The MeidasTouch Podcast - MeidasTouch Presents 'Legal AF': SCOTUS Season, Historic Candidates and Pernicious Politicians

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

On Episode 3 of our new weekly law and politics podcast, Legal AF, hosts MT founder and civil rights lawyer Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and commentator, Michael Popok, interview two historic candidates, Lucy Lang, candidate to replace Cyrus Vance, and be the first woman to ever lead the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in its 220 year history, and Hydee Feldstein Soto, who is running to be the LA City Attorney, the chief municipal legal office, and its first woman to hold that office in its more than 150 year history. Then, Ben and Michael, applying their “Analytic Friends” superpowers, tackle the current US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) term and recent oral arguments and decisions, including giving our followers what they crave: more analysis of due process and personal jurisdiction(!) by taking a look at Ford losing its efforts to only be sued in its backyard and avoid being sued in the states where its cars injure people.  Next up, Ben and Popok try to read the tea leaves of SCOTUS’s recent “hot bench” concerning the antitrust case against the NCAA and its refusal to pay athletes for their work, and whether SCOTUS will expand warrantless searches of homes under the 4th Amendment by creating a new “community caretaker” exception.  Finally, they take on the ongoing “Water-Gaetz “ saga with Matt Gaetz being investigated for sex trafficking crimes, and the recent successful prosecution of former Trump HUD official (and Eric Trump wedding planner), Lynne Patton for violating the Hatch Act’s prohibition against “pernicious political activity” by civil servants, for video recording NYC public housing residents without telling them that the clips would be used at the RNC’s presidential convention to promote Trump. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF, your legal analysis friends. Sorry we were not here last week. One of the problems about running a Legal AF podcast when you're actually a real lawyer is you have cases and trials and depositions. And unfortunately, I had like 10 depositions last week. I'm exaggerating. I had three, but I had a lot of court appearances and it was just a crazy, crazy week. So I apologize. That's Ben's fault, not Popak's fault. But Popak,

how are you doing today? I'm doing good. You left out. You also had to worry about canceling your Rolling Stone subscription. So that I had to cancel my Rolling Stone. Who knew? Who knew that the Rolling Stone rock magazine that we all used to love from the 60s and the 70s and like i was in the 80s they're owned by saudi arabia they're owned by the saudis who who knew such a thing bizarre thing i mean that's more tragic look people want to write mean stories about me go ahead write freaking mean stories about me but the ahead, write freaking mean stories about me. But the tragedy of discovering that they're owned by Saudi Arabia just kills me. Yeah, I remember what I said to you, you know, and everybody knows who follows us because they're also following Midas Touch and

my Twitter feeds. Everybody knows we were sort of tied up last week as well with cease and desist letters to Rolling Stone and their reporter, Seth Atana, and everything that came off of that. But who knew that once Midas Touch did its own proper investigative reporting in contrast to what Seth Atana's been doing? You found and unearthed all of these connected links and dots that connect through the Penske family, you know, this connectivity with Saudi Arabian money and all of that. And so that is real investigative reporting at its finest, which I think you guys have been at the forefront of developing. And that's as a part of, you know, somebody going after Midas Touch with really no facts in place. I mean, it's just the most bizarre experience of my life. Here's an organization that I work out, that I work at for free. We're entirely grassroots funded. We post all of our donations online. We hold like monthly meetings with our donors

about where the money's going. We're no questions off limits. Anything we do as any expenditure that has any level of significance, we post the photo of what it is and describe all of the exact details. And they're coming after that and they're freaking owned by Saudi Arabia

for $200 million. It was the most bizarre. details and they're coming after that. And they're freaking out by Saudi Arabia with 200 million dollars. It was the most bizarre. You and the brothers are just too transparent. That's the problem. Too, too transparent. They're come there saying you were not efficient enough in your Georgia canvassing effort. So now you're too efficient. You were you were too efficient. You just charged five dollars per door. I mean, look, we paid for full PPE. We paid a living wage. And then we unearthed that Rolling Stones doesn't pay its people a living wage. So, of course, they'd be coming after us for not paying a living wage.

By the way, has anybody pulled Seth Atana's voting record? I wonder if this guy's ever voted in any election, let alone critiquing how much you're paying to have people canvas and make sure that people get to the polls. When did it become a problem? It's only a problem in the Republican world where we have too many people voting. I've never heard of this concept. We have too many people voting. We need less people voting. Spend less. Do less. Have less people voting. That's what America is all about. I missed that chapter in high school.

It's one of the oddest experiences. Now, digging into the legal issues of the week, the legal AF, legal issues of the week. The first one I want to talk about, Popak, is what's been a major headline. Matt Gaetz gate. Matt Gaetz is under federal investigation for sex trafficking of a minor. It seems that the QAnon who are all talking about pedophile rings. It seems that the GQP are the pedophile ring. Am I wrong? No, I mean, can I just start with my first expression? Yuck. We always thought that Gates was sort of yuck. But, you know, look, we thought it was weird when a couple of years ago he was the only member of the House of Representatives who voted against Trump's human trafficking bill to stop human trafficking. But we didn't know what the time was.

He was probably participating in human trafficking for his dating life, which was bizarre. But now it sort of makes sense. The one guy that was against human trafficking is the one person that probably had a relationship, inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old across state lines? Sure. So how this investigation reached this point, the federal authorities were investigating the sex trafficking violations of Gates out of a probe that emerged from the prosecution of another Floridian, a tax collector, Joel Greenberg out there. And when they were analyzing Joel's phone, they then saw the Gates messages and the conversations that they were having together. What is going on in Florida? Well, as a part-time Floridian, I don't know.

Let's frame it for the followers. You've got two laws that are implicated by the investigation. One, you have something that's been on the books for a long, long time called the MAN, M-A-N-N Act, which is against what then was, you know, white prostitution rings, bringing young women across state lines for illicit purposes. But the law is still on the books, and it's used for just that. If you are bringing a person, usually a woman, across state lines and interstate commerce for any illicit purpose whatsoever, including in this case, having sex with or underage, you have violated the Mann Act. You've also violated

the sex trafficking laws that have been on the books in the last 10 years. And as you noted, Ben, they stumbled into the GATS affair, water GATS, whatever the people are calling it, because they were investigating another elected official, in this case, the tax assessor in Seminole County, Florida, for him, and they got him dead to rights. They already convicted him. He's already pled guilty that he was using websites and other parts of the dark web to have illicit relationships or, or rape is the better way to put it with underage women for, for money, for gifts. And he got, it looks like he got Matt involved with this.

And then there's a beautiful picture on the internet of Greenberg, Matt and Stone, which is such a crazy combination. But yeah, he's going to go down hard for a violation, I believe, of the Mann Act and human trafficking law. Because, you know, all of these things that he said in his op-ed piece that he published yesterday, because he's trying to, he's got a girlfriend, he's about to marry who's 28. He's worried about that. The reality is the text messages and emails alone and the photos they have found are enough to convict him. He is in a lot of trouble. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg with these GQP. It's not just Gates. I mean, I think as we see

other people who are supporting Gates, who are guilty of their own criminal conduct, I'm not saying it's this specific type of conduct, but all they do is project, project, project. And during the Trump years, the biggest project, not projection in the way I'm using it before, but everything that they would do is violate the Hatch Act, it seemed, under the Trump administration. So can you just tell us what the Hatch Act is generally? And I want to then talk about what the Trump administration was doing, which was basically every day violating the Hatch Act and whether there will be meaningful repercussions. Yeah, good. So in 1939, the U.S. Congress passed a law named after a then Senator Hatch,

which referred to in the business as the Hatch Act. But let me tell you the subtitle for it, and this will describe it all to our followers. It is the Prevent Pernicious Political Activity Act. And what it says is if you're in the executive branch as a civil servant, if you've been given your job as a civil servant, you are not to be political. While you hold your job, you are not to campaign or do anything that

is anything other than being an agnostic civil servant. And so as we saw throughout the Trump administration, everyone used their offices, whether it was Kellyanne Conway or anyone else, to politic and campaign on behalf of Trump. At the same time, they were in the executive branch. So one, it's one of many prosecutions. But the one prosecution that just came down with a settlement as of yesterday, is the is the is Lynn Patterson, who who is at the time she committed the hatch violation. And we'll go over what she exactly did. But at the time she committed the Hatch violation, she was like the number two person in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, for the New York region. And what was her qualifications to get that job through Trump, you might be asking?

She was the wedding planner for Eric Trump. That was her claim to fame. That's how she ended up being like the number two or number three job in all of HUD, managing public housing affairs for the state of New York. But what she did, Ben, you know what she did, right? Yeah. So Lynn Patton, she recruited people living in New York to participate in a video that was shown at the Republican National Convention.

So what she did was using her position, her government position, she basically got individuals to act like they supported Trump for a political video that was used at the Republican Convention. And by the way, Trump did that a few times at the Republican Convention. I mean, number one, he did it at the White House, which itself was a violation of the hack. The biggest violation of the Hatch Act was doing it at the White House, number one. But then didn't he also swear in immigrants and for citizenship? And he didn't tell them that that was actually going to be used at the Republican National Convention as well. He did. And the perniciousness to go back to the Hatch Act's main title,

the perniciousness that I don't want to gloss over in using people as human props for political campaigning is that they didn't even, in the case of Patterson, they didn't even know that they were being used as props. And they weren't just citizens of the state of New York. They were residents of public housing who she went with a video crew and did not tell them that she was asking them questions because she was going to cut and splice it into a pro-Trump video at the RNC convention. She started throwing just loaded, you know, person on the street questions. The goal was to try to convince people that the Republicans have done amazing things for public housing,

which we know is false, by getting and misleading these people into, you know, signing waivers. You know, don't worry, this is just, we're just doing an internal promotional video. And they end up being on, you know, a 50 by 50 screen at the RNC. I mean, acting like they're supporting Trump, you know, and it's specifically designed, you know, towards black and brown communities also to try to peel away those votes from Democrats. So going back to the perniciousness, there's nothing more pernicious than that. I mean, look, at the end of the day, she was fined a thousand dollars. She's barred from federal employment for four years. I think the penalties need to be stiffer than that, because, I mean, to me, that's a very, very serious crime. It's deceptive at every level. But there are some repercussions. It'll be interesting to see Popak. And I don't know what you think if other Trump officials will be similarly fined or have these penalties. My prediction is this is the, this is the floodgates are going to open. And this is the first of many. They got her. She pled guilty.

You know, we say the thousand dollars in a few years barring from federal office is not much. Frankly, it's more than the former president got for inciting an insurrection in the nation's capital. He wasn't even barred from future federal office. So I think this is not a one and done. I think there will be more Hatch Act prosecutions and the prosecutors under Biden will now be emboldened because they just got the conviction off of her.

And so Popak, switching gears for a second, though, it's still dealing with a Trump issue. The Knight's First Amendment issue, there was that the case that was a major important case in our litigation that you and I did on behalf of Midas Touch against Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Supreme Court was going to hear that case about whether Trump was permitted or not permitted to block people. All of the lower courts had held that Trump was not permitted to block people and use his public accounts to block people. Now, the case was dismissed, but it was dismissed as moot. What does that mean? Yeah, let's talk about that. So there was a very good precedent, a case decision from the lower court that you and I use in our case with Marjorie Taylor Greene, as you described, which basically said that an elected official, especially the President of the United States or other elected officials who use Twitter for their public proclamations, can't bar the public from

participating in the public forum and block them from seeing or following them on Twitter. And the Knight Foundation- The Knight's First Amendment Institute v. Trump. Absolutely. And the Knight Foundation out of Columbia brought a number of these suits and thank God that they did. And we use those suits. It went up on appeal all the way up to the Supremes.

However, because Twitter decided to ban Trump, it seems to be indefinitely because he's still banned. He's still issuing like mimeographed memos in his basement in lieu of Twitter. But he's banned. And because which, by the way, by the way, this infuriated me, too, that Rolling Stones was like one of the only online digital spaces with six point two million followers that tweeted Trump's ridiculous Easter statement calling the calling lefties crazies and all that. They posted his message, which I think is itself

a violation of Twitter. I like it's like it's news, right? They put it on their Twitter feed. Exactly. So Trump wishes everybody on the left, you know, you know, tells them that they're all crazies. It's like, why are you posting that? Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, that's all right. But back to the case. So if Twitter had not banned Trump, the case would have presented a live controversy. And the way that the courts work, especially the Supreme Court, they are not a court giving advisory opinions.

There has to be a live controversy between two parties where a decision can affect the result. And if you have a, in this case, a Twitter having banned Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States had an out. And the out they had was there's no live controversy because Trump is no longer on Twitter. We don't give advisory opinions. That's not our role. We try to conserve our judicial authority and we are going to find the cases moot. But it's actually a little bit worse than you set it up then. They actually vacated the lower decision. So when lawyers like you and I are going to, we're going to be able to use the lower court decision in the future,, we're going to be able to use the

lower court decision in the future, but we're going to have to put a whole set of texts in our brief that's going to say vacated on other grounds. They didn't vacate the underlying principles that were established by the lower court in favor of the First Amendment and against blocking on Twitter, but they vacated on other grounds because the controversy was moot. So they went a little by the lower court in favor of the First Amendment and against blocking on Twitter. But they vacated on other grounds because the controversy was moot. So they went a little bit further than I would have liked, because now you and I are going to have to deal with that precedent in the future. And lawyers who are Republican driven are going to say, oh, that was vacated. You know, the Supreme Court ruled, but they really didn't.

There's a nuance here that we'll have to continue to convince trial courts of in the ruling. So that's the result. And one of the reasons that they did that is you have a number of people who are on the right, people like Justice Thomas, who want to make a statement that this is somehow big tech suppressing speech when this has nothing to do with that. They don't know how the algorithms work and what a free flow of information is. And so I think Thomas basically used this to basically say, and this is a quote, as Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital

platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions, you know, which is. That's a dog whistle for the right in writing that dissent. He went, you know, this is this is him staking out future. He's basically inviting a future case to come up. And we know the Republicans will bring a future case to try to test and challenge. The next case is going to be a lawsuit against Twitter brought by Trump or his acolytes that they are not allowed to block because they are a pseudo government. And it's a First Amendment violation. We know that case is coming. And and Justice Thomas just gave the blueprint for how to bring it.

And some other Supreme Court cases that have been argued lately. Just just interesting, though, Popak, why we've heard a lot of news of Supreme Court cases just being argued. Can you tell our listeners out there, like, why is this going on now? Are there specific times when the Supreme Court meets? Like, why are we hearing about these opinions? Yeah, the Supreme Court meets during defined times. They start their term in October. They hear cases, they decide at conferences among the nine justices

of the Supreme Court, which cases they're actually going to take. It's up to them. It is a completely discretionary appellate process at that level. If the Supreme Court declines to take a case, it dies wherever it last was at the highest level of that region's federal court or even state court in some circumstances, if they decide to take it and they take a very limited number of cases during the year, 30, 40, 50, 60 cases tops. And actually, the Roberts Court, because we call it the Roberts Court because it's named after the Chief Justice. The Roberts Court has taken very few cases over the last 15 years, much fewer than its predecessor. So one way to influence our lives through the law and through decisions is for a court, a Supreme Court, to take less cases. And when they take cases, to take them on policy grounds that they find interesting. So

they have a conference, they decide which cases to take. They then alert the parties on the other side. Okay, your case is going to be heard by the Supreme Court, start briefing. So each side gets, one side gets two briefs, the other side gets one brief. Those briefs then get reviewed and assembled by clerks. Supreme Court clerks play a very important role in the gatekeeping process. The the chief judge then does a little bit of a polling to decide, you know, which who's in favor of which side of the case. They do oral argument. So oral argument is throughout the year. A lot of it is in the spring. And then they start issuing opinions. And so now we've got a little bit of a hybrid. They're still hearing, the Supreme Court is still hearing matters like we'll talk about on

this podcast. The NCAA paid athlete issue just got heard. Issues about the Fourth Amendment search and seizure just got heard. At the same time, they're actually issuing orders and final decisions in other cases. So this is Supreme Court season when between oral arguments and actual written opinions on matters start flying out between now and the start of the summer, because once the summer hits, all the Supreme Court justices are on holiday. And let's talk about, yeah, they're human beings. They go on vacation.

They don't like to work a lot. Let's talk about Supreme Court season. You mentioned the case, the Supreme Court heard a case about restrictions on compensation for NCAA Division I athletes. And the Supreme Court seemed inclined to strike down restrictions on compensations to Division I athletes and to allow for compensation. Now, this case specifically, unless I'm wrong, Michael, did not address the overall issue of paying players or should colleges, should universities

be required to pay full-fledged salaries to players. That was not the scope of this, but the indication amongst the justices are they are willing, in fact, to go there. So tell me about this case and what the implications are more broadly. Yeah, I found it fascinating. And sometimes just for the followers, sometimes when you hear oral argument, which is the argument of the two lawyers on opposite sides of our adversarial process, making their case literally to the nine justices who sit all together on a panel at the same time, in this case, it was done by Zoom or by phone. Usually it's done live in Washington. But when oral argument happens,

sometimes you can read the tea leaves about questions being asked. Litigators and trial lawyers like Ben and I call it a hot bench. It's when there's lots of questions coming, rapid fire from all nine. Usually they're asked in seniority position, whoever the most senior justice goes first, they go down the line. Some justices don't ask any

questions. I mean, you know, just for our followers, Justice Thomas, who's been on the bench for pushing 30 years, I think has asked a total in 30 years of three questions. And I'm not making that up. Whereas others are very active. So sometimes you can get the feeling of how a case is going to be decided based on oral argument. And sometimes you can't. Sometimes you're misled. You're like, well, oral argument, they seem to be going one way. But when the opinion came out, they went completely the other. I don't think that's the case here. From what I can hear, and I listened to the oral argument also, I, are getting together and they are deciding as a group not to do something related to paying, in this case, their workers, if you

will, their student athletes, that can be, and it looks like the judges are leading that way, an antitrust violation because you're not allowed to get together with your competitors and decide to all do the same thing. Okay, guys, let's all not pay the athletes. Yeah, let's do that. That sounds great if you're the colleges, but it is an antitrust violation if you're covered by antitrust law. And I thought the most interesting comment that was made, I think it was a response to Justice Sotomayor, was they asked the NCAA's lead lawyer arguing, so what are you saying? Are you saying that the consumer, the viewer of sports, the person sitting home on their couch watching television, enjoys watching unpaid athletes as amateur more than they

would enjoy if those same athletes doing the same thing were somehow paid? And that person, that lawyer had to say, yes, that's what we're saying. We're saying that the viewers actually care whether the athlete is given a stipend, paid for, given transportation, paid for their meals. I mean, they didn't laugh out loud on the panel, but you could tell there was a real jaundiced view. And the NCAA's position got a lot of headwinds because the justices realized the athletes were already getting paid in some way, shape or form. They're getting scholarships. They're getting stipends. They're doing, you know, I don't want to call them no show jobs, but they're getting the job in the library, you know, that's paying them. That question was asked to the lawyer for the NCAA and the NCAA said that the consumer actually prefers them not getting paid. That the consumer enjoys, enjoys that more to see unpaid people versus paid.

I like watching the point that the NCAA basically made is I like watching slaves play sports more than I would if they got paid. It's absurd. By the way, I think that it is a travesty that players are not paid. I think all student athletes should be paid for name and likeness rights. They should be paid whatever the market will allow them to be paid. I'll tell you, though, what I do think to play devil's advocate for a second, what the best argument of all of them was Chief Justice Roberts, who didn't necessarily say which side he he was going to going to rule for. He was appointed by George W. Bush, who seemed to be the most sympathetic to the NCAA's argument. But he likened the situation to a game of Jenga where each block is one of the restrictions. And he said, yeah, this may be a stupid rule. Let's pull that stupid rule out. This may be a dumb rule. Let's pull that dumb rule out. This may be it. Fine. You pull one out and everything's fine. But if you continue to overturn all of these, you may not have an NCAA. And so the answer to the question that I think the NCAA lawyer should say is absolutely not. Whether someone's compensated or is not compensated does not impact the consumer's

enjoyment. But let's be clear, if you push this to a certain limit, we just may have to rethink the very existence of the NCAA. It just may not exist anymore. Now, that's not to say that there won't be something that replaces it that's better. Maybe there should be something that's better, but we may not exist. And it is existential. And that's probably the better argument is, okay, let's change the whole system. Let's extinguish the NCAA, get rid of it. but then what do we have? And do we have a pathway of education to the pros in a meaningful way? And again, I don't side that way, but I at least think that that's the stronger argument than the way the NCAA lawyer argued. I think you laid out the strongest argument that they can make. The problem is there's just so much billions, almost trillions of dollars

that pump through the NCAA on the backs of these unpaid athletes, whether it's the deal with Nike or Converse or the scoreboards or look at the money that the athletes are amateur, but the coaches are pro because look at the money the coaches get, $3 million, $15 million, $20 million contracts, both from the university and from the Nikes of the world. Yeah. And that was one of the things that the justices continued to point out, how over the past 20, 30 years, when the Supreme Court had previously ruled on this in the mid-1980s, the Supreme Court just basically said, now, the mid 1980s, the Supreme Court just basically said, now, look, it's just a whole different landscape now. Like we have to evolve

our doctrines because y'all exploited the shit out of it. It's like, in a lack of better words, that's what they said. Like y'all could have been fucking fair about the situation and no one would have raised red flags, but like now you start paying your coaches fucking 10, $15 million, you know, a year. And people are going to start saying, wait a minute,

how could you pay that guy? 15 million and the star athlete gets $0. And so, and so this wasn't said, no one used the curses like the way I did or any boy, but that's basically cutting through all the legalese. The message is, is like, y'all screwed up. You screwed this up. You didn't have to be this way, but this is where your greed got you. So that was that case. And I think we hit all the points

there. Moving on to another Supreme court, this time, a Supreme court ruling. We talked about this issue on our last podcast, because we know our podcast listeners love to talk about venue, love to talk about jurisdiction. But look, we are educating them on these facts that are important legal issues. And so there was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that was handed out in the past week that ruled against Ford in a product liability venue dispute. Can you tell us a little bit about this case, Paul? Yeah, I have to tell you, I graduated law school 30 years ago. You graduated law school slightly less than that or less than that. I thought this decision, I thought this doctrine had already been really resolved 100 years ago or at least 40 years ago with cases that I learned in law school.

We all remember International Shoe, Shoe the Shoe Case. Helicopteros, now we're really into baseball. Volkswagen, the Volkswagen case. Yeah, we learned all of these cases. And those cases stood for the proposition that if you angle your activities towards a jurisdiction, even if it wasn't necessarily your intent and somebody got injured in that jurisdiction, you're going to get sued in that jurisdiction and you're going to have to defend yourself. And you're not going to be able to say, but I made the thing. I made the product in Ohio, just sue me in Ohio, even though the person was injured in Montana or in this case, Minnesota,

I thought this was fairly resolved. But apparently, there was a slight loophole in the jurisprudence, which has now been plugged. And just for our listeners, it is very difficult to get this Supreme Court, which is split Republican and Democratic appointees to agree on anything. They agreed 8-0. Coney Barrett had to sit this one out. They agreed 8-0 against Ford Motor Company. Now, Ford Motor Company argued in a tire explosion case, which is exactly what it sounds like, an unfortunate circumstance where a tire exploded, leading to a rollover of a vehicle, the death of the passenger. They argued, we made the car in Detroit, in Michigan. It got sold and resold as a used car over the next 30 years.

But we're not responsible for what happened in Montana when it got sold as a four-time used car because you got to come sue me in Michigan. And it's not even the argument, you don't have a right to sue me at all, that just for our followers. It's not they're arguing, statute of limitations, there's too much time passed, I'm not responsible for the tire 40 years later,

30 years later. They're arguing, sue me, but you gotta sue me in my hometown. And the Supreme Court said, no. And Kagan, Justice Kagan, I think, brought it home best in her questioning or her decision making when she said, look, you spent an inordinate amount of advertising dollars and marketing dollars pointed at Montana and at Minnesota and every other state in 50 states to try to get consumers to buy your product. Okay. You now, you want to live, you know, live by the sword, you die by the sword. So if somebody gets injured driving your vehicle, even if they didn't buy it and pick it up from the factory in Michigan, because who does that? Who goes to the factory and picks up their car?

Okay. They bought it in Montana. It's a Ford. It says Ford on the back. They are responsible for defending themselves. And it's okay under what we call due process, which is what personal jurisdiction is all about. Is it fair to bring the person into court where the injury happened? Supreme court finally shut the door once and for all and said, in the context, especially of products liability, you can be sued where the person is injured. End of story. And to bring this though, into some human terms though, is that a tire exploded. Okay. Somebody was probably horribly injured in Montana. They were injured in Minnesota. They may have, someone may have died. They may have lost an arm or a leg or lost a family member's lives. And for the past 10 years or so, they've been fighting with Ford

over whether or not the case should be heard in Montana and Minnesota or whether it should be heard in Michigan. So for these human beings who were injured, a large corporation like Ford, who wanted to have the case heard in their home court stadium, in their home court stadium in front of jurors who probably either work for them or have family members who work for them, this company has created many, many, many years. I don't know if it's a decade, it could be longer, it could be shorter, but now the family basically just gets to begin the process of litigating their case, which still may take another three, five, 10 years. And then on those issues, the company like Ford can appeal those issues.

And so this was just one sliver of a pie. Assume a pie in the sense of litigation as 100 parts and jurisdiction is one of 100 parts. A company like Ford can bring one of those 100 parts to the Supreme Court all of those times. And if they want to, and granted, it'll cost them tens of millions of dollars to do this if they have the resources. But this is why sometimes justice is denied to people who have to go through this process. Sometimes the family is like, you know what? I don't want to deal with this shit. I don't want to go in front of the Supreme Court. I don't want to deal with it. I want to get my life back.

I want to bury my family member. I want to go on with my life. And that's why these large corporations do that. But that's why I have such a great deal of respect for lawyers, though, who fight these cases for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, because that lawyer who was on the side of the family or the injured party, they're not getting paid hourly to do that. I'll tell you that much. They're not making money litigating this case. The Ford lawyers, they probably made Ford's legal bills on this,

probably easily over 20, 30, $40 million on this case, maybe more. They should have just paid the family. Look, you just hit the nail on the head. To be callous for a moment, their forged strategy, business strategy, worked. They stretched this family out. They did it for a number of reasons. One, I guess they really believed in this legal theory that they had, which got slam dunked 8-0 by the Supreme Court. But they stretched this family out so that sends a signal to the rest of the world that if you're catastrophically injured by a Ford product, we are going to fight

you tooth and nail for a decade on the most procedural of issues. You will not even get your day in court until we exhaust you financially and emotionally in every way, shape, and form. And then, okay, we'll try the case. And this is an hyperbole. Mike and I are in mediations all the time, you know, where that is a argument that is used by the corporation of why you as the plaintiff should settle. Not we were wrong, we injured your client. It's like, look, you should settle this now or else we're going to drag this out forever. And it's a legitimate issue that we have to explain to our clients. We go, look, they could drag this out for 20 or 30 years, or you can get guaranteed money today.

What do you want to do? And so that is a major, major consideration. Going to our last issue, though, of the day, Michael, you referenced this also earlier, is this issue of warrantless searches, whether that's a violation of the Fourth Amendment requiring warrants, but there are exceptions to the rule of warrants. There are some exceptions where you don't need a warrant. Can you tell us about the recent oral argument and whether that you think is going to impact the way warrantless searches are conducted? Yeah, I think the Supreme Court, led by the Republican appointees on it, are moving quickly based on the oral argument to allow for another warrantless entry into your home. For our followers and listeners, the U.S. Constitution under the Fourth Amendment prevents warrantless

entry into your home, which means that law enforcement has to go to a judge and get a warrant on probable cause before they can enter your house and search and seize things within it, property. So if they don't, let's play it out. If they don't have a warrant and they needed one, they was required to have one under the constitution and they entered your house and they saw something illegal or illicit in their view, a gun, paraphernalia, something else, that material that they have now seized will be thrown out of court because there's been a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And that's the way that works. There are some exceptions to when the police, in doing some part of their job, can enter and abode a house and search without a warrant. You would

think in our society that because the framers of the Constitution put the Fourth Amendment in there for a reason, that there would be very limited warrantless searches. And there are a few exceptions. It looks like we're going to have a new one if the oral argument is any indication of how the Supremes are going to rule. And the exception is what's called the community caretaking exception. So let me put some flesh on the bone. If a police officer, it has to be a police officer, law enforcement, is doing a wellness check on some elderly person or someone that a family member or friend suspects is suicidal or has issues. I haven't heard from Bill in a while. And can the police run over there and take a look for me and make sure everything's okay? That's called the community caretaking

exception. So if they knock on the door and they look in, or the door is open and they walk in, or the person there lets them in, the question is if they see something that's illicit, or a gun on a table in this case, or two guns on a table in this case, can they seize that, or will it be thrown out of court as a warrantless unconstitutional search and seizure. In the case that's before the panel, the Supreme Court, they did a check on somebody that a friend thought was suicidal. And so they knocked on the door to make sure the person was okay. So far, so good.

We're not in the world of search and seizure yet. That person who they were checking on actually opened the door and let them in. Now, he didn't give them permission to search. They could have asked for permission. They could have said, would you mind if we come in and look around? And that person can say, not without a warrant, go away, which is that they would have had to constitutionally turned on their heels and walked out of the door. Or they could have said, sure, come on in. And then there's no warrant issue. Then you can freely search the place because you've got permission.

This falls in a gray area. The person that was being checked on for possible suicide let them in, but he did not give them overt permission to search. They saw in the room a couple of guns and they seized those guns. So the Supreme Court, which is, let's be honest, is a lot of older people. I mean, there's some new justices that got added recently in their 50s, but there's a couple of them that are in their 70s and 80s, like Breyer. And, you know, from the oral argument, it looked like some of them were like, yeah, I want somebody to check on me if I fall and I can't get up. And maybe while they're there, if they see something illegal,

we're going to let them take it without a warrant. But, you know, our followers should understand every time you chip away at the Fourth Amendment, you're giving another excuse to law enforcement to raid your house without permission or a warrant and take what's in there and use it against you in a court of law. And our followers should be up in arms about it. In theory, you can say, well, look, in this case, the man's wife called the police, said the man was suicidal, and therefore there is an emergency that the police needs to investigate. I think there's a broader conversation, though, here, too, which is the police represent kind of government force at its most extreme. And even in a situation like that, a police officer with guns, with a man who's suffering from a mental health crisis, like legitimately, what are they going to do for that man? And a lot of times, in a lot of my actual cases,

the police end up killing the guy who may with proper training or women where the police, if they had proper training or if it was a mental health professional who was intervening, could have actually saved the life. So the very nature of the call and the warrantless exception actually aided and abetted the death. And I think a lot of those questioning, Mike, that you referenced comes though from a incorrect perception of the police, of what the police do. And in those situations, sometimes when you're having a mental health crisis, the police are the last people who could actually be the ones to help. And the right type of people to call in that are mental health counselors and other people.

And so when we hear this language often of defund the police, a lot of that language is centered around these interactions where the police are getting hundreds of millions of dollars for tanks and on high armor and all of this artillery. But at the end of the day, heavily armed, who have this armor to walk into your home and to actually create problems that you want to avoid. We want to we want to be very protective of our private spaces because we know historically the government and the police are known to abuse those private spaces. That's why it's so important. You, you, you, that is, I had not thought of it that way, but as you were describing it, you, you are so correct. Let's think of it this way. If you had sent over a fire department or paramedics to check on the person, I don't know exactly what would have happened, but I could

tell you it would not lead to death. If a fire department person, we're all fine with them getting cats out of trees, but if you put them in that position to go and check on somebody, they're trained differently than the police, heavily armed paramilitary police are trained. So you're right. The question is not, should we have a caretaker exception, a community caretaker exception? The question is, should we be using the police to go to mental health challenge situations to be the person trying to solve the problem? And you're right. I don't think we should. Exactly. So switching gears here, this is going to be a new segment of the Midas Touch Legal AF podcast, where Michael and I are going to interview two individuals embedded in the area of law from coast to coast. Each of these individuals is running historic

candidacies to be the first woman to hold these various positions. We have Lucy Lang, who will be running for the district attorney of Manhattan to replace Cy Vance, who is currently investigating Donald Trump. So that is an incredibly high profile position. And then we also have from the West Coast, the best coast, Heidi Feldstein, who's running for the city attorney of Los Angeles. She would be the first women's city attorney of Los Angeles, Heidi Feldstein Soto. So after these breaks, we're going to talk to them and then we'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back to Midas Touch Legal AF.

Ben Micellis, Michael Popak, joined by Lucy Lang, candidate for Manhattan DA. Heidi Feldstein Soto, candidate for L.A. city attorney, both historic candidacies. This could be the first time and which I can't believe it's the first time that we have women in these positions, which we need that more than ever. Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF to you both as we do this coast-to-coast power edition. Thank you, Ben. How about that intro? How about that intro for Legal AF? You know what? What's hard-hitting stuff? Lucy, for those out there who don't know, though, what a DA is, you know, these are different positions you're running for and what Heidi's running for in LA, you're running for in Manhattan. Can you explain to me what the DA does and then Heidi, what the city attorney does, just so our listeners know what it is that you're running for? Thank you so much for having me, Ben and Michael.

I'm so glad to be here and glad to be here with Heidi in particular. It is a really exciting election season in New York City, but it's particularly exciting because the district attorney's race is on the ballot. And as you all know, the district attorney is a uniquely American phenomenon. We are the only country in the world that elects our district attorneys, which means that it's the voters who determine who oversees all of the criminal matters in any given local jurisdiction. So a district attorney in New York is a countywide designation.

And the position I'm running for Manhattan DA means jurisdiction over the county of Manhattan or New York County. And that includes jurisdiction over the violations, misdemeanors, and felonies that occur within the boundaries of this island. And the district attorney has historically tremendous discretion in the United States, makes the decision about what to charge, whether to charge, how to charge, and then what sentences to recommend. So it really is an incredibly impactful role, especially in this moment of emphasis on long overdue criminal justice reform here and nationally. And especially in this moment right now, too, where we have some very serious things going on in Manhattan, all, you know, in all areas. And

particularly though, with respect to, I think a lot of people are looking at this race because they know what's going on with Cy Vance. That is the position for those out there that you're running for is, is Cy Vance's position, who's currently involved in an investigation of the former guy, Donald Trump. And so that is a huge position you're going to be, you're running for. One of the distinguishing factors between this district attorney's office and so many others, of course, is jurisdiction over Wall Street. And it's a reason why the Manhattan district attorney has historically had a major profile that includes investigations into serious white

collar crimes and is a reason that my campaign has emphasized and rolled out a plan around how we're going to better leverage resources to ensure appropriate accountability and instances of economic crime that victimize ordinary New Yorkers up to high level bank and tax fraud. Heidi Feldstein Soto, tell us a little bit about what it is the city attorney does. I understand there is not a city attorney style even position in Manhattan, but why do we even have this in LA and what is it that you're running for? Thanks, Ben. The city attorney is one of only three citywide elected officials within the city limits. We have the mayor, the controller, and the city attorney. So in addition to being an independent elected official, the role, as firms in the country. So as the managing partner of that municipal law firm, the city attorney oversees lawyers from criminal misdemeanor systems, which some have called the misdemeanor machine in Los Angeles, to civil litigation,

some of which involves consumer protection and consumer fraud, to a lot of transactional work. So the city attorney writes the municipal laws, the city attorney writes the ballot measures and the summaries of those measures. I will tell you that I will write them clearly so that the ordinary voter understands exactly what they're voting for. And the city attorney is in charge of the fiscal documents that govern our city. So the municipal bonds and all of the commercial contracts that deal with vendors. In addition to that, as an independent elected official, the city attorney takes an oath to the charter. And so the city attorney has the obligation to defend the charter against intrusion into municipal affairs from our state, which

sometimes tries to reach down into our city government or from any other source, and to protect the residents of the city directly for those rights that are included in the charter or in the U.S. or state constitutions. The role is both civil and to the extent of misdemeanor criminal, and it is elected. So no, I don't think

there is an equivalent in Manhattan. This seems to be a uniquely, perhaps California, but at least Western position. So Michael and I are coast to coast. Michael is based in New York. I'm out here in Los Angeles. And so we're speaking to two people who really impact issues that affect our, you know, day-to-day lives. The corruption that we see, you know, in the cities. The violence that we see in the cities. Crimes that we see in the cities. Issues affecting small businesses that we see in the cities. I'm going to let Michael direct his question as a New Yorker to his fellow New Yorker, Lucy Lang. And then after Michael's question, I'm going to direct it to Heidi, a fellow Los Angeles resident.

And I'm going to ask those questions about something I think impacting our community. So, Michael. I've got one shout out for Heidi. In my prior life, my law firm was the city attorney for 23 cities in Florida in an outsourced way. So I get what you do or what you want to do in that position. And I'm impressed that it's the largest municipal law firm, if you will, in the country that you're looking to run. And I know you're supremely well qualified for that. I'd love to see you in that role. But back to my fellow Native New Yorker there. For those that can see the video, she's got a beautiful map of Manhattan right behind her head,

which is going to be her territory when she wins this election. And for our followers, just to make life imitate art or vice versa, the office that Lucy is running for is the model for every Law & Order episode ever created. It was modeled after Morgenthau's running of that office. If you want to go back to season one, that was basically just Morgenthau being portrayed by an actor. And I think if I did my math right, Lucy, did you have a year overlap where you were with Morgenthau before Cy Vance took over? My first three years I served under Mr. Morgenthau and was honored to have been hired by him. And an interesting other claim to fame is that I had the unique honor of co-authoring with Mr. Morgenthau, who was known as the boss in the office and in many circles in Manhattan, of co-authoring his last op-ed before he passed away two summers ago. And it was an op-ed in which we called for the end of immigration

raids on courthouses, which ultimately, after he passed, was codified in law. So that's something I'm very proud of. And I'll tell you that when I proposed to him at, I believe, 98 years old, that we co-author this op-ed together on a subject we were both passionate about that had been in the news, I didn't expect him to redline edit it to the extent that he did. But he really was a great collaborator right up until the end. Yeah, I think I remember that. I mean, look, the courthouse, the court system is a scary enough place, but to also think that if you have an immigration status issue that you could be scooped up, you know, having crossed the threshold where Lady Justice is supposed to do her bidding,

that was great. And I love the fact that you've got that legacy of having worked with a titan, the legendary Robert Bargenthal, and then also underside. And now, of course, making the office your own when you get elected. I think I think the fact that you have that that legacy of having been brought up there. I'll give a compliment to the folks like you that grew up there as a prosecutor. When I built an in-house trial team for a Wall Street firm that Ben and I know well, when I recruited, I told the people that I was recruiting that the model for me was to build an elite squad of litigators and trial lawyers

modeled after Morgenthau and that office. So you already come with a tremendous wind at your sail. Anything we can do to help you get that position, of course, I'm going to try. I found out your campaign headquarters is a block from my apartment, so I'll certainly be stopping it after this broadcast. The bagels are great at campaign headquarters. Well, thank you so much for that, Michael. I served under two district attorneys and I have my own vision for the district attorney's office because we know so much more about what works and really what doesn't work in criminal justice. And Manhattanites are calling for transformative reform that addresses mass incarceration and racial injustice while at the same time prioritizing public safety. And we can

accomplish all of that through collaborative leadership that prizes safety, equity, and the dignity of all New Yorkers. And that's what the breadth of my experience as a former assistant district attorney and as a national criminal justice reform leader, as director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, has led me to create alongside community partners and that has led me to run for this position. And can you and have you taken a position about the continuation of the Trump prosecutions that the office is leading?

I think the worst thing that the next district attorney could do would be to say something on the campaign trail that would suggest anything other than a complete ability to be impartial and objective in pursuing all cases. What I will say is that I am the person in this race who is best suited to take on every investigation pending before that office to prioritize criminal justice reform, but to make sure that the critically important work of investigating and prosecuting serious crimes continues.

Heidi, what was the tipping point for you out here in L.A.? You worked for a large law firm. It's, you know, a city attorney is often, you know, a thankless job in LA, you know, often comes under a lot of fire and gets very little, you know, gets very little credit, you know, just being honest with the idea. I mean, the DA is a high profile position and the city attorney is a little less high profile, but has a huge portfolio of stuff that they have to do in LA. And so what makes you say, hey, I got to really get into this right now with everything that's going on when you could enjoy the rest of your life and not have to deal with the craziness that's about to come your way? I think there's three components to that. The first is I live in LA. I live here. I walk outside

my door. I experience the cracks in our fabric and the problems facing our city. And I've done that for several years. I've been in service on my neighborhood council. I've been trying hard to deal with some of the issues that affect our neighborhood and our city overall. And our government, at least at the level of the city of LA, needs to get back to basics. I mean, we need to actually do things. We need to build shelters and build housing, not simply commission another study or another report about what sites might be appropriate. We need to provide reliable utility and emergency services. We need to pick up the trash. We need to educate our kids. And we need to protect our neighborhoods. And all too often, we have elected officials who are running for their next office

and focused on chasing the latest viral hashtag. I can promise you that every community in the city of Los Angeles, and in fact, experts all over the country will have a seat at the table because some of the problems we face from people experiencing homelessness to how we administer misdemeanors versus diversion programs for first-time offenders are nationwide issues. So I want to approach this from the perspective of getting things done, getting things fixed, and doing this job without a view to next office. There is no next office for me. I have no desire to go to Sacramento or D.C. or run for higher office. I want to do this job well. The tipping point, as you put it,

is that my dad passed away last year. And without going into a long speech about my father, he was a remarkable man, an absolute lion and a titan who lived a life full of good works. And so in looking at his obituary or news reports on his death, I suddenly thought to myself, okay, it's nice that my tombstone could say I closed a lot of deals, but ultimately, that's not much of a legacy. I want to do something in the way of public service. I come to this as the kind of person that I and my friends always say we want to vote for. We want someone who's going to come to this office, who's going to do this job, take their turn at the wheel of public service and go home. And that's what I am proposing to do. My skill set, both in managing other lawyers, by the way, is a little bit like herding cats, but that's okay.

And in serving as a general outside and inside counsel for various companies across industries, I think makes me uniquely qualified among the candidates in the field. And I feel a calling to come and try to help the city that's been my adopted home for 40 years. My joke with Popak is I said, you're going to love Heidi because she's such a taskmaster. So in my relationship with Popak, and we do a lot of cases together, Popak's always the one saying, Ben, we have a calendar, be there at the 1130 meeting. And I'm always like, all right, you know. And so that's our relationship where I'm the, I like to think that I'm, I got the creative genes and the idea of people, the idea guy, and Popa keeps it on track and no missed deadlines, which is why we get along, why we get along so well. Heidi, Ben is my cat. I will tell you that when I was starting out as a young lawyer, one of my best clients and my mentors who gave me many breaks was a man by the name

of Sanford Sigloff. And Sandy Sigloff was infamous for running his deals and his companies with what he called a master calendar. And the master calendar had a date, time, place, deliverable, and responsibility. And if your name was on that last column for responsibility, you better have met the rest of the columns fairly quickly. And that's how I was trained. I still do it. I still do it this way, which is probably not the best. I just showed my agenda of handwritten notes. I don't even use the calendar. Going back finally to conclude,

I want to talk about where we began this interview, that these are historic candidacies. And I wanted to specifically talk about the importance of diversity in law, something that I see as a lawyer in law schools, in big law men and particularly white men. And the policies that often originate are not reflective of views and values and inclusivity that's needed in the law. So Lucy, as you're running for this position, and as I mentioned that you would be the first woman to hold this position, How does that make you feel? And what's your overall view about diversity in the office and in the practice of law? And then, Heidi, going to be the same question for you after. I think about a case that I handled many years ago in which two masked gunmen came out from behind parked cars on Upper Broadway and opened fire,

hitting five people and killing one who had a three-year-old son. I investigated the case over many, many months. Ultimately, we built a circumstantial case against the gunmen, identified them. They were indicted and brought to trial. I tried it over the course of many weeks, became close to the mother of the young man who'd been killed, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The morning after the guilty verdict, I called the mother of the young man who'd been killed, who now was working around the clock and raising her grandson and dealing with the grief of having lost a son to gun violence. And when I asked her how she felt, she said, I slept all night for the first time since my son was killed.

But when I woke up, all I could think about were the moms of those two boys, referring to the two men who had just been convicted of murdering her son. I was a new mother myself at the time and was overwhelmed with her generosity of spirit. And it prompted me to create a first of its kind college and prison program to bring assistant district attorneys inside New York state prisons and work on justice reform issues alongside incarcerated New Yorkers so that the people who are running the system had to understand the experiences of the people most impacted by it. It is that model of leadership that I intend to bring to the district attorney's office and have brought to all of the policies that I have developed over the course of this campaign and intend to implement as district attorney. And I'm actually proud to announce officially that as of tomorrow, I will be putting out

a policy book that is a roadmap for Manhattan and lays out 27 plans so far about how I intend to implement change in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. And all of those plans have been built alongside community members most impacted, including a sex crimes plan built alongside survivors of sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein, a plan for police accountability built along women who have endorsed me, who lost their loved ones to police violence, and including plans built in collaboration with progressive prosecutors across the country who have endorsed my candidacy related to racial justice, economic justice, tenants' rights, workers' rights, and all of the things that fall under the purview

of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. So I would be thrilled for folks to follow me on social media at Lucy Lang NYC and check out my forthcoming policy book, A Roadmap for Justice in Manhattan, Dignity, Equity, and Safety, coming out first thing tomorrow. And Lucy, when's the election?

The election is June 22nd. Don't miss it if you're a Manhattanite. Heidi? Lucy said something very important, which is that she started with community members and building inclusivity from the ground up. I truly think that is the true definition of inclusivity. You don't get the variety of perspectives and the insights that you need to run a job if what you're doing is sitting in an ivory tower and dictating programs from the top on how inclusiveness is going to be affected in office. And I think Lucy has done an effective job in her area in inclusiveness. I go back to my own history. I was a Puerto Rican Jewish female and proud of both, standing in some of the most elite

law firms in the country. Earlier in my career, I was a woman in an area where, trust me, there weren't very many women. I think I blessed the ones that existed every day, but they were a few bright spots. And I was very fortunate to have male mentors. That means that I took my responsibility for inclusiveness seriously when I became a partner and I was in a position to help others. Of the folks that I sponsored to the partnership, I think that all but two were women. And each team in the law firms where I practice law, of the associates and the partners I worked with was heavily diverse. There was usually a majority of women, and my team always attracted associates and lawyers and paralegals and secretaries of color and of diverse experiences. Law firms, by definition, are stratified environments. You

need a license to move from being a secretary or a paralegal to being a lawyer, and then you need a vote of the partnership to move to being a partner. So when I practiced, I strived to make the team include everybody from every layer in the firm so that our meetings, our staff meetings, and our parties and the ways in which we interacted with one another really included all of the voices at the law firm so that we formed a team to succeed. What I think I would bring to the city attorney's office is that same kind of listening ear to build diversity from the ground up, to try to recruit neighborhood prosecutors, for example, from the neighborhoods in which they're expected to work. So that if you have a young lawyer in the city attorney's office who's supposed to be resolving problems in one part of LA, hopefully somebody who either lives there now or who has grown up in the neighborhood and has some connection to it. I'm very proud of the fact

that I was voted by associates across the state of California as one of the 10 best partners to work for in 2010. And I would hope that part of law firm management really is coming into an office softly, sitting down with the experts and the professionals and the folks who are there and listening to them as to what's working with their office and not working as well as listening to the communities. That to me is true inclusion, a leader who listens. Heidi Feldstein Soto, Lucy Lang. Lucy's running for Manhattan DA. Heidi's running for LA city attorney. Thank you both for coming on Midas Touch Legal AF. We will be right back after these messages. Welcome back to Midas Touch Podcast. Legal AF.

Great interview with Lucy Lang and Heidi Feldstein, Soto. All of those listening out there, let Popak and myself know, should we do more interviews like that? Should we do less interviews like that? This is an evolving format. We just take our cues from you at the end of the day. Ain't that right, Popak? You ain't kidding.

I think those are the choices. More interviews, less interviews. More Popak, more Ben. More Popak. Ben should shave. Ben should be clean shaven. You know, these are the issues of the day. Great issues of the day.

Of course, we deal with great issues like my beard, what I call elegant scruffiness. And then we deal with lesser issues like Supreme Court and incredible decisions from other courts and district courts across the country. But as always, thank you so much for listening to Midas Touch Legal AF Podcast. We'll see you same time, same place next week as my my dogs bark, it's shout out to you and say goodbye. Thank you, Pope. I appreciate it. You're welcome.