Advisory Opinions - The Alito Burn Book

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Justice Samuel "Spicy" Alito returns to the pages of The Wall St. Journal with a flaming-hot interview and Sarah and David are here to unpack it. (And we all thought this is going to be a short pod!) Plus: -The rise of judicial voters -Why flying United is bad (according to Hugh Hewitt) -Who's paying for Trump's legal fees? Show Notes: -Alito's interview in the Wall Street Journal -Original Jurisdiction with David Lat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Sarah Isger and this is David French. And David, we're not quite in August, but we're almost there. And because we had the sort of emergency special podcast on Friday, we're going to do a little bit abbreviated today. Fair? Yes. Okay. So we're going to talk about Samuel Alito's interview with the Wall Street Journal. A lot of people have feelings about Congress's power over the Supreme Court. They have none.

They have total. Which is it? We'll solve it today. Also reported that the super PAC supporting Donald Trump has spent $40 million in legal fees. They are now starting a separate legal defense fund. Is this legal? Why? Why not? We'll talk about that too. But first, following up on a fun story from last week, remember the, has the Supreme Court fixed qualified immunity yet.com. And I was like, wow, who is this person who listened to the podcast immediately? That website was gone within an hour of the posting that morning. And the answer

is actually a little bit sad and a little bit wonderful. And I wanted to share it with our listeners, David. Yes, please do. And it is both wonderful and sad. So yeah, please go ahead. So this listener was listening to the podcast as soon as it posted because he's sitting in a children's hospital with his beautiful, wonderful daughter, Beatrice. And Beatrice, frankly, could use all of our prayers, thoughts, feelings, just a moment of a power of a whole lot of people who listen to this podcast giving their thoughts to her because she is going to undergo her second brain surgery this week. She is only just a few months old and they sent us a picture and she really is like this, like Gerber baby of a little girl. So cute. She's smiling of course, with her little oxygen tube and everything.

So Beatrice, uh, you know, suffers from, uh, epilepsy. She's going into her second surgery and they're just really hoping that it'll be successful that her brain can develop normally without epilepsy medication. And this will just, as he said, ultimately just go down as the craziest summer her parents ever had. Yes, we absolutely are on your team, Eric and Beatrice and Beatrice's mom, who must be going out of her mind. I can't even imagine. And to the extent you're listening to this podcast, sitting in the children's hospital, thank you for registering this amazing website.

Yeah. Thank you for taking a moment of your time to register this amazing website. And God bless little Beatrice. She is beautiful. That smile in the picture just breaks my heart. I mean, I'm looking at a four-month-old at our house, our little grandson every day. And oh, my gosh, they're exactly the same age.

Beatrice is four months old. Yeah, it's so, you know, you recognize that smile and that stage of development. And it's just heartbreaking. And we're praying and we're rooting for Beatrice to just to make this the craziest summer her parents ever had and that she goes on and lives a joyful, happy, healthy life this day forward. And we just really are appreciative of doing something a little bit fun for us in the middle of all of that. What? That's really amazing. And very thankful for you listening, for Eric and his wife listening to this podcast, and very thankful for our Advisory Opinions community, which we know is made up of some really remarkable people,

including many, many people who will definitely pray for Beatrice, and we would appreciate that. In other news, on the power of this AO audience that I know will now come together, many, many people who will definitely pray for Beatrice, and we would appreciate that. In other news, on the power of this AO audience that I know will now come together to send their well wishes to Beatrice, you know our Doors episode, David? Yes. Where nobody believed. Judge Thapar doubted that we could make an hour on two doors amazing. Yeah. Well, I am told reliably that FedSoc chapters throughout the

country are scrambling to have their own event with Judge Eskridge about the doors before this thing has even been published. So we're just selling out auditoriums. Selling out law school auditoriums for door conversations from coast to coast, thereby signaling that, yes, we and our wonderful listeners are hopeless nerds. I mean, wow, guys. No, I love it. No, you meant that wow in the best sense of the word, wow. I meant it in all the senses, actually. the best sense of the word. Wow. I meant it in all the senses, actually. Let's see. Another update. The name game over here in House Keller is it's progressing. Basically, every day, a husband of the pod asked me what we're naming this kid. Yesterday, I suggested pain as I just like literally looked around our room and he was like, P-A-I-N. And I was like,

no, no, P-A-N-E, thinking maybe that would change his mind. It did not. So the search continues. Lampshade was struck down immediately. You know, I'm just stricken that apparently Aragorn is just off the table. It really is. It's just off the table. I'm waiting for someone to go to make the plunge. You know, when our oldest, before our oldest was born, I threw in an argument for Arwen and it went nowhere. But Camille's a beautiful name. So I have no regrets on saying no to Arwen.

But somebody's got to make the Lord of the Rings plunge at some point it's got to happen it's getting pretty bad so we just finished the bear season one and all I'm doing at the end credits is looking at all the names oh maybe no no cousin cousin nobody's calls nobody calls his name their kid cousin

honestly bear would be closer to what we would name this kid. Yeah. Oh, I like that. Yeah, Bear's a good one. That's got some potential. Okay. All right, David. Justice Samuel Alito gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal, actually sort of in chunks here. It's come out this week, but the interviews start back in April. Then he has that op-ed he published in response to pro-publica piece. Then he does another sit down with them. And we have this relatively long news article that comes out from the Wall Street Journal. Before we get to the Congress versus

the Supreme Court part of the argument, there's other parts in here that are fascinating and really interesting. So for instance, he's talking about the differences between the six conservative justices. First of all, he acknowledges there are very serious differences. Yeah. He says, Justice Thomas gives less weight

to stare decisis than a lot of other justices. It is in its way a virtue of his jurisprudence. He sticks to his guns. That's nice. But then, talking about Justice Gorsuch, this is the Wall Street Journal writing, Justice Gorsuch has an ornery streak that has shown itself in cases involving Indian law, crime, and discrimination. Now quoting Justice Alito,

He's definitely not a consequentialist, Justice Alito says of his colleagues, meaning he is less concerned with the real-world effects of following his principles. That's a great term for my institutionalism, David, and one that probably I should have been able to come up with myself, but didn't. But yes, consequentialism is part of that Y-axis institutionalism that I've tried to use to describe why you can't simply predict the outcome of cases along that horizontal conservative to liberal ideological line, because Gorsuch is not less conservative or more conservative than many of his other colleagues, meaning something else needs to explain it. He's always my best example, because you have the Indian law cases, but you have Ramos on the unanimous jury verdict in criminal cases

that this piece points out as well. Okay. Chief Justice Roberts. I mean, he's just, it's like the Alito burn book. Yeah. He's going at it, man. Chief Justice Roberts quote, he puts a high premium on consensus. He rarely dissents. I mean, he rarely has to dissent, one might note. He also has expressed a very strong tendency to protect the prerogatives of the judiciary. I feel like he's describing my thesis here. Yeah, I just finished a draft piece for The Times and I'm like, dude, you just said it. You're just saying it all. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. Here's a part I kind of disagree with, though. He says on the liberal side of the court,

by contrast, quote, I don't see that there's a difference in interpretive method. But he adds, we don't always line up six, three, five, four, the way some people tend to think. If you look at all the cases, there are cases where the lineup is unusual. I think that actually is just incorrect. Maybe he means he doesn't see a difference in the interpretive method because they all have different interpretive or he doesn't see an interpretive method. Maybe like, I don't know whether that's like a little more side eye than I'm reading it, but the idea that they all have the same interpretive method, again, you run into the same problem where in, okay, if they all have the same interpretive method, then you would assume and expect to see them on the same side of cases

all the time on all the cases really. And especially this term, of course, uh, we didn't, it was fewer than a quarter of the cases that the three liberal justices were on the same side of the non-unanimous opinions. I'm not counting unanimous ones. So clearly, again, there's something else explaining why in 76 percent of the non-unanimous cases, the three liberal justices aren't on the same side. So I disagree with that one. Yeah, I disagree with that as well. And I think with that one. the four liberal justices sitting together on the most controversial cases. I see why you say this, okay, but he's got the bigger view. And the other thing that's really interesting to me

is there's sort of an idea that comes across that when the liberal justices join the majority, when the liberal justices join the majority, it's weird how they kind of get a pass in a way. And tell me if you think this is totally off base, Sarah. I do not sense that the left goes after, say, a Justice Kagan in the way that the right goes after a Justice Roberts or Kavanaugh or Gorsuch, when Kagan joins with the conservative justices on religious liberty, as she has many times. And that has always been a masterpiece cake shop, very hot button case. Kagan was with the conservative majority, Trinity Lutheran, this was the first case ever,

well, in a very, very long time. I don't want to say ever, but in a very long time involving direct transfer payments from the state to a church, to an actual church, in this case, Trinity Lutheran. And she was in that majority. And it's really interesting. Fulton County. The Philadelphia adoption, Catholic Charities adoption case, Kagan's with the majority. Exactly. Well, that was unanimous.

And you have these situations where the Title VII case, DeGroff, again, that was unanimous. And you don't see it. Maybe I'm missing it. And listeners, please tell me if I'm missing it. But I've not seen the thunderous denunciations of Justice Kagan for siding with conservatives that I have seen, for example, against many of the conservatives when they side with the liberal justices. declared the conservative legal movement of failure a little overwrought. And we've seen that kind of withering critique before, and I don't see it as much. Am I wrong or am I missing it? What do you think, Sarah? I think there's a couple things that would nuance that. One is

oftentimes they're not denouncing her because they actually just ignore the fact that she's in the majority they denounce the opinion as MAGA extremism and that's how you end up with me shaking my head on this podcast being like I don't understand though your own people so like why denounce your side when you can just pretend it didn't happen? So there's a little bit more of that, I think, coming from the left. There's also, I think, a different sense of, quote unquote, betrayal on the right because it has been a longer term project. There's more specific litmus test is almost the wrong word. Well, it's the after the overhang of the Casey case. I think also overhang of Kennedy

as a swing justice. Yeah. Right. They haven't felt nearly the suitor O'Connor, Kennedy, and I'm doing those in sort of descending order, of course. The drift,

there have been a few drifters that have gone from the left to the right, but they're much, they're way, way in the past at this point. Right. Right. 40 plus years ago, there were some left to right drifters. Uh, and so I don't know that because there's not a sort of federalist society equivalent on the left. And I think there's all sorts of reasons for that. I crack up laughing every time someone on the left is like, we just need our own federalist society. No, no, no. You've tried many times. The problem is you don't need a Federalist Society when all the

professors are your Federalist Society. Yeah. When it's called law school. So it's, again, plenty, bagillions of dollars have been poured into the American Constitution Society. And it's hard to make fetch happen when there's not a need for fetch. Sorry, mean girls reference. But because of that, then I think that there's not a need for fetch. Sorry, mean girls reference. But because of that, then I think that there's not the like knee jerk sense of betrayal. I wonder if that will change now that there's so much more focus on the Supreme Court and particularly as the left tries to create court voters, that there will be more pressure then in a way that there hasn't been because really it's only the right that has court voters. So why freak out about it if you don't have voters that

are willing to vote on that specific issue? Yeah. No, that's a good point. I mean, I do think that the court voter phenomenon will be rising on the left. I think it'll be a factor in 2024 that will be used to rally wavering voters who are really, really, really concerned about Biden's age. So, you know, it'll be it'll start to function the same. The but Gorsuch vote from 2016. In 2016, there were all sorts of Republicans who didn't like Donald Trump, didn't want to vote for him. And at the you know, in the run up, of course, Gorsuch, you didn't know he was going to be the nominee. We have since named them but Gorsuch voters, meaning they don't like any of it.

They're scared about all of it. But the judges and they're not willing to vote for Hillary Clinton because of the judges and they justify their vote. And I don't mean that as a derogatory term. They look back and say it was totally worth it because we got Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. I think that same thing can happen on the left. Like, yeah, we don't like Joe Biden. We don't think he's liberal enough.

We don't think he's progressive enough. We're concerned about his age, all of this stuff, but the court. Yeah, no. And they will find the power of that argument with waivers because the thing about the growth of the power of the presidency and the growth of the power of the court at the expense of Congress is that in many ways you start to feel like, oh, two branches of government are at stake here in this one vote. are extremely activist and aware, but would also tend to have qualms. Because there's a lot of people who have no qualms. And if we have some time, we might talk about this a little bit more.

There was a Time Siena poll that came out and it had this, that shows Trump in just an absolute dominant position in the GOP primary, of course. And it had this sentence, which I thought was a really good sentence, or these couple of sentences. The MAGA base, and they define this as about 37% of the Republican Party, doesn't support Trump in spite of his flaws.

It supports him because it doesn't seem to believe he has flaws. And that's a really, because there's always been this argument, do people support him in spite of his flaws or because of his flaws? What about if you'd believe he's flawless? So let's set aside those voters for a minute. There's a large number of voters who are able to see their candidate with clearer eyes and would begin to waver, would begin to worry. And then the judge's argument is one of those arguments for, in many ways, more highly informed voters to kind of reel in the doubters, reel in the doubters. And I don't think the Democrats really need that in 2024, but it's certainly's certainly if you, if by some way,

it wasn't a Trump who was going to be nominated. Um, DeSantis, for example, has said, I'm not going to appoint or nominate, uh, anyone like Barrett, uh, Kavanaugh in Gorsuch. And you better believe that would be used against him by the Democrats on the campaign trail, that he only wants Alito and Thomas style justices, and that would be used against him. But yeah, so I think you're exactly right. We're about to see the rise of the judicial voter on the left in the way that we have seen it for years on the right. Don't you think it's weird that we host a legal podcast, but neither of us are judicial voters? Yeah, no, that is, that's weird. Yeah. I would say in normal circumstances,

I do think about judges in, in normal circumstances, but when you've got a Donald Trump hovering out there, all of a sudden, those are not, in my view, it's not a normal circumstance. I mean, look, you can define it however you want. You're not a butt Gorsuch voter. True. Yeah, absolutely. 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 you're up to today. Even better, with unlimited storage and an easy to use app, you can keep updating mom's frame with new photos. So it's the gift that keeps on giving.

And to be clear, every mom in my life has this frame. Every mom I've ever heard of has this frame. This is my go-to gift. My parents love it. I upload photos all the time. I'm just like bored watching TV at the end of the night. I'll hop on the app and put up the photos from the day. It's really easy. Right now, Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting aurafFrames.com to get $30 off, plus free shipping on their best-selling frame. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. Use code ADVISORY at checkout to save. Terms and conditions apply.

All right, continuing on this Justice Alito interview, we now get to sort of originalism versus textualism in the interview, which was interesting. Quoting Justice Alito, I reject the idea that the statute should be interpreted simply by looking up the words in the dictionary and applying that mechanically. Cough, cough, so this is the, because of sex in, uh, employment discrimination where justice Gorsuch said that it would cover sexual orientation and gender identity justice Alito again, when it's very clear that the author of the text cannot have meant something that I don't think we should adopt that interpretation. Even if a purely semantic interpretation of the statute would lead you to a different result. Is that a good definition of originalism versus textualism? I honestly have my quibbles with that, Sarah. So a lot of it, and again, if you take anything from this podcast, you should take from this podcast

buckets, gnaw dog doctrine, many things. But here's one thing is that originalism is not an undebatable thing. In other words, that originalism is not a concept that has one specific definition and that applying that one specific definition sort of yields the correct legal outcome, sort of like if you're digging for a vein of gold and you will discover the gold and you have no doubt that it's gold. I think we've kind of done a disservice in originalism land by sort of arguing, well, wait, originalism is the means for achieving the objectively correct result. And when the reality is the concept of original public meaning, which I think is a very powerful and in a way that is my default means of interpreting statutes.

But the question is, in my mind, Sarah, is that going to original public meaning, is that step one? Or is step one, I'm going to read the text and if the text provides the answer, then I stop? Or is original public meaning more of a step two? In other words, I read the text and the text provides some ambiguity. So how do I resolve the ambiguity? Then you move towards original public meaning. What did this mean at the time? How was this

interpreted? What did it mean at the time? And I've always thought of it as a kind of a two-step process. One of the reasons why the text history and tradition test is a little bit unsatisfactory to me is because I think a lot of it should just stop with text. There it is. There's text. We don't need to move to history and tradition because the text is sufficiently clear. And that's where I have a quibble with this is that, wait a minute, my thought is you've got kind of a two-step process. And if you can resolve at step one, that would be preferable to moving on to step two. It's sort of my thought of the process versus one that says, well, we're going to look at history and tradition right alongside the text, even if the text is not terribly ambiguous. I don't know.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. But let's keep going. Yeah, let's do it. All right. Next up, and sort of we're getting into the spicier parts of this interview, Justice Alito having no problem about talking about cases that were just decided this term. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's unusual. And I do know, you know, the Wall Street Journal was like, all these people who are his critics say they want more transparency, but then they don't like it when the justices talk about things like, OK. I think they're talking about different types of transparency. But OK, so he's describing how in the last term in U.S. versus Texas, this is the Biden immigration policy case that the Supreme Court threw out on standing. It was 8-1. It was actually Alito's only sole dissent of the term. Wall Street Journal editorial folks were like, why? And he was like,

I don't know. He said, this is the quote. They said, why did all of all eight of your colleagues end up on the other side? I have no idea. I honestly don't. Why did it turn out that way? Because it involves immigration? Because it's vaguely connected to Trump? I don't know. I honestly don't. Why did it turn out that way? Because it involves immigration? Because it's vaguely connected to Trump? I don't know. I don't know what the explanation is. Oh, but you just provided two thoughts that you had, didn't you? And here's what's interesting to me, Sarah. He says, how did all of his colleagues end up on the other side? I have no idea, he says. But here's two. Well, but here's the other thing. He have no idea, he says. But here's two. Well, but here's the other thing. He says, as if they didn't write a majority opinion.

Well, I think his point on that, he's talking about precedent. And when you overrule precedent, when you don't, they're trying to talk to him about the Chevron case for next term, which obviously he's not going to talk about. But his response is interesting. He says, I'm not in favor of overruling important decisions just by pretending they don't exist, but refusing to say anything about them. And then basically launches into this whole, that's what they did in US versus Texas with then referring to Massachusetts VEPA. This was the 2007 case where Massachusetts was found to have standing because, you know, climate change was going to make their beaches erode, basically.

Yeah. And he says the court just hardly said a word about Massachusetts v. EPA in the U.S. v. Texas majority. So I think that's why he's like, I don't know. They didn't really say why they weren't willing to overturn Massachusetts VEPA pointedly on the standing question. You know, Spicy Alito, what you going to do? Yeah, I do find it interesting that he attributed motives. I do find that interesting that he did that. And I which and I frankly, I kind of have a problem with that because on the one hand, he's up there at the very top. He said, look, it used to be that the organized bar would defend us. He says, in the face of

political onslaught, he observes the traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is that they should be mute and leave it to others, especially, quote, the organized bar to defend them. And he says, says quote but that's not happening and so at a certain point i've said to myself nobody else is going to do this so i have to defend myself interesting and we'll talk a little bit more about that but one of what is one of the primary ways in which external critics of the court attack the court and attempt to delegitimize it one of the primary ways is they attack the court is by attributing motives other than the actual analysis and decision

as announced in the court's opinion itself. And so what I found kind of weird about that was he's saying, well, we got to defend ourselves. And it really is for him, it seems to be, defending him. Not as much the institution, defending him. It's sort of openly musing that, well, maybe they ruled this way that I didn't like. All eight other people were wrong because it was immigration or because it involved Trump. That's what you would read on Twitter.

You would read that on Twitter. And so I found that troubling, the attributed motives. And I want to be clear, I didn't disagree with all of this. I mean, a lot of the analysis in here is kind of an affirmation of the way a lot of us have been analyzing the court from the outside. So to see him analyze it in a similar way, using a different language like consequentialist is a similar word to institutionalist or similar to say incrementalist where you're thinking about how big, how far do you want, how big do you want the ruling to be? I agree with him completely when he says some decisions, and I think that Roe and Casey fell in this category, are so egregiously wrong, so clearly wrong.

That's a very strong factor in supporting the overruling. I think that's exactly right. But this idea that, well, I'm going to explain away the disagreement of aid of my colleagues, in that manner, that's doing what some of the critics of the court do. He just did it. That bothered me a little bit, I have to confess. All right, now let's get to the fun part. I want to read a Twitter exchange between Hugh Hewitt, conservative radio host, and Ted Lieu, Democratic congressman, because it's the perfect not debate about issues that are debatable. OK, so first of all, here's what Justice Alito says in this interview

about the ethics proposals being bandied about in Congress and just all the stuff. I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period. All right, so that's Justice Alito. Now, you've got Hugh Hewitt. Justice Alito is not only correct, he is quite obviously correct, and every lawyer on the Judiciary Committee who believes otherwise is either a fraud or forgot everything they ever learned in con law. It's absurd to believe otherwise. Congress can impeach and convict, period. Head loop. Dear Hugh Hewitt, this is like, this is some Hamilton burr letters. Yes. My dearest Hugh Hewitt, I'm on the Judiciary Committee and the Constitution doesn't exempt

justices like Alito from laws passed by Congress. Also, on the Judiciary Committee and the Constitution doesn't exempt justices like Alito from laws passed by Congress. Also, Congress determines how much to fund the court, the size of it, and can strip jurisdiction in many cases. You should read the Constitution. Hugh Hewitt. Ah, Congressman and noted con law scholar Ted Lieu, member of Judiciary Committee no less, Ted Lieu, member of Judiciary Committee, no less, hides a massive implied lie about an illusory implied grant of power in the Constitution that Congress can regulate SCOTUS justices via code of conduct. Inside truisms about express powers. Very weak. But come on Monday and discuss, Congressman. I'll find a time that works for you. Bring your casebook and sites. Hugh Hewitt continuing. This, by the way, is a classic example of the left's finding

the powers it wants in emanations from penumbras cast by expressed language in a constitution, the very specificity of which refutes their absurd arguments. If framers had intended Congress to have the power to regulate conduct of SCOTUS justices, they would have done so expressly. Of course they didn't. And I suspect Congressman Ted Lieu won't accept my offer because he will figure that out if he doesn't already know it. FYI, I'm responding to Ted Lieu at this absurd hour on Saturday in the middle of the night because I'm wide awake in the wrong city because United canceled my connecting flight. Never fly United.

Spicy Hugh Hewitt. Everybody's getting spicy. All right. But David, let's try to cut to the heart of this. Who's right that Congress has no power to pass a code of ethics affecting Supreme Court justices or that Congress has all sorts of power to tie a code of ethics affecting Supreme Court justices, or that Congress has all sorts of power to tie a code of ethics to, for instance, jurisdiction stripping the pay of the justices, you know, sorry, not the pay of the justice, the appropriations for the judicial branch,

the size of the Supreme Court, et cetera. Who's right? Who's wrong? Go. Yeah, so Alito's mostly wrong. And Hugh Hewitt is mostly wrong with a kernel of right. See, I think they're both right. I think they both just refuse to acknowledge the other one's rightness. Well, but there's a little Mott and Bailey going on here. On both sides. Well, okay.

If you say no provision in the constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court period, that's just wrong. If you're taking that statement on face value, it's just wrong. I mean, it can regulate the jurisdiction of the court in certain provisions, as Lou notes. It can regulate the size of the court, which is a huge freaking deal. It regulates a lot about appropriations. I mean, it can do a lot of things. And then if you sort of then do the next jujitsu turn, which is, oh, but what I was talking about was not regulating the Supreme Court. What I was talking about was composing a code of conduct for the justices. Well, that's a little bit different argument. And here, I think it's absolutely the case that Congress couldn't, for example, create a code of conduct that would permit sanctions against

justices. Let me put it carefully. So the Constitution does allow for the impeachment power, absolutely, which is a form of regulation, by the way, but it does allow for the impeachment power. What I doubt is that Congress could create a code of ethics that could have teeth or sanctions equivalent to the teeth or sanctions that ethics codes that Congress creates, uh, applying to itself, for example, uh, applying in, uh, to parts of the executive branch when regulating the creation of executive branch agencies, for example, um, they can't create a mechanism for disciplining members of the Supreme Court in the same way that they can discipline themselves. I think that much is correct. But if you're going with,

can we regulate? What Hugh did was sort of this thing of, he's right. You can't regulate. Here's Ted Lieu. Here's all the ways you can regulate. And then here comes Hugh. Well, but not the code of conduct. Well, if that's your definition of the entirety of regulation, well, we've got some sort of argument here. But that wasn't what Alito said. So yeah, it's a mess. No, but in fairness, it's what we're talking about. We're talking about whether Congress has the power to pass a code of conduct. Do they or don't they? Oh, I think they do. I think that the sanctions that they can attach to the violations of the code of conduct are limited. But I do absolutely think they have the power to pass a code of conduct. And they could even say if a justice violates the code of conduct, he can't have any.

We're not going to appropriate a single dollar for him to have a clerk. I think they could do that. I don't think they could say if the justice violates the code of conduct, then the justice is going to be removed. They have to go through an impeachment. Yeah. But I do think they have a considerable amount of power to create a code of conduct, but with a limited ability, with limited ability to put teeth on it.

Okay, fair enough. The interview ends sort of referring to that Mark Tushnet letter where he urges President Biden to ignore Supreme Court rulings that he doesn't like and comes up with a name for it that makes it sound like this will be some like doctrine that will be easy to follow and will only restrain the court on the things that you don't

like. And it'll be no problem if someone else comes into office that you don't agree with. It's sort of too silly to talk about, but they ask him about it. And Justice Alito says, if we're viewed as illegitimate, then disregard of our decisions becomes more acceptable and more popular. So you can have a revival of the massive resistance that occurred in the South after Brown v. Board of Education. I do wish that more people studied that immediate aftermath and the limits of the Supreme Court's power. You know, Brown v. Board happens in the mid-50s. You know, they hear it, they rehear it, there's finally a decision. There is no desegregation of schools in the South for 10 years. 70s still have busing, for instance. There's plenty of arguments about segregated schools now,

although they're not de jure segregation. They're certainly de facto segregation in schools now. And I think it's a good lesson in what happens when you simply have... It's a good lesson on several fronts. One, the Supreme Court is rarely the leader of change. It doesn't really matter what they often say. If the culture isn't there yet, then the opinions don't do much, A. B, though, it also is an interesting warning on what happens when the political branches in toto basically say, so what? What are you going to do about it? With all due speed? What was the phrase? With all deliberate speed? Yes, with all deliberate speed. Thank you. And then everyone shrugged. That didn't have a good result for the country. And I wish people took that more to heart more in the sense of, and again, I've brought up the sort of historical humility point before.

sense of, and again, I've brought up the sort of historical humility point before, everyone in 1954, not everyone, you know what I mean, thought they were on the right side of history on this thing, right? And we look back and think everyone who thought that was wrong. So have some historical humility that you don't know how you're going to be judged down the road. And so you might want to think about that carefully before having strident opinions about delegitimizing a branch of government. Well, and I think Alito's hitting on something very important here, which is the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of law is actually enforced by voluntary compliance. That's the vast majority. We literally do not have the ability to create a police force large enough to create,

to mandate compliance, cultural compliance with the law. And so it is absolutely the case that even when the Supreme court is right, like it was in Brown v. Board of Education, that in the absence of cultural will to enforce it, that the Supreme Court decision will be a leading indicator of where the law is actually going to end up eventually. And that's what happened post-Brown v. Board.

But when there was massive resistance, political resistance, it was very hard for the court's judgment to penetrate. And look, you're seeing hints of this on left and right. I am not pressing the alarm button yet because of a few op-eds or a few comments from particularly cantankerous senators. particularly cantankerous senators. J.D. Vance, for example, talked about civil service reform and said if the Supreme Court strikes it down, then President Trump, then if he wins the next time, should just ignore the Supreme Court. I mean, that's Senator Vance saying,

say, plow through the Supreme Court. We've seen some of that from the left. I think Justice Alito is right to highlight that as a real problem. But it also does demonstrate the reality in support of consequentialism or incrementalism in a lot of circumstances. Not every circumstance, but in a lot of circumstances, there has to be an awareness of what is possible. There has to be an awareness of what is possible. Is this ruling by the Supreme Court a ruling that can, as a practical matter, adjust the facts on the ground?

It is a question that has to be asked. This is not a purely academic exercise. A judicial ruling is not a purely academic exercise. A judicial ruling is not a purely academic exercise. And that's not an argument for paralysis. It's a factor to consider when issuing decisions. And it was clearly a factor to consider. It was clearly a factor in Justice Roberts' mind in the Dobbs decision, for example. And it was also a factor in the majority's mind because most of them did not go along with the Thomas formulation, or they did not. Thomas stood alone in his own formulation in his Dobbs concurrence.

So the majority did not go as far as Thomas and they went further than Roberts. So these are arguments and thoughts that the judges justices rightly have and again sometimes the answer is do not be cautious like i i think brown b board was absolutely 100 the right decision um it was 100 the right decision that came down in an america that was in a much worse place than it should have been. But it is absolutely the case that thinking through the consequences of decisions is part of a judge's job.

So, yeah, I thought that was interesting. You know, and look, I mean, this kind of resistance mindset to judicial rulings, we've seen it in the Second Amendment context. We talked about it before in the response to Heller. We've talked about it recently in response to the Allen v. Milligan, the Alabama case. And so, yeah, it's something to be concerned about. And one of the reasons why I think it's urgently important, even if you disagree with the court's decisions on any given matter,

to continue to defend the legitimacy of the institution. All right. We ready to do a little election law? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So a Donald Trump super PAC put out their expenditures

and they spent $40 million on legal fees. Wow. Those legal fees appear to include both Donald Trump's personal legal fees, as well as they're arguing Donald Trump's associates, etc. They're paying other people's legal fees. Now, there's a few things to talk about here. One, why can a campaign committee pay legal fees when those legal fees are not related to like ballot access or running for office, et cetera? Okay. That's number one. Number two, the special counsel, it has been reported, is looking into some of those legal fee payments for potential witnesses, etc. in the Trump orbit. it acceptable to pay someone's legal fees who could be a witness against you? When is that

just straight up, you know, gangster style obstruction? Right. Okay. So let's tackle the first question. So the test is roughly, um, the irrespective test when it comes to most expenditures. We've talked about this before before david like if the expenditure would exist irrespective of the campaign you can't use campaign money for it um the best example is like clothes you have to wear clothes no matter what you have to do your dry cleaning no matter what um like groceries you know your box of Cheerios that goes in your pantry. That's not going to get covered. Hopefully the FEC has outlined things that are like

definitely not OK. So I just want to read you some of the definitely not OK. Automatic personal use. Household food items and supplies. Funeral, cremation and burial expenses for deaths within the candidate's family. I don't want to know how that one got second on the list.

Yeah, I know. The campaign cannot pay for attire for political functions, a new tuxedo or dress. But it can pay for clothing of de minimis value that is used in the campaign, such as t-shirts or caps imprinted with the campaign slogan. I think those are pretty easy to understand. Tuition payments, unless it's for training staff. Mortgage, rent, and utility payments. Entertainment, dues, fees, gratuities, salary payments to the candidate's family. But actually there's exceptions to that as well. The family member is providing a bona

fide service to the campaign as in they're working on the campaign. You absolutely can pay them. The payments reflect the fair market value of those services. Yeah. Okay. So actually you totally can pay your family. Don't pay your family, but you can. All right. So then there's case by case. Childcare expenses is an interesting one. Vehicle expenses. And then we get to legal expenses. All right. I'm just going to read a little bit from the FEC website here. Using the irrespective test summarized on this page, the commission decides on a case by case basis through the advisory opinion process whether legal expenses are considered personal use and thus are expenses that a candidate may not pay for using campaign funds. Well, that sounds like you probably can't,

right? Because Trump's legal expenses would exist irrespective of him running for president right now. I mean, you can certainly make a case that, well, they're targeting him because he's running for president. But in terms of the criming that we're talking about, the alleged criming, the alleged criming has nothing to do with him as a candidate. But you'd be wrong because that's the FEC website has its limits to some extent. But basically. A campaign fund may be used to pay for up to 100 percent of legal expenses related to campaign or office holder activity.

of legal expenses related to campaign or office holder activity where such expenses would not have occurred had the individual not been an office holder. Well, that's going to cover a lot of these cases we're talking about, David. He was in office. Had he not been a candidate for president in 2020 or the president of the United States in 2020, we're going to wipe out all of the special counsel, the Department of Justice potential indictments. We're definitely going to wipe out Georgia, the Fulton County indictment. And when I say wipe out, I mean, pay for 100% of the expenses related to it.

The New York DA indictment was the hush money payments. Yeah. Now that one's interesting because they're saying they would have made the hush money payments irrespective of him being a candidate. Exactly. Now they're going to argue they're covering the legal expenses. So that one's a little tricky. We'll get to that one in a second.

And then you have the lawsuits relating to defamation. But remember, he was a candidate or an officeholder when he said those things. That's probably going to fall into it. Okay. So that's the hundred percent covered, but a campaign fund may also be used to pay for up to 50% of legal expenses that do not relate directly to allegations arising from campaign or office holder activity. For instance, activity prior to becoming an office holder of a business owned by the candidate. if the candidate is required to provide substantive responses to the press regarding the allegations of wrongdoing, for instance. So anything related to the Trump organization, 50% coverage.

Interesting. So the short version is the vast majority of those millions that have been talked about, in all likelihood, there's no legal issue at all with spending that money on lawyers. None. And I've heard people say like, okay, but it's not whether they can spend the money on the lawyers. It's the fraud and collecting the money. They told people that it was going to get to the next question. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. I was going to get to the next question. Yeah. Yeah, that's sort of how it happens, man. Like if you, for instance, give a candidate a money, sorry, give a candidate a donation for their election in, you know, 2016. And then over the course of their six years in the Senate, you decide they're a terrible senator. They can still use that money for their 2022 election, even if you don't like it. Now, you can ask for a refund. There's other things you can do. But as long as it's within the allowed expenses, you don't get to earmark your money and say, you can only use it for this, even if they kind of said that's what they were going to use it for. Yeah. I think a way of looking at it is imagine you have a pot of money that can be used for 20 purposes. And you, as the fundraiser, have found out that you get the most money if you emphasize one of those 20 purposes. And in comes the money. But once the money comes in, it can be used for any of those 20 purposes, is the way the law works. And the way fundraising works is you find what's the thing, what is the argument that builds that pot? And that's why it's really, really hard to make out any kind of fraud claim along these lines, because basically kind of every candidate

does this, Sarah. They're going to say, here's my best argument for you to give me money. In comes the money. And then once that money is there, it's just available to be used for every lawful purpose connected to the campaign. And those lawful purposes are very big and broad. And so it's hard to fashion, what's the rule that you fashion here that makes the fundraising actually fraudulent? It gets really difficult when you think about the actual mechanics of fundraising versus the legal uses of the money. It's not fraud if you're emphasizing one thing over the other or emphasizing one thing to the exclusion of the other. one thing over the other or emphasizing one thing to the exclusion of the other.

So I do think it's something worth being worth publicizing the extent that says, hey, they might be saying that you're writing this, you're you're paying this money to stop woke people. And it's really going to it's really going to, you know, pay for the lawyers related to the documents case. But that's what transparency to pay for the lawyers related to the documents case. But that's what transparency and accountability is for. That's the news report that says, hey, world, you might think you're stopping the woke, but in reality, you're paying a battery of high-priced lawyers to keep Trump out of jail. Those aren't the same things.

Maybe you should think twice before falling for this fundraising pitch is a different thing than sort of saying, well, the fundraising pitch is illegal. All right. Now the second bucket, why does Donald Trump get to pay the legal expenses for people who could be cooperating witnesses against him and potential co-defendants who could testify against him and all of that? Doesn't that sound pretty mobby? Well, the special counsel is certainly interested in it. We know they're looking at it. But the line's a little muddy because you absolutely can have a third party pay for your legal expenses.

The client has to give informed consent and know who's paying. There can't be any interference with the lawyer's independence or professional judgment. This can come up a lot in like even parent, um, uh, child situations that like the parents paying for the lawyer and then wants to be involved in the defense of the child. Let's assume the child's an adult here, the defense of the adult child who did something quite stupid. The lawyer's often going to be like, get out of the room, mom or dad. Like you can pay the bill, but you can't be in here for these conversations. You don't get to tell

your child whether to plead or not to plead, for instance, at least not by influencing by, you know, saying, well, I'm paying for this lawyer and I'm going to tell the lawyer, like you have to plead guilty because this is embarrassing to the family or something. lawyer. And I'm going to tell the lawyer, like, you have to plead guilty because this is embarrassing to the family or something. And then, of course, the advice that the lawyer is giving, what the client is saying back to the lawyer is all protected. And, you know, the lawyer can't go tell the person, the third party who's paying for it. Yeah, but I mean, A, how do you know that that's being followed? What about the conflict of interest, for instance? David, what do you think about all of this? You know what this reminds me of? The parent-child issue is one that I think is very,

very interesting. So is the insurance defense lawyer. Insurance defense lawyer comes up everywhere, all the time. Yes. Yeah. And explain that. Yeah. Yeah. So an insurance defense lawyer, let's say you have a liability insurance policy,

connected to your homeowner's policy or something like that, or you have your automotive insurance policy, and you rear end somebody at a stoplight and you give them whiplash, you're going to have a lawyer provided, paid for by the insurance company. And they're your lawyer. They represent you. And so they have an ethical obligation to you,

but you're not paying them. And so- They have, sorry, the third party here, the insurance company, has an interest in minimizing the legal fees. Yes. That's a problem because that's not your interest. That's not your interest. And so you actually have kind of a labyrinth of sort of interesting ways in which this has been resolved. And I would love for an insurance defense lawyer

who listens to us to give us one of the, some of my favorite comments are like 1,500 word legal explanations underneath at the dispatch website. In my 40 year practice, working for fill in the blank insurance company. Sorry, I've been bombarded with insurance company ads recently.

So now I have only certain ones in mind so i'm not even going to say them but the bottom line is you know your ethical your ethical obligation is to your client and so is to the person you are defending and so there is the the question often comes like, what kind of controls, what kind of strings can be attached to those dollars? And that's really a key question, even down to what kind of information can be shared with the third party when you're talking about billing disputes or auditing billing statements, things like this. This is an interesting kind of side issue. Billing statements, things like this. This is an interesting kind of side issue. And so the key here, though, is that your attorney really is under the rules of ethics, your attorney who is supposed to look out for your interests, not the interests of the Borg collective that hired it. And so that's a key element here. So for example, if you had a situation where an attorney said, well, we're paying your campaign expenditures, we're paying for this attorney,

so long as this attorney does what the campaign says, well, that's not your attorney. That's not somebody who is living out an ethical obligation to you. And so it gets more complicated when you're talking about these third parties because the attorney has an ethical obligation to the client. So that makes it all more complicated, Sarah. And it certainly does in this case. Again, they've now started a separate legal defense fund that, again, they're telling New York Times at least, will only be used for these associate legal fees. And the argument on the other side, I think, is worth just noting, which is these folks wouldn't have tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees but for working for Donald Trump, working in the White House, et cetera, et cetera. And they, in most cases, can't possibly afford the types of lawyers that would be helpful in this situation or most helpful in this situation. And so if you don't pay their legal fees, you're going to have a really hard time finding quality

staff. And for those of you listening who are like, great, I don't really want Trump to have quality staff. Okay, but now apply it to your favorite politician, because I assure you that many people coming out of executive branch service or even presidential campaigns at the most senior level, not surprising to have legal issues coming out of that at all. Right. No, there is absolutely, I mean, to just sort of say that a person, because of their involvement in a campaign, has to be personally on the hook for potentially bankrupting legal fees. I think that's a problem. I think that's a problem.

And I don't think there is a problem with putting together a legal defense fund. It has to be done ethically. This idea that it's by default a problem that third parties pay legal fees, well, what are you going to do about the insurance industry? What are you going to do about your car insurance? What are you going to do about your liability insurance? It's got to be ethical, but the idea that we can have legal defense fees or legal defense funds, I think, is an entirely appropriate aspect of our political fundraising apparatus. But I like the idea of being transparent and disclosing so that people know what they're actually giving money to. And that, you know, I think with transparency, transparency is a cure for a lot of ills.

Well, not a cure. It's a treatment, a treatment for a lot of ills. But I don't see, for me, the idea that somebody who joins a political campaign or serves in the executive branch is thereby consenting to potentially ruin his attorney's fees as a condition of public service. I don't think that's a road we want to go down. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get into the details of any of this for what to the lawyers will be obvious reasons. But leaving the Department of Justice, there were three lawsuits that then I had to deal with. I was not named as a defendant in any of those lawsuits, but nevertheless would need legal stuff. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And like for, you know, we want to encourage government service. Yeah. And no, nobody paid for any of my legal help after that, but nobody's feeling particularly sorry for me on that front. Don't worry. Yeah. But I do think that it is a, it is a important public service to explain where Donald Trump, the money you've sent to Donald Trump actually goes. That is an important public service to say that it goes somewhere other than the thrust of the fundraising letters is not the same thing as saying that you've proven a fraud. That's just not the way the law works in this area.

That is true. All right. This turned out not to be much shorter of a podcast. Well, that Alito interview was rich with content. And I just, can I give a shout out to our own podcast? I don't even understand how that works. Well, on our podcast, promoting our own podcast in the wisdom of our podcast,

which is, were we not nailing the spicy turn of Alito way before spicy Alito emerged as a colossus astride the judicial culture? I love when we give ourselves a pat on the back.

It really doesn't feel intuitous at all. Somebody's got to. Somebody's got to. I've got one other thing. So original jurisdiction, the David Latt newsletter, I was mentioning our podcast. It turns into like,

this is just going to all be very circular now. So I'm going to mention our mention in original jurisdiction, wherein there's a discussion over whether the latest superseding indictment will delay the trial more. And to a different podcast, which I mean, should I name another podcast here? That seems bad. Oh, goodness, no. I mean, do others exist? Anyway, another podcast of very smart lawyers made the case that this would, in fact, delay the trial from the May date. And then it says now Sarah Isger, on the other hand, doesn't think it will.

I want to be clear. I think there's a great chance the trial is delayed from the May date. I don't think this specific superseding part will be the reason it's delayed. I think it could be delayed because of SIPA in general, but it won't be, aha, this Iran document or the fact that it's two months later will be the reason that we can't go in May. Could be wrong about that, obviously. But I just wanted to clarify, I think there is a great chance it's delayed. There's not a chance. I think it's likely it's delayed. I'm putting it at like exactly 50-50. I think there is a chance you can get there by May and that it helps that the judge clearly wants to get there by May. The government definitely wants to get

there by May and the government is going to be a big part of how quickly or slowly the SEPA process goes. The problem is the government's pretty big and the special counsel is only a small part of how quickly the SEPA process goes. As I've learned, there are limits to the Department of Justice's arm-twisting powers. Very limited.

Yeah. And, you know, one interesting dynamic is, so the trial date is set for after the conclusion of the vast bulk of the primary elections. So the outcome of the Republican primary is going to be known by May. I mean, we're going to know who the Republican nominee is by primary votes. However, the convention and the final decision is not until after May. If you start doing convention fantasy world where somehow the convention rejects Donald Trump because he's been convicted, I can't. Why don't you got to let me finish, Sarah? Okay.

All right. So there's going to be people who would say that the convention will have a chance to reject Donald Trump. Those people aren't on this podcast, right? Right. Because technically they would. Okay. Technically they could, depending on some of the convention binding, you know, the delegate binding rules

of various states and all this. But, but if you think that the Trump delegates to the convention are going to reject him when they're going to be drawn overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly from the population of people, that this says what they believe. The Maccabees doesn't support Trump in spite of his flaws. It supports him because it doesn't seem to believe he has flaws. No. What you would have is the GOP going ahead and nominating somebody who is subject

to a criminal conviction. And I don't even think that's a close call that that would happen, even though technically there might be a possibility of the GOP switching horses then. You would have to persuade the Trump delegates, the human beings who were put forward as sort of the core of the MAGA base to represent Donald Trump at the convention. I mean, good luck with that. I'm so glad that we are in agreement on that. I did get an interesting legal question from someone

that is worth, I think, ending on, which is what happens if, you know, let's say it's Biden versus Trump. What happens at various stages if these candidates are no longer able to run? Let's assume, you know, lightning strike. OK. So Donald Trump or Joe Biden gets hit by lightning, you know, after they've wrapped up all of these primaries, let's say May, but before the convention. That's really easy. The convention, then it's like a brokered convention type thing like we used to have. Those

same rules all still apply. The convention has to vote for someone. I think everyone's got that one down. Okay, but post-convention, let's now pick August 15th. The date will be somewhat important here. August 15th, either one of these guys gets struck by lightning. Well, that's actually very interesting because then, and by the way, I had to go on the Republican side, the answer I knew, which is that the hundred and sixty eight members of the Republican National Committee would simply vote. So that's the two committee members from the state, one male, one female and the chairman of the state, the state chairman. So there's three per state. If you're wondering why it doesn't add up to 150, that's because of the territories. So it's 168 members of the RNC would get to vote at that point. On the Democratic side, I asked no less than Donna Brazile, the former chairman of the DNC, what would happen on their side on August 15th. It's actually the exact same answer,

which maybe shouldn't have surprised me. Now, they're not set up with 168 like the RNC side, but they have DNC members. Same idea. Those members would then get to pick who the Democratic nominee is. Whew. Yeah. That'll be interesting. It would be interesting. Okay, but what happens September 15th if they're struck by lightning?

And why am I picking these specific dates? Because on August 15th, the ballots have not been printed yet. On September 15th, they have been. And once ballots are printed, that power basically devolves to the states and their rules about replacing people already on the ballot when ballots have been printed, have been mailed out, et cetera. That's how you get, you know, electing dead people is that their names are on the ballot and the state says that person is still there and we replace them in a different way afterward. So that could get very interesting and messy. So that was to answer a very smart question from someone about what happens when you have two old people running for office. I really, okay. I really, really, really, really, really, really

do not want to see this kind of situation emerge. But my goodness, we're like staring at a situation where you could have an event occur after September 15th that would be extremely predictable actuarially. Well, this came up, by the way, on September 11th. Remember when Hillary Clinton was visiting that church on September 11th. Remember when Hillary Clinton was visiting that church on September 11th and she fainted. So everyone was sort of checking their rule books like, wait, what? Yeah, exactly. And so you could have an event that is not actuarially

surprising, but very jolting. And then nobody could look back and say, who could have seen that coming? You know, I just feel like we are sleepwalking into a really difficult situation. That both parties are just sleepwalking right into a potentially extraordinarily difficult situation. Unnecessarily so. Unnecessary, I mean, walking right into a potentially extraordinarily difficult situation. Unnecessarily so.

I mean, the idea that these are the only two men that we can have that are qualified to be president of the United States and can gather enough votes and support to be presented as the nominee is really a stunning kind of development in American democracy. Can I also raise another thing that nobody seems to be talking about, but that I find really interesting? So there's a lot of discussion over who Donald Trump will pick as his running mate. Totally understand it. It's an interesting conversation. Have you heard anyone talk about, again, let's assume lightning strike, Kamala Harris becomes president and the de facto

nominee at that point for whatever. Just run with me here. Or heck, it's now 2025 and Joe Biden wins and there's a lightning strike and Kamala Harris becomes president. Who would she pick as vice president? And why is no one talking about that? That's an interesting question. It's surely something that they've thought about. Well, and the other thing is, if lightning strikes, would Democrats defer to Kamala Harris? Oh, you mean like, I think that timing is everything, right?

If it happens now, no. Yeah, of course the timing, yes. If it happens in May, yes, I think. But I know, I know. But yeah, I know. Gavin Newsom? No, he would not. It's funny. You talk to Democrats and they don't think Gavin Newsom is nearly the obvious choice

that Republicans think Gavin Newsom is. Myself included, by the way, in that like I look at their side and I'm like that Gavin Newsom makes a lot of sense. That seems like the Ron DeSantis of the left. But like high level Democratic operatives will tell you that's not what it is. Yeah. And I don't think of Gavin Newsom as like the star. I think that Gavin Newsom thinks of Gavin Newsom as the star. Gavin Newsom's hair definitely.

Yeah. So when I think about and talk about deferring, the first person who comes to my mind is Gavin Newsom would not defer. Would be my view, but I, I'm with you. I, I think of Gavin Newsom has kind of set it. He's kind of set himself up as the,

the, you know, primary competitor to Ron DeSantis. And I feel like they might have sort of equivalent mirror image sort of constituencies, which is not a majority constituency in their respective parties

would be my sort of judgment from a distance, but I could be completely wrong about that. All right. We're going to leave it there for no reason whatsoever. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for sticking with us. Thank you guys for just being some of the best podcast listeners in the world on every front, right? You go with us to the nerdy places. Uh, you are highly funny,

quirky people who buy domains, um, that are awesome. And, uh And just, I don't know. I have not met an AO listener who I did not immediately take to. You're all great. So with that, if you want to become a member of the dispatch, by the way, you can hop in the comment section and leave one of those 1500 word comments

that David is so eager to read from all of you in-house counsels in insurance world. But otherwise, we'll talk to you in the next episode and we have some fun guests coming up.