Advisory Opinions - Friends With DOJ Benefits

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

David Lat joins Sarah Isgur and David French to analyze what’s behind the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the case agains New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The Agenda: —Friends get benefits in the Trump admin —Attorneys operating under a dual sovereignty —How good of a narc can you be? —Listener questions! —How Rome falls —Retribution —Grading the judiciary Show Notes: —Will Chamberlain's tweet —Denise Cheung resigns —AO's emergency-ish episode on Sassoon Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings, click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isger and it's David French still recovering from the flu. Still. So to fill in for some missing David, we brought on another David. David Lat for Original Jurisdiction. Thanks for coming back. My pleasure. David, your newsletter's Original Jurisdiction.

Is there another way to search for your podcast episodes? They're on the website and they're also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and your favorite podcast platform of choice. Awesome. So today's episode, I'm gonna call this the marination episode. We've gotten a lot of questions from you guys. We have little like follow-up notes.

So we're gonna kinda, yeah, we're gonna marinate. The first thing I wanted to start with, David Latt, was a question from a listener about like, yeah, I get that what DOJ leadership has done is a problem. Isn't Adams really the bad guy here? I mean, he's the one who's changing policy on behalf of his city to save his own butt, rather than sort of some principled stance. So shouldn't we be blaming Eric Adams a lot more for taking this deal? So, I think the answer to that is yes.

In fact, I received a text message from a friend of mine who still lives in New York, Zach and I moved out a couple of years ago. She said, people outside New York do not know how terrible he is. And she was saying, you have to name Danielle Sassoon lawyer of the week, which I did, on original jurisdiction. She basically said that Adams is definitely a villain and if he ends up leaving office, good riddance. So that's absolutely true.

One thing I wanted to say though is the New York Times did an interesting article about how Eric Adams' lawyers, Alex Spyro and Bill Burke, sort of worked behind the scenes to orchestrate this deal. And the reporting claims that they were almost coordinating with Emile Beauvais, the acting deputy attorney general. And one might say, oh, is that that kind of gross? And I guess you could say, yes, but look, they're lawyers. They have a client. Their duty is not to the city of New York

or the public welfare or the Southern District of New York. It's to Eric Adams. And I have to say, Alex and Bill got a great result. It's kind of icky, but you're dealing with the Trump DOJ in 2025. Ickiness is to be expected. So David French, let me ask the other version of this question, which is, again, a lot of people

have been blaming DOJ, blaming Emile Beauvais for everything that's happening. Shouldn't we be blaming Donald Trump? If we're unitary executors, unitarians, why is everything falling on Emile Beauvais and his letter instead of blaming maybe Eric Adams, as I just asked David Latt, but also Donald Trump, the executor.

I mean, of course this would not be happening if Donald Trump weren't president right now. I mean, he's establishing a precedent, a series of precedents that if you are with him, if you tack towards him, then maybe even you get a break from the rule of law. I mean, you've got the January 6th pardons, you have the Rod Blagojevich pardon, you have dropping the cases against Eric Adams, you have, for God's sake, even intervening on behalf of Andrew Tate, Andrew Tate to try to get travel restrictions lifted in Romania. So this is a very much, I mean, we've talked about this before, this friend to enemy distinction,

this, that animates much of the Trump movement. And for my, for his friends, there will be deals. I mean, there's just no question about it. This, so, no, I'm, I think that one A and one B on blame for this are Trump and Adams. I wanted to add something though, which is sort of, I guess, maybe a steel person point, as you guys might put it.

Let me, so Jack Goldsmith, friend of the pod, Harvard Law Professor and Bob Bauer have an excellent sub-zac, which covers executive power. And they wrote a post recently about all these goings on. And they answered a question or sort of answered a question that I've been wondering, which is we have this understanding post-Watergate that presidents are not supposed to muck around in individual prosecutions for political ends, et cetera. Well, what I've been asking myself over the past couple of weeks is what is the constitutional or statutory basis for that norm, especially for those of us who may have Unitarian leanings, who may think that prosecution is an executive function,

a quintessentially executive function, and the president gets to bring his policy preferences, his prejudices, his whims, his views to that. And this Goldsmith and Bauer post, I think kind of confirmed what my suspicion was, which is this is really just a norm. There is no constitutional provision saying presidents don't muck around in individual prosecutions

for political reasons. There is no statute. Goldsmith and Bauer point out that there is a statute essentially saying you can't abuse process or prosecute corruptly or something like that. But as they point out, post Trump for United States, the immunity decision, that can't be constitutionally applied to the president.

So if we wanna play devil's advocate here, this whole understanding of the Southern District of New York, the Manhattan Prosecutor's Office as independent from main justice, the so-called sovereign district of New York, as they sometimes call themselves, what is the basis for that? So if you're a defender of the SDNY,

and I've made clear, I'm team Sassoon in this, I think what happened was reprehensible, appalling, as you said the other day, all the words. But what is the actual constitutional or statutory provision that Trump and Bovet and Bondi and anyone else, what have they violated besides just a norm? Well, that's a great question, David. And I think you're exactly right. I mean, as I've thought through this and going all the way back to Trump one and then pressure on Biden to indict Trump, that, you know, I thought through, wait a minute, of course, there's no formal constitutional bar for the president ordering their attorney general to prosecute somebody or not prosecute somebody.

And so, yeah, I do think it's pretty clear we are just dealing with a norm here, but we're also now watching in real time why the norm exists. And so, you know, you have what appears to be an acting on overall sort of Trump policy, friends get benefits, right? And so you're seeing the reason for the norm,

but the twist in this, the twist in this is what we talked about last week or last podcast, which is these attorneys operate under kind of a dual sovereignty. They answer to the attorney general and ultimately to the president who's telling them to file or dismiss a case. They also answer to the court and that they have a duty of candor too. And so, on the one hand, it was constitutionally within Trump's prerogative to dismiss the case, but it was not within Danielle Sassoon's prerogative to be less than forthcoming to

the court or to deceive the court. And so, that to me was the real scandal here. The real scandal here wasn't the norms violation, although that is a problem. The real scandal was, and they're engineering this deal and using a pretextual reason that they couldn't, with a straight face, make claim to the court. I thought that David, for a second there, was going to say that Donald Trump and Eric Adams were friends with benefits. We were going to have to explain to the old man that that term doesn't mean what he thinks.

But I know what that means. You notice I paused. I know. I did. Yeah, I paused. I mean, it's like every time I hear like some of my older friends like talk about Netflix and chill, and I'm like, that does not mean what you think. I think I'm just going to Netflix and chill and I'm like, that does not mean what you think. I'm like, I think I'm just gonna Netflix and chill tonight. And I was like, nope, please don't say that. Yeah. I have two follow-up points, sorry. One, in terms of just the policy reasons or the prudential reasons for the norm,

my family traces its ancestral origins back to the Philippines where basically every administration prosecutes the last one. So I totally get the reason for the norm. But here's the interesting thought experiment. To those of us who value the norm or think it's a good thing, how would you word a constitutional or statutory provision that instantiated this and who decides what's a bad or good or acceptable prosecution under the rule you've just drafted. Because the Republicans believe that Democrats have engaged in lawfare and politically motivated prosecutions and vice versa. So I guess the

question is, what's the word, what's the wording of the rule you come up with and who decides whether that rule has been violated? So this gets to an interesting point though, which is the argument, the folks who are trying to support DOJ, the Emil Boves of this fight, non-Team Sassoon folks, if you will, their argument is that this was a politically motivated prosecution through and through, as in you're complaining about the politics now, were you complaining when the Biden administration brought this case after Eric Adams had complained about their lack of immigration enforcement and had embarrassed the administration, caused all these headlines about breaks within the Democratic Party.

He's causing these political headaches. And then, oh, looky there. There's a relatively small ball indictment brought on corruption, huh, right before his primary. How interesting. And so their point is this thing was tainted from the get by politics. And so yes, this is now political too. Here's the problem with that, though. If it were tainted by politics, such that you don't think this indictment can exist

basically or can continue, then either you issue a pardon for Eric Adams, or you dismiss the charges with prejudice. It makes no sense to dismiss the charges without prejudice as if we can bring back this indictment that we think is only politically motivated and has no merit whatsoever. Then why are you keeping that leverage over him if you're saying that it has no merit and is only politically motivated. That just, you can't have it both ways here. Well, that's right. And also, you know, if you're going to say it's politically motivated,

you have these two these two factors here that are really dispositive in my view on on whether that's a credible allegation, because it's not just it's dismissed without prejudice. And if this was political, politically motivated from the beginning, isn't that unjust to keep the sword of Damocles hanging over his head. You just get rid of it. And then the other one is show your work. If you're going to make the case and to make the argument that this was

politically motivated from the get-go, give us some evidence to that effect. And so far, all that we have is that the former US attorney and the SDNY put boasts about the investigation and indictment on what looks like a campaign website, which both Sarah and I agree was gross, but not evidence the original prosecution was improperly brought. And so show your work there, because my understanding is this all began with an investigation of a Turkish company. So it begins with an investigation of a Turkish company and it leads its way into the Adams administration. So that's my understanding of some of the origin story here. So if you're gonna make that claim, this isn't

you know, this isn't Twitter where you make a claim and then we just all accept it. Nope, if you're gonna make the claim, bring some goods or act in a way that's consistent with the claim. And they've not done that. And the other problem I would say is the, just in terms of, if we're gonna think of Boves as the villain here, he was not a totally competent villain.

Because if you actually wanted to do this right, you shouldn't have had shifting rationales. The initial letter said something like, we haven't looked at the merits of this, we're deferring to you on the merits, we wanna dismiss the case for these reasons. Then the response or the rebuttal to the Sassoon letter near the end has this tacked on stuff about,

well, this persecution is kind of flimsy, kind of a weak case. If you wanted to really kind of do it right, what you probably should have done is said from the outset consistently, we've reviewed this case brought by the prior, well, I guess it's been the past four US attorneys, but anyway, we've reviewed this case

and we think it's a weak case. And under the Supreme Court's recent rulings tightening up public corruption and white-collar liability. And in light of the kind of weak quid pro quo here, the St. Bob Menendez with Mercedeses and gold bars, we have decided that this is a weak case and we are not going to move forward with it. So I think they could have done that. They could have done that consistently.

They wouldn't have mentioned the political or policy motivations, but again, I don't know how even that better, I think, strategy or approach would justify dismissing without prejudice. I have yet to read a good defense of that. I've had some Trump sympathetic friends of mine say, well, the government does the sort of Damocles thing in other contexts. They will defer sentencing for a cooperating witness. The cooperator does the song and dance the government wants so they don't get

hit at sentencing. The government writes a letter to the court saying, please give this person a light sentence, et cetera. But there, it's all intrinsic to the case. The government is trying to get justice in this particular case that includes this defendant, but a bunch of other people. It's not like, oh, it's going to serve our political or policy interests over in the next parking lot over. So again, I just don't know how you have a good defense of the without prejudice thing. So David, I'm so glad you said this because you were an AUSA for a long time in New Jersey, correct?

Not a long time, but yes. A while. You weren't there for a summer. A couple years. Yeah. So we got this question from a lawyer listener. And he says, isn't this on par with when authorities work defendants arrested for drug charges, if not on all fours?

Those arrested in drug cases are asked to cooperate to bring in other drug defendants, sometimes before being charged, sometimes after, and sometimes how much help, quote unquote, they get on their charges is dependent on how successful they are as a narc. I recognize Adams can be distinguished as he's an elected official, but I'm not convinced it's a distinction without a difference. So as an AUSA, and I'm sure you worked on drug cases, because everyone does, what do you think of his point there that how much help you worked on drug cases, because everyone does.

What do you think of his point there that how much help you get on your charges is dependent on how successful you are so that how much help Eric Adams provides on immigration will then determine whether these charges stay dismissed? So, there is some truth to that, as I was just alluding to. The government, if they like your cooperation, they're happy with the results. They're a satisfied customer, you could say. They write a 5K letter, which is alluding

to this section of the sentencing guidelines, where they write to the court and basically say, please sentence this person to below the sentencing guidelines. They may even say in their letter, please don't sentence this person to below the sentencing guidelines. They may even say in their letter, please don't sentence this person to prison. They were an invaluable part of our investigation, et cetera. So that definitely happens. But what about the charges issue? Are you aware of federal prosecutors basically dismissing charges without prejudice to see how good a narc you can

be? See, that I actually have not seen. Because I think the sentencing thing is quite different. Yes. The sentencing thing happens all the time, where a person pleads, and a lot of times this has to be done confidentially because you can't have it public that the cooperator is cooperating. So they exist in this kind of limbo sometimes for a very, very long time. They know they're going to end up as a convicted felon, but judgment hasn't been pronounced. They haven't been sentenced. They don't know what their sentence is. And the government wants to keep that sword over them. But again,

I think that the difference there is the government is trying to seek justice in this case. They're not trying to get some external aim. For example, we wouldn't find it acceptable if a prosecutor said, okay, we're going to defer your sentencing because, you know, we want you to whatever, pay us money or something like that. Like we wouldn't view that as acceptable. But I think we would even kind of view it as sketchy if we said, okay, Bob Menendez, we're going to, I mean, Bob Menendez didn't cooperate, but say he had cut a plea agreement,

but they deferred the sentencing and they said, well, say he hadn't resigned from the Senate and they said, well, we are going to defer the disposition of your case until you vote this way on this thing and that way on that thing. I think we'd view that as unacceptable. So I think there's a distinction here between justice in a particular case versus some extrinsic or outside objective. The other thing I would draw a distinction between, which I think some Trump or Boeva defenders are making as well, the president gets to make decisions about prosecutions to advance their priorities. During the Obama administration, some cases involving Iranian or Iranian connected defendants would get dismissed or get light treatment because he was trying to sort of cut deals and kind of have a rapprochement

or I don't speak French with Iran. But again, that I think is a little different because presidents, we all accept, are entitled to have their prosecutions reflect policy objectives. So Trump's administration doesn't want to go hard on white collar crime. They want to go after transnational gangs. That's their prerogative. Other administrations have had varying degrees of intense focus on child pornography,

war on terror, all kinds of things. I think that's legitimate, too. So there are some fine-grained distinctions here at work. I admit that it is hard to come up with really sort of totally bright line rules, which I think we often want to do. But those are situations I would distinguish from the present. David French, I actually want to like underline that Menendez point because Bob Menendez was

indicted and tried. Well, he's indicted many times over many administrations, but for our current purposes, the Biden administration is the one that gets the conviction against Menendez. As he is serving in the US Senate. He did not resign. And the Biden administration was having some trouble at various points, wrangling members of their own party. Is there a distinction between what Trump is asking of Eric Adams in exchange for having these charges delayed with the possibility of being dismissed, I think is almost a fair way to describe this, versus David Latt's example of like, hey, we don't have to try this case, but we're

going to need your help on some of this stuff in the Senate because we're having some defections. So you're going to do X, Y, and Z on some totally other issues for us? I mean, I see those as very similar. You know, I'm not going to try your case if you're going to help us with the legislation. Not any... I don't say... I see that as a distinction without a difference and we're going to prosecute you unless we have your help on deportation. That kind... If you're talking about favor trading, that part of the favor is a valid federal indictment, then I think we're really, we're busting through Normsville here, right?

I can't believe we're having this conversation. Aren't there moments where you're like, did we just say that as if it was like an interesting? But you know, the funny thing, the funny thing Sarah is, and I encountered this all the time now when I'm kind of out in the world, is that folks don't know these norms at all.

They already have such a cynical view of government that they don't even know necessarily when something has broken a norm because they didn't know a norm even existed to begin with. And so there's actually an important civic education component to all of this because you don't just sort of say this happened and then therefore like leave it out there and expect everyone to have the same reaction. You have to say this happened and that's why it's, this is why

it's a problem. This is why it might violate the duty of candor to the court or this, there is a duty of candor to the court. There are all kinds of, not just norms, but legal obligations that people are largely ignorant of. And when the system is functioning well, they have no actual reason to learn about it because it's just fine within a margin of error, but it's fine. And now we're breaking through these things and people don't know the norms even exist. They don't know why they exist.

They don't know why anyone would be upset that they're broken. And so there's this, we have to do this basic explanation all the time, I feel like. I wanna add one other concept into the mix. And I guess I would say the word I would use is corrupt. This is a word that recurs throughout federal statutes. Whoever corruptly does this or that, and there's been all this litigation in the DC Circuit

and the Supreme Court over it. I think that what we might say, if you were to look at favor trading, going easy on a senator in a criminal case in order to get votes, I think we would probably say that is corrupt, which is essentially, I'm looking up the dictionary definition, having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain. And I think we would view the personal gain as the favorable votes from the Senator. Same thing if you wanted to shake down somebody for money in exchange for not prosecuting them.

Whereas if you're dealing with somebody in the context of a case, I don't think you're saying, oh, we're getting personal gain from this cooperator who's helping us get these other defendants. That's just our job in enforcing criminal law to get as many people for as many serious offenses as possible. That's not corrupt. So I think the concept of corruption is important. But here's the thing. Can you prosecute a president post Trump v. United States, post the immunity decision for doing something, quote, corruptly if it's within the president's preclusive and exclusive or something suesive authority? And prosecution is definitely within part of the president's authority. And so are other things like hashing out deals with senators and things like that.

So what normally you could go after regular defendants for acting corruptly, I don't know that. How can you go after? I don't think you could go after a president. Maybe you can go after some lower officials in the executive branch for acting corruptly. Well, you just brought us right back to the question that Sarah and I talked about forever after Trump v United States. Can you prosecute Trump for bribery?

Does that exist? Like if it's, I'm being bribed to exercise my pardon power, pardon power unmistakably core presidential power. If I'm doing it for exchange for a million dollars in my personal bank account, can I be prosecuted for that? And to this moment, I don't know that anybody knows. Like I'm reminded of the quote from Blades of Glory. Do you remember that fantastic Will Ferrell documentary of the first all-male pair's figure skating team?

Yes, David, we remember. Sorry, not documentary, but they're talking about their... Yeah, it was like a Will Ferrell documentary. I was kidding. I was kidding. They're talking about their music and he's saying, oh, I want to skate to My Humps by Black Eyed Peas. And he starts singing it. And Napoleon Dynamite, what's his name, Josh Yeater? Josh Yeater says, what does that even mean? And Will Ferrell says, nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative, it gets the people going. That's the bribery discussion in Trump, the United States.

Here's where I think the chief might've made a miscalculation in Trump, the United States. They basically kicked that can down the road in terms of Trump, the United States saying, well, we're not gonna decide these thorny questions about bribes or pardons and stuff like that because hopefully this won't recur. And here we are in the second Trump administration and there are many, many possible recurrences that we're seeing either right now or we will see over the next four years.

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That's A-U-R-A frames.com promo code advisory. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, here's another listener question. David French, this goes to a point you were making earlier. And I'm curious, both of you who have had to make representations before the court on behalf of clients with candor. David Latt, again, is an AUSA. I think this is really relevant because I was a student

of Jack Goldsmith's in a class about government lawyers. And on the first day, the question is, who is your client? And all of a sudden you're like, I don't know actually. Is it the government? Is it the executive branch? Is it the people? Anyway, relevant to that then, who is your client will matter in this question. Well, I certainly admire the resignations of the various prosecutors. I question what was said on the podcast about them not having an option. You indicate that in bringing the dismissal, they would have to believe in it or agree with it.

I don't see why they couldn't have filed the dismissal simply on behalf of their client, the president, saying he believed dismissal was necessary for the interest of justice, etc. A judge might very well inquire, yes, but what do you think, counsel? And I think the proper response there is that, in my personal opinion, doesn't matter, Your Honor. I'm here to represent a client and they have requested this for the stated reason. Frankly, while the position these prosecutors have been and are in is extraordinary, it is not unusual at all for a lawyer to make arguments he or she does not agree with legally or personally merely because they are representing a client. Certainly happens all the time for

criminal defense lawyers. So David Ladd, I'll start with you maybe, I guess, on the, like, who is the client? Is the president your client here? Can you make a representation on behalf of the president or the Department of Justice that is not your own? So, it's interesting. I think the reader comment that you made is very similar to something that Will Chamberlain of the Article 3 Project said on Twitter, where he said, I'm quoting him, I'm absolutely baffled that people are defending the conduct of the SDNY prosecutors. It will be one thing if Pam Bondi and Emile Bove

were demanding the prosecutors agreed to adopt Bove's reasoning as their own, or if Bove was forcing them to lie to the court, none of that happened. But again, look, the thing is, this motion is going in with some paragraphs in it. And those paragraphs say some stuff about the case. And if you are saying stuff about the case and your name is in the signature block, maybe you're not the sort of slash

S person, the first person, but your name is in that block, you are making representations to the court. And so again, I think I sort of come out where you guys came out on your first podcast about the Thursday afternoon massacre where you said, look, there was nothing illegal about ordering this case to be dismissed, but there was also nothing improper about Sassoon saying, I want no part of this. Right. So that's why I thought that the Beauvais letter, which to use a favorite term of my former above colleague, above the law colleague, Ellie Mistal,

like the Beauvais letter was sort of, he was butt hurt, I guess, as Ellie likes to say, because feelings were hurt about, oh my gosh, you didn't go along with this. It's like, she doesn't have to go along. She's not stopping you from signing the dismissal motion, which Beauvais ultimately did, along with two other lawyers. She just wants no part of it. She's not stopping you from signing the dismissal motion, which Beauvais ultimately did along with two other lawyers. She just wants no part of it. She wants to wash her hands of it. And if that's her choice, nobody, you know, she just doesn't have an employment contract that requires her to do any of this. She can quit any time she wants. So again, I think that, you know, maybe if the motion had said nothing

and just said, we seek court leave to dismiss, that would be one thing. But here's the problem. We're recording this a couple of hours before Judge Dale Ho, who has the Eric Adams case, is going to be having a hearing on this. So let's say you file the bare bones motion. Then you show up, and Judge Ho starts

asking you tough questions. And you're, Danielle says,soon on your feet in that courtroom What are you prepared to advance the full main justice? Amelia Bovay theory of the case even if you personally don't agree with it. So again, I I just I Find it hard to fault Bovay and Hagen Scotton and everyone else for resigning if they wanted no part of this Scotton and everyone else for resigning if they wanted no part of this. Yeah, completely agree. And you know, this point about the president is the client, no, the president is the boss. So think about it like this.

It's a weird situation because your client is the United States government. The president is not the United States government, but the president is your boss. And so it's a little bit more messy than sort of saying, think of the president as the managing partner of your law firm, but in some ways, you're also representing the law firm. But there is a distinction with the difference. He's the boss, he's not the client. And so, that is a distinction with a difference. And so, walking in and just sort of saying, my boss told me to dismiss the case, I don't agree with the reasons, here are the reasons. I mean, I suppose you could do that. That'd

be an interesting approach that you could take, Your Honor. I'm standing up here because I've been forced to stand up here and I don't agree with this. And I'm going to tell you that a quid pro quo is not a good reason to dismiss a case, but dismiss it anyway. That'd be an interesting approach. I don't think it's a superior approach to the one Danielle Sassoon took. You know, it's interesting on this whole who is the client question. It reminds me of something I've been wondering over the past few weeks, which is where the heck is the Office of Legal Counsel in all of this? So for folks who are not familiar, the Office of Legal Counsel is this very important influential section or division within the Department of Justice, which is essentially the arbiter

of executive authority. Sometimes they are dealing with conflicts between different branches of the executive branch or different sections. Like, oh, well, the Department of Veterans Affairs wants to build a cafeteria on this property, but it's not controlled by them. It's controlled by this other department. Now they're fighting over whether you can build the cafeteria.

Sometimes OLC does stuff like that. But OLC also issues things like the torture memos, saying that the president or members of the administration, CIA, FBI, whatever they can or cannot do this certain thing. OLC also came up with the rule that you can't indict a sitting president. OLC is very important. Justice Scalia, Chief Justice Rehnquist, they were heads of OLC before this. And typically, OLC will bless things or help reword things or make them compliant with

law. Jack Goldsmith, who we've already mentioned several times, was a prior head of OLC will bless things or help reword things or make them compliant with law. Jack Goldsmith, who we've already mentioned several times, was a prior head of OLC. So where is OLC in all of this? Are they saying these things are okay? Are they helping them make them okay? OLC was involved in the first Trump administration in trying to vet the travel ban or bans, I should say, because they had a couple of takes on that for so-called form and legality like does this travel ban order does this look kosher is it worded properly is it

consistent with what you usually see but here I just kind of wonder where is OLC are they asking for all C's advice now one thing that's weird about OLC is OLC kind of has to be asked for its opinion on stuff so if you don't want to hear from OLC, you just leave them alone. So is the Trump administration kind of like, we don't want to hear O.L. who? Like they're not making any inquiries of OLC because maybe they don't want the answers.

That is an amazing, worth the whole podcast just to have the OLC conversation. And just to emphasize the point of how central OLC is as almost the brains of DOJ in a lot of ways, on the fifth floor, the fifth floor is like a term of art almost at DOJ, that is where the attorney general's conference room is and the attorney general's personal office. The solicitor general is also on the fifth floor with their own suite of offices. And guess who else is right in between those

two? The Office of Legal Counsel. So they are considered that heartland, very prestigious special DOJ part. The fourth floor, by the way, has the deputy attorney general. And on the lowly first floor, you will find me. So to that point, David, by the way, some little scuttlebutt. You know, originally, Henry Whitaker, who had served in the first Trump administration, DOJ, and had gone to Florida as Florida's Solicitor General under Ron DeSantis. He was the acting head of OLC. And then his name was off the website. And do we know who the Senate confirmed or PAS, so-called in DC parlance, who the presidentially appointed Senate confirmed pick for that is? We

have all these other people. It's kind of like they're trying to almost be like, again, like, oh well, who like, Yes. And like, other people have pointed this out privately to me that as far as anyone can tell, like, everyone's lost OLC's number. Like, OLC has been totally cut out because they don't want the OLC. It's like, who this? Yeah.

New phone, who this? And poor OLC is like the Maytag repairman. Is anyone going to call me? What's happening? Next question from a listener. Okay, so this one comes, let's just say, the comment comes from an AUSA, from a highly relevant district in the country.

He said that something was missing in our account, David. Said, I think a lot of your listeners would appreciate a discussion not simply of the legality or illegality of these decisions, but of the generational impact on the culture of public service. Whatever the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the actions, and I think you made a powerful case that these actions were

at a base level, quote, within the law, they are having a profound impact on a generation of new and early career public servants. Hundreds of extremely talented lawyers who either have recently joined or planning to join the Justice Department are being driven away. It is hard to overstate how demoralizing these weeks have been. Lawyers who simply followed orders are subject to internal investigation. Trial teams have been decimated. Criminal trial

calendars have been thrown into chaos. In fact, a lot of critical criminal cases are now stalled for the simple reason that too many of the prosecutors are on forced administrative leave. Many of the early career prosecutors who are too junior to be forced out are quitting, too demoralized to soldier on through such a cultural earthquake. To be clear, this includes people who were determined to stay until a week ago. Their sense of federal law enforcement as an aspirational career path has suddenly been dashed on the rocks." And he notes, like, there's nothing wrong with going to the private sector, of course, but many people who might have been banking on a fifth or sixth year pivot into government have given up on their dreams. In the grand scheme of things, this may seem like a small

issue, but it is also crucial. This damage to the public service ideal may echo for many, many years. So David Latt, I guess, again, to start with that career of a prosecutor, everyone says the best job in law is an AUSA. And yes, there's pay cuts, but the work is incredible. Your coworkers are all there for sort of this singular purpose and mission. And so you take the lower pay for the incredible responsibility and mission-driven work. If you take away the mission part, do you still have the best and the brightest in the country going into being AUSAs? And if not, is that okay? I mean, is this sort of the side point that I've been making of Justice Scalia saying, we don't need the very smartest humans arguing before the

Supreme Court, please go into science or medicine and actually solve some of our problems. And we have too many smart people doing law. Maybe we don't need our most moral, dedicated, public service minded people going to be federal prosecutors. Maybe we need more of them going into federal public defense or into simply other jobs. And like I have said on this podcast many times, maybe they shouldn't be going to law school. No, no, Sarah, don't go there.

Don't go there. Well, I have a couple of thoughts. Look, I totally understand the Scalia point. And this is why my husband, Zach, even though we're both lawyers, I think wants our seven-year-old who has STEM inclinations to go do something else, whereas I'm like IP law. But, you know.

David Lat just wants that sweet, sweet child making money for the family. Exactly, exactly. But here's the thing. I totally agree. This is a huge deterrent to public service. The Wall Street Journal editorial board is one of many conservative commentators,

along with Andrew McCarthy and Ed Whalen, who have condemned what happened at SDNY and DOJ over the past week or so. And the WSJ editorial, I think near the end, said this is really a deterrent to anyone who would want to serve in the administration or in public service. But here's the thing. From the perspective of Elon Musk and the Department of Governmental Efficiency is turning people off government service, a bug or a feature? Right. Remember, these are the people who just axed the entire entering class of the DOJ Honors Program, which is the main way to get an entry-level job at the Department of Justice. These were aspiring government servants. These were aspiring federal prosecutors, and they were basically told, okay, go find another job with a couple of months left in law school or your clerkship and all the other stuff that you would want is probably gone already because everyone in law hires like 10 million years out.

So again, I think yes, it's a deterrent in terms of going into public service, but I don't think it's a problem for Trump and Musk. And here's the other thing. The people who will go into this administration, there's a selection effect here that Trump wants, which is the whole point of that reality show style exercise where Bovet threw everyone into public integrity in a Zoom and said, figure out which one of you is going to sign this thing or you're all fired, essentially. They want people who are going to be spineless. They want people who are not in that tradition of people who view the, you know, there's

that inscription you probably saw when you worked at the DOJ building, Sarah, of, well, you know, the government or the United States wins when justice is done or blah, blah, blah. The new inscription should be the federal government wins when Trump is happy. And so they don't want the justice is done, people. They want the Trump is happy people. And look, with this kind of treatment, they're gonna get that. So here's the hypothetical I've been wondering about.

We all know about that famous situation near the end of the Trump administration where Trump had this plan to take environmental lawyer, Jeff Clark and install him at the top as the acting US attorney. And he was going to investigate the supposed malfeasance and election fraud in Georgia. And basically all the assistant attorneys general, the heads of the different components,

whether it was Steve Angle at OLC or John Demers at National Security or everyone else, they basically went to the president and said, look, if you do this little Jeff Clark thing, we're all residing and Trump back down. In Trump too, does that happen? No. Or does Trump say, thank you for your service? Well, you know, you raise a point, David, that I think's really interesting. And what is the difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2?

Back in Trump 1, there was a consistent story within the administration, and that was Trump would float something or suggest something that was way out of bounds, and people would throw their body in front of it. And most of the time, they actually could prevent it. Sometimes they couldn't. And then when they couldn't, like when Mattis couldn't prevent Trump from the sudden withdrawal from Syria, he resigned. So Bill Barr was throwing his body in front of a lot of things before he

resigned. And so you had this dynamic and it's what led people to do this. And Sarah, this goes to your op-ed you wrote in the Washington Post. One of the things that led people to do was to take... Do you remember that Selena Zito piece from 2016 where it says, people take Trump seriously but not literally? And then the press takes Trump literally but not seriously, and Trump supporters take him seriously but not literally. The bottom line is Trump was intended to be taken seriously and literally. That was Trump's intent.

And so his team was like trying, how can I accomplish your objective without doing what you're telling me to, or asking me to do that would be terrible in 19 different ways? And so that's how this whole thing of seriously, but not literally really took hold so that you don't, you don't pay attention to Trump's words, right? But no, he meant he means them. He means them. And in Trump 2.0, you know, one thing we saw in Trump 1.0, he wasn't fully unbound until the very, very end of his term. And he's coming in, you know, as if this is January 7th, 2021. I mean, this is, this is a, this is Trump Unbound, and he wants to be taken seriously and literally. And so that's why you can no longer in this, the aftermath of what we've been witnessing, just sort of roll your eyes when he quotes Napoleon and

say, well, there, there's, there's our boy Trump just being a little, you know, going rogue a little bit. No, no, no, no. This is who he wants to be. And he's making that plane in every way that he possibly can. And here's what depresses me about this. Because here's the thing, like, we, meaning the United States, I'm not speaking of us as individuals, we all voted for this. We can't claim buyer's remorse or, oh my God, we didn't know Trump was going to do that. He said on the campaign trail, I am your retribution or whatever else it is. So we all signed up for this.

He's not, as you said, David, he's not going rogue. He's delivering on his promises and people voted for him and he got the popular vote and he won every battleground state. Now, I think some people would try to say in defense of the American people, who I generally think are a, you know, common sense and good people, like they'll say, well, they were more focused on the price of eggs or things like that.

And you know, this, this, all this inside baseball DOJ stuff, you know, they didn't care about it. But here's the thing. Okay, fine. They didn't care about it in that it wasn't enough of an election issue for them to sort of stop Trump or vote against Trump. And if, as long as the price of eggs is good, well, okay, you can do whatever the heck you want with the DOJ.

So we signed up for this. This is an old story, by the way, as long as my finances are okay, you get to do what you want to do is an old story. Yeah, that's how Rome falls. Yeah, it's an old story. It's an old bad story. It's an old story already. It's an old bad story. It's an old bad story. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC optimum points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I want to focus on that retribution point. David French and I have been making, distinguishing between helping your friends versus using the powers of the federal government to go after your enemies. One is bad and the other one is way, way worse. I want to mention what happened in the DC US Attorney's Office, something we don't have all of the facts on yet, so I'm going off of the reporting that we

have. The head of the Criminal Division in the DC US Attorney's Office, Denise Chung, resigned this week, and in her resignation letter, she basically says she was asked to freeze the assets of an organization, basically committing to the court that there was some evidence of criminal wrongdoing that they were going to look into. What she says in her letter, more or less, is there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. You just want to freeze these assets for political reasons. It's not clear exactly what group or what investigation she's talking about. The New York Times suggests that it could be about $20 billion that was awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency for clean energy and other environmental projects, for instance.

On the one hand, if you're just trying to freeze the money from going out the door, for instance, I don't know that this fits into our overall paradigm that we've talked about between the two. But if you're launching a criminal investigation or civil fines, et cetera, type of DOJ investigation into an organization because you don't like their politics and the last administration had given them all this money under these grants. That seems to have crossed the Rubicon that we talked about of using the powers of the department to target political enemies

because they're political enemies. Not like, well, we were investigating generally grant corruption and then we stumbled upon this. They are political enemies, so we're not gonna not do it. But this seems like they went and looked. They wanted to stop the money. And the only way they can stop the money is by opening such an investigation. David Latt, concerns, feelings, make me feel better?

Absolutely. Because the problem is you would have to make representations to the court. And I think this is why Chung resigned, because she could not make those representations consistent with her duty of candor to the court. And I think this is why Chung resigned because she could not make those representations consistent with her duty of candor to the court. And so here's the depressing thing. So I totally agree with David's point about- Oh, this is going to be the depressing part? Now we're going to get to the depressing part? Oh my gosh. I totally agree with David's point about in Trump won, people sort of throwing their bodies on top of grenades. You had, you had even, you know, even people who are viewed as villains by the left, like, you know, Don McGahn or, you know, what have you or Bill, you know, or Bill Barr or Pat Cipollone or any number of people who, along

with you, Sauer, are now on, you know, the appendix of Cash Patel's book. Those are many, many of those people are actually people who served for Trump or under the Trump administration, but tried to stop him from doing terrible things. So a lot of times, with the first administration, people would ask me, I sometimes become people's kind of informal career advisor. People say, well, should I go into this administration? I told a lot of people, look, I think there are going to be a lot of problems, but I think you could also do some good.

I think all those people who threw their bodies on top of grenades or who threatened to resign if the Jeff Clark thing got carried out, they did the right thing. It's funny, side to Steve Engel, who was the head of OLC, who was one of the people who threatened to resign, he and I were law school roommates. And we also served on the college newspaper together. And when Steve was announced as the pick for OLC, four of us, Steve, myself, two other colleagues from the Harvard Crimson,

we all were on an email chain. And the other two are very progressive. And they were kind of like, congratulations. And I said to Steve, good luck, but I hope that if the time comes for you to offer your resignation, you're prepared to do that. And lo and behold, Steve offered his resignation, but Trump backed down. But Steve was willing to do that. And again and behold, Steve offered his resignation, but Trump backed down. But Steve was willing to do that. And again, if someone came to me now and said, should I go into this administration? Maybe if you would ask me before the inauguration,

I would have said, OK. And look, there are some very impressive people who have elected for now, at least, to go into the administration. There are some excellent people on that list of agency general councils that Trump sent to the Senate the other week. Sarah Harris, who's the acting Solicitor General, she has an excellent reputation. But again, I don't know how I feel about telling people to go into this administration because I don't know that your threat to resign is going to change anything.

And you might just, I don't know, it just might be ineffectual. David French, what are you looking for from this point? Or is the Rubicon crossed and we're not looking for anything? They're over on the other side playing on the shore. Well first, Sarah, I have to compliment you as we're winding down this podcast. You've done a masterful job navigating between two Davids. So it's just, it's been the David Weave. Like, they've done a great job.

I mean, for this administration, I think the Rubicon was not, wasn't crossed when you had this incident, which we're still learning about, but it looks bad. To me, that punish enemies Rubicon was crossed in the opening days when he yanked the security details from Pompeo and Bolton. This is very important, and publicly announced it. So essentially, he says to the whole world, here, come and get these guys.

They're exposed. So I hear you. I guess for me, it is different because it's not, I know this is a weird distinction, and I want to be clear. Obviously, I don't like that. I didn't like it, whatever. Yeah.

But in terms of the Rubicon, that to me is not an affirmative attack. I actually totally understand why you think it is an affirmative attack. So I'm not saying you're crazy. But for me, I guess that really wasn't affirmative enough. Whereas this opening an investigation, if true, and if all this reporting turns out to be accurate, it's small. And it's not the political retribution that I think we were all expecting,

but that's what the Rubicon is, right? It's not the river in the heart of Rome. It's the river you have to cross way up in the North. Right, right. No, I'm with you, I'm with you. And I do think, you know, the other thing that, how do we interpret like these mass firings and mass layoffs? How do we interpret aiming first at USAID? And I think you do there begin to sort of see, wait,

I'm targeting institutions within the government that I might feel are more entrenched against me or institutions that I might feel are perhaps vulnerable because Americans historically have weird, inconsistent thoughts about foreign aid, but often tend to fall against it, both Democrats and Republicans in some ways. So there is a question of how do we interpret a lot of the actions, the personnel actions that have taken place so far? Is it truly a cut and sort of like we're just coming in and we're just cutting people without regard to politics, et cetera?

Or are we talking about more targeted action within the federal government? And also it's very early because we're not even a month in. We're not even a month in. Cash Patel isn't sitting in the chair at the FBI yet. Pam Bondi only just got to main justice. So we're on the front end of this. So you would expect to see that front end begin with an investigation here,

an investigation there. And then it will, you know, build momentum if that is in fact, if that is in fact, if Cash Patel and Trump and all of them do follow through on their repeated pledges, then you would expect to see it all accelerate. Okay, David Latt, in your last newsletter, you graded the judiciary. You gave them an A minus. But I really liked your point in one that I don't think has been made broadly enough,

which is for all of these emergency motions and lawsuits filed about Trump's EOs and everything else, it's gone to any number of judges, a dozen at this point or more. And the outcome of those emergency petitions and lawsuits so far has not been remotely predictable based on the president or party that appointed the judge. So for instance, we just had Seth Waxman get bench slapped, as you noted, a term you coined, I think, right?

Yes. Popularized. Yes. That I just, right? Yes. Popularized. Yes. That I just use now as like common parlance. It's like Kleenex for me instead of tissue. It's in Black's Law Dictionary. Wow. So, Seth Waxman, former Solicitor General, famous overall lawyer, gets bench slapped by

Tanya Chutkin. No, no, no. That was actually Ana Reyes, but Chutkin just ruled in favor of Trump the other night. Yes, sorry, I'm mixing up my Democratic appointees ruling in favor of Trump. And in the case about the bench slapping, saying like, why shouldn't I issue a show cause order for you bringing this emergency motion

about the firing of the inspectors general 21 days later. Like if it's an emergency, bring it at the time. Don't waste my time in the court's time telling me something's an emergency three weeks after it happened. Tonya Chukin, as you said, ruling in favor of the Trump administration. And you have Trump appointed judges ruling against the Trump administration like Carl Nichols. And so you gave them an A minus, the third branch of government, David Latt. I guess I'm curious, why didn't they get an A plus? Well, I guess part of it is because I have not had a chance to review every disposition

of these dozens, I don't know, maybe over a hundred at this point cases. And I'm sure that there might be a stinker in there somewhere. So I was kind of covering my butt a little bit in case we later learn of some ruling that is terrible. Also, even though I went to Harvard for undergrad, which is notorious for great inflation, I wasn't really going to give an A plus. Let's try not to give A pluses where you have these people graduating high school with 4.25s and ridiculous things like that. A was really the best grade that could have been gotten. But the other thing I have to say is this, and I made that point also in the original jurisdiction discussion.

One of the reasons I also give these judges credit, and even if we find some dubious or sus ruling, I have to give them credit for this. They are deciding these things based on very spotty records. Often the facts are very unclear. They're often on these very expedited timelines because many times people are asking for TROs or preliminary injunctions, and they're not waiting 21 days to do it. So, for example, take a look at that opinion that Judge Nichols, former Thomas Clerk, Trump appointee, issued in one of the USAID cases a week or two ago. It's seven pages. I think he reaches the right outcome, but there are like 10 million open questions in that way. He's like, well, we don't know this, but if we take this as the

assumption, we don't know that, we're going to have a hearing next week to find out more. They're flying by the seat of their pants. So I take my hat off to them because they are deciding so many of these rules, deciding so many of these issues based on highly imperfect information and accelerated timelines. So at least the third branch of government, I think, is so far at least, holding up. David French. What grade? Do you disagree? Agree? No, I agree. I'm going to go A minus. I'm going to say, you know, with the giant caveat that there's just so much out there that it's hard to keep up with everything. And I would say encouragement, end with encouragement and exhortation. And the encouragement is that I feel like

the judges, the judicial branch, as we have said many times on this podcast, is still the best functioning of the three branches of government. I think it's demonstrating that now with the care that it's taking in reviewing these cases. But the exhortation would be to district court judges, be careful, don't be famous. We are in a very, very, very, very tense time where it is a very live possibility that you have an administration that will just defy court orders. This is a live possibility. So write orders that are the most defensible possible orders. Do not give, because what you're gonna see is, as a situation where, and this is a dynamic

you've seen throughout the Trump era, which is Trump does something bad. Let's say it's a nine out of 10 bad. And everyone's saying this is nine out of 10 bad, but then that one person steps forward and says, no, this is 14 out of 10 bad. And then all of MAGA media says, look at them being hysterical, right? So you could have 15 court orders that are carefully drafted,

that are sensibly done. And then you have that 16th that is just out of left field that, you know, maybe it's a forum shop judge who has been coaxed into drafting some sort of absurdly overbroad injunction. And then that will be the symbol right there. This is the judiciary. That will be the symbol. So every last one of these district court judges, there's like no room for error here. Every single one of these has to be buttoned up. It has to be tight.

It has to be as precise as humanly possible, and then motor up to the court of appeals on that basis. So we're doing well so far, the judicial branches, but, but, but resist the urge to be a hero, be a jurist. And 99% of judges, that's their instinct, jurists not hero, but there are the few out there. There's a few. Yeah. And again, I would flag, I, you know, I know Adam works fast, but I don't know when people will be hearing this, whether it's before or after the Judge Ho hearing in the Eric

Adams case. I hope Judge Ho acts judiciously and doesn't want to be a hero of the resistance, because he could turn that hearing into a giant spectacle. And a lot of people are calling on him to appoint a special prosecutor, which my personal opinion is, I don't think he has the power to do that. And even if you think of it as a debatable question, you think this Supreme Court,

given its views of executive power, is going to allow that? I think not. But maybe you could argue, oh, well, you know, maybe Judge Hull will just do that for sort of like the headline, even knowing that he's going to get smacked down. I hope he doesn't do that. I just, I don't think the law is there. The Supreme Court denied cert a little while ago in this kind of weird case where there was a contempt issue. And the judge tried to, the judge did,

I should say, appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute contempt. But contempt is an offense against the court, which is a bit different from just regular federal criminal offenses like the ones Eric Adams is accused of. And even there, there was a dissent from denial of cert actually. So I do not think that this court is going to allow or affirm Dale Ho appointing a special prosecutor. That ain't happening. I 100% agree. I have no problem with Dale Ho saying, look, you either can continue with this prosecution or you can dismiss it with prejudice. Yes.

Right. Yes. Yeah. That would be solid. Yeah. That's totally fine with me. It's not the interest of justice. I think you're using this to harass the defendant here So you pick but we're not doing this without prejudice nonsense. That in fact is Always the more extraordinary ask in any court is to dismiss without prejudice um the the sort of status quo slash default the default is to dismiss with prejudice, so So I hope that that's what we see at least at this point. And then we'll see what DOJ says to that.

All right, last question from the listener. Next episode, by the way, of course, we have these amazing expert listeners. And I love that so many of you are writing in with like, I'm just a simple caveman microbiologist. You're cracking me up out there, folks. But someone pointed out in our conversation about the Constitutionality of Actings and the Vacancies Reform Act and those Musk lawsuits on special government employees, A, of course, that actually there are Senate-confirmed

special government employees, for instance, at the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. I had forgotten about them. So we're gonna have to revisit that a little bit. And someone sent in a marvelous dissent by Judge Thapar in which he says that the Vacancies Reform Act as applied at least is being done in some unconstitutional ways. So we'll go through his reasons,

which were far more articulate, smart. You know, there's a reason he's on the short list and I'm not, right? Okay. Here's our last question from a listener today. I am an AP U.S. government and politics teacher. My colleague and I are organizing our annual mock SCOTUS hearing. We'd like to select a case which the court has not released an opinion. Any suggestions for a current case that high school students would find interesting? David We'd like to select a case which the court has not released an opinion, any suggestions for a current case that high school students would find interesting. David French, I'll start with you. I'm going to start with the Paxton, you know, age limit porn case.

I mean, you want to talk about it. You're recommending the high school students do porn with their teachers. I'm recommending they do the porn case, the porn case, which let's not be naive for some portion of the students in that class will be extremely relevant. And also introduces them to some of the age distinctions in the law, important First Amendment issues. There's just a lot there. It's just a lot there.

Interesting. I came in thinking you were dead wrong about that the age distinctions in the First Amendment thing is good. You might be persuading me. David Latt, what do you got? So I do think that Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a good candidate. The other case that I think is getting a lot of attention this term is United States v. Scrumetti, or is that actually Scrumetti v. United States, the case about gender-affirming care out of Tennessee and what limits a state can place

on that as it pertains to minors. But I think one thing, look, I'm very mindful of the teacher's pedagogical position. If these things are sort of third rails, either pornography or transgender status, what if there's a trans kid in the class? I could understand it being tricky. The problem is this term is kind of slim pickings. There's not really a lot here that is kind of juicy, relatable, not too complicated. I was looking on SCOTUS blog at the list of cases this term.

A lot of them are very technical It's almost like the court was trying to say oh my gosh, we need a breather from all the culture war stuff Let's take a lot of really boring dry technical stuff resolving circuit splits. Um, you know, it's too bad I think they by the way, I think they were expecting to have a lot more 2024 election post-election day action. Yeah, and they were leaving largely cleared Yeah, their docket for some of that, whether consciously or unconsciously, but it feels that way.

Okay, but my suggestion is Felix V. Barnes because it isn't political. That's the case about whether a police officer's use of force is looked at in the moment that he uses force or in the sort of overall timeframe of the stop, I like that it's, well, not porn. I'm sorry, like as a teacher, I just don't think I'm going to have daily conversations about pornography with my students. And like, is that hardcore? Is that so? No. And I agree, the transgender thing might just be tricky for high school

students to separate their politics or emotions from the case. Now, maybe that has a pedagogical value in and of itself to teach them how to separate that. But if you don't want to go there and you just want to have them thinking about the law qua the law, I think Felix V. Barnes has a lot going for it. And it's something every kid can wrap their head around pretty easily. Yeah, true. You know, it's too bad that the assignment requires a case where there hasn't already been an opinion because TikTok would have been a really good one. Really relatable, involves the first amendment.

They're all probably on the God darn thing the whole day. So TikTok would have been good, but they issued an opinion. Did you say God darned? I've never heard that. I guess I didn't wanna say like, is that like, that's kind of more political. But not gosh.

Gosh darned. I guess you're right, I should have said gosh darn. That would have been, you're right. I kind of defeated my point there. You're only kind of in the good place. Yeah, exactly. Apologies, David. I offend David on a daily basis.

Thank you, David Lutz, so much for joining us today on this episode of Advisory Opinions. Should we call this the rumination of advisory opinions to steal from Jonah Goldberg? David, French and I are headed down to the National Constitution Center Conference. And so our episodes next week may come out at weird times related to some of that travel.

But like I said, we've got endless content here. So don't worry about that. And David Latt, we're going to need you back more given all of the shenanigans. I'm always happy to return. Thanks for having me today. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,