The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Case Dismissed? Politic Legal Expert and Former Federal Prosecutor Ankush Khardori - Cannon, Immunity, The Current Supreme Court and more

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Partisanship or principle? IMHO, one of the best and most reasonable liberal analysts of the current Supreme Court, discusses Trump's immunity and Chevron's reversal decisions and what motivated them. Also, Cannon's dismissal. Contributor for New York magazine, also The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Atlantic, TIME, USA Today, WIRED, Slate, The American Prospect, and the Columbia Journalism Review.

All right, good evening, everybody. Welcome to Live from the Table. I'm here with a guy I've been trying to get to talk to him for a long time already. His name is Ankush Kadori. Is that pronounced correctly? Yeah, that's good. Kadori. And Ankush Kadori is a lawyer based in Washington, D.C., and a senior writer for Political Magazine, where he writes about national legal issues. He was previously a contributing editor for the magazine, as well as a columnist and contributing editor for New York Magazine, where he wrote a column and features on legal affairs. He's also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal,

the Financial Times, the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, the Atlantic, Time, USA, Wired, Slate, the American Prospect, and the Columbia Journalism Review. Welcome, Ankush Kordori. Thank you for having me. So I contacted you because I wanted to talk about the last bunch of Supreme Court decisions. But today, hot off the presses, Judge Eileen Cannon has dismissed the Trump case. So why don't you tell us, are you up on that? Can you talk about it yet?

I'm up on the news. I've not been able to go through all 93 pages of the opinion. I started reading it before we got on. I haven't finished it. So yeah, I'm up on the bottom line. Yeah. So go ahead. Give us your quick take on it.

Yeah. So she appears to have dismissed the case on the theory that the appointment of Jack Smith is unconstitutional because he should have been a gatherer appointed in a more formalized capacity. That having the attorney general appoint him was improper. He should have been appointed through either a presidential appointment or a congressional approval. But the basic idea here is he's wielding too much power without enough oversight from the Justice Department. You know, it's a 93-page opinion. It looks like it's going to be a pretty complex thing.

But I think a lot of folks kind of thought that this was in the cards, particularly in light of, and we're going to talk about this separately, but in light of a concurring opinion that Justice Thomas issued in the Trump immunity case that zeroed in on precisely this issue of whether or not the appointment of Smith was appropriate or not. And, you know, she had been she held some hearings on this issue. She allowed some amicus to come speak on the issue, which is a little unusual. We can talk about that if you like. So I think a lot of people were prepared for this. I'm still a little surprised, to be honest. But, you know, it was something that was on folks' radar. I expect

it'll be appealed to the 11th Circuit and potentially the Supreme Court. I think contemplating actually all the mechanics and the scenarios are fascinating, but a little bit tricky, because I think one thing that's at the top of my mind is if I understand the logic of the opinion correctly, then it seems like the case could be resuscitated with just having a U.S. attorney, a presidential appointee who's confirmed by the Senate, bring in potentially having a U.S. attorney, a presidential appointee who's confirmed by the Senate,

bring in potentially even the U.S. attorney in Florida in the relevant jurisdiction. But obviously there's a lot of moving pieces in terms of the November election, whether this case even survives past that if Trump is reelected. And so it's an interesting piece of work with a lot of... Now, is it a ridiculous decision that she made? I don't agree with it. I think it's it's the reasoning is not compelling so far as I can tell. I didn't agree with it when it was being briefed. But, you know, it's not like totally out of the realm of possibility. I do think it does follow a line of thinking.

Again, I'm not from this line of thinking, but it follows a line of thinking that emphasizes the centrality and importance of executive branch authority, and in particular the power of the president to exercise authority over people exercising significant power in the government. This has been a theme that has been, that is not new for conservative jurists and people who are, you know, work, and I'm not using this in a scandalous way, but Federalist Society folks, people who come from sort of that conservative line of jurisprudence. So it's not like kind of totally out of left field. I would say it's honestly kind of fairly, I think that the idea is fairly within the realm of

conservative mainstream jurisprudential thinking at this point in time. Now, she was a Federalist Society member, correct? She was. She was. I mean, I don't place as much emphasis on all of that as some other people do. She was, and she was, of course, appointed by Donald Trump, too. This is a big thing I want to talk to you about. I know smart liberal people, journalists, who every time a decision goes Trump's way, they assume it's because it's political they have to be supporting donald trump never mind that justice roberts uh upheld obamacare never mind that justice roberts uh you know didn't save trump's butt on his tax returns and i know there's other decisions and never mind that justice roberts to me kind kind of fits the profile of what you would expect to be kind of a never-Trumper conservative.

I'm not talking about Clarence Thomas, right? They can't see it any other way. And, you know, when I went to law school, I never practiced law, but I went to law school. Most five to four, six, three decisions, something like that. Most students said, oh, yeah, you know, what about this? What about that? It wasn't like they were never like ridiculous. How could anybody possibly think if it got three votes or more, then it was considered to be worth chewing on. But not now. Now, anything that comes out in Trump's favor has got to be corrupt, you know,

and it's quite an accusation. What do you think about that? Yeah. So I want to bracket the immunity case because a lot of what you talked about there is relevant to that. And I have a lot of thoughts that are kind of almost unique to that case. On Cannon in particular, you know, there has been a months-long kind of rolling debate about, like, is she in the tank for Trump? Is she trying to get on the Supreme Court in a Trump administration? Is she in over her head? Is she inexperienced for a case like this, I have found that debate to be quite frustrating simply because it just, it refuses to stop. I don't think that there is an answer to it. I've taken, my position I've taken is that I have attributed mostly, you know, the flaws that I've seen in her opinion so far to like inexperience, maybe a slight preference for conservative

thinking and maybe even the president, but not like totally, excuse me, President Trump, former President Trump, but not like, oh, she's trying to tank the case. One of the arguments that I've been making is like there would be much easier ways to tank the case or easier ways to like handle the case in a way that would set her up for a Supreme Court appointment. I don't think she would be following the steps she were following if this was an elaborate plot to get on the Supreme Court in a Trump second term. But that debate sort of refuses to die. I mean, it's also unresolvable, right? Like we don't, I don't know what she's thinking in her head. And I think the record on her has been sufficiently kind of like odd and

awkward for me to render a definitive decision. That said, it is now, you know, there is now a pattern here in which, you know, going back to the search of Mar-a-Lago and her appointment of a special master, where these sort of close decisions, which we would expect to be typically resolved in a certain way, typically resolved in favor of the government, candidly. She was resolving in favor of Trump. And then, you know, in a couple, she got reversed a couple of times by the 11th Circuit. Remains to be seen what will happen with this case if it goes up on appeal. So there is something there that has really attracted people's attention. But I don't think it's as simple as, oh, you know, people will call her a MAGA justice and say she's just

trying to get on the Supreme Court. I don't think it's as simple as, oh, you know, people will call her a MAGA justice and say she's just trying to get on the Supreme Court. I don't think it's as simple as that. But I also think it kind of doesn't matter at the moment, just given where we are and the relevance or lack thereof of this case between now and November. Yeah, I mean, if I believe it about anybody, I believe it about her. That whole special master thing. Although at the time I looked into it and the arguments were plausible to me. But the biggest indication would be, and of course it what you would predict of a judge who comes from that legal school of thought? And if she comes from that school of thought and you tell me that that school of thought would likely go this way, then that's that as far as I'm concerned.

It's when the school of thought wouldn't indicate that or it's hypocritical to that school of thought, then you have much more smoke, right? This is a little strange. Not that we're talking on Monday, a couple days after the attempted assassination of Trump. Not in that direction, but that it's the first day of the Republican National Convention. You know, he's going to be in the Republican Party. We're making a lot of this. Obviously, it's a major victory for him. I expect it will be. I mean, he has already tweeted, you know, sent out truth social uh post about it um that i find a little unusual i'm just not i'm just curious why she didn't hold it until friday since there's no reason you're absolutely right i mean whether

she's biased or not biased um it seems to be just dumb and oblivious because you don't want to look like you're a judge even if you are biased you don't want to look like you're a judge. Even if you are biased, you don't want to look biased, right? So you want to cover your tracks. Don't release it on the day. And if you are not biased, you should also have the sense that I might look biased. Either way, it's like, why complicate it, right? Just hold off a few days.

Exactly, because this isn't a decision where there would have been any material difference between issuing it today versus Friday. And I think, you know, there's a lot of talk about these court proceedings and how the judges are conducting themselves in connection with a campaign that is ongoing. So none of these are easy questions. But it just seems to me that if I were in precisely her shoes and intended to reach exactly the same conclusion i would have held it over until friday absolutely you know um okay but but okay that's canon well when we talk about people like justice roberts we're talking about uh you know quite an another level of respect that he's entitled to quite another level of record and quite another level of showing objectivity and ability.

I mean, there was no issue more central to partisan politics than Obamacare was, maybe in my lifetime. That was the issue for years and years and years. And the case against it was pretty strong. And yet, Justice Roberts came down on Barack Obama's side. And that to me, you know, that that was really all I needed to hear about the man to know that I wasn't I couldn't just write him off as a MAGA justice. Right. Yeah, I don't like that term. I don't because Alito Alito with the flags and thomas with his

wife you know at least i can't say it's ridiculous right there's yeah go ahead i agreed uh as applied to them i kind of get it but i just don't like that term uh yeah or even maybe even applied to like the the justices that trump appointed right right at Right. They seem less MAGA-ish than the ones I've already mentioned. Correct. I mean, that's the irony of it. But I mean, if you were going to attach like a Trump label to someone, you would attach it to the appointees, right? But in any case, it seems to have become sort of a more fashionable term.

I think this is a new thing, particularly headed into November. The Supreme Court may be more of an election year issue than typically is the case. I still tend to think of them more in the mold of conservatives or Republicans and think of them, whether and to what extent I have criticisms of them fall into the camp of like maybe person, excuse me, political inclinations toward conservatives or the Republican Party and not, you know, just MAGA justices just singularly doing the bidding for Donald Trump. All right. Let's talk about the immunity case. there's something I want to put on the table factually, which I'm just shocked that it hasn't been mentioned over and over and over again, which is prosecutors have immunity. And I just Googled it.

Prosecutors cannot be sued for knowingly prosecuting an innocent person, knowingly prosecuting an innocent person, withholding evidence of innocence, or even fabricating false evidence of guilt. Prosecutorial immunity is an absolute shield against damages. So my point by saying that is we've lived with much less scrutinizable people, much more corrupt people, having immunity to do horrible things to people.

For many, many years, I actually am offended by prosecutorial immunity, actually. Actually, that's how I found out about it, because I thought, why don't they put this guy in jail? I mean, it's hard for me to believe that a prosecutor who knowingly puts an innocent person in jail can't be prosecuted, but he can. So that is very important context to understanding how could we possibly give the President of the United States some kind of immunity that he might have the ability to get away with something awful? With all the checks that we have on the president and impeachment and the press and elections, I think that's a big part of the way we have to understand the notion of giving people immunity. But anyway, do you want to give a nutshell summary of that case

before we discuss it? Sure. So that case emerges from the prosecution in Washington, D.C., over Trump's alleged effort to steal the 2020 election, just to make it as simple as possible. Trump argued that he should be immune from prosecution because this conduct occurred during his presidency. That argument was rejected by the district court. It was then rejected by a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit. And then it went up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court held oral argument earlier this year and then issued its opinion a couple last week, actually, and held that Trump is immune for certain conduct alleged in the indictment,

may be immune for other types. I would put the way they sort of broke things down into three different categories. I mean, generally speaking, they held that the Trump, excuse me, that the president is immune for official acts, but not immune for unofficial or private acts. But they ended up kind of with three different categories, I would say, of conduct. I mean, one is there's this category of absolute immunity, where the conduct alleged concerns core constitutional conduct on the part of the president. So as applied to the Justice Department prosecution, they held that the part of the indictment that alleges that Trump tried to work through or attempted to use the Justice Department to initiate these sort of sham election fraud investigations,

that he is immune for that alleged conduct because it concerns his dealings with the Justice Department and falls within his core constitutional powers. The third category is unofficial conduct, private conduct. He's not immune. Then you have this large, very large sort of amorphous category in the middle in which the court said that, well, he's presumptively immune for his official conduct unless the government can show that there's no effect on the functioning of the executive branch. And as applied to the allegations in the Justice Department indictment, they said that presumption applies to all the other allegations,

but particularly as to the allegation that Trump tried to sort of strong-arm Mike Pence to throw the election to him at the January 6th certification, the court expressed some reservations about sort of suggesting that that may be official conduct over which Trump is immune, but sending it back to the lower court to do additional sort of fact-finding and fact-gathering. And then they, in a much shorter level of analysis, consider the other allegations which concern things like tweets, things like working on false alleged false slates of electors, the false claims of election fraud that he

articulated or posted about from time to time. And they said, there too, all of those things need to be considered under this new rubric of presumptive immunity subject to rebutting the presumption by demonstrating there's no effect on the executive branch. So that's, hopefully that was clear enough, but that's sort of the broad way forward. Very good. So listen, I believe, I'm not 100%, but I believe that this decision is pretty pragmatic and pretty good. But I'll tell you why. And then I don't, you probably don't agree, but I'll tell you where I'm coming from. And then you let me know. First of all, one of the things, I remember actually saying this in class in law school. was that if an outcome was ridiculous based on a case,

that outcome never would really happen. There's all sorts of competing doctrines, competing concerns, like you can't establish a religion and you have to have free exercise of religion. And they come up with a decision this time and then, well, that doesn't seem to work out when it comes to this real life case and then they adjust it and they adjust it but in some way without knowing anything about the law if anybody thinks that the supreme court intended to make it perfectly okay for a president to assassinate his political rival and and have absolute immunity i'm saying this that's

just not the way the world is actually going to work that's not what they meant and it's not what they're gonna mean but that's number one number two is um and this is where i need your guidance would if they hadn't ruled this way would this mean that like for instance obama had ordered some american citizen killed in yemen but you could come up with as they say a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich would this mean that every president now becomes a ham sandwich you find some prosecutor to indict them for something. Then since there's no immunity, you can have discovery.

You can call everybody in. You can demand evidence of any issue that you want to know about. If that's what it would mean, how could we not have immunity for the president? We can't have that. Yeah, well, I am not sure.

See, I don't agree with the sort of the practical implications as you sketch them, simply because we've had a system in place where I think most people, most scholars, assume that there was no sort of robust form of immunity in this way. And things like that weren't happening. Right. And also, given the way that and I want to separate out the state and local prosecutors. Can I interrupt you? Can I interrupt you there? I think it's interesting, this conversation, because it's a nice thing. I agree. And it would be better if we didn't have to make this decision.

Some stones are best left unturned, right? Hard cases make bad law, all that. But the world has changed, and I'll give you an example. Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich. That was as obviously corrupt a pardon as we've ever seen. He also pardoned Susan McDougal, and that stunk to high heaven also. But the norm in place at that time was everybody, well, what are you going to do? It's the president.

Nobody was indicting him. If that happened now, ifald trump had pardoned mark rich they would be investigating him for a crime and and and because the world has changed because the norms have changed because the the taste for blood has changed i don't know if what happened in the past applies anymore so go ahead yeah okay, just first of all, Donald Trump did pardon a lot of people and issue a bunch of controversial pardons, but I don't want to, I don't want to litigate that. But nothing like that. Nothing, nothing I know about anyway, but go ahead, but go ahead. Well, I mean, look, there's a guy named Phillipus Formas, who was a convicted

health care fraudster down in Florida. This didn't get any attention because nobody knew who the guy was. But, but, but let's just bracket that because I'm not even conversant enough in the history to try to relitigate the Mark Rich pardon but I think on a forward-looking basis I kind of think about this in a current and prospective way I understand and I've actually been

quite ambivalent I would say about the local prosecutors the Manhattan prosecution and the Fulton County prosecutor and in fact, I've written a couple of times about how I think the Justice Department should have preempted those cases. In my ideal world, they would not exist, the Manhattan and Georgia cases. And frankly, we would probably only have one case. It would be a federal case concerning the 2020 election.

That would be my ideal world if, in my view, the Justice Department had done what it should have done in an appropriate manner. But instead, they took a step back, the local prosecutors got in the way, and we have a very different situation. So I hear you, and I think you're right to be particularly concerned about an open sort of field where we also have local prosecutors playing on the field too. But as I said, I'm not really fans of that. So for me, I'm focused on Justice Department prosecutions. And I think like there's still just so much political, there's so many political checks in that process, right? You know, the Justice Department is run by an attorney general who's appointed by the president. It's not that easy to just indict anyone and get a conviction.

Now you can indict people, you know, you can indict a ham sandwich and all that, but in the highest profile, most controversial cases where prosecutors are really reaching, the cases can get dismissed. And there are protections built in that make it, you know, unlike in civil cases where anyone can file a civil lawsuit against a government official, only the Justice Department can file a federal criminal case against someone, including a former president. So I didn't quite see the implications of sort of opening up the floodgates in that way for the future. I do understand people being concerned about the tit for tat. But this applies to local cases as well, right?

Well, I would not read this as green lighting the local cases i'm saying that the immunity applies to local cases as well sure sure no for sure and trump is going to be taking that decision and arguing that on the basis of that decision the local right so i'm saying you're making the argument why you know in the federal world they're more responsible but we don't live in the federal world we already saw we already saw Alvin Bragg do an outrageously tenuous case. Would this be the future? them to just, for instance, toss out the Fulton County case on the theory that it's not a space that a state prosecutor should be in, given the federalism concerns and the concern of having a state prosecutor, particularly an elected local prosecutor, going after the highest public official we have in this country.

So I think that this is the most generous standard that would be applied to the state prosecutors what I'm suggesting is actually if the supreme court ever considers one of those cases that the state prosecutors may not actually be entitled even to this level of accommodation if you want to call it that but I do want to just like if I could like sort of articulate how I would have liked to see this case resolved. Yeah, please do. For me, I thought that the district court's opinion was good. I thought the D.C. Circuit's opinion was good. to see the court approach this much more like a discreet sort of common law constitutional

question where they take this one case, this set of allegations, consider them and whether or not it's appropriate to apply criminal immunity to this set of allegations without necessarily trying to create a rule for the ages, as Justice Gortz said at the oral argument, or to dig into all of these minutiae and opening this door up to all these sorts of implications when I think it would have been perfectly fine for them to issue, it may not have needed to be a five-page opinion, 10, 15, 20-page opinion, just saying, look, this case raises some very serious questions. We're going to consider just this set of allegations and this indictment. And I think if you read this indictment, at least my reading, is that he's being prosecuted for trying to stay in office as a candidate. I mean, to me, there's really very

little to suggest that he was trying to do anything to promote the public good or anything that we would typically regard as being the province of a president as opposed to a candidate who just wants to stay in office. And I thought the D.C. Circuit opinion was good on that framing as well, which is why I thought the opinion was kind of solid and very hard to argue with. To me, I think this case was, I could kind of tell where this case was headed, well, even before the oral argument, the fact that there was an oral argument, the fact that it took longer than I would like to have seen. But then once you're on the terrain, as the oral argument indicated, of the conservative

justice saying, well, we're making a rule for the ages. What about this scenario, that scenario? What about the rogue prosecutor? What about the president who wants to seek revenge? I mean, I don't think those questions all needed to be addressed. And in fact, I think they've kind of opened up a Pandora's box on some of those questions. Now, I don't know that we're going to like the implications of all of them, but I don't think this is – they didn't have to issue a decision that was, okay, should presidents have criminal immunity and what should the precise rubric

be for all time? I don't think that was necessary. In fact, I think that was kind of a deliberate choice that I suspect was – helped facilitate the result here. Well, okay. Let's think. This is so interesting. So first of all, do you agree within this case, people don't realize this, they actually gave, by the way, I went to law school with Tanya Chutkin. Oh, yeah. And she was she was awesome. I wasn't I wasn't friends with her, but it's a small class. And, you know, she she she she's not going to go easy on Trump. I could I could tell you that. So in this case, they essentially gave her the road map of which part of this you're going to have to decide. This rebuttable presumption is a factual matter. And it seems to me if she decides that which part is it that the slate of electors matter is not immune, the Supreme Court is not

going to revisit that and overturn her findings. So people are very concerned about the timing of all this, especially because it looks like Trump might be the president and then all hope is hope is lost. But if he were not running for office now, then, you know, this this case would not preclude his conviction. It would just preclude, you know, slice off part of it and they would have their satisfaction. You agree with that? I would look at it a little differently, just to get to the same point, which is that if he loses in November, this case is still going to go forward. Yeah. Right. Which is a different way of saying this. And they basically telegraphed in their opinion which part of the case. Look, that's if you think that's if you think that's not immune, that's up to you, district court. Well, I mean, look, there's a difference. I mean,

there's a reason why Amy Coney Barrett were a concurrence in which she said explicitly the ranging the private slates of the electors in her estimation will be private conduct, not subject community. But that was a concurrence. The majority conspicuously did not say that. Right. And I think the majority did say this goes back to that issue is for the district court to decide. Correct. But we don't know how they would resolve it on if it comes back to them. And also they did kind of I mean, I don't know the section of the opinion on Trump's dealing with the vice president. I mean, they're very equivocal. Right. I mean, it's very much on the one hand, on the other hand, kind of thing, and then kind of tosses it back to

Chuck in. And I think that's the key. They toss it back to Chuck in. To i think that's the key they toss it back to chuck in to me that's the key as a practical matter yeah yes but i think that there's still a couple of things that uh i find a little uh problematic one is uh first of all the standard that they gave her is very nebulous right um i don't know what it means to to first of all, presumptive immunity is not a term that's like common in the law. And I don't know how you can, as a practical matter, override a presumption if the standard is it has to have no effect. If they mean that literally, that it has to have no effect on the executive branch in

order to override the presumption. I mean, that may basically just be absolute immunity, right, for that conduct. And they use that language a couple of times throughout the opinion. And so that's that's one problematic element of it, I think, because in telegraphs, perhaps that I wouldn't be so optimistic about the rest of the case. Well, let me ask you this, because she joined that opinion, Amy Coney Barrett. Yeah. So the issue about the language that you're mentioning, they didn't address each other. Like she didn't – she apparently didn't demand that that language be clarified.

She could have not joined on that language. And Roberts didn't feel the need to separate himself from what she said, even though she was kind of by joining it. Apparently, they're all in agreement about this language, not not the factual matter, but the standard. So can we read those tea leaves in any way? You follow me, right? Yeah, I do follow you. I'm not inclined to read tea leaves that carefully. I do hear you. I mean, look, there is a very significant point on which he did respond to her, right, where she said, look, because another part of the opinion says that the government cannot introduce evidence of official immunized conduct, even if the prosecution concerns allegations of unofficial conduct. And she said, well, look, that means that you won't be able to prosecute a president for accepting a bribe in exchange for, say, a pardon.

And he did respond directly to that, not terribly convincingly in my view, but he did, which is further evidence for your view that maybe they were sort of engaging in a very, very specific way. I don't know. Um, but, uh, I think that, uh, the thing that I would say is that, you know, we, we don't know how they'll resolve this. I, I, again, I come back to the section. I mean, look, I think the section on, uh, Trump's dealing with the justice department, I think it's crazy to be honest. I mean, I shouldn't use a word like that cause it's a little, it's too brisk. But I think it's very hard for me to wrap my head around. It's a practical matter. We can come back to that. But I just want to say the other thing that I find challenging about this case, if you're a judge, chuck in and it's been sent back to you,

is that they gave her no real guidance on what the sources of evidence and information are that she's supposed to feed into this, right? So you have a standard, but one question is like, well, what is the standard? I think that's not entirely clear. And then the second question is, well, like, how do you determine whether or not that standard has actually been met? And I thought they were quite vague on that too. So they've kind of sent it back to her. You're right. And that is a key point that they've sent it back to her. But I think she's got the case in a very, very tricky posture

where there's actually, like in some ways, not enough guidance for what she's supposed to do. See, the way that I like it, maybe it's the business owner in me, the kind of use ambiguity, is that the future is so yeah sorry you're cutting it out that's okay where each computer records locally do you know sorry

the internet's glitchy so i started to say um i kind of like the ambiguity maybe it's the business owner in me that uh and it's kind of what I was saying before about not having to worry about allowing somebody to use a SEAL team to assassinate their rivals by the court not giving a really strict standard

they're allowing for the fact that they can't predict but they're going to leave it up to the kind of common sense of judges to protect the American people

protect the office of the presidency and not use every standard becomes a way that clever lawyers find a way to get around or whatever it is. I'm comfortable with a more open-ended process where the lower courts decide, and if they really abuse their discretion, then it goes to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court then has to say,

well, no, this is too far, so now we're going to begin to take the chisel, and we're actually going to carve out that standard and make it more specific. Now that we're presented with a case that demands that detail. Now we'll give you that detail, but we don't need to give you that detail now. That's my feeling about it. Yeah. But all of that, all of what you're describing could have been accomplished if they had proceeded as I just, I agree. I agree with you right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I agree with it. I think I agree with it i think i agree with it yeah i mean i just because i you know once you go down this path of looking beyond the indictment you know you do find

yourself contemplating these scenarios right and worrying about the tit for tat and that sort of thing and i just think like it they would have introduced fewer complications and fewer risks if they had just cabined themselves to this indictment. And, of course, I think that the right way to look at this is that he's not immune for any of this conduct, as alleged. So even if they had just focused on this indictment, you know, I'm not sure I would have liked the result. But I think a lot of the things that people are spitting out from it, like the like the seal team six scenario that sort of thing um they could have mooted that too right by just saying we're not considering all of the many complex hypotheticals that might come up in a new fact pattern right that may never hopefully we'll never have to encounter but okay but but you know what's rich is that as it's all turning out, the guy that the people who oppose this decision will be the trump justice department because they will be looking to prosecute biden for the fact that they had that hunter barden

hunter biden got a sweetheart deal which he did and and and you know they'll be especially after everything that trump went through you could him, especially if you believe the words about him, giving orders, leave no stone unturned. I want to bring every possible case against these guys that I can. And, of course, if this decision had come out the other way and if Trump did that, the people who are now opposing his decision would be claiming that the president has immunity that's just the way the world works and um that's just the politics can i can i just read something that's my opinion i read something from the um uh majority opinion then i want to talk about the chevron thing and give you the last word on anything you want to say yeah no i just want to go ahead go ahead one thing that occurred to me as you were saying that you're right, it will constrain Trump, but only as a prosecution of Biden.

Right. What this actually does is make it below Biden or if you set up President Biden himself aside because he would plausibly have some immunity based on and Garland. Well, I don't garland because because they would demand to know what the president told him and then the president would claim immunity and garland i can't answer the president the president has claimed immunity oh you mean oh see but i don't see a criminal conceivable criminal case on the theory that there was a sweetheart deal and i don't first of all i don't agree it was a sweetheart deal but even if there was i'm not sure what it's at least as plausible as the stormy daniels case i mean well no but i don't want sorry i don't want with the sweetheart deal, but even if there was, I'm not sure what the prosecution – It's at least as plausible as the Stormy Daniels case. I mean –

Well, no, but I don't want – sorry, I don't want to do that. Is there a statute or a theory? I don't want to just do that, say it's plausible. The ham sandwich is that no one's ever heard of the Justice Department allowing the statute of limitations to just lapse on an open and shut tax evasion case. And they did that with him. And then we had two whistleblowers came forward and says they were told they weren't allowed to ask this question, not allowed to go to Biden's residence. I can't recite all the details.

I don't want to get them wrong. I don't want to oversell them. But there's a lot of smoke there. Typical political corrupt smoke, you know, stuff in the past that nobody would have thought about bringing charges about just saying oh that that stinks you know um but you could just imagine after what trump has been through if he were president you can imagine it's a new world now and let's look into that and this protects trump and biden from this kind of stuff and that's what i was getting to so it's almost as if roberts tells us. And that's what I was getting to. So it's almost as if Roberts tells us exactly that that's what he's worried about.

He says, the dissent overlooks the more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself with each successive president, free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next. And, you know, I mean, we'll never know if he's wrong or right because he's precluded it. But as we know, a lot of counterfactuals turn out to be properly avoided. I just think all I would like to see people do is calm down and understand that whether you agree with Roberts

or not, that's what he's worried about. It's not crazy. I'm worried about it too. I was against Bill Clinton having to answer Paula Jones charges while in office. I like the idea that the president is free to do his

job. Go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I mean, on the other side of the ledger, though, is that the court has immunized the president for essentially anything that he does through his Justice Department, any kind of consultations with his Justice Department. To me, that opens up a very big problematic set of scenarios itself to say opening it was also problematic that's the thing that's why i like like let me give it let's i didn't hear i didn't catch that i said but opening it to the the examination to lost the prosecutions also leads to certain problematic scenarios when you're dealing with a political class

that has no shame and no sense of forbearance that we've had through our history. And Roberts is kind of saying, I'm going to err on the side of protecting us and Sotomayor is erring on the other side. I guess both could be right. Let me ask you a question that this this scenario of somebody delivers a bag of money to the president in return for a pardon.

Is it is that really would that really be immune here? I mean, isn't just taking a bag of money alone a crime? Well, taking a bag of money in exchange for the just taking like you don't like you take the bag of money as a as a president you're guilty of something you don't have to say what it was in exchange for do you not allowed to take a bag of money i don't think he's allowed to supplement his income with uh uh with outside sources but of course i mean that was happening during the Trump presidency through his businesses, right? I'm sure it's a civil infraction of some sort

if someone would just give the president a bag of money because of the way he's supposed to be paid under the federal law. I don't think it would be a crime per se. I mean, it would need to be a bribe, I would think, the bag of money in exchange for something else. It would violate gift bans and things like that, which also I think fall in the realm of civil penalties and things like that.

But simply the bag of money I don't think would be a crime. But I don't think we need to litigate that. I think the question in particular that Roberts and Barrett confronted was, does the decision effectively make it impossible to prosecute a president for bribery and say in that scenario where he gets a bag of money in exchange for the bribe because the the scenario that Barrett posed was well look if you've created this rule where the official conduct cannot even be introduced in a case that concerns unofficial conduct or conduct

that should be outside the president's powers like taking a bribe, then how, practically speaking, could you actually prosecute a bribery? Because it's a quid pro quo. Like, you can't prosecute them without the whole story. And Roberts says, well, look, in that situation, the official act, you won't need evidence of the official act or you won't need to uncover evidence of the official act, you won't need evidence of the official act or you won't need to uncover evidence of the official act because say that the bribe is done for an appointment, then the fact of the appointment will become public, right? Or the fact of putting someone into an ambassadorship, let's

make it more concrete, that will become public. I don't know if it's as easy as all that as he's claiming it is because the crime of bribery is completed upon the agreement, right? We often, of course, we see the cases typically after the bad act has occurred, but the crime itself can be prosecuted at the point of agreement, right? At the point of the quid pro quo. So I think even he would have to concede. And they didn't confront the opinion that he has definitely or that opinion has definitely made it harder to prosecute a president for bribery unless the bribery goes to completion. Right. Right. Which I think is unfortunate. I just thought of something. And by the way, bribery is mentioned specifically in the Constitution as something impeachable. So, you know, I mean, it depends how much of our, what's the expression, how much of our pound of flesh we insist on having from our presidents if they take a bribe. And like I say, I think presidents have taken bribes. But the problem is the bribe on the way

out the door right that's that that's the pardon that's the mark rich well and that's why the impeachment remedy doesn't work in that situation but yeah but but this isn't but the fact that it mentions bribery may make it somehow come into the consideration of whether or not you can really exclude this but this is interesting i agree This is interesting that by not giving, if we're worried about a president up to no good, then by keeping the standard ambiguous, you make it much harder for the president to construct his behavior to specifically conform

to the standard that's been laid out for immunity. You follow, right? Like you said, you're immune this way. Ah, well, I'll just do it this way. Ha ha, you can't catch me. By making it very open-ended here, I think they've made it less likely for a president to try to get away with something because he can't be sure whether he's immune or not.

He can't. But again, that same objective could have been satisfied on my preferred scenario, right? Just affirming the DC circuit without venturing into all of these other situations, right? So it's still suboptimal to me. But also, like, I just think it's very hard. And one of the things that we're all, you know, folks, I'm very critical of the decision, right? Just this would be obvious, but I have been critical of it. I was critical, even head into the oral argument, because I kind of saw where I thought that this was headed. I think it's hard to like weigh all these things out, which is one of the reasons, frankly,

I didn't want them to do it or attempt to do it. Because I don't know, these aren't commensurate values that we can or benefits and drawbacks that we can cancel off against one another, right? So it's like I hear what you're saying. But then I just say to myself, OK, I'm very concerned about the fact that the Supreme Court has sort of carved out or not. I mean, they've made explicit that there is a zone of immunity for a president working through his Justice Department. And that, to me, opens up a huge amount of risk. And I just I can't cancel them out or figure out which one, you know. You know, that's, that's why,

that's why I started with this example of prosecutorial immunity only to make the case that this is nothing new. Like this is kind of, we've lived with this kind of stuff from backwoods southern prosecutors

who can do just as much harm to innocent people as the president. But there's way more checks in the real world on the president. You know, it's like, I get it, you're right, he could do that. Hopefully won't you know well i mean i think the thing that's trouble hopefully he won't but i mean let's not forget like the actual allegations in the case

now now we're not i'm not accepting them as true just to be very clear right but the allegation is that trump came close to almost did use his Justice Department to lie to the public and to remain in power unlawfully despite knowing that he had lost the election. And if that is true, right, I think it is frankly stunning that someone could be immune for that. I think it's stunning. I don't think it makes any kind of sense logically, constitutionally. I don't think that there's anything in the text of the Constitution, anything in our history that suggests that that's true. The standard, like the methodology that they use, I'm sure this will be very apparent to you, that the majority use, it bears no resemblance to originalism or textualism,

which are supposed to be the two theories that they're most firmly associated with. The opinion works from sort of structural inferences from the Constitution, concerns about the practical implications. Those are the sorts of tools that the conservatives routinely criticize the liberals for using for and have used for decades. And so now you find them using these same tools that they derided and ignoring their own methodological commitments to originalism, to textualism. What would the originalist take be on something like this? That there is no meaningful evidence in the historical record whatsoever

that the framers intended to confer any criminal immunity on a president. Don't the originalists have some convenient out for situations where the Constitution is completely silent about something? They have something, I've read. Maybe I'm misremembering. That could be escaping me, too. But, I mean, look, typically their thing is we look to what the framers intended at the time that they passed the relevant passage, whether it's the Constitution or an amendment, to see what they understood it would be. There is no contemporaneous evidence that, at least from the majority's own opinion, and they had plenty of time to find it and plenty of incentive to find it,

that suggests the framers ever thought that a president would enjoy any type of criminal immunity. In fact, there's plenty of counter evidence, too. And then on the textualist side, there is no textual support in the Constitution in the way that conservatives typically employ textualism, right? Meaning we start with the words on the page. There are no words on the page that confer any type of immunity on the president. There's an impeachment clause, which people can draw inferences from. And I tend to think we should read in favor of criminal prosecution for a president. And as a Federalist paper, I remember because I was looking at this during the impeachment thing,

where they contemplate prosecution after impeachment. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that was even his defense. Right. And that was what senators said when Republican senators... That's what Dershowitz said, yeah. Was what McConnell said, too. Right. Remember when he voted to acquit Trump in the second impeachment? So there would have been plenty of time and strong incentives for people

to come up with this historical evidence, and it has not emerged, which is telling us something. So that to me also is extremely bothersome in telling in and of itself. But I think the, well, I don't want to sorry i think i mean i i listen i i i i sort of agree with you but i feel like this is just a gut feeling that they did the right thing here because the country was spinning out of control i know that's not that's not they can't write that but i think ro was like, you know what, this

is going too far. We can't have this tit for tat. The most compelling originalist arguments pertain to things which were really discussed and the least compelling are the ones that they could have never

contemplated. Anyway, we talked the whole time about this. You're really a great expert. I do want to ask you quickly about the, what's it, was it Loper Bright? Is that the name of the case? Yes. The Chevron case.

It's a very, one of those names that like, as you know from reading the cases in law school, that like, it's going to be a very distinctive case name. As a business guy, just in a very common sense way, I prefer anything that has a judicial last word to an agency because the agency has an agenda. The agency doesn't take an oath to justice. The agency is appointed by somebody who wants to see a policy.

Anybody can imagine if you were in trouble with the IRS for some novel tax issue. Do you want to go before the IRS or do you want to go before a judge? Just like in a very zoomed out way, I have no stake in this. I support the idea

of taking a lot of these decisions away from these bureaucrats. How do you feel about it? So I just want to make sure. So there are two decisions that came out of the court that kind of touch on. So Loper Bright was about overruling Chevron and the deference. OK. And then there was a separate decision that also basically said a bunch of these in-house courts within these agencies can no longer hear certain types of cases. I don't know about that one, but it's probably related. Oh, you should. I think you'll find that of interest to you because it's in the same vein. Basically, it said that the case emerged out of an SEC enforcement action and said the sorts of things you're asking for cannot be resolved in an administrative form.

You need to take it to court for a judge and jury to resolve. So on the question of, on low-per-bright, just to set the table here for folks, until recently, until this decision, there was a doctrine in place for several decades called the Chevron Doctrine that held that courts were supposed to defer to agencies' interpretations of laws and regulations within their purview if Congress had not spoken exactly to the question in front of them and in front of the court, and if the statute or the relevant regulation was ambiguous and the interpretation offered by the agency was a reasonable one. Courts in those circumstances were required to defer to the agency. And the court's decision on Loper-Bright explicitly overturned what's known as the Chevron Doctrine and holds that basically courts have to

resolve these questions by themselves without any kind of sort of thumb on the scale, so to speak, for the agency's interpretation. So that's kind of the situation here. Look, I think that obviously the argument in favor of the result that they reach is the one that you described, which is judges are supposed to make laws, they're the ones who are supposed to resolve these sorts of disputes, and that's kind of the way things are.

And we shouldn't deviate from that in the particular setting of an administrative agency. I think that, you know, as a practical matter, though, I, like, it was a pretty strong supporter of keeping the Chevron Doctrine in place. Simply because, I mean, as you know this as well, I'm sure, the array of regulations that federal agencies administer are so complex and so minute and so often context-specific and requires often subject matter expertise that I don't think that judges are frankly going to be very well equipped to take these head-on themselves and I think actually this is one of those things where we'll see kind of how the the fallout kind of uh goes but it's going to create a lot more work for federal judges it's going to create a lot more

work for federal judges and a lot of very complicated difficult work for federal judges going to end up producing a lot of outcomes that people are going to say are politicized because such and such trump appointee down in texas doesn't like birth control and so he decides to throw out this rule or on the other side side of the ledger, you can construct a hypothetical with a supposed liberal judge. And I thought the status quo was pretty good, quite honestly. I mean, it wasn't a hard line rule, right? It wasn't, like if Congress spoke to the question, that was it. The agency's views didn't matter. But we're talking about explicitly those circumstances in which there was not a clear direction from Congress, right? In which case, definitionally, there was some

ambiguity. And in those circumstances, you know, I understand concerns about the bureaucracy and all that, but I do think all things equal. We are better off having subject matter experts and the people within the agencies doing their best work than judges coming at them completely uh de novo so let me end you and with a story by the way what year did chevron start oh gosh it's not it's not an ancient decision oh no no i think it's 40 years old i think was the so like yeah so so we managed before but i i agree it's one of those things we'll have to wait and see and and if it doesn't work out then they will have to fashion something else. I mean, the system responds slowly, but the system will respond to practical problems.

Anyway, I don't know if you can see this. Can you see that? 91% of IRS seizures for structuring involved lawful taxpayers. This is an article. This is something that I know a lot about because I, through a series of coincidences that I probably can't talk about, was this close to having everything that I owned attached by the IRS. And, you know, once they attach it and seize it, if you get it back, you get back like, you know,

40 cents on a dollar, 60 cents, oh no, 60 cents, no. And this was a, they stopped it. There used to be a thing where if you deposited more than $10,000, you had to, you still do, I guess, you had to file a SARS report.

The bank had to file a SARS report, suspicious activity report. But of course, restaurants, small businesses, they're always doing this kind of stuff. And if they don't, and what they would do is they would find, now, let me present this properly. There

was a law for seizures to try to catch drug dealers depositing cash in banks. That's where this all comes from. But what they found was that a lot of small businesses deposit a lot of cash in banks, too. And the government started seizing the property of small businesses. And then there was finally an Inspector General report, and i'll read it most people impacted by the program did not appear to be criminal enterprises engaged in other alleged illegal activity according to a news

release from the ig rather they were legal businesses such as jewelry stores restaurant owners gas stations owners scrap metal dealers and others more troubling the report found that the pattern of seizures targeting business had obtained their money legally was deliberate quote one of the reasons why legal source cases were pursued was that the department of justice had encouraged task forces to engage in quote quick hits where property was more quickly seized and more quickly resolved through negotiation. This is what they are capable of. They took a law designed to catch drug dealers,

and they turned it at a rate of 91% knowingly to ruin innocent people. Now, this may not be apples to apples to Chevron, but to me it is. Because unless you have the ability to appeal to a judge and a jury and an appeals process, this is what will become of you. And there is an analogy to everybody's industry dealing with regulators where there are

islands unto themselves so i i i i can't help it this is just where our perspective changes what this almost happened to me this would have ruined my life completely and to think that I would have had to argue with an IRS agent rather than be able to make my case to a jury is all I need to know about this issue zooming out. But I know there's more to it than that. I know there's practical considerations. I know that some of this may have nothing to do with what I'm saying to you. But there is something about what I'm saying, which actually is relevant. Yeah, well, look, I mean, look, obviously a lot of people, myself included, are frustrated at times with how federal agencies go about carrying out their, sometimes incredibly frustrated with how federal agencies go about doing their jobs. And I don't, obviously I don't know your personal circumstances or that report. But I mean, just to be clear, you know, Chevron doesn't, the Chevron Deference Doctrine, it was not designed

to close the courtroom door to these sorts of disputes. It was about how you interpret ambiguous regulations. So I'm not quite sure, again, it is on a one-to-one footing because it was not about, honestly, the other decision that I mentioned was more sort of on that footing because that was about what sorts of disputes these agencies can resolve in in-house courts. But Chevron, so I do think you're on to something, and you might want to check that out just for your own interest, because I think you'll find that interesting. But Chevron, I think it had its most potent justification in these areas of like environmental regulation or these really, so for instance, like Justice Kagan's dissenting opinion, I think does a good job of actually trying to make concrete

what a lot of these disputes are about. And she uses several different examples of sort of the types of rules that come before the courts. I mean, Chevron itself was about how you decide how to measure sort of pollution emissions and which sort of units to count in large sort of plots of land. I'm messing up the facts, but it was a very minute question about a technocratic question. It wasn't a question where there was an obvious answer under the statute as it was written, or even frankly, where, you know, a jurist coming to it would have much in the way of strong policy inclinations

if they were just trying to address the dispute that was in front of them. So I can't deny, the federal government is not flawless. We have lots of problems with our agencies. I would be the first to, and I've had my own frustrations with agencies personally. So I hear you there. But I think this was one of those things where like kind of the balance, I think, was just kind of is off. And I don't, you know, we'll see. You're right. I mean, we'll see how the practical implications play out. I worry that those implications will be for the worst, but we will find out.

We'll see. You know, these ambiguities,ities obviously somewhere in that story i just told you somebody drove a mac truck through some sort of ambiguity in that law because the law was never intended to be able to start seizing uh you know to have 90 of the seizures be innocent people and see well let me just so let's say they brought a case based on a guy. I don't know the facts. Let's say they brought a case based on that theory. If the IRS's position was simply that we're enforcing this statute and there was no sort of ambiguous like they would have been that question would just been in front of the court and the court and say, no, this is not fit within the four corners. I just don't know, but I just know they got away with it. The key part of that whole story and the part that just is revolting is that they were ordered to get the low-hanging fruit. This is how cynical an agency can be. So then you have an administration that comes in and they deny global warming. Let's take it from the opposite. And now they appoint their bureaucrats and they start deciding this way and they cynically read these environmental laws in a way which allows smokestacks. You know, I it can go either way. People always forget that, that these things can always go either way, as with the immunity but can I say see I don't think you just to I don't know that the scenario you just posited is as bad as you think it is

right it's bad in the sense that we think that the law is a fixed thing that should be stable over time but if we're talking about an area where statute excuse me statutes or regulations are ambiguous like definition that's the universe of cases we're talking about, I'm not sure it's a bad thing for the administration in power to be able to adapt its enforcement program to its view of its regulatory authority. So it could change over time.

No, I'll tell you, well, I mean... Actually, I'll give you an example from this term, the bump stocks case, right, which we haven't talked about, which is the case where the Supreme Court just threw out an ATF guidance saying that they thought bump stacks should be effectively converted semi-automatic rifles into machine guns, which elevate them in sort of the regulatory and in terms of penalties that can be attached to possession and distribution of them. That was a situation where the ATF did change its position during the Trump administration in the wake of the shooting in Las Vegas. So that does happen from time to time. And it didn't get kind of litigated under the Chevron rubric for complicated for sort of complicated reasons.

But that kind of was an instance where you would say, well, look, maybe the ATF had gotten it wrong. We have this terrible Las Vegas shooting. Things aren't as clear cut as they appear to be on the face of the regulation. I'm not sure it's actually that bad for then a president to be able to say, you know what, I'm going to take my agency, take a different view of this. Well, I think it's bad. It's tough to say it's bad about the bump stock case. I certainly wasn't pro bump stock. But behind every one of these changes, not everyone, quite often behind these changes, associated with these changes, is a company that invested millions or billions of dollars on an assumption that something was or wasn't legal.

And then it can't switch four years later because this administration wants to interpret it this way and then switch back the other way. This is no way to run a business. That is actually, that is a compelling, I mean, that is the case for continuity and stability is that you can't have private people and businesses ordering their affairs without it. And as for the bump stock, I looked into it pretty carefully.

And finally, I saw a video online where a guy says, look, I can pull the trigger and nothing comes out. You have to shake it or whatever the bump stock was. And I was like, shit, you know, the law seems to me to be written so that a bump stock is not a machine gun. Make the machine guns illegal. It's like, you know, what can you start putting on a bicycle to turn it into a car if it gets to a certain speed? Like, I'm sure there's a definition of a car. And if you can take the go-kart and make it go faster, but it still has like a bicycle accelerator or maybe a car is defined by having a foot accelerator. Like maybe they have to change the law.

But it's like, no, no, it goes as X miles an hour now. So now it's a car. It's just so painful because people were killed by these things. And we know the reality that it's unlikely that Congress will act. Right. And I understand all that poignancy. And I'd be happy if they made bump stocks illegal. But the general principle that

they read into these laws cynically what they want, you know, whatever. These are really, really interesting issues. They're not really partisan issues. But they really are informed by one's life experiences. I mean, they really are. If you did my job for a year, I mean, you would generally have,

definitely have different theories about law. You just would, you know? All right, listen, it's been a pleasure to meet you. We had talked about meeting in person one time. I hope we still do. I think we hit it off well. you we had talked about meeting in person one time i still we i hope we still do yeah um i i think we hit it off well i hope when there's another big case that comes down the pike maybe i'll email you and you'll come on again we could do shorter interviews 30-minute interviews about a you know a current case uh but i'm very happy to have met you yeah no i i'm happy you reached out

i'm happy to be talking to you i enjoyed it and. And I don't mind doing, I know one of the things I like kind of enjoy about your show and why, you know, I check it out from time to time is that you know i appreciate it and i and i as i've told you um separately um i i have appreciated your effort in the wake of october 7th to really try to take a hard look at the issues that are of interest to you and to many other people and try to approach them from different perspectives and try to change your mind and try to test your own and your colleagues who have been in those discussions. Obviously, none of us are going to all agree, and many of us are going to have very strong disagreements with one another,

but I don't think many people have been doing what you attempted to do, and obviously it's never going to be fully successful or not, but I just wanted to say that because I know you got a lot of flack for a lot of those episodes, probably in every which direction, if I had to guess. At first, I was getting a lot of flack from Jewish people. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

But I just, I really did appreciate the sincerity and openness and earnestness with which you approached it, even though I'm sure we have many disagreements on it. But, like, we should be able to do that, what you attempted to do. I very, very much appreciate those kind words. It's been very important to me to try to not be one of those people that I despise who all of a sudden turn on a dime and make the arguments that they were the other day just before were complaining about and hide from the truth. And I've really tried not to.

I interviewed today Ami Ayalon, the former KGB head. That's pretty interesting. And on Thursday, I'm having a kind of debate between John Spencer and Robert Pape. John Spencer is the urban warfare expert, and Pape is a University of Chicago. He's a terrorism expert, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they definitely disagree on Hamas.

So that's going to be interesting. But yeah, I'm trying to do it. And of course, it's also interesting, right? I mean, it's frigging interesting. It's interesting and important. Yeah. Yeah, and it's important. Yeah, I'll let you go, but I've had a few comments on Twitter.

Why the hell does the comedy seller do the best conversations about the Gaza war? What is going on? Yeah. No higher praise. i'm not on twitter by design but uh at least i mean that's good to hear that's yeah yeah yeah all right sir all right thank you very much um don't disconnect