Advisory Opinions - Trump Found Liable for Sexual Abuse, Defamation

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Sarah returns from her tick-filled trip from Gettysburg to discuss the E. Jean Carroll civil lawsuit against Donald Trump. Also: -Santos detained -Sci-fi hot takes Show Notes: -David French NYT Column: A Guilty Ex-President -Subscribe to The Dispatch and watch an exclusive live Remnant with Jonah, Steve Hayes, and Chris Stirewalt -The Gettysburg Address Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Certain conditions apply. Details at phys.ca. Ready? I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgerd, that's David French, and I will give the latest report from the battlefield at Gettysburg after my return from Legal Eagles 2023. And we'll talk about the verdict in the Trump case and the indictment against George Santos. And who knows what we'll touch on in between, or maybe it'll just be a little bit of a, you know, shorter, tighter pod. Let's find out, David. Let's do it. Let's find out. I'm so eager

to hear about League of Eagles and I'm so distraught that I was not able to go. So please fill us in. David, it was incredible. Let me start by thanking some folks. Thank you to Judge Norris and his wife, Carol, for allowing me to join Legal Eagles 2023. I am so beyond grateful. I don't even know how to express my gratitude towards them. And Grace, a wonderful lawyer who is helping them out there as well. Thank you to Judge Radler for allowing me to join the Radler Raiders and his law clerks in their car. And for including me so generously in everything that they did. Thank you to judges, well, Chief Judge Sutton and Judges McKeague, Bush, the Parr and Sargis for, I don't know, allowing me to hang with the cool kids. It was amazing. All of the law clerks and their chambers, who, again, were just so, so kind and generous to me at all times.

Thank you to Wayne Mott, the president and CEO of the Gettysburg Foundation, who talked to us at dinner and was just so informative and incredible, highly entertaining. And the folks at the Gettysburg Visitor Center. If you have not visited the Gettysburg Visitor Center, if you have not visited the Gettysburg Visitor Center to see that cyclorama, you don't know what you're missing. I didn't know what a cyclorama was. So we can just start with that. So anyway, I felt so welcomed. And it was

an incredible group, 38 people. I will have a separate Legal Eagles package episode for folks down the road, but give me a little bit of time to put together all of the wonderful audio and interviews and cool stuff that I got while I was out there. But I'll give you just my perspective, which is that it was amazing, David. You have no concept. whatever your expectations are of what three days walking Gettysburg is this wildly exceeds it. Um, we walked pickets charge and, um, and then, I mean, in like what had to be another highlight, there were eight cars, 38 people on this trip, walkie talkies, keeping us in touch as we drove around to various sites with Judge Norris narrating what we were driving by. And then we'd have pop outs, which are different than

expeditions out of the cars. I mean, everything was just so amazingly planned. We had a battlefield companion that was a spiral bound notepad that he had done for all of us, pictures of everything. So we do pickets charge all 38 of us, but then the drivers need to do pickets retreat to head back to the cars to drive the cars back. And it turns out all of the drivers were basically the article three judges. And so I got to do pickets retreat with a lot of sixth circuit judges, which was super fun. And I got some funny audio from that, but I'll definitely share. But look, and this was no like glamping trip, David. There was rain. There were numerous ticks and law clerks and ticks are not a great,

great combination. Were the ticks drawn? Were the ticks drawn to the law clerks? I think so. I got one tick, but some cars, let's just say of the eight car caravan at one point, I'm just going to call them out. The Thapar car, there was some flailing of limbs out of the windows. there was some flailing of limbs out of the windows.

Were you familiar with the life and career of Dan Sickles? I am not familiar with the life and career of Dan Sickles. Please tell me about it. I mean, I don't know who to compare him to in modern era, but if you're a screenwriter listening out there, just go do a dive into Sickles, because I don't know why we don't have an entire Apple TV series that would be sort of dark humor about Sickles. One, he marries this woman, but is clearly not maybe living up to his husbandly duties, or at least her expectations, because she decides to carry on a bit of an affair with another man. Sickles gets a letter that's like, hey, guess what's going on? And he confronts her. She denies it at first. Then she's like, okay, yeah, it's true. The guy then shows up outside the house and is making his secret

signal. Sickle sees it. This is on Lafayette square, by the way, David. So right across from the White House. Sickle sees it, has his friend delay Key. Paramore's name is Philip Barton Key. He was the United States attorney for the District of Columbia and the son of Francis Scott Key. His friend goes out and delays key while sickles arms himself goes out and shoots key dead okay he is acquitted at trial in the it it's at least noted as the first trial that uses temporary insanity as a defense huh and this is all before the Civil War. Okay.

Now, I'm sensing he has some Civil War relevance. He does have Civil War relevance. So he was one of the generals under Meade. He's supposed to hold the line. He's right next to Hancock, but he doesn't like his position. And so instead of holding the line, which is supposed to be at this fish hook at Gettysburg, he decides to just go ahead and push out of the line to get higher ground. But now it's not a line. It's a bulge or what, uh, judge Norris called a salient. Yes. And that salient

becomes basically impossible to defend. So Sickles loses tons of men. He loses his leg in the process, but good luck for Sickles. He then winds up being sort of one of the first guys back into the hospital in DC. And so members of Congress are able to interview him really quickly. And basically Lincoln first hears about what actually goes on at Gettysburg

from Sickles' perspective, in which Sickles says that on at Gettysburg from Sickles' perspective, in which Sickles says that, you know, he won Gettysburg. Then another then very lucky thing happens for Sickles, which is that he outlives everyone else. So his version of history kind of gets to be the last word as well. But it also wasn't his last run with the law because he's then indicted in 1913, I want to say, for embezzling the funds that were supposed to be used for the memorial that would have had his bust on it. He dies before it goes to trial. But nevertheless, you can drive by one of the many, many monuments at Gettysburg, and there's this pedestal with nothing on it. And that's where Sickles was

supposed to go. But after he embezzled the money, no more money for the Sickles bust. Fascinating. Fascinating. So this guy just basically ran a long con. Very, a very long con as it turns out. I mean, what an odd life to have lived. Um, but this is just one of the many characters that we learned about in, in legal Eagles. It was very, very cool, David. And so neat to be with all the law clerks. They were so welcoming and kind to me. Um, I mean, the judges were hilarious because judge Norris, who's a senior judge, literally was barking orders at his fellow judges. Judge Norris is 87 years old and the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit, Judge Sutton was there. And let's just say like the chain of command was very clear. The 87 year old was running the show. He was General Meade. No question.

Fascinating. I am so upset that I missed it. I've been to Gettysburg a couple of times. It's a place that you just kind of need to go to. And it's different from most Civil War battlefields in that it has all the has all of these monuments to the various units all across the battlefield, which is not what you see when you go to other battlefields. But it is cool to see the sort of the special salience of Gettysburg and the American heart and the special salience and the sort of the special attention paid to the veterans of Gettysburg. I mean, truly one of the pivotal moments, not just in American history, but by extension in world history. And I'm so upset that I missed.

Instead, I was while you were, Sarah, while you were walking the battlefields, I was writing about E. Jean Carroll. Well, I think what I left Gettysburg with, there's all the questions, right? There's a reason people become really obsessed with the Civil War and with Civil War battles. You know, there are various points where Lee might've been able to turn Gettysburg, sure. But there's also the question of,

Gettysburg was an accidental battlefield. Neither side was planning to engage in Gettysburg. And so what happens if Lee actually just continues to Harrisburg or something like that and gets better ground and a better defensive position? What if Lee decides to make it a defensive war, make it more of a guerrilla warfare situation and make the North come take the South rather than what Lee sort of believed, which was he had to win quickly. He wanted to have war weariness in the North. That's why he makes this expedition in the first place. And then there's what happens after the war, obviously the pardons. I don't think many people argue now that the pardons weren't a good idea for the future of the country,

pardoning Lee, for instance, who had been indicted, of course, treason, sort of the definition of treason. But, you know, I still find it really fascinating. You know, veterans from both sides are going to the reunions and things like that. There was just in, on the one hand, you have reconstruction and you have the lost cause myth and all of this animosity from the south about what was destroyed and then you have these people who had just been fighting each other coming back together and be like all right we're good now like it's all over and it's reflected on the battlefield itself there are monuments obviously to the confederate side and you're driving around and Lee's monument is higher than Meade's monument.

Right. You know, and in this conversation that we're having nationally about what to do about Confederate war memorials and things like that, Gettysburg stands out as being sort of the most nuanced, most closest to the line for me because those monuments are marking something literally on the

position on fields yet they are heroically done i mean one of the monuments to the north carolina whatever division sorry i'm not judge norris they don't have all this um at the tip of my fingers but um it's done by borglum the guy who does mount rushmore it It's a Confederate monument glorifying the boys in this North Carolina division. I don't know. I feel pretty strongly about Confederate memorials and naming things. You know, I think I've mentioned this before on the podcast that something that bothered me from the day I moved to DC was at the major road right on the Virginia side was called Jefferson Davis Highway. And so you'd have to say like, Oh, I'm getting on Jefferson Davis or meet me at this address on Jefferson Davis.

And I hated it. And it really got under my skin. And it was one of the things that I told Carly Fury and I wanted if I worked on her campaign and we won, I wanted to do something about campaign finance stuff. I wanted to change daylight savings and get rid of just changing times. I don't actually care which direction we go. And three, I wanted to rename Jefferson Davis Highway. And she was like, I'm not sure the president has the power to do that. And I was like, you'll find a way. These are the three asks that I make. Thankfully, that road has been renamed now. So now I only have two things I need from the next president. Yeah. So I find Gettysburg fascinating because what you had was, and look, I'm just going to go ahead and apologize in advance

to the Civil War buff listeners who have an extremely sophisticated grasp on Civil War strategy. And what I'm about to say, you might find unconscionably oversimplified, but it's a helpful frame for me thinking through the military history that what you ultimately ended up with was a kind of a clash of views of military strategy where Lee and the Confederacy and the early Union armies were in the grips of Napoleonic thinking. And Napoleonic thinking was you go and you win a decisive battle, and then you reach a peace treaty. After Austerlitz, after Jena, after other major Napoleonic victories, Napoleon was able to achieve at least a temporary peace and consolidate his gains. And Lee was constantly chasing that decisive battle, the battle that would force the Union to the peace table.

that would force the union to the peace table. Whereas the way Grant and Sherman kind of broke that paradigm is they said, no, no, it's not about a decisive battle. We can lose a battle and we can lose a lot of battles and still win the war by grinding the Confederacy into the dust. And that is ultimately, of course, what happened. And there's this really interesting moment

in the wilderness campaign where Lee had won a tactical engagement and the Army of the Potomac was used to retreating when that occurred. That was sort of the concession. We retreat after Lee has beaten us on the battlefield. And Grant was like, nope. Where are y'all going? We're not retreating anymore. That doesn't happen. And it's really, and so Gettysburg wasn't just that, there's that plaque. Did you see the plaque, the high watermark of the Confederacy? For sure. So it's not just the high watermark of the Confederacy in many ways, it's the high watermark

or the culmination, the end, the high watermark of the attempts to be an American Napoleon, and then all which ultimately floundered and failed. And his strategic vision was replaced by Grant's and Grant's prevailed. So it's really, it's really fascinating to me. We also had this lunchtime talk from Judge Sargis, who's a district judge on the Sixth Circuit. He wrote, literally wrote the book on West Virginia statehood, which I, it was one of those things. There's plenty of things I know I don't know,

but when you find something that's that relevant to like what you do for a living and you didn't know, you didn't know it. You're like, Oh my God. Oh no. Um, so I was like paying, you know, rapt attention here, but West Virginia, which is part of Virginia, um, at the start of the civil war is that part to the West of the Allegheny mountains. And it's just very different economically and culturally and all that stuff. And so when Virginia secedes to make a long story, a little bit shorter, West Virginia is like, yeah, no, that's not legal. So we're going to constitute a new government over in West Virginia is like, yeah, no, that's not legal. So we're going to constitute a new

government over in West Virginia. And we're going to declare ourselves the government of all of Virginia. And then we're going to give ourselves permission to secede from Virginia and make our own state with congressional approval, which at that point, of course, was all Republicans in Congress. And so West Virginia becomes a state through sort of legal shenanigans, if you will. And it's pretty important to the role of the Civil War because they've got the railroad and a bunch of other sort of important tactical parts that are sitting in the West Virginia part of Virginia, which is now then an admitted state in the union. So there were things like that to learn along the way. We had someone who

had their PhD on Frederick Douglas, who was one of the law clerks and returning to be a law professor after this. So, I mean, really cool group and for lawyers and judges and law clerks and future law practitioners or law professors to sit and do battle tactics at Gettysburg while talking about the history of how this goes on and the personalities involved. You're never going to look at the 14th amendment the same way again. True. I'm so, have I mentioned, I'm so upset. I wasn't there, David. It was amazing, but you got to watch out for the ticks. Absolutely. 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

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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. Should we move on to E. Jean Carroll? Yes. So we have a verdict in the Trump case. And David, I want to know if anything surprised you about the verdict, where the meritorious or at least non-frivolous grounds for appeal are. And then I'll have a few listener questions along the way. Yeah.

So I was following the case as well as you could when you're not in the courtroom, which means not well. When you're not in the courtroom, it is very, very difficult to follow a case. But at the same time, as I was following it, I began to realize a few key things about it. I reached the point where I was going to be surprised if the jury did not rule for Carol. And now, to be clear, it was not because of the composition of the jury. It's really important to note this was not a Manhattan jury. This was a jury in Manhattan. It was drawn from the Southern District of New York, including people outside of the city, including the nine.

There were six, I believe, six men, three women. Of the nine people, one was pretty well, it was established at Bardier that he was somebody who got his information from listening to right-wing podcasts. Everyone was asked like where they got their information. So this did not seem to be a ideologically monolithic jury. It was not drawn from Manhattan, but from the Southern District. And a couple of things started to tip me over into thinking that I would be surprised if Trump won this trial. One was the prior bad act evidence. And we'll get into this, we'll get into this because there's actually the federal rules of evidence have been changed.

And so we'll we'll get into the prior bad act evidence. But this is the key element that changed this from simply he said, she said. Into when you're beginning to look at a weight of evidence that began to cut against Trump. And so this was E. Jean Carroll presented evidence, her own testimony that she had been assaulted. Then there was evidence of friends who said that E. Jean Carroll told them in the moment that she had been insulted. And then critically,

she was able to introduce the evidence from other women who said that they were assaulted in a similar fashion. And then she was able to introduce the evidence of the Access Hollywood tape where Trump talked about how he just moves, you know, moves on women and grabs women. And when you put all of those things together and then you weigh on it, the other side of it was that Trump did not appear and give testimony. Instead, what happened is his videotaped deposition was presented. Now, in the videotaped deposition, he's denying everything, right? He's denying. But interestingly, when it came to the Access Hollywood tape, he says in the actual Access Hollywood. I'm going to bleep the

bad part. I just start kissing them. He said, it's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the blank. You can do anything. These are the famous words. And then Carol's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who did a tremendous job in the case, asked him specifically about the quote. And here's what Trump says. Well, historically, that's true with stars. She presses him on it. He doubles down. Well, that's if you look at the last million years, I guess that's been largely true.

Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately, Sarah. As soon as I saw unfortunately or fortunately, and when you combine that with the testimony of the other women in the case and E. Jean Carroll's testimony and his unwillingness to go and talk to the jury directly, I thought there's just so much for a plaintiff's attorney to work with here. There's just so much, especially when you combine it with the fact that this was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This was a civil case. It was a preponderance of evidence. Is it more likely than not that Trump did this? And so when you begin to look at that weight of evidence, I was going to be really surprised if Trump won.

And when I saw that deposition testimony, I thought that is a lawyer's closing argument dream right there. And so nothing about it surprised me. What about you, Sarah? I think it's worth noting you mentioned the distinction between criminal and civil in terms of the evidentiary standard, the distinction between criminal and civil in terms of the evidentiary standard, that 51% versus whatever beyond a reasonable doubt is, uh, 90%, 80%, whatever. Um, but the other big difference between a civil and criminal case is that in a criminal case, if you do not take the stand to testify, the prosecutor cannot use that against you. The jury is not allowed to make an inference of guilt because you did not testify in your own behalf. Not true in a civil case. And so very much the closing statement was like, he didn't even bother to come talk to you guys

because he knows he's guilty. Um, and so just worth drawing that fun little note for those playing at home. You know, we got a question from a listener that I'm curious what you thought about, which is, how can a jury find by a preponderance of the evidence that E. Jean Carroll had proven that he had sexually abused her, but not proven that he had raped her when her allegation was that he had raped her. So the answer to the question, essentially, the jury doesn't have to believe E. Jean Carroll fully. So the jury could believe that what Trump did and believe testimony did things that constituted sexual battery up to including trying to kiss her, that constituted sexual battery up to including trying to kiss her, throwing her against the wall, groping her, and then they could not believe that he actually penetrated her. And so they could simply not believe the entire story, that they could find it credible that Trump did A, B, and C, but not credible that Trump went all the way to D

as well. And so this is kind of a civil version of like a lesser included offense, if that makes sense. And when you're thinking about appeals, if a jury verdict is contradictory, that's a pretty nice ground for appeals. That's very different than I think what this is here, which I think you can say intellectually, it's hard to understand why you would find her credible in some parts of her testimony and not credible in either. It's like either you found her credible or not. And in fact, you think it's more likely

that the jury just thought he was kind of a bad guy, but maybe not all the way. And so they split the baby. Split the baby is not a great grounds for appeal. It really does need to be contradictory or without evidence. And that's not really what you have here from an appellate standpoint. But you think there's other interesting grounds for appeal? Well, I would say people have submitted to me a potential grounds for appeal that is not, in fact, really a

ground for appeal and not as interesting as it first appears. But let me go back real quickly to the sexual battery but not rape part of this. It's interesting to me, because this is going to roll into the next discussion. It's interesting to me that essentially I think the prior bad act testimony may have ended up taking the rape case, the rape charge off the jury from the jury and here, here, or made it less convincing to the jury because the prior bad act evidence introduced was not of Trump, Trump raping people. It was of Trump groping and grabbing people. That was the prior bad act evidence. And so it's entirely possible for them to say, look,

I'm going to believe that Trump did behaved towards towards E. Jean Carroll the way he acted towards these other witnesses. But I'm not, I'm more skeptical that he went further than that. I think that that's a rational jury verdict. And incidentally, it's one that says, hey, maybe the jury wasn't just biased against Trump from the beginning. It parsed the charges. But this is the part that's interesting. So a number of people have come after me online in talking about the case because I didn't talk about in a piece I wrote for the Times about Rule 404. Okay, they said I did not address

Rule 404 of the Federal Rules of Evidence.. And therefore I have not really raised the elephant in the room that all of that prior bad act testimony was impermissible, not properly admitted. And so this verdict is completely stained. How dare you not mention it? And rule 404 says it's, it's entitled character evidence, other crimes, wrongs, or act. And 404A says evidence of a person's character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion, the person acted in accordance with the character or character trait. 404A says don't use character evidence to prove actions in accordance with character. 404B says evidence of any other crime, wrong, or act is not admissible to prove a person's character

in order to show that on a particular occasion, the person acted in accordance with the character. So this is a general prohibition against using prior bad acts to prove the existence of another bad act. It's a general rule. There are multiple exceptions. And folks are right that if 404 was the final word on this, this was going to be, and there are exceptions, but this was going to be an interesting choice by the judge to let all

that in. Except, Sarah, there is now Rule 415, similar acts in civil cases involving sexual assault or child molestation. In a civil case involving a claim for relief based on a party's alleged sexual assault or child molestation, the court may admit evidence that the party committed any other sexual assault or child molestation. already committed any other sexual assault or child molestation. So this is a pretty big exception to the general prohibition against prior bad acts in the civil context, in the sexual assault context. And so it seems to me, Sarah, that the judge is on really solid ground on admitting the prior bad acts because this is a civil sexual assault case. It's black letter law. It's quite clear. And so that's how it was relatively non-controversial that these prior bad acts came in. Interesting. Okay. So where do you think an appeal can come from? Trump has obviously said publicly that he wasn't allowed to defend himself. He wasn't allowed to talk publicly and that he's going to appeal on those

grounds. That to me seems less fruitful. No. So the fact that he was gagged in some small way by a court, in other words, a court admonishing him against talking about the case publicly, it's not grounds for appeal because Trump's public statements, whatever he was going to say, are not evidence that were excluded from, that's not evidence excluded from the trial. This is not something the jury would have seen anyway. Ideally, if jurors sort of sought it out against court's orders, they could have seen it. But I have been in court cases, Sarah, where the judge issued a gag order to the parties that I thought was ludicrous and overbroad, but that was not grounds for appeal

in the case. I had the opportunity to challenge the gag order in court separately. So that's not a grounds for appeal. Now, as far as the rest of the case, Throughout a trial, and trial lawyers know this, there are multiple objections made. Some are granted, some are sustained, some are overruled. And so if you're a trial lawyer, you're maintaining that sort of running list of, I wanted this jury instruction and didn't get it, or I wanted to introduce this evidence and wasn't permitted to. So I don't know what the bill of particulars will be on all of the various objections that were raised in the case, but I don't see a singular glaring error that would overturn this verdict. That's not to say that there might not be death by a thousand cuts, but I don't see a singular glaring error.

Sounds good. And of course, we are still waiting on that indictment from Georgia on the election case. And the Department of Justice still has its three outstanding investigations, one into January 6th, one into classified documents, and one into obstruction related to the classified documents. Those are all under the special counsel.

So there's plenty more of this to come. There's so much more, so much more. Yeah, and so Carroll was awarded $5 million, which is a substantial sum of money. It is not make or break money for Donald Trump. I expect he'll continue to contest the charges. I think there's no downside in him appealing. I did find it very interesting, Sarah, and I did write this today.

And we can put this in the show notes. Look, from the beginning of the Me Too era, I think both the advocates of the Me Too movement and the good faith skeptics of the Me Too movement have had powerful points to make. And the advocate's powerful point is, look, in spite of sexual harassment law, in spite of criminal law, in spite of culture changes, we still have a culture in which powerful men behave towards women with an atmosphere of impunity. It's still there. It's still terrible. And by the way, if you don't assume just because people don't report something promptly, that nothing happened, that there are a lot of reasons because of this powerful culture of impunity that exists,

why people don't come forward promptly. All of that was, I believe, true and powerful and important and necessary in the public to bring to the public square. The good faith skeptics also had something true and important and necessary, which is to say, we're with you that powerful men have operated with impunity, but we cannot, we cannot make final determinations about who's good and who's bad based on media reports. Now, sometimes evidence can be so compelling that it leaves no doubt, but the bottom line is don't forsake due process. that it leaves no doubt. But the bottom line is don't forsake due process. And what's important about this case is this was due process. This was not just E. Jean Carroll doing a bunch of press conferences with her friends. This was E. Jean Carroll going under oath, her friends going

under oath, these other women going under oath. Donald Trump had an opportunity to go and look the jury in the eye. This is about, this is peak due process right here, an actual civil trial. And Trump was found responsible. He was found liable. And I think it's a really important moment for those who say, I am with the Me Too movement, but I also want due process to absorb that due process occurred here. He was found liable and shouldn't there be some kind of reaction to that, Sarah? Yeah, I do want to provide one asterisk. I agree with everything you just said, but when it, there's, you know,

sort of a technical due process and larger due process issues. And when you're asked to defend yourself against a claim that was 40 years ago, it undermines due process because you don't know where you were that day. And sometimes the person accusing you doesn't have the specific day. And so they're able to put together this case. And let's say for a moment, by the way, that it's absolutely true. You know, if this happened to you, you would remember it very well. And if you're the person who did it,'t happen. And it doesn't mean women, um, do or should even have to, to talk about it right away. I, I very, it doesn't mean they're lying all of that, but from a legal standpoint, it makes it incredibly hard. You're asking someone to defend something where they have no clue where they were that year, let alone that month, that day, et cetera. That's very different than accusing someone of something from last year.

I agree with that completely. And that's also an excellent argument for a defense attorney to make. If, which is ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client didn't do it. So you're asking him to specifically remember something he didn't do 40 years ago and where he was in a moment that he says didn't happen. You know, there's a lot of powerful arguments you can make to a jury raising that very point, I think. And there's every indication that Trump's attorney raised those kinds of arguments. And again, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And look, there's persuasive parts to that, but I think there's also a due process element.

Right. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. All right. George Santos is now in custody, has surrendered to the FBI as we tape this podcast. I don't find George Santos to be that interesting as a person, but I thought we could quickly run through just some of those charges. If any of them stood out to you, David, you know, sitting congressman gets indicted. Why not take it for a whirl? Yeah, I'm with you, Sarah. It's the AO hive mind at work. George Santos doesn't really interest me. Um, I mean, it is interesting in an abstract sense of it is just how weird his lying was. I was a volleyball star, you know,

like of all the sports to pick that you're going to lie about, you know, I was a volleyball star. It's an interesting choice, but anyway, he, he's weird at to an extreme level. But I have never been captivated by the story. And I'm still not captivated. Because what's interesting about this, or what's not interesting about this is, as weird as a lot of his lies are, this case is really about the most boring and mundane and normal and conventional aspect of his line, which is, guess what, Sarah? There's a lot of evidence that he defrauded people out of money. Oh, wow. Yeah, that his lies were not confined to his collegiate athletic career,

collegiate athletic career, um, that he would also lie to get, take people's money. And the heart of the case is, is, uh, around about $50,000 in donations from political donors for a fake super PAC that he created. And he got the 50 K in and he spent the money on luxury goods and designer clothing. And so it's a really sort of primitive, fraudulent scheme that he created a limited liability company that was not actually a super PAC. Two donors give $25,000 to the company. And then Santos does what? Promptly transfers the funds to his personal

bank accounts. So that's the heart of it. There's three counts of money laundering in connection with this scheme. He has two more counts of wire fraud and one count of stealing public money, which is in part of a separate scheme where he was employed earning $120,000 a year through a Florida-based investment company. But he also told the state that he was unemployed and he collected $24,000 in unemployment benefits. So all of this stuff, Sarah, as weird as sort of the Santos lying scandal is, this is boring, plain vanilla financial fraud from a liar. I should say alleged financial fraud from a liar. And there's not a lot. The only thing that's really interesting about it is he is one fourth of the of the GOP It can't lose four seats. And he's one of the four

seats. I think his political career is in its last legs. But he's interesting mainly because he's one fourth of the political, of the House majority. Yeah, so I think it's worth noting, by the way, in terms of whether people think this is unusual during my time at the Department of Justice, which, again, remember, wasn't that long. We indicted two sitting congressmen actually in two weeks. Chris Collins was charged with insider trading and lied to the FBI. Duncan Hunter was charged with basically stealing campaign finance money and falsifying campaign finance records. And David, do you want to know how I know that the Department of Justice is at least feeling very confident about what they've got in this case? How do you know? Because it's only May.

Like, do you know how fast this must have moved internally department of justice investigations take a long time usually i mean they cross all their t's they dot all their i's they have to have everything dead to rights i've talked about this before the doj has this sort of philosophy that can be different than state prosecutors they don't just bring cases against people who they think are guilty they bring cases against people who they believe basically without a doubt they can win against at trial. So by the time the feds knock on your door, like you're cooked and that's what they want you to think too. So it's, you know, it's all bound together. It only took them till May to indict this guy. There was some low hanging fruit here, low hanging evidence.

Yeah, Sarah, like if you read the indictment, you think either this indictment is one of the more incompetent charging documents ever and that it is dramatically oversimplifying a complex case or this ain't a complex case. simplifying a complex case, or this ain't a complex case. You know, you get 50K from a couple of people on the grounds that they're going to be supporting your political prospects, and then you go ahead and buy clothes with it. Yeah, you got a problem. Or if you get 24K in unemployment benefits, yet you also are employed. I mean, this is not rocket science stuff here. Like this is not. And I think that's the one thing about the Santos scandal that is just the only thing interesting about it is just how brazen he lied and how easy it was to catch him.

But that he wasn't really caught until after the election. So I have an idea to float past you, Sarah. Okay, so I've been thinking, I've been at a conference where I've been around a lot of smart folks proposing a lot of smart ideas to try to deal with things like public corruption. to try to deal with things like public corruption. What would you think about a party, not the government, but a party adopting a rule that says every candidate for public office in this party, in this state, will have to submit to a background check and the results will be published? I'm not talking just a criminal background check,

but a background check kind of like I had to have when I got employed at the Times where they actually dive into things like, did you really work at such and such a place? Who was your supervisor? Like just checking these boxes of, do you, are you who you say you are? In addition to the boxes of,

what's the legal history of this person? Who sued this person, who sued this person, et cetera? I have a few thoughts. One, you know, you're taking a bazooka to swat a fly. Like the vast majority of the time, it'll be really boring. So you're going to waste a ton of resources to find the one George Santos and maybe a handful of other people who are exaggerating, for instance.

Although frankly, the exaggerations are gonna be very hard to find in a routine background check. The George Santos is what you find in a background check. Second, my reaction is, we already have that built in. Those incentives are built in so that we don't need to spend public resources on them. Each side-

Party, party resources. Okay, but whatever. I mean, each side already is doing that to their primary opponents, to the other opposing candidates. What is remarkable about the George Santos situation is watching that system just fail in like really blatant, obvious, weird ways. I've never seen that happen. I mean, again, you have candidates who exaggerate things on their resume from 40 years ago, and they're running ads about it. And here, every single thing the guy was saying was not true.

And the Democratic Party didn't notice. Huh? So I don't think it's necessary. I'm not against it. Sure. But it's not necessary on both fronts. A, it actually doesn't happen that often. And B, it's not necessary on both fronts. A, it actually doesn't happen that often. And B, it's getting found where it does happen 99% of the time. And then there's just George Santos. I don't know, man. I'm not sure you can create a system

that fixes sociopathy. Well, maybe I'm colored by the fact that I live in Tennessee. And here in Tennessee, we have nine members of Congress, of which two of our nine member delegation, I think, would have been absolutely disqualified by a background, a decent background check before they even got going. And the heart of their wrongdoing was not discovered until after they were elected. the congressman who became quasi-famous after the Covenant school shooting,

because that's his district, and he had a Christmas card where his whole family had AR-style rifles. Turns out that a huge amount of his bio that he put out to the public was just, it's a bit too much to call it exaggerated. What's something, I mean, just not quite Santos level fabrication, but close. So for example, said he was an economist. He had one economics class in community college that he got like a C in. He said that he was in law enforcement combating international sex traffic. Turns out that he was like a reserve sheriff's deputy of some kind, eventually thrown out of the program

for not doing the mandatory training. And as far as we know, had no legal involvement with international sex trafficking. But see, David, that stuff I think is actually much harder because then the question is, who's doing the background check? And I'll give you the alternative version of what that means. Carly Fiorina in her campaign, you know, one of our taglines was from secretary to

CEO, because her first job out of college was as a secretary. Well, that got fact checked by the Washington Post, who said that because she had had jobs in between being secretary and CEO, because she had had jobs in between being secretary and CEO, it was a false statement. To which I was like, did anyone think that they went to their secretarial pool and were like, who wants to be CEO? They said she'd gotten an MBA in between being a secretary and being CEO. And all of these things proved that she was exaggerating and lying about her career trajectory. And you see why I'm comparing it. Like, obviously we know that one is ridiculous and one is real,

but when the Washington Post fact checkers don't really see the difference between the two, we've got a bit of a problem then because you're just moving the ball to who does the background check. And I remember that background check, I mean, that fact check so vividly because it was so absurd.

It'd be about like if I was a baseball player and my autobiography said from Sandlot to Yankee Stadium. Then they go, nope, sorry. You know, between when you were eight years old and when you were 23, when you debuted in Yankee Stadium, you had a little bit time. You had some time. Right, you debuted in Yankee Stadium, you had a little bit time, you had some time. Right, you played in a high school field. So therefore, yeah, I mean, it really was absurd. She actually had been a secretary at Marcus and Milla Champ. She'd been the CEO of HP.

And I was the person who, by the way, like gets the call from the Washington Post and is supposed to like defend this. And I'll admit, I don't think I did a very good job because I was so flabbergasted by- Just gobsmacked. Yeah, the line of questioning. I was like, but she was a secretary. And then at a later point in time, she was a CEO. And the line that you're fact-checking says, quote, from secretary to CEO. So I'm confused by your confusion.

Yeah. And it's actually, you know, for those listeners who are really mystified often by Oh, so I'm confused by your confusion. And it's actually, you know, for those listeners who are really mystified often by after the seat prior CEO stepped down and says, you have shown some promise answering phones. Like, yeah, come on. Luckily, of all the things that bothered Carly on that campaign, I can tell you when it's something that ridiculous, that's not something that gets under a candidate's skin. David, we have just a couple minutes of time, but I'm curious if there's anything you are reading or watching on TV that is standing out to you in this moment, culturally in the United States. Well, I'm not going to mention succession because that's a trigger for it. It's a trigger word for you.

Yes. Yeah, you don't like succession. So I'm not going to mention it. I am, so I've been traveling a lot. So I've been off my streaming game, but I have taken up watching Love and Death on HBO, which is a, it's a ripped from the headlines of the 1970s slash early 80s story murder, but it is very well done. It is very well done. I've, we have stopped,

we've gotten to the point where the axe has emerged and the axe has a part to play and what comes next, but it is very, very well done. Uh, it stars, oh gosh, is it Elizabeth Olsen? I mainly know her, Sarah, Scarlet Witch in the Avengers, you know, in the MCU. So it, it stars Scarlet Witch and she's fantastic in it. So it's really good. And then I just can't say enough about Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Yeah. So a little Texas murder in love and death and a little bit of saving alternate Earths and Guardians of the Galaxy 3. So yeah.

What about you? I have two that I think are really interesting right now. One is called the big door prize. It's on Apple TV. And so I always say that like, I don't like sci-fi, but that's not totally true because there's really two totally different genres of sci-fi. One is like Battlestar Galactica. And yeah, I watch Battlestar Galactica and I get it and it is fun, whatever. That's the kind of sci-fi that I generally don't like. But there's another type of sci-fi that I'm going to call like the Ray Bradbury sci-fi where it changes like one thing or, you know, you add one piece of technology into our current lives, how would that change how we interact with one another? I'm really into that type of sci-fi.

That's pretty cool. And the big door prize falls very, very heavily on that Ray Bradbury side. So basically there's a machine that shows up in town. No one knows how it works. No one knows how it got there, et cetera. And it will tell you your life's potential. It just spits out a little card.

And that's it, right? So you're in this small town in America. It looks like it's probably Wisconsin. At least that's according to husband of the pod who... I think he has had more complaints. It never says it's Wisconsin, but he thinks it's Wisconsin and then has complaints

about how they're mischaracterizing Wisconsin, a place they never claimed to be. Uh, but you know, you basically are getting into character development, but with this small, you know, Ray Bradbury-esque sci-fi chain. So A, I think that show is pretty cool so far. There's episodes coming out every week. So I don't know how it's going to end. Maybe they can't land the plane. I don't know. Um, but it's not like lost where there's, you know, you need to understand what the numbers mean or something like that. Like, nope, it's like, lost where there's, you know, you need to understand what the numbers mean or something like that.

Like, nope, it's like, it's, you know, like a gas station machine instead of a photo booth, it spits out your life's potential. So it's not like it's high technology in that sense. The other thing that I'm watching, David, that you're gonna die laughing about, but I think it's really interesting. Bridgerton season three.

No. Yes, but I'm gonna tell you why. Bridgerton season three. No. Yes. But I'm going to tell you why, David. Nope. Okay. So this is a Shonda Rhimes show. That's not usually the stuff that I'm into, but, um, you know, sometimes you need some mindless stuff to watch in a, in a hotel room.

And this season is the story of King George III and his queen Charlotte. And it basically takes the real history of King George's mental illness and Charlotte's, you know, role and their children. And, um, you know, there's going to be a sort of a problem with finding an heir at the end of all of that, even though they have 15 kids. So the historical part's always fun. You know, we always think of George III as the mad king in American Revolution and the musical Hamilton. And so you're seeing it from a more, a much more sympathetic perspective, but that's not why I'm talking about it. I'm talking about it because the thing that they've introduced in a near Ray Bradbury sense

is the idea that during this time, there was a great experiment. They call it the great experiment. Charlotte is black. So King George marries a black queen and they bring up and give titles to and land to, you know, wealthy black merchants throughout the kingdom and how that experiment works and what that would do sort of the racial history of the United Kingdom, obviously, of America. And look, it's pretty ham-handed in

the sense that this is Bridgerton, so don't expect it to be too intellectually engaging. But nevertheless, cool thought experiment. I don't know. It's kind of working for me. Okay. So was Queen Charlotte... Wait, was she Black in real life no of course not oh okay okay that's the change that's the ray bradbury-esque sci-fi change got it okay okay because i knew bridgerton had multi-ethnic casting it does but yes but I didn't think that was historically based. And then when you said it, I, okay, I'm tracking you now. I'm a little slow today, Sarah. I'm a little slow. I'm tracking you now. So am I, but it's probably the ticks. But you know, for our cultural moment and everyone talking about race and making it such a central part of so many conversations.

And you have folks on one side saying this is what's necessary. And you have folks on the other side saying it's too much of a focus, all of that to have a show that is, um, trying to tackle it in an interesting and from a, you know, far back history way and say, what if things had just been slightly different? What would that have looked like? How would that have changed everything that we're living through now? Um, and look, they have to change other stuff, right? So there's very, very wealthy, um, you know, black landed gentry in this version, but there's racism. They're not invited to the, you know, various things. And so they're given these titles and lands and everything else. Um, but it,

you know, various things. And so they're given these titles and lands and everything else. But it, it's basically creating a Bridgerton universe to explain why this is a flashback season, right? Why in later seasons, you then have this multi-ethnic society in, you know, early 19th century, Great Britain. So I have to confess, I did not know that you were going to be an aficionado of the BEU, the Bridgerton Extended Universe. Did not see that coming. David, let's be clear. This is also soft core pornography, so I'm not necessarily recommending it for our listeners. I just think what they're trying to do here is interesting.

Yeah. Okay. Well, moving on from Bridgerton, there is one other thing, Sarah, that's about, I'm about to publish. The Times asked its columnist to write 500 words on the piece of art, whether it is actual, like a painting or a song or a movie that explains America today. And so I did my 500 words on my favorite, what is now probably my favorite sci-fi movie of all time called Arrival. I listen to the soundtrack from Arrival sometimes. Oh, it's so good. And so why would Arrival explain America Today? Well, it only does in opposition to another movie.

And because I talked about how there are these two movies, both of them have an existential threat to the world's coming of different kinds. One was an arrival as aliens are arriving in Armageddon. That's my other movie, the Michael Bay movie. It was a big giant asteroid. And in both of the movies, the Americans end up saving the day, right?

The American linguist and then the American science, the American linguist, and then the American oil driller. But in Michael Bay in the 1990s, this was America as the hyper power. We had won the Cold War. The Russians, if you go back to 1998, were our lovable friends with creaky space stations. And there was no doubt it was rah, rah, we're going to get this thing done. You go to, uh, to arrival and we get every, we get it done, but we're also, it's just a very different thing. We are the cause of the crisis and the solution to the crisis in an interesting way. There's a lot more loss in the story, a lot more uncertainty in the story. And it just does feel like a track between those two movies, it tracks the art of America with extreme confidence to America with still extreme capability,

but with less confidence and less sure it's less sure of itself. And in many ways, less virtuous. And I thought, anyway, so that was my maybe reading way too much into my favorite sci-fi film. I just like the soundtrack because it's Vivaldi, but like bizarro Vivaldi. Oh, it's so good. It's so good.

Yeah. All right, David, that ends a sort of bizarro advisory opinions episode for any number of reasons. One of which is that I've been gone in a field for three days. So next week you're gone and we will have David Latt joining us for the week as guest, special guest. Yes.

Special, special guest. Special, special guest, David Latt of original jurisdiction. Plenty to talk about with him, but we'll cover news of the day like we do here normally. And David, we'll see you when you get back. I am looking for, well, let me just say, I hope it goes well with David Latt, but not too well because I want to be invited back. As long as I can keep saying, but David, I just not sure I'm going to notice the difference at all. It's true. It's true. Absolutely. All right. Safe travels.