Donald Trump Trying To Use The Courts For His Petty Grudges. Again.

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Kathryn Rubino:  Hello and welcome to the Thinking Like a Lawyer podcast.  My name is Kathryn Rubino from Above the Law.  Today I am joined by fellow ATLer Chris Williams and as you may have guessed by the lack of interruptions in the intro, our colleague Joe Patrice is not here today.  He is living his best conference life I think at a combination of conferences this week at ACC as well as Relativity Fest.  So we have brought in a special guest, Above the Law columnist, Liz Dye.  Welcome to the podcast, Liz.

Liz Dye:  Hi.

Kathryn Rubino:  So good to have you on and actually talk about some of the wonderful things that you write for us as well.  But before we get started and kind of dig into the week’s legal news, we start with a segment called Small Talk.  We don’t have any sound effects again, because of the lack of Joe Patrice.  Are we all really grateful in our heart of hearts?

Chris Williams:  That’s not true.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, there’s a certain extra charm I think when you do it yourself there, Chris, so I appreciate that.  But Liz, you’re new to the podcast.  What did you do this past weekend?

Liz Dye:  I worked, and I did a lot of yoga.  I went to a lot of hot yoga.  It was very hot.

Kathryn Rubino:  Fair enough.  I was sort of the opposite, chilling a little bit.  I went to the Villanova homecoming game this weekend.  My sister is an alum and my cousin is a current student, so a bunch of my family decided to head out to the suburbs of Philadelphia and do some tailgating, which was very cold in the shade and a little sunnier if you actually got some of the sun.  It was not the most exciting football game I’ve ever seen in real life person although actually it was close game by the end.  Villanova 131 to 29 against Albany.

But it was, I mean, I went to a magnet high school that focused on academics and we had a bigger crowd for homecoming.  It was fun, though.  It was fun via the Wildcat was very accessible, which is different than some other college mascots, but a good time anyway.

Chris Williams:  This is very acceptable like super average or?

Kathryn Rubino:  No, I mean, it’s accessible.  You could just walk up and be like, “Hey, I’d love a picture with the Wildcat.”

Chris Williams:  Oh, cool, because I was wondering if it was, like, meh or wasn’t racist, like super accessible like oh wasn’t a character-driven a Native American?  No.

Kathryn Rubino:  It was not.  It was just like the cat, right?

Chris Williams:  Cool.

Kathryn Rubino:  But it was just like driving around on like a golf cart, and no one was really around the Wildcat for large chunks of time.  I think its power five kind of teams.  There’s like, they have their own security detail because no one wants the Oregon Duck’s head to come off or something crazy like that, but they’re like, “Hey, yeah, you want a picture with the Wildcat?”  “Don’t you want a picture?”  That’s a little bit more down to earth, maybe.  I guess that’s maybe a decent phrase.  It was still fun.  How about you, Chris?  Did you do fun this weekend?

Chris Williams:  Let’s see.  No fires, so that’s good.  I appreciate the small things, you know, people always talk about when they think about big events, they think about like, parties or festivals, but it’s also important to appreciate a nice calm Thursday.  I didn’t have to call the fire police.  The fire police, the fire department.

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean, the kind of fireplace.  I love the cops, I guess.

Chris Williams:  I hear there’s — lot less hangcuffs.  Interesting calendars sometimes, but better all around.  Let’s see.  For the nerds out there, I’m playing old school RuneScape, and I just hit 77 runecrafting, which means I get to runecraft blood runes, and I’m so excited about it.  So if you understand what I meant, you’re like, “Oh, shit.”  You’re also like, “People still play RuneScape,” but if you don’t like, “What are you talking about?”  And it’s understandable.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s okay.  I’m just going to smile and nod.  It’s going to be great.

Chris Williams:  I appreciate it, I appreciate it.  And also, I just want to say shout out to Joe.  It’s weird to hear the Small Talk where there’s not like of, “Hmm, yeah” or like—

Kathryn Rubino:  Grumpy old man —

Chris Williams:  Pressure cooker.

Kathryn Rubino:  –just all the noises.

Chris Williams:  Yeah.  I miss like the screws’ aesthetic and a love of pressure cookers that Joe has.  It’s warm in that scorching sort of way.  We know he’s a good dude.

Kathryn Rubino:  Harumph to you, Chris.  That’s the best that I got.  It’s my best Joe Patrice’s impersonation.  But okay, so we’re done here with Small Talk.  Again, no sound effects so points for us, and we can kind of get started on the stories of the week.  One of the big stories Liz, I think, is one of yours, Trump decided to take on the Pulitzer committee?

(00:05:03)

Liz Dye:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  It was a good time.  That sounds logical.

Liz Dye:  So he’s actually been on this nonsense with the Pulitzer Committee for like a year.  He first got his sparkle magic lawyer Alina Habba to send a spoliation letter like over a year ago, I think, or at least a year ago saying that threatening that if they didn’t revoke the 2018 prizes for the Post and the Times for their coverage of the Russia investigation, he was going to sue them for defamation, which is ridiculous, right?  The statute of limitations for defamation is four years — I mean, it’s two years in Florida, it’s 2022, you know, he could have (00:05:52) where it was one year.

Kathryn Rubino:  Time is in fact linear.

Liz Dye:  Time is in fact linear, but I mean, it was ridiculous.  And aside from that, they did not defame him by handing out these prizes.  That’s not how defamation goes.  None of this makes any sense, but that didn’t stop him.  And he sent two other letters.  He got different lawyers.  He got — I believe it was Rally and Irving to send a letter, and also, he sent a letter on his own.  But now, he has like a boutique litigation firm.  Not like First Amendment litigation, but business litigation out of St. Petersburg, which sent another cease and desist letter.  And this time they have a whole new theory of the case.  And the theory of the case goes that Trump, after he complained a million times, the Pulitzer people were like, “fine,” and they did it their own internal investigation, and then they put out this statement on July 18th saying that we have established a formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed.

In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries including from former President Trump about submissions from the Times and the Post, blah, blah, blah.  The Pulitzer Board commissioned two independent reviews of the work, and the separate reviews converged in their conclusions that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions, and any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to conferral to the prizes.  And that being in July of 2022 is now the new defamatory statement on which they’re going to bootstrap themselves into the statute of limitations in, I guess, any jurisdiction DC or Florida or anywhere else, maybe perhaps New Jersey, since he spends quite a lot of time there.  And now they’re within the statute of limitations because this statement from the Pulitzer Board, which, like, eight people read damaged him by reaffirming the original findings from 2018 that the articles from 2016 and 2017 and 2018 which documented his Russia, if you’re listening discussions, which he claims were defamatory, which were clearly not, but whatever.  So that’s where we are.

Kathryn Rubino:  Although — I think that you’re right that the theory of the case is pretty wacky and out there it’s kind of nice to hear about a Trump legal kerfuffle that does not actually scare me for democracy’s sake.  This just sounds like a wild theory.

Liz Dye:  Well, yes and I mean, yes and right.  Yes, this is a bullshit lawsuit among many, many bullshit lawsuits that they are filed, I mean that he has filed and continues to file, but he also is kind of – it is part of this conservative ploy or plan is they’re not subtle about it to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan.  I mean as a person who reads a lot of bullshit lawsuits, bullshit First Amendment lawsuits, bullshit defamation lawsuits by Devin Nunes and Donald Trump and the rest of the goon squad.  Yeah, it’s hilarious, and also, it’s a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment and one that they’re not kidding.  They really really do intend to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, I mean, which is preposterous, right?  Because Right-Wing Media is so fact free that they would be immediately sued, you know, by everybody all the time, but it’s hilarious and also, you know, not.

Kathryn Rubino:  Sure sure.  I know that the overturning of Sullivan has been on the sort of Right-Wing agenda for a while, but maybe I am naive, but still hope that that’s at least a while ahead of us, the reality of that –

Liz Dye:  Right.

Kathryn Rubino:  — it seems like a much more just hopefully.  I mean, maybe I’m wrong.

Chris Williams:  We’ve got at least two months.

Kathryn Rubino:  That’s what I’m saying.

Liz Dye:  Yeah.  Right.  Spring term, probably.  It’ll be fine.

Kathryn Rubino:  But I like your sort of spin on it that this might be very much cutting off their nose to bite their face, at least in terms of the overall conservative movement because what happens when OAN can’t be in business anymore.

Liz Dye:  I mean, OAN functionally isn’t in business anymore because they got removed, but like, okay say Gateway Pundit is a blog which has a gazillion –

(00:10:05)

— I mean, it’s ridiculous, it’s like nonsense, but it has a scazillion clicks all the time, and it publishes just utter nonsense.  Look, Hannity says all kinds of crazy stuff.  How many times did we hear that Hillary Clinton was at death store, right?  So Trump has filed this and appealed that nonsensical suit in Florida where he alleged that Hillary Clinton and Jim Comey conspired to do RICO’s to him or something.  It really was a civil RICO’s suit, and it really did get laughed out of court, and he really really did appeal it.

Kathryn Rubino:  This is the world we live in.  This is 2022.  This is unfortunately not shocking anymore.

Liz Dye:  Right.  So here we are.

Chris Williams:  So it’s been a busy time.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah.  You know how I know it’s busy?

Chris Williams:  How?

Kathryn Rubino:  Because we’ve had the phone ringing off the hook.

Chris Williams:  Off the hook?  Is it really on a hook?

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, I think that it’s one of those phraseologies that —

Chris Williams:  Idioms that you’re just not going to let go of.

Kathryn Rubino:  I’m not going to, but you know what I will let go of?  My need to actually answer the telephone.

Chris Williams:  Okay, okay.  How will you do that?

Kathryn Rubino:  Virtual reception services.

Chris Williams:  All right.  That makes some sense.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, it really does.

Chris Williams:  So let’s hear from Posh about that.

Female:  As a lawyer, ever wish you could be in two places at once?  You could take a call when you’re in court, capture a lead during a meeting.  That’s where Posh comes in.  Where live virtual receptionists who answer and transfer your calls so you never miss an opportunity.  And the Posh app lets you control when your receptionist steps in.  So if you can’t answer, Posh can.  And if you’ve got it, Posh is just a tap away.  With Posh, you can save as much as 40% off your current service provider’s rate.  Start your free trial today at posh.com.

Male:  Today’s legal news is rarely a straightforward as the headlines that accompany them.  On Lawyer to Lawyer, we provide the legal perspective you need to better understand the current events that shape our society.  Join me, Craig Williams, and a wide variety of industry experts as we break down the top stories.  Follow Layer to Lawyer on the Legal Talk Network or wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

Kathryn Rubino:  Welcome back.  The other story that we spent a lot of time on this week was about the Supreme Court leak.  We all remember that the Dobbs decision.  The case that overturned Roe v. Wade and all that nonsense was leaked ahead of time before the final published decision and the Supreme Court and sort of, I think the legal elite came out to say.  But really really the problem is the fact that we got the decision before the actual decision was published and they promised an investigation into it and suspiciously, we have heard very very little since then.  I don’t think that that’s necessarily shocking for those of us who sort of cover the industry.  I think that we probably won’t hear what comes out of the end of this investigation, but I am curious for you all.  What is your favorite theory about who did the leak and why it’s not coming out?  Because I think it was Ginni.  I got to be honest.

Liz Dye:  I know people love that theory.  I know people love that theory.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s is too good.  It’s is too good.

Liz Dye:  I know.  I don’t think we’re ever going to know because I think nobody is an, like you’d have to be really dumb, right?  Or you’d have to like, give it to Glenn Greenwald who would probably, like screenshot it and show the email because that’s how he rolls.  But unless it was given to a reporter in that way, or unless the person who worked their entire life to get to the Supreme Court and whatever was really really really dumb and had the dumbest upset ever, we’re never going to know.  And that’s that’s fine.  You know that’s fine.  And what difference did it make with it?  We knew like six weeks in advance.  It was the same opinion.  It’s not like he changed a word of it, right?  Alito still did what he did, so we’re not going to know.  But it wasn’t Ginni.  She’s not that smart, like for her to you know (00:14:09), like, “Oh, I’m going to make it look like Ketanji Brown Jackson did it” or like come on, she’s not that smart.

Kathryn Rubino:  I don’t know, man.  She had her hands all over everything related to January 6 like she’s goddamn Forrest Gump, so I would—

Liz Dye:  Okay, but she had her hands over in the dumbest way possible, like she’s sending out form letters that are like, why isn’t Biden on a barge at Gitmo?  Like she did have her hands on it, but just in the most ham handed like dumb way possible.

Chris Williams:  Liz.

Liz Dye:  I don’t think he did anything.

Chris Williams:  Liz, this is a classy podcast.  We will not make fun of Clarence Thomas’ stupid wife.

Liz Dye:  Oh my God.  I know, right?  Sure.  No, far be it for me to impugn the honor of Mrs. Clarence Thomas.  That brand genius.

Kathryn Rubino:  Fair enough.  I think that certainly the initial speculation leads heavily towards the clerks.

(00:15:03)

But it strikes me that clerks seems very low on my personal list because, I mean, people who go to law school fundamentally are risk averse, right?  I think that is something that characterizes lawyers, generally speaking.  These are folks who are literally at the pinnacle.  This is the achievement that they get to have, like the gold star in their resume for the rest of their damn lives.  I don’t think anybody’s throwing it away when — as you said, Liz, the exact same decision, functionally the same decision came out very shortly after.  But I do think it absolutely rallied the right and made sure that no other conservatives joined the more moderate, but still awful decision that John Roberts.  His concurrence that he penned.

Liz Dye:  Do you think it really did have the effect of pinning it kind of as written in place?

Kathryn Rubino:  Based on the lack of edits from the draft to the final?

Liz Dye:  Right.

Kathryn Rubino:  That certainly, I think is a decent theory.  Everything we’ve heard, not just from this decision but the ACA case that John Roberts really has this sort of moderate for the sake of moderate kind of mentality.  It seems very on brand.  I can imagine those sorts of conversations happening and I can also imagine sort of the far right of the court feeling very locked in place when their name was originally attached to it and not wanting to feel like they squirreled on it.

Liz Dye:  I mean, there are six of them.  Was it ever in doubt?  You knew it’s going to happen?  You know it’s going to happen the second Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, right?  Like without justice — I mean, they were probably going to do it anyway, right?  But they were certainly going to do it when they put Amy Boney Karen on the –

Kathryn Rubino:  Amy COVID (00:16:44), as I like to call her.  But I mean, I definitely think you’re right, but I do think there is there are some functional differences between if John Roberts is writing the majority opinion or Sam Alito is writing the majority page and not just sort of the sort of flame on, I don’t give a fuck anymore attitude that I think really characterizes the Alito decision, but also in terms of the way the trigger laws and other states got implemented versus (00:17:09).

Liz Dye:  Oh yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  I think that they did have a lot more impact.  And as much as I think that if that concurrence was the majority opinion, I think it would still be devastating for rights in this country.  Probably better, at least in the short term.

Liz Dye:  Yeah, okay, yeah.  I mean, at least a little bit, right?  Yeah, for sure.  The way that the Texas’ bounty hunter law went into effect, that was gross.  That was really gross and was disastrous.  So, yeah, I see your point about losing whatever moderating effect John Roberts could have had had he authored the opinion.  But there were six of them.

Kathryn Rubino:  Abortion rights were always going to go down.  It was a question of how far and how fast, and I think we got the worst-case scenario of all those.

Liz Dye:  Right, on the other hand, it clearly is going to have an effect on the midterms like we will know in four weeks what the effect was, and I think it’s going to be serious, like you can see that in Kansas.  Nobody wants this, right?  This is not majority rule.  This is counter majoritarian rule.  This is bad policy being foisted on the country against the expressed wishes of the people, so we will see.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, I mean, absolutely.  Of course, OPEC came in and decided to try to influence the elections in their own way, so I’m not sure that we wind up with enough of a benefit even of the Alito decision in terms of left-wing politics, but it certainly is motivated, I think a lot more people to come out and to actually participate in (00:18:42).

Liz Dye:  I think it’s motivated women.  I think it’s concrete.  I do, I do.  Who knows what happens with the gas prices, but I do think it has concretized the risk for women across demographic spectrum.  So I don’t know.  I think that there will be an effect on the midterms, but we will find out in three weeks.

Chris Williams:  Your clients are expecting you to know a lot of things about a lot of things, even topics like domain names.

Kathryn Rubino:  Domains are definitely not covered in my law school classes.

Chris Williams:  Worse yet, your client might want a domain name to protect their brand or support a product launch that’s already taken.

Kathryn Rubino:  Fortunately, GoDaddy’s Domain Broker Service can help.  Expert brokers will help you securely and confidentially get that perfect domain.

Chris Williams:  To learn more, visit godaddy.com/dbs.

Kathryn Rubino:  And another story that got a lot of attention this week is Steve Bannon’s ongoing legal woes.  I know that’s something, Liz, you’ve been covering for an awful long time for us.  What is the latest in the Bannon saga?

Liz Dye:  Bannon’s going to jail?

Kathryn Rubino:  Yey!  See now, we’ve got to use ourselves with that.

Liz Dye:  He’s going eventually to jail.  I mean, he’s not going to go to jail pending appeal, which I know people are pissed about, but I think that that’s — look, it’s U.S. America.

(00:20:02)

That seems like an appropriate role, but okay, so Bannon defied Congress.  Bannon was subpoenaed by the January 6th Select Committee and he chose not to respond in any meaningful way.  He refused to produce any documents and he refused to testify.  And he claimed executive privilege, which is ridiculous.  He was fired from the White House in 2017.  He was asked about being events which took place in 2020 and 2021, and events which he has spoken publicly about, particularly his coordination with Peter Navarro, who also tried this trick of defying the committee and got indicted for contempt of Congress.

So he refused to show up and he made this claim of executive privilege and it was immediately born to be false.  His lawyer, Robert Costello, who is a Trump land regular, he represented Rudy Giuliani, and he is the one who infamously kind of people say try to dangle a pardon to Michael Cohen to stay online in the Russia investigation.  So Costello told the Select Committee and also the Justice Department that Trump’s lawyer Justin Clark had invoked privilege on the former president’s behalf.  But Justin Clark said he’d done no such thing, and he said, to the extent that you have privilege, I count on you to invoke it, but we are not going to tell you what you have to say, which is privileged.  But of course, nothing was privileged, right?  There is no privilege for someone who is not an executive officer.

Kathryn Rubino:  It hasn’t been for years.

Liz Dye:  No, I mean it’s preposterous on its face, right?  So Bannon tried to invoke privilege, but he didn’t do it.  A lot of them invoke privilege, Pat Cipollone evoked privilege, but he sat his ass down in the chair and said, “I’m not going to answer your question as citing executive privilege”.

Kathryn Rubino:  And also actual attorney that actually worked as part of the Federal Government (00:21:59) time in question.

Liz Dye:  Correct.

Kathryn Rubino:  This explains a lot.

Liz Dye:  Right.  A lot of them did invoke privilege, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to put your ass in a chair.  And so Bannon said he didn’t have to do it, and indeed, he did not do it.  So he invoked in his Trial or attempted to invoke in his Trial a lot of what I wrote about is permission slip defenses.  He tried to assert an advice of counsel defense because he said that Costello had told him he didn’t have to show up.  He tried to assert various forms of public authority defense, saying that he kind of got permission from Donald Trump or there were OLC memorandum that said former White House officials could not be prosecuted for contempt of Congress, but none of those were really opposite to him because he wasn’t a White House employee.

Moreover, the precedent from a case called Licavoli v. United States in DC says that you can’t assert mistake of law defenses, right?  So you couldn’t assert advice of counsel because the counsel is a mistake of law defense.  And you can’t say, “Well, I read all these.”  I mean, Bannon was preposterous.  He was like, “I was reading over all of these OLC memorandum by the fire in my spare time drinking gin or whatever.”  But in my three shirts, it’s pouring over this OLC memoranda from the 80s and 90s and thus I knew that I could give Bennie Thompson two middle fingers.

Kathryn Rubino:  I’s smarter than you.  Don’t you know.

Liz Dye:  I’m smarter than you, right right.  Although he talked about his plan, he was the one that said, all health is going to break loose on January 5, so he definitely was in on it.  Anyway, it did not work.  None of those worked.  U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols wouldn’t let him present any of those defenses because it was contrary to the president, right?  Licavoli v. United States says you cannot present mistake of law.  You can present mistake of fact, like if you sought that testimony was supposed to be Thursday and it was supposed to be Tuesday and you didn’t show up.  You can present that, but you can’t say, “Well, I just thought I didn’t have to show up” because, you know, you’re shit out of luck.  And indeed, he was shit out of luck, right?  So none of those defenses were permissible at Trial nor was his malicious prosecution defense because the Justice Department refused to lock up Mark Meadows, although Mark Meadows did famously engage with the committee and handover a gazillion embarrassing text that he had with Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity.  So hmm –

Kathryn Rubino:  And Ginni Thomas.

Liz Dye:  And Ginni Thomas, right that was the one where she was like, are they going to put the Biden crime family on a barge at Gitmo?  That’s what I’m hearing which is why, Chris, I really really don’t think she was the leaker because she’s that shit crazy.  Anyway, so none of that worked and the jury convicted Steve Bannon, who failed to be able to turn his Trial into (00:24:45) promised like the misdemeanor from hell for Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and Nancy Pelosi, like he was not allowed to subpoena Nancy Pelosi and he wasn’t allowed to subpoena Merrick Garland and end up like we’re done.

So he’s convicted and he is going to appeal.

(00:25:00)

He has already promised he’s going to appeal and he’ll be out pending the results of the appeal, and good luck, buddy, because I do not think the DC Circuit is going to be receptive to this argument.

Kathryn Rubino:  Were you at all surprised at the length sentenced to four months?  I think six months was sort of the maximum that he was facing.  Were you surprised sort of where the judge decided to come out on that?

Liz Dye:  No, I mean I think, look, he looks like a first-time offender despite the fact that he was pardoned and is facing Trial in New York.  He’s been convicted again for that.  We Build the Wall scam which we can talk about if you want, but six months is a lot.  The Justice Department said basically he was an asshole who flagrantly disregarded the law and was disregarded this court.  But okay, he is a first-time offender and it is contempt of Congress.  It is a misdemeanor.  I think four months was pretty rational.  I’m okay with it, I can live with it.  He also famously refused to engage with pre-Trial sentencing and told them, I have the money and I’m not going to tell you where my money is which like, okay, if I were Steve Bannon, I probably wouldn’t want to talk about my money either because he’s got some interesting associations.  But he told them, I’m not going to tell you where my money is.  You can impose the entire $200,000 fine or $100,000 for each count, but the judge kind of didn’t.  I think the number was $6,500 that he is going to wind up having to pay, which is a bummer, but also, who cares, right?

Kathryn Rubino:  The money wasn’t the point.  To being able to see him in jail is really what’s going to help our heart a little bit.

Liz Dye:  Right.  So like maybe — go ahead.  Sorry.

Kathryn Rubino:  No, no, I was going to kind of take you up on your Build the Wall entree there.  What’s sort of next on Bannon’s legal woes agenda?

Liz Dye:  Okay, so he and this veteran named Brian Kolfage and some other people who saw a chance to make a buck had this grifty scam that they were going to build their own border wall on the southern border.  And I think they raised a couple, like maybe $20 million from donors for it.  And part of their pitch was that this Kolfage guy is a multiple amputee and a veteran, and he’s very photogenic, and he has pretty wife and lovely family.  And he said he was volunteering and he wasn’t getting paid, but he was getting paid, and he got paid quite a bit.

Kathryn Rubino:  They were lying.

Liz Dye:  They were all lying and they all sent these like — I know you’re not supposed to say okay, boomer anymore, so you all can send your – I mean DM me and twitter and call mean asshole, but it was such an okay boomer thing.  They were all sending each other these texts like, “Do not worry.  We will have him be our pitch man, and I will move the money around via my shady ass LLC.”  And they got caught.  They were dumb.  They got caught.  So they were federally indicted and on the eve, I think on maybe the morning of January 20, 2021, Trump pardoned Bannon.  He did not pardon any of the other conspirators who got time, but that did not make them well-disposed toward Bannon, their co-conspirator who got to walk away clean.

And so when the State of New York came knocking and said, “How would you like to tell us about your old pal Steve?”  Multiple of the them it appears his co-conspirators were like, “Hell yes.”  And so the State of New York has –

Kathryn Rubino:  Watch me flip.  Watch me flip me.

Liz Dye:  Oh, hell yeah.  Right, so it’s pretty clear that Kolfage is on side for the State of New York’s prosecution of Bannon.  And because I think some of the LLCs were registered in New York, and certainly some of the people who sent money in were in New York, there’s enough of a nexus for the State of New York to prosecute him.  So four months is a little bit like maybe we’ll just call that like the runway for him, for Steve Bannon’s next phase of life in perhaps a lockup state or federal.  I’m not super picky on that one.  I’m (00:28:59) where I would like to see him and his shirts wind up.

Kathryn Rubino:  Amazing, and maybe I’ve just been listening to entirely too much Taylor Swift this weekend, but all I can hear is you’re telling the story about his (00:29:10) slipping is the karma song, which is an absolute gem of a song.  Stop shaking your head on me, Chris.

Liz Dye:  I’ll have to listen.  It’s Steve Bannon’s honor.  High praised.

Kathryn Rubino:  Thank you all for chatting today.  And thank you all out there for listening and thanks of course to our sponsors.  Be sure to read us at Above the Law.  You can follow Above the Law on Twitter, it’s @atlblog.  Liz is available on twitter @5dollarfeminist.  Chris is @WritesForRent.  I’m @Kathryn1.  So if you’re on Twitter, there’s lots of people that you should be following and engaging with.  You should also be listening to the rest of the Legal Talk Networks.

Chris Williams:  Joe would have got you for that.

Kathryn Rubino:  He would have.  He would have, but unfortunately, he’s not here, and the rest of LTN’s podcast offerings.

(00:30:07)

I am also the host of another podcast to Joe Bo about diversity issues and the law.  And Joe is on some sort of a podcast on Fridays about legal tax.  So if he doesn’t know the name of it, neither do I.

Chris Williams:  Awesome.

Kathryn Rubino:  I think that’s all I got for this week.  Thanks again and happy listening.

[Music]

Chris Williams:  And thank you as always to Posh and GoDaddy Domain Broker Service for sponsoring the show.

Kathryn Rubino:  Thanks.

Continue Reading