Breaking Down The Mueller Hearings

Episode Notes

Transcript

Above the Law – Thinking Like a Lawyer

Breaking Down The Mueller Hearings

07/30/2019

 

[Music]

 

Intro: Welcome to Thinking Like a Lawyer with your hosts Elie Mystal and Joe Patrice, talking about legal news and pop culture, all while thinking like a lawyer, here on Legal Talk Network.

 

[Music]

 

Joe Patrice: Hello. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. I am Joe Patrice from Above the Law, with me is Elie Mystal. How are you?

 

Elie Mystal: Well, I am going to die.

 

Joe Patrice: I mean, right, that’s actually how the legal industry works, at the end of the day if you don’t bill enough you do die.

 

Elie Mystal: I am just — I just —

 

Joe Patrice: Oh, right, this is the part where you like hyperventilate about things that you think will allow you to be on TV more.

 

Elie Mystal: No, I don’t even want to be on TV.

 

Joe Patrice: That’s just not true.

 

Elie Mystal: I don’t even want to be on TV right now, like I don’t see — what the hell would I say oh, the President committed multiple crimes and nothing is going to happen to him, nothing is going to happen to him, because all we can talk about is whether or not Robert Mueller seems super old, like that — I can’t —

 

Joe Patrice: That is problematic. But I mean it’s problematic, but it’s problematic for reasons that make — they are problematic for reasons that make a lot of sense to me, because people don’t understand, and maybe this is a good topic for conversation, people don’t understand what the legal industry is all about.

 

Bob Mueller yesterday seemed to me like a lot of very prestigious, very thoughtful lawyers at big law firms and government positions across the country, somebody who was very thoughtful, careful, worked out everything, was very, I am not going to speak to that if I can’t look at it and make sure I am right, just what a lawyer should in theory be. And the problem is a lot of the nature of the way media has turned in this country is Bob Mueller is showing up, he is going to start throwing fireballs, and it’s like well, no, he isn’t.

 

Elie Mystal: I think there is that. I think there is the issue of performative lawyering. It goes to people who kind of watch too much Law and Order and have never like actually listened to a courtroom trial and people who — it’s amazing this is happening at Congress, because they are people who should be watching congressional testimony all the time, but people who haven’t watched these men all the time have no idea what a lawyer sounds like when they are being essentially cross-examined.

 

And more astounded, like if you are surprised by how Mueller sounded, you just haven’t been paying attention to how all lawyers sound if they possibly can, right? If they possibly can what they are going to do is say please refer me to the exact citation that you are talking about so I can read it before I answer anything that you are going to say, like that’s — people are like oh, Mueller didn’t have command of the facts.

 

No, he had command of the facts, but he wanted to know specifically to the page and paragraph number what the hell you guys were talking about before he answered, and all the congressman could do is, as he was fumbling through the pages they were like, I have got to keep moving on because I only have five minutes, which is why it’s also fucking dumb to question people in five minute segments, like the whole thing just starts off dumb, proceeds dumbly and leads to a dumb conclusion. And none of that is Mueller’s fault.

 

Joe Patrice: Yeah. No, I completely agree. I am one of those people, and I actually had a Twitter exchange as the hearings were going, where somebody — a right-wing person said oh, this isn’t going very well for you guys, and I was like I don’t know what you mean. As a lawyer it’s going pretty much according to form. He is responding to questions that are being posed to him in a very careful and measured way and that’s what I expected, because I am one of those people who know Bob Mueller, not personally, but by reputation, but in his face I saw 8 million mentors of mine over the years who would respond exactly the same way, who would go okay, hold on, what do you mean, you mean that page. Yes, I would agree with that.

 

Exchanges where people of both parties would ask questions where he would go I will agree to the first part of that, but I will disagree with your characterization of the second, just a very careful deposition. And America isn’t ready for depositions and America doesn’t want depositions, because we have reached that stage of idiocracy where everybody wanted to watch a weird bomb throwing competition and when it didn’t turn out to be that; unfortunately, the bastions of traditional media decided to start saying he is old and didn’t have command of the facts, when what I saw was a perfectly competent prosecutor explaining what he did.

 

(00:05:09)

 

Elie Mystal: And what he did was extensive. There was one Republican, I think it was McClintock, who suggested that all Mueller did was — I mean his analogy and I am not being hyperbolic, his analogy was that he left a bag on America’s doorstep and lit it on fire, as if he had left a poop bag on America’s doorstep and run away — rung the doorbell and run away.

 

That’s not what — that is 450 page careful report that you all can’t be bothered to read so you wanted Mueller to like give you like the cartoon strip of it. It’s so freaking frustrating.

 

Joe Patrice: That was my early morning — within the first two questions I put out the Tweet, it was shorter version of the Democratic side of this hearing, this is audible, whatever the title is, the report — special counsel report into 2016 presidential election Russian interference by Robert Mueller, read by the author. That’s what it was.

 

They wanted him to like say in a short version the careful legal work that they had, and it’s problematic, and the way in which bad journalists and I am — we will just put this all on Maggie Haberman, we don’t have to, she is obviously a terrible person who pretends to be a journalist, but she is part of a system of other bad journalists, so it’s not just her, but people like her who said why should we care about this, this isn’t exciting enough, like she is part of the crystalism, like they are just terrible, hackish, awful people who shouldn’t have jobs.

 

She made quips apparently early about it saying nobody is going to remember this, it’s not exciting enough. And I am like, okay, well, you don’t understand the law and this is why we are broken. So that’s why I put the blame there.

 

Elie Mystal: Yes, I just went to that clip that she made that you got exactly right, but her emails, right, like these are the same people that did three years of fucking email stories, but the Mueller report wasn’t exciting enough for them.

 

And by the way, like there was — you had to listen to the whole hearing, you had to like wait till the end to get some of this stuff, but like he actually did confirm — he did more than reiterate his reports; he confirmed some of the characterizations that the Democrats wanted him to confirm.

 

He confirmed that he felt that Trump’s answers to the written questions were not just merely inadequate, but they were untruthful. He confirmed that he — the characterization that Trump instructed White House aides to falsify testimony to his investigation. These are crimes. He confirmed them in public and like nobody saw it. I guess I am sitting here today reading reports, listening to the coverage of this, like he confirmed crimes in front of Congress and nobody heard that part because they were too busy being like, why do you sound like an old man. Like I just —

 

Joe Patrice: Put aside crimes, confirmed at least crime, there is at least one instance of obstruction that’s involved in that discussion, but it was always — this has been very much a test of how smart and legally literate America is and the answer is not very. They don’t seem to understand — I mean one of the more damning Tweets of the day was Kellyanne Conway, who if she needs legal help she could turn over and ask, George is right there to explain why all this is wrong. But she put out early when Mueller said there was no evidence of collusion, she said, and drop the mic, and I replied to it with, and then pick it back up again for the part where they talk about obstruction.

 

Because that’s the issue, there was no collusion between the campaign and the Russians. That is not ultimately what the report comes down to being. The report comes down to being there is a Russian attempt to interfere the election, which the campaign was not actively cooperating with, but that is immaterial to the —

 

Elie Mystal: But was accepting help.

 

Joe Patrice: No, but that’s — but they weren’t accepting help in any way that really mattered, like that’s the thing. And that was part of the problem with the liberals who really wanted this kind of weird, almost cueing on level of collusion between the two, which — that was always kind of a stretch and weird this idea that Trump’s a Manchurian Candidate, which let’s sit down, if you are the Russians and you are trying to create a Manchurian Candidate to take over America, you wouldn’t go to the dumb guy who like has already gone bankrupt a million times. You would probably go to somebody who has a better résumé. So that was never going to make much sense.

 

(00:10:06)

 

That said, obstruction, which is a crime was happening all over the place and confirmed by Mueller’s report and Mueller’s testimony yesterday confirmed it and the idea that people want — liberal people wanted way too much, conservative people wanted way too little, what you have is a lawyer saying the very basic thing. We initiated investigation, the guy obstructed justice. I was not allowed to indict him; therefore, I wrote a report saying to the decision maker whose power was to whether or not to recommend indictment, here is what I found and you can make a decision based on it, and if you understand the legal conventions involved, it was a very straightforward set of events.

 

Elie Mystal: I agree with that. I actually don’t agree with your soft selling of the collusion aspect. I think that is your narrative that you have adopted because it makes you sound smart compared to liberals who are screaming about criminal conspiracy, which clearly did not happen and it makes you sound smart compared to conservatives who are screaming that nothing happened when — no, something happened.

 

In the testimony Robert Mueller said that the Trump administration was willing to accept the help that Russia offered, not that they asked for it, not that they were — not that they paid for it or whatever, but that they did not do anything to dissuade it.

 

And I thought one of the most — on the collusion thing, one of the most damning parts of the testimony was Mueller said, again, in front of Congress, in front of everybody that not only were the Russians and he — and he said this point multiple times, the Russians were helping Donald Trump, that was actually — Republicans still don’t want to agree like that Russians actually wanted Donald Trump to be elected. But he said I thought impactfully that he believed that Russians were continuing to help Donald Trump like right now, and I forget which Democrats said wait, right know, and he is like yes, now, happening now.

 

And that’s not part of the media narrative because he didn’t — because he didn’t say it like I just said it, because he didn’t scream it, because he wasn’t having his hair fall out while he was talking about it. He wasn’t kicking over trash cans and stopping it. He just said I agree.

 

Joe Patrice: And that’s a good point to push back against your characterization of me as a, oh, I am going to find the hot take that’s in the middle. I will say like absolutely, his point, independent of the — and that comes to Mueller is not there to indict a President. He was asked to investigate a whole range of crimes that involved many, many people and many of them he has successfully indicted and that involves the collusion that may have been happening with all sorts of folks and the interference that’s going on continuing as he said. But that doesn’t necessarily involve a criminal conspiracy with the President and that’s another part where America’s legal literacy is wrong.

 

That’s a part where everybody said the Russians are trying to sow chaos by hacking into social media and trying to change the narrative, is the President involved somehow, and it’s like well, maybe, maybe not. He might actually — he and his campaign may actually be too dumb to be directly involved, but that does not mean that it is not a threat. And Mueller is like, my job isn’t necessarily to put somebody in jail here. My job is to investigate a series of crimes and some people are going to go to jail and it’s not necessarily the targets that you are after. So you are right.

 

Elie Mystal: The only reason we talk about collusion is because Donald Trump has hacked the media and forced it to or convinced it to using his words, collude. The first person who said collusion was Donald Trump, okay. The first person who came out with collusion was Donald Trump in the phrase no collusion. That is his invention, that is his word, that is his goalpost that for some reason the rest of the media decided to follow along and try to match. That was never what the goalpost should have been, which was A, simply to understand what the Russians did and how they did it; and B, who helped them do it, that was the point of this investigation.

 

Trump invented the collusion thing, which as you point out very well, is not an actual legal term, as Mueller pointed out very well, the actual term is criminal conspiracy and quite — as everybody is now pointing out, the legal hurdle to get from, oh, these guys helped, to maybe these guys knew about the help and da da da, to actual international criminal conspiracy is quite high.

 

And I accept Mueller’s findings by the way, despite my clear liberal bias, I accept Mueller’s finding that he did not meet that standard, the very high standard of actual criminal conspiracy, there was no evidence to support that, I believe Mueller when he says that.

 

(00:15:01)

 

Now, might we have found such evidence if Mueller had interviewed Donald Trump or Donald Trump, Jr. or Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump? We could talk about that. Certainly we might have found more evidence about Trump’s obstruction of justice had Mueller taken the road to subpoenaing Donald Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and by the end of the hearing we finally got there, we finally got there where Mueller was directly asked why he didn’t subpoena the President, and Mueller said that he wanted to subpoena him, that he was worried about how much time it would take for the President to fight through all the subpoenas.

 

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

 

Elie Mystal: But he reaffirmed that he found the President’s answers inaccurate, unhelpful, and then when pressed by Congresswoman Val Demings about whether or not those answers were truthful, she said — she asked, did you find Trump’s written answers untruthful, Mueller said yes, generally, which to me sounds like where you follow up, like if you are a Democrat. To me it sounds like —

 

Joe Patrice: But her time is up.

 

Elie Mystal: Right. Exactly.

 

Joe Patrice: Her like three minutes of time is up because of the way that whole hearing was set.

 

Elie Mystal: That’s how we decided to run this.

 

Joe Patrice: But in defense of Mueller there, and this goes to kind of my stance as — which you are trying to cast as radically centrist, whereas I very much think it’s more like just procedural legally.

 

Mueller’s take of why not issue a subpoena that you know is going to be fought for a long time, Mueller’s stance is, I don’t need to get — pin a trophy of saying I took down a President, I am investigating crimes, and Mueller — to Mueller’s take, at least as far as I can tell based on the report and based on the hearings, Mueller’s take is I did not want to delay a report that says I don’t care about the President, Russia is absolutely interfering with elections and something needs to be done about it. I did not want that message to become subservient to oh, is there a possibility that there is an outside chance of building an impeachment case against Trump. And he is like I am not going to delay a report for two, three years when I need to get out to the public something is happening here that is more fundamentally important than any one individual and whether or not they go to jail.

 

And I hear that. I think there is something to be said for that, and I think it’s a shame that the media narrative as well as to some extent the political narrative has focused on, are we going to prosecute XYZ? It’s this whole prosecution is the whole thing mentality.

 

There is an important job that an investigator, like he — like a former Director of the FBI pulled off there, really detailed, here are things that are currently happening that a foreign power is doing to undermine the country, we should get on that, and it’s become unfortunately sidetracked into, let’s see what we — if we can build a case against one person or not, and that’s why he didn’t want to delay it and I get that.

 

Elie Mystal: Yeah, I get that, but I don’t think that’s a strong argument, I don’t think that’s a good argument, and the reason why is because if Mueller is really concerned about stopping the foreign power from influencing our elections, he has to be a man not just of the law, but also of his moment and also of his time. And he has to understand — he probably has to understand better than anybody that you will not get action against the foreign threat threatening America if you allow Trump to maintain his position essentially. That Trump himself is a block on getting anything done about the Russian interference. And so when you have Trump running around and being able — arguing that he cooperated with the investigation and you know he is not cooperating with your investigation, I do think that you have a duty to show he is not cooperating with the investigation and the way that you show that is through subpoenas.

 

Quite frankly, and this is a point that I will not retreat on, there is no other non-white person in America who does not get subpoenaed in that situation, including if that non-white person happens to be the President of the United States. There is simply no non-white person that flouts Mueller’s investigation, provides him with inadequate, incomplete, untruthful written out answers and does not find his ass subject to subpoena, that just doesn’t happen.

 

(00:19:51)

 

Joe Patrice: Sure, but I mean that was a point that I think Mueller powerfully makes in the entire second half of the report where they talk about obstruction, that’s his whole point is all these bad things happened and what can I do about them, because that’s a part of the problem. He is not able to do anything about them, and that’s a good transition point to one of the most galling questions that kept coming up throughout the hearing, that I feel the media did a terrible job of fixating on, was there were some Republican legislators on that panel including some who ostensibly are lawyers, who kept saying, prosecutors, they can only indict or not indict, they can’t pass judgment. True. Well, why is it you wrote all these bad things about Trump, and then didn’t indict?

 

And he’s like, because I was not allowed to, so my orders were to write a report that gave whoever the Attorney General happened to be at the time, the option to either take action or not. That was my charge, I did my charge, and their response was basically, I mean if you weren’t indicting then you shouldn’t have done anything. A good friend of ours of the website responded my Twitter about that with a fake quote of, “If you weren’t personally planning to Frog March him out of the White House then why would you even look into this?” That’s basically what that question was, and it’s a Testament to how people didn’t get the overlapping issues of, yes, that’s what a prosecutor should do, but no, sometimes there’s a rule that says you can’t do that.

 

And if the instructions to the special counsel are this, then they have to write the report this way. It’s an ordered, dry, boring world law, and people don’t like that, and that’s a real problem. And it’s the — it was on display over the last 24 hours for us, for you all the last 72.

 

Elie Mystal: My issue on this point was how they kept yelling about, the presumption of innocence. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Don’t we have a presumption of innocence in this country? He’s a f**ing prosecutor. Prosecutors are not required to presume innocence and it would be f**ed up if they did, right? It would just be — it would be weird, it would be hard for a prosecutor to do their job if they had to the entire time presume that nothing wrong happened. Trump absolutely has —

 

Joe Patrice: I disagree with that concept.

 

Elie Mystal: Trump absolutely has a presumption of innocence in front of a jury and I would like to see him in front of one, but until that point I have no problem with Mueller charged to investigate crimes trying to see if there were crimes committed as opposed to whatever the Republicans thought they were saying when they were arguing that Mueller shouldn’t have even — I mean I don’t know what they want him to do. Shouldn’t have even looked into this, as you put it.

 

Can we talk a little bit about the OLC memo?

 

Joe Patrice: Sure. There is a fairly ill-advised legal opinion that is sitting out there that people are taking as precedence. I don’t know if you know what precedence is, it used to be this thing before the current Supreme Court where you would assume that a decision made in the past is probably true.

 

This current court doesn’t seem to get that, but generally that’s how it works and there is a past decision that said that presidents probably can’t be subject to the traditional criminal justice system, they should not be able to be impeached and tried in a normal course of criminal justice for a variety of reasons that are on facially make some sense like a president couldn’t do their job if they’re constantly fending off criminal cases whatever, and that the actual constitutional response is to put them in an impeachment sort of a situation if you can do that.

 

So that’s what this memo says, and that’s why theoretically no matter what the Special Counsel report found they were not able to bring charges, they were only able to bring to the attention of the Attorney General here things that could be charges.

 

Elie Mystal: Do you think Mueller was right to follow it?

 

Joe Patrice: I mean, I don’t know as though he hadn’t any choice, right, like because of the way in which the Clinton administration killed the Special Counsel rule or allowed it to sunset, which I understand why they might have, they had some issues with the Special Counsel in their time, mostly self-inflicted.

 

Anyway, they had the issues, they allowed it to sunset, the Republicans never liked it in the first place so it died, and now instead of an independent counsel, the Office of Independent Counsel is what they allowed die, this Special Counsel works for the Attorney General entirely and has no authority that is not given to that office through the president.

 

And so you could say I’m not going to follow it, but who cares, you don’t have authority under the current set up.

 

(00:25:08)

 

So the memo exists in a way that blocks them, but that memo is controlling as the system set up, that’s why an Office of Independent Counsel was originally created.

 

Elie Mystal: Do you think that Mueller should have said, hang the memo, this president should be indicted for obstruction of justice?

 

Joe Patrice: I mean he could have done that, at that point he probably would not have been able to issue a report that said any other thing, and the whole investigation would have fallen apart.

 

And if you believe, as I think Mueller does, there are bigger fish to fry than one guy here, there’s a value to putting all of these 30 some-odd people in jail who have been doing actual damage to democracy in a more direct way, then you don’t do that because you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to fix what I think Mueller would say is the actual cancer going on, which is the continual work at a low level of undermining democracy by Russians paying off and people and doing social media high jinks and hacking and 8 million other things that he’s been putting people in jail for.

 

Elie Mystal: After you release the report your investigation is closed, it’s over, it’s probably been stopped by the Attorney General and now you’re in the situation where you’re in front of Congress, do you think that Mueller was right to continue to follow the guidance of the OLC memo as opposed to stating clearly the president should be indicted for obstruction of justice?

 

Joe Patrice: I mean he said in response to, oh, this is another good legal lesson, that’s a good transition point. So, Buck, who ostensibly is a lawyer asked a series of questions —

 

Elie Mystal: A Republican.

 

Joe Patrice: One lesson that they teach you is don’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. He asked a question, what was that question that he asked and what was the answer he got, and you don’t need to be off the transcript, you can just give us generally what happened.

 

Elie Mystal: Buck asked Mueller if the president could be indicted after he left office?

 

Joe Patrice: Based on the evidence in the report.

 

Elie Mystal: Based on the evidence in the report. If the president could be indicted after he left office, and Mueller said, yes.

 

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Mueller basically responded with, oh yeah — no, I mean this is a crime. I just couldn’t do anything about it.

 

Elie Mystal: Which is brilliant. Unfortunately that gets us into the necessity of Trump losing in 2020 for this to happen and here’s where ultimately I think the OLC memo is wrong and I think that I was about to say, I don’t think would hold up in court, of course it will hold up in court.

 

Joe Patrice: I think it would hold up in court unfortunately.

 

Elie Mystal: But I don’t think it would hold up in court with a more liberal court, because if you take the OLC memo to me that the president cannot be indicted for crimes that he commits while he is in office, that only works if you are assuming the president can be indicted for crimes after he leaves office.

 

But, because there is nothing that holds the Statue of Limitation on crimes if, in this situation, if we assume that the obstruction of justice starts 2018 or stops 2017, 2018. If Trump wins re-election by 2024 the Statute of Limitations will uphold and there will be no opportunity to indict the president for his crimes.

 

So if we go by the OLC memo then what we have is seriously a president who is above the law is seriously a president who could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it —

 

Joe Patrice: Right.

 

Elie Mystal: — because he can’t be indicted.

 

Joe Patrice: The problem isn’t the OLC memo, that’s the whole issue. The problem is the lack of an Office of Independent Counsel and all of these things we have kind of metastasized in the post-Nixon world. Well, it was created in the post-Nixon world or immediately pre to post-Nixon and then has metastasized into this way in which the executive is considered Imperial.

 

The OLC memo only matters if you don’t have an Office of Independent Counsel, which we get rid of Office of Independent Counsel so then it goes, it falls to these people who are at the whim of the Department of Justice, then there is an OLC memo.

 

Like the OLC memo is not the problem, it’s a symptom. The lack of Congress’ ability to create a purely independent counsel to look into things is a problem. And it’s a reason why in the post-Nixon era they created this sort of thing.

 

Elie Mystal: If you ask Neal Katyal who wrote the Special Counsel guideline.

 

Joe Patrice: Correct.

 

Elie Mystal: He says they’re being misinterpreted right now and he wrote them and they are being misinterpreted.

 

Joe Patrice: And they are. And we may — we should, I don’t see if I can get Neil on the line here for a discussion about this.

 

(00:30:02)

 

But, Neil is right, like they are being misinterpreted. But it’s not like I think if you pressed him, he would not say that the special counsel rules are his ideal rules. They are the rules that he drafted and created and that are robust but they’re robust within the cabining that you can’t have an office of independent counsel. I’m not altogether sure he wouldn’t agree that an office of independent counsel would be a better option. So that’s kind of the problem.

 

You’ve already created a situation where they are subordinate to the DOJ and that’s always going to create some problems and there are regulations that can try to cabin against and push against those problems but there’s problems.

 

Elie Mystal: What else is going on?

 

Joe Patrice: Not much, you’re in the city, I am not. In a rare twist I’m usually the one in the office on Thursdays diligently but unfortunately for our scheduling purposes, I happened to be out of town so coming to you remotely.

 

Elie Mystal: We didn’t do our usual opening because everything because we’re all going to die —

 

Joe Patrice: And we didn’t — well, I mean, we’ve grinded our gears and there we go.

 

Anyway, we’re right at our time so we will let people go and we will be back next week some more fun stuff. You should be reading Above the Law; obviously, you should be listening this podcast, subscribing to this podcast, giving this podcast reviews not just some stars that we love all five of them, you should also be writing something, because the more engagement is what like convinces the computer that you’re out there and actually caring about the podcast.

 

We know you’re out there, we see you downloading it, just write something nice, talk about Elie’s hair whatever, because by the way, you have been getting a lot of comments about how you’ve been aggressively like going with the mad scientist look.

 

Elie Mystal: Yeah, they told me to do it like I — so once we hit the summer I was going to cut it off because it’s hot, but there was a makeup and they were just like you can’t cut your hair, ask her on and they asked like other hosts on the network and they were like I thought you would like to doing TV. I was like, I do; well, then you can’t lose your hair, it’s your brand now.

 

So apparently my hair is my brand. I would have followed my incisive analysis buttress by the occasional humor but actually my hair is my brand.

 

Joe Patrice: I mean, it’s like what if Doc Brown from ‘Back to the Future’ was black, that’s kind of what I think you’re rolling with.

 

Elie Mystal: The thing that people don’t understand is that rumor. I have natural f**ing hair, this is how my hair is supposed to look and so one of the things that people don’t understand, well people — one of the things that White people don’t understand is that the reason why this is natural for people of my skin complexion is that when it’s f**ing hot, like it is right now, my hair basically acts as a headband, like is that’s why it grows like this.

 

I very rarely get sweat in my eye unless I swish my hair because I’ve got a headband on, it’s just hot as balls.

 

Joe Patrice: Yeah — no, what I —

 

Elie Mystal: I bet you know that.

 

Joe Patrice: Yeah — no, oh no, I absolutely don’t. You talk like even White people here — White people also have the problem of too much hair means hot, like it’s not like the laws of thermodynamics stop operating just because you happened to have white privilege. It’s one of the few things we don’t get to opt out of.

 

So, no, I mean — but still like the doc — I was going more with the – by the way, also and my Testament probably to the privilege issue, I would also say that the — I was talking more about the gray was kind of the — that like the wild and gray was kind of the thing that was the issue not so much just the fact that it grows out.

 

But like you’ve been growing it into this kind of gray, I’m going to grow old in front of you sort of a way that I think that people have been commenting on.

 

I think people have been commenting on you more like – I actually got one tweet that said it was — it was like your those stereotypical pictures of presidents who grow old like in office but you’ve been doing it over the last 12 months was one that I saw.

 

Oh you know, a president-elect goes gray over four years and like you did it in like 12 months that sort of thing. Yeah, anyway, we’re off-topic. The point is so you’re getting all that attention, you should follow him on Twitter @ElieNYC, he’s talking all the time about events in the world, many of them that we’ve talked about today.

 

(00:34:58)

 

I’m @JosephPatrice. You should follow the other LTN podcasts, you should follow The Jabot, which is another Above the Law podcast, you should be — just tell a friend listen to this show, see what happens.

 

All right, that’s it. Let’s get you out of here.

 

Elie Mystal: Peace.

 

Joe Patrice: All right, bye.

 

[Music]

 

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