Advisory Opinions - Castle Doctrine Differences

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

People who watch and comment on politics do so very differently than campaign operatives do. Campaigns use voter scores and voter modeling—which is essentially “Moneyball” for politics—to gauge which voters are worth spending money on. As Sarah explains: “It’s a quadrant: on the y axis you have who you’re going to vote for, and on the x axis, you have your likelihood to vote. So you may be the most Trump-y Trump person ever.” But here’s the kicker: “If I go and look back and you haven’t voted since Jimmy Carter, your propensity to vote is so low, that how much money we’re going to spend on reaching you as a voter is going to actually be pretty low.” Be sure to listen to this episode so our podcast hosts can get more into the weeds about how those voter scores are being used behind the scenes in future episodes. The country is still mourning the death of Breonna Taylor, an African American woman who was shot and killed by police officers in her Kentucky home during a no-knock raid in March. For years, no-knock warrants have withstood the test of time, given their alleged capacity to protect police and preserve evidence. But as David says, “there’s evidence that no-knock warrants are constitutionally deficient,” and “as a practical matter, castle doctrine and no-knock warrants are incompatible.” Sarah, on the other hand, doesn’t believe the castle doctrine should apply to police. Are no knock raids worth preserving? Why are they so broadly granted to police officers? Sarah and David have answers. Catch up on the latest episode for an update on the Michael Flynn case, subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, and the Hatch Act. Show Notes: -Sarah’s newsletter, The Sweep, Jonah’s column on silent MAGA voters. -SCOTUS opinion authored by Justice Alito on no-knock raids, D.C. v. Heller. -“Flip It and Reverse It: Squirrel Edition” episode of Advisory Opinions. -“Trump’s Bank Was Subpoenaed by N.Y. Prosecutors in Criminal Inquiry” in the New York Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker. And if you're new tuning into us, I don't know, can you still say tuning in in the era of podcasts? For sure. Okay. If you're new tuning into us, we are part of the Dispatch Media, thedispatch.com. Go check us out. Become a free lister if you want to just sort of sample our wares. Or if you're totally convinced that this is the greatest new media property in the history of the universe, which it is, you can become a member. And you will be convinced of that in an hour. Oh, less, I think. 30, 40 minutes tops.

But we've got a lot to talk about. This is not one of the special Nerd August podcasts. We had a fantastic Nerd podcast on last Monday, or Monday, not last Monday, Monday, where we talked dinosaurs. And I would urge you, if you're catching up, to go back and listen to that. That was fantastic.

And then we're going to have another Nerd podcast coming Monday. Surprise topic when you get to it, but it is not going to disappoint. But today, I must say, disappointingly, I know for many of you, it's going to be our typical politics, law, and culture, but we've got a lot to cover. We're going to talk about vote scoring in the politics side of the house. Then we got a lot to talk about in the law side. I have been doing, and I will be publishing later today, a deep dive on the law surrounding the awful killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, which is one of the cases

that is still to this moment, really. If you were watching NBA basketball, you're going to see a lot of people who have written, say, on their jersey or on their shoes, say her name. It's one of the more prominent cases right now of police shootings and police violence. And I'm going to untangle a tangled web of law that I assert has made not just her killing, but has

made other killings and future killings inevitable. So that's not going to be the most up with people topic, Sarah. But then we have legal potpourri of a whole bunch of people who have done a whole bunch of things wrong. Yes, exactly. So we're going to talk about a little latest twist with Michael Flynn. We're going to talk about Deutsche Bank and subpoenas of Trump financial records. We're going to talk a little bit about, well, gosh, I mean, we've got a list. We'll see how much we can get through. And we'll wind up with Justice Thomas tooling around America and his RV. with Justice Thomas tooling around America and his RV. But first, Sarah, you and please, listeners, if you have not subscribed to Sarah's, can we say under our star guide, subscribe to a newsletter? Sure, but it's free.

Yeah, it's free. If you've not subscribed to Sarah's free newsletter, The Sweep, please do so. It comes out every Monday. If you become a dispatch member, you're also going to get bonus Sweep newsletters. But the main one comes out on Monday. If you've not subscribed, please subscribe. It's really an excellent deep dive into these last 100 days of the campaign but you had sarah a really interesting um segment of your newsletter called the scorpion king spelled s-c-o-r-e pn king we we got this uh uh review like listener review one time like

a while ago it was like, Sarah laughs at her own jokes too much. And I like, I just laughed at the Scorpion King, which was very much my own joke. It's good. It's good. And look, I tickle myself. You know, you are your own audience as well. It's so true. Yeah, I am. I'm an only child. So for me, like if I didn't laugh at my jokes, no one else was going to. I remember early in our marriage, Nancy looked at me and she said, you think you're funny, but I don't know if you're really funny. She said, you say things and you laugh at your own jokes and then people join in. This is why we're good pod buddies. That's right. Now, and so what that's meant, you know, in my extremely forgiving, keep no record of wrongs

nature is every time she spontaneously laughs at anything I say, I remind her of a 24-year-old conversation. I remind her of a 24-year-old conversation. We need to do biggest fights you've had with, biggest stupid fights you've had with your spouse. Oh, gosh. Because our biggest fight to date is over pizza, and it was a good one.

Oh, my gosh. Anyway, all right. Voter scores. Yes, so this came up in the context of the claim and the discussion about Smaga. In other words, is there the secret MAGA voter out there? Are there the people who are going to vote for Trump or willing to be persuaded that they should vote for Trump, but they're not showing up in the polls? And that brought you into what? Voter scoring? Yeah. So Jonah Goldberg, our partner in crime, wrote about the smag of voters. And this is, you know, Jonah is one of the most lovely political thinkers of our time.

And I always enjoy reading his column. They're always thought provoking. But I also had this reaction, which, you know, I do on our Slack channel from time to time, including about 15 minutes ago when I put a long dissertation in our Slack channel about what life looks like on the other side when it comes to news gathering and newsworthiness. But I read Jonah's thing and I was like, oh, yeah, here's the funny thing. People who watch and comment on politics

and voters and where voters fall on the spectrum, talk about it really differently than campaign operatives do. And so it was almost like an answer to Jonah's column where he was like looking at polling and it was, you know, a really smart take on why he doesn't think there are smag of voters out there. And even if there are, they aren't going to matter. And like, for instance, I thought his shortest take was. We're talking about battleground states. Why would they be secret in a place that's roughly 50 50? Like, why would they feel like they couldn't come out and be MAGA rather than SMGA?

I was like, oh, good point, Jonah. And then I thought to myself, but still, the way that campaigns talk about voters is voter scores and voter modeling. And so I was like, you know what? The sweep is really intended to give people, you know, you get punditry anywhere. There's plenty of pundits. There's plenty of better pundits than me. Lord knows. But the one thing I think I do offer is I do not work for any campaigns.

I don't make my living that way anymore. is I do not work for any campaigns. I don't make my living that way anymore. And there aren't many campaign operatives that talk about stuff publicly that don't do it, where there's certain things that if you make your money that way, you're just not going to talk about. So it's to give you sort of a peek behind the curtain of voter scoring. And a couple of things here. One, I compare it to Moneyball because like there was this just revolution, I feel like around the Moneyball time period where once computers got smart enough, big enough and small enough and accessible enough to people like maybe, I don't know, David French or, you know, high end tech people, but amateur tech people, if you will. All I heard was high-end tech person.

Yeah. That's all I heard. That's all he heard. That all of a sudden you could really revolutionize a whole lot of industries. Moneyball being obviously the book and then the movie, which is awesome. But then like everything is, you know, Moneyball for whatever, Chipotle. So this is Money ball for politics. And OK, your basic voter score, it's a quadrant.

And on the Y axis, you have who you're going to vote for. And on the X axis, you have your likelihood to vote. So you may be like the most Trumpy Trump person ever. You love him more than anything. But if I go and look back and you haven't voted since Jimmy Carter, your propensity to vote is so low that how much money we're going to spend on reaching you as a voter is going to actually be pretty low, even though you're the Trumpiest Trump voter. Vice versa with Biden, you know, you're super progressive, the wokest. You comment on Facebook

all the time. But, you know, you're 18 and you're not registered to vote. Yeah. OK, so then what do we do with those scores behind the scenes? There's two examples that I think are going to be telling. One, social media. So I use Facebook because the Facebook world will blow your mind in terms of what you as a campaign can do just using Facebook. So I'm going to go through my voter file that's made up of voter registration, how often people have voted, their name, their address, their zip code. It's not obviously going to tell you who they voted for, but frankly, I'm going to know a lot about you just based on, you know, your age, your zip, how often you voted, what primary, your party registration, stuff like that. So I'm going to take a hundred people out of my voter file who I know are big fans of my

candidate. Maybe even I'm picking those 100 people because they've donated already or they've signed up on the website. So I know for a fact that they're into me, to quote some song lyrics. Then I'm going to give those 100 people to Facebook, just their names. And Facebook is going to find their profiles and then they have thousands of pieces of data on each of those

people. And they're going to run their own algorithm to look at what those people have the most in common, which to them, to me is meaning their best predictor for why they support my candidate. Okay. So Facebook is going to find that. Let's say that the best predictor is that they all shop at target who knows and so they've all you know they all like target's profile page or something um facebook is then going to go find a million people who look like those hundred voters and you know all like target's profile and also are between you know you know roughly an average of 25 years old, whatever those like top 10 most predictive features are of my hundred people, they're going to find a million

people who look like that. And then I get to put my ad in front of those million people. Now, Facebook isn't going to share who those million people are. And they're also not going to tell me what they had in common, which is interesting. So like Facebook is protecting your data in that sense, but they're sort of this middleman that lets me target them. So first of all, when it comes to raising money, that's huge. But also, you know, when it comes to reaching voters who are going to really like your candidate, but maybe haven't heard of your candidate. That can be really big and useful. Okay. The other way that you're going to use this sort of voter scoring is the thing that we know is most effective at reaching voters, which is personal contact. So here's an example that I didn't use in the newsletter because it's a little hard to explain, but is in fact one of the most successful tactics in its postcards. Really? Yeah. So I'm going to have a whole bunch of volunteers from, you know, your city, David, let's call it, but they're going to really be your

neighbors. I mean, yeah, like Nashville's pretty big, but you know, it city, David, let's call it. But they're going to really be your neighbors. I mean, yeah, like Nashville's pretty big, but you know, it's still someone from Nashville. So those 10 people, 10 volunteers for the campaign are going to sit there. I'm going to pull the voter file and look at the voter scores and find, you know, who do we want to reach out to? We want middle propensity voters, but who are into the candidate. So like they have a, an above a 90 on the candidate score on the voter file, but a 50 or 60 on voting propensity. And I'm going to give you, um, you, David, my single volunteer, a hundred of those addresses and a bunch of, uh,

pre-addressed postcards, you know, with those people's names. And you're going to say, Hey, my name's David. I'm your neighbor. I just wanted to let you know, here's the day of the election. Here's where you're going to go vote. I really hope you vote for so-and-so, but you know, the most important thing is to go vote or whatever we've decided, the most persuasive messages we want to send. You're going to write those three sentences on every postcard a hundred times and sign your name, your neighbor, David. That has been found to be so, so effective and it's And it would not be possible without these voter scores. Interesting. So I've kind of done something like this, but not in the voter world, in the activist world. So I used to, for a big, in addition to running a litigation department for a

big Christian nonprofit, legal nonprofit, also ran our digital communications, including our efforts on Facebook, where we had a couple million followers. And one of the things that we did was find out what did our followers follow? What did they have in common? I found out, for example, that a huge proportion of them also followed Cracker Barrel. You know, you and I love Cracker Barrel. Oh, we love Cracker Barrel. And so we served up ads for our organization to Cracker Barrel followers. And it was quite effective. It was really fascinating. And this is also goes back to, I don't know if you remember right after the 2012 election. I don't want to bring up any PTSD

about tech in 2012, Sarah. I will not say the word orca. Oh my God, you just said it. It's like saying Macbeth. How dare you? I'm so sorry. I got a text from someone from the campaign, by the way, in 2012 who listens to this podcast, and I'm sure he's listening now, and he said, can't wait for your orca newsletter. Oh, nice. Just random question that we didn't prepare for. Did you ever interact with Bill Hagerty during the 2012 campaign? I don't remember doing so, but I'm going to be really embarrassed if he's like, Sarah, how do you not remember me? No, no, no.

He was a big fundraiser for MIT here in Tennessee. He was a big fundraiser for MIT here in Tennessee. The board in MIT going all the way back to 2006 when I interacted with him, when we were organizing for MIT, my wife and I in Tennessee in 06 for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Great friends with MIT, raised a pile of money for MIT, was one of the key leaders of the transition team,

had MIT won in 2012. And now it's running- They keep me far, far away from donors, by the way, on any campaign I've ever worked on. They don't keep me far, far away from donors, by the way, on any campaign I've ever worked on. They don't want me anywhere near donors because I am the least, um, uh, nice is nice. The word I'm the least nice person, but Sarah, you're so nice. Um, but he, he, um, he was, uh, a MIT guy going back to oh six to, And now he's in the Tennessee Senate primary, running basically like Mitt is a leper, and like Mitt is unclean, and Mitt is horrible.

And it's a little infuriating, but that's a side note. Anyway, in 2012, I don't know if you remember this big New York Times story after the election talking about sort of the genius of the Facebook efforts of the Obama team. And they did a lot of what you were talking about sort of the genius of the Facebook efforts of the Obama team. And they did a lot of what you were talking about. One of the interesting thing was, is how they use Facebook to target TV ads. And I believe what they found on Facebook was that a lot of people who were highly, they liked Obama a lot, but they weren't necessarily highly likely to vote, watched Judge Joe Brown. That feels like a low propensity voter show, to be honest.

Yeah, but it's a lot cheaper to advertise on Judge Joe Brown than it is to advertise, say, in prime time. And so they were able to flood the zone, flood the Judge Joe Brown's zone with ads on a much more cost-effective basis, while Team Romney was spending a large chunk of money on some of the more, you know, like the shotgun blast type ads. Right. Very interesting. Yeah, I mean, at this point, you would never not do micro-targeting for every part of your campaign.

And what micro-targeting used to look like in let's call it, you know, smart micro-targeting in 2004 for the Bush campaign was, you know, micro-targeting to evangelical Southern Christians. But now the micro-targeting is to David French. Yeah. I mean, it's gotten micro.

And there's one other thing that's worth mentioning on this because as you said, like, you know, groups do this and so do, uh, brands, right? Brands can do this also, but here's a big difference between campaigns and brands. And I use Pepsi and Coke. Uh, you know, when Pepsi wants to increase its share of the soda drinking electorate, there's two things they might do. They might try to reach out to Coke drinkers and get them to switch, or they might try to reach out to people who aren't drinking soda and try to get them to try Pepsi first and fall in love

with Pepsi. But here's what Pepsi never does. As far as I know. Maybe I'm wrong. If you work for Pepsi, do let me know. Pepsi never targets Coke drinkers to convince them to stop drinking soda altogether. Right? To just tell them that Coke sucks, so does Pepsi, but just stop drinking because while we may not convince you to drink Pepsi, we just don't want to give Coke money

because screw those guys. They're not looking to grow their market share by shrinking the market. That's right. Yes, that would be a weird thing to do because in the long run, they still think they're going to be able to convert Coke drinkers and it's a long game. Not true in campaign world. Shrinking the pie is just fine if your only goal is winning and when you have a limited time frame where there's an end in sight. And so what campaigns do that no one else does

in the micro-targeting big data world that I know of is look at voter scores to find high, you know, let's say the Biden campaign here the biden campaign could find high trump voters relatively low propensity voting though and target them through facebook through advertising you know the the you know judge judy versus joe brown equivalent and just run ads that basically trash both candidates and are like, so don't bother to vote this November. It makes no difference. And when I reached out to some folks who are working on this cycle, I was like, hey, guys, I know that like in theory this kind of happens, but is it happening this cycle? To a person, they were like, of course it is.

But is it happening this cycle to a person? They were like, of course it is. Yeah. Well, you know, that's the Republican voters against Trump approach, which is. We're not telling you to vote for Joe Biden. If you do fine. If you don't fine. We're just saying don't vote for Donald Trump.

Like that's that is the single message of Republican voters against Trump is don't vote for Donald Trump, not vote for Joe Biden. That's a bridge too far for a lot of people. Just don't vote for Donald Trump. Yeah, I mean, that's basically the equivalent of Dr. Pepper coming in and saying, like, you don't need to drink Pepsi. Just don't drink Coke. Well, Terry, you know, the true competitor to Dr. Pepper is Dr. Thunder. Oh, my God. What is that? Sarah, are you not from the South? Is this some Tennessee thing versus Texas?

Because, no, Dr. Pepper is from Texas, and we don't even tolerate any discussions of things that might be competitors to Dr. Pepper. Please. Dr. Thunder is the Walmart Dr. Pepper. Yeah, not in Texas, it ain't. Walmart Dr. Pepper. Yeah, not in Texas it ain't. But you know, I will sometimes drink Dr. Thunder just because what a name. Like what a name. Dr. Thunder is the greatest. Okay. Caleb, our wonderful producer who, you know, never does anything during our podcast. In fact, we can't even see him usually just on video muted himself to shake his head in dismay at David. That's how wrong that opinion is, David. It does. It's not as high quality. It's not as high quality as Dr. Pepper.

You got the Caleb head shake. So sad. It's not as good as Dr. Pepper. I mean, there's subtle taste differences, but it's one of those few instances where the branding overcomes the taste. Ridiculous. You know, and look, it's a sign of whether or not you're a man of the people, frankly. Uh-huh.

Is are you serving up Dr. Pepper like the elitists? Are you serving up Dr. Thunder like the people who keep it real? Well, back on voter scores, kind of. So voter scores are how everything works, because it feeds the fundraising people to how to reach potential new donors.

It feeds the comms people for what messages might resonate most. And it definitely feeds the political team for whose door to knock on and how to reach people in person. And so I say all this because for the rest of this election, now that our listeners understand the basics of voter scoring, we can get a lot more into the weeds in future episodes on how those voter scores are being used behind the scenes in campaigns. Yeah, it's fascinating stuff. It

really is. And so I would urge you to subscribe to The Sweep. The Monday one is free, as we said, and it's just loaded with really interesting information. Some of it, which we talked about on the Dispatch Pod yesterday, that came out yesterday afternoon, which is, I'm not going to say the flagship Dispatch Podcast. It's sort of the secondary Dispatch podcast behind this one. This one is for nerds. This is the nerd version. This is the nerd version, yeah.

But we talked about Sarah's nation-breaking scenario involving mail-in balloting that I would urge you to listen to that. Shall we move on to a really unpleasant topic? topic yes but i want to just leave this with one thing so the the sweep is free to everyone but my midweek missives are for members only and i haven't come up with what to call that one so i'm thinking like the dust but like what do you call it like you know when you when you sweep that's like a verb so like the sweep but like the dust, but like, what do you call it? Like the, you know, when you, when you sweep, that's like a verb. So like the sweep, but like the dust makes it sound like I'm referring to the dust particles rather than dusting. So I need to come up with like something

that's like sweeping, but could be like the midweek smaller missive version. So ponder that David vacuum, the vacuum. The vacuum. Yeah. We hit it. That's our brainstorming session right there. Okay. Okay. So, Sarah, I had a plan in mind. I wanted to, because right now, as we speak, there has still not been a charging decision

or a decision whether or not to charge the officers who are involved in this awful shooting of a young woman in Louisville named Breonna Taylor. And there's a huge amount of commentary surrounding this case, a huge amount of activism surrounding this case, but I hadn't seen a real deep dive into the law around this case and what's the legal scenario. And so I have this great advantage in that one of my law school roommates is actually runs the, he's the public advocate for the state of Kentucky. He is in charge of all public defenders in the state of Kentucky. So Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in Louisville, Kentucky. And so we talked some about, you know, what would be some of the, what would the statutes be that the officers would be charged under potentially, et cetera, et cetera. something deeper going on here and a deeper problem that means that I now understand beyond the particular facts of this case, why this happened to Breonna Taylor and why it's going to keep happening unless we change something. So that's going to be the topic of my newsletter today. And it's a little complicated. So let's try to unpack this. Now, for those who don't

know anything about this story what happened is that rihanna taylor was in her own home an apartment there was a gentleman there with her the police had gotten a no knock warrant to search her home for drug paraphernalia or for drugs that's undisputed at this point that there she was home with a guy, police had a no-knock warrant. From this point forward, things get a little bit more disputed. The police say after midnight, shortly after midnight, they knocked and identified themselves for about 30 seconds. When nobody answered the door, they forced entry. In a 911 call immediately after the shooting, the guy who was with Breonna Taylor called 911 and said,

no, people started pounding and forced entry without announcing themselves to be police. But there was a forced entry. After the forced entry, Breonna Taylor's, the guy that was with Breonna Taylor had a handgun, fired it at one of the officers, hit an officer in the leg. The officers responded with a volley of return fire. Unclear whether they were inside the house or some of them outside the house, but a volley of return fire. They hit Breonna Taylor's companion, wounding him.

a volley of return fire. They hit Breonna Taylor's companion, wounding him. They hit her, I believe, eight times, maybe, a bunch of times, killed her almost instantly. The 911 call is awful.

It's just awful because Taylor's friend calls 911 because apparently after the volley of fire, the police retreated. And so there was this kind of lull before he surrendered. And if you can believe his heat of the moment conversation, he doesn't really know what happened. And so initially he was charged with attempting to murder a police officer. That was withdrawn.

But now it's sort of in a state of suspended animation. Taylor's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. There's no charging decision in Louisville. And here we are. Tell me again, by the way, when the 911 call is placed and when it ends. Yeah, so the 911 call is placed. So there's the pounding on the door. We don't hear that, right?

No. Forced entry, gunfire, police retreat, 911 call. Okay. So we don't have any of the particularly relevant stuff on the 911 call? No. No. What we have on the 911 call is the immediate recollection or the immediate statement from the guy as to what happened. And then he eventually surrenders.

And then the police come in. And by that point, there's some dispute as to how long Breonna Taylor lived, but apparently her wounds were either instantly fatal or nearly instantly fatal. So let's begin, Sarah. No knock rate. Okay. Let's start with the number one. The number one more quick thing. Do we know whether there will be body camera footage? There is no, they were, there were no body cameras. Oh, sigh. Yes. Yes. So we're never

going to know whether they identified themselves as police. Or rather, to be more specific, when they identified themselves as police. Now, there are a ton of witnesses who say they did not. Okay, so there are multiple witnesses who heard pounding and heard a commotion, but more than a dozen witnesses say they did not. From the building, right from the building not the cop yeah i mean you know that we saw some of that similar stuff in michael brown at the beginning where sort of everyone came out on one side and it took a long time to but okay that's

and i'm not pushing back on any of this it's just I like to know exactly where everything falls in terms of facts we know for sure. And eyewitness stuff is good and helpful, but can be wrong. Undisputed they got. So here's how you would break it down. Undisputed that they got a no-knock warrant. Yep. Undisputed that Breonna Taylor's companion shot and wounded a cop. Yep.

Disputed whether the police announced themselves. And they claim their version is that they announced before they broke down the door. Yes, yeah. That they knocked and announced. Yeah, police and then you hit the door is the way it's supposed to happen. The normal is knock and announce.

That's the normal method of executing a search. There are special circumstances where you can get a no-knock warrant, which they got. But they're saying that even though they had the no-knock warrant, they executed it as a knock and announce. But when they got no response. I got you. Because even with a no-knock, you do need to still identify yourself as police. Eventually. Yeah, as you're breaking down the door, because for exactly this reason.

I mean, at some point, you do need to let people know that you are an authority. Okay, continue. Okay, so here's problem number one. Okay, it has been the case for some time, and this has been adjudicated at the Supreme Court, that a no-knock warrant is lawful. Okay? That a no-knock warrant is not a per se violation of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable search and seizure. And let's talk for just a second on the purpose of a no-knock warrant yeah right the purpose is to protect police it is protect police and preserve evidence yes okay so there are circumstances in

which um so and this is this is from justice john paul stevens in order to justify a no-knock entry the police must have reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence under their particular circumstances would be dangerous or futile or that it would inhibit the effective investigation of the crime by, for example,

allowing the destruction of evidence. Now, that's broad permission. Right, because I mean, especially on the destruction of evidence side, yeah, that's broad permission. Right, because I mean, especially on the destruction of evidence side, yeah, that's going to be pretty easy to say that, like, if you say you're the police

and someone's smoking weed in there, they're going to flush the weed down the toilet. That's destruction of evidence. Therefore, I want a no-knock warrant. Yeah, and so that is, so, and then you have this standard of reasonable suspicion, which is a pretty low threshold. It's the lowest threshold we have.

It's very low. But what's interesting is that this standard should be applied to each, each warrant individually. Okay. So in other words, you have to say for each target of a no-knock warrant, why you have reasonable suspicion that you need the no-knock warrant. Now, here's what's defective. If you go and you look at the actual warrant for the Breonna Taylor search, it is a mess. mess. So what they do is they have a whole bunch of people, or not a whole bunch, but several targets for the no-knock raid with a wide variety of levels of evidence directed for each target. So for some of them, it's quite clear that there's a lot of evidence that the house that they're targeting is a place where drugs are sold. With Breonna Taylor, there's very little evidence. There's that a suspected trafficker had picked up packages

that contained unknown, had just picked up U.S. Postal Service packages at her house was the main evidence. And that this drug trafficker would sometimes be at her house. So it's very sketchy.

And then they wrapped it all into one warrant. So all the addresses and all the evidence appear in a single warrant application. That has got bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. That if you're not parsing this thing, it's like, whoa, look at all of that evidence. And then here is the request. Here's the entire basis of the request for the no-knock entry. Are you ready for this? Ready. A fiant is requesting a no-knock entry to the premises due to the nature of how these drug traffickers operate. These drug traffickers have a history of attempting to destroy evidence,

have cameras on the location that compromise detectives once an approach to the dwelling is made, and have a history of fleeing from law enforcement yeah this isn't that far off from my weed example no no you flush the roach how these drug traffickers operate now brianna taylor is not identified and there's no reasonable suspicion that brianna taylor from here is a drug trafficker. Right. The reasonable suspicion is that she knows a drug trafficker and that that drug trafficker, witting or unwitting to Brianna Taylor, is perhaps used her premises to send packages or, you know, receive packages, etc., which she may or may not know about. Correct. Correct. So there's a strong argument that this no-knock warrant is constitutionally deficient. And in fact, no-knock warrants are granted just as a matter of course. This is something that happens all the time in America. well if the supreme court is requiring at the very least a

particularized case to be made why are these no knock warrants you know uh granted all the time and why is there no real limit on these things another supreme court case so this is a bad Scalia decision. Okay, this was June 15, 2006. If you, essentially, the judgment is that even if you violate the general default knock and announce rule, in other words, your no knock is unlawful, the exclusionary rule is not going to apply to the evidence that you get. Because the search wasn't unlawful. The announcement was unlawful, unconstitutional. Essentially, yeah.

Yeah. And so, in other words, what essentially happened from a raw policing standpoint, the violation of the no-knock rule has no real consequence. the violation of the no-knock rule has no real consequence. Because the other, so there's no criminal consequence because there's no exclusionary rule and there's going to be very little on the civil side because of qualified immunity. Yes. Yes. Okay. Which you and I have talked at length about. So, even if this is an unconstitutional search, there's just not much that you can do about it if you're a victim. Now, okay, can I throw in what makes it even worse? Okay. Now, there's an awful lot of case law

that says that even if I have violated the Fourth Amendment in the search itself, in other words, I am now on your property without lawful permission, which is what a Fourth Amendment violation essentially is saying. If I'm on your property without that permission and I see a gun, if you have a gun, I can kill you. Okay? If you have a gun, I can kill you. Okay.

I'll tell you an incredible case from, this is 2017, a wrong Alito decision. But this is one that was, you know, I think the only, this was unanimous. So this was an Alito opinion. So you have a case, this is coming out of California. Sheriff deputies are searching for someone who is a parolee at large. They're not finding them. They go into a shack without permission that is the dwelling place of two folks, super poverty stricken. I mean, this is basically almost like a third world type living situation. They walk into their dwelling with no warrant and the person there has a BB gun and he picks up the BB gun and the police respond with 15 rounds, blow his leg off, injure his girlfriend. He files suit. Okay. And the Ninth Circuit says, you know what?

We're going to hold you officers liable if your shooting, which would otherwise be lawful because somebody had, they had seen what they thought was a gun, was initiated by a prior Fourth Amendment violation, the unlawful entry. So they're going to say, you can be held liable, that was the Ninth Circuit,

if this shooting was precipitated by your violation of the Fourth Amendment. Make sense, Sarah? What you're explaining makes sense. Yeah. Supreme Court says no, no. That essentially what has to happen is you're not looking at for the liability for the shooting itself. You're not looking at was the entry lawful. You're looking at what was the shooting reasonable. Which, David, I have to say seems like actually the correct legal application here. The Ninth Circuit sounds wrong to me. legal application here. The night circuit sounds wrong to me. The night circuit was out of step.

Correct. But let's add in another thing. So the night circuit was out of step with other circuits. But the question was, if I'm not lawfully in your house, can I still shoot you if you display a gun, if I'm a cop? Okay. But now, Sarah, Okay. But now, Sarah, ever heard of the Castle Doctrine? Yes, I have. Okay. The Castle Doctrine doesn't apply to police. Does it not?

It does not. Oh, that is the issue. Of course not if somebody is not lawfully in your house and you have no duty to retreat this is where it gets really rough well you do have a duty if it's a police officer what if you don't know it's a police officer okay that's a different issue though but see i don't have to to. So 3 a.m. And by the way, this is why this stuff is going to keep happening. All right.

And what has actually the outcomes of these cases has been all over the map. 3 a.m. Somebody barges into your house. Dogs are going crazy. Don't bring the dogs into this, David. You know how that upsets me. No, I know. Dogs are going crazy.

3 a.m. people barge into your house without your permission and you have a gun. And you have no duty to retreat. And not only that, according to Heller, you have an absolute constitutional right to self-defense in your home.

People with guns come in. Okay. That's okay. That's a slight extension of Heller. You have an absolute right to an individual, to individually own that gun. But okay.

Yeah. Yeah. You have a right to, for self-defense. Not to use it necessarily. The justification is self-defense. Okay. And so,

and then can you open fire? And now, there's a lot of cases that are really awful and bad in this area. And some of them, and they come out in really haphazard ways, to be honest. to be honest. So in some of them, the person who fires at officers who are not lawfully in your house, they have no prosecution. And some of them who fire at officers who are in the house are prosecuted. It's all over the map. And here's the other interesting thing is there's actual case law that now says, in some circuits, if they are unlawfully in your house and you have a gun and they shoot you dead, you can't even sue because of qualified immunity. Now, do you see this awful tension here? Now, do you see this awful tension here? I see some tension, but what you're missing, I think, in the legal analysis of this is when they identify themselves as police officers. So they mistakenly, not intentionally, mistakenly enter the wrong house, let's say. So there's no question it's a constitutional violation at that point. Anything that they find in your house uh they would not be able to use against you right um

whatever roughly speaking it's uh but they identify themselves as police and you have a gun in the house and maybe you're groggy or maybe you don't quite hear but they've said police and now you have a gun and they have a gun and it's a dangerous situation for the police officers. It does not matter then what their lawful presence is. What matters is you have a police officer in your house and you don't get to shoot a police officer. Or if you do, they get to shoot you. Well, you know, that's a really interesting question. Is there a privilege that accrues to you when you are unlawfully present if you're wearing a uniform?

Not just wearing a uniform, but identifying yourself either or. I mean, I could, if I was trying to have a home invasion, I could burst in, I start screaming police. Sure, but also, you know, I could claim that when, you know, a police car tries to pull me over and I could say, well, I didn't have any real knowledge that they were police, so I sped off. Well, yeah, there's a big difference between someone in a marked identified police car flashing blue lights and 3 a.m. in the total darkness screaming police. I think the issue we have here is I don't think Castle Doctrine and no-knock warrants as a practical matter,

as a practical matter, Castle Doctrine and no-knock warrants are incompatible. And you're just going to see this again and again and again and again. Because one of the things that you see, if you see any of the body camera footage of this stuff, is how immediately chaotic everything is. It's just immediate, incredible chaos well how about this i agree with you insofar as i don't think that no knock warrants actually protect police officers the way that they're intended to often you know because part of the argument is if the police officer is going to be in danger from identifying themselves as in the person is more likely to shoot an officer than a random person barging into their home at 3 a.m.

I'm sort of with you that like anyone barging into your home at 3 a.m. is going to be in some danger if you have a gun. Identifying yourself as police right before knocking down the door is probably a good idea. And so in that sense, I think there's some tension. We want that identification early and quickly. But I just think you're wrong on, like, Castle Doctrine applying to police officers. It just can't work that way. Because then everyone can claim, like,

you know, they knocked on my door, they had a warrant, they said police, and I opened the door with a gun, and knocked on my door. They had a warrant. They said police. And I opened the door with a gun and I shot at them. Well, so I didn't want them in my house. Again, we're talking about the no knock. We're not we're not talking about. But my point is, why doesn't your same theory apply to regular warrants?

They knock on the door, they say they have a warrant and they come into your house. Well, so if you have a regular warrant... And it turns out the warrant is invalid. If you have a regular warrant, and you knock and you announce, and you serve the warrant... Yep, and the warrant's invalid, it turns out. Yeah, if the warrant's invalid, but...

Then they can shoot you? Like, then the person can shoot the police officers? No, no, no, no. Because the question is, what is the perception of the homeowner at the time of the raid? So so if you're talking about a um if you're talking about and if you've seen these videos like the way it works is not um the way it is on in movies in where things seem so clear the way it works is as you saw in this case,

an awful case out of the Levin Circle called Andrew Scott, a lot of these things unfold in less than two seconds. So what you'll have is somebody piling into the house and you hear the pile in, somebody walks around a corner holding a handgun, you hear gun, boom, dead. That's how fast it is. And when you walk around a corner holding a handgun you hear gun boom dead that's how fast it is and when you walk around the corner holding the handgun you are exercising a constitutional right but once again you've left out the part where they said police and that's a big difference so david in my theory

the no knock versus the knock doesn't make a whole lot of difference because if they knock on the door, you answer and, you know, the police then will come into your house. They don't wait for your permission when they have a warrant. So now people are in your home. You believe it's an invalid warrant. It turns out it is an invalid warrant. And so you pull out a gun that would actually be castle doctrine still versus the no knock where they hit the door and say police. Let's just deal with this as a matter of practical reality.

So if you have a knock and announce and you open the door and the police file in and the police serve you with a warrant and they file in, what's the first thing they do? They search you. So the first thing they do is they search you and they set you and your family in a part of the house and they file in, what's the first thing they do? They search you. So the first thing they

do is they search you and they set you and your family in a part of the house and they watch you and then they... Well, wait, you're making that sound way less chaotic. That's not entirely true. They search the person who answers the door and then they ask who else is in the house and they try to go find those people. Let's assume that a small child answers the door but dad's in the back and dad comes out with a gun yeah but this is not this is the the the the real conflict in real world is not typically with the knock and announce like the knock and i agree but your legal scenario is just as applicable castle doctrine wise to either one i agree it doesn't actually result in much ever very often i'm part press but in terms to come up with a legal doctrine where castle doctrine applies against police you'd have to include an invalid regular warrant as well no i don't think

so you can easily carve out an exception in the case law that says if a if there has been a knock and announce and a regular course of business, and it is later found that the warrant suffered from a previously unknown defect, but those who are serving the warrant and receiving the warrant are under the impression that the warrant is valid, then the idea that you could execute the cops at that moment because you had your own subjective doubts about the validity of the warrant that you could execute the cops at that moment because you had your own subjective doubts about the validity of the warrant that you just read, the case law exception there is easy to carve out. The issue here that you have is you have no opportunity to see a warrant. At 1, 2,

3 in the morning, you have people piling into your house. You have a constitutional right to have the handgun that is on the counter there and then you're in a state where you have absolutely zero duty to retreat and where the the reality of it is often these these exchanges of gunfire occur just on the very site of the gun itself like this awful andrew scott case in um north carolina in the 11th Circuit, not North Carolina, 11th Circuit. In that circumstance, someone, cops pound on the wrong door.

They have no lights on. They don't identify themselves. Andrew Scott opens the door with a gun at his side, kind of peeks in. He's shot dead in less than two seconds. But that can happen with a regular warrant. That is not- But there was no announcement.

There was no announcement. But if you hear banging on your door, to your point, David, and someone says police and you don't know whether it's police, you still may answer the door with a gun. I think we're just an agree to disagree here because, you know, for instance. So shouldn't even be liable. They shouldn't even be liable if they pound on the wrong door and they gun down somebody who's exercising their constitutional right by possessing a handgun in their home and holding it in their hand. Well, look, we can talk about how qualified immunity should work. If the warrant, you know, if there's some bad faith involved, things like that,

I think that's a totally different... Like, that's just about qualified immunity, though. That's not about castle doctrine versus warrants. Because, you know, you were talking about you don't have the opportunity to look at the warrant. It doesn't matter. You can't dispute the warrant there. Let's say, you know, you know, in a regular warrant, a knock warrant that they handed to you and you're like, this isn't valid. This isn't my address. Doesn't matter. You don't get to dispute with the cop what the warrant says or whether it's valid. In this circumstance, in the 11th Circuit, they did not identify themselves as police. They did not have police lights on.

They pound on the door. He opens the door with a handgun in his hand and they shoot him dead in two seconds. That may be a constitutional violation that would trigger a qualified immunity issue but my issue with what you're saying is the castle doctrine part like they may have violated his constitutional rights but it has nothing to do with castle doctrine well i would say castle doctrine and now that case that case is more sort of pure Heller Second Amendment conflict between police power and the Second Amendment. But in the Castle Doctrine circumstance, and there's some really, I believe it's Radley Balco at the Washington Post who really did a deep dive on this. and there's case law and there are cases out there where people have killed cops barging into their home and they have been protected by the second amendment and castle doctrine in their cases where

people have killed cops barging into their home and they're in life in prison and there is a almost like a randomness to it and and i think one of the issues we have here with the law as it is, is how broadly granted these no-knock warrants are, especially in these jurisdictions where not only do you have a right to own a firearm in your home, as all of us do, but you have zero duty to retreat with a no-knock warrant, your people are going to keep dying. They're just going to keep dying. Like it's just, they're just going to keep dying. So here's what we're going to end up agreeing on.

We're going to agree that no-knock warrants should be heavily disfavored in the law and by judges. And we're going to agree that Heller and by extension McDonald is good law and you should be able to own a gun under those precedents.

We also can agree that qualified immunity, and we may fall on slightly different parts of this, should be reformed in some form or fashion. The current qualified immunity doctrine is not great. Those are the three things we're going to agree on. those are the three things we're going to agree on. And I look forward to your newsletter and even wonder whether you should consider turning that newsletter into a law review article. It would be very interesting. But that's a lot more words, Sarah. You're talking $2,000 to $15,000. Minimum, yeah. Exactly. So you just assigned me a quarter of a book.

I did, yeah. Thanks for that. Okay. That like seven people will read, but those seven people can turn out to be pretty valuable eyes. Yeah, it's true. But the bottom line is where we agree,

we're going to save a lot of lives if that became, and if in fact the isger french doctrine of no warrants are disfavored highly disfavored yes highly disfavored um in fact but in point of fact i mean in this one apparently the judge took about 10 minutes to consider whether or not to grant these no-knock warrants. So, hopefully, the newsletter will at least point out that if you keep widely granting these things, especially in castle doctrine states, the reality of the confusion, you're going to have this.

You're going to have it. And we can argue all day long about what should be the legal posture towards somebody who carries a gun outside of their bedroom when people are piling into their house at 2.30 in the morning. We can argue about that law and how the law should treat that situation. But you better believe you're going to have it.

It's just going to keep happening. And Breonna Taylor is not the only person this has happened to. We'd like to take a moment and thank our sponsor here, the Bradley Speaker Series. Making sense of current events during this extraordinary time can be trying. Conceived in Liberty, the Bradley Speaker Series is a new video series that offers meaningful perspectives through engaging 15-minute interviews. 15-minute interviews. Visit bradleyfdn.org backslash liberty to watch their most recent episode featuring British author and historian Andrew Roberts. The author of numerous award-winning books, including his most recent book, Churchill, Walking with Destiny, Roberts is a foremost expert

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to be notified whenever a new video is posted. All righty. Next. What do you want to talk about next, Sarah? Do we want to... We've got so many little potpourri things. OK, let's do Flynn real quick. So we talked about how the D.C.

Circuit is taking this on. Bach, they sent out their briefing orders of the questions that they wanted answered. And interestingly, and I do have a theory on this. They asked the for the brief thing, both all three sides. Right. To brief on the rules surrounding when a judge should remove themselves from a case because they have the appearance of a lack of impartiality now uh we named that podcast where we talked about this flip it and reverse it after my

wonderful missy elliot impression because it would be a little odd for the dc circuit to take it if they weren't going to flip and reverse the panel uh which said that the case was dismissed basically that that flynn that the department of justice could dismiss the charges against flynn without the judge needing to approve it in so many words um i think though, the standard for what's included in the court's instructions on what they want briefed, if a judge wants something included, they're not going to say no to that judge. So you could have Judge Naomi Rao, for instance, include that in what she wants briefed, regardless of the fact that she's a single judge versus there's any sort of consensus on the en banc among all the judges that that's the direction that they're headed.

So there's a lot of mountain being made out of this molehill in the instructions on the briefing. I think that this is going to matter not at all to the majority opinion and quite a bit to the dissent yeah that's an interesting theory um yeah when i saw that i thought somebody or somebodies uh in in the dc circuit thinks that sullivan is um thinks that sullivan has lost his perspective uh yes it's a shot over the bow no question but the question is how many judges were shooting thinks that Sullivan has lost his perspective. Yes, it's a shot over the bow, no question. But the question is how many judges were shooting, and I don't think there's many.

Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah. But you know, the thing that we've learned at this point, by this point, Sarah, is that there is no possibility of any given new twist in this case happening without something unusual. Oh my God. Just one thing after another. And you know what? When the briefs come in, I'm very interested to read them. We'll see if there's any sort of juicy nuggets in there. Yes. Okay. Next topic.

Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank. Yes. Deutsche Bank. Yes. We said that at the same time. We're on mind meld, David. Amazing. Despite our castle doctrine differences. OK, so I am very confused about this, David. Yeah. We had a whole Supreme Court thing. We had a sir petition. We had briefing.

We had oral argument and we had decisions over whether the Manhattan County district attorney. And we had decisions over whether the Manhattan County district attorney in subpoenaing Deutsche Bank for the president's financial records could get those records. And Deutsche Bank the whole time was like, we'll do whatever the court says. And the court was very clear that the reason this case could go forward was because Trump was the owner of those financial records, despite the fact that Deutsche Bank was the, you know, custodian, holder of the records. Okay, then last night, the New York Times comes out with this bombshell that's actually hidden in the story. It's not even in the headline. It turns out Deutsche Bank, I think, in my reading of it, got another subpoena, a different, a technically different subpoena for the same records, I believe. Or I mean, not all of the same records, but a subset of those records from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and turned them over a while ago.

What the what? yeah like i mean this this is let me just read a little bit of this article just so that listeners you know we're not deceiving you it says new york prosecutors who are seeking trump's tax records have also subpoenaed his longtime lender a sign that their criminal investigation into mr trump's business practice is more wide ranging than previously known. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office issued the subpoena last year to Deutsche Bank, which has been Trump's primary lender, seeking financial records that he and his company provided to the bank. And it doesn't say which financial records, but financial records. And then it says Deutsche Bank complied with the subpoena. Over a period of months last year, it provided Mr. Vance's office with detailed records,

including financial statements and other materials that Mr. Trump had provided to the bank as he sought loans, according to two of the people familiar with the inquiry. What? familiar with the inquiry what yeah so uh if i were the supreme court right now i would be unhappy that i was not told about this issue because even if it's a different subpoena if it was for a subset of the same records it was certainly highly relevant uh and at no point were they told about this there's a thing called um muncing where vacator which deals with this sort of um mootness and i'm not saying that's going to happen here because this is such this case is so under the microscope and a muncing where Vaketer would make, like, blow the world up over this.

But I don't know. Yeah. It's really confusing to me, honestly. Like, so was there a subset of records that Deutsche Bank believed it was totally fine to turn over? And then a second set of records that Deutsche Bank believed, well, no, we're not going to turn over and then a second set of records that deutsche bank believed well no we're not going to turn those over without but if they were the financial records of the president

then the overall you know he's the they are the custodian he is the owner apply regardless perhaps i don't see how there could be a distinction yeah there's so many questions raised by this story um and like and you know what um i am not one of those new york times hating people whatsoever but come on new york times you can't drop something like that in paragraph four and it didn't raise red flags for anyone in that editing room nothing didn't call a legal correspondent nothing okay well you know the question is was were these records that um well i mean it's not just you can't say well it's just trump org materials at deutsche bank turnover and not trump materials um that's not clear from the story at all. And the story sort of made it sound like the Supreme Court opinion case

was only about the tax records, which it very, very much was not. Yeah, exactly. So normally, listeners, we don't bring you things unless we have theories and resolution. We like to wrap things up in a tidy little bow for you. That ain't this potpourri item. This potpourri item is just me mad that this seems like a big deal to me and that no one

else seems to think it's a big deal. And I just feel like I'm alone sitting in my garage as I am right now screaming into the wind. Yeah. I mean, most of the sort of immediate response was on Twitter was like all these people kind of rubbing their hands together, going, Ooh, what's,

you know, they've got, they've got him now. And I'm sitting there going, what just happened here? Um, this doesn't make a ton of sense. And it just makes,

you know, and there it says, according to two people familiar, I mean, I don't know. I'm just pressing pause on this, uh, on people familiar. I mean, I don't know. I'm just pressing pause on this, on the analysis. Muncingware. Yeah.

Muncingware. It's fun to say, funner to do. All right, we're running out of time, but we got to cover this one. Hatch Act. Yep. Hatch Act. Yep, this is, the president's right's right okay so this all comes up because

um there was a headline based on the president saying that maybe he would just accept the republican nomination on the south lawn of the white house since basically these nominating conventions ain't happening this year on either side. And all these people, reporters, Nancy Pelosi, John Thune, the Republican senator, all were like, wait, that's not constitutional, Hatch Act. And I sent a text to David that was like, there's no way that they can apply the Hatch Act to the president. However, any staff that is assisting the president in putting together an event on the South Lawn could be held responsible under the Hatch Act, which creates kind of a fun little weirdness. Yeah. Do you agree with me, by the way?

We didn't actually talk about it. I just like sent you an angry text. Well, as per my want. My agreement is irrelevant. The agreement of 5 USC section seven, three, two, two is quite five USC section seven,

three, two, two says employee for persons per for purposes of this sub chapter employee means any individual other than the president and the vice president employed or holding office in an executive agency other than the GAO or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, what's funny to me, though, is that I did not know about that statute, but simply as a constitutional matter, you could not Congress could not apply the Hatch

Act to the president. Correct. I mean, I think you're right about that, but it's right there. It's right there. But they also wrote it themselves, so good for them. Yep, in black and white. You know, which is interesting. It makes some sense, although you would know this.

Campaigns reimburse the government for the use of Air Force One, correct, in campaign appearances? It's a little more complicated than that but yes and let's say you're um yeah let's say you do one official business thing and three campaign stops on that trip you you break it up it turns into a percentage and stuff like that yeah because i i have i've only been to one presidential campaign rally in my life, and that was in late October of 2004. And I still have no idea why he did this, but President Bush did a quick campaign stop near Corbin, Kentucky. One of the safest states for him in the entire union, and probably one of the safest communities in the safest state

in the entire union. There wasn't a Senate race or a House race or anything else nearby? I mean, this was, you know, red. I mean, this is red, red, red America. I don't remember a big Senate race at that time. Perhaps a Kentucky resident, 0-4 Kentucky resident will remind me of one. And that's not the part of Kentucky that's close to Ohio? Nope. That's the part of Kentucky

that's close to Tennessee. Huh. Yeah. Okay. But it was close to me. I was in Lexington. It's about an hour drive southeast. So we took our young kids

to go see the president. And we drove down there and it was a two-hour line of cars. I mean, this was such a remote area that the roads were just not really sufficient for the crowd. And so it was, you know, you waited for almost two hours just to park. And here he comes flying in with a smaller version, not the main 747 version of Air Force One. It was a smaller runway, so smaller plane. By the way, I love that you're doing this correctly. As the movie Air

Force One, I believe, taught us, but if not some other movie, any plane that the president is on is Air Force One. Or Marine One. Correct. Or Navy One. The designation rides with the president, not with the vehicle. Yes. So he comes in and he gives a speech against this amazing backdrop with Air Force One

right behind him. I mean, it was like all of the trappings of the presidency right there. And then gets back on and takes off and we spend four hours getting out of the parking lot.

Was it worth it? For this story, maybe. Okay. Speaking of travel and whether it's worth it, we'll save all of our other potpourris for later. They'll hold. We'll put them in the refrigerator. Leftover potpourri. And they'll they'll hold we'll put them in the refrigerator leftover potpourri

uh and don't forget on monday we'll do a little potpourri probably and then jump into our next august nerdery event uh which we'll do on mondays this month so we'll give a little short shrift to our culture topic today but justice thomas is well known for hopping in his RV every summer to, you know, tool around the country. And there was a great little vignette story that posted about it today that while all the other justices had to cancel their summer plans because it normally involves going to Europe or, you know, regardless being on a plane. Justice Thomas, like so many snails, takes his home with him. And so in the pandemic, he's just fine and can go about his normal, normal-ish at least, routine in the RV with his wife, which sounds like so much

fun. And David and I were talking about this and David was like, I'm taking an RV trip. Yes, I am. No. I'm so jealous. Now, first, though, you know, this is something that's been known about Justice Thomas is one of those endearing facts about him that, you know, he's so much about him. He's like he's a regular guy and he does this incredible, like regular older guy thing of tooling around the country in an RV. like regular older guy thing of tooling around the country in an RV. And for a while he was known, and he may still do it, to sometimes he'd just park overnight at a Walmart.

Yep. And if you live in the South, this is a totally normal thing that you see all the time, especially in smaller towns. Walmart encourages it. Yeah. You see in the back of a Walmart parking lot, you'll see a line of RVs all the time.

Yeah. And I used to, when we drive by our Walmart at night in Columbia, Tennessee, when we were living there and I would see some of those RVs, I'd always wonder, is Justice Thomas over there? No, the best are his stories where someone's like, you know who you kind of look like? Yeah. Clarence Thomas. And he's like, I get that a lot. And then because he spoke so little, you know, when he would open his mouth, which would remove all doubt because of that deep voice that he has. But he hadn't spoken all that much. So he'd keep the mystery. But yes, I am going on an RV road trip with my friends from college. We're driving from Nashville to Leadville,

Colorado in a couple of weeks. How long is that drive in an RV road trip with my friends from college. We're driving from Nashville to Leadville, Colorado in a couple of weeks. How long is that drive in an RV? We're allocating 20 hours. So, a long time. And so we're going to go 20 hours and we're going to park in Leadville, Colorado and then we're going to, the plan is,

climb up Mount Elbert, which is the highest mountain in the American Rocky Range, to recreate a trek we did when we were 23 years old. Okay, I have several questions. One, what are the alcohol open container laws in an RV? Like, can you still have the open container in the back of the RV as long as it's not in the driver or passenger seat?

I have no idea. But I don't want any no-knock warrants into our RV. Second question. What's the average age of these men who are going to scale this mountain like they did when they were 23? We're 51. Every one of us. Well, no. One will be 52.

Okay. Is anyone bringing, I don't know, a defibrillator, first aid? Well, I mean, we're just hoping Life Flight can fly that high. But I will say this, the 52-year-old is an Ironman triathlete. And the reason we're going up Mount Elbert is because all the Ironmans were canceled this year. And he was saying, hey, I want to do something else. And I'm in reasonably good shape. I can't vouch for everyone who's going to make the assault. But my general view is if we just have to leave the bodies behind us like in a trail, some of us will get up there to the top. Cool plan, bro. So for listeners like I make fun of David for being old and some of you don't like that.

So let me do a little self-own. I had a girlfriend who's older than I am by quite a bit. I'll have, you know, just for the purposes of this story. Anyway, she turned 40 several years ago. And for her 40th birthday, she wanted us to, uh, like basically hike San Francisco, like do a two day, 40 mile, like hike around the up and down hills of San Francisco. And I was like, I love you so much. I'm so proud that you're turning 40. I absolutely will not survive a walk of 40 miles up and down

those hills. So, okay, David, I mean, good for you. I don't think I could do it, but I would love the RV part. I mean, I would just, if I could get an RV right now and load up the brisket and my husband, I would do it. Well, one of our guys is not going to try. He's going to be our support person. He's going to... That's what I do. I cook at the bottom. He's going to make chili. He's going to cook the steaks. He's going to cook the eggs on the morning of the assault on the summit. Perfect. Yeah. So he's going to cook. That's my kind of guy. That's what I do around ski trips. I do the apres ski preparation yeah and five of us of varying degrees of physical condition are going to make the summit and i will say just to give you a sense of the varying degrees i'm

the second i'm in the second best condition of the five i'm i'm not anywhere near the triathlete Ironman guy, but I'm clearly in second position, so this should be very, very interesting. We'll look forward to that report. It's happening at the end of this month, correct? End of this month. I'll give listeners a full report assuming I'm still vertical. Right. Also, listeners, just totally unrelated, but send other thoughts for who I could host this podcast with come the fall. Inside and outside of the dispatch. Yeah. Brainstorm my replacement. All right. Well, that is it. So thank you guys for listening to a Law Culture Potpourri podcast. And then tune in Monday for a nerd podcast. And you will not be disappointed with Mondays. I can promise you that.

Until next time. And again, please leave us an evaluation or a review at Apple Podcasts. A lot of you have, and it's been great. And please rate us five stars if you like us. So thank you again for listening. And this has been David French and Sarah Isger and the Advisory Opinions Podcast.