The Chaser Report - Should Donald Trump Hire Bruce Lehrmann As His Lawyer?

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

Since our last episode, Donald Trump was convicted as guilty and Bruce Lehrmann has filed for an appeal against his defamation case loss. But for Charles and Dom, there is a piece of news even bigger than those two... Intergalactic war! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. Today we have so much news to get through, including not one, but two people who've been found guilty in a civil process of rape. Bruce Lerman and Donald Trump both feature in today's episode. But also, I mean, all this conversation about, I don't know, court cases, elections and the UK's got an election happening as well.

This might all be moot once I read you this headline, Charles. Oh. From news.com today, you say you know it's reliable. Secret Chinese spaceplane sparks fear of intergalactic war. I'm not talking about the national war. I'm not talking about a conflict on Earth extending to space. Yes. Intergalactic war, Charles.

Well, Peter Dutton's been warning us about this very threat for years. Stop the space planes. You imagine you have one of those tasteful. sculptures in his office saying, I stop these. So is it China who's invading space? Isn't that a sort of, doesn't that mean we shouldn't fear them? Because they're defending the earth? The earth?

You'd think so. You also, when you read the article, you realise that America is doing exactly the same thing pretty much. But China, of course, is the one who we fear. America always has our back, don't that. That's right. Let's get into it right after this. So, look, this is Jamie Seidel's.

article to begin with. It's got a little bit of ridicule online, to be honest. And the first lines are, we don't know what it looks like. We don't know what it's doing. But the mysterious behaviour of a secret Chinese space plane has the world increasingly worried that Earth's orbit is on the brink of becoming a battlefield. I wasn't worried about that. Before I read this article, Charles, I was blissfully ignorant of this.

Is there just a slight chance that this journalist has, and I use that term very liberally, has accidentally watched some sort of Bruce Willis movie about deep impact or something, and mistaken it for news? Or Star Trek or something else? It's true. It is, like, is that what's happened here? Because it sounds like, or is there an actual sort of reason that he's writing this article? No, no, this is actually a thing.

I actually believe this is a thing. So what's the thing? He starts out by saying, look, there's a lot of dead satellites up there. Apparently there are 9,900 active. satellites. A lot of them are SpaceX. And they've gained Sandians. That's right. They're unionising. That's right. No, there are all these radars just tracking what's in the skies, basically. Yeah. And there are some strange things. There are some larger things. We know that satellites have thrusters and can move around so they don't crash into each other. So that's good.

But we're also seeing some much bigger things that are zipping in and out around all of the satellites. And, I mean, it could be UFOs. But what it seems to be, if you believe, news.com.com. Yes. Is reusable shuttle-like space planes. And so one of them is the Boeing X-37B. Yeah, which we needn't fear. Which we needn't fear.

Because it will just crash. It's Boeing, yeah. So, I mean, I'm terrified of the notion of, I mean, I mean, like, its door will, you know, will crash. Well, there could be a deadly door incident. Yeah. So as much as this article is trying to make us fear, China's one, which is called the Shenlong,

the divine dragon. But it actually isn't Boeing like space the perfect place for Boeing because at least their aircraft will burn up in the atmosphere. On re-entry? Yeah, so it doesn't, it won't actually affect us. Well, isn't it true that in space no one can hear you scream? Boeing! Yeah.

So these are things that are going on. But it's likely to be a Chinese one as well. Well, America's got one and so has China. We should get there. Did they bite off Timo? I mean, look, I like it. the idea for the submarine. So it's also been deploying objects and transmitting, they've been transmitting signals. So what China's news agency says is that it will carry

out reusable technology verification, which sounds very harmless. And space science experiments is planned, providing technical support for the peaceful use of space. Now, none of this is giving me intergalactic war as per the headline, Charles. No. But still, I don't think we think of all these space planes going up there and doing stuff and then landing again. It's a little bit nerve-wracking, isn't it? No, I don't think so. I mean, like, isn't the whole point that it's not flying machines that make war, it's people, it's the people who make the decisions.

You know what I mean? Like, it's not, you know, you don't go, oh, well, you know, it's really worrying that drones exist because now Russia can use them against Ukraine. You go, it's worrying that Putin seems to want to kill lots of people. in Ukraine. You know what I mean? Like it's humans. Yeah, it's not the technology. It's humans. Well, okay. That's why I think the greatest worry is

the spacecraft gaining sentient. Quite possibly. Well, let me make it much more worrying for you. I continue to scroll down here. Okay, good. This is the Space Force, which of course Donald Trump invented. Sorry to be such a bummer. Very sensible. Yeah, I know. You're supposed to you being scared. Yeah, sorry.

Okay, I'll try and be more scared. Space Force General Saltzman talking to an Australian audience, earlier this month. Why was this not reported? Yeah. Said that China has a new censor shooter kill web, Charles. What's a shoot to kill web?

No, sensor shooter, so sensor dash shooter kill web. I don't know what it is, but it sounds terrifying. Oh, that is terrible. And it's, uh, I think we need to, we need, you know what we need, in addition to our submarine force, we need space submarines. Space submarines, that's right. Subs in space. Yeah, yeah.

Nuclear power. And it could be called Sporkas. Spork. It's as useful as a spork. Yeah. That's in space. So, look, there's lots of great ideas here. There's lots of things that urgently need funding.

Yeah. Russia also apparently has a space weapon. Oh, wow. Which is supposed to take out the Starlink satellite, supposedly. And it's just going to... But none of this... They can't even take out peasants in eastern Ukraine. Can I just make the point that none of these stories,

while slightly concerning, add up to a fucking intergalactic war. Like, intergalactic war implies us fighting against people from somewhere else in the cosmos, right? And, like, intergalactic, doesn't that mean, like, between galaxies? Yes, exactly. So we're talking about... But there's, like, the Milky Way, ganging up against... The Andromeda or whatever. Yeah, that's...

Like, I think New York on the day, you might need to rephrase with the help of the dictionary. That said, yeah, reusable space planes a little bit troubling, except that, Charles. Yes. Except, wouldn't that be able to get us overseas faster? I mean, I'm all for space planes if they can make it faster to go, I don't know, to London or something. Yes. In an hour.

So what we need to do is we need to scare all the sort of rocket scientists into thinking that this is a real problem. They'll develop a whole lot of technology and then we use it for consumer purposes. Yeah. It's a bit like the way Teflon. That's right. And space food sticks, which I used to have in my lunchbox growing up. Yeah. So there could be lots of benefits to continue.

All right, so I'm not that worried. We'll get on to some harder news. I know, I think we should stay on this. We'll start on the space plane. I'm starting to get very worried. I mean, what if New Zealand managed to... Oh, and New Zealand spaceplane? Yeah.

They're surprisingly good, aren't they? I know. You've said this for years. Yeah, exactly. What if Malaysia Airlines got a space plane? I mean, that could go very badly. Yeah. Well, they do.

They've got one. Better disappeared. More in a moment. Sorry. News a few days after it happens. So, Charles, look, I know this is big, but there's all this other news. Yeah, we can cover Bruce Lerman very briefly. Yep.

On the final day allotted to him, Bruce Lerman announced or filed notice that he plans to appeal. Yes. Charles, the key detail here, and why I think you and I should perhaps actually attend the courtroom. Is that in my experience, having seen him quite a lot over the last few years, Bruce Lerman has never been appealing. So it's very strange that he would now be reported as appealing. There you go. So he is appealing, it's for sure.

I think it's probably his only chance of ever being reported as appealing is to appeal. It's not clear to me whether the court's consented. That has been an issue in the past for Bruce in these situations. Yes. But Charles, the key detail here, and I think the thing it's going to get me if I can into the courtroom to watch what happens. Two points. Firstly, he's a law student.

Everyone's going, what's you going to do? How's he going to afford these massive defamation payouts? and he's also been found liable for almost all of the costs of the previous litigation. He's a law student, Charles. His current occupation is law student. Right. Which is why it was particularly fascinating to read that he plans to represent himself. So, I mean, he's not going to add to the bills on that side.

Is that because no one else will represent him? Or do you think he's just, he's... Hutzpar. Or is it... Do you have to do pracks? It could be. It's a brack. Learn on the job. When I was a law student, Charles, we didn't have to represent ourselves in criminal proceedings,

but maybe I should have applied. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you should have. I might have had a more successful career. Maybe he's just had a little bit too much of that, you know, white powder that he was videoed with a few months ago. Karaoke powder.

Yeah, the karaoke powder. I mean, that would make the courtroom proceedings even more entertaining. Because that would make you confident enough to go, you know what, I can do this. I can do this. I've got these. Yeah, fuck all these lawyers with decades of experience. I'm going to take them on. I mean, none of this is making me not want to go and watch him in court.

Is this also something where, well, first of all, do we get to see, will there be a YouTube channel that there was last time? I really hope so. So I'm not sure. I mean, he can apply to appeal. I don't know whether the court necessarily. I think there's a hearing where they decide whether to actually take up the appeal or not. Yeah, because appeals aren't easy, are they?

They've got to be on the basis of law. Eras in law. Eras in law. You can't just... Which means you have to know the law to know how to appeal. Yep. Yep. Like, it's sort of weighted in favour of people who actually know what they're doing.

I mean, it's very rigged. I mean, unless you... It's completely rigged. Unless you just think, oh, you know, I'll figure it out. Is it that it's just a delay tactic? Like, does this mean that he doesn't have to immediately go bankrupt? Like, is that one of the reasons? I mean, it's certainly true.

I can't possibly tell you what his strategy is here. It's well beyond me at this point. But it's certainly true. It's beyond lawyers. You wouldn't, you wouldn't need to pay out. And we certainly wouldn't want to defame him further because we may have to face him in court. Literally him in court. It's quite possible.

But, yes, I think when you're appealing, you don't have to necessarily pay the damages. There was some talk in America, we'll get to Donald Trump, that he had to, would have to pay some of the damages, even if you wanted to appeal. Well, but that was a bond, wasn't it? Yes, it was a bond. And this is one of the things that's mysterious to me about this is that when Ben Robert Smith launched his appeal, and he is appealing the whole, I'm a woman. war criminal thing. I don't know whether Bruce Lerman's representing him as well. That would be fantastic.

But he had to put up a bunch of money, right? Because having lost the case, he now owes the news organizations all this money. And so he had to put all this money out, all this bond up so he could cover their costs. Bruce Lerman, unless I'm mistaken, doesn't seem to have millions of dollars around. Maybe he did before that night of partying with the guy from Spotlight. No, so I don't know whether he'll actually be asked to pay up before you even a allowed to represent himself in court. And I think...

But maybe that's like a tomorrow problem. It could be tomorrow problem. That could be something where, well, I'll work out how to pay the bond when I get to that point. Or maybe he hasn't reached that part in his textbook. One massive disaster of time. And I think if the court does turn it down, I would urge all involved to go with a live broadcast on either Channel 10 or Channel 7, maybe a similar cast.

Yes. I think I would pay-per-view and help to cover the costs of that. particularly if Bruce promises A, to represent himself in court and B, to do no prep. I think that would be highly entertaining. I mean, maybe the Chaser can make a coin out of this. Like, maybe we should be the official live stream partner. We should cut a deal with the courts. Yeah.

Wouldn't that be great for the gravitas of the court? It'd be like, we'd call it the Chaser Contempt Channel. Yeah, it's true. So that's one court case that's going on. In the other, and this is the biggest story, we've been working up to. And listeners won't have heard this news, I'm sure. That's why we left it till last, because the Chinese space plane was actually new at this point.

34 counts of fraud. 34 charges Donald Trump guilty on all 34 of them. Yeah, guilty according to a rigged jury and a rigged trial and a rigged system. And a rigged country. That's been against him since the day he was born. Yeah. Before then. It was rigged before then.

Yeah, yeah. That's right. And, you know. Like, actually, if you look at what he's saying, he is saying, like, when he says this is a rigged system, right, what he's saying is law. The law is the problem. A whole process of having a court case and people coming in and saying you did bad things. Yes.

And trying to prove it through evidence. That is rigged. And there was some great commentary from pro-Trump supporters about how, you know, this whole trial was a far, you know, one side was trying to prove him guilty, the other side was trying to prove him not guilty. I mean, what sort of system? It's outrageous. And the thing that I'm most angry about, Charles,

on Trump's behalf, is, I mean, the jury was rigged. They're all New Yorkers, right? The fact that he committed this crime in New York, I mean, he wasn't to know that all the Democrats. Do you remember we were talking about actually quite a lot of the details of the jury were given and the answers to questionnaire? One of them said that they got their news from truth social. Yeah, what happened to the person who got his news from truth social?

He voted guilty, Charles. It was unanimous. And in fact, Trump's team were very confident it was going to be a hung jury. He didn't read truth, the truth. Yeah. So they were, maybe he discovered what truth actually meant in the process. Trump's team were very confident it was going to be a hung jury, and he's going to argue that that proved it was all a sham.

Yeah. But actually, in quite a short period of time, the jury came back and said, no, he did every single one of these things, 12 people. And the thing that I'm most angry about on Trump's behalf is the shan, sham where his lawyers, Trump's lawyers, were allowed to interrogate and vet jurors themselves so they can veto anyone who they thought was too biased. They could just get rid of them and pick jurors who they thought would give Trump a fair shot.

And even those jurors said that he was guilty. So how did they rigged that? The Democrats rigged it. So I read this one report that apparently even from a couple of weeks ago, Trump was getting quite exasperated with his lawyer. Yeah. And there was this whole point where he posted some things on true social, which he was forced to take down. It was one of the ten counts of him breaching the gag order against him.

The thing that he wanted to do was, and I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how this works, but essentially there is a form of defence, which is that I shouldn't be convicted because I got really bad advice from my lawyers. Oh, okay. Right. And there was this sort of whole idea, and he wanted to use that as his defence. I mean, that's certainly true. You can appeal on the grounds of having Paul Eagle of us.

Which makes me wonder, briefly, Charles, can Bruce Lerman sue Bruce Lerman for doing a bad job representing himself as a lawyer? Maybe he's a genius. That could be a great way to get out of this whole thing. Yeah, he turns around, he mounts this case, he loses this case, and then he turns around and says, but my lawyer was an absolute fuck weird. Did he even have a law degree? He was even, like, on the balance of probability, he's a rapist. And he frowned up at court.

And was overly confident for reasons that probably involved other potentially criminal material that we might have seen in a video. Yeah. This guy should be struck on the legal system. Before he's struck on. Take him off the role of solicitors before he even gets on it. So I think, I mean, I think the point is Trump wanted to use that as his defense, but then it was pointed out to him that doing that means that you have to then test. testify because your defense is I was misled.

So suddenly it's like, well, let's get Trump on the stand to testify. Which is the one thing his lawyer said he shouldn't do. Yes, exactly. So he didn't want to do that. So he then backed away. But I think the other thing is, I think he was also trying to set himself up for this trial to also be about, oh, my lawyer was really shit. And, you know, that's the reason should be thrown out.

Clarify for me, doesn't that mean that every defense should be just like my lawyer was shit? Like, if you lose, if that's a real defense. Why doesn't everyone just use that as their defense? Because you've got to prove that your lawyer fucked up and your lawyer knows more about the law than you do, I presume. Oh, okay. Also, I don't imagine other lawyers are willing to get into that. But I imagine that Trump is currently apoplectic and angry at his lawyers.

Probably, yeah. And he's using some of the same lawyers in his other trials as well, curiously enough. But I imagine also, if you imagine Donald Trump's account of why his lawyers screwed up, he'd be saying it because they weren't allowed to say, They didn't get up in court and say this is a sham. Yes. You, Your Honor, are a crook. You're a crooked Democrat criminal.

I mean, the stuff that Donald Trump has been saying outside court is the most blatant contempt of court. I mean, just in terms of actually displaying contempt for the court and the judge and every single aspect of the process, other defendants would absolutely have gotten in major trouble. You're not really allowed to say that the whole system is completely rigged against you. At least, when I studied law, that was something that was said in Australia. You couldn't really say that the whole system was crooked. And Trump's been saying this for weeks

And that the judge has let it slide It's just when he started intimidating witnesses And saying things about the family of You know, the judge and other witnesses That's when it crossed the line But he's been given a lot of leeway To shoot his mouth off over and over again I wonder if a solution

I mean, all these things fit together Donald Trump needs a new lawyer Are you saying we shoot Donald Trump into space Is that what you're saying? No, that's actually pretty good idea Oh, I see, sorry, you're saying I know the man, yes, Bruce Laman, to conduct the appeal. Conducts the appeal.

The two men who've both been found to be rapists on the balance of property. And then Bruce Lavin gets his dream, which is for someone to find that he's appealing. And that he's to get out of Australia's probably. Yes. Is there an extradition treaty with the US? Probably, but Bruce wouldn't know that. Get him over there, defending Donald Trump. He hasn't done that.

He wasn't done that course yet in national law. Get him on the stand. Yes. And in fact, if Donald Trump wants to claim that his lawyer, is incompetent Bruce Lerman's the man I don't, you know, I think it's perfect.

I love it. All right. And when it all fails, Donald Trump... That's when we shoot them into space. Donald Trump goes to the Space Force and says, remember who created you?

Yes. And gets a ride up to, I don't know. What planet? The Andromeda. I think we... I think it would work very well for the planet if we declared war on Andromeda

the galaxy. And we start an intergalactic war. I mean, what's to stop? us. I don't think there's an intergalactic base treaty, is it? Not yet. And if they're... What does Bruce Lohman think? Do you wear of any treaty up there? All right. Anyway, lots of news story to catch up on. And look, none of it matters because

there's going to be an intergalactic war. I read it in news.com.com. Yeah. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the iconic less network. See you in court! I'm appealing that.