Coup Coup Ka-Choo

Episode Notes

Transcript

Thinking Like a Lawyer – Above the Law

Coup Coup Ka-Choo

01/13/2021

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Hey everybody, welcome to Thinking–

Kathryn Rubino: And you’ve been — you just said hey, and I — and I already started–

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Well, so this is Thinking Like A Lawyer and I am Joe Patrice from Above The Law and that was Kathryn Rubino from Above The Law And we are here to talk about a really slow news week.

Kathryn Rubino: Super slow.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Nothing happened this week.

Joe Patrice: They’re really –yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: So weird.

Joe Patrice: So, things are moving really fast. So hopefully, not the entire world has changed by the time you hear this, you know.

Kathryn Rubino: Mm-hmm.

Joe Patrice: You know, in a matter of–

Kathryn Rubino: Hours.

Joe Patrice: —hours after this, but, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, like our last podcast was published probably the last thing people heard before the whole world change.

Joe Patrice: That’s right. Actually, it was published like–

Kathryn Rubino: Wednesday morning.

Joe Patrice: —20 minutes before everything went crazy. So yeah, so there’s–how’s everybody doing? Good?

Kathryn Rubino: No.

Joe Patrice: Good.

Kathryn Rubino: No.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Kathryn Rubino: No, no. No one’s good.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Everyone’s — if somebody tells you, “Oh, I’m fine right now”, I think that they’re just lying to you or in some sort of a cave in which case, they would not answer your question.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, we had a bit of a coup and we’re going to–

Kathryn Rubino: A little coup.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, it’s a little. It’s like a chicken coop.

Kathryn Rubino: Attempted.

Joe Patrice: Coup, coop.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I know there’s been a lot of talk from folks about what the proper terminology to describe what happened on Wednesday is I lean towards insurrection.

Joe Patrice: I think that’s probably — that does seem to be getting the most–

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: –the most play.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I also like that it’s easy to make it announce like insurrectionists did blah, blah, blah, because trying to describe folks is something we’ve had to do a lot of over the past couple of days.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, a relatively violent mob overtook the capitol. There were obviously some people, you know, like the son of a Brooklyn judge and all who were, you know, wearing animal skins and horns and stuff like that. Those people are goofy, but that shouldn’t detract from the people who had flash bangs and pipe bombs.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s the other thing that we’re finding more and more as more information comes to light is that although there were definitely folks that are primed for ridicule, there were also highly trained folks part of the mob as well. Current, former members of the military and/or law enforcement is what we’re finding and yeah, I mean, they did a paramilitary exercise.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, not great.

Kathryn Rubino: Not, not.

Joe Patrice: That said, we’re going to talk about a lot of the fallout from this and a lot of the legal — or break down some of the legal takes of it obviously. You know, we trust that a lot of our listeners are lawyers, not all, but even if you are a lawyer, you might not be an expert in this particular–

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, the 25th amendment is not something that you–

Joe Patrice: The 25th amendment–

Kathryn Rubino: –the ton of time studying in law school.

Joe Patrice: Right. So, we’re going to break down some of the issues there so that as you hear people on TV say stupid stuff, I’m not like– I don’t know, just throw someone out, Jonathan Turley. You see these sorts of people say incredibly stupid stuff on TV will be able to give you a little guide of what’s going on. But first, obviously, thanks to our sponsors and, you know, as usual, we have Lexicon and Contract Tools by Paper Software and LexisNexis Interaction sponsoring the show. You’ll  hear more from them in a bit, but first, let’s take a quick second to talk. So, we had this coup and you utilized the insurrection term, or coup, whatever we want to deal with. As we’re discussing this, like as we’re discussing this, Articles of Impeachment are being waved around on the floor of the house which suggests that we’re soon to have a second impeachment which is cool like to have a sequel this quickly. Even the MCU takes a couple of years to make a sequel.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, and I guess I don’t know the answer to this trivia question, but this I believe it’s true that’s the first president to get two different impeachment actions.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So before this, there had been only two in–

Kathryn Rubino: History.

Joe Patrice: –history. So, two within a span of a couple of years is really impressive, so–

Kathryn Rubino: Impressive is a weird word to use right there.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah, so—

Kathryn Rubino: Historic, certainly.

Joe Patrice: Yes. So, one of the arguments against the impeachment is coming from folks like Alan Dershowitz because shamelessness is a lifestyle, is that this can’t be an impeachable offense because Trump didn’t commit — like because this is core political speech is the argument that Dershowitz is making and it’s not incitement which for those of you who don’t remember your law school classes would be from Brandenburg, Ohio.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure.

(00:05:00)

Joe Patrice: So, there’s a standard for incitement.

Kathryn Rubino: Right.

Joe Patrice: You’re allowed to say really inflammatory things and have that be protected by the first amendment and if somebody goes out and acts on those things, that does not necessarily mean that you’re liable for that person unless a certain standard is met.

Kathryn Rubino: Right and I assume you have this standard ready to–

Joe Patrice: Oh no, I just – I mean, it was their job we to research this and we talk about this. Yeah, no. So, the standard is that the speech–

Kathryn Rubino: It’s been a long time since law school.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. The speech has to be directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and it has to be like–

Kathryn Rubino: A couple of hours.

Joe Patrice: It has to be likely to incite or produce such action. This is an interesting question for Trump. I feel as though it’s a lot easier to make this case against somebody like Giuliani who was making in his speech–

Kathryn Rubino: In his trial by combat.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, and his speech beforehand was saying that we need to hold these people to trial by combat like and that does seem to be telling–

Kathryn Rubino: Directly.

Joe Patrice: Directly an angry mob that combat–

Kathryn Rubino: You should fight folks

Joe Patrice: –is what you should do.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Yeah and that seems very, very into this prosecution line.

Kathryn Rubino: Have we heard — there haven’t been anything besides rumors about anybody holding Rudy accountable, right?

Joe Patrice: No, as of now, the prosecutors say that they are not considering any of the speakers who spoke beforehand to be possible targets of prosecution for incitement.

Kathryn Rubino: That seems like something that might change after January 20th.

Joe Patrice: Well yeah. So, Trump’s speech was a little closer to the line. I think that you’re dealing–

Kathryn Rubino: You mean, on the good side of the law.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, a little closer to accessible.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure. protected speech.

Joe Patrice: That said, he did utilize phrases to a group of people who were known to be saying that they wanted to kill people.

Kathryn Rubino: We know that they were armed as well.

Joe Patrice: Right. To the extent that that was happening, he told them that they had to fight and fight like hell.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, that what they did.

Joe Patrice: And go up to the capitol and fight.

Kathryn Rubino: Again, what they did.

Joe Patrice: Drawing the line from go to the capitol and fight being said to people in that context is very close. Now, does it reach the level that you could probably prosecute somebody just in a standard situation. Difficult to say. Does it reach the standard where you could impeach somebody?

Kathryn Rubino: Certainly.

Joe Patrice: Certainly easier.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure. Obviously, that’s a different standard than criminal–

Joe Patrice: Right. So, the problem with impeachment is that it is as we learned from the last go-around, it’s not particularly clear what that standard is. High crimes and misdemeanors seems as though you’re talking about it has to be a crime beforehand, but scholars when we were going through it beforehand, made the case that no, it doesn’t really. That the decision on this was intentionally by the framers left in the hands of the people making this trial as a political decision.

Kathryn Rubino: I really believe though that fomenting insurrection was exactly what everyone assumed would be considered a high crime and misdemeanor.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. You know, one would think that would be fair.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, and I guess then the debate becomes whether or not what he did was inciting the insurrection, but that’s the question, not whether or not if he did incite it, it should be impeachable.

Joe Patrice: So, there’s a lesson to be taken from the first impeachment in history. When Andrew Johnson was impeached, it was over. The term of office act, it was about whether or not he could fire a cabinet member and replace them. It was a technical issue, but certainly the sort of thing that you would look at and say that’s not a high crime and misdemeanor, but going into the context of it, a large part of the discussion of that impeachment was that Johnson had been encouraging violence against members of congress.

Kathryn Rubino: Mm-hmm.

Joe Patrice: So, this isn’t entirely unprecedented that this might lead to impeachment.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: But you know, kind of the flip side of that is he was not removed from office.

Joe Patrice: He was not.

Kathryn Rubino: So, maybe we shouldn’t get too excited about that.

Joe Patrice: Well, and this brings to the next issue which is that Alan Dershowitz for instance is saying that there’s no way there can be a trial because by the time they get to a trial, Trump will be out of office and you’re not allowed to impeach people who are no longer in office. That’s a question. I think the balance of the evidence would be on the side that sure you can. You can impeach people for what they did in office because the role of impeachment is to question whether or not they are faithfully executing their job.

Kathryn Rubino: Right and there are a lot of benefits that one gets for being a former president, right? That was not impeached.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Kathryn Rubino: Right. I know there’s a lot of social media memes going around about his lifetime salary, his travel budget, his secret service protection and I think also there’s some classified information.

(00:10:04)

Joe Patrice: National security.

Kathryn Rubino: National security issues, yeah. So, I mean even though a lot of people are saying, “Oh, it’s only a matter of days, why do this?” I mean, there are definitely reasons.

Joe Patrice: Right. And if you interpret what was going on in the impeachment when it was placed there by the framers, it’s not necessarily that the person is sitting there to be removed. It’s also removing the trappings of that job based on what they did in that job. So, that would suggest that Dershowitz is incorrect about this. That might be shocking to people that Dershowitz is incorrect about something over the last several years who’d a thunk it, but—

Kathryn Rubino: Has any legal figure fallen from public grace as quickly or as far as Alan dershowitz?

Joe Patrice: That’s a bold question.

Kathryn Rubino: I don’t know. I don’t know how to really think about it.

Joe Patrice:  That’s a hard one, yeah I think–

Kathryn Rubino: You know, if you had told me when I first started working at Above The Law that Alan Dershowitz would be someone that I wouldn’t respect.

Joe Patrice: We roll our eyes, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I mean, I would have been shocked.

Joe Patrice: I mean, Rudy has given him a run.

Kathryn Rubino: Oh yeah?

Joe Patrice: Yeah. No, but–

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, Rudy was always a fundamentally political as opposed to legal figure or at least he had been since, you know, his time in the mayor–

Joe Patrice: In the late 80s.

Kathryn Rubino: In the 80s, he’d been more political and I think that there’s less of that inherent respect when people are making political judgments as opposed to legal judgments and Dershowitz always historically tried to paint himself as making legal judgments.

Joe Patrice: Right. I think that’s fair.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: But anyway, so that brings us to we know we’ve discussed the legal standards for incitement and impeachment. Obviously, what happens with the president going forward is it’s going to be an issue because if there is an impeachment, McConnell is saying that that he will utilize that trial to drag out that trial to prevent the Democrats from passing anything in the early days of the Biden administration to just block things which you know is unfortunate because I think there’s a lot of things that need to be done on a bipartisan level very quickly and that brings me to this question. How have law firms weathered previous economic downturns and come out stronger on the other side? LexisNexis InterAction has released an in-depth global research report confronting the 2020 downturn, lessons learned during previous economic crises. Download your free copy at interaction.com/like a lawyer to see tips, strategies, plans and statistics from leaders who have been through this before and how they’ve reached success again.

Kathryn Rubino: You know, I was wondering how you’re going to get from insurrection to an ad read and–

Joe Patrice: I mean, I’m a professional. So, the other option, the argument that Pelosi has made leading into this impeachment discussion is that what should actually happen is that Mike Pence and the cabinet should be involved in invoking the 25th Amendment, Section 4.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, well the other thing that I think before we get to sort of the 25th Amendment, the other option is that you know, in order for removal to happen, you need 67 votes in the senate.

Joe Patrice: Correct.

Kathryn Rubino: And very well politically connected former big law attorney, George Conway—

Joe Patrice: He’s still a big law attorney, but former–

Kathryn Rubino: I thought he resigned.

Joe Patrice: He’s–

Kathryn Rubino: I thought he was off their website, am I wrong about that?

Joe Patrice: I thought he was still there, but he’s like of counsel, not a partner anymopre.

Kathryn Rubino: Oh, maybe that’s it. Okay, George Conway regardless.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Has tweeted out that he believes that there are six — and also married to Kellyanne Conway, right? He believes that there are 67 votes in the senate for removal right now.

Joe Patrice: Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Rubino: So you know, he’s obviously well connected and so there’s good, I mean, of course he’s also part of the Lincoln project, so very vocally anti-Trump, so you know, he’s his own perspective going into this, but he seems to think that the votes are there which is not something that was true in the first — and there was never going to be the votes in the impeachment hearing.

Joe Patrice:  But the argument of the 25th Amendment is that it is actually easier and more streamlined for the cabinet with the consent of the vice president to basically sideline Trump. They would not remove Trump from office despite some of the language that the media has about like, “Oh, the 25th will strip him up.” It doesn’t actually like that.

Kathryn Rubino: Right and he would still after his term, he would still be considered a former president.

Joe Patrice: Correct.

Kathryn Rubino: And have all the trappings of that office.

Joe Patrice: What it would do though is make Mike Pence acting president.

Kathryn Rubino: Right.

Joe Patrice: And strip Trump of the ability to utilize his powers over the next—

Kathryn Rubino: Provided he would still be 46 in that world.

Joe Patrice: Correct, correct. So, the way the 25th Amendment works for people who have been struggling with this because as we previewed, not exactly a–

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I mean–

Joe Patrice: You don’t spend a lot of time learning the–

Kathryn Rubino: I think that the only thing you really have to know about the 25th Amendment to get through law school is what it is.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, Professor Brian Kalt from Michigan state has a book called the unfit and you can follow him on Twitter.

Kathryn Rubino: He’s not banned.

Joe Patrice: Banned, we’re getting to that. So, he has a book that deals with this because this is his thing, Unable is actually the name of the book.

(00:15:01)

Kathryn Rubino: There you go.

Joe Patrice: Which deals with this and walks you through exactly how this rule works. So, what would happen is the majority of the cabinet would have to vote that the president is unfit to or unable to do their duties and Pence would have to agree with.

Kathryn Rubino: Okay, here’s the question.

Joe Patrice: Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Rubino: Right, because there have been a lot of recent resignations from the cabinet.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Kathryn Rubino: There are several acting members of the cabinet that have–

Joe Patrice: Right, so–

Kathryn Rubino: –informally members of the cabinet.

Joe Patrice: So, let’s take the second part first.

Kathryn Rubino: Okay.

Joe Patrice: Because that’s the important part. So, yes, there are acting members of the cabinet for instance, the Secretary of Defense is an acting Secretary of Defense. Do those people get a vote in this? The question is unclear. The professor

believes that they would actually get a vote, though in this instance, it would be, you know, kind of a moot point because you would need seven of the full cabinet to vote to get there. And if these three acting members were not able to vote, they would be

removed from the denominator as well which means you would need seven members

of the remaining cabinet to vote. So, it wouldn’t really make a difference. That said, there’s a question whether or not they should be able to vote. He seems to believe that based on the case law that’s built up around this and the commentary that’s built up around this over the years, that they would have a vote. In any event, they would have to vote and the vice president would have to agree, at which point, Pence would become the acting president. If that happened, Trump would say, “No, I’m actually okay.” At which point, the cabinet and the vice president would have four days to come up with a statement saying either we agree that you’re okay and you can take over again or we disagree. If they disagree after those four days, it gets sent over to congress at which point, there would be two days to get them back in session.

Kathryn Rubino: Both houses or–

Joe Patrice: Well, yes, but if given that they’re now back in session for the purposes of this impeachment stuff, they don’t need the two-day grace period of coming back into session, but they would have 21 days to come to a conclusion on whether or not–

Kathryn Rubino: Which is much longer than the amount of–

Joe Patrice: Than the amount of time.

Kathryn Rubino: –left in any world of–

Joe Patrice: Correct. So, if Pence and the cabinet were to decide that Trump is unable to perform his duties and then four days later be willing to double down on that, it would functionally put Mike Pence in charge for the remainder of this term.

Kathryn Rubino: And importantly, Trump would no longer assumedly have access to the nuclear codes, for example.

Joe Patrice: Well, all of these—

Kathryn Rubino: Because he does have access to that. He doesn’t have access to Twitter. No Twitter, yes to nuclear codes. That’s–

Joe Patrice: Again, again–

Kathryn Rubino: —as a country.

Joe Patrice: Again, not where we are yet, but still.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s still important to say sometimes Joe.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough, so–

Kathryn Rubino: All these things are happening.

Joe Patrice: Say sometimes, you need to wait like 45 seconds, like you don’t need to jump. Anyway, so yes. But you do raise the secondary issue which is some people have been resigning.

Kathryn Rubino: Right

Joe Patrice: Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao have both resigned and what happens there, I mean, that means that there’s now people who are acting in harge of those departments and the same question applies, although now, that would change the denominator and numbers a little bit, but yes. So, that’s what’s going on. But yes,

so he has now lost a few extra members of the administration. You know, if you’re interested in streamlining some administrative tasks–

Kathryn Rubino: Oh, streamlining. Good one, good one.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, check out our friends from Lexicon.

Here’s a message just for the attorneys out there. So you passed the bar, joined a firm or even built your own. Now, are you finding out that you’re doing more administration than actual law practice? Lexicon can help. Lexicon is a legal services and technology provider with over a decade of experience streamlining administrative tasks like time keeping, HR, billing, client intake and more so you can focus on maximizing billable hours and increasing client satisfaction. Call 855 for Lexicon or visit lexiconservices.com/go to learn more.

Kathryn Rubino: That was a good one. I didn’t see it coming.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, again–

Kathryn Rubino: Like the Spanish inquisition.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Oh, nice. That’s a classic reference. So, let’s finish up with a discussion that you’ve previewed a couple of times now. Let’s talk about Twitter.

Kathryn Rubino: Not a public utility.

Joe Patrice: It is — it is not a public utility, although frankly, even if it were a public utility, it would be a different. Public utilities are a different animal even than what this is about. The president’s been permabanned from Twitter as have many vocal followers of his and acolytes who have been, you know, tweeting things like it’s okay to kill capitol police officers and staff. See, you can’t do that and still be on there because Twitter will say “We don’t want you on our entirely private company platform.” If it were a public utility, still, they would have some latitude there, but it wouldn’t be nearly as free as it is when it’s private. That said, the response that came from these corners is mostly about a law called Section 230.

(00:20:03)

And it’s people making claims that we need to get rid of Section 230 because these tech companies are telling Trump he can’t be on online.

Kathryn Rubino: That doesn’t even make sense to me.

Joe Patrice: It does not.

Kathryn Rubino: Then, it’s just like somebody responding with this is the other thing I’ve heard about tech.

Joe Patrice: It’s really dumbfounding actually. This Section 230 has become this punching bag because in reality, without Section 230—

Kathryn Rubino: It would become way more restrictive.

Joe Patrice: Trump would have been banned years ago–

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: –but for Section 230. It’s the most deliberately misunderstood piece of law going right now. Section 230 for those who don’t know, is a provision that basically is what allows the internet to function. It’s the provision that says if you are say, Twitter and you invite the public to comment in your place, you are not liable if

Somebody who comments on your platform says something wrong. So, if somebody gets on your platform and defames somebody—

Kathryn Rubino: You’re not–

Joe Patrice: —they can’t go after Twitter.

Kathryn Rubino: Twitter is not responsible for people who defame folks on their platform, the person who wrote the words is responsible which seems fair.

Joe Patrice: Right because otherwise, in a struggle to get at the deepest possible pocket, you would always say, “Oh, so and so made up a lie about me and it went to a million people because it was on Twitter, so now Twitter needs to give me my money.” That would be ridiculous, so we have this law that says that’s not how it works. That Section 230, the conservative backlash against Trump being taken off of Twitter–

Kathryn Rubino: Is to make it more likely that he would have been taken off.

Joe Patrice: Right. They’re like we need to get rid of Section 230 and it’s like cool, then Twitter would have said forever ago, this is a dangerous loose cannon.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. It is interesting that it’s just so devoid of actual information or a way to act. The other thing I have heard which, you know, kind of getting into the public utilities is that, “Oh, Twitter needs to be taken over by the government, otherwise, we’re socialists.”

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Otherwise, it would be communist. Yeah, I did hear that one too.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I’ve seen that a couple of different places and again, the lack of understanding of irony I think in the far right has really been stark and also a

struggle for me to take any of these arguments seriously I’m like how do you not see what’s happening?

Joe Patrice: This is what happens when you have a whole generation growing up thinking that Alanis Morissette’s definition of irony is real.

Kathryn Rubino: There’s so many better punching bags right now.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. You know, that’s fair, that’s fair, that’s fair, but still—

Kathryn Rubino: Listen, Jagged Little Pill was great album.

Joe Patrice: It sure was.

Kathryn Rubino: It still is.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, okay.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s my musical information for the day.

Joe Patrice: Cool, but the point remains this idea of how to deal with Twitter and look, I am sympathetic to the idea that we have emboldened a small number of private outlets to be our primary ways of communicating with the world of which Twitter is not one by the way. It’s one that people like me and Trump are freakishly into, but in the grand scheme of things, Facebook dwarfs it by orders of magnitude.

Kathryn Rubino: I think that’s definitely true, but the other part about Twitter is that it becomes stories that are then amplified by mainstream media.

Joe Patrice: That’s true.

Kathryn Rubino: You know, screenshots of tweets are a large part of my Instagram feed.

Joe Patrice: Of course.

Kathryn Rubino: You know, and it also becomes part of the news cycle.

Joe Patrice: Instagram of course being also part of the Facebook –

Kathryn Rubino: No, that’s what I’m saying when you were saying that Facebook dwarfs, yeah.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: At least right now.

Joe Patrice: It is problematic that a bunch of — that a small cadre of megalomaniacal tech people control the way in which we communicate. I agree. The

answer to that is—

Kathryn Rubino: None of the thing you’re suggesting.

Joe Patrice: Certainly not. Making it so that they feel personally liable if somebody says dumb things on their platform because that’s the answer for not having you on that platform.

Kathryn Rubino: Right.

Joe Patrice: Anyway, speaking of platforms, Parler’s(ph) in trouble.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I mean, and I guess that was the response you said you know, it’s disturbing that there are so few platforms that kind of control it and there was an effort to create a new right-wing platform in Parler. Not everyone knows what Parler is if you’re not kind of super plugged in or a while, you may not have heard it before the insurrection, but it’s sort of an alternative to Twitter.

Joe Patrice: Right-wing Twitter basically.

Kathryn Rubino: Right wing Twitter, right. But you can’t just kind of create some sort of a quick little account where you’re anonymous. You had to actually submit detailed information about who you are and that kind of stuff.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, you had to give them — to access some of their services, you had to give them your pictures of your driver’s license and stuff. They were really trying to avoid it being taken over by folks. Unfortunately, it was built on a WordPress Plugin which is, you know, an open source wonderful platform.

Kathryn Rubino: We love WordPress.

Joe Patrice: We do.

(00:25:00)

Unfortunately, it is also a platform that is, you know, an open source thing that has changes to it that leads to some insecurities and I have noticed today that apparently, hacking groups have cracked into Parler and it’s now been releasing direct messages that have been sent on the platform, deleted messages from the platform. Basically, a whole history of this conversation beyond just what was “public” on Parler is now out there for authorities to look at. Obviously, there’s some poisonous tree elements of hacking being how the stuff came to the public, but now that it’s in public purview, it seems like something that is more than fair game for prosecutors to look into.

Kathryn Rubino: But you know, access to Parler itself is kind of down at the moment.

Joe Patrice: Yes. Well, it’s kind of down for a lot of reasons and one of them is it doesn’t have a server to be on.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Because Amazon, AWS was it the server that it lived on? They have said you can’t do that anymore and cut them off.

Kathryn Rubino: Both Google and Apple have taken the app off of their platforms.

Joe Patrice: Right. So, it’s basically like it just doesn’t have a place to live at this point. The Parler people are certainly upset about it. Obviously I think we can assume they’re going to complain bitterly that this was unfair.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure, but now they have less places to say that.

Joe Patrice: Fewer places say that, yeah. No and — but I’m just saying that like their deal with AWS has resulted in what Amazon clearly sees as a breach that allows them to terminate it which you know, that’s why it’s important to understand what’s in your contracts. And if you work with contracts and don’t use contract tools, you’re

missing a lot to save time, make more money and do a better job for your clients with contract tools by Paper Software. Contract tools is the most powerful word add-in for working with contracts. Thousands of lawyers all over the world rely on contract tools every day for every kind of deal. Visit papersoftware.com to watch a demo and get a free trial. As a special offer to podcast listeners, use coupon code Ltn 2020 to get one month free. That’s papersoftware.com and Ltn 2020.

Kathryn Rubino: How slick.

Joe Patrice: I mean—

Kathryn Rubino: Listen, it looks like—

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I mean, I do my job–

Kathryn Rubino: It’s also true that contracts are sort of foundational to a lot of business.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: But that was—

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Good job. Two points.

Joe Patrice: Thanks. So, this concludes a nice little round up and we didn’t even get into Rudy’s about to get kicked out of the New York State Bar and then—

Kathryn Rubino: He was another big law attorney.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Right? So, last week’s episode was largely about Cleta Mitchell and her role in the call between—

Joe Patrice: Oh right.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: That was last week?

Kathryn Rubino: It was only last week.

Joe Patrice: So, last week we talked about Cleta Mitchell’s problems. As it turns out, another lawyer who was identified on the call only by their first name and never spoke.

Kathryn Rubino: Right, and that was the call between—

Joe Patrice: Trump and the Georgia officials.

Kathryn Rubino: Trump and the Georgia officials trying to get them to find 11, 000 votes.

Joe Patrice: Right. As it turns out, the person only identified as Alex, we were able to — Above The Law crack reporting.

Kathryn Rubino: Above The Law exclusive.

Joe Patrice: Crack investigative reporting was able to work out that that was Fox Rothschild partner, Alex.

Kathryn Rubino: As a reminder, Above The Law tipsters are the best and—

Joe Patrice: That is true.

Kathryn Rubino: –continue to give us all of your insights into the legal world. You can email us [email protected].

Joe Patrice: That’s right. When I say crack reporting, what it really was, was we got a tipster who let us know which led us to dig.

Kathryn Rubino: There were lots of tips people guessing who Alex.

Joe Patrice: Right. There were several dead ends.

Kathryn Rubino: You would also put in one of your stories. If anybody knows who Alex is, let me know. So, you know, but there was lots of information, you went through it all.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. And found out. Anyway, since then, Fox Rothschild has severed, well, they have mutually agreed to separate.

Kathryn Rubino: And his father as well.

Joe Patrice: His father as well. They will be going back theoretically to they originally had a firm of their own that merged into Fox Rothschild. One would assume they go back to their own private practice. But yes, so that was a follow-up to that story from last week. So, good job on that. Yeah, people have lost their jobs. It’s been a busy run.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s been a lot. We’ve  written a lot of stories since last we spoke.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, check all those out on Above The Law. Hopefully, by the time we talk next week, there will be, you know, less stuff to talk about because this was a lot.

Kathryn Rubino: I can’t imagine that would be.

Joe Patrice: Oh no, it won’t be. Anyway, so—

Kathryn Rubino: Like just thinking about all the things that are inevitably going to happen this week is exhausting.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough.

Kathryn Rubino: And it’s only Monday.

Joe Patrice: Well. I mean, it’s Wednesday.

Kathryn Rubino: We recorded this on a Monday.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah, fair enough. So anyway, with that said, thanks everybody for listening. You should be subscribed to this podcast so you get it downloaded every time it comes out. You should leave us reviews, stars as well as write something because that’s always nice and shows engagement which is useful for the algorithm to realize that we’re really a podcast. You should be reading Above The Law as always so you can check up on these stories as well as a bazillion other things we’ve had to write this week.

(00:30:07)

I mean, I had to write about Tiger Woods’ mistress this week. Like these are things that are actually coming up in law. Anyway—

Kathryn Rubino: You maintain multitudes.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I mean, it’s a busy time. You should be following us on Twitter because we’re actually both still there. I’m @josephpatrice. She’s @kathryn1, the numeral one.

Kathryn Rubino: Only last week, I also said my New Year’s resolution was to use Twitter more on the podcast.

Joe Patrice: And i think you tweeted twice since then.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s not true. Because of the coup, I’ve tweeted a bunch.

Joe Patrice: That’s fair, that’s fair, that’s fair.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s really helping me.

Joe Patrice: And I think I said I was going to use Instagram more and I really had. So, that’s fair. So, you should be listening to the other shows. Kathryn also hosts a show called The Jabot. I’m part of the legal tech week news roundup. We have many other shows that we aren’t on that’s part of the Legal Talk Network that you should be listening to. And with all of that said, now I kind of vaguely think I got through everything. So, as a parting thought, let’s just thank contract tools by Paper Software, LexisNexis InterAction and Lexicon for sponsoring the show and we will chat again next week.

[Music]

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, it’s officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer

[Music]

<a href=”https://www.tech-synergy.com/podcast-transcription” target=”_blank”>Podcast transcription</a> by <a href=”https://www.tech-synergy.com” target=”_blank”>Tech-Synergy.com</a>

(00:31:34)

Continue Reading