Some More News - Trump Indictment The Third, Supreme Court Corruption, And EVEN MORE Tree Law

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Hi. Peter Shamshiri (@The_Law_Boy) joins Katy and Cody to talk about the likely third indictment of Donald Trump, the shameless corruption of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and a Supreme Court ruling that says discrimination is fine and good, actually. Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Some More News and Even More News audio podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews Go to https://eightsleep.com/MORENEWS and save $150 on the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep. That’s the best offer you’ll find, but you must visit https://eightsleep.com/MORENEWS for $150 off. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Leave summer stress behind and upgrade your CBD. Go to https://NextEvo.com/MORENEWS to get 20% off your first order of $40 or more.

hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is katie stole hi katie stole it is i've got a name too it's cody johnston and i don't have a bit or anything i'm just saying hi no there's no need to have a bit of no it feels like there's a need but there isn't no there's only one news podcast and this is where you're gonna get it so you don't need it it's just straight straight facts here it's right there in the tagline. Just get the information. Joining us today for the first time by himself, co-host of the podcast 5 to 4, and also, if books could kill, it's Peter Shimshiri. Hello, hello.

Good to be back. It's so very good to have you back. Thank you for returning. Of course. All right. Well, great episode. Been fun. It's been great.

Okay, well, we're going to chit chat. After. After. We talk about holidays. This is fun. July 20th, National Moon Day. That's the first day the moon was invented on this date in 1969. No, this is when we allegedly walked on the moon.

So it is specifically our moon, like Earth's moon. It's not just like moons. Not like you celebrate your favorite moon. It's just fucking Earth's moon. It's just that one. All right. Okay. And I was hoping it would be a little bit more mystical.

Not mystical, but like we honor the moon and we revere it. No, this is just when we touched it. Again, allegedly. Well, we honored it by planting our flag on it. And that's an honor. You know? Is it? It should feel honored.

It should feel honored, moon. You're welcome. It's America's flag. Here's a piece of trash. Yeah. Piece of blank trash now. now i'm gonna get canceled for that i think it improved the overall aesthetic of the moon when we put the flag certainly the property value yeah you add a little it adds some character it's not just dust everywhere come on well now we know that it's an american moon so that's right it's not the world's moon there's a sign there now that's like, on this moon, we believe Black Lives Matter and people are people.

We believe in science. It's getting scattered with all these real virtue signally flags out there now. Yeah, exactly. Well, here's a fun dovetail because July 21st, July 21st, invite an alien to live with you day and we're talking about the uh outer space kind so not just like okay not just like something offensive here we're talking about invite people from like more from work and mindy okay oh it is okay jonathan has included this. This actually is a celebration of the character Mork from Orc in Mork and Mindy. Oh, and it's July 21st. It's Robin Williams' birthday.

Oh, well, let's just say that. Let's just celebrate. Let's just say... I like that they were like, that's not enough. It's not enough that it's Robin Williams' birthday. Let's give it some flair and call it Invite an Alien to Live With You Day. Yeah, let's make it some flair and call it invite an alien to live with you day yeah let's make it not about Robin Williams at all let's like make you work for it for the

for the information that is Robin Williams's birthday let's make you like really like invite an alien I don't know like work from orc oh it is like work from work oh it's Robin Williams's birthday okay to be fair if I had holiday read more than just the name of the holiday when introducing this holiday that's all most people are gonna do that information but yeah that's what it says in the calendar that's what it was this a wall cat jonathan no it was uh someone else who decided that robin williams birthday would be this three legs removed holiday. I can't tell you any of the broad plot details of what I could. Mork from Orc comes into the Earth and takes up with Mindy,

and they live together and have all sorts of hijinks. But beyond that, I can't remember, but I did enjoy it very much. And Robin Williams is, like, a big influence in my life in terms of... National treasure. In terms of national treasures, treasures yeah he's up there yeah tomorrow I'll be celebrating uh mentor a local blue collar genius day which is push him to move on with his life you know yeah yeah absolutely um but also encourage him to pursue love yeah exactly that's

implied in the name of the holiday yeah yeah stand on your desk day oh yeah stand we're good we can keep going with a bit i think we got three we got three robin williams projects out of there yeah yeah peter hi hi how are you doing great doing great it is uh I am I am by the way in an un-air-conditioned room because the air conditioning will uh ruin the sound quality and I am a professional uh and so you will over the course of this podcast see me get increasingly brutally uncomfortable okay this is how a recording podcast in like the july august space tends to go for me uh but i'm used to it now thank you for your sacrifice thank you and also you i'm sorry but i have to call you out you started that response by saying that you're

you're great and it doesn't actually sound like you're great it sounds like you're sitting in a very good now i'm just saying in about half an hour, I will be miserable. Yeah. It's all going to be. I like to antagonize people right out of the gate here. Wait a second. You fucking fraud, actually. Aha, you lied to us. I was trying to be fun.

It didn't work. What part of the country are you in? Are you in a... I am in the Big Apple. I am in New York City, Queens. Oh, yeah. That's hot. I don't... I mean, it's hot. I've seen the queens oh yeah that's well it's hot i don't i don't i mean it's

hot i've seen the maps and it just looks like it's hot everywhere all across the planet so i don't think you can escape it's hot it's hot planet uh we filmed the uh the youtube show in uh it's like a studio apartment type room but it's very hot in this next like five weeks um so apologies to everybody listening who will get to see my sweaty face on youtube you didn't look that sweaty thank you i felt very sweaty i didn't say you look fine you look great the ultimate reassurance you didn't look that sweaty you didn't look that sweaty you looked not as miserable as you're describing. I didn't take me out of anything. But also, I guess I wasn't wearing my glasses, though.

Oh. Yeah. That's why I said you're looking at it like a small screen in Zoom. Yeah, your glasses on. So I do tend to like carry this computer. Once I'm done with my stuff, I tend to carry the computer with me from room to room and like fold laundry and stuff yeah i know there's also that i'm always there so keep your eye out i've said too much glistening face of cody i guess it's not that bad i think um you heard it here first, folks. Not that bad.

Hello to my many friends and also my one enemy. Summer can be a stressful time. What with that freak sun looking down at you all the time. We sure hate the sun, don't we? But when I'm feeling stressed over how much I hate the sun and want to destroy the sun, I'll take a stress CBD complex gummy by NextEvo Naturals. NextEvo vigorously tests their CBD to make sure you're getting what they're giving, multiple fast-absorbing and effective products.

That way you can stay calm and get a good sleep so that you can spend every day fighting the sun. Did you know that the sun hates babies? It's true. Speaking about how much we hate the sun. Did you know that the sun hates babies? It's true. Speaking about how much we hate the sun, perhaps you should check out Nextivo's triple action CBD sleep that features a fast-acting and controlled release melatonin to help you fall asleep and stay asleep. Someday, well, someday the sun will fall asleep too. And never wake up. So leave summer stress behind and upgrade your CBD.

Go to nextdiva.com slash more news to get 25% off and a free bottle of premium pure CBD. $50 value limit, one use per customer. That's n-e-x-t-e-v-o.com slash more news. Feel better as you await the sun's extermination and the celebration of eternal darkness, cleansing darkness. So we keep detouring here. You have a new podcast with someone I've never met, but I am a fan of michael hobbs uh yeah kill

how tell us about that this new project it's a podcast about where we sort of do critical reviews of like airport books um so we started off with freakonomics and uh then did some malcolm gladwell and we've gone as far afield as like the end of history by Fukuyama and some more serious stuff like that. But yeah, Hobbs reached out to me what must be a year and a half ago now and was like, we should do a podcast together. And I am a man who loves to hitch his wagon in general. Smart.

He's smart. Yeah. He's smart. Yeah. He's been on some successful podcasts. And I was like, I want to hitch. And so I did it. And it was a great move. I also, since we've last, I think, I think that last time we spoke, I had my day job. And then I got fired from it.

Oh. And so it was a great it was a great time to launch a second podcast uh for me personally and yeah it's gone it's gone well um i basically consume nothing now but things that are bad like i read supreme court opinions and then i read bad books and that is it that that is my life this is a good um recipe for mental health and and whatnot but i actually kind of think it's probably a good counterbalance or maybe not for to to all the great things that are happening in my life generally you mean yeah they're very different types of reading i I guess. Yeah, no. Michael Hobbs reaches out and asks you to be a co-host on a new project.

You say yes. Also, as big of a fan of Michael Hobbs as I am, I'm also a fan of his co-hosts. That's a compliment. They're in good company. that's a compliment. Yeah. They're in good company. There was a couple months there where I was like,

I'm not going to be good at this relative to your other co-hosts. You know, they're talented co-hosts. And I, of course, am a fraud. And then I quickly realized that, no, I am not a fraud. I am a great podcaster. I am one of the top podcasters on earth and I know that because good podcasters keep reaching out to me

what else could explain it Leon Mayfock reached out and wanted me to do 5-4 and then Michael Hobbs reached out and that cured my imposter syndrome just thinking about it for a minute I now feel great just you have to believe what i'm saying i don't have imposter syndrome yeah yeah you should say it more

it's more it's more believable the more you say it yeah actually i feel great i feel great i feel great i i feel great i feel great well i like that well, I just in a serious note, I do think that it's easy to talk yourself out of doing things because you feel like you're not qualified or why would somebody want to listen? And you know what? Perhaps you're correct, but you'll never know till you try. Also, you have to learn. Imposter syndrome is just I always I kind, I've struggled with it in my past. Sometimes still so, but do, but not really. I just thought, I realized that it's like you, you only learn from doing, and there's

always going to be people out there that are ready to receive what you're putting. I always find that there's somebody that's going to, it's going to resonate with. So that's my way of busting through imposter syndrome. Okay. Okay. Well, I, in my case, it's sort of weird because i actually don't have much when it comes to the law stuff where i'm critiquing supreme court opinions and people who are who i should feel inferior to by objective metrics um but when it came to doing like books and reading about all these different topics where I don't really have a ton of independent expertise in every discrete topic.

Yep. That was harder to like convince myself that I can do. And it took me a few like episodes and getting like a structure and a general approach to those episodes and methodologies that i was using to actually like feel like i knew what i was doing and wasn't just bullshitting and yeah and like adding value like there's a reason i'm here and like i feel confident that it's okay that people listen to me talk for an hour yeah yeah have you done um do you do i know you you're like what what was the one you did?

The Hillbilly Elegy for Mr. Senator Vance. But, like, it's not really fiction. Would you ever delve into, like, what, is it James Pattinson? Pattinson. Because that, to me, is a very airport book. My mom loves James Pattinson. Genre and author. Yeah. But it seems more like advice and stuff and

about the world yeah we're we're primarily building ourselves around non-fiction because i think we're you know talking about pop science and and um the sort of like just pseudo-intellectualism that uh sort of flows through a lot of these books. But it is sort of on our radar that like at some point you have to do the Fountainhead, right? Right. Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah, you do. And, you know, maybe one day, yeah, you get to the sort of like junk fiction of the world. I don't know exactly how we'd go about doing it but i do think that we are we will inevitably get there it feels like we have to eventually yeah there's no there's no dearth of like just like advice or like political type of books that do associate with that but i feel like yeah there's like there's like it's not even pick a book it's just an author and pick a random one because there are authors you yeah see there yeah i mean it's it's sort of weird to talk about airport books without eventually being like by the way remember

the da vinci code and how everyone was talking about it for three years straight right and yeah these little uh whether it's factoids or like scenes or just these tropes or memes that sort of go from these books and then right are regurgitated amongst people who think they're they know they're talking about right i will eventually do a full episode linking the da vinci code to q anon whether or not there's any merit to it doesn't matter doesn't matter it's your show you can say i just thought of it right now and i'm gonna do it yeah perfect i worked at a barnes and noble uh for a couple years in the mid aughts and almost every book on your list is like oh my god i saw that book non-stop as just like flying off the shelves yes right right like the secret i

like i had flashbacks to everyone buying this yeah cultural significance to the yeah they're they are sort of like emblematic of a lot of weird american cultural uh quirks and norms um and a lot of people reach out being like hey i um i actually read this when it came out and you've made me realize that i should be deeply ashamed and i'm like that i don't think that that shouldn't be the takeaway really right yeah it's a different time you know there i mean absolutely also so many of these uh i feel like this is less of a thing nowadays but just like yeah there's like a week where every single tv show like every daytime talk show is like buy this book everyone's buying this book we're going to talk about this book but that doesn't really happen much anymore well now it's different

the the heyday of all these books i'll say pre-internet or at least the internet as we know and use it now where you don't have access to people critiquing or pointing out flaws and whereas right now you could you've got everybody's opinions all at once which is a clusterfuck but it's harder for certain things to take addressing people saying oh I'm a little bit ashamed that I read

this book and didn't think about it's like well different context we weren't sharing information in the same way so it's easier to like all you had was the book we got to talk about some news though i think good yes i think i can't wait right that was a bit of a hard pivot but it was necessary because boy oh boy we got some stuff to talk about this hasn't happened yet but it's probably gonna happen so let's talk about the impending trump indictment perhaps which one

start there the new one oh the new one uh yeah i guess donald the indicted uh yeah special counsel jack smith informed mr trump that he is a target in his investigations around the efforts to overturn the 2020 election so he's probably gonna get that third one the trifecta racking him up racking it up but he did everything right he did everything right and they indicted him that's okay i don't know that he did everything right quincy key play that quote i did everything right and they indicted me i mean this is just uh you know good for him it's you know you gotta yeah you gotta get those numbers up it's good to me that these are like indictments are coming down the pipeline that are a little more related to like, yeah, that was real bad.

Yeah. That's like real, like the document stuff people are, you can easily, you can easily, people easily sort of like, well, Biden documents. And obviously there's like, it's not the same thing, but there are ways to talk about it as if it doesn't really matter. But yeah, these election things are like, oh yeah was that's bad that's like i know i've said this on this show and i know that there are reasons for why indictments come down when they do would have preferred this one to come first but yes it is good to see one that has a little bit more you gotta save the juicy stuff you know yeah it does feel like this one this one overlaps with like what made trump a bad president much more directly than the others right which seem like ancillary stuff to some degree not that they're not important or not that they're not

valid indictments but you know you are finally sort of getting to the heart of why Trump sucked. And it's like, oh, right. He was engaged in a concerted effort to undermine the results of the election. Right. And here you have an indictment that actually touches on that rather than being something that you could maybe characterize as unimportant if you were you know your median voter for example right yeah or something that's like well all presidents do that kind of or like have done it to a certain degree or something like that as opposed to this too i think gets to even to the closer to the heart of what actually bothered republicans about trump where like all this other stuff's like yeah he's doing he's getting our our justices on the court so i don't really care about

this and this and this but it does seem like the the destruction of like the social fabric and like our democracy are things that some republicans at least sort of have some reverence for or miss a bit um and so i think that it is good at least that there's like yeah remember how you hate this fucking guy um and how he's damaging to our entire nation not just like the libs um or our, you know, our civility. I wonder if like, because we don't know specifically what details are going to be in this indictment. Do we think that, like, I don't know what part of what he did

to overturn the 2020 election is the most legally damning to him. Is it the speech before January 6th? Is it the perfect phone call? Is it to do with the false electors? Peter, I don't know if you have any insight into this whatsoever. Don't blindside me with legal questions that I should know the answer to on the podcast. I don't know what they're likely to go after. I will say that getting him on something related to this speech would be very difficult. Not that they wouldn't maybe give it a shot, but it's not like he says something, you know, very like, let's go charge the Capitol building, take out some police barricades, right? let's go charge the Capitol building, take out some police barricades, right? It's all very sort of between the lines.

You'd have to mix in a speech with the tweets. That would be a tough road to plow, I would think. If I'm looking at the whole set of circumstances around the election and thinking about where I see potential to get them, I say it's the phone call. It's the most obvious, please commit a crime for me that you're going to get in a situation like this. You know, you're never, I shouldn't say never with Trump, but generally speaking, you're not going to get someone on the phone being like, hey, go do this illegal thing, right? They will always stop just short of that. That's what Trump did. And I think that it's something you could go after him for. I think that the inference that he wanted everyone to make is pretty obvious. And it would be,

in my mind, I don't know exactly what statutes they're going to use, for example, but it would be, in my mind, the safest bet to build this around the phone call. You don't get that kind of thing from Trump or anyone often, and it sounds like they kind of have that when it comes to the documents, too, in the other indictment. The documents are such an obvious violation of the law the law that it's not in my mind it's almost not even really worth like debating in any way or like discussing it's they obviously he talked about it all the all the time when we were like you give him back give him back he's like no and like we all saw it very easy to have declassified it while he was president. He could have, but he didn't.

Right. I mean, he thought that the fact that they were classified was cool. It's very obvious that that is what was sort of motivating him, right? And so he could have declassified it, but then it's almost no fun, right? The fun is that there's a stack of classified papers sitting on your desk, and you get to show them to Kid Rock. That's the whole point. Sitting on the floor of your bathroom, actually.

It wants to be accurate. Well, it's a tie-in to that photograph anyway. In the fucking bathtub. Amazing. American hero. Just the funniest man in the world. I'm curious to see how it all plays out. Obviously, it is very frustrating talking to people that don't want to believe that this man's a

criminal it just is there's an answer to everything so mountain time isn't feeling it i i mean i haven't discussed this latest yet that's what this weekend's for guys oh good but yeah no i mean Yeah, no, I mean, the documents, you know, the Stormy Daniels payments, all of this has just been fodder for the politicization that the Democrats, the deep state, what have you, are going after politically motivated. You got nothing. So that's why I say personally, I am curious how. So that's why I say, personally, I'm curious how, if this one had come first, how that would be. Because right now, it's like, yep, here we go again. Here's another one.

They got to get them on something. So they're trying everything they can instead of like, no, they took their time with this because it's pretty important. That's why the move in my mind, and I'm 40% joking, is to just go after him for treason and seek the death penalty. Just raise the stakes to the absolute maximum right off the bat and just see how it goes. We'll follow around and find out. Now, will he actually actually be executed almost certainly not almost you know he's a former president if they could get convicted of crimes no one would want to be president right the whole point is that you get to do uh crimes on a grand scale yeah exactly

that's why you become president but i think that in my mind that is a the funniest thing that could happen and b the way a way to raise the stakes to the point where no one can be like, well, this is just bullshit. It's like, well, no, actually, we're going after him for full-on treason. And we're going for the guillotine. We're going to try to kill this guy. I did everything right, and now I'm walking the green mile peter what do you think this is just a question i'd ask i've asked the boys this week what do you this is unrelated to the indictments or maybe not what's the worst thing donald donald trump did to you oh man

not to you personally but in your opinion yeah, I feel like the answer to this is like escalation in the Middle East, like very quiet stuff, you know. And by quiet, I mean things that didn't get a ton of media play over here. That's sort of. That would that's sort of the answer that jumps out of my brain. However, what's the worst thing Trump always did? What's the worst thing Trump did is always something that ends up in a conversation where people then continuously remind me of various things that I forgot where I'm like, oof, right, right.

That's exactly what I'm at. It's like every time I've brought this up to people, I've gotten more answers like, oh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's good. So what do you think it is? Or what are some good answers you've heard well i mean like there's the muslim ban and all of that you know jonathan discode like the supreme court justices three of them three just pretty bad in general

uh erosion of the social fabric no just the just the way that his way of being and the way he talks and his offensive, this has just opened the floodgates. There's been a huge cultural shift in what people are comfortable saying and doing very publicly, general polarization amplified. But then there's the rapes.

It's really hard for me to not get like out of the game before he was president rapes how about the fact that he's a fraud does nobody care about trump university what all the people that he never paid the contracts the the scams he's run his entire life are we not concerned about saudi arabia and the different deals that his you know just in general using the office of president to enrich his own businesses. Full page ad to execute the Central Park Five. I feel my heart rate raising just reiterating the list I've got going. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that the Muslim ban might be something where I think in a vacuum, in and of itself, I wouldn't say it's the worst thing that he did, but it's sort of emblematic, you know, of, of a lot of what he wrought, um, where he sort of, I wouldn't say kicks off the campaign. Um, but you know, between this and build the wall, you know, you have this sort of twin pillars of bigotry that build his 2016 primary run. And a lot of a lot of bad shit flows from that. Right. So it's sort of like this symbolic, symbolic part of what makes him so awful that he took ban Muslims and turned it into something, you know, something watered down relative to that but something that was an actual policy output I think there's a real case for that

so much is like almost intangible a little bit and because also he wasn't like the most effective president that's the other part of it is he ultimately didn't accomplish a lot of the stuff he wanted to do sorry Cody keep going no yeah that's it just well I got too excited that was another point i wanted to say but oh of course isn't just the

wall in general being all we talked about for so many years and just that whole just in general our relationship with mexico and anything yeah deal i mean and also like the election denial is pretty, pretty, pretty bad. January 6th was a terrible day. It was pretty bad. It's a bad, bad thing

that we all watched happen. It's not, it's not crazy to think that he still has a real, tangible opportunity to absolutely ruin democracy in America,

right? Oh yeah. Whether it's in 2024 or 2028 when he decides to run again because I cannot see him. You don't think he's going to squeak out? If he's not in prison, he's not going to stop running.

No. I mean, even if he wins in 2024, I still think he tries for a third term because there's just enough wiggle room that he goes for it. Right. Yeah. There are just enough people who would talk in a way like, yeah, be like, it's actually OK or whatever.

And they would they would accept it. Yeah. I do find a little bit of peace in the idea of a Trump third term only because I feel like I can then write off the country entirely, where it's just like, well, we're done here. We're done. I'm going to move on to personal projects, and that will be it. Right, right. I mean, I got to be like...

Get into woodworking. Oh, now's your chance. Yeah, now's the chance. Yeah, God, that is... It's not a non-zero... It's a non-zero chance it could happen. Well... To bring it back to the indictment stuff, I have... I non-zero this is not zero chance it could happen well to bring it back to the indictment stuff i have i'm curious if this is since we were talking about it i started to think

because there's this narrative that like the deep state is going after trump so he can't run right they want him to be in prison but also there's the narrative that uh everybody wants trump to win the nomination because he will lose to biden uh there's like oh desantis would would win against biden uh so it's just this weird conflict of like do you think that they want him to go to prison so that he can't win the nomination but they want him to get the nomination so that he is the candidate that loses. But from prison, I guess. Well, I mean, look, Eugene V. Debs did this.

All right. You can run a presidential campaign from prison. And, you know, in my mind, Eugene V. Debs is a hero now. Therefore, anybody who runs from prison is. No, it's it's tragedy and farce on this like hundred year scale where the extremes are just like exquisite, like just unbelievable. That's a good phrasing. The but I mean, I I honestly don't know what like higher ups in like the Democratic Party, for example, are thinking about all of this. And I I am concerned anytime anyone talks about like, well, this would be the weaker candidate just because like this is what went wrong in 2016. Right. Like, can we not have this conversation anymore?

Can we just focus on ourselves and maybe like let the Republicans run wild with whatever lunatics they feel like fielding? I think it was John Chait talking about how he'd prefer DeSantis last week. And I was like, which I imagine was for strategic purposes. And I was sort of like, I mean, A, I'm not ready to say that DeSantis is notably weaker than Trump against Biden. I don't necessarily think that's true. Who knows? But also, I'm with you. Maybe.

I'm not prepared to say that either. Yeah. But we're just going to play chicken with fascists again? Like, is that what we're going to do from now until the end of time? They keep winning and we're like, ooh, well, next time we'll get them. Next time we'll pick the even crazier guy and then no one will want that person well i would argue that there are plenty of people in the democratic party that are very happy to do that because ultimately that's how they oh yeah that's how they that's their best way to campaign and exist is in opposition to the big bad guy instead of focusing on uh whatever is actually needed we

need to take a quick break for advertising so we will hi it's cody you know everyone deserves a good night's sleep even people from vermont me i used to toss and turn like a drugged up mule in a cement mixer that's when i found out about the PodCover by 8sleep. It's a fitted sheet that automatically regulates your temperature so you don't wake up sweatier than a greased up lawyer in a bank vault. Now I sleep through the night. In fact, I've never experienced sleep quite like this. Why, I'm more rested than a comatose turtle in a larger comatose turtle.

The PodCover by 8s Sleep not only controls your temperature, but actually tracks your sleep during the night. That's some high-tech magic right there. Ooh, not like in Vermont, who I'm mad at for some reason. I, you go get out of here, you state. Ah, I'm so mad at you, Vermont. Go to eightsleep.com slash more news and save $150 on the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep.

That's the best offer you'll find, but you must visit eightsleep.com slash more news and save $150 on the pod cover by 8sleep. That's the best offer you'll find, but you must visit 8sleep.com slash more news for $150 off. 8sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Invest in the rest you deserve with the 8sleep pod and you will be happier than some analogy that you can think of you think of it you do the analogy and we are back from those ads that we did need to take a break for a break for we needed to

take a break for those ads but we did it and now we're back from those ads and i have not lost the flow i couldn't agree more with you um so okay we've got you here and i know you're an expert in airport books now but you also are an expert on supreme court that's right things expert we knew you were coming so we kind of saved this conversation for you um and that is the web designer uh case that came before scotus um uh not to just spring it on do you want to set this up since this is your realm or do you want to i'm happy to i'm happy to set it up. The case is 303 Creative v. Alanis, and it's about a web designer in Colorado. Laurie Smith, I believe was her name. Yeah, that's right. the problem for her was that Colorado has a public accommodations law that says you have to serve anyone regardless of their race, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sexual orientation. And that is an issue for her because she's a homophobe and she does not want to create wedding websites for LGBT

people. Well, let me, she doesn't want to create wedding websites for gay weddings uh i guess she would theoretically do it for lgbt people if they were married deciding to stay closeted and marry someone just like just like the yeah the the two groups like on opposite ends of the cake just like talking to other people so i support that anyway she uh she sues and um the supreme court sided with her a few weeks back um basically with the core concept being that to make her provide wedding websites for gay weddings would be to compel her speech under the first amendment and the government cannot compel speech under the first amendment it's a long-standing principle of first amendment law and so uh she doesn't have to serve gay people uh with her little wedding website business and uh that's that yeah good for her

but this whole thing came about she didn't even have a case she didn't even have somebody asking her yeah so design anything she just there's a little bit of there's a little bit of low-key fraud going on in the background here it's not okay it's not actually very relevant to the Supreme Court case itself because the case wasn't predicated on her having received like a request. But she in earlier court filings, I believe it was represented that there had been a request from a gay person, a gay man in San Francisco. Reporter reached out to that man and found out that didn't appear to be true. He was like, no, I'm married to a woman. I did not make this request. So it's sort of unclear exactly what happened, but it's possible that lori or more likely her lawyers at the alliance defending freedom a uh absolutely ghoulish uh conservative uh sort of legal uh think tank and um and and impact litigation uh operation um someone seems to have lied somewhere um it's also possible the reporting is totally

incorrect or that the guy is feels like if the reporting was like yeah i don't know what this guy would have to be doing for for this to for it to be somehow his fault but i guess it's theoretically possible that he is lying to someone i guess but it does feel if the reporting was wrong or if there's some sort of mistake we would have also heard reporting on that um it seems also like a case before the supreme court makes it all that way you know it does it's just so monumental a decision well you'd think it would be for a real case this court has been this court has been very willing to humor uh cases where there doesn't appear to be a real injury um they did it they did it twice in one day with this and the student loan case where you know their claim to an injury there was like this

really roundabout thing where um a public corporation that was theoretically under missouri's control might have been injured by the program which missouri then claimed was an injury to them directly and whatever it was like all these this little daisy chain of causation that didn't make any sense um and here we have uh a situation where this woman is pretty much just bringing a theoretical claim and the courts like yeah sure that's fine too all of these are experiments here yeah let's let's just vibe this out all of this is the kind of stuff that you learn is not acceptable within the first month of law school mmm well it was a long time ago for them, though, like that first month.

That's true. Decades and decades. That's true. Also, they can change what is taught in the first month of law school. So, you know, more power to them. Exactly. Yeah, that's an absurd amount of power we bestow people for a lifetime. But at least there are only a few of them and they're very old yeah at least that and this feels like a really good segue to this other topic that we

thoughtfully prepared which is talking about the scotus corruption it's a problem y'all problem it's just gifts just yeah is there a law against gifts in this country there should be oh for these people what would you even call that law look technically there is a law against gifts for these people i never heard of it well i know that the senate judiciary committee is advancing uh legislation today uh that would you know, require the Supreme Court to adopt an ethics code, which feels like that should be a slam dunk. But it also feels like it won't be. 2023, get an ethics code.

All right. Yeah. I mean, it's very odd because people are like, there should be a more aggressive ethics code. It's true. There should be. I mean, there should be a pretty rigorous ethics code but also like there is a law saying that you need to disclose gifts and clarence thomas didn't disclose his gifts uh so like the rules are there the the real problem is that there's no institutional infrastructure to hold them accountable um so you can put ethics rules in place but he already violated the law

and no one did anything from what i can tell so what are what are they going to do they're making these ethics codes well exactly like yeah yeah uh so many laws are just like well we wrote it down surely somebody will enforce that but yeah if there's no enforcement apparatus then it's just going to be words on a page that they can ignore and then right go on vacation i mean and it's also worth noting that their response has not largely speaking been my bad their response has been like aggressively defensive like yeah it sure has like thomas got uh immediately came out with i shouldn't say immediately thomas came out relatively quickly with a statement basically saying i did nothing wrong um and then pro publica dropped like more reporting that uh sort of buried his arguments a little bit alito you, you know, here's about the ProPublica piece in advance and runs to the Wall Street Journal

who just did PR for him by letting him do an advanced op-ed before he even saw the reporting. These are not the actions of people who feel bad. You know, it feels like everyone's sort of missing the point which is like they for sure violated pre-existing laws and rules so are we going to do something or not alito's bit in his op-ed about how the lodge that he stayed at kind of sucked uh yeah it's it's such a funny because i if there are rules against accepting gifts it

kind of doesn't matter if you think they suck it 100 it doesn't matter uh do you want to read that passage i would love to i put it in here for a reason because i think it's very funny this is samuel alito in the wall street journal he writes i stayed for three nights in a modest one room unit at the king salmon lodge which was a comfortable but rustic facility as i recall the meals were home style fare i cannot recall whether the group at the lodge about 20 people was served wine but if there was wine it was certainly not wine that costs one thousand dollars unbelievable okay well moving on then i guess he he also had a line about how um he didn't believe that the seat he took in the private jet was like would have been occupied if not like if not for him somebody had to take it right like he's sort of like the moral difference between me being on

or not on this jet is zero um it's incredible that he obviously got a call from ProPublica being like, you know, request for comment. They sort of gave him enough information that he had a general idea of what it was about. And then he goes sprinting to the Wall Street Journal trying to get out ahead of it. But he hasn't seen the reporting yet. And so he's just sort of like firing off in different directions, hoping to hit something. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I was at the lodge.

Food sucked. The wine was yellowtail at best, you know, and the private jet. I was just taking a seat. You know, I was just taking a seat that was otherwise empty. So you can't fault me for any of that. Anyway, the whole point of this stuff, though, is that you have to disclose it. So like it doesn't matter if the food sucked. It doesn't matter how big the gift was from a legal perspective.

What matters is that there was a gift that he did not disclose. It's relatively uncontroversial. There are some gray areas here about what exactly constitutes a gift. You know, these all sound like gifts to me. Homestyle fare. So I think the reason he said homestyle fare is because like private lodging, like if someone had Alito over to their house and was like, you can crash in the guest room. That is pretty unequivocally not a gift under the rules.

But it gets very weird with these billionaires who have like yachts, right? Like Clarence Thomas's argument is essentially that a billionaire super yacht is the same thing. That's sort of obviously not true when we're talking about the spirit of the law. But there's like just enough wiggle room for these guys to try and make that distinction they love the floor of yeah and of course these are gifts from people yeah but perhaps goes without saying they're ruling on cases affecting these people it yeah it's not just gifts it's like right right gifts it's not just gifts and they're not exposing yourself not recusing yourself from cases that involve the people who gave you the gifts

that you didn't disclose there there are recusals that should have happened and like more importantly more holistically and this is something that lawyers tend to ignore because we're so trained to search for technicalities but like they are existing in a world where money and power are just like swirling around them and they are sort of latching on to it as they deem fit and that's sort of what everyone on earth thinks corruption is and only when you start like haggling about the details, right? Like, well, was that technically a gift? Only then can you sort of like free them from just a tiny bit of responsibility or just create enough doubt that like, you know, the New York Times has to throw in a couple sentences about how some legal experts don't think that this was technically a

violation of the law. Meanwhile, I think everyone understands what's happening here. Everyone understands that it's very unlikely that Harlan Crowe went to Clarence Thomas and was like, rule for me this way, and I will give you a super yacht vacation. But everyone also understands that there's a reason Sonia Sotomayor isn't getting those invites, right? There's a reason that Ruth Bader Ginsburg never got those invites. He is being rewarded for his performance. Right. It's the same functional thing. I think normal people understand that. And it's only because the discourse is dominated by lawyers that there's any sort of doubt in anyone's mind that this is just blatant corruption. I mean, also, as the

reports about Clarence thomas specifically have rolled out they keep coming and you start to lose track of the thread it's not just that two people crow harlan crowe paid for two years of college for thomas's grandnephew who he is said i think it was actually a private school that was before college but i can't remember uh oh okay but my point is like financial support over i mean it was straight up it was straight up cash into his pocket like that i i think that was maybe the third story to drop and they were getting sort of increasingly obvious as violations of the law like at first it's the super yachts and then it was uh the purchase of his mother's house yes and then his mother still lives in right um and then it was

the payment for uh a the the schooling of a child in clarence thomas's care which like is just direct cash into his pocket in function. And yet, like, well, and I saw it's like it's like affecting the lives of people that are important to Clarence Thomas. That's an ongoing reason why somebody can't or would not vote against the benefactor. It's just like someone on your payroll it's having you on your payroll yeah it's so obvious um it's the kind of thing that like like you're saying it's like people know uh and i think there's also a sense of like people know like well nothing will happen nothing ever happens nothing ever happens to people in these positions but it is obvious what's going on and it's just going to be like yeah national review columnists or whoever is like well actually it's fine and we should be

doing this more or whatever um but no serious person being honest is like this is good actually right well and the same person who is like leonard leo from the federalist society who is connecting alito with pa Singer and connected Ginny Thomas with Harlan Crowe is probably paying for those op-eds indirectly, is paying for those opinions from people out in the zeitgeist to be like, actually, maybe this is okay. Yeah, what if you... Yeah, I might need a fact check here, but I want to say that it was like Eric Erickson who came out very quickly in defense

of Harlan Crowe and Clarence Thomas' relationship. And then someone pointed out that he's like very directly on Harlan Crowe's payroll. Oh, this is all fun. Yeah, I was going to say like without looking it up, Eric Erickson definitely was one of the first. But I didn't know that follow-up. That's incredible. his sub stack from may 4th eric erickson's another baseless attack against clarence thomas so he's one of the first people out there right out of the gate you

shot a newspaper and posted a photo of it like just get out of here what are you doing that guy what a clown we're gonna we're gonna to bring this episode home talking about tree law. I don't know. Have you heard this story, Peter? There's a strike going on. I don't know if you know about that. I know about the strike. The entertainment industry.

The biz is abuzz with talk of the strike. You see? Okay. So this thing happened this week. So writer and comedian Chris Stevens took a photo. It's from the picket line outside of Universal Studios in Burbank. And showing that all of the trees on the street had been trimmed. And the thing about...

Heavily trimmed. Totally trimmed. All the ficus leaves. The ficus trees were trimmed back out of season, mind you. It looked ridiculous. It wasn't like trim trim puts it trim makes it seem like it's a thing you do to trees but the picture is like they all of the foliage was removed from the trees it looks preposterous the thing you don't want to do especially in the summer and for all the picketers outside of uh universal studios this was the main source of shade and so there is all this hullabaloo uh and a belief that they definitely uh did it on purpose

to retaliate against i shouldn't editorialize like that um but you know it sure seems that way. Then the studios are like, oh, it also isn't their area to prune, right, Jonathan? Am I getting that right? No, these are city trees. City trees. Yeah, they weren't their trees. Not their trees to prune. That's why there was a series of discoveries

where the picture is posted and everyone's like, those bastards, and then someone else was like actually it's the city that does the trimming so it's probably not the studios or whatever who did it and then it was revealed that in fact the city was like no we didn't do that we didn't do it there were no permits for this but then the studios are like no but we we we always do it this time of year to protect the trees against wind damage. But then there has been absolutely no work permits pulled for at least the last three years or something like that to do such a thing.

Wind damage? Yeah. You know how trees in Southern California are constantly being damaged by wind? What an absurd claim. Why would they even try to do claim yeah there's a solution for people not in la right now it is there is zero wind and it's a thousand degrees it's you want just for context the trees the wind problem in burbank california it's from bob hope airport all the wind from the plains i mean it's very funny i love when uh specific like yeah just like yeah let's discuss tree law what are the what are your little permit laws

uh peter do you have like do you have like is there like a niche like law area that you find particularly fascinating like tree law well when i was working at a big law firm, one day I had to learn about the Jones Act, which is like this century plus old law that governs a bunch of maritime disputes. And basically, I just had one case where I had to learn about it. And then the case ends. And I was like, well, that was interesting. I guess it was odd. I was litigating against a law firm where like if internally, like, hey, do we have any maritime law experts? And someone else would loop me in like I was an actual expert and be like, yeah, Peter's

our maritime law guy. And then I had to fake for like three years being a maritime law expert. like three years being a maritime law expert. So I don't know if I, I don't know. It is pretty interesting, but it's also, it was also sort of traumatic for me because I was just like constantly being looped into meetings with big time partners at the law firm.

And they were like, Peter, here's the issue. And they would explain this like really abstruse, bizarre maritime law dispute that like involves like worker benefits when the workers are offshore and stuff like that and i was like well here are the concerns and then i would just bullshit like just just filibuster until i had time to do frantic uh west law searching for like a couple hours that night i was gonna say did you find that like by the end of that three years that like actually i do know quite a bit about maritime all expertise in in

my experience at law firms is like fake it till you make it but you do sort of make it like there was a time when i was having these discussions and with um the opposing lawyers and i was sort of like you know i feel like i know enough here. Like, I'm doing fine. Yeah, you're finally comfortable. Like I could, I could go to the sea. Absolutely. Yeah, that that was the only like, interesting kind of law I ever learned about everything else was just like, corporate law bullshit. Yeah. But yeah, that was cool. Did it ever get you in trouble like months later they come back to you and they'd say hey you you said this was in international waters and thus was legal and it turns out if being wrong got you in trouble back at the law firms i would not have made it as as long as i did um no like law it's it's one of two things one you can find the answer

relatively cleanly and clearly or two you can't which means they can't either um and so occasionally you would run into situations where someone had more expertise and would make you feel like you're a big dummy. But for the most part, what was actually happening was that I was the firm's foremost maritime law expert. And so if someone was like questioning me, they didn't quite have enough knowledge to really pinpoint what I did or didn't get wrong. And that's my my real skill set at the law firm was staying just above that line where it's like, OK, I don't think that he made a terrible mistake here, but I'm not entirely sure. Right. And yeah, knowing that, like, I know the person I'm talking

to doesn't know just enough as much as me. Right. So they have that lack of confidence that exactly. as much as me. Right. So they have that lack of confidence that you can, you know. My absolute favorite thing was when I went in-house after being at a law firm. And when you're in-house, what often happens is you're the only lawyer in a meeting with a bunch of non-lawyers. And so they're asking me questions and I am just spouting nonsense, just like garbage. And if they ever got, put me in a corner about it later where there were other lawyers involved i would be like that's not what i said just a little gentle gaslighting you know so yeah so you're exclusively podcasting now by the way this is not why i got fired i just got fired for podcasting that's it

i was gonna i i was gonna make that joke but like, no, but I'm so glad you did. Yeah, you got fired for podcasting. This is a great concept for a podcast in itself. It's just all this behind the scenes. I know. Lawyering. Fake law, yeah. And you can only do it if you're confident that you're not going to go back to that.

Right, right. Exactly. Right. The problem with this is you can't get lawyers to talk about this stuff because they take themselves very seriously in general. They weren't keeping lawyers too, right? Yeah. I have a vivid memory of when I was a young attorney at a big law firm making a joke about we had just kind of messed around, had a long lunch. And someone was like, oh, I'm behind on my hours today, their billable hours. And I was like, oh, I'll bill the lunch to JP Morgan.

And that was a joke, but one of the kids who was at the lunch who I didn't know very well was like, well, that would be fraud. And looked me in the eyes like dead serious, and I was like, okay, I can't make jokes about this sort of thing with other lawyers around that sucks you gotta spend your days you can't make jokes yeah the point of that story uh jonathan is that that podcast would suck because lawyers are no fun right it would have it would have to be somebody who's like i will never be a lawyer again no it'll just be you and us and we'll do this every time right we could do we could pull in anonymous lawyers and uh and do it that way oh that's fun there's a that's a

functional idea yeah there's something there we're all pretty busy i i'm also going to float another uh podcast idea i had while we're all just talking about this uh and we're at the part of the episode that like four people are listening yeah thanks for taking on everybody um i i do i did a couple years ago want to do a podcast that was something like the worst job you've ever had and you just bring on a guest every time and talk about the worst job they ever had that's a great idea i never really googled this but i sort of assume that someone's done this in some form but it just feels like a kick-ass kind of podcast but you haven't done it so that sounds really fun yeah no if you guys want to just do that that's fine i'll take five percent okay well so i i want to do a show i want i want to do a show i want

something that is an easy just sit down i want a format for talking to people and not have it be about the interesting, surprising conversations. And it can be you can make your way there on accident. But I want the, you know, like everybody has, but mine. So I'll take that idea. Anyway, we are at the end of our show now. What I've won one update. We didn't finish this tree law story.

Oh, yeah. There's just this huge hubbub online and all these people posting about it. The city controller, Kenneth Mejia, got involved and looked into it and was like, no, there were no permits for this. There's a whole thing on social media. Everyone is like, yeah, this didn't...

They did this to fuck with the strikers. The next day they put up tents to make it seem as though they didn't do it on purpose. I don't think it's very believable. But I just wanted to update. The trees are still trimmed. There are tents there now to save face. Tape the leaves back on, you cowards.

They really wanted to fix their mistake. They invented a time machine and go back and not trim the trees. I don't know. Thank you for that update, Cody. You're welcome. I just make sure everybody's up to date, informed. And Peter, thank you so much for joining us. This was a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me. Plug your show, where people should find you, all that fun stuff. Yeah, I'm on five to four about the supreme court and if folks could kill about airport books and i post on twitter once a month now uh yeah because i don't like getting weird messages from freaks uh but i am at the law boy on twitter yeah it's bad out there we didn't even talk about twitter good for us not good for us and we're not going to we're not going to it yeah it's bad out there i'm sure we'll talk about it again very soon can't wait uh yeah that's it we did it we did it i think everyone had a great time we learned we laughed we loved a little bit we laughed and we loved a little bit, but not as much as...

We love you because we love you very much. Okay, I got there. Fucking dang much.