The Ricochet Podcast - Courting Trouble

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

This one's gonna be tough to beat! We've got the details of a Tom Wolfe novel playing out in real time. From a corrupt DA to a presidential scandal involving an adult film star. Plus we've got fan-favorite John Yoo! Need we say more?There's some more AI chatter; and Peter's ticker is finally working!

Welcome, everybody. Great way to start. Three, two, one. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new taxes.

I think the unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States for a campaign finance issue is an outrage. And I believe the American people will see this for what it is. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs, and today we talk to, well, John Yoo. Anything more I need to say about that? No. So let's have ourselves a podcast. America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was going to put him, excuse me.

Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast. It is indeed. And it's episode number 636. If you would just do us a, you know, little favor and go over to ricochet.com, take a look, join up. You can be part of the most stimulating conversations in community on the web and we mean that it's the place you've been looking for if you want to go someplace where there's a code of conduct and people don't act like idiots under false names and throw bricks at each other all the time it's a haven sometimes no it's a haven all the time i'm james lilacs here in minneapolis which is my haven even though the skies are slight gray and we're expected to get five inches of snow. Damn. And Rob is in New York, where I imagine it's fine

and people are strolling about with the expectation of a wonderful New York spring. Chilly rainy day, James. Really, really. New York's great in the chilly rain. Just to make you feel better. Peter, I understand, has not been glimpsing the sun for days in California, but now it's out. And so we're all in a grand mood. We've seen the end of March. We've got the hope of spring and April and taxes ahead of us.

What's there to do? Well, naturally, we're going to have to talk about the indictments, all 30, 34 of them. But John, you're going to be along shortly to discuss these things because bog knows what I can say about them. Um, we could discuss the other events of the week. I think the only thing really that stands out right now, days later after the horrible shooting in Nashville is the argument about whether or not this manifesto that the shooter left behind should be released. Usually, people say, no. No, don't give them any publicity whatsoever. But then there's the argument that says,

well, there might be something to be gleaned from this. As a matter of fact, there was something to be gleaned from Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. There are things that tell you the intellectual temper of the times, even though they may be written by somebody who is who's plainly daft what do you guys think i don't leap don't leap to the mic no i suppose i suppose i'm thinking back to the unabomber what year was the unabomber that was a long time ago now james seems now uh maybe you'd better just give us two sentences on who the unabomber was we We're going to have lots of listeners who don't remember. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber University, an airline bomber, I think is what it was,

was a guy with aviator glasses, according to the description that was out there for decades. It turns out he's a guy living in a cabin who was bashing out these manifestos about what the machine age, the computer age, the technocratic age had done to humanity and civilization. Some of his ideas have been taken up by people who say, you know, he had a point. He just went about it by planting bombs and killing people and taking off their fingers and the rest of it. So, yeah, I think it's David Galertner. Yes, yes, David Galertner. He was a victim.

Right, he lost a digit or two to uh to the unabomber and it's a fascinating tale because kaczynski was a very was a very smart man obviously twisted but that doesn't mean that you you look at what he said he's not talking about the snakes and ravens coming out of a hole in the earth to devour the so i mean he's talking about issues that we're still grappling with so yes yes, I mean, my argument is I'd like to see the manifesto, not to give the person any publicity, but to just understand the tenor of the times when it comes to what's rattling around the brains of some of these people. On the Unabomber, I have a question that we will not be able to answer. Well, you can answer yes or no, I suppose, but I want to set up a conversation for a future show. Does either of you understand?

I mean, even at a rudimentary level, does either of you understand artificial intelligence? Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Do you understand it well enough to understand why some serious people, including Eric Schmidt and Henry Kissinger and who who some some very weird duo by the way some it is a strange duo but Eric Schmidt used to run Google Henry Kissinger of course is still with us at the age of 100 still writing and they tell us

that AI is very very dangerous do you understand enough about it to know why? Yes, I think. You do? Uh-huh. Oh, really? I'm in favor of shutting the whole damn thing down now. And I'm almost in favor of the guy who... Can you give us one paragraph on why? The smarter it gets, it has absolutely...

There's no reason that it has any investment whatsoever in the continuing existence of humanity. It's utterly irrelevant to it. There's no reason to expect that what comes out of it at the end of it is anything other than inimicable to the human creative spark and human imagination and ingenuity. We don't need it. And I'm a big tech guy.

I'm a big, yes, bring it on. I'm Star Trek. Give me my flip phones. Give me my... Well, we know that. You've got those computers, all of that stuff. I do, but this... To infinity and beyond is our point, James.

You cannot tell me that this has not advanced... The advancements that we've seen since we started just hearing about this, the rapid pace of it is, on stop wait slow it down before something happens uh i mean the example of the well anyway rob where do you stand on this i'm i know you are not the band tiktok paranoid word no i mean look but i just i don't like this i don't like this i'm a fatalist though i don't think that you can i don't think that you can go back i don't think you can put the toothpaste back in the tube as they say so i mean i feel like we have to figure out a way to to live with it and i just think that living in general and being a human and

making decisions and being autonomous and having your you know human natural citizen sovereignty is just going to take a little bit more a lot more work going forward i think we've kind of been sleepwalking on it for a while um and we've thought of that we are sort of looking for like well what are the things i don't have to think about anymore um and i don't think that you can ever not think about your own freedom and your own freedom of choice and thought and speech and um you know just your your sovereign rights as a citizen um suppose does this strike you as a society that's in the mood for more work well i'm yeah no maybe not but i don't i the problem for me is that if you if you attempt to ban something like this this technology then the only people who will use it will be people who are smarter than you are and they'll continue to

use it and we won't know it i agree uh and so there's no there's a banning is not a possible um it's not part of the of the decision uh array so what's the decision right it may just have to be that we do more work i mean you know for you this is kind of a human problem definitely it's a cultural it's a modern cultural problem right people are looking around and saying like just think about people trying to lose weight um like if you just go on email or tiktok and just say or instagram instagram's filled with weight loss infomercials right basically uh and they kind of all say you know it's a lot easier than you think it's actually a lot easier than you think and everybody knows no it's not you just have to eat less and that's hard for a lot easier than you think. And everybody knows, no, it's not. You just have to eat less.

That's hard for a lot of people, including me. And move more. Right, and move more. Who wants to do that? Isn't there an easier way? And the truth is that some things aren't easier. We just have thought, we've convinced ourselves that they are, they should be. Morally, I shouldn't have to do this or that.

And the truth is that no, some things are always going to be hard. And's always going to be hard especially as the world gets more busy and noisy and there's more intrusions into our privacy just because everybody's closer to us than they ever were before it's just going to be harder and harder and harder to be a sovereign citizen but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it that actually means it's better let me give you a test rob you're okay you're a citizen of manhattan this is not a test yeah This is not a test. This is a choice. Here's the choice. Within the next five to 10 years, you may have no traffic in Manhattan. I'm not saying no cars. I'm saying no traffic jams, no trouble parking, no traffic jams, traffic moves smoothly. There's never another instance of what did it used to be called before rudy made it illegal uh grid gridlock there's never another instance of gridlock all right here's the price you have to pay you will never be allowed to drive a car on the island of manhattan again do you take the deal no i mean i don't know i don't think so i

mean the interesting thing about the the traffic i mean, the specific issue with traffic in Manhattan, it's interesting because a lot of these streets have been essentially slimmed by two lanes it that you you everyone can you can have the most efficient commute ever in your car and the only thing you have to do is give up your right to choose your route and for your right to keep your destination private because if the giant auto brain knows where everybody's driving um it will be able to root us in the most efficient way and the benefit of that is that actually we have these beautiful cars that seem to work and they're really great and they're much more efficient in a lot of ways to get you exactly where you want to go than a train or a bus let's be honest um the downside is that there's a million cars going different but just noise there's no organizational structure to any of this any of these sort of packets of people rather than packets of information so that's what ways is so maybe maybe maybe we'll need to here's a thought

maybe we can invite david gillertner david and i were exchanging david and i were exchanging emails about ai just the other day and he said there are many benefits, and he listed some benefits. And of course, I'm not a founder of the discipline of computer science the way he is. Some of it I couldn't follow. But he said, here's the risk. I'm pretty sure that in 20 years, you won't even have the option of driving your own car. That's, I think that's exactly right. That's where this is going. All right. And when they come, when they come for your, I mean, I actually, when they come for your rights, right? When people come for your sovereignty and for your freedom, they don't, I mean, no, they don't, they never.

They're going to sound very reasonable. They sometimes come in jackboots and, you brown shirts sometimes but mostly they come in friendship offering convenience yes yes and that is the that is i think the thing we have to fight against the incremental diminution of liberty and agency will always be done by promising an ease and a certain removal of responsibility who wants to plan their own trip to get across Manhattan when you could have the auto brain do it for you? And of course, the information is going to be encrypted. Nobody's ever going to find out that. We all know how that works. Hey, listen, one of the things you can do when you're in Manhattan is, you know, drive around

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And we thank Refunds Pro for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast. Oh, I just saw who we got. Yeah, him again. John Yoo. John Yoo. You know, he likes McDonald's and he likes Spam Musubi. And apart from these appalling culinary tastes, he's pretty smart guy and we love him he teaches legal stuff at berkeley and it's

attached to aie and hoover etc etc he's been here in the ricochet podcast a lot in powerline podcast and so forth never seems to wear out his welcome because he's always a cheerful presence and he's a smart guy and he knows his stuff and uh hey john how are you today 34 indictments wow what do you think guys can we all tell the listeners the real truth is that now we can reveal rob long has been on this grand jury this whole time and he picked of the many charges you could bring against trump he picked the one that would make the best sitcom oh the worst sitcom i mean you know as the as the resident you know anti-trumper here on this on this podcast you know these charges are stupid when even i know they're stupid or am i

am i stupid about that too john i think that this is a terrible case to be even if you wanted to get trump you would not want this case to be broad even if you can take that for granted in the case of mr long so so john what do we know do we know about it? Tell us what we know and tell us why you think we know it. Are you pretty satisfied that the reporting on this is good, that the DA's office is leaking intentionally and accurately and so forth? Well, I think the DA's office is leaking like a sieve, but it's not just the DA's office. You've also got reporters staking out the courthouse and watching the witnesses coming in and leaving the grand jury room. Plus, you've got witnesses who come out on TV and start telling everybody what

they testified about, which you're not really supposed to do. But there's no way to stop people from doing that in New York City. So I think we have a pretty good picture of what this is going to be, which is it's going to be about this 130 000 hush money payment by donald trump in 2016 during the campaign to former or i guess current i don't know porn star stormy daniels this is why i thought rob fingerprints were all over this so to speak i mean he would of course want the main character in this to be called stormy daniels but no of course he has much better ones yeah it does have have the ring of of uh the kind of hack writing that i would do yeah a little on the nose can we just get clear for a minute john i know everyone's jumping but

i just need to know it's not illegal to pay somebody hush money right right this is the problem about this prosecution is right if if it was illegal to pay people for non-disclosure agreements right half of hollywood and half of wall street be in jail right now there's nothing about that nothing illegal about that so what the da here is trying to say is that trump mischaracterized it's like doing your own personal taxes. He tried to charge this to the business and not to himself or not to his campaign. That's the charge. But that charge ran out. He had two years to bring that after it happened. That should have been brought by 2018, and it wasn't. That's the real problem Bragg has, is in order to try to stick it in now, seven years later, he has to claim this is really a felony. Not just any felony, but it's a felony because Trump essentially gave himself a campaign contribution by paying off Bernie Daniels. to this point before you go, if indeed he did do what Michael Cohen said and claim hush

money as legal payments somewhere in his huge accounting book, that would have been a misdemeanor and the charges would have had to have been brought within two years. So as of five years ago first of all who would bring a misdemeanor charge of this kind anyway as far as i can tell from reading around in new york they don't bring they don't charge that stuff they don't worry about it they have worse problems uh but it would have had to have been brought five years ago okay gone can't do that so therefore to chart to indict donald trump we must do what exactly? Explain this, which is everywhere being called, I love this phrase, a novel legal theory. Untested slash rejected slash unconstitutional, I would say, legal theory.

Okay. Can you explain it? Yep. Yes. So, in New York, you could claim it's a felony. And a felony is a serious crime punishable by a significant jail time. So most things you've heard of, like murder, rape, assault, robbery, those are felonies. Those have longer statute limitations. To try to get it to that level, the DA here, Alvin Bragg, has to say, okay, Trump cooked the books to conceal some other crime. That is a felony in New York law. The problem is, you know, that's Rob's question is, what's the other crime, right? What he did here is not illegal. So this is where it really gets into the gymnastics the acrobatics is he says trump violated the election laws right not the new york state of the united states he violated

federal election law and then it gets even with me here this is when you have to take this long to explain to someone what the criminal charges are, you're already going free. Right. So then what he has to say is, oh, when Trump paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels during the campaign, he was really making a campaign expenditure to stop bad press getting out about him on account of how does that oh to stop bad press right yeah uh okay so because because no one would have ever imagined that trump would have ever paid it would have been so shocking to hear that donald trump paid a porn star off it's like like yeah yeah i'll say to big matt um obviously rob this is where rob should have been a criminal defense lawyer because a great trump's great defense to this charge is i do this

all the time yeah this is not about a campaign i've got thousands of women i think this happened to dollars two over the years we uh just so john i mean uh i've been reading about this last two days obviously um we have been here before this case has already appeared in court not with donald trump and stormy daniels but with vice former senator and vice presidential candidate john edwards and real hunter essentially he paid her off he used campaign funds they took him court, and he was acquitted. This theory that you're giving yourself an illegal campaign contribution by paying someone hush money has never been accepted by any court, as far as I know. And the only time it was put to the test was with John Edwards, and the jury acquitted him. Because the claim is, this is not

a campaign expenditure. This is just something any normal person would not want out there in public, and they would have paid it no matter what, whether they're running for office or not. So, for example, you can't take your campaign funds and spend them on stuff you do every day anyway. You can't pay your home mortgage off with campaign funds. Although I don't know if Hillary tried that one. She might have. But you can't use your campaign funds to put your kids in fancy private schools or pay for your dry cleaning and your dinners and lunches and everything. So Trump's defense is going to be, as Edwards' defense was, I would have done this anyway. It didn't matter if I was running for president or not. When you mentioned Hillary, though, wasn't there something about her using money to buy the Steele dossier and writing it off as legal expenses, what is actually a campaign

expense? I heard something about that. Yes. No, I do think people who are claiming this is unjust prosecution have a point and this is what gets to the unconstitutional point of this is at least in the case james is mentioning at least in the case that rob's mentioning the federal government the justice department investigated they decide not to charge hillary they charged edwards and lost the prosecutors remember this they're not going to push this theory right this case was also investigated. They decide not to charge Hillary. They charged Edwards and lost. The prosecutors remember this. They're not going to push this theory. This case was also prosecuted before. This is why Michael Cohen, prosecutors brought these charges for this exact conduct here against

Michael Cohen because he was the bag man. Michael Cohen was Trump's lawyer and he carried, apparently transmitted the money. The U.Ss attorney went after him and he pled guilty right he's the bag man so the problem here is and the reason why i think it's unconstitutional is state prosecutors can't go around saying i'm going to get you for federal law only federal prosecutors the justice department prosecutes federal law and only state prosecutors prosecute state law so think about what happens this is a question i ask i ask my friends you know my liberal friends which is most of my friends i guess is what are you going to do when the shoe's on the other foot now every republican da in texas and florida is going to start investigating the biden family right that's

exactly my first thought do they really think the house of representatives can't find anything in the hunter biden laptop that would enable them to bring charges against the president biden no absolutely not it was peddling on its face it seemed okay so and you're so how do your friends how do your friends reply john how do your liberal friends of your friends liberal friends that's a redundancy how do your friends reply it's a it's a um sort of the trump exception rule i think of it is trump is such a danger that it's worth breaking all these rules or not worrying about the future consequences on institutions to get him because he's a unique danger to democracy at the exact moment right now the manhattan district

attorney i was responding to a letter from the house republicans house republicans that said hey listen we want to know what's your go what's going on in those grand jury rooms we want to know what's going on in those grand jury rooms. We want to know what you're looking at. And he responded in a letter that said basically, hey, buzz off. I'm a district attorney. You have no power over me. You have no standing here. You have no – and yet a week later, he's meddling into federal jurisdiction. So, I mean, I say this as a New new york resident meanwhile there's a lot of bad

guys on the street like the manhattan district attorney is not supposed to be i mean i actually believe i mean maybe i'm wrong i don't know that much about federal election law but it always seems to me that fec violations are how you get the person that you don't like and it's usually over something like this or some kind of quasi ill-defined number and you know dinesh d'Souza whatever you think of dinesh d'Souza should not have been wearing an ankle bracelet for federal for fec violations that's it it does seem like this is not only bs but a waste of time right and this is why uh we actually say federal government you're in charge of your crimes state da's you're in charge of your you know state crimes because rob is reacting the way any misbegotten resident of new york city being

from philadelphia i can say that the misbegotten residents of New York City should react, which is we put this guy into office to make our city safer. How is this advancing any kind of priorities that help New York City at all? And if federal prosecutors want to charge Edwards and not charge Hillary, well, we can hold them responsible. But when you start saying, oh, the state DA in New York is going to start prosecuting people for campaign laws, there's no way for us to hold anybody accountable who's responsible. That's why I think this is a very dangerous precedent, because this is not just going to be candidates for the presidency. What if this becomes part of the standard operating procedure for political operatives in every campaign? Why not do this to senatorial candidates,

presidential candidates? And we're Costa Rica. We're Honduras. This is a banana republic. This is a third world. Right. There's no way for the nation. You know, we vote for the president. There's no way for us to hold Alvin Bragg accountable. Right. So, John, let me sum up and just ask the, you said it, but I want to hear you say it really quotably. The indictment rests on a legal theory which is at a minimum tortured. There's a jurisdictional overreach which is likely unconstitutional. And in prosecuting the case, in trying the case, the Manhattan DA will be required to rely on the testimony

of an admitted liar. All three of those are correct, right? All right. Is it conceivable that such an indictment would have been brought against anyone other than Donald Trump? I can't imagine it. I can't imagine it. Okay. I can't imagine it. So those of us who are saying that this is a really a grotesque misuse of the legal system, that this is a political and ideological prosecution, are simply correct. We're not overheated.

We're not being hysterical. That's simply what has happened here, right? Even the judicious John Yoo would say that. Yeah. I mean, you have a guy who was elected to office as a Democrat in New York City, one of the most bluest of the blue states, who said he was going to go after Trump. And that is a violation of everything a prosecutor should do. It's long been a principle of prosecution. You don't go after a person. That's how the Soviets would try to run criminal justice. I think Berea said, I think he was the head of Stalin's secret service, he said,

show me the man, I'll show you the crime. That's the worst of what a justice system is. It's not even a justice system. Our justice system is you have prosecutors who judge what is the best case to bring to protect the public. And these charges, based on this, the facts as we know them, is so, so weak. It only reinforces that it's political. This is the other political point I'd make. It's not really political points. Legal slash political point is, by being first, Bragg is going to give Trump enormous ammunition to rightly attack the prosecution as politicized.

It's going to cloud all the other, I think, much more meritorious investigations that are going on right now into january 6th or classified documents of mario lago or the georgia district attorney down in georgia right trump i think is gonna i read i think i saw a poll today saying that a two to one i think americans think this prosecution is political that could right in fact all the other prosecutions to come but there are people who don't mind that it is there are a lot of i mean and i've been talking with people who just it's like well this may not be the thing really it's those other things it's mostly january 6th when he told everybody to go and break in and kill people but you didn't um and we'll get to that in a second here but you know this will do

in the absence of anything else this will do because he's just kind of guilty in a meta sense as well as a micro so you know to get him on this then they get him on which to me is a dangerous way to look at the law i mean did you did yeah it's like finally comeuppance after all these years of the walls closing in and the end is coming and the rest of it. You know, we didn't get him on. We didn't get him on being a Putin stooge who took money from the Kremlin. So we'll get him on this and that'll be fine because in the karmic sense, it works, which is really not a good way to run a republic. Two thoughts about that. One is people don't realize in this country we don't have many police. We don't have a lot of prosecutors. Americans willingly comply and cooperate with law enforcement because Americans have great faith in the integrity of our justice system.

If they start by polling two to one thinking our politics, I mean, our law enforcement are political, then that means we're going to have a lot of trouble enforcing our laws and maintaining law and order in the country. And then the second thing is, and James is repeating what I have here from my friends when I argue with them about this, and my response is, think about the future incentives you're creating. Think about what you're doing to the presidency. Who's going to want to be president in the future and then when they have to make tough decisions do you want them factoring into their minds oh someday i'm going to get sued investigated my family's going to run up millions of dollars in legal fees because i have to make a tough call right and then you're going to subject presidents senators to members of the house cabinet members to the whims of any

elected prosecutor anywhere in the country is it really the way we want to run a government they know they know they know if they don't know it specifically they know it instinctively that if indeed that happens and the republicans start to go after the democratic candidates that they will have an entire media apparatus on their side to show how this is baseless, this is politically motivated, and these people are just being mean to people who are blameless, because generally the people who will come from the left will be blameless. They're not motivated by avarice, by any sense. They're not motivated by power. No, they're motivated by doing the good things that need to be done, whereas we know that the people on the right will be the ones who are justifiably investigated because they're corrupt in essence in philosophy and dealings and the rest of it and there's you know what will it

take to get a media to turn on somebody on the left if they're investigated no they will defend them up and down the hunter biden case was just an example of that rob you had something else to add to that i was going to go wait a minute hold on a second here i. Should we make John sit through a commercial or should we do a nice thing? No, John's got to sit through a commercial. John's not busy. He's got to sit through a commercial. He's got nothing to do. Look at him.

He's just sitting around with his headphones on. You know where I am? You guys will laugh like this. I'm in my mother's retirement home where I'm eating retirement food, which I really like. So I'm getting ready for retirement. I was like, can I put my name down now using the retirement home gym? I love being in a retirement home. How did I not know about this? How young can I be before I sign up? How is your mom, by the way?

She's great. She's turning 85 this weekend. Oh, man. And she was still practicing medicine until COVID stopped her and she couldn't go to the hospital anymore. I like this retirement. It's like being back in college, but everybody's 50 years older. Listen, I met your mom. Your mom versus COVID.

I feel sorry for COVID. She should have been in the hospital. She should have been working. I turned 85 the other day, but what I was doing, I was turning up the thermostat because it was cold in the house. It really was. But now we're getting into the weather where it's going to be nice, even though it's just clammy here in New York. Sounds like it's a little bit shy of warm.

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Promo code RICOSHAY. Exclusions apply. See the site for details. And we do thank Bolan Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now back to John Yoo, where we were asking him legal questions galore. details and we do thank boland branch for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast and now back to john you where we were asking him legal questions uh galore you forgot uh when mentioning brag of course that he's uh that he's soros adjacent which apparently is a way of completely

delegitimizing any criticism that's made of the man right so part of this is look i got no problem with people running for district attorney on a partisan platform and i've got no problem with bragg saying to the voters of new york to people like rob i'm gonna stop prosecuting a lot of people right i'm gonna start letting the back out on the street you're gonna love it it's gonna be great right but that is why he can only prosecute crimes under his own law so that people like Rob can say, this has been a disaster. We're voting you out of office. The problem is Bragg trying to reach out and interfere. And then we should neglect this part, not just with the treatment of an ex-president, but with the current frontrunner of one of the two major parties'

elections for president. Not only is he punishing past presidents, but this is a DA in New York City directly, I think, interfering, and for the purpose of interfering with this prosecution, a national election. That's also something we should really be concerned about. And again, how can the rest of the country hold him, this DA in New York City, accountable for the way he is interfering with national issues? John, can I go through just another couple of legal, ask you for another couple of legal explainers. Ron DeSantis tweeted last night, I'm quoting from his tweet, Florida will not assist in an extradition request what's he talking about that was kind of

interesting but i don't think it's gonna be necessary because uh what i can what i've read is that trump is going to surrender himself on tuesday at the courthouse right where he'll be you know fingerprinted there'll be a mugshot you, I'm wondering whether he's going to have a happy mugshot or a defiant mugshot. I expect a non-smiling mugshot. And then he'll be presented to a judge, and he'll be asked for his plea, and there'll be a request for bail, which I assume would be granted. Then he'll come out onto the front steps of the courthouse, which I expect will be like, I don't know if you've ever seen it, that time he was on a WWF ring. He walked into a World Wrestling Federation match and just sort of took over the ring. But if Trump had resisted, that's why what DeSantis is saying is somewhat relevant,

but not anymore, is suppose Trump had said, I'm not showing up, come and get me. Well, New York can't send police to Florida. They'd have no authority in Florida. So the way it works is usually if you're being prosecuted and the defendant flees to a state, you can go ask that other state to arrest them for you and extradite them back. It's a very routine thing usually because we're one country. So the states are supposed to accept the validity of the demand for arrest and sending them back to the other state but desantis again this is how this prosecution is corrupting the law desantis was suggesting that he would not perform that he gets

his constitutional duty to send trump he gets to exercise his judgment on whether the indictment is valid in the first place usually Usually you don't do that. Usually you, as a governor, you accept it. But he could legally do so? There's precedent for that? No. I mean, I guess theoretically, if someone was completely trumped up charges, right, and on things that aren't even really crimes, but no, you're supposed to basically do it automatically. Okay. I guess what I'm getting at is the unprecedented nature of what's taking place

is placing pressure on ordinary legal practice in all kinds of ways that we're just beginning to glimpse. Whoever, who would have conceived of a governor saying, wait a minute, I'm not so sure I'll extradite this guy if it comes to that. That was inconceivable 48 hours ago. And now Ron DeSantis has said it. Everybody sort of read it and moved on to the, it's just, okay. Next question. How do you get to, you've explained the novel legal theory.

How do you turn that into a couple of dozen counts, which is what the New York Times was reporting, or 34 counts, which is what CNN is reporting right now? How do you get this multiplicity of counts? Well, everybody's wondering whether there's more in there than just the Stormy Daniels hush money piece. People are saying maybe there's hush money payments to other people. Again, as I was discussing with Rob, that actually helps trump's case the more the more hush money payments he did made you know the maybe he said i've got this rotating uh what do you call line of credit at silicon valley bank for people for women to draw on every time that's why the place went under they ran out of money or something but you know the more he did it the more it was

regular the more he gets you know the more he gets out uh from under it but look the 30 and if you're a prosecutor this is how you would do it each time trump made a payment to cohen that's an indictable count so suppose he made five of them suppose there were six changes to the accounting rules each of those is i see every conversation he had with cohen where he told him to do it that could could be accounting. And then you've got conspiring as accountant. So, look, the indictment's under seal. All we really know is the leaks coming out of the DA's office and then the witnesses coming in and out. And we haven't seen witnesses who are involved maybe with the Trump organization or her might be involved with some other kind of crime.

They all seem right. Michael Cohen came back several times. Trump sent this fellow Costello, who had been Cohen's lawyer, who now they had a breakup, and now he testified against Cohen. He apparently went, all these people have been on TV talking about what they were saying, which you're not really supposed to do. And so I think we have a pretty good idea what's in the indictment. So just the 34 counts, it's still really focused on the hush money, the bag man, Michael Cohen, and just reporting it under campaign finance law. Rob. Okay. So John, you're now appointed chief counsel to Donald Trump Incorporated. And you're sitting in the Mar-a-lago i've turned

down many many times yeah yeah well yeah yeah right uh you're sitting at the mar-a-lago patio and you know he's having a big mac and you're having your beloved mcrib you guys are like vibing as the young people say and you're telling him look it's it's not going to be fun you're gonna have to go up there and you're gonna get printed and all that stuff but you're gonna be able you're donald trump you'll be able to turn this into a media opportunity, right? Don't worry about this one. Your odds on this one are pretty good. What are you telling him to worry about? What are the many cases

that he is now facing in Georgia, Florida, etc.? What should keep him up at night so there of the investigations i think the one that would be easiest to prove against him would be the mario classified documents where apparently people have testified we'll find out more but apparently people have testified that trump directed them directed these employees of his to move classified documents around to hide them from searches and federal case special prosecutor correct that's under jack smith special counsel in washington the one that's the most important and serious because i don't think the classified

documents cases actually real is all that important no motive has been established right other than well you want to frame stuff for restaurants yeah other than he wants yeah he wants to keep have some box of keepsakes basically but the one that's the most serious but i think is harder to prove and harder to make out but you could see the investigation is going to is moving forward quickly on it is a january 6 investigation did trump conspire in any way with the people responsible for the riot at the capitol and or did trump how involved was he with efforts to pressure mike pence to block so so you you you think you this i i did not expect that you to say this

because i i mean my legal mind and as you know i have a steel trap legal mind i may i have not full disclosure i have not passed the bar in new york state but um uh i i thought i thought i might look at this january 6th stuff and i say this as the resident you know trumpeter like the guy just i mean he's a jerk and he's you know i'm you know how i feel about him but this this didn't this didn't uh it's a very confusing crime calling up the sitting governor of georgia and saying find me the votes here's what what I need. I need 11,973 votes. That seems to me to be a little bit more legal exposure. But then again, I haven't passed the bar in the state of California, as you know. So educate me. Well, the thing about the Georgia case that's difficult is one, I mean, so again, we've got another problem. We've got a state officer trying to investigate a president for something that might really be a federal crime, not a state crime. So what's a state crime? Is it going to be some kind of fraud in the election? Well, what do these words, find me 110,000 votes mean? Is he saying, you know, there's got to be a legal, there's got to be a cache of legal votes that you guys have overlooked? is he really pressuring him to say defraud the vote count right this is this is a question that's very

difficult to prove it depends on trump's mental state does anyone really want to see a whole trial about trump's mental state i mean trump really but if i'm the prosecutor i say you know you call the governor you say hey listen you make sure you count all those votes. I'm sure I have more votes. I know I had more votes. You better count them all. Right. That's one thing. They call and say, I need eleven thousand four hundred, whatever it is, number of votes to actually know the number seems like, I don't know. That seems seems like it's more of a gun is smoking more to me than the January 6th stuff. But again, I have not, as you know, passed the bar in the state of Massachusetts. So explain your opinion on the January 6th stuff. January 6th,

I think, has gotten more exposure because first, you know, everyone's focused on Trump gave this speech on the ellipse. Is it incitement to commit violence? I don't think it is. I think it is protected by the free speech clause. But that's not really where Trump is vulnerable. Where Trump might be vulnerable are where Trump campaign officials, texting, emailing, calling with whoever were the ringleaders of the violent attack on the Capitol. Were they talking to Trump about it? You only need the testimony of one or two people, say a Rudy Giuliani, for example, or what's her name? Kraken woman, Sidney Powell, to say, oh, I had a conversation with Trump. I told him there were these people who wanted to go into the Capitol and stop the vote count.

And he said, yeah, thumbs up. It'll be beautiful. Right. That's maybe all you need to get conspiracy that Trump was involved. Or the other possibility is, how much pressure did Trump put on Vice President Pence to stop the electoral count? Did he try to really coerce him? I think the reason why I think this is where there's a lot more vulnerability is we've got a lot, we can see in public a lot of what happened in Georgia, a lot of what happened in New York City. I mean, Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary

of State of Georgia, recorded the phone call he had with Trump and released it, right? So, there's a lot more facts that we don't know. But with January 6th, I think there's still a lot more to come. I don't think we really know much about what was happening inside the White House with Trump talking to campaign officials. We've not really heard Rudy Giuliani's story. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You don't think that the January 6th committee has already released every bit of damaging material, damaging to Donald Trump that they possibly could? But they didn't get the cooperation of people like Giuliani, a Eastman, Sidney Powell. That's what I think a prosecutor can do, which a congressional committee cannot.

He can subpoena John Eastman and put him under oath. You could say, well, look, Rudy Giuliani pulls the same line he did with the congressional committee. He says, I'm not going to help you. I'm not appearing. Or Steve Bannon could have been a conduit, too. And they just say they get you know they stiff them that's what bannon did right he just refused to well prosecutor can throw your ass in jail you say that with relish john oh yeah i mean people who refuse to cooperate you know with a legitimate investigation they should spend some

time yeah okay listen can i ask ask, we're going to have to, I'm sure you and Richard are going to devote at least an entire law talk to this. Well, you mean Richard will spend 45 minutes and then I'll spend 10 minutes trying to get him to stop. Well, but I have one last question here,

for me at least, I don't want to preclude Rob or James from coming in again, but the politics of the thing, my heart sinks. I'll just tell you the way it looks to me, and I want to know if you agree. Rob has been anti-Trump for a long, long time. I thought he had three okay years. Okay. Years COVID hit things went sideways. And then after the election, it was just outrageous. But even I have come around to the opinion that we've got

to get rid of this jackass. He just needs to depart the scene. And it looked to me as though Rhonda Sandis was going to be able to make the case to satisfy the Republican impulse for fighting back while still being intelligent and disciplined and honorable. And that Ron DeSantis was going to be able to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination. It's gone. That's just gone the manhattan da has so bungled this from my point of view has put a put to put together an indictment that when donald trump by just looking at the news now

he's called the thing a total political witch hunt and astonishingly enough he is exactly correct and the impulse to rally to donald trump if only to protest the injustice the damage to the american system on the republican among republicans is going to be overwhelming yeah this jackass is going to get the gop nomination so tell me i'm wrong tell me i'm wrong no so if you were to be really machiavellian and suspicious of democrats who don't all operate as a single mind and in one plan but maybe brag by being incompetent has done the biggest favor you could have done to the Democratic Party. Because you could say, maybe this is the turning point when Trump sewed up the nomination.

Exactly. That's exactly what I'm afraid of. And then, meaning Joe Biden will win re-election. Even Joe Biden could defeat Donald Trump. Exactly my fear. So, actually, maybe this partisan Democratic manhattan has pulled a fast one on all of us it's entirely possible but you know what the thing of it is is is as much as i may think that this is a political prosecution and it's thinly sourced and it's a bad idea and the rest of it it doesn't make me want to take a letter opener gouge out an eye and then shoot myself in the foot there are other things i'm not going to rally to this man and hope that he gets the nomination

and surely lose just to show them what I think of their effort. No, the way that you show them what you think is to put somebody in power who is effective and who can undo so much of what has been done and rally a whole part of the country to a new way of looking at these ideas that isn't tied to Donald Trump. Now, they already have got DeSantis branded as the fascist who's going to bring the jackboot rain over the rest of us. But that is a lesson that they're going to learn is not true. I yeah, it's going to help Trump.

But but how many people like Peter are just want the guy to go away and are not going to sacrifice absolutely everything in order to rally to his side. But sadly, look at the polling out in the last two weeks while this has been going on we've all been talking about it trump has increased his lead over desantis right he's now over 50 percent the choice of over 50 percent of republican primary voters and he's got by two to one americans believing this is a politicized prosecution so right no that's true that's all true just with the with the short attention span that we have and the the likelihood that something else is going to happen we'll see we'll see the great thing about it is when

something else does happen we'll have john you back john thank you so much wait no i'm not going i'm staying on uh no actually yeah hey john john John, really, here's my real last question. Are you taking your mom up to Atlantic City to get in a little time at the tables? Actually, you know what? We're going out for a birthday to a restaurant that has been in this town since 1790. I hope the food hasn't been there since 1790. But the building has been there, and the restaurant, I think it's been a continuously operating restaurant since the 18th century. So,

I'm expecting, you know, a hunk of venison, and some what do you call it, succotash? Is that what it's called? And other culinary glories of the 18th century. Yeah. Succotash and sarsaparilla. Well, enjoy yourself. It's been great as ever, and we'll see you the

next time something breaks. Thanks, guys. Thank you, John. And he's in Florida, right? Did we get that? Is he in Florida? Oh, he's in Philly. Right, right, right. John, you can leave now, okay? Yes. You can stop with the interjections

so we can get on. There he goes. There he goes. Cut the cord. Cut the guy. Use a bolt cutter, whatever you need, a lawn shearer or something. Yes, indeed. Well, Philadelphia, big city, big city. Rob, I have to ask you, when was the last time you were in Philadelphia? Oh, my God. Yeah, it's been a long time, actually.

I mean, I drive past it all the time down to Baltimore, but I haven't been in Philadelphia in a long time. Interesting. Well, when you drive, of course, you have to fill up from time to time. And as most people know, when you go to the gas pump at home, there's a couple of prices. There's the price that it says on the pump, but there's also that little 10% off you get because you shop here or you do this, or you got this rewards program. I got that here in Minneapolis. It's great. 10% off, but you know what? I can't always go to that

station. Sometimes there's another brand and I don't have 10 cents off a gallon there. You know, you can't always fill up at the same place. Well, finally, there is an easy way to get cash back at multiple gas stations. It's called Upside. Upside is the incredible app for anybody who buys gas. With Upside, you can get cash back on every gallon of gas you buy. How? Well, Upside manages to offset inflated gas prices by giving you cash back on purchases. All you need to do is click on your handy-dandy little app

and find gas stations that use Upside. With all that savings, the only issue you're left with is, what do I do with my extra cash? Well, you know, as a family that runs convenience stores, you could go inside and buy some jerky. Love that jerky. To get started, download the free Upside app. Use the promo code Ricochet and you get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. An extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. Now next, claim an offer for, you know,

whatever you're buying on Upside, and then pay as usual with a credit or debit card, follow the steps in the app, and get paid. You don't have to worry about them selling your info to third parties either. It doesn't happen. So what are you waiting for? Join Upside users who are saving hundreds every year without any more effort than a trip to the app store. Download the free Upside app and use the promo code RICOCHET to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's an extra 25 cents back on every gallon in your first tank using promo code RICOCHET. And we thank Upside for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Speaking of Ricochet, Rob is here to briefly tell you, I'm setting the time at 90 seconds here, about

upcoming Ricochet promos, which is where people get to meet actual other human beings not ai not avatars actual human beings or he won't or he's on mute can you lip read james i guess he's talking about yeah he's on mute here so he's gonna oh sorry about that yeah no i was gonna say um start the 90 90 seconds now um yeah it's not chat gpt it's chat irl i mean that's my new you know i'm gonna trade my guy by the way i invented that um uh before we go so i want to say that we we should thank ricochet as a is a member organization we want you to join and become a member and one of our members randy wivoda is kind of you know helping arrange all these um meetups and kind of organize them and i think he's organizing especially the one in new orleans

what i'm going to be too i'm going to be in um and um you know that's part of the fun of ricochet is that these are real people and they they're real life people and that's a rare thing real life nice people too so we got a new orleans meetup um in a couple of weeks away it's for we'll be in the french quarter for the french quarter fest go to rickshay.com check it out i'll be there charlie cook will be there uh and we're gonna have a this could be a big bash on friday so make sure you're there on friday um and then following weekend uh members in stillwater minnesota april 22nd they'll be gathering and then there's a mid-july one in formation in winston-salem it's being

worked out so if you're in the area and you have suggestions or whatever you go there go to ricochet.com and check out winston-salem meetup uh if you want to do that and you're not a member there is only one way and that's to become a member so uh matt balser just sent notice about an annual german fest extravaganza will be happening in milwaukee in late july, which actually sounds like a lot of fun. And she, and that's her ricochet handle name, she's not the, and a preferred pronoun, it's not the

President of China. Wondering whether members want to, it would be kind of funny if she was setting up for Beijing, if members want to do a meetup in the Pittsburgh area, because there's a Willie Nelson concert in the Pittsburgh area. I'm a big Willie Nelson fan. Not necessarily politically, but he's a cool dude.

Oh, he's great. And it's a 90th birthday tour. He's 90. So, you know, he probably only has another 30 years left. But look, so that's what's coming up. If they're too far away, if the dates don't work, there is only one way to fix that. Join Ricochet and just announce that you want to put one closer to you on a date that you can make it.

And Ricochet members will arrive there ready to chat IRL. For details on all of this, including Ricochet, including members, including joining, including all that stuff, go to ricochet.com slash events for events. There's a module on the sidebar on the website. And we want to see you. And if you're suddenly available to come to new orleans please do and if you go to ricochet.com join and go to the member site and say hey how come nobody here is talking about baseball you can start talking about baseball and people will chime and you can start talking about anything i would not i mean i go to the member feed all the time i love reading what people are saying and thinking dipping in and saying this or that I would not, I mean, I go to the member feed all the time. I love reading what people are saying and thinking, dipping in and saying this or that. I would not participate in a baseball opening day thing because I don't care. But here's the thing. I am glad baseball exists and I'm happy that it brings people the joy that it does. And America

would not be America without it. And I love those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where they bring back this sort of 1940s attitude of baseball that you think still pervades and is still there under the modern corporate heart, that there's still the smell of the cheap hot dogs, the Red Hot, and the nickel beer and the creek of the wood and the stands and the rest of, and the nickel beer, and the creek of the wood, and the stands, and the rest of it, and the men with their straw boaters, and all those archaic things. You like to think that that's still sort of in the beating heart and soul of baseball. Even though, you know, I'm looking down the street here, and there's a massive, massive stadium down there with a massive corporate presence, and it's big, and the brats are,

you know, $17.50, and the beer costs you an arm and or a leg um but i'm still glad it's there and that was the point at which either of you would drop in and say yes i do too but since you're obviously sort of having a sugar crash or a glucose crash caffeine coffee cup speaking of sugar and glucose and medical, may I rise very briefly to speak in defense of modern medicine? I didn't know anybody was attacking it, but do go on. Well, actually, in my own mind, I sometimes attack it. It's too expensive. It's bureaucratic at all. Okay. I just want to say two things. All my life, I've had a slightly irregular heartbeat, and in the last three years, it's gotten a lot worse, and it's become a problem. And this past week, tachycardia was the problem. It would wake me up at two in the morning, I'd lie there doing nothing, and my heart would be racing at 160 beats a minute.

Unpleasant. Yeah. unpleasant. And this past week, I had something called a heart ablation, and I was wheeled into a room with more equipment than I have ever seen before in my life. I was wired up this way, that way, the other way. Opposite the table was a huge flat panel television with pictures of my heart, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, and pictures showing each of the different leads they had on my body, showing heart activity. I think there may have been as many as a dozen professionals in the room. And they opened up a bit in my leg and sent a catheter up to my heart and very carefully mapped the cells that were misfiring and cauterized those cells. And the following day, for the first time ever since

owning one of these little watches that records my heartbeat, my heartbeat, the little 30 second test on the watch came back and said, my heartbeat is normal. So I don't know what the insurance company is going to get billed for that, fantastically elaborate, but I can only tell you that it worked, that it's a procedure that's only been invented a couple of decades ago, that it would have been impossible without technology and specialization and all kinds of drugs and the new ability to read the electrical discharges in the heart, and it made my life better. I just want to say that in defense of technology and medicine. A, we're glad. We're glad. That's good. B, in defense of tech,

we all have these little moments every day, not something as life-changing or as important as yours, where we realize how much of our existence is just improved in a little bit by this. a day if that didn't you didn't make long distance after 11 and the kids were out until the street lights came you know all those halcyon things but then you think yeah no we live at the apex of civilization right now if we if we really look around it and that's in what you've talked about as one of the examples see uh you would like to think that most of tech these days that the real brilliant people who are going into this want to do things like they did for you not to just disrupt for the sake of disrupting not to come up with a new way to spy and sell information and repackage nonsense but that actually tech can still continue to be a force for good in our lives as it was for you and d if i ever have to have that happen i'm going to ask them to put something

else on the television screen because i'm not necessarily sure i want to watch that stuff i'll get me neither i'd rather watch i'd rather watch colombo uh that stuff. Me neither. I'd rather watch Columbo. Yeah, Columbo's great. I'd rather watch anything. Well, except for that last episode they did in season five where Patrick McGowan directed, and they blew the whole thing up. Look who I'm talking to. One of the worst Columbo experiences I've ever seen in my life.

It's just I want to shout at Columbo every time I see a Columbo. It's Jack Cassidy. He did it. Right. It's always Jack Cassidy or Robert Columbo. They always did it. Or Robert Columbo every time I see a Columbo. It's Jack Cassidy. He did it. Right. It's always Jack Cassidy or Robert Culp. They're always there. He always did it. Or Robert Culp.

Or Patrick McGowan, who had four spots like that. The problem is, of course, is that the more that you look at it now, you realize every single case that the lieutenant, and that's why he's still a lieutenant after all these years, never got promoted. Every case, he tainted every case that he did. There's none of that stuff that would stand up in court. And if there's anything that relies on any sort of cigar ash to be around, he contaminates every scene that he goes to. Really, we didn't know that back then.

We did. Anyway, Peter, glad you're glad you're great. And, you know, now you know that when the heart starts beating a little bit, it'll be a good thing. Yes. A patriotic reason. A piece, you know, some marvelous example of pulchritude strolled by on a summer, spring day. Quiet. That marvelous example of pulchritude would, of course, be my wife.

There you go. There we go. Ladies and gentlemen, that's why he's lived this long and he's buried this long. He knows. Right. Preservation instincts kick in. Hey, this podcast brought to you by Upside, by Bowling Branch and Refunds Pro. Please support them for supporting us.

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