: She hasn't said anything. Obviously, she's denying it. There's 65 counts right now filed against her of messing with a public document, basically. It looks like they have hard evidence that that she's just moving these scores around and changing it up then trying to cover our tracks.

0:51:24 Thomas: This. Is nuts, Matt.

0:51:25 Matt: It is really nuts. I mean, it's so much crazier in the California thing, because at least that was explainable of they just rushed a software program. I mean, it was bad. It never should have happened. Like what happens if you find out that you took the bar six years ago and actually bumped up your score to help you pass?

0:51:38 Thomas: Depending on what the motivation is, I guess those people may have already known if it was just Bribery.

0:51:42 Matt: Maybe no, yeah, maybe they pay off Yeah. Uh,

0:51:45 Thomas: Or whatever.

0:51:45 Matt: But I mean, presumably there might be some completely innocent people out there that have no idea, and I mean, I think you got to give it a pass. I mean, and also, does that mean that everything they've done as a lawyer is invalid after that? I, I don't know. I've never heard of anything like this. This is like the Annie Duken of the bar exam. I mean, it's just, it's, it's incredible. That was the drug, uh, examiner.

0:51:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:03 Matt: Yeah, you know, that, that, you know, called, you know, all these different drugs cocaine or whatever without actually testing them. Yeah. Blew my mind today seeing this, still processing what this actually means for these people. And I really hope that it doesn't cost anybody anything, except maybe people that, like you said, that maybe actually should be disbarred for this. Yeah, we're going to keep following this because I really want to find out why and what exactly happened.

0:52:01 Thomas: Oh, yeah, that's right, This is nuts, yeah, yeah. So this is, so truly there's no insight into motive yet or anything.

0:52:29 Matt: No, I looked and looked. There was some speculation that she might've been told that it's time to get more people passing the bar. It's also kind of a zero-something here because she's redistributing scores.

0:52:40 Thomas: But that's so funny too, because that acts like there's some finite number of points, but unless there's some weird system reason, but otherwise it's like, it doesn't, there's no, that doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, like two people could have both done better and both done worse. It's not as though one person, it's not a zero sum thing.

0:52:51 Matt: Always make more points. I know.

0:53:00 Thomas: You know, it's not, The test isn't a a head-to-head competition where you steal points from another person, right?

0:52:59 Matt: Yeah, you'd have to change up. Yeah, It's not a curve. Yeah, I really don't know. It's mystifying, the whole thing. But it's also just shocking, and I've never seen anything like it. So I thought thought it was worth a footnote.

0:53:13 Thomas: Insane, man. All right, we- you gotta, you gotta keep an eye on this, and we we want to know the minute you know what the hell is going on here. Crazy. All right, well, thanks so much, Matt, for the great breakdowns. Thanks everybody for listening, we really appreciate you. We'll see you on Monday for one of the best interviews we've ever done on this show.

0:53:16 Matt: We will.

0:53:29 Matt: Yes. Matthew Cole, Princes and Thieves.

0:53:32 Thomas: Just remembered, this was good. You're going to want to tune in. I've done a lot of interviews, Matt. This was one of the most knew what he was talking about, knowledgeable, quick, thorough, careful. Yeah, this is a, you're going to want to hear this, folks.

0:53:35 Matt: Yeah.

0:53:44 Matt: Careful. The allegations about Jared Kushner in this book, Princes and Thieves, which is this month's book selection for OA, are even as jaded as we might all be about Jared Kushner and about corruption right now. It is beyond. It is just incredible. And I believe all of it after reading the book and talking to him.

0:53:54 Thomas: Yeah. Can't wait for y'all to hear it. We'll see you you then.

0:54:05 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.

0:54:37 Thomas: Can't do the shatner impression

0:54:40 Matt: Friend, the Krakow shit guy.

0:54:43 Thomas: Let's clarify our complete lie on it's so loud I can't hear you

0:54:47 Matt: I specifically picked oh good