Advisory Opinions - Judge's Letter Fails to Disclose Conflict of Interest

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

On today’s episode, David and Sarah pop from topic to topic, including a discussion of a very strange letter, a brief foray into the Electoral Count Act, a few observations about the Trump top secret document revelations and the most recent John Durham filing. They wrap up with Olympic nonsense. The Russians are at it again.   Show Notes -Judge Clemon's letter to President Biden -J. Michael Luttig: “The Conservative Case for Avoiding a Repeat of Jan. 6” -Latest John Durham filing -Reuters: “Anti-doping agencies, IOC brace for drawn-out Valieva case” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger, and we're going to bounce around and talk a lot about a lot of different things. Not talk a lot about a lot of different things, because that'd be a long podcast. We're going to talk a little bit about a lot of different things. We've got a very unusual letter from a retired federal judge that is maybe playing a role in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. We've got some Electoral Count Act updates. We've got, as some blasts from the past, some questions about Trump's handling of classified documents

and some updates from the John Durham side of the investigation of Trump-Russia, some 11th Circuit sadness slash nonsense. And then Sarah's got more to say about the Russians, not about Ukraine, but about Russian figure skating and doping. So that's a lot. So let's get going. Sarah, a judge, and really not just any judge, but a rather sort of important judge in recent judicial history, wrote a letter slamming, absolutely slamming Ketanji Brown Jackson. Tell us about it all right so former judge uw clemon he was the first

black judge in alabama wrote a letter to president biden cc'ing the chief of staff the white house council an assistant council special advisor to the president cedric richmond uh said he applauds i rejoice in your determination to appoint the first Black female to the United States Supreme Court. In addition of Thurgood Marshall, hopefully she will stand tall for equal justice for all and equality in the workplace. As you consider the candidates, though, basically you should ask, what has she done for the cause of justice and equality? What has she done for the cause of justice and equality? Based on her conduct in Ross v. Lockheed, I strongly believe that Circuit Judge Katonji Brown Jackson

should not be appointed by you as the first Black female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Ross case was brought in 2016 as a class action on behalf of 5,500 Black workers of Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation's largest federal contractor. Before filing the lawsuit, lawyers for the Black plaintiffs negotiated a settlement with Lockheed Martin, which provided for a reformed evaluation system, the cornerstone

of pay and promotions decisions, and $22 million to be distributed to Black workers. When the lawyers presented the settlement to Judge Jackson, she incredibly refused to approve the settlement because in her view, there were no common factual questions. It goes on to express sort of continued outrage that this case was basically dismissed by Judge Jackson when she was a district judge on the D.C. District Court. And I will say this is the problem in journalism overall, I would say, that journalists used to sort of have these beats where they would have an expertise that they would hone over decades. And now we have a lot of young people, especially in political journalism, who don't have that

expertise, a lot of, you know, grit, enthusiasm, all very good things. But in this case, there was a lot of just repeating that. There was a letter from the first black judge in Alabama. He said she hasn't stood for equality and that she rejected a class action lawsuit because there weren't common factual questions. And that's all any of the news stories that originally talked about this letter said. You know what they didn't say, David? What's that?

That when he said lawyers for the black plaintiffs negotiated a settlement with Lockheed Martin, yada, yada, yada. He didn't mention that he was one of those lawyers. So he simply made this seem like a case that he knew about that he thought was very unjust as a former judge and never mentioned the fact that after he retired from being a judge, he joined a plaintiff side law firm. And six months later, his law firm lost, I guess, approximately $6 million when Judge Jackson didn't rule in his favor on this case. $6 million when Judge Jackson didn't rule in his favor on this case. None of that is mentioned. And in fact, it is just lawyers for the plaintiffs, as it's referred to in his letter.

This is so wildly inappropriate to me. It should be scandalous. And there should be all sorts of news stories about an attack on Judge Jackson by a lawyer. She ruled against trying to muddy the waters on this. It's, it's totally insane to me that the only attention this got was the attention, like that it was a good letter basically. Uh, so our, our friends over at volet conspiracy, Josh Blackman in particular, went through and actually noted some of the, quote, defects that Judge Jackson identified when she denied the settlement. The proposed notice to class members, so if you're going to have a class, you're basically suing without any of those people knowing that you're suing on their behalf, and then you have to go find them and tell them what you've

done and allow them to come join this class, the proposed notice to class members did not provide any, quote, sense of how giving particular answers on the claim form would likely influence the amount of a class member's recovery. As in, you're making them fill out this extensive claim form that will mean they cannot sue on their own ever, but also doesn't say how you're going to determine who gets how much money based on their answers to that. They would lose their right to sue yet would become ineligible to recover any compensation from the settlement form if they didn't fill out the claim form. Gross imbalance between the claims actually at issue in the case and the claims released under the proposed settlement. In other words, the settlement asked the employees to give up more than the law permitted.

Lockheed Martin would be legally immunized from misconduct that occurred after the class members were given a chance to exit the settlement. The proposed class was not cohesive because the discrimination, if any, against the employees was individualized, right? It's like each person has a different set of facts as to how they were discriminated against. So look, this happens pretty frequently. A plaintiff's law firm will bring a quote unquote class action on behalf of some group that they don't actually represent yet saying, we'll reach out and find these people. And those people, and they, they reach the settlement with the company because the company doesn't want to run the risk. 22 million is nothing to Lockheed Martin. The fact

that it's such a low number should send off alarm bells in your head. If Lockheed Martin has been discriminating against all of its black employees, 22 million shouldn't come anywhere close to fixing that. And who gets the most money out of something like this? The plaintiff's law firm. As I said, they lost $6 million potentially in this out of the 22 million settlement they had negotiated. So this letter is outrageous to me. Again, I don't have strong feelings about who President Biden should pick, but I would say this letter did more to harm the case against Judge Jackson because the White House absolutely is aware of who this guy is and why he sent this letter, even if the news media was not.

And so if this was sort of solicited by Team Childs, and of course, I don't mean that Judge Childs had anything to do with this at all. But Team Childs, the people who are trying to be her allies, huge mistake. Oh, my goodness. What a mistake. And, you know, as I'm reading it, because I've been involved in a few class actions in my day. it because I've been involved in a few class actions in my day. And I look at this and I see 5,500 workers, black workers, 22 million. Well, okay. I think you're being generous to say only 6 million would be taken by the attorneys. I was thinking more along the lines of a third, which, or perhaps sometimes even up to 40%. I mean mean so we're talking six to seven to eight

million that would be taken by a small group of attorneys i did some math if it's just a third if it's a contingency fee of a third that's only two thousand seven hundred dollars to each of the workers represented in the class which is not a life-changing sum of money in any way, shape, or form. And look, I mean, a judge is not just supposed to rubber stamp this stuff. This is diligent trial judge work here. And it's really remarkable. I mean, it's really remarkable. I recognize that this judge is a notable member of the Alabama legal

community. I recognize that he's a pioneer, the retired judge who wrote here, but that is a remarkable hit job without the single most important disclosure within it. It's really one of the more brazen things I've ever seen. And the fact that it's not been largely covered as a plaintiff attorney complaining that their payday was rejected by the judge is all by itself a little bit telling that not a lot of digging was done. Yeah. And look, like the reason I say, you know, team childs is because the NBC story that first published this, it says in the story that NBC basically got this copy of a letter first after it went to, I mean, it was pitched to NBC. And the headline that they went with was Biden faces conflicting pressures as he closes in on a Supreme Court nominee. Third paragraph, the first black federal judge in Alabama, UW Clemens, sent a letter to Biden on February 4,

urging him not to consider appeals judge Katonji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court, according to a copy obtained by NBC News. It just goes on to describe the letter. court, according to a copy obtained by NBC News. It just goes on to describe the letter. He pointed out that, you know, then quotes. And then later says Clemens, who retired from the court in 2009, is listed as counsel at the firm, which argued on the losing side. Other rulings by Jackson have drawn praise from progressive labor groups, but no mention of the money that he would have lost or gained. I just not appropriate. And look, we talked about team Jackson inappropriately changing Wikipedia pages. Yeah. Yeah. This is like the same thing to me. Like you're out there trying to dig dirt and this is what you found. No.

And the letter itself, if a lawyer filed something like that, it would be sanctionable. You know, I have a business idea for a selected group of people. Kavanaugh clerks. Former Kavanaugh clerks should, I mean, look. They'll help your boss get on the Supreme Court. Yeah, that's going to be. Yes, exactly. That'll be a tight... Well, look, Michael... Mike Davis was one of the Team Gorsuch

folks, and he now runs a judicial advocacy group. So this kind of exists. Now it's conservative. Mike Davis is unquestionably on the conservative side. Right. But the Kavanaugh clerks who ran in one of the most efficient clerk army operations, as we've already discussed, that I've ever seen. And it was so efficient, it was right up to the point of annoyingly relentless without crossing entirely over. But the Kavanaugh clerk operation was impressive. I mean, I could easily imagine with each new sort of changeover of president, you have like in some Hilton Garden Inn somewhere, a seminar for all activist clerks of shortlist judges. They'd make a killing, Sarah. They'd make a killing. Hey, before we move on on i made a slight mistake josh blackman is the one who posted about this on vala conspiracy but he was actually

posting something from adam shulman of hamilton lincoln law institute who's an expert on class action so when i was reading i was actually reading shulman not blackman apologies gotcha gotcha Gotcha. All right. So, Sarah, you have some Electoral Count Act updates. I do. All right. So an organization called Conservative Action Project. It's been around a long time, David. I'm sure you've heard of them. CAP is what it normally goes by. It was founded by former Attorney General Ed Meese and Ken Blackwell. And they put out a letter a couple days ago, and it said, Conservatives oppose opening up the Electoral Count Act to Democratic election takeover legislation. Relatively short letter. Their points are, roughly, I'm going to read a little here. With Democrats in charge, such efforts to reform the electoral count act merely cover for

liberals to have more opportunities to pass their election takeover legislation. Their point being that they could take their, you know, John Lewis Voting Rights Act stuff and just squeeze it into the electoral count act reform stuff, which Republicans could simply not agree to. So that's, John Lewis Voting Rights Act stuff and just squeeze it into the Electoral Count Act reform stuff, which Republicans could simply not agree to. And that's sort of what we already know is going to happen. So that paragraph's a little confusing. The goal of the latest leftist scheme to change the presidential election rules is to make it harder for Congress to do anything about election fraud in a presidential election. Leftist politicians have committed themselves to opposing all election security measures, including id well blah blah blah uh moreover there is no need for these conversations

to be taking place now more than two years before the issue is pertinent again um i think we might disagree on how soon an election is two years to me is really soon yeah uh you know i started working on a presidential election usually just a couple weeks after a midterm election so like you already have your strategies and you're already touring the country and all of that in like january of the year before anyway um there are major issues that need serious legislative attention from republicans and then it lists things that are in fact important u.s military action ukraine tyrannies inflicted on personal freedoms in the name of covid protocols big tech speech suppression vaccine mandates okay so engaging with democrats on this issue is a pointless exercise, which will

only allow them to further their agenda of completely federalizing elections in America and instituting practices, which will render future faith in elections untenable. All right. First of all, this says conservatives oppose reforming the electoral count act, but I don't see any like actual conservative problems here. I see political complaints, which is Democrats could sort of use this as a Christmas tree to hang on their own amendments having to do with federalizing elections. And that that's a conservative problem. But in terms of actually changing the electoral count act, I just don't really see much, but David, it is signed by, I mean,

so many people that you have heard of. Yeah. American conservative union club for growth, rent Bozell media research center, David Bossy of citizens United tea party, Patriot citizen fund, conservative partnership Institute, Becky Norton Dunlop, Ken Cribb, Ken Blackwell, Ed Meese, Jim DeMint. The list goes on and on, and I can't name everyone. There's a whole lot of people on here. But David, December 10th, 2020. Yeah, I was going to say, I know what's coming next. I know what's coming next. Yes. The same group, not the same signatories I do want to say that There's a good Venn diagram overlap There's some overlap

But way more people signed this Electoral Count Act letter than signed this December 10th letter that I'm going to read But there is overlap I don't even need to read all of it Here's the sentence that matters There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump Is the lawful winner of the presidential election

Joe Biden is not president-elect No doubt, say you? There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect. No doubt, say you? None whatsoever? None. None. It's obvious, Sarah. We've been wrong all this time.

So, Michael Ludig, friend of the pod, as we've discussed him before, former judge on the Fourth Circuit, who was, you know, was him and John Roberts up for that nomination to the Supreme Court before, by the way, it was the chief nomination when it was just associate justice nomination. He wrote a pretty lengthy piece, actually, in the New York Times that was published this morning, the conservative case for avoiding a repeat of January 6th, and just lays it out in such beautiful fashion as to why we all need to agree on the rules ahead of time, why, as we've discussed before, he thinks the Electoral Count Act as it's currently written is unconstitutional, and then what should be done to change it. First, Congress should formally give the federal courts, up to including

the Supreme Court, the power to resolve disputes over state electors and to ensure compliance with the established procedures for selecting presidential electors, and require the judiciary's expeditious resolution of these disputes. Two, Congress should also increase the number of members required both to voice an objection and to sustain one to as high a number as politically palatable. Three, currently Congress has the power under Article 2 and the Necessary and Proper Clause to prevent states from changing the manner by which their electors are appointed after an election. But it has not clearly exercised that authority. It should do so.

Finally, the president's important but largely ministerial role in the joint session where the electoral votes are counted should once and for all be clarified. It's a long piece, and we'll put it in the show notes if you want to read sort of his conservative underpinnings. He takes quite a few shots at Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Fun fact, Ted Cruz clerked for Michael Ludig. So if you want to know the intrigue of that, yeah, that's that's some of the drama there. But look, this actually lays out the conservative case for those changes. You can disagree with them if you'd like but it is at least a case the conservative

action project has no actual philosophical underpinnings aside from you know democrats will hijack this that's not conservatism that's just political points which again i i take their point i think republicans can simply disagree to do those things. But that has nothing to do with reforming the Electoral Count Act. And it makes one wonder, why wouldn't they want to reform the Electoral Count Act when the current vice president, who they think has control over determining who the president is going to be in 2025, is a Democrat? Yeah. It makes no sense to me, David. Is a Democrat. Yeah.

It makes no sense to me, David. And anyway, Ludig's piece is a beautiful refutation of it without ever mentioning it because there's nothing that he can refute that they said because there was nothing in their letter of substance. Yeah. There are still, and I genuinely believe this, more people than you might think believe that the election should have been reversed on January 6th. That there are, and more people than you might think, believe that the election actually was won by Donald Trump. And I'm not talking about, you know, Uncle Bob down the street. And I'm not talking about, you know, Uncle Bob down the street. I'm talking about people who are deep, deep, deep into this conservative, or I even hesitate to use the word conservative, who are very, very much deep into this right-wing activist world. And the deeper you are into it and the more sort of pugilistic you are by reputation and

the more sort of pugilistic you are by your temperament, the more you're a part of all of this. And I think that the bottom line is when people are thinking about reforming the Electoral Count Act, that there are a not insignificant number of folks who believe that they had the strategy, you know, what was it, the Green Bay sweep or whatever, the Bannon strategy that's been talked about, the Eastman memos, the Ellis memos, the Trump plan, whatever. There are significant numbers of people who believe

that they had a strategy that would have worked, that should have worked to reverse the outcome of the election. And they know an electoral count act revision would obliterate any future hope of such a strategy succeeding again. So for what is for you and I is the central feature of reform for them is the central bug of reform.

It is the thing that prohibits a highly, highly engaged, very aggressive activist minority from working its dark magic on the House and Senate to create chaos. And that's why I keep going back and saying, look, when I hear the Ludwig proposals, When I hear the Ludwig proposals, raising that threshold for objection higher and higher and higher, as high as politically palatable, is a great formulation for that. Green Bay sweep is how pleased as punch these guys were that all it took was Gosar on one side and Ted Cruz on the other side, and they were off to the races. And the more we can raise that threshold, the better off we are. And in fact, that reform alone would be a substantial reform, much less some of the other reforms that Ludwig talks about that I think are important in

their own right. But I think the raising of the threshold is just flat out necessary. And three Democrats have come forward with their draft proposal for reforming the Electoral Count Act. But while they are in communication with, they're not really part of the bipartisan group that's still working on their draft. They've broken up into subgroups, by the way, David. Each assigned a different part of reforming the Electoral Count Act. So I'm sitting on pins and needles waiting for that draft to come out because I think that would be the one that has a chance of moving forward. For those who are relatively new to the podcast, we covered extensively a lot of the individual lawsuits in the wake of the 2020 election. Feel free to go back and listen to those. But to summarize.

You know, Trump appointed judges heard a lot of these cases and the pushback on that was, yeah, but they dismissed them for standing. They've chickened out, right? Right, right. No, a lot of them did hear the merits. That one Wisconsin judge in particular had a two-day hearing, heard all of the evidence from the lawyers and said, you got nothing. There is just nothing here. So I'd point you to that one.

And then the other thing worth mentioning is, look, I do see a distinction between people who claim like, you know, there were suitcases full of ballots and the bamboo ballots prove that the Chinese blah, blah, blah. Like that stuff's bonkers town. And as I've written extensively, you cannot steal a statewide election at this point. I have never come up with a way. And I've worked in three presidential campaigns overseeing exactly that question. My job for many, many years was to come up with a way to steal a statewide election. Binders of every state's election rules that I would put together. Anyway, that's all to say, like, I have actual expertise here. Can't be done. to say, like, I have actual expertise here, can't be done. To be clear, your job was to not to steal the election. Sorry. Yeah. I thought that went without saying. To understand how others might

steal it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Obviously, or else I would be really unsuccessful at my job, all of the ones I worked on lost. But I am far more sympathetic to the arguments that in fact, because of the pandemic, voting rules were changed on drop boxes, 24-hour voting, early voting hours changed, and that changing the rules was unlawful under that state's election laws because the person who changed the rules, let's say a local election official, didn't have the authority to do that. I think those are very different claims. They were also litigated and dismissed. But I want to separate out those two because those claims really aren't that Donald Trump won the election. They are that the election itself was sort of fundamentally flawed and you would need to redo

the election um but you can't say like well because the election official changed the rules in violation of state law maybe we throw out all of the votes that were submitted that way that's not how any election lawsuit works. After the fact, you either have to prove that those votes themselves were fraudulent, which in this case, there's no, even I don't think allegation that the votes were fraudulent.

It was real voters casting real votes, but instead of, uh, you know what these previous 2018 rules had been, for instance, that you needed to drop off your ballot to the polling place, your absentee ballot. In this case, they dropped it in a 24-hour mailbox. Well, that doesn't make the vote fraudulent. So you can't throw out that vote.

So it's worth separating those two, because I think when we talk about people who think the 2020 election was stolen, everyone's mind goes to bamboo ballot stuff. And I think far more people are on the, no, it's that they changed the rules. The problem with that is then Donald Trump didn't win the election. What you needed to do was successfully convince a judge that those violated state rules and hold a new election. But you never even convinced any Trump appointed judge that those that those changes had violated state law, let alone get to what the remedy would be. So that's the problem. And that's where the Conservative Action Project letter is particularly without merit, to put it gently.

Yeah. There's a couple of things there. And one I just want to put a pin on is myth one is that none of the substantive claims were adjudicated. False substantive claims of fraud were in fact adjudicated. And some of them were adjudicated in the way that the judge was begging, begging, put up evidence, put up what is your evidence? What is your evidence? And literally nothing came in of any that could even pass the laugh test and then the other thing is this point about the changing of

the rules and we we actually talked about this at some length because the real question was what does it mean if you say that it when the Constitution says that the election of electors is determined or the selection of electors is determined in a manner dictated by the state legislatures, does that mean that it's a broader sort of grant or a sort of a broad, vague grant that says, here's one manner the state legislature decides, here's one manner, the state legislature decides. Here's another manner, the governor decides. Or here's a manner, the people decide. And that's the end of the inquiry? Or is it that the manner is not only the people decide, but they decide according to procedures that are only designated by the state legislature? And that was what was at issue. It was to what extent

could officials other than state legislators adjust the way in which the actual voting occurred. And this was actually, this was adjudicated by Trump appointees in the Seventh Circuit. And they basically took the view that the manner language refers to we're just talking about sort of the big top line is this done by popular a vote in your state is this done by say a governor selecting in the state this is not do we then dive in and see that every particular way in which the popular vote is conducted is determined by state legislatures. Now, that doesn't mean that question is settled because the Supreme Court didn't weigh in on this. The Supreme Court didn't decide that that's what that means. And so I do think that there is definitely some question that is outstanding to the extent to which how much can a secretary of state on

their own authority or a governor on his or her own authority change the location of voting precincts, of drop boxes, increase the number of drop boxes, expand the amount of all of these kinds of various procedural changes. What discretion exists outside the state legislature for those? That's a live issue. That has not been settled. And that's, I think, something that will need to be settled. And the time to bring those kinds of challenges is not well after the changes were announced and after the results are in. That's not the time to do it. There's sort of a reverse Purcell rule when it comes to complaining about election rules after an election. You have to have done it before you

know the results. You don't just get to complain about the rules of the game after you know who won the game. And this is where I think the Ludig proposal is particularly smart, and I hope they read this and include it, which is Congress saying explicitly that a state can't change the manner of choosing electors after they know the results of the election. That seems like an obvious one that we should just go ahead and button that one up. So, and you know, it's funny, David, I agree that it's a live issue, kind of. We do have a problem though in our appellate system, whereas if all circuit courts agree on an answer, that question will almost never go to the Supreme Court. And so you have to have that circuit split for the Supreme Court to really weigh in because

otherwise, why are they going to hear it? Everyone agrees. So it's decided. And then people like us are like, well, I mean, technically the Supreme Court hasn't decided it. And they're like, but every circuit agrees. So I don't know that the Supreme Court will ever get that one. Because while I think it is an interesting question on the manner of election language in the Constitution, I just, when you play it out, you can't really interpret it to apply to state legislators setting individual election rules like drop boxes, things that

are so clearly have to be decided at the local level sometimes. So something has to be decided at the local level. Does the state legislature have to say that only Mary Sue can run the election? Well, no, that person is... you know, anyway. So what's frustrating to me is that some of how our system works in the United States, and I mean all of it, public policy, law, it really is based on this idea of an adversarial system that you have smart people making the best arguments on both sides. And I think part of my frustration is there actually is an argument on the other side that, for instance, that language that you're mentioning on the manner of elections doesn't simply restrict to the Nebraska main, you know, we elect by CD and statewide instead of just by congressional district. That it means something else. Smart people can make that argument. I want to hear them make it.

I'm happy to hear about why having an electoral count act at all is anti-conservative in some way. I mean, to some extent, Ludic has made some version of that, saying the electoral count act itself is unconstitutional. It should simply be decided by the courts.

That, I was like, wow, I really have to chew on this and think about it. Yeah. And we did, we did. There are smart arguments to be made and nobody is making them for the right. And instead they're making no arguments, bad arguments, um, in like insincere. I don't know how else to put it. Like it's so clear that Donald Trump won the election. Joe Biden is not the president-elect. Opportunistic is maybe perhaps a word. Yeah. So anyway, I'm frustrated because I want smart people to make some of these arguments, particularly, for instance, on the manner of elections, and we just haven't actually seen

a great lawyer take up the cause. Yeah. Can I get philosophical for a moment? Sure. I think one of the things that began to happen in conservatism is once the consensus, for a long time, there was a reasonable level of consensus about what conservatism was ideologically reasonable. I mean, lots of dueling arguments within National Review, for example, on foreign policy, on tax policy, but it's sort of a broad definition of what it meant to be a conservative when there was some reasonable consensus on this. There was some reasonable consensus that sort of conservatism, well, at the very least, we're not like, we're not going to be defending people like Bill Clinton, like the Democrats do. I mean,

we're not claiming our politicians are perfect, but there was also building this break in consensus about how to make those arguments. Were you going to be more pugilistic? Were you going to be more aggressive? Were you going to be less compromising? Or were you going to be more compromising? And a lot of this was the origin of the Tea Party versus establishment debate. The argument was that, say, McConnell was too squish. He was willing to just give up too much. But again, a lot of this was on these sort of this ideological and temperamental axis. We allegedly believe generally the same things. We just disagree sort of what's the most effective way to mobilize our voters? What's the most effective way to deal with Democrats in Congress? And you

saw a lot of this flare up over arguments about things like shutdowns. Well, I think what began to happen is that as the ideological consensus began to fracture, what is conservatism began to fracture as certainly sort of this background, um, commitment to character began to fracture. we began to sort of figure out why are we really in this thing and who are we really? And then for an awful lot of people who are sort of on the more pugilistic side of conservatism, it was the pugilism. It wasn't the conservatism. It was the oppositionalism. It wasn't the ideology. And so for an awful lot of folks, you'll look and you'll see on this list of people, and we can put it in the show notes,

in this list of people, you will see some people on that list who are among the most vigilant policemen of ideological boundaries in the entire conservative movement before 2016. The people who brooked no dissent from strict constitutional interpretations, from no dissent from Reaganite conservative ideology. I mean, I have friends like Ramesh and others who tried to advance some reform agenda that was a little bit more aimed towards the working class and all within broad conservative parameters, by the way, and just got smacked around as like, you know, rhinos and compromisers by people. And now many of those same people who were, you know, I remember back in the day when Sean Hannity was on basically his shows,

like one constant rhino hunt for people who are not conservative enough. And then now what you have is many of these exact same people, they're still manning the bulwarks, but it is for a Donald Trump or for a particular populist slash reactionary ideology, if you're going to count it as that. And if you have any memory at all about who these people were and what they stood for, it could be jolting.

If somebody went on a 10-year mission to Mars from 2012 and came back to 2022, they would be shocked. They would be absolutely shocked. And I think that's, I think it's important to point out and it's important for especially younger listeners. I think that a lot of times you think you know who you are. You know sort of like what are the core values? What is it that gets you up in the morning? What is it that fundamentally defines you? And then you find out you don't really know who you are until those values and you're going to be on the outside looking in, an awful lot of people find a way to emphasize other things. And it's just when I look at that list, because I got a memory, I'm the oldest dispatcher. I remember this stuff. It is stunning to see. It is stunning to see where many of them are now. I just remember being mocked. I started in campaigns. I actually started in 2000, but really I started in 2002. And that I looked liberal because I dressed like a liberal and I

had curly brown hair and that I ate tofu, that I liked animals. That made me not conservative. And I was like, wait wait but what does that have to do with anything related to i don't know public policy or the constitution and it did look it just goes to the tribalism point right the tribe changes what the um signals are that you're a member of the tribe and i wasn't a member of the tribe based on how i looked and where i shopped and what i ate even though the tribe wasn't supposed to be about those things. And anyway, when I look back on that, I laugh really hard because I literally ate granola at Whole Foods and that was unacceptable. Yeah. Yeah. There are all kinds of lifestyle. So I remember there's always been lifestyle markers plus ideological markers.

And so what kind of car do you drive? If you're in a Prius, are you really a conservative? All of that kind of stuff. That's always been there. That's always kind of in the background, especially as we've gotten more tribal. But then after a while, you began to realize some of the lifestyle markers began to overtake sort of the underlying fundamental ideology. And then one of the ultimate lifestyle markers became just sort of like reactionary mind itself that the that the the goal of the movement is huge holistically anti-left and so in a weird way the left sort of

defines who you are because whatever they are you're not that whatever they like you don't like whether it's lifestyle whether it's ideology, whatever it is. And to me, that feels like the beating heart of the grassroots right now. I have said this over and over again, but Donald Trump didn't create his voters. They created him. And when history looks back, they will see this as the result of the 2008 financial crisis, the anger, the resentment, you know, that was a, a, uh, a financial crisis that largely affected males in the workforce. And we're seeing the results of that. And we are, you know, fish in the water saying like, what's water. Um, but you know, a few generations from now, I think this will look

a lot clearer to them of how it happened and donald trump will not be the leader of these people he is the result of these people who were left behind by the economy after a whole bunch of people um did some pretty screwed up stuff that caused the economic collapse worldwide they were profiting off of these people and these people are angry about it. And I am sympathetic to why they are angry. I am not sympathetic to how that anger is manifesting, as you said, where the anger is the point. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos. She'll love looking back on your childhood memories and seeing what

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Well, we're going to do a Trump-Durham segment here. So we'll start with Trump. We'll move on to Durham. Interesting report out of the Washington Post, New York Times, many others. And I'll read the very beginning and then I'm going to read the part that is most intriguing to me. OK, some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to Mar-a-Lago residents were clearly marked as classified, including documents at the top secret level, according to two people familiar with the matter. The existence of clearly marked classified documents in the trove,

which has not previously been reported, is likely to intensify the legal pressure that Trump or his staffers could face and raise new questions about why the materials were taken out of the White House. Okay. Sounds kind of bad. Okay. Sounds kind of bad. So. Sounds kind of bad. So I want to keep on reading

because there's some interesting questions that I have in my mind. And both Sarah and I have handled classified documents in different circumstances. So I was really eager to ask Sarah about this. But one of the things that was in my mind was, well, you know, Trump, who has a security clearance, he can see anything he wants to see. He can declassify what he wants to declassify.

I mean, he kind of has an almost monarchical, while he's president, control over classified information. If he's spending a bunch of time in Mar-a-Lago when he was president, and he was, and he had to have classified documents and he had to have access to classified documents when he was in Mar-a-Lago, one of the questions that I wondered was, huh, where were those documents when discovered at Mar-a-Lago, often known as a SCIF or a sensitive compartmented information facility. Didn't there have to be a place in Mar-a-Lago where he could safely view classified documents? Because the rule is not that if I have a security clearance, I get to run around holding on to classified stuff. Like I can't have a thumb drive. Let's back in the days of thumb drives. I, you know, when I was in Iraq, we had a, I had a classified thumb drive and a non classified thumb drive and that classified thumb drive. I had to take good care of that information. And it's not something that I could just go ahead. And when I went on leave, jump on a plane and fly to the United States and see my family with my classified thumb drive and just say, you know, I'm taking care of that. I'm not going to let anybody see it. You can trust me. Classified information is supposed to be reviewed, not just controlled who views it, but where it is viewed. And so on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, if you're going to view classified

information, you have to often go to a place called a sensitive compartmented information facility. Shorthand term for that is a SCIF. Okay. So one of the questions I had was, huh, if there's classified stuff at Mar-a-Lago, it's one thing if it's hanging out in Trump's suite. It's one thing when he's not president. It's one thing if it's hanging out in some file cabinets and some business offices. It's a whole other thing if it's still in a skiff. If it's still in a skiff, maybe it shouldn't be there. But as far as a practical problem, it's much lower. And then I read these two paragraphs and I asked my scholar of skiffology, Sarah, to interpret them. And so here are the two paragraphs. The markings were

discovered by the National Archives, the secret markings, which last month arranged for the collection of 15 boxes of document from the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence. Archives officials asked the Justice Department to look into the matter, though as of Thursday afternoon, FBI agents had yet to review the materials. It remained unclear whether the Justice Department would launch a full-fledged investigation. The files were being stored in a sensitive compartmentalized, the files were being stored in a sensitive compartmented information facility, also known as a SCIF, while Justice Department officials debated how to proceed, the two people familiar with the matter said. Okay, that seems to me to say that the files are right now in a SCIF.

seems to me to say that the files are right now in a skiff. It doesn't seem to say that they were taken from the Mar-a-Lago skiff. And what I really want to know is, were they taken from the Mar-a-Lago skiff or were they elsewhere? Because doesn't that change the complexion of this whole thing, Sarah? Yeah. So just to read that sentence again, the files were being stored in a skiff while justice department officials debated how to proceed. So bad verb choice, right? I think this is actually just a mistaken verb choice by the Washington Post. The files are being stored in a skiff while the department decides how to proceed. Why do I think it's actually an R? Because they've already taken the 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago. Therefore, if justice departments are currently debating while justice departments officials debate how to proceed, that implies that it's where

they are currently being stored. We know they're not in Mar-a-Lago. Therefore, the skiff refers to the, uh, the department of justice has several skiffs in it, as you might imagine, many, many. So that's where I think they are. Now, though, it is worth mentioning Mar-a-Lago does have a skiff. And when President Trump was president and he would go to Mar-a-Lago, he could be briefed and read a classified material that could then be kept in that skiff. And so it would not shock me to find out that when he stopped being president, nobody bothered to go clean out the skiff and bring all of that back to DC. So it's not that it's never made sense, right? That the president upon leaving the white house packed his jet with 15 boxes of random documents, brought them to Mar-a-Lago so that he could secret them

away. And then those tricksy people at the National Archives figured it out. And he was like, oh yeah, my bad, take them. No, here's what actually makes sense. And I don't understand why no one has written this as a more likely hypothesis. This was all the stuff he kept at Mar-a-Lago. When he stopped being president, he and nobody else thought to call someone and say, hey, we still have all these documents from December, January, November of 2020 when he was president. Someone needs to come pick them up. Some of them, by the way, are sitting in the Mar-a-Lago skiff. Presidents maintained their security clearance after being president, which shouldn't surprise anyone. While that is poor housekeeping to me, it is not anywhere near the, for instance, ripping up documents and putting them in the

toilet to try to flush them. Right. That is also alleged. try to flush them. Right. That is also alleged. That is alleged. And that is clearly a violation of the Records Act. But this is not. And if anything, like the problem would almost potentially be with the National Archives. You know that the president had a skiff at Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago. It was someone's job to say, hey, have we gone and gotten all the documents from the two other places that the president conducted business? It wasn't the president's job. I'll tell you that. It was someone's job. And so that's my best guess of what happened. And that actually, for as much as this is turning into a to-do and an investigation, that in fact,

the investigation is going to be, why didn't anyone go get these documents in the first place? Why was it up to the people at Mar-a-Lago to say, hey, we have all these boxes hanging around. Is anyone coming to get these a year later? Yeah, that's my read as well, although I'm not leaving it to me. If somebody is as sloppy with documents as some of the other allegations are have been made, I mean, tearing things up, putting them in the toilet, taking them up to the White House. You know, all of these various ways in which Trump is has been at least alleged to have mishandled documents. has been at least alleged to have mishandled documents. It wouldn't shock me if some stuff was sitting around outside of a skiff. Wouldn't shock me at all.

No, that's fair. And I don't mean to say that I'm certain this is. It's an alternate hypothesis of how this all came about that nobody seems to be even acknowledging the possibility of. I think there's a middle hypothesis that is somewhere in between the two, which is, yep, nobody bothered to collect all the stuff from Mar-a-Lago and also the stuff wasn't being properly stored in the skiff. But it wasn't, again, taken from the White House onto the plane, brought to Mar-a-Lago so that he could secret it away. That seems less likely to me. Finding secret documents in a skiff that maybe should have been in a different skiff is a low order scandal compared to having secret documents outside of a classified environment, which is one of the reasons why a lot of the stuff about I saw online about but her emails about comparing that the Hillary Clinton emails, which the secret information in those emails was not in a secure location.

They were not in a skiff. They were in a civilian server. If the whole scandal with Hillary was that documents or BlackBerrys or whatever back in the BlackBerry era were in the wrong skiff or on the wrong classified server. That is a whatever compared to having secret documents on an unclassified server. So that's why I think that I feel like I read these stories and they just didn't tell me much that really mattered.

And they just didn't tell me much that really mattered. Because if you know there's a skiff at Mar-a-Lago, and they're all there, well then, I mean, it's barely even a news story. You just safely and securely transport them from one secure location to another secure location. But if they're somewhere else, then heck yeah, we got to look into that. Absolutely got to look into that. So I just wanted to highlight that for our listeners, because they may not have any sort of sense of how these documents are handled and why the location of the documents, Mar-a-Lago versus D.C., is a whole lot less relevant than Skiff versus not Skiff.

Yeah, let me just say on the flushing documents down the toilet, only a man would ever flush documents down the toilet because a woman would already know what clogs a toilet and would have a much greater understanding of how plumbing works. And I just find it to be this like amazing gender difference that a man thinks you can rip up papers and flush them down a toilet when like, not to get too graphic with you, David, but I mean, plastered in any restroom, any public restroom, hell, private restrooms, in any women's restroom, it will tell you exactly what not to

flush down a toilet because we have things in bathrooms that can go down toilets and things that can't go down toilets or in some toilets, but not other toilets. And it would be the nightmare in 17 magazine, why me level late nineties, if certain things clogged the toilet and you had to call someone to please come unclog your toilet. So again, the fact that the White House toilets, this was according to a couple of sources that have been, it was in Maggie Haberman's book tease. Another reporter then confirmed it, though again, confirming could mean talking to the exact same sources. And so that's why I'm always a little hesitant to deal in anonymous sources, because it can be the same two people. And so just because someone

confirms it doesn't mean you now have four people, still maybe two people. Anyway, it was confirmed, at least, that those same sources, if nothing else, had said it to another reporter. But yeah, the White House toilets got clogged. And when they went to unclog it, they found ripped up papers and that due to the toilet involved and the papers involved, they believe could only have been ripped up and placed in the toilet and flushed by one POTUS. Somewhere in very cold Russia, Vladimir Putin is saying, if we'd only thought to turn a plumber. Yeah. The things we could know. Look, the plum like think watergate this is a popular popular thing to do plug the leaks uh all right david durham durham durham now this is something that um durham filed john durham filed a who for listeners who don't remember john dur Durham is investigating the investigation, for lack of a better phrase, he's investigating the Trump-Russia investigation.

Was there misconduct in the course of that investigation? And he filed a document, and it was kind of an interesting document, a little bit curious. Sarah has read it. And Sarah, you have thoughts. Yeah, so this is interesting for a few reasons. Now, again, full disclaimer here. I worked at the Department of Justice during the Russia investigation done by Special Counsel Mueller. Very much was part of that. So you should know that before I

talk about this. This was an unusual document for a lot of reasons. So first of all, it is actually that the Durham team is flagging that they believe that a defendant who they've indicted, who's a lawyer, needs to sign a disclaimer about potential conflicts with the attorneys representing him. And so they're filing this to say, hey, we think there's a conflict of interest. We're fine if the defendant wants to waive that conflict, but we can't continue until we believe he has adequate counsel constitutionally mandated at this point. And let us lay out some of those potential conflicts. So the law firm in question is Latham and Watkins, the one representing the lawyer. And Latham and Watkins, for instance,

represented this lawyer and his law firm during the special counsel investigation. Well, this lawyer is no longer at his law firm. And so there could be a conflict if Latham still represents the law firm as well as now this lawyer about things that they said the special counsel that are now under investigation. They list other potential conflicts. other potential conflicts. The law firm's representation, again, not Latham, but the law firm that Latham represents, they represented the Clinton campaign and other political organizations. And Latham represented the lawyer in his congressional testimony. Now, if he is going to claim, for instance, that he didn't have adequate representation or there was malpractice when

he testified, that would be a conflict for Latham. So anyway, that's the point of this filing. What's strange about it, David, is in the factual summary, there's a whole bunch of new stuff that honestly, to me, isn't necessary to talk about any of these conflict issues, but nevertheless includes new stuff for the rest of us. So basically the allegation in the, in the factual stuff on the top of this conflict of interest motion involve that the lawyer worked with a tech executive and that tech executive used his access through his tech firm to get access to the servers at Trump Tower. That tech company also somehow works on the servers at the White House, and that the lawyer and the tech executive decided to concoct an allegation that those servers were unusually pinging Russian IP addresses, sort of creating a smoke situation

of like, hmm, why are the Trump Tower servers having all this communication with Russian servers? This must mean that the president or president-elect or candidate at that point was having inappropriate conversations with the Russians during his time as a candidate. And in this factual allegations as laid forth that they say they would prove at trial, it says that the tech executive knew that there were 3 million such pings from United States servers and fewer than a thousand of those came from Trump Tower, that they were in fact very common, that the Trump Tower pings actually went back to 2014, not related to when he was, you know, only related to when he was a

candidate, that they knew all this, didn't disclose any of it when they turned it over to the FBI. And that is a problem. But David, again, I don't know why it's in this filing, except to make news, because it's not needed to get to the conflict of interest. Two, the tech executive in question hasn't been indicted. And that I find odd to make these allegations, but not have them in an indictment, but instead have them in this conflict of interest thing. And again, thinking back to the special counsel, uh, you know, when there were indictments they were wholly inclusive if you will yeah uh you know 12 russian intelligence officers and here's everything that we know that they did uh and then if it

wasn't in the indictment you had to wait for the report yeah and what's strange about this is we're still waiting for the durham report but then there's stuff in here that isn't involved in an indictment with this tech executive. And so that's all to say, I don't know what to make of it. The conflict of interest thing is important to me. I actually think that is like spot on. It seems to me that the client needs to waive that conflict if he wants to continue being represented by Latham. You know, there was some public speculation that this case was kind of falling apart against the lawyer. And so maybe including these new factual allegations in this conflict of

interest, uh, motion was a way to shore that up publicly. I find it strange. I find it very strange. Yeah, it is. It is strange.

It revealed troubling facts. It are troubling allegations. Let, let me put it is strange. It revealed troubling facts or troubling allegations. Let me put it that way. Troubling allegations without the broader context of an indictment. And so you sort of feel like it almost felt like this filing was saying stay tuned. It was sort of a stay tuned filing, but I don't know. All I know is I'm staying tuned. Yeah, I mean, look, this is bad. It's not that different than what we've seen before. Basically, this lawyer was trying to get the FBI to investigate Donald Trump's campaign, according to John Durham

and according to the indictment we've already seen. This doesn't have a new theory or a new narrative given that narrative. It's a different though scenario from the narrative we were given in the first indictment. Sorry, the facts, the allegations we were given in the first indictment's narrative.

But this would still fall under the, hey, let's get the FBI to investigate our rival and then say our rival is under FBI investigation. That's the narrative. This is more like a second case to fall under that narrative. But again, super weird. It's not in any indictment. Super weird that the tech executive in question who is clearly part and parcel here, using his employment to gain access for these purposes? No indictment? Hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting.

And I keep having sort of this kind of deja vu to Mueller, except with a lot less information, this kind of wait for the report, wait for the report mantra. But with Mueller, you're getting these indictments one after the other, after the other, to the point where even if you had carefully read all the indictments, by the time you got to the Mueller report, at least on the side of the report that was the Russian interference slash collusion side, you kind of had a pretty good sense of what was going on. The obstruction side had a lot of brand new revelations that we had not seen at all. But on the Russia side of that investigation,

the indictments were complete enough and told a narrative that was complete enough that you started to get a feeling. And I remember writing something several months before that said, look, this Steele narrative, the Steele dossier narrative that essentially Trump is fundamentally under the Russian thumb with the story of the meeting in Prague and all of this like cloak and dagger stuff. It just wasn't being borne out by anything. I mean, it wasn't being borne out by all of the investigative journalists looking into it. It wasn't being borne out by the indictment so far, but something else like this sort of like super amateurish, amateurish Keystone cops operation of trying to find negative information on Hillary wherever they could find it, whether it's trying to get a jump on WikiLeaks or meeting some people in

Trump Tower or, you know, and then this kind of weird Manafort relationship out there with a suspected Russian agent, like all of that stuff was known and a lot less, though malignant in intent, a lot less than a Steele dossier, sophisticated, our presidential candidate is all but turned, between a James Bond movie and an Austin Powers movie. And Team Trump was the Austin Powers, Dr. Evil team, not the James Bond villain team. And that was really sort of borne out as the disclosures kept coming from the Mueller team. But this with Durham, you kind of feel like you're getting a narrative of some actors in the larger Clinton orbit trying to coax an FBI investigation, as you just said. But we're just waiting on a lot more specifics. All right, David, last bit here on updates on the Olympic doping scandal hitting figure skating. on updates on the Olympic doping scandal hitting figure skating.

So we have a ruling, an interim ruling of sorts, in which, yeah, the Russian skater's going to get to compete. The World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee, and the International Skating Union on Monday were digging in for the long haul

in the Russian Kamila Valieva's doping case. So the Court of Administration for Sport cleared her to continue competing until they sort of are able to work the rest of this out. So think of this like a stay application. This is the shadow docket of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as best I can tell. They actually look at some of the same factors that our courts consider in stay application. This is the shadow docket of the court of arbitration for sport, as best I can tell. They actually look at some of the same factors that our courts consider in stay applications, the potential harm, the irreparable harm to the plaintiff, in this case, the skater. And yeah, if she can't compete now and then is later cleared, well, that would be irreparable harm because she then didn't get to compete in the Olympics. So what they've decided, which is a messy, messy outcome, I have to say, is that she will get to compete.

But the Olympic Committee has said that they will not award medals at all if she finishes in the top three. So for the team skate competition that already happened, that medal ceremony was delayed. It is not going to happen now. And for the individual skating, they're all going to compete. If she finishes in the top three, which frankly, she's expected to finish number one, they simply won't award medals. The idea being that then they don't have to take back medals. They'll just award the medals later after this case is concluded. What a total mess. But there's the part that I just don't understand the court of arbitration for sport is upholding an earlier decision by the russian anti-doping agency that lifted the ban on

valieva competing so wait a second the russians saw that their own athlete had a positive doping test and a day later decided that she was good to compete i'm shocked to find gambling in this institution and so i looked up i was like wait am i missing like the russian anti-doping agency is actually something else like it's just called that but it's not run by the russians no no this is fact, the exact organization that is why the Russians aren't competing under the Russian flag or with the Russian national anthem, because they are part of the state doping problem that worked to create state directed fail safe system to disappear positive tests. This was part of the McLaren report from 2016. And so they were in response to these findings that Roussouda, the Russian anti-doping thing, should be regarded as non-compliant with respect to the World Anti-Doping Code and recommended that Russian athletes be banned from competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics in 2018. That was kept in place.

They remained suspended until the program moved towards full compliance. But wait a second. This is the same group that decided she was good to compete and that was upheld? I have some questions about that. But I'm not surprised with the stay issue on the irreparable harm prong which is so obvious here also though we got an email from another expert this time a medical

expert on what exactly this drug that was found in her system yes that was a great email does and he tried to he put it in medical terms and then he put it into lay terms and frankly the medical terms make no real sense to me but I'm going to read anyway, because they'll make sense to some of you. Trimedazine is a drug classified as a partial fatty acid oxidation inhibitor. It inhibits an

enzyme used to metabolize fatty acids, and by doing so, increases the metabolism of glucose by heart muscles. Okay, that's the part that I don't particularly understand, but here's the part that I do. To put it very simply, it basically provides a sugar high for the heart. This is not FDA approved in the United States. Possible side effects include Parkinson's disease-like syndrome.

He says definitely something he would not recommend to be given to 15 year old girls. So for those asking, like, would this actually help her compete? Clearly, yes. If it's getting your heart pumping in what sounds to me like, you know, a Viagra like way. Wow. And what a mess. And so the other question has been like, okay, but she, this is from a December sample. And so why is she being punished for something that they didn't process the Stockholm? I believe the lab is in Stockholm. Well, it turns out that was also the Russian. So the Russian anti-doping agency forgot to flag the sample as basically needing to be

expedited because it was an Olympic athlete. And so the sample just got processed now. Oh, look at that. I mean, look, it could have actually been processed after the Olympics, David. That was clearly the plan, I would assume. They at least got the team competition out of the way. So this looks really bad for the Russians all the way down. And honestly, it looks bad for the Olympics. The fact that they haven't been able to properly punish a country that is unshamed by doping their athletes, including a 15 year old girl who, as I said, was the first to complete a quad, a first woman to complete a quad at the Olympics. That's really upsetting to me. This is a big deal for women and now it's tarnished and now it'll be the first one to complete a quad at the olympics who isn't doping or you know like it's just it

it messes the whole thing up the russians clearly are going to continue doing this they shouldn't be competing at the olympics flag or no flag if and by the way like i just watched the russians win one of the cross country skiing competitions. If she's doping, if they're giving a 15 year old girl heart medication, you think that maybe they might be doping some of their athletes who are still testing clean and you're just not finding it? You think all of their athletes should be disqualified. All of these medals should be taken away. The country, the government is doing this. And there have to be consequences or else there are no consequences, in which case every country should get to drug up their athletes. Although,

again, I would not suggest giving your 15-year-old daughter these medications. But fine. If there's going to be rules, enforce the rules. If there's not going to be rules, say there's not going to be rules. But this, it looks terrible for the Russians, obviously, but there's going to be rules, enforce the rules. If there's not going to be rules, say there's not going to be rules. But this, it looks terrible for the Russians, obviously, but that's not surprising. But it's bad for the Olympics, and it's really bad for figure skating, one of the premier sports of the Winter Olympics, if not the premier sport. Well, and there's another, I mean, one thing that just I think is worth underlining. I came across this tweet from Rachel Denhollander. For those who don't know, Rachel Denhollander is a person who broke the Larry Nassar. She was the one who stood up and

really got the ball rolling on breaking the story of the Larry Nassar systematic abuse of young American gymnasts. And she tweeted out a picture of this figure skater just weeping by the side of the ice. And here's what Rachel said. This precious child will carry with her forever what these adults did to her. And the only place she has to turn for help still are the ones who did it. She's 15. You cannot imagine the reorienting of reality she has lived under and will and still lives under so much trauma.

They're doing this to a 15-year-old. That's one year older than my youngest. That's one year older than Naomi. And they're doing this to her under the glare of the international spotlight. The damage to this person, to this girl, is just incalculable. It's just incalculable and and it is heartbreaking to see it happen why are the russians competing um as you said in that as you you know walking walking through just even some of the history it it makes a mockery of the integrity of the games

just makes a mockery of it well this is the is the same Olympic committee, by the way, who was okay with holding the Olympics in China and is seems I mean, all of these international, I mean, FIFA, the International Olympic Committee, there's a lot of problems that have been exposed of late. And look, the argument was, yeah, but it's not the athlete's fault that the Russian government is doing this to them. I hear you. It's not. I don't think it's her fault. She's 15 years old. She couldn't consent if she wanted to, but I don't know what else to do because if we don't ban their athletes and just

say, yeah, but it's not under their flag. Clearly the Russian government doesn't see the distinction and claims these medals for themselves anyway. And so we've got to ban the athletes. And I'm sorry that it will affect people who are innocent in all this and who are incredibly talented at their sport, but we're out of other options because their government, like the lesser punishment was not sufficient. Yep. Yeah. It's, it's a very, very sad, um, when it applies to a 15 year old girl and it's extraordinarily outrageous and disqualifying when it applies to a 15 year old girl and it's extraordinarily outrageous and disqualifying when it applies to a nation that is purporting to participate in international competition. But,

um, again, I love the Olympics. I love the winter Olympics. It's just, ah, this is just so bad anyway. Well,

we had, speaking of so bad, we're going to talk about an 11th Circuit case. We'll table it. I've read the whole thing and it's got more layers than I first thought, Sarah. I'm excited. It's got more layers. Yeah. Yeah. We're also getting a lot more questions about law school, applying, what to do to get ready to go to law school, how you can get your applications better. We've got a lot more

of those questions recently. So maybe next Thursday, we'll do some law school talk. Oh, yeah. Good idea. Good idea. All right. Well, we've already got material for Thursday. So definitely tune in. Please rate us on Apple Podcasts.

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