Jack - Episode 73 | Ford Immunity

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

This week; Donald Trump had a bad week and the coming weeks don’t look much better for him. The jury has been seated in the Manhattan election interference case. There’s a hearing scheduled regarding his shady bond in the NYAG civil fraud case. CIPA Section 5 deadlines are rapidly approaching in the Mar-a-Lago willful retention case. Oral arguments in the Supreme Court over Trump’s immunity bid in the January 6 case are scheduled for next week. Plus, a couple of listener questions, and more! Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ Brian Greer’s Quick Guide to CIPAhttps://www.justsecurity.org/87134/the-quick-guide-to-cipa-classified-information-procedures-act/ AMICI CURIAE to the District Court of DC https://democracy21.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Attachment-Brief-of-Amici-Curiae-in-Support-of-Governments-Proposed-Trial-Date.pdfGood to know:Rule 403bhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_40318 U.S. Code § 1512https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 Prior RestraintPrior Restraint | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information InstituteBrady MaterialBrady Rule | US Law |Cornell Law School | Legal Information Institutehttps://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brady_rule#:~:text=Brady%20material%2C%20or%20the%20evidence,infer%20against%20the%20defendant's%20guiltJenksJencks Material | Thomson Reuters Practical Law Glossaryhttps://content.next.westlaw.com/Glossary/PracticalLaw/I87bcf994d05a11e598dc8b09b4f043e0?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)Gigliohttps://definitions.uslegal.com/g/giglio-information/Statutes:18 U.S.C. § 241 | Conspiracy Against Rights18 U.S.C. § 371 | Conspiracy to Defraud the United States | JM | Department of Justice18 U.S.C.  § 1512 | Tampering With Victims, Witnesses, Or Informants Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AGFollow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

MSW Media I signed an order appointing Jack Smith. And those who say Jack is a fanatic. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, what law have I broken? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is?

Send me to jail! Welcome to episode 73 of Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. It is Sunday, April 21st, 2024. I'm Andy McCabe. Hey, 2024. I'm Andy McCabe. Hey, Andy. I'm Alison Gill. And man, we're about to enter one of the busiest and most crucial weeks in the, I guess, trials and tribulations of one Donald John Trump. That guy again. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. April 22nd. We have a full jury. April 22nd is opening statements in the election interference trial. Also, April 22nd is a hearing to sort out the sketchy bond backed by Don Hanke, the king of

the subprime car loan. Could that guy's name be any closer to Hanke, which is what the bond is? A janky, yeah. He's a hanky janky guy.anky guy. This is the New York attorney general civil fraud case obviously. And the New York attorney general, by the way, just filed a thing saying she wants this bond rejected because it's untrustworthy and incompetent. She said, yeah, she's not mincing words. Tell us what you really think. Right. Wow. So that's just April 22nd. April 23rd, Trump has a hearing about 10 so far potential violations of his limited gag order in the Manhattan DA's election interference criminal trial, the one where they just seated the jury.

That would be the gag order where he was told, don't talk about jurors and then immediately posted something about the jurors. Yep, and witnesses. Michael Cohen, for example, and Stormy Daniels. And then April 24th, we're going to get Walt Nauta's grand jury testimony transcript. We had his FBI transcript, we're going to get the grand jury one. Then April 25th, we have the Supreme Court's oral arguments on Trump's immunity bid in the January 6th election subversion criminal trial. So I have not seen a stacked court calendar like this yet. And I don't think it's going to let up, honestly.

No, it won't. And of course we have in the espionage and obstruction case in Florida, we're staring down the barrel of a SEPA section five deadline. And of course, down there as well, you just mentioned the Walt Notta grand jury transcripts are becoming out. So like get your red pencils out for that one because that'll be fascinating to just go line by line

with the grand jury testimony. You know, I'm looking forward to that. And then of course, a few days ago, Supreme Court heard the case that could impact over 350 people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, as well as two charges that Jack Smith brought against Donald Trump, those being the obstruction charges under 1512 C-2.

So yeah, a little bit going on. It's turning out to be the perfect storm of legal distractions and impossibility that everybody thought it would be last summer when these things started getting indicted. We were like, how's that going to work with all these trials? And then he's also running for president. That's going to be hard to do all that at once. And it is proving out to be exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. So with all that in mind, let's have another entry of good week, bad week. Which we might have to re-christen how this was a bad week.

Because it's always- It's just bad week, worst week. It's really unlikely to be good weeks, especially for the former president. With all that stuff going on and everything we have coming up, he's really facing a lot of challenges. I think the Fisher, uh, arguments to the Supreme court on the 17th were probably, it's hard to say completely, and I know we're going to get into this in detail later in the show, but I think it could very well be an indicator of an upcoming bad week for Jack Smith.

Uh, when this, when this decision comes out. I know there's a range of opinions on how bad it could be, but there certainly seemed to be a lot of skepticism among the justices on both sides to some extent about the scope of how DOJ is using that statute. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I'm in the other camp. I know that there's a lot of folks like Roger Parloff and Ellie Mistol who are pretty certain that the Supreme Court is just going to gut the statute. And we'll talk about that a little bit later in the show. But with everything that's going on, this is just an epically bad week for Donald Trump. The jury was selected in his criminal trial in the first week.

I thought it was going to take at least two weeks to select that jury. And right now, as you and I record this, he is sitting there in a Sandoval hearing and it looks like the judge is going to let most of his prior bad acts come in as impeachable stuff. Like a Sandoval hearing is where if Trump testifies and the prosecution wants to impeachable stuff. Like a Sandoval hearing is where if Trump testifies and the prosecution wants to impeach him, the judge has to decide what prior bad legal stuff can be brought in to impeach him that wouldn't prejudice the jury. Something that is, quote, you know, what they call squarely within Sandoval. That's right. Yeah. Generally, proof of prior bad acts is not allowed in

criminal trials unless it falls into one of a number of different exceptions. You know, exceptions range from things like planning, you know, all kinds of, there's all kinds of ways that prosecutors try to squeak that stuff in at the federal level. It's a little bit different than at the state level, but nonetheless, it really comes to a head in the context of if the defendant testifies in their own defense, at that point, the prosecution really wants to open the floodgates

and go after the defendant in an effort to impeach them, to show them to be not trustworthy or not truthful. You have those bad prior bad acts can be very influential, sometimes too influential, which makes them unduly prejudicial. And that's when the court kind of pushes back. So that'll be an interesting hearing to see how that goes. Yeah. And Andy, watching it right now, your lawsuit, the one where Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and you and Pete Struck and 28 other people,

that's allowed in. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the one he was sanctioned for. He was. Him and Alina Jaba sanctioned nearly a million dollars for that lawsuit. He tried to judge shop that one down in Palm Beach and ended up with Judge Middlebrooks instead of Judge Cannon.

And it didn't go well for him. Middlebrooks. Where we would be today if we'd gotten lucky twice there, but apparently not. All right. Let's start up in DC. We have Trump's reply brief on immunity. So in this briefing, the Supreme Court, Trump gets a crack and then Jack Smith gets a crack and then Trump gets to reply one last time.

This is his reply brief on immunity. He's got a new argument here and we'll get to it in a second. But he says, the special counsel admits that the separation of powers precludes the criminal prosecution of a sitting president, but he contends that this protection vanishes the moment the president leaves office. It does. The special counsel insists that from that day onward, any enterprising prosecutor may charge and seek to imprison the president for his official acts, including his most controversial and impactful decisions. The threat of post office prosecution will, quote, bog the executive down

threat of post office prosecution will quote, bog the executive down into endless cycles of recrimination, quote, assuring that massive and lengthy investigations will occur and quote, permanently encumbering the republic with a novel practice that will do it great harm. Even though it's never happened in the history of the country. That is his argument here. Yeah. And endless cycles of recrimination, kind of like saying, I'm going to put Joe Biden in jail if I win the presidency. Would that be an example of the endless cycles of recrimination? I guess so. As someone who has pledged to continue to establish the cycle of recrimination, I guess he has a unique position from which to make this argument. Yeah. He also hits his kind of greatest

hits on the immunity argument side. He starts with a former president enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. There he of course misquotes Marbury versus Madison again saying that Marbury held that a president's official acts, quote, can never be examinable by the courts. That is a misstatement of Marbury, as we've been saying for months. And then he raises his impeachment judgment clause argument, which we have discussed at length on this pod is a logical fallacy. But nevertheless, he says the impeachment judgment clause thus reinforces Marbury's immunity principle, which again, that's something that doesn't exist.

There's no immunity principle in Marbury, but I continue. Absent the exception recognized in the clause, impeachment and Senate conviction, a president's official acts, quote, can never be examinable by the courts. There's this misquote of Marbury. Or I should say selective quote of Marbury. He goes on to say, respondent worries that a hypothetical president might leave office and evade impeachment for official crimes. But when the framers erected the formidable hurdle

of impeachment and conviction, they assumed the risk that some presidential misfeasance might go unpunished. I would like to see the history of that one. I want to see, you know, the Federalist Papers or wherever, whatever you want to cite to that actually shows how the framers are like, you know, we're good with some degree of presidential misfeasance. Misfeasance, yeah. I don't think you're going to find that. No.

Actually, I think there was one guy at some point in the 1800s, and I can't remember who it was, who said, you know, we're willing to risk that not being right all the time in the interest of liberty, right? But I think he's misapplying it to here as he tends, as he has want to do. They kind of constructed the entire thing in the way they did because they wanted a country that was led by someone who was accountable to the law. So because they all came from this place where you didn't have that. It was called England. It's still called England, but it's different now. So yeah, they're kind of not really interested in like, let's throw someone in the presidency and just let them run, do

whatever they want. The whole idea of America was based on that. Now, exactly. This is when we get to his new argument. And it may not be fully new. It might have been mentioned a little bit, but he's brought it up here and I haven't seen it in a while. I don't remember him making this argument. He says, President Ford pardoned President Nixon, but President Nixon faced charges for private conduct, not just official acts. He faced subordination of perjury, tax fraud, misprision of a felony, and misuse of government funds for his private home. Moreover, President Ford correctly determined

that the prosecution of a former president would be incurably divisive and destructive. So he's actually applying here, Ford's reasoning for the pardon, his political reason for the pardon, to say that it gives presidents immunity. Because it would just be, you know how he was like, well, we have to look forward, we shouldn't look back and we need to unite the country. And he's saying that that means that you can't indict Donald Trump, which is fascinating, a fascinating argument that I have yet to see. It's the president creating a presidential immunity unilaterally. One president, Ford, deciding that from that point forward, with the pardon of Nixon,

no president who came after that could ever be held accountable under the criminal law. Somehow, I think that that's not that was not Ford's intention. Yeah, and maybe if you hadn't tried to assassinate your vice president, and he, you know, somebody else got into office, then maybe you'd have gotten a pardon. And then you do have immunity when you're pardoned by the president. But didn't happen that way. And he goes on to say the special counsel cites sources indicating that a sitting president may sometimes face prosecution after leaving office, but sources that consider an immunity during the Clinton presidency focus on the president's private acts, not official acts. So he's continuing to say Nixon, private acts, Clinton, private acts, Me, official acts. But he fails to tell you why his actions

were official and not private. He says, respondent contends that the court should be, the court should remand for immediate trial, even if criminal immunity exists. But the respondent repeatedly admits that the indictment charges the quote, use of official power, unquote. And boy, that is as cherry picked as Marbury is, because that is not the full statement from Jack Smith. He is talking about your private means, your private ends, you're a private citizen doing private things with private people as a candidate for office. And you, you know, used some of your official powers to achieve those private ends and private means as a candidate for office. But he didn't say, oh, the indictment charges the use of official power. No, he

never said that. He said the only overt conduct that respondents attempt and fails to identify as supposedly unofficial conduct is the alleged organization of the alternate slates of electors. That was that all? Thus, the respondent effectively admits that this hypothetical trial would rest largely or exclusively on immune official acts. No, again, he's drawing these inferences, logical fallacy that that to me looks like the same logical fallacy that he is using in the impeachment judgment

clause, right? Yeah, it's a complete misrepresentation of the substance of the special counsel's arguments in their response brief that we went over last week. I mean, I thought Jack Smith made a convincing argument that the majority of the indictment was based on acts that he took outside the perimeter, outside this, you know, the scope of his official duties. And in the event that there was then needed to be some determination as to whether or not some of those acts were within or outside the scope, that could be done as part of the trial as soon as they remanded back to the trial court and start moving. And Trump says the immunity does not turn on the motivation for actual performance of official acts.

Yes, it does. If that were true, the president could use his official acts like commanding the military to achieve private ends, like to kill his political rival. Right. That's exactly the argument that's been roundly rejected by the courts. And he concludes with this, Trump concludes with, if the court upholds criminal immunity without dismissing it outright, it should remand to address whether each act in the indictment is shielded by immunity

with evidence if necessary before any further proceedings. And he's doing that so that he can appeal at what those rulings are all the way back up to the Supreme Court, drag this out past the election. So that's the punchline there, right? All the rest of that was buildups to be able to establish this request of send it back for a detailed factual findings on each act alleged in the indictment and we'll completely derail this thing for, I don't know, a year or more while they fight over those, appeal the judgments in each one of those instances, and then appeal those judgments to the Supreme Court. Yeah. And Jack Smith thought of this. He had the foresight to know that he was going to

file an immunity thing and said, well, I'm going to write this in such a way where even if for some reason the Supreme Court decides that there is immunity for some official acts, all of this behavior that you were indicted for was you as a candidate for office, was when you were a candidate for office, a private citizen, not the President of the United States. And the reason we're able to use the official acts, some of the official acts that he undertook in order to achieve his private means as a private candidate, that can be used as evidence and doesn't preclude us from going forward without immunity arguments. So he wrote this indictment and he drafted the charges in that very specific way for

this very specific fight. And hopefully the Supreme Court sees it the right way. I was surprised that Trump didn't make any single argument that his acts were official. He didn't say, this particular thing in the indictment was an official act because blah, blah, blah. This particular act in the indictment was an official act because of blah, blah, blah. He didn't explain. And the reason he didn't is because he can't and he knows that because Justice Thomas's super good friend, Judge Pryor, who is the chief of the 11th circuit,

had written a decision in the Meadows case. Remember when Meadows was trying to get his stuff moved out of Fulton County to a federal court? Pryor was like, y'all in the executive branch have zero business providing oversight for elections. None. It is not your job. In fact, you are explicitly precluded from doing that job. So no, you don't have, we aren't moving this to federal court. We aren't moving this to federal court. And that, I think, is going to be taken into consideration when a Supreme Court, when we might hear that come up on Thursday in the Supreme Court's arguments. Yeah. I think that's likely.

I think he really is going to struggle to make those arguments of these are all official acts and he can't do that competently here. But if he gets his wish and this entire thing gets thrown back for an extended review of that issue up against each fact in the indictment, then you're going to see those arguments. If this was official because of... Right. That's what he wants. He wants to throw this back to Judge Chutkin so she has to go through all of these acts and decide whether it was official or not, hear evidence, have hearings, make a determination, rule on it, and then have it appealed by Donald Trump and go back up to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and then go back up to the Supreme

Court again. Right. and then go back up to the Supreme Court again. That's his whole goal here. We've known for a very long time that his goal is delay, delay, delay, because that's what innocent people do, right, Andy? They're like, I am innocent. I don't want to go to a trial and clear my name before I run for president. No, he wants to delay this and it's becoming now evident exactly how the machinations of his delay tactics are coming into focus. And that's this one here with this interlocutory appeal and wanting to send it back down to have to send it all back up again.

It's becoming clear also down in Florida with his addenda to motions to compel and all these other things to create and trigger these ongoing litigations. We'll talk about that a little bit later in the show. But we still have more from DC with the Supreme Court oral arguments in Fisher versus United States and how that could impact the convictions of January 6th defendants and possibly Donald Trump. But first we have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay. Let's stay in DC where this past week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the application of Title 18 USC Section 1512 C2, which we have talked about for many, many months. And so, so our listeners know that that statute makes it

illegal to obstruct an official proceeding. So this So this case is one we've been following. This is Fisher versus United States, in which Fisher, who is a January 6th defendant, argued that in order to be prosecuted under 1512 C-2, he had to have committed obstruction that involved the use of a document. Now several January 6th defendants made this argument to over a dozen judges and every judge except one upheld the DOJ's position.

Judge Nichols, who was the judge in Fisher's case and is a Trump appointee, Judge Nichols took a far narrower reading of 1512C2. So let's start with the statute itself, the text of the statute. 1512c2 says, whoever corruptly, number one, alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding or number two, otherwise obstructs influences or impedes any official proceeding or attempts to do so shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both.

Okay, so Judge Nichols interpretation of the statute hinges on the word otherwise. Judge Nichols believes that otherwise connects number two, okay, the second piece that I read there, to number one, meaning that to violate number two, you would first have to obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding with respect to a document as required in

C1, part one. So again, he was the only judge out of over a dozen that read it that way. Now, of course, we don't know how the Supreme Court justices will rule, but their questions suggest that at least some of them agree that the DOJ, who sees At least some of them agree that the DOJ, who sees part C2 as a typical catch-all addendum, that is an addendum that is tacked onto the end of the statute for the purpose of capturing conduct that doesn't fit within the preceding part of the statute. So some justices from their questions, it seems they believe that DOJ is interpreting the statute too broadly. Justice Gorsuch in particular seemed to compare a peaceful sit-in protest or pulling a fire alarm, which was a clear reference to Representative Jamal Bowman, comparing those hypotheticals to what happened on January 6th. And basically he asked, you know,

would a peaceful sit-in protest that obstructed a proceeding, would that warrant 20 years in prison for the people who participated in the protest? Yeah, and then Elizabeth Prolegar, who, by the way, is just an absolutely incredible litigator, she had a great argument to the 20 years in prison comment saying that that's the statutory maximum and it's hardly an indicator of the application of the law. We have sentencing guidelines that dictate how much time someone spends in prison and

the average sentence in these cases is like 24 months, not 20 years. And she says it also depends on what, if any, other crimes the defendant is charged with, right? So if the law came with a mandatory minimum, she said she would understand bringing up the statutory maximum, but it doesn't apply here. And further, she argued that in those other scenarios, it would be very difficult for the government to prove the corrupt intent element necessary to charge 1512C2, right? You've got to sit in or somebody in the gallery who shouts something out and is removed,

it's really going to be hard to prove that level of corrupt intent that's required for 1512 C2. Yeah. So they wouldn't- How do you prove that there was a proceeding and how do you prove that the people who are now charged knew and intended to obstruct that particular proceeding with a random sit-in that happened in Columbia University this week with people protesting on behalf of the Palestinians. No, there's no proceeding connected to that,

or you certainly couldn't prove there was. Right, and if there was a proceeding, or, you know, well, in the fire alarm example, you know, and we all know they're talking about Jamal Bowman pulling the fire alarm before a vote in Congress, It was in a different building. And so it would be very difficult for the government to prove that he was obstructing an official proceeding

in a building across the street by pulling a fire alarm over here. And then you also have to add the corrupt intent element. And then she also brings up the nexus element, right? Along with Actus Reus. All of this stuff is taken into consideration when applying the law. It's not like everybody who trespassed in the Capitol that day is in prison for 20 years. It's only a handful of them. I think 26 defendants were charged with only this felony, and they received anywhere from six months to two years.

And so she had just made some really, really excellent arguments. I don't think a lot of some of the more conservative justices are buying it, but the whitewashing hypotheticals don't end there. Alito posited, let's say that today, five people got up one after the other and they shouted either keep the January 6th insurrectionist in jail or free the January

6th patriots. And as a result of this, our police officers had to remove them forcibly from the courtroom. And let's say we have to delay the proceeding for five minutes. So he's bringing these up, these hypotheticals like that. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was a fact of where Prilagar argues that those sorts of minimal brief interruptions wouldn't qualify as obstruction under the statute. I thought that would have been a good place also to mention that this statute, as every criminal statute does, brings with it a fair amount of discretion on the part of DOJ and the prosecutors. And these are the factors that they consider before deciding whether or not to pursue an

indictment. So in Alito's example, would DOJ, any DOJ, I'm not talking about like Biden's DOJ versus Trump's DOJ, any DOJ choose to indict a group of five people who showed up and sat in the gallery of a Supreme Court argument and then stood up and chanted in unison, thus obstructing the argument? Would a prosecutor choose to bring a case against them because it's minimal disruption, nonviolent, clearly involved, protected First Amendment speech activity, or likely did. You could maybe argue that at the edges. No, that would be a matter of prosecutorial discretion.

So I thought there was a place for that in her position as well. But anyway, it was an impressive performance by Priligar, but the conservatives really seemed to kind of stick to their questions that indicated concern about the scope of the use of the statute. So we also have a pretty good summary from Politico in which they said, Priligar said there were no examples in history that mirror the attack on the Capitol, which she described as a direct assault on a constitutional process. She also noted that of the more than 1,350 people charged in connection with the riot, only about a quarter faced the obstruction charge.

In part, because of what she said, she described as the difficult hurdles of proving that rioters were both aware of the congressional proceedings and explicitly intended to disrupt them. She called that evidence of intent a, quote, dividing line between those January 6 defendants charged with obstruction and those facing misdemeanor penalties. Now, Judge Clarence Thomas described January 6 as a violent protest and then contended that there have been many such demonstrations, quote,

that have interfered with proceedings. He then wondered whether the Justice Department had ever protest, and then contended that there have been many such demonstrations, quote, that have interfered with proceedings. He then wondered whether the Justice Department had ever deployed the obstruction statute to deal with those situations. Politico goes on to say, what happened on January 6th was very, very serious. And I'm not equating this with that, Alito said, before saying it was important to consider some hypotheticals to determine the quote, outer reaches of the government's interpretation of the law. He went on to reference a Gaza-focused protest on Monday blocking traffic on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and to ask if something similar done on Washington area bridges and

aimed at preventing a congressional hearing could be prosecuted as obstruction of Congress. Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the Justice Department's novel use of the obstruction law to cover a violent protest was justified by the unique nature of the events of that day. Quote, we've never had a situation before where there's been a situation like this with people attempting to stop a proceeding violently. So I'm not sure what the lack of history proves," she said. Now it's also of note that Michael Dreeben, a member of Jack Smith's team, was in court during arguments taking notes. Yeah, he was. And that's a good idea.

No doubt. To see what they're saying, to see how this might impact what they've got over in the Jack Smith indictment of Trump. And I know a lot of my friends who are SCOTUS watchers think that they'll gut this statute, as I've said, and they'll have to contend with overturning nearly 350 guilty pleas and convictions. But I walked away with a different conclusion, especially since Alito was like, oh, I know January 6th was very different.

I think they may narrow the law to be more clear about precluding things like peaceful protests and fire alarms, but I think they'll leave the statute intact for the acts of January 6th. And I also disagree with some of my colleagues who argue that this could upend two of the Jack Smith charges against Trump. Now he's charged with 1512 C2 and 1512 K. And 1512 K is conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and it relies on 1512 C2. It's a direct reference to that. So if 1512 C2 were to fall, so would the 1512C2. It's a direct reference to that. So if 1512C2 were to fall, so would the 1512K charge.

Correct. But just like immunity, Jack Smith fought ahead. And you know, I thought, I went back and I read Trump's motion to dismiss on statutory grounds. I was like, that's where this would be, right? That's where these two would argue about the 1512 C-2 statute. And Jack Smith's response to Trump actually cited Fisher, okay? That's right. He said, the indictment would likewise suffice under a narrower conception of 1512 C-2's actus reus element, which Fisher rejected, that focused on tampering with records.

The certification proceeding that the defendant and his co-conspirators are alleged to have obstructed is required under the Electoral Count Act, which specifies procedures that rely on specific core records, the certificates of votes from each state. Preventing the members of Congress from validating the state certificates constitutes evidence-focused obstruction and thus would violate Section 1512C2 even on a narrower view of the statute's scope. That's particularly true whereas here the criminal conduct included falsifying electoral certificates and transmitting them to Congress. So even if the Supreme Court agrees with that one judge, Judge Nichols,

on his interpretation of 1512 C2, I think Jack Smith has it covered here in his indictment. I think you're right about that. I'm not really that concerned about whatever their decision is gutting the indictment for the same reasons you cite. I think Jack think they're going to adapt, adopt, um, Nichols theory that you have to basically prove somebody's violated C1 in order to then get C2. That doesn't even make sense. If that were the case, you'd only have C1. You don't need C2. You only have C2 in the statute because there will be some fact patterns in which the details of the requirements of C1 are not met, but the conduct is similar enough that it should be penalized under the same statute. That's why you have a catchall.

And clearly, I mean, it's or. The connecting word between the two is or. It's not and. So when they get into a very detailed, if they get into a detailed analysis of statute, I don't think they walk away in Nichols corner But they clearly are concerned that DOJ is being very aggressive in their use of the statute So I think they'll try to limit it in some way as you say I don't think it'll affect the Trump indictment

It may affect a bunch of these convictions on Jan six people but most of those people on Jan 6 people, but most of those people, like Fisher, who's facing six other counts, right? Most of those people who are charged with felony obstruction under 1512C2 are also facing other counts. So even if you get, even if you pled guilty or you went to trial and got convicted and one of the counts was 1512C2,

that might, that part of your conviction might get thrown out, but you're still a felon and you're probably still going to end up serving the same, if not a very similar sentence. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know that this, just in my opinion, I don't think that they're narrowing of this statute. And I'm with you, I think they'll narrow it, but I don't think it'll impact the January 6th capital attack defendants either. But I have been known in the past to give too much credit to this particular Supreme Court. And they had a lot of friends and family there that day. So, you know, not all of them, but a lot of them. So I don't also don't want

to hold my breath or be too Pollyanna about it. All right. We're going to head down to Florida because Judge Cannon has denied pretrial motions to dismiss or for a bill of particulars from Trump's co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira. But we have to take a quick break first. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey everybody. Welcome back. Let's head down to Florida because Judge Cannon has done something right. I'm shocked. I just fell on the floor. I don't know if you heard it. Now I'm back. Okay, go ahead. And she only had a couple of little don't know if you heard it. Now I'm back. Okay, go ahead.

And she only had a couple of little digs at special counsel in this. Normally she's got pages of digs, you know, how she'll be like, you're stupid, you're ugly, I hate your face, but I grant your motion. You didn't even provide facts. You didn't substantiate your argument in any way that could be judged, but you should have told me this a year ago. Why didn have voted for you anyway. Why didn't you put this in your other motion? Yeah, there's only a little bit. I'll get to that. But she's denied Nauta and Deo Lavera's pretrial motions.

She said, this cause comes before the court upon the following three motions. One, defendant Deo Lavera's motion to dismiss the indictment or in the alternative for a bill of particulars. Two, defendant Nauta's motion for a bill of particulars. Two, defendant now does motion for a bill of particulars. And three, defendant now does motion to dismiss the obstruction counts, 33 to 35 and 40 and 41, for unconstitutional vagueness and failure to state a claim. The court has heard argument on the motions on April 12th. And upon review of the relevant filings and fully advised on the premises, defendant's motions are denied. The arguments in defendant Deo Lavera's motion, the arguments, pardon me, do not warrant dismissal

of the obstruction offenses charged against him. As grounds for dismissal of those counts, 33, 40, and 41, Deo Lavera identifies various topics or allegations that are not contained in the indictment, namely specific allegations about his knowledge of the classified documents or the content of the boxes, more generally, or about his knowledge of an official proceeding under 1512. De Oliveira also argues, again in support of dismissal, that the allegations in the indictment do not show that he was capable of acting with the required corrupt criminal intent to support the alleged obstruction offenses.

These characterizations are not grounds to dismiss the obstruction counts against De Oliveira. So basically he can argue this at trial if he likes, but it's not grounds for pretrial dismissal. And for similar reasons the arguments in in Dale Lavera's motion do not warrant a bill of particulars either. It goes on to say here, defendant Nauda's request for a bill of particulars is also denied. Nauda seeks clarity about which boxes

were allegedly concealed, moved, or searched on August 8th, 2022, whether the searched boxes were among the 34 he had allegedly concealed on June 2, 2022, whether any of the allegedly moved boxes contained documents marked classified, and which of the seized boxes were the boxes allegedly moved by NADA containing classified material. Although there is reason to understand the request for additional specificity as to the boxes and their contents, even in light of the lengthy indictment, that's the little dig. The special counsel is not legally obligated to provide more detail.

And now does principal submission that the term corruptly in 1512 is subject to multiple still developing and contested judicial constructions of the term such that it fails to give ordinary people fair notice of the conduct it punishes and invites arbitrary enforcement. But, she says, the 11th Circuit has not had occasion to grapple with its meaning in any contested sense. And then turning finally to Nauda's more particularized challenge for failure to state a claim, the court rejects this argument for the same reasons. So now we're at a point where all of Nauda and Deo Lavera's pre-trial motions have been

denied, right? Yeah. So is Deo Laver Rivera going to change his mind? Is he going to have a come to Jesus moment? I think Nauta is ride or die with Trump. Yeah. But what about Dale Rivera? I mean, this would be the time, right? They are different in some fundamental respects. I think let's look at Nauta. His kind of ride or die status comes from a bunch of different things. He's a military guy who I think feels he's been personally and professionally elevated

through his association with Trump and saved in a way because we know that although he didn't admit it to the FBI agents in his interview, one of the reasons he left the White House is because all of a sudden he was at the target of several complaints about alleged harassment activities and things like that. So he definitely owes Trump. I would suspect he sees it that way. So that's kind of him. Dale Laver is different. He's just a regular guy. I'm sure he feels a certain degree of loyalty for the time that he's spent there. He doesn't have a lot of alternatives in terms of sources of income and things like that. But the difference is he's helped me with the guy's name, the witness who identified himself in interviews a couple of weeks ago, who's really good friends with Dale Lavera. Oh, Daniel Duncan?

Is that his name? Daniel. Matthew Duncan or something, but anyway, you know who I'm talking about. I do. They used to go long walks together at night and things like that. He's gonna be a prime witness against Dale Lavera.

And seeing the example of his close associate taking that path of cooperating with the government could, could, I'm not saying it will, but it could ignite some desire on his part to switch teams. So if I were the government, I definitely wouldn't give up on the prospect of, of Deo Lavera coming on board. I wouldn't either. And then he also has seen somebody else he worked with, namely Taveras, in his position where he's not charged with anything. Right. Right? Yeah.

At some point he's got to start asking himself, or his attorney should start asking him, like, you could be one of them. You could have been someone who didn't get charged. Now here you are. You're in the grease bucket with these other two knuckleheads. There's a way to get out of that. He also doesn't have quite the same baggage as Noda in terms of, Noda's now going to have a history of saying different things, of lying to the FBI and who knows what he said to the grand jury.

We don't have the same sort of detail on Dale Lavera, but that'll be interesting to see as it goes forward. I thought this ruling is really remarkable. I mean on the surface because it's clear. It's like it wasn't a split the baby, which she usually does. It was just straight up denials. And maybe this is unfair, but I'm gonna throw it out there just for for thoughts. Is it coincidental that the

only motions she has very clearly just straight up denied, defense motions, are the two that did not involve Trump? Yep, you got it right. Right? There was no effort to save some sort of claim of victory here for Deo Lavera or Nauta. It was straight up tough. Not enough. You didn't show enough. You didn't prove it. Your motions fail.

See ya. I don't know. It just kind of stands out to me in contrast is the way every other one of these ones has been decided. Like, wait a minute. Right. And like I said, there wasn't a bunch of, you know, tongue lashing for the special counsel in this one, as there is in the Trump kind of denials,

denies, you know, when she denies. Not going to any length for these guys. Without prejudice. Doesn't care whether they like it or not. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's Brian Butler, by the way. It's Brian Butler, his employee number five. I'm like, Daniel Duncan. No, yeah, for sure. And Brian, it's Brian Butler, by the way. It's Brian Butler, his employee number five. I'm like, Daniel Duncan. No, he's a friend of mine. He's a guy running for Congress in

South Carolina. Brian Butler. Yes. But yeah, again, yeah, very good friend of his. Now he's, he's on the hook now. Dale Lavera is on the hook for these crimes or at least the trial. And, you know, like you just pointed out, he's not getting the kid glove treatment like Donald Trump is from Judge Aileen Cannon. So maybe he's feeling a little uneasy about how this trial could go for him. But we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. All right, next up, we are waiting for a ruling from Judge Cannon on the SIPA Section 5 deadline. So here's the background along with what happened this week.

We get this from Roger Parloff from Lawfare who explained it on Twitter. Here's what Roger said. Here's what it is and why it matters. SIPA Section 5 is at the heart of SIPA, which is of course the Classified Information Procedures Act of 1980. SIPA was enacted to combat gray mail. And that's when a defendant tells the government, if you indict me, then in the course of my trial, I'll disclose

national security secrets during the trial in my own defense. Before SIPA, the government couldn't evaluate whether the defendant was bluffing, or what secrets he meant, or were they really secret, were they admissible, and whether or not redactions could be made. SIPA set up a way to address all that before trial. But it all begins with the Section 5 notice. That's when the defense notifies the government of which secrets it wants to present. The government then goes back to the intelligence community stakeholders to find out how sensitive

the secrets are. Then it goes to the judge to argue either that the information is inadmissible, which would be under SEPA section 6A, or that it should be redacted or summarized or otherwise handled so as to minimize the damage to national security. Again, see the section 6C. But section 5 starts the whole lengthy contentious process. Cannon's original scheduling order set the section 5 notice for November 15. Of last year, November 15. Yeah, sorry. Roger should have included that clarification. Easy to get confused on that one.

Ye oldern days of November 15. Now the government gave the defense access to 5,500 pages of its classified discovery by November 2nd in preparation for that November 15th deadline. 90% of the total classified discovery. But Cannon then stayed the deadlines on November 3rd. On November 15th, special counsel asked her quickly to set a new date, stressing that section five notice was, quote, the central document in SEPA,

and it, quote, ensures that a trial can go forward without delay. The next day, Cannon refused, saying she'd reset it after the March 1 scheduling hearing. Now, on the eve of the March 1 hearing, DOJ asked for a Section 5 deadline of March 18. Trump asked for June 17, three months later. And at the March 1 hearing, Special Counsel Jay Bratt stressed that the Section 5 notice was his highest priority, and Trump's

June 17 date would be way too late because of everything that hinges upon it. Bratt argued that Trump's team had had access to 90% of the classified discovery since November and had already poured over it with Trump's lawyers during the SEPA Section 4 process. But Trump's lawyer Todd Blanch urged postponing over nine weeks after the New York trial ends. He argued that he needed a skiff to prepare and that his co-counsel, Emile Beauvais, their SEPA specialist, is doing the New York trial with him, most certainly on purpose. The government mentions that in its opposition to the delay request. They say Trump elected to engage the same council in multiple matters and his council

agreed to the engagements. They should not be allowed to use their overlapping engagements to perpetually delay trial in this case. Okay, on April 10th, 40 days after the hearing, Cannon split the baby, setting the Section 5 notice for May 9th. That was 52 days later than the government wanted, but 39 days earlier than what Trump wanted. But four days later, Trump moved to adjourn again

until more than three weeks after the New York trial ends. Okay, so now Cannon is in a tough spot. If she puts it off again, she'll look foolish, having taken 40 days to make a decision only to reverse herself a week later with no change in circumstances. But her only other choice is to deny Trump something he really wants. Roger is really good at laying these things out.

I got to say mad props to Attorney Parlov. Yeah, that's really good. I love the timeline. I love the way that he explained it in that thread. I wanted to include that in the show and a big thanks to Roger Parloff and the lawfare team for putting it together because it really gives you a sense of the delay that we're seeing. And, you know, it's completely unprecedented. 52 days after what the government wanted and and to for Trump to be like I need more time I need a skiff you've had 90% of this information since before Christmas since November before Thanksgiving right buddy

and you've had your skiff down near, we even built one near your house for you. Where you been? I was in and around on the periphery of many SIPA cases, most of them leak cases that had SIPA proceedings when I was running the counterterrorism division or working in other national security capacity at the Bureau. And I've never, ever seen a defendant get away with this kind of delay in the SIPA process. It does not happen in any other case. So once again, despite his many claims to the contrary, Donald Trump is being given privileges and consideration and time unlike any other defendant similarly situated. Yeah. And those tactics, those delay tactics I was talking about a little bit earlier in

the show, again, we see him putting Beauvais on his case in New York where he has necklace, right? And Blanche, but Beauvais is his SIPA expert in the Florida case. And so he dragged him up to New York with him so that he could file, oh, hey, my SIPA expert, who needs a skiff is doing a New York trial. He's doing a thing. He's doing a different crime thing for me. So can't do your seat the section five stuff i don't think i honestly. I am you know you know i feel about judge cannon but i think she'll probably say no because.

She made this decision this may 9th decision on april 10th so did you not know there was a trial in New York? Like it's ridiculous to even entertain. But I wouldn't put it past her, but I don't think she's going to grant this one. I think she's going to stick with the May 9th deadline. I tend to believe you. I hope maybe that's just my hope speaking. But let's think about it from the other side. Like why not ask for more time, even a few days after she made her decision? It's all about the delay. Trump's lawyers are figuring, yeah, we'll probably get denied, but maybe we squeeze a hearing out of it.

Maybe we get a briefing schedule out of it. It's just one more thing, one more handful of sand to throw in the machine to bind up the cogs and slow this thing down. So, you know, we saw it last week, the week before jury selection started in the New York case, they file three or four different motions to dismiss in the three days before the case was going to start. Contrary to what the judge told them not to file any frivolous motions, but not that canon would ever say such a thing. But you know, it's just what they do. So we'll see. It is going to make her look ridiculous if she pays them any mind whatsoever. And

again, just to set the context here, any federal judge with any degree of experience would look at this and dismiss it with a two-word order posted to the docket. Walk away. Don't give it any... Pay it no mind. But we'll see what she does with it. Especially just 10 days after you already made that ruling. It's ridiculous. As Roger Parlov notes, with no change in circumstance. Right. All right. I have one more quick observation in Florida before we get to a listener question or two, but we have to take another quick break. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. All right, one last observation in the Florida proceedings.

Hugo Lowell mentioned that we will be getting the Walt Nauta grand jury transcript on April 24th. Now keep in mind that transcript along with the FBI interview transcript that we went over last week, Andy? Yep. They're all addenda to the Trump motion to compel discovery and It'll be interesting first of all to compare the grand jury testimony to the FBI interview transcript sure but what's clear here is that neither of these things are being contested by special counsel and You know, I mean obviously with redactions for PPI and

to keep witnesses safe. Right. And the FBI interview was not in any way exculpatory for Walt Nauta. Fun, interesting, a nice time kill but not exculpatory in any way. Yeah. So why add these things to your motions? And Jack Smith gives us a reason. And he's been arguing this all along. He says Trump is appending these motions to trigger long drawn out litigation over whether the judge should unseal them, what redactions should be made, et cetera. And Andy, they've been litigating just this one motion to compels exhibits for four months now. And there's still like 14 other motions with nearly 70 exhibits, half of which are on a

secret docket that haven't even been argued. Because they haven't even been docketed. And she's probably going to want hearings for every single one of them. So you do four months and 14 motions. Do the math, right? Totally. But that's what we've been talking about for this whole episode.

It's all about the delay. It comes off to us as frustrating and sloppy and annoying, but it's a strategy that's working. It's working. And Florida has no chance or hasn't been for a long time of ever getting that Florida case before the election. That's working for them in DC right now. So, you know.

Yeah. I mean, you can see them having the discussion. My whole goal is to push this past the election and on into as far into the future as we can for as long as we can. I want this delayed as long as we can. Well, really good way to delay is to attach real, damaging information as exhibits in motions and ask to unseal them. And then you have to litigate all of that

for every single one. That stuff is really important to the government. so you can bait the hook with that. And be pretty confident that the government's gonna go after it and they're gonna try to keep it quiet or sealed keep it away from the public for good and you know good reasons. And that that's a platform to litigate i think they're doing the exact same thing with these gag orders i've been saying this on TV and people look at me like I'm crazy. They are provoking the request for a gag order because they know as soon as the prosecution asks for one, that unleashes a whole you-know-what storm of hearings about it and decisions and then appeals and everything else. I don't think the gag orders are worth their weight. But I think it's another very calculated effective delay tactic.

Yeah, I agree. All right. Questions? Question time? Yeah, listener questions. Everybody will put a link in the show notes that you can click on to submit your questions to me and Andy. What do we have this week? All right. A couple of very brief shout outs to clear up. We're going to try to end things on a positive note here. First, thanks to Kelly, who sent us a message

through the question portal, clarifying us on the pronunciation of the name Emile Beauvais, which I may have gotten wrong in an earlier episode. That's entirely possible. She used to work with Mr. Beauvais' father as the two were both New York State Assistant AGs. So thank you, Kelly. Yeah, I think I was saying Beauv. Yeah, I think I was too. I think I was calling him Beauv, so Beauvais. Yeah, thank you. Very helpful. All right.

So now on a totally random one, Tom says, hello. It says on McCabe's Wikipedia page that he used to bike 35 miles to work every day. I'm curious to learn how he dealt with getting his work close to the office and was he able to shower at work? This is a really good question. I know it seems insane, but I get it all the time. And it's a great example of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, some of what you read, full on accurate,

some of what you read, not so much, not so full on. And this falls in that category. I did used to drive, ride my bike to work. It is 35 miles, but I would do it with a friend and we'd only do it like maybe one day a week in the summertime or spring or fall when it was not, you know, super cold or snowy. And my friend lives on my street. So like one of us would drive the other home the day before.

And so that way we could carpool back home on the day that we rode in. So we only had to go one way when we did it. And yeah, I would bring my clothes the day before and I did shower at work. So I didn't go rolling into my first meeting like stinking like someone who rode 35 miles in the heat. I used to ride my bike to work when I worked for 10 P five Department of Veterans Affairs, remote work in San Diego road as probably about a seven or eight mile bike ride. It wasn't too long. But the way I did it, I rode in and out every day. And the way I did it was I actually had, I bought one of those on Amazon, one of those clothing racks with wheels.

Sure. And I had all of my office attire hung up. At the office. In my office. And I would come in and we had showers in the building. We had like downstairs in the basement, a lot of office buildings come with, you know, like showers and bathrooms and locker rooms and things like that. And I've had a big bike rack down there and I would lock up the bike. I would shake a shower, dry my hair, go and you know, have my clothes with me that I grabbed from my office,

from my little rolly cart thing, and put on my office clothes and go to work. Totally the best. Takes a little bit of logistics planning as you showed us there, but it's totally worth doing. I would ride every single day somewhere if I could. I'm a dedicated cyclist. Okay, now into the business.

David said this, there was a lot of questions about Judge Mershon this week. And so this, this one I think stands up for most of those. David says, hi, both. Did Judge Mershon have the authority to exclude all press from jury selection and or issue a press ban on discussing jury details? If this was the case, do you consider it a misjudgment not to have done so? Thanks for your ongoing patriotism. Okay. So David, the judge is typically the court system for the state or if we're talking the federal government, that's a different one, makes a decision about whether or not you can have cameras in court or audio recording of proceedings, things like that. My understanding of New York is that they

do not permit it. They don't permit cameras and things in court. So that wouldn't have been up to Judge Mershon individually. Some states leave it up to the individual judge to decide whether they want them or not, but I don't think New York does it that way. But judges do have a lot of discretion in the course of an individual trial to kind of moderate those sort of things. And here Judge Mershon made the decision this week to tell the news outlets to quote, use your common sense and do not publicize some of the details that they're hearing about the perspective jurors, like specifically identifying their actual employers.

You can say someone's an attorney, but you shouldn't say like what law firm or place they work. So that raises some interesting issues. There's some question as to whether or not the news organizations will get together and together challenge that decision in court. They could potentially challenge it on First Amendment grounds.

Not sure how that would play out. But for right now, he is trying to keep this case moving forward as quickly as he can and doing it in a way in which he provides the utmost protection to the jurors, keeping their identities concealed, and therefore limiting the type of information that could potentially lead to identifying them. Yeah, and I think he's doing a fair job of that. From my understanding, he could have just barred the press full all out and then had litigated that. He did actually come in, I think, after Jesse Waters did his

bit on the jurors there. And then the next morning that one juror was like, I can't do this because of that kind of identifiable information. The judge said, all right, we're no longer going to give the answers to these questions and gave the press some instructions and then the press did better. Or follow, I should say follow the instructions because I don't really fault the press. I don't want to say do better. Reporting everything that they get in the courtroom or in the overflow room. And then once the jury was selected and seated and sworn and all the alternates were seated and sworn and then they waited and they all had a little bit of a long lunch and they

were in the middle of the Sandoval hearing this afternoon. Again, congratulations for the frivolous lawsuit filed against you and 800 million other people. We made it to the show. He's going to be making it in there to impeach him if he decides to testify. I don't think he will. It would be a huge mistake if he does. But after that, the Sandoval hearing, they brought the press back into the room or into the courtroom. I shouldn't say back into, but into the courtroom full-fledged for the first time because the jurors aren't in there. You know, I should have been more clear about this at the beginning. The judges can, court

systems generally, and more specifically judges can opine on whether or not they're going to let cameras in or video cameras or audio recordings. It's very hard to say. They can't tell the press, you cannot report on this trial at all. And so typically they always allow reporters in the courtroom to take handwritten notes and things like that, not make recordings, but to take handwritten notes that they can then use in the substance of their reporting. It's also very kind of presumptively a violation of the First Amendment. If the judge says ahead of time, okay, press, you can report about X, but you can't report about Y. That's a restriction of the press's First

Amendment rights that's generally not tolerated under First Amendment challenges. But they can after the fact go back and say, I don't want this. So there's some balancing there. I think that's what you're seeing and reflected in his comments. He didn't come out and say, you may or may not do this specific thing, but he did say, I'm going to limit the amount of details that come out from the voir dire about identifying information and I want you to use common sense in not passing that stuff along. Yeah, it was a request. I saw it as a request of the press. And thank you so much for your questions. We will have again, like I said, a link in the show notes for you to click

on. And I just wanted to hats off to Laura Coats. I've been on her show a few times. She did some incredible harrowing reporting live from in front of the courthouse where somebody self-immolated and she covered that. She was on CNN at the time covering the trial and giving a little cover to the trial when this happened. And I think that her ability to stay calm but have the sense of urgency necessary to convey what was happening with that situation. Yeah. And to convey it in a way that's accurate and descriptive, but also sensitive and not lurid and not something that's going to make listeners or viewers react negatively.

I mean, it was an artful, I think, way to talk about it. It was really well done. Total pro. And a really, really nice woman, a pleasure to work with. And in such a tragic and horrifying situation to be able to maintain that professionalism. Just outstanding job on that reporting. I just wanted to give a shout out to her. Full on, totally agree.

All right, everybody. That's our show. Andy, do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here today? I just, I don't even know what to say. We do this every week, but I'm like, oh my God, where are we going to be this time next week? It's that the volume and the issues are really piling up. So stay tuned.

Buckle in because who knows where we'll be next week. Yeah. And well, we know a buckle in, because who knows where we'll be next week. Yeah. And well, we know a few things, right? Trial starts, bond hearing, gag order hearing for 10 so far, you know, at last count of possible violations of gag order, Supreme Court hearing on immunity. And I think that that Supreme Court oral argument will probably take up a great deal of next week's show. But it is one of, like I said, one of the most consequential weeks in American justice and democracy in my lifetime for certain.

democracy in my lifetime for certain. Totally, totally. And a pleasure to be here to talk through it all with you and our listeners. So looking forward to it. Oh, you flatter me. You flatter me. I always welcome that. Please anytime. Everybody will be back in your ears next week.

Thank you so much for listening. I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe.