What A Day - Tip Of The Weisselberg

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

A federal judge in Florida announced Thursday he is "inclined" to release parts of the affidavit that led to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. That means it could be made public, giving the Justice Department a week to submit its redactions. Meanwhile, Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty to tax evasion – and agreed to testify in a broader investigation of the company.And in headlines: Israeli forces raided the offices of seven Palestinian rights groups, the U.S. boost its supply of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine, and a federal judge ordered Starbucks to re-hire seven employees fired for union organizing.Show Notes:National Vulnerability Database: “Rhythm Nation” DoS resonant-frequency attack – https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-38392Vote Save America: Fuck Bans Action Plan – https://votesaveamerica.com/roe/Crooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffeeFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday 

It's Friday, August 19th. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And I'm Erin Ryan. And this is What A Day, where we're here to help if anyone wants thoughts on what they should wear to Ben Affleck and J-Lo's wedding this weekend. I RSVP'd you, Priyanka? I mean, I'm already there, so. You're already there?

You're helping him set up? Live from, where are we, Georgia? Yes, you're in Georgia. Yes. On today's show, the U.S. is stepping up its response to monkeypox. Plus, Finland's prime minister is fighting for her right to party. Love that for her. But first, a federal judge in Florida made waves yesterday when he announced that he is, quote, inclined to release the affidavit that led to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. That means it could be made public.

That is, after federal law enforcement submit what they want to be redacted. Judge Bruce E. Reinhart, the same judge who signed off on the search warrant itself, says that the feds have until next Thursday to choose which parts of the documents should get blacked out. Got it. Okay, so who is behind this push to get this affidavit released? Several news organizations, including ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, argue that the document that ultimately gave the FBI permission to search the former president's residence should be made public. Here is Deanna Shulman, a lawyer representing some of those media outlets, speaking to reporters outside of the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach. This is a proceeding that's about the credibility of all the players. So whether the judge is doing

his job, whether the DOJ is doing its job, that is the proper function of these access proceedings and why the public is entitled to access, that is the public interest. We are entitled to monitor the affairs of our government at all levels. And that is the interest in this essence that we were asserting today. Got it. OK, so they want to see this. But who is against this happening? Attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that releasing an affidavit like this while an investigation is still in its, quote, early stages, could jeopardize the outcome. That's because an unredacted affidavit would contain information on witnesses and what gave officials probable cause to believe a crime had occurred. But Judge

Reinhart has given the federal government the opportunity to redact any details that might endanger their case, so it's unlikely that the really juicy stuff like who in Trump's orbit has been talking to the FBI, which we're all dying to know, including probably Donald Trump, and what they spilled, it's unlikely that that would be made public at this time. That sort of information doesn't typically come out until criminal charges are filed. Got it. Okay. So tough break for everybody who wanted the tea, but I suppose very understandable for this person's safety. So where does the former president stand on all of this? Do I even want to know? For a guy who never shuts up, it's really hard to actually tell what he really wants

because his lawyers sat silently in court on Thursday. They didn't argue for or against the document being released. Weird strategy. Okay. They were't argue for or against the document being released. Weird strategy. Okay. They were just there to witness. But the former guy himself has been all caps yelling into the cesspool that is truth social about how he does want the full affidavit released. The problem with that is even he has no idea what's in it. And it's highly possible, probable that whatever's in there will make him look even worse than he already does. Tough to do.

Yeah. CNN reports that Trump's allies are banding about the possibility of releasing security footage from the Mar-a-Lago raid to the public, arguing it would be good to keep the story in the news to rile up his base. But there's also the possibility that if the public sees the sheer volume of documents he carted off from the White House, boxes and boxes, that might actually drive home how serious his offense is. Like with Hillary's emails, you can't picture that volume. But when you see 15 boxes of documents. You're like, maybe he shouldn't have taken all those home. That's kind of weird.

You put in a lot of effort to do something you weren't supposed to do. This wasn't a whoopsie daisy. Yeah. It was like a deliberate effort. According to the Justice Department attorneys, the full affidavit is, quote, very detailed and reasonably lengthy, unquote. So if it does get released, I've got my doubts that the former president would actually read it unless Judge Reinhart orders the Justice Department to release a version of it that is mostly pictures. Got it. So he is getting the recap from Fox News. Good for him.

I suppose that's nothing out of the ordinary. So what this all amounts to is an announcement that next Thursday, the judge will consider whether to release a redacted affidavit at some point TBD in the future. So many secrets. So much intrigue. Is this a criminal case or is this Taylor Swift teasing a new album? We will never know. If it were both, that would be pretty incredible. Yes. If Taylor somehow figured out a way to drop hints about her next project.

In the affidavit, congratulations. Hats off to you. Master of publicity. Master of publicity. Yeah. You know, this isn't the only thing happening in Trump world. It's actually one of like 5 million right now. But there is more tough news. Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer for the Trump organization, pleaded guilty yesterday for his role in the company's alleged tax fraud scheme. So as part of his plea deal, Weisselberg agreed to testify against the Trump organization during the trial. We touched on this briefly in yesterday's show, but we wanted to give you some more details now that we have them. All right, so let's start with what he's charged with here. Can you give us more details?

Definitely. So prosecutors allege that from 2005 up until July of this year, the Trump Organization and Weisselberg committed tax fraud in an effort to pay their executives off the books. So this means that instead of paying them money that would be taxed like any normal company would, like you or I gets paid, they try to compensate employees with crazy perks in addition to, you know, whatever baseline amount they were being paid.

So in Weisselberg's case, the business paid for his rent and utilities for an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, an expensive place to be, leases for not one but two Mercedes cars. Okay, pause. Why does he need two cars if he's living on the Upper West Side? Who knows? Is there a space to park this?

Absolutely not. Where are you parking, sir? Where are you parking your two Mercedes? Would love to know. Not included whether or not the parking was covered in this. Yeah, because that's at least $5 million. Truly. Private school tuitions for his grandkids

and more. So basically he is living life and not paying taxes on any of this additional stuff, the total value of which is estimated to be around $1.7 million. Obviously that is not allowed. He was charged with 15 felonies and in pleading guilty to those, he admitted that he didn't tell his accountant about those benefits and knowingly left them off of his personal tax returns. Sounds pretty crimey to me. Definitely does. Let's talk about this deal that he took. What does it mean? Yeah, so he was facing up to 15 years in prison for his role in this tax fraud scheme.

But in exchange for his testimony against the Trump Organization in a separate trial set to begin in October. He will instead serve five months and get five years probation. According to the New York Times, with good behavior, this will get cut down to just 100 days and he has to pay nearly $2 million in taxes, penalties, and interest. All right, so time for the question we all want to know. What, if anything, does this mean for Donald Trump? Yeah. So in this case, there aren't specific members of the Trump family who are accused of wrongdoing. Weisselberg was charged as an individual and the Trump organization was charged as a whole. So if the organization is convicted of criminal tax fraud, that is a huge deal, really bad. They can't do business in the way they do now. They could have to pay fines and taxes that they owe, but nobody is going to prison for that,

including Donald Trump. So we did not get him here, sadly, for everyone who's been waiting at home. However, I should note that Weisselberg isn't cooperating with another separate criminal case in New York against Trump or any of the other criminal investigations involving Trump,

but prosecutors can point to any admissions in his testimony of conspiring with the Trump organization in that criminal case and the other ones. So still could be bad. Donald Trump is the greased pig of the American legal system. Quite truly. Just running around, squealing all over the place. Nobody can catch him. Escaping everybody's clutches.

Indeed. That's exactly what's happening. That is the latest for now. Let's get to some headlines. Headlines. Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson, who hasn't even taken the field as a Cleveland Brown yet, will now be suspended for 11 games without pay following accusations of sexual misconduct by over two dozen women. Initially, Watson was benched for just six games,

but that penalty was revised yesterday and he'll have to go through a mandatory mental health treatment plan as well. Watson must also pay a $5 million fine, the largest financial penalty ever imposed on an NFL player. But it pales in comparison to his five-year contract with the Browns, which is worth $230 million. What a complete and utter disaster. And it couldn't have happened to a Cleveland Browns-y or team. Israeli forces raided the offices of seven Palestinian rights groups in the West Bank yesterday, forcing them to shut down all operations. These offices were located in the city of Ramallah, where soldiers broke into the

premises, confiscated documents and welded the door shut to keep people from entering. Authorities then left behind notices declaring the organizations to be quote-unquote unlawful. This comes after the Israeli government accused most of these groups of being terrorist organizations late last year. But the international community has called these accusations baseless. All seven organizations spoke out against Israel for the raids yesterday, accusing the government of targeting them and the essential services they provide to Palestinians, such as legal aid for detainees. Yeah, this is awful. A mess.

That's not good news. U.S. officials announced yesterday that they will boost the country's available supply of the monkeypox vaccine called Jynios by an extra 1.8 million doses. The White House's monkeypox response coordinator, Bob Fenton, also said that they're creating a pilot program to reserve vaccines specifically for the LGBTQ population. That will provide up to 50,000 doses from the national stockpile to be made available for pride and other events that will have high attendance of gay and bisexual men. For any local health department to get these newly available vials, they must agree to give the vaccine in a specific way designed to stretch out the number of shots. Instead of injecting full doses into a person's fat, a smaller amount would just go under the skin. However, some health experts questioned

whether there is enough data to show that this method will effectively build up people's immunity. Well, Priyanka, I hope it does. I know. Yeah, please don't waste this. Seems like a pretty big risk. This has one job and it's to keep people safe. So please let's make sure it does that.

I really hope it works. A federal judge ordered Starbucks to rehire seven pro-union employees in Memphis, who the company fired last February. Starbucks denied any wrongdoing, but yesterday the judge agreed with the National Labor Relations Board, which argued that the firings violated the barista's right to organize. The workers have been calling themselves the Memphis Seven, and here's one of them in a video they shared with the news outlet More Perfect Union.

Hello, Nikki Taylor here from the reinstated Memphis Seven, and I just want to say thank everybody for the support. We won. Absolutely, we won, and I'm so, so excited. Thank you! And just in time for PSL season. Really? Starbucks has four days left to give them their forest green aprons back so they can resume upselling you on four-day-old cake pops.

According to the union Starbucks Workers United, the company has fired around 75 union leaders and unionizing baristas across the country. Yeah, feels blatantly illegal to me, but they continue to do it. Doesn't really seem to be stopping them. It should. Now that his party has hitched its wagon to the likes of Georgia's Herschel Walker and Pennsylvania's Dr. Oz,

Mitch McConnell is expressing some concerns about, quote, candidate quality in midterm Senate races. Yeah, I wonder why. The Senate minority leader spoke with reporters yesterday in Kentucky, and he theorized that based on the people who are running, Republicans are more likely to flip the House

than the Senate. What a delicate way to put that. This idea won't surprise anyone who has watched Dr. Oz grow grocery shopping or learned one single thing about Herschel Walker. Meanwhile, Republicans are spending big to back a Senate candidate who seems slightly more viable, proud techno hillbilly J.D. Vance. Yesterday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a McConnell-aligned PAC is spending $28 million on radio and TV ads to support Vance

in Ohio, where he's running in a close race against Democrat Tim Ryan. Please, please do not vote for this man. Yeah, don't. And you have Mitch McConnell, a man with a 20% approval rating. Yeah, being like, uh. He's concerned about candidate quality. That's a bad sign. Yeah, that's true. Finland's millennial prime minister has achieved something amazing. She has a group of friends who are down to turn the hell up in their mid to late 30s. Love that. I mean, are they new friends? Because that would be truly amazing if she made those friends in her mid to late 30s. But instead of being celebrated, Sona Marin is being criticized. Since Instagram videos of the world's second youngest head of state dancing and partying with friends surfaced this Wednesday,

she's been hounded by members of the opposition party. Talk about an opposition party. Truly. They're opposed to parties in general some of whom are calling for her to take a drug test for her part marin expressed a willingness to put her money where her sterile plastic cup is and said quote i did not take drugs nor did i consume anything other than alcohol she could have stopped there but she took it one step further adding quote i've never been in a situation where I've seen or known others using drugs. Lady.

All right. In Europe. All right. Partying. And yes, you have. And that's okay. You didn't need to lie. We believed you.

Like, you were down to pee in the cup. I was here being like, I don't even need to see it. She's just having a good time. Let her live her life. You don't have to lie here. It's fine. It's fine. And it sounds like the people who are in the opposition party are just absolutely terrible.

Yeah. And really highlight the necessity of her being in the office that she has. Because otherwise the Karen party would be ruling Finland and nobody wants that. Seems like it. And those are the headlines. We'll be back after some ads with some info about the dangerous collision between early 2000s laptop technology and late 80s pop music technology. It's Friday, WOD Squad, and today we're introducing a new segment called Geeks WOD, where we apply high-level scientific analysis to an important story from the world of tech. For those of you who are wondering, GeeksWOD is spelled with the word geeks,

space, and then the acronym WOD. No relation to the place where they fix your computer at Best Buy. We will probably have to bleep those words out so we do not get sued. Anyways, a vulnerability has been exposed in Windows XP era laptops and not a second too soon.

The problem has just been given an official common vulnerabilities and exposures or CVE number. And apparently I have to read it to you all, which is great for me. It is CVE-2022-38392. And essentially it manifests when these laptops play the 1989 hit song,

Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson and subsequently crash because the song's specific audio frequencies resonate with the computer hard drive's operating frequencies and cause the drives to vibrate out of control. Incredible. Same. Truly. Same. Truly same. Here is a clip from the song so you get a sense of its awesome power. If you're listening to this podcast on a laptop from 2005, please mute and turn the volume back on in 20 seconds. This sounds like something that would be very cutting edge in its time, you know, like where it's like, this is a new sound. Priyanka, do not besmirch.

No, no, no. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, that's probably why the computers are freaking out. They're like, what is this? Oh, so you're saying it was like a future looking. Yeah. Donna Jackson saw the future and she was like, I'm going to fuck with some computers in the year 2005. Well, maybe she didn't intend, but the computers, I understand why they are freaking out. Right. It would be like if you were like cryogenically frozen in 1975 and you woke up in 1989 and Rhythm Nation was playing.

Yeah. And you'd be like, what is going on? Yeah. That's what these computers are. Obviously, we have known about Janet Jackson's ability to bring us to our knees for decades, but we didn't know she could also do this to our circuit boards. So Erin, what is your take on this? Okay, I really want this technology to have a broader implication. I wonder if there's a Janet Jackson song that we can play at a certain frequency and volume outside of, say, the Navient headquarters, erase some student loan payments for some people. I think that we could probably find a Janet Jackson song that we play really loudly outside of maybe a bank that's charging excessive overdraft fees.

Go ahead and erase that. Deposit a cool grand in everybody's account. It feels like a weapon for good. I feel like we should be using the power bops of the late 80s and early 90s to right social injustices. And I think that we can do it if there's a smart enough person listening. Please become a mad scientist and make this your life goal. Well, I mean, I think all it requires is us just doing like a WOD, you know, picking a time. Everybody just drive outside wherever with the computers and play this song on full volume

and then watches our society crumbles. Yes, exactly. I mean, it's going to be trial and error. We have to try all kinds of different songs, but they have to be dance jams and they have to be awesome. And you have to play them very, very loudly. And something is bound to work. It's like the principle of having like a million monkeys on a million typewriters. Eventually one of them will write Shakespeare. Eventually we will

somehow dismantle the power structures that oppress us. Totally. With music. This is our first Geek Squad, but I feel like it's pretty great. I think this is maybe our thesis for all future Geeks. It might be. Anyways, that was Geek Squad. Remember to restart your computer at least once every year. I will not be updating. No. Absolutely no. No to the update every single day. No.

No. It's just a suggestion. One more thing before we go. With less than 100 days until the midterms, it's safe to say midterm madness is setting in. Right now, you can find all new Vote Save America merch in the Crooked store. A portion of every single order on the Crooked store goes to VoteRiders, the leading organization focused on educating citizens about their state's voter ID requirements and helping them secure the documents they may need to vote. So check out crooked.com slash merch for the latest drop. Then head to votesaveamerica.com to find out

how you can get involved and do your part in the lead up to this year's midterms. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, turn up with the prime minister of Finland and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just descriptions of Janet Jackson-related computer problems like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cookit.com

slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And here's to you, Ben and J-Lo. She's not J-Lo anymore. She changed her name. Oh, to J-Aff. J-Aff? J-Aff. Ugh.

Jafflic. Oh, that's kind of cool. Yeah. We have some suggestions to the artist formerly known as J-Lo. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance, Jazzy Marine, and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Lita Martinez and Leo Duran. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. you