Law&Crime Sidebar - Brick-by-Brick: Unpacking the LEGO Lawsuit Scandal

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

The viral and complex legal battle over a high-valued Star Wars LEGO collection in Salem, Oregon, took a dramatic turn as YouTuber Ben "Reckless Ben" Schneider faces criminal charges and a massive civil lawsuit from Bricks & Minifigs corporate. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber sits down with litigator Rich Schoenstein to dissect the multi-layered legal issues, the newly issued temporary restraining order, and what comes next in this wild social media controversy.Purchase John Morgan's new book now on Amazon by going to https://www.forthepeople.com/lifeisluck/ HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What are all the legal issues in the reckless Ben Lego controversy that has taken social media by storm? From the lawsuits to the TRO to the criminal charges, we're going to break down what we need to be thinking about because it seems likely this story ain't going anywhere anytime soon. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Everybody loves a self-made success story, but John Morgan says that is not how real life works. The great John Morgan, everybody. In his new book, Life is Luck, the founder of Morgan and Morgan, gets real about the role that luck plays in success and how to recognize opportunity when it shows up. And that seed was just lucky. From delivering newspapers as a kid to building America's largest injury law firm, Morgan shares the moments that changed everything.

It's a how-to book to approach life, luck, and ultimately success. This isn't another billionaire memoir full of cheesy advice. It's honest, blunt, and pack with lessons on turning good luck and bad luck into something bigger. I hope people read it. I hope people appreciate it. By Life is Luck, now on Amazon at for thepeople.com slash life is luck. The very viral and very complicated Lego Star Wars Ben Schneider saga continues, and we have been covering it every step of the way.

But right now we're going to do something different. want to talk about the law. We want to get into a sense of the actual legal issues that are a part of this, because that's going to dictate everything that happens, right? Both the criminal and the civil components about this. So the legal issues that Ben and others are facing. But in order to do that, I got to give you a refresher, right? So stay with me on this journey. We'll go through it. This all centers around a dispute over a reportedly highly valued Star Wars Lego collection. It starts with Brian Mansell, whose father reportedly invested in a massive Lego. collection that was reportedly originally valued at over $200,000 for his grandchildren's college

education, although there was reporting it's worth less than that. The collection was placed apparently on consignment at a bricks and minifigs store in Salem, Oregon in 2023. Apparently the original owner of this store was Crystal Law. We'll talk more about her because the store would sell the sets and then keep a commission. That's how it would work. Bricks and mini figs, corporate, allegedly said, this violated the franchise rules. That law should not have. agreed to this. In 2024, the store is apparently closed. The details about it, they're even in dispute, according to reporting from the Salem Business Journal, law claims that they contacted corporate about possibly selling the store and suddenly corporate moved in the very

same day, took it over. But the CEO of Bricks and Mini Figs, Amen McNeff, says the owner's got a job offer overseas. They wanted to take it. Still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. law claims basically corporate improperly kicked her out, sees control over her business, she ended up reportedly filing a lawsuit. Now, Mansell reportedly is like, tell you what, I just want my remaining collection back that hasn't been sold, or $80,000. Now, the news store managers, reportedly Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best, they allegedly said the Lego sets aren't here.

According to the Salem Business Journal, one year after entering this consignment agreement with law, Mansell sends a termination notice to Johnson's saying he hasn't been paid that month's earnings from sales and that he hasn't been allowed to come inspect the inventory. And eventually, they seem to offer Mansell recovered sets that are worth $2,000 to $5,000, which Mansell reportedly rejects. So Mansell and his family allegedly don't get the Legos, they don't get the money. And according to the Salt Lake Tribune, court records alleged that for months, he had filed police reports and posted negative reviews and allegedly harassed the new managers. That's the allegation.

This is when YouTuber reckless Ben gets involved, okay, earlier this year, Ben Schneider, he's the investigative podcaster. And he reportedly travels to Utah where Johnson and Bess LLC is headquartered or goes to Johnson's home. And according to Oregon Live, court records show that in March of 2026, apparently Ben had tried to sue Johnson personally, then tried suing the bricks and minifig store in Oregon twice in small claims court. The first one maybe was dismissed. Ben had tried to get a default judgment. it gets a little messy, but I'll tell you what, just so you get perspective. When I interviewed Ben Schneider, I did here on Sidebar, here was his take on the whole legal situation, legal process. When was the lawsuit filed?

What was the first thing that you did when you got in touch with this family, which I believe is out of Oregon? What was the first thing that you guys did? I just heard his story and then I said, well, I heard your side and now I want to hear their side. And so I walked into the store And she called the cops on me and said I was harassing her And she's like, you're harassing like all I did was In the most polite way possible I said hey I think my friend has some Legos in your guys's store

He asked if you could have them back and you guys trespassing the store So I'm just wondering if I can get him back for him And she's like she calls the other She's like, I'm being harassed right now And she calls 911 she's like cops get here There's a lunatic here harassing me And that's how that went, I guess. And when was that?

Because that's different than all the body cam that's come out into the, you know, the media of the last. Yeah. So in Oregon, the police actually don't wear body cams. They're not required to it in the same of Oregon. So I was not going to get any of the body cams for Oregon, sadly. But that was the very, it was like one of the last days of September, probably September 29, I'd say. And of 2025.

and yes, that's when the whole thing started. When did the lawsuit get filed? The first one, so we actually did one lawsuit, and then they ended up closing down the whole store so that ended up actually not working out. I think they closed down a store to avoid paying us. So if we can't sue the LLC, we shut down their store, we'll just sue them personally, you know.

And so that lawsuit was filed probably a couple of days before I went to Oregon, I'd say. So in other words, you couldn't even get this in front of a court, get this in front of a jury, litigate it, they closed the store, so there was nothing to do. So you decided to go to Utah now to confront Mr. Johnson, right? And explain to us what happened there. So it's such a long story. So first, before you can get a court case approved, you have to. to have what's called a good faith conversation. And I mean, every state's different, but in

Marion County court in Oregon, Utah, this is their procedure, I guess. So you have to show actual verifiable proof that you try to have, like, resolve outside of court first before I can get to a court. So I go to Josh's house to basically just talk this out with him, like, hey, like, we don't want to take you to court. Can we solve this, like adults, you know, and he calls the cops on me? And, They let me go, of course, because I didn't do anything illegal. And then I'm like, okay, well, we had the good faith conversation. My court case gets approved. So we, next step, serving papers.

I can't serve in papers because I'm involved in the court case. But I just like really put on my Instagram story. I was like, hey, anyone want to like help me with the video and someone reached out? And I felt kind of bad sending her there by herself because she's like a girl. going to this unhinged, like kind of lunatic guy who, really the previous day made a false, yeah, we think he made a false arrest and we had heroin in our car. We got a three-hour search on the car the day before.

So this guy is unhinged. He actually, we found that later that's good that I probably went with her because he said he was going to shoot the next person that, like, walks on his property or something. He told it to the police. So basically, I was sitting in the car next door. We got permission from the police. We said, hey, is it okay if we do this?

we will sit in the street. Like we pay taxes, you know, so like we have a right to be on the street, like the sidewalk. And when he walks outside, then we'll start him his paper. And the police will, like, yeah, that's fine. As long as you're in the street, just don't go, you've been specifically, don't go on his property. And so we're waiting for him to come outside. And then the girl was going to start from his court paper. But before we could do that, he called the cops on us.

And at first the cops were like, okay, like, I see what you guys are doing here. like this is the legal way to do it. They'll leave. Because the cops on us again. I think the cops just ended up leaving and coming back for probably a two or three hour period until finally

Josh has convinced the police that this is a fake lawsuit. And we see this in the unreacted body camp, but I think he said it's a billion, a million, billion, a trillion time percent fake is what he said in his exact quotes. And he's now

fully convinced to the police department This is a fake lawsuit. So the police officer actually goes and calls the court, verifies it's a real lawsuit, and then after that, that's when they arrest me, I guess. Yeah. So embody cam footage, you see the various interactions with Ben and others who were poorly connected to him,

even the guy who allegedly tried to get to one of the manager's homes under the pretext of a religious meeting. This is what we were required to do from the United States. We're just following the instructions of the government. He does not want the paper. He's not want the papers? Here's that back for you. Okay.

He wanted you trespassed. Okay. I have to stand over here. Do you have any weapons or anything like that on you? No. Okay. If the trains find you back. Am I being arrested?

We're under arrest right now for stalking. They're arresting me because this guy stole into Legos. So according to police reports and body cam footage, Schneider was arrested twice by American Fork Police, charged with misdemeanors of stalking and targeted residential picketing. and then in a separate case, he was charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespass in connection with an incident on December 10, 2025. In May, Ben releases a video series and it goes viral. Millions of views about this whole situation.

Basically accused corporate company, this is a corporate company, Bricks and Minifaggs, of stealing, claim the police are trying to protect them. Now, there are a few legal developments that have happened. So Bricks and Minifigs ended up filing a lawsuit against Schneider, Mansell, and others, includes three. 13 causes of action. RICO, so racketeering, defamation per se, defamation, injurious falsehood, civil conspiracy, tortious interference, civil stalking, nuisance, trespass, intentional infliction of emotional distress, unjust enrichment, declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and corporate claims that Ben and Mansell allegedly coordinated this massive, multi-platform media campaign designed not to find the truth. It's not about reporting they claim,

but it was about extortion to extort money and damage the company's brand and reputation, that this was done for money, that it was a very lucrative commercial prank stunt to get clicks, get all this money on GoFundMe, boost Patreon subscribers, and they claim that this wasn't investigative journalism, but across the line. And they talk about, and there's allegations of fake raffle materials and fake Guinness World Records style award, disguises, posting signs, one that allegedly said, steal from old people, that this resulted in online harassment and review bombing and death threats. And it looks like they're seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars and damages.

And they also reportedly just got a win in court, a TRO, a temporary restraining order. I'm going to read it to you directly. It says, quote, the court finds that Bricks and Minifix corporate and its affiliates are suffering immediate and irreparable financial and reputational injuries that cannot be easily fixed or adequately compensated with money. Court stated plaintiffs are substantially likely to prevail on the merits of their claims against co-defendants, meaning against Schneider and Mansell. So the defendants are prohibited from contacting, harassing, stalking, or intimidating any of the plaintiffs, their corporate employees, the store owners, stalking, trespassing, or targeting,

picketing anywhere near the private residences or storefronts belonging to the plaintiffs, publishing, distributing, or broadcasting, false defamatory or disparaging images or statements regarding the business or its affiliates, soliciting or recruiting bricks and mini-figs employees, franchisees or contractors to act as undercover agents, leak confidential information, or secretly record video or audio inside the retail stores, creating, orchestrating, or participating in stage confrontations or deceptive activities relating to the plaintiffs using fabricated deceptive or misrepresented instruments such as fake contracts, fake, fake raffles, mock lotteries, or sham court papers to pressure or target the plaintiffs.

So what happens? Well, Reckless Ben goes on camera and says, while we're all waiting for the next part of his series about this, now legally, because of the TRO, he can't release it. Episode three is finally finished after crazy all-nighters. and basically destroying my health, but I can't post it or I will go to jail. And not only that, I will also immediately lose my lawsuit of $300,000. And the go-fund me we made for Brian will go straight to this mystery company that I am no longer allowed to talk about. So that's where we are, okay?

And I want to understand who has a good legal argument in all of this. All right, so I'm so happy to bring him on, litigator, friend of the show, Rich Schoenstein, Rich, I'm made of questions. I haven't spoken to an attorney yet on sidebar about this. So I'm so happy to get your thoughts. Can we first start with the TRO? Can we start with the temporary restraining order? Because that's the big news that came out. Your thoughts on that TRO? So I looked at the TRO. First of all, I mean, everyone loves Legos. Here's a little Lego version of me. By the way, is that? Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. So who got that for you?

I don't remember, but I don't remember. The only thing that can make Legos more fun is litigation. Well, first, let me just tell you, I found out it's not even Legos. It's no plural. It's Lego. Oh, right. There's no, I didn't know that. That's right.

I knew that. I knew that. So there you go. Okay. So the TRO, first of all, let's talk about a TRO. TRO is a temporary restraining order. And the key word there is temporary. It's only in place until the court can have a preliminary injunction hearing and make a decision on the preliminary injunction application after seeing all the evidence.

And if the court wants after seeing live testimony, witnesses, documents. So it is a placeholder. But the temporary restraining order here issues really broad relief, including not making, you know, not making. not intimidating any witnesses and that kind of thing, but also not making any public statements and essentially requiring the takedown of some of this video content, as far as I can tell. And it does all of that without requiring a bond, which is interesting too. Can you explain that? What do you mean? So ordinarily, when you get a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction,

you have to post some sort of bond. The court requires you to put up money to secure the defendant for any damages if it's ultimately ruled that the injunction is unlawful or shouldn't have been entered. And so if the defendant's going to be harmed, you would require the plaintiff to put up money that could be paid to the defendant if that turns out to be the case. But this court said no bond required. We're going to give you the injunction. We don't see it harming anybody in any way.

and therefore we're not going to require it be collateralized at all. Didn't the court, when the court says the likelihood of success and the merits, are they basically saying reckless, Ben, you're going to lose this thing? Yes, they are basically saying. And why do they think that? Why would the court think that? So I'm not deep enough into this to figure that out. I do see the complaint here is 95 pages long, has 13 causes of action. There's defamation. There's RICO. There are other claims. and the court must have felt there was something substantial about the allegations that were being made. And likelihood of success on the merits doesn't mean you win.

It just means we've looked at this, and from what we can see so far, you have a pretty good chance of prevailing. To be clear, you've seen TRO's granted, but at the end of the day, if it goes to trial, that party could still lose. So it's still a potentiality that Bricks and Minifigs and Johnson, they could potentially lose this lawsuit even if they got the TRO at the beginning, right? Well, they could lose the lawsuit. They could also lose at preliminary injunction hearing. So sometimes you get a temporary restraining order, but you go do the preliminary injunction hearing,

and the court changes their mind because at that stage, right, at the TRO stage, you've really only heard from one side. heard from the plaintiff, and they're going to put their best foot forward. But at a preliminary injunction hearing, you're probably going to get a substantial argument from the defendants, and you're going to hear their point of view. And so sometimes it changes at that stage. How could Ben challenge it? Well, first of all, he can show that his reporting is, you know, he can attempt to show that his reporting is fair and accurate. To the extent there are arguments here that he's like engaged in interference or witness intimidation or something like that.

He can provide testimony that he didn't do it or it's being misinterpreted. He can take on the evidentiary predicates of the application. What about a First Amendment argument? Hey, I'm an investigator here. I'm posting things on social media. I'm talking about what I went through. This is an illegal prior restraint on protected speech, this TRO. What's the line there? What's their argument there?

Yeah. So that's a very interesting one to sort out because you're right. You don't want to prohibit speech. But I think from what I know about this, Ben isn't just commentating. It's one thing for you and I to go on, you know, we're not going to be on YouTube, right, with this session. And we're discussing the thing and we're commentating and we're offering opinions. We're not getting involved, right? We're not on the scene in Oregon or Utah challenging people who are involved in this. We haven't become part of the case in the way that I think Ben probably has.

So we're not in the line of fire like he is going to be. Commentary, is it commentary or is he getting directly involved and trying to put his thumb on the scale of this? That was the whole totally different, whole Don Lemon situation. too. It raises those kind of interesting questions between just covering and being involved in it. Okay, I do want to take a step back here. There's an interesting part, and I played it before when I spoke to Ben about this, where he says, look, the reason I went there is because my understanding of state law is that before I can even go forward with a full-blown lawsuit, I got to negotiate in good faith. I have to have a good faith conversation with the people we're planning on suing, you know, small claims court. And then there's this other part where he says, listen, I, in terms of serving the papers, anybody over 18 can be a process server, not me because I'm a party to this case. I'm interested party in this.

So I'm trying to have people serving papers. I know you might not know that state law. And I'm sure you're going to say probably should have just hired a process server if that's the situation. But have you ever heard of anything where you have to make a good faith attempt to mediate or settle or negotiate before you go to the courts and does it look like something like Ben is accused of doing? So I'm not familiar with that. That's not the case in New York where I practice that you would have to make a good faith effort to resolve the dispute before you bring a claim.

I'd have to look at the state law to see if that really is the case. And also, whether that really requires you to go in person, I mean, can't you do that by letter or email or phone call or invite a video conference, did you really have to go there? And the idea that you had to go there to engage a process server, that's not valid at all. There are a lot of process servers out there who operate nationally. They have whole networks for this kind of thing. You can find a process server and, you know, two clicks of your mouse and a phone call. So you don't need to fly to a different state to do it.

And I guess the argument would be, okay, assuming he was under the law required to have a good faith negotiation, that could be an email, that could be a call. And if it's not returned, if it's not answered, you say, okay, I tried. That's the way I tried. I don't have to go to the person's house, right? I think that could be a challenge, right? Yeah, I can't see any law that says you have to ring somebody's doorbell in 2026. I would be really shocked if that's it. I mean, if he was supposed to reach out, there must have been other ways to do. do it. And certainly in a situation where you expect you're going to be rebuffed, there's no point in going all the way out there. Talk to me about this lawsuit, though, against Ben and Brian Mansell. From an optics point of view, you know, on social media online, so many people have taken their side. They're like, you're suing the guy who lost his, whatever you want to call it, how much it's valued, let's just say $200,000 Lego collection, but maybe less, but he's trying to get it back, get the money back, you decide to sue them. From an optics point of view, it

looks bad. But from a legal point of view, what do you make of their allegations? Again, RICO violations, defamation, civil stalking, trespass, civil conspiracy, tortious interference with economic relations, intentional infliction of emotional distress, injurious falsehood, trade disparagement, false light, nuisance, they threw everything. From what you've seen so far, I'm not surprised that in a lawsuit you try to throw as many claims as you can. Do you think, and look, the court has already issued a TRO, but do you think that there's something here? Do you think that this is a strong lawsuit?

I can't really tell from the lawsuit itself. So let's start with the basic dispute here. This is a consignment dispute where somebody consigned to a store a bunch of used Lego. to sell. And I gather there's a consignment agreement. I haven't read it yet. I'm interested to read it. But that thing ought to be a matter of contract. What were the obligations of both sides? And that ought to settle issues like could they ship it to another state if the consignment shop was sold, which apparently is what happens here. Well, also, I'll tell you, the parent company seems to say, we didn't even know about this, that the owner of that place, like she did it,

on her own and now she's suing, she's suing bricks and mini fakes. Right. So there's a small consignment disagreement worth somewhere between zero and $200,000 that is not worth going to court over. It ought to be settled. It ought to be dealt with on the contract. It ought to be negotiated. But now what's happened is this thing has exploded on social media. And I wonder if it has become a a significant problem for the entity. What's the name of the seller? Bricks and mini figs.

Bricks and mini figs. I wonder if it's affecting the business of bricks and mini figs in a meaningful way, making it much more than a $200,000 dispute because that would be the only justification for throwing in, you know, basically a hundred page complaint. and a, you know, very aggressive litigation strategy. You wouldn't do that to avoid paying $200,000. It makes no economic sense. You would only do that if there's something bigger and larger at stake, and maybe there is.

I wonder how much of it is the PR of it, right? So if you're, Ben, if you're Brian, and you're making waves with this, and it's viral, and you say, listen, we're going to try to go forward with it. We'll defend themselves as much as possible because in a litigation, the books will be open, right? The big discovery. If we can show that Bricks and Minifigs or Johnson or Best, they weren't transparent about what happened to the Lego collection, if they weren't being honest about it, that in and of itself could be a win, right? I mean, I wonder how much that may be guiding the motivations here as well.

Right. It may be an effort to respond to the narrative that's emerged online. And one other thing, Jesse, by suing Ben, You're also sending a message to other content creators. Be careful, because we might come after you, too. And maybe part of the strategy here is to try to subdue the online reaction and the online discussion that's going on about this case. Try to slow it down or even stop it so it doesn't cause any more damage. Well, let me ask you about this.

I mentioned it. So law, who had been operating this bricks and minifigs franchise in Salem, Oregon, claims that the corporate parents, so bricks and minifigs, illegally ousted her. And law has filed this lawsuit against them. And essentially, I'm going to read you verbatim what it says. And I'm just curious how this might affect the whole situation. So it says this action arises from the wrongful termination of a bricks and minifigs franchise in Salem, Oregon. And the franchisers subsequent seizure of the franchisee.

business assets and defamation of the franchise owners in November 2024. Bam, Bricks and mini-fakes, without valid cause, abruptly terminated the franchise, changed the locks, took control of the store and all its inventory. The purported defaults, BAM used as a pretext with problems of BAM's own making and had been cured or waived. Bam failed to transfer the store's bank account and property lease the plaintiffs as required, directly causing the payment issues later cited as grounds for termination because they talk about this store going bankrupt. Once plaintiffs discovered these problems, they work with BAM to cure them and BAM accepted restructured payments for many months without complaint, BAM then refused to compensate plaintiffs

for the confiscated assets, effectively stealing merchandise and equipment worth over $100,000. And there's multiple causes of action, fraud, negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, conversion, torsious interference with economic relations, defamation, civil conspiracy, injurious falsehood, unlawful trade practice, unjust enrichment, declaratory judgment. Look, the big deal here, Rich, the reason I'm bringing this up is what happened to Mansell's Legos, right? And there's a dispute as to, did law do something with them? When this new operators came in, did they do something with them? So you have this other lawsuit that I don't think can be ignored that may play a role in this overall story.

Yeah, absolutely might play a role in the overall story. And I think everybody wants the answer to the question. This ought to be easy. If you're a consignment shop and you take in merchandise, then you keep records of what of that merchandise is sold, when, to whom, and for how much. and if you're acquired, there should be a record of the inventory that you transfer to the new owner. And if the new owner takes it from one state to another state, there ought to be a record of that. But there will be extensive, if these litigations go forward, there will be extensive discovery to try to get at the books and records and really understand what happened, probably brick by brick, what happened here with the merchandise.

Let me ask you about real quick, Ben's, if he's in legal jeopardy criminally, if you violate a TRO, so if he starts posting things they're talking about it, can he go to jail? Sure. You can. I mean, a judge can order, what would happen if there was a violation of the TRO is that the party who obtained the TRO, the plaintiff here, would go to the court and would bring a motion in the first instance, really just to enforce the TRO and could ask the court for sanctions. You know, a court can impose monetary sanctions. A court can impose contempt, can find somebody in contempt of a court order. And in most states that I'm aware of, if there's contempt of a court order, a court can send someone to jail as an inducement to comply. Now, I've never actually

seen somebody go to jail for failing to abide a court order in a civil case like this, although I have been in cases where it's been threatened, where it's gotten at least that far. What about the actual criminal charges he's facing? Currently, my understanding, misdemeanors right, you know, disorderly conduct, trespassing, residential picketing. He also made the mention, I believe, that he thinks he might be facing felonies down the line. Two points to that. Do you think these are, do you think that, you know, American Fork Police came out and basically said, we were investigating. This is what we saw. There's body cam footage. I don't know if you've seen it. But they're basically saying his actions or his alleged actions in conjunction with

others is what amounts to this, right? They didn't even charge him, by the way, nothing to do with like forging documents. I know there was a whole back and forth about, well, were these legitimate court papers that were trying to be served or not. It wasn't him about that. It was like the alleged actions he took with respect to Johnson. So what do you make of the charges that he's currently facing? And do you see any potential felony charges being pursued? I don't know. There's so much to unpack there because we have the whole sort of interesting interplay between the American fort law enforcement and the argument that they're doing this in support of a local, you know, a Utah business, maybe in a way that's overly aggressive,

although you do have some conduct by this content creator that I think maybe crosses the line at becoming too heavily involved instead of just reporting on things that are not, that he's not part of. There's a lot to figure out there. Could it amount to any felony? I mean, it depends the extent to which he trespassed or committed disorderly conduct or if he threatened people, could that be a felony? Sure, that could be a felony.

It's possible. Right. But I guess his defense is, hey, I'm following the legal process. I'm trying to get these papers served any which way I can. I'm trying to have a good faith conversation. I'm not, you know, there's a line there, I guess, right? Like, what's the line between trespassing or harassment or disorderly conduct versus I'm trying to, you know, follow the legal process? And also, there's an open question here, right?

This is a civil dispute at its bottom, at its core. And now there's a court that's hearing the civil dispute, and that court has issued a TRO, and that court has given expressed instruction. don't do this anymore. So if you are law enforcement, local law enforcement, you might ask yourself, do we really need to be involved with this? There's a court on it, there's a court policing it. Did he do anything that actually requires further criminal proceedings or should we just let the civil court run its process and sort this out? They're probably better equipped to figure out this dispute. than we are. And then the counter to that is, well, no, you still have to enforce the law. You still have to protect the public. If there's been crimes committed, you still have to

prosecute. I think those are difficult questions to work out. It seems law enforcement is saying, I get everybody has feelings about this business dispute. We're not even getting involved in this business dispute. We're not even talking about that. We're just looking at our laws on the books and whether or not anybody, there was probable cause that they broke them. So look, it's a fascinating discussion. It's a fascinating situation that's happening. Despite the fact there's this TRO, I've said it before, I said again, I don't think the story is going anywhere. I don't think this is the last time that we've heard of reckless Ben and what's happening here. So we'll continue to monitor it. Rich Schoenstein, thank you so much

for taking the time as always. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Go next. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. So you can also check us out on NBC's Peacock as well. If you want to follow me, X Instagram, my News Nation show, Jesse Weber Live, Monday through Friday, 11 p.m. Eastern. I'll see you next time, everybody.