Liz Dye lives in Baltimore with her wonderful husband and a houseful of teenagers. When she isn’t...
Joe Patrice is an Editor at Above the Law. For over a decade, he practiced as a...
Kathryn Rubino is a member of the editorial staff at Above the Law. She has a degree...
Published: | April 3, 2024 |
Podcast: | Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Category: | News & Current Events |
Special guest Liz Dye joins us to talk about the week that was. First, we delve into the abortion pill oral argument where even most of the conservatives scoffed at the right-wing effort to let an Amarillo courthouse second-guess the FDA on science. Almost as though the Chief Justice just tried to crack down on that practice. But along the way Neil Gorsuch showed off his (lack of) research skills and Alito and Thomas sought to revive the legal legacy of a chronic self-pleasurer. Then we check out the end of the showdown between Ron DeSantis and Disney that looks like a major victory for DeSantis until you, ya know, actually read the settlement agreement. Finally, Trump’s got another gag order and went straight to work setting up the inevitable contempt hearing over it.
Special thanks to our sponsors Metwork and McDermott Will & Emery.
Joe Patrice:
Hello.
Kathryn Rubino:
Hey.
Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like. A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above. the Law. You heard Kathryn Rubino there.
That is true. I’m also of Law
Joe Patrice:
also Above, the Law. Chris Williams is out this week. So we have a special guest, so Liz Dye from the Law and Chaos podcast.
Liz Dye:
And also Above the Law
Joe Patrice:
And also Above. the Law
Liz Dye:
I have made some words on your fine blog once or twice,
Joe Patrice:
But I am, I’m plugging the new thing there, so Me too. But yes, has joined us to chat about the big stories of the week that was in law, or in this case, a couple weeks, I suppose. We were off last week. So lots
Kathryn Rubino:
Of things to talk about. Good news.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. But first we always have our little small talk segment, which we introduced with our sound effect. Yeah. What’s up with everybody?
Kathryn Rubino:
Well, we had a holiday Easter. I cooked for a bunch of people and the thing I have to say that I am most proud of was my tablescape. I went all in, got new wine glasses, pink wine glasses for the white wine, blue for the red wine. All
Joe Patrice:
Pastel.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, pastels. Then I had pink, blue and yellow service wear and I just thought it said a really cute spring. Get you into the mood for the holiday. Kind of a tablescape.
Joe Patrice:
Oh, there you
Kathryn Rubino:
Go. It was really, really fun for me.
Joe Patrice:
Alright.
Liz Dye:
I used white dishes. I’m not like that,
Kathryn Rubino:
But white dishes are actually what you’re supposed to use because it makes the food look better. It makes the food look better, but I care more about pink, which also checks out.
Liz Dye:
Yeah, no, I did. And then I did Easter, so I used the same white put the tablecloth on, wash the tablecloth, iron the tablecloth, put it back on the table.
Kathryn Rubino:
I mean, that’s impressive iron ironing. The tablecloth is always that step where you’re like, but it’s clean. You guys, you don’t have last year’s Thanksgiving on it that you count for me.
Liz Dye:
White. It was just white. It wasn’t any tablescape.
Joe Patrice:
So now what about you,
Kathryn Rubino:
Joe? Did you cook for
Joe Patrice:
People? No, I’m sick. I’m very ill. Oh, blah blah, blah. I feel terrible. I am hopped up on DayQuil.
Kathryn Rubino:
I know your man cold must be very
Joe Patrice:
Terrible. Barely going get to get through all of this. You say?
Kathryn Rubino:
Said it must be very terrible.
Joe Patrice:
It’s not great. Okay. It’s not covid though.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yay. There are other illnesses.
Liz Dye:
I just don’t believe anything anymore. It took me the last time I had covid like three days to test positive. I’m like, I know I have Covid. This is ridiculous.
Joe Patrice:
Okay, that’s fair. I’ll be worried. Then I’ll go back to being worried.
Liz Dye:
Yeah, no, sorry, I’m like ray of sunshine.
Joe Patrice:
I mean, look, I could still smell. So there’s that.
Kathryn Rubino:
Is that still a symptom? I feel like,
Joe Patrice:
Oh, is that not anymore? I
Kathryn Rubino:
Don’t know. I feel like that was early. I’m not sure that the later iterations have that quite as commonly.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Oh, well you
Liz Dye:
Have, between you and me, Kathryn, he’s going to be like, I got to go.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. You’ve ruined my day so far, which was already not going great. So now you’ve got me thinking I’m going to get Covid. I’m going to No,
Kathryn Rubino:
You’re not going to get it. You have it. Okay,
Joe Patrice:
Thanks. And with all that, I think we can move on to topics and get me back to resting. So that concludes our small talk segment. Let’s talk about what’s going on out there. I think the big thing that we had last week was the oral arguments in the abortion pill case, which you managed to touch a bunch of different subjects. So what was going on there?
Kathryn Rubino:
I mean, it’s a weird moment when you feel like your side’s going to win, but you don’t actually feel great about any of it, right?
Liz Dye:
Yeah. I mean it’s clearly going to get kicked on standing even. And even Justice Gorsuch was like, yeah, ixnay on all of these national injunctions. But look, it’s still going to go back to the Kathryn, you probably want to talk about this, but it’s going to go back and Judge Kamarck in Texas has already granted those state attorneys general the right to intervene. So I think this is just a reset button.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, disturbingly, it seemed like far too many justices are interested in the Comstack Act coming back from the zombie dead, which not great news. Do
Liz Dye:
You mean 18 USC 4 61
Kathryn Rubino:
There? I love
Liz Dye:
How Alito tried to sneak it in there. Well, what about 18 U Ussc 4 61? This isn’t an obscure provision. You’re like, come on dude, anybody, and God bless Elizabeth prologue who was like, oh, you mean the Comstock Act
Kathryn Rubino:
Like to be clear in case you were following along at home, this is that part of the agenda. Yeah, I mean obviously it’s kind of terrifying that an obscenity law from hundreds of years ago
Liz Dye:
Could, I think he’s 1873.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, right.
Liz Dye:
It’s like a guy who had a problem, let’s say he felt himself to have a problem, Anthony Comstock with masturbation, and thus he wanted to outlaw pornography so that he could kick his habit
Kathryn Rubino:
Because why not make it everyone’s problem?
Joe Patrice:
I mean, is there an oral history of what happened to that poor guy, long-term, Anthony?
Liz Dye:
Oh, he became like a postal inspector. He leveraged this into a job, I guess pawing through everybody else’s mail to make sure that they didn’t get any pornography or abortion, which is why this is hooked in here, right? Because the loss, the statute says it’s illegal to mail birth control or abortion drugs or equipment through the US Postal Service,
Kathryn Rubino:
Which could very well if it’s brought back. It obviously hasn’t been enforced since RO and even before, but obviously could have some tremendous impacts for not just reproductive health in red states, but the whole country.
Liz Dye:
And look, every time it’s been challenged, I mean it’s been knocked down. I believe Margaret Sanger challenged it to import diaphragms from Japan and it was overturned. It’s been overturned or it’s been overruled every time that it’s been challenged in court on first amendment grounds or on individual liberty grounds.
Kathryn Rubino:
And yet this court is like, I think that there’s a way that we could absolutely outlaw abortion. Yeah,
Joe Patrice:
I mean Alito and Thomas seem excited about it as a potential end run of,
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, I mean for people who wrote so prolifically about returning the right to the states, what they actually want, they have revealed their true hand for if you weren’t paying attention AKA, we all were paying attention. We all knew this was coming, but they want women’s lives to be controlled. They want abortion outlawed and pretending that it was a state’s rights was merely a Ruth to make it seem less extreme in the first instance.
Liz Dye:
So can I ask you a question, Kathryn, while we’re still on this and you’re the one that wrote it up. Sure. Do you feel like it’s better for us to try and repeal the Comstock Act or do you think, right, so Representative Cory Bush has asked, proposed that we repeal it, and I’m of two minds, I think maybe we should repeal it because otherwise God knows how Republicans might use it in a future Trump administration or if we say it needs to be repealed, are we conceding that it is still good law?
Kathryn Rubino:
I don’t think it necessarily, I think that anybody who buys that it’s still good law is going to buy it. Whether or not we are advancing that argument, I don’t think that it’s hiding the ball at any way in any way. And I think that the problem, I think with the left on reproductive freedom for a lot of years, even sort of pre Dobbs was, well, this is fine. Let’s just ignore the way that the laws are. That’s why we have all these sort of state level laws that immediately went into effect when Dobbs came through because, oh, well it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t apply. Who cares? And I think that what Dobbs absolutely should have taught us is that we do need to care. We need to codify these things when applicable. We need to overturn anything that could potentially happen to us, particularly when you have justices signaling that it’s an argument that they are open to the only way that Alito doesn’t get to, whether it’s in the majority, a concurrence or a dissent. Here’s all the reason why the Comstack Act is the bomb. The only way we avoid that is by overturning it, by listening to Cory Bush and getting rid of it. And that should be our priority.
Liz Dye:
I agree too. But
Joe Patrice:
Poor I would this, I mean, I don’t see a scenario in which this would actually reach a vote, but I’d be very interested to see Mike Johnson, who famously has his son monitoring his porn intake. I would say about this, a couple of other interesting aspects of this whole decision. One you mentioned that Gorsuch repeated his longstanding disdain for nationwide injunctions, which is a conservative hobby horse that many conservative justice judges generally and lawyers generally kind of ignore once the shoe is on the other foot. But Gorsuch sticks with it, which is one thing
Kathryn Rubino:
Points for consistency.
Joe Patrice:
But in doing so, he chastised the plaintiff’s Counsel for, how dare you say this. I went back and looked and there never been injunctions like this during the Roosevelt administration, which was interesting because it prompted immediately a law professor to point out, I’ve written a whole article about how that is true, which got me wondering, has something gone wrong with their Westlaw subscription or something? Are they doing chat GPT for research these days up there? What’s going on?
Kathryn Rubino:
Why research when you can get by on vibes?
Liz Dye:
I would say that concerned with accuracy, I mean they’re taking all of these made up fact patterns to rule on now, so why not make up some of their own?
Joe Patrice:
Well, and Gorsuch being the most made upy of them, the one who made up all of those school prayer case facts that just weren’t even remotely in the record.
Kathryn Rubino:
And I mean even this case in particular, the underlying scientific articles that Judge Kme relied on came out as actually the journals that published them have disavowed them saying that the science behind them were junk science. So made up facts or made up citations are the least of our problems at this point.
Liz Dye:
Well, so many of the findings in K Merrick’s original opinion were about abortion regret and how women feel shame. And so actually the best plaintiffs here are not women’s doctors, but doctors who specifically refuse to treat women who seek medication abortion. Those are the people who really have standing.
Joe Patrice:
And of course, the last little tentacle of this that made news was that towards the end of the week last week, we got news out of the northern district of Texas that despite being told by the National Judicial Conference that Hey, you can’t keep sending all these cases to Amarillo just because they get filed there, you have to run it through the randomizer for the whole district. They went full and said, I prefer not to, so we’re just not going to do it. Technically the rule is discretionary, but it was set up in a way that was, I’m pretty confident the chief set it up in a way to say, this is discretionary, but obviously you’re all going to do this. Right. And was probably aghast to learn that they were just going to say no.
Liz Dye:
And encouraged by McConnell Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz to say, no, we set this up, we confirmed this lunatic in Amarillo and look the alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the plaintiffs in this case specifically incorporated in Amarillo so that they could have a marginally colorable claim to have venue there.
Joe Patrice:
So just
Kathryn Rubino:
What if by random we meant you can decide exactly who your judge is. Yeah,
Joe Patrice:
I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not the world’s biggest Chief justice fan, but sometimes no, but sometimes I feel on, I feel for this guy, sometimes I kind of look at him and he’s so desperate to have his name attached to something with credibility and he just watches as everyone around him lets the world Byrne. He’s just trying so hard. He’s trying so hard.
Kathryn Rubino:
There’s a lot more he could do, Joe. Okay. He has moments and he tries and fails to reign in the worst impulses of Samuel Alito, which I guess is a thing, but come on, he does not deserve credit.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Well,
Liz Dye:
Yeah. I mean when it comes down to it, he’s going to vote in favor of corporate personhood every single time. So limited sympathy.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, substantively, I’ve got my issues. I feel like he wants to, and in some ways it works to my benefit, the way in which no one is allowing him to rebuild the credibility of the court only further undermines these opinions in the eyes of history,
Kathryn Rubino:
But he isn’t actually working the most to rebuild the credibility of the court. When all of these scandals with Clarence Thomas have come out, he has not taken a particularly hard line stance against That’s true. All of this. He said, well, I’m sure my colleagues are fine. That true and has had an unenforceable code of ethics, all this sorts of stuff he’s not doing the most.
Joe Patrice:
And he put up that long screed about the history of typewriters
Kathryn Rubino:
Because that’s what we were really worried about as a country
Joe Patrice:
Man with his finger on the pulse of what we care about. Yeah, McDermott will and Emory is Vault’s number one law firm for associate satisfaction three years running. Why? Because they’re doing big law better. At McDermott, you define what your success looks like, they help you achieve it. Award-winning professional development program and hands-on mentorship propel you toward your goals while the industry leading wellness benefits help you feel your best. So you can do your best. Want to see how your life could be better at McDermott, head to mw.com/ Above, the Law. So I’ve been writing a lot about Ron DeSantis and his ongoing fight with the Walt Disney Corporation. And guess what that looks like it might be over.
Kathryn Rubino:
Well, I have full confidence in your ability to continue writing about Mickey Mouse and
Joe Patrice:
Look, it combines things that I love, rat Disney World and making fun of Ron DeSantis, the
Kathryn Rubino:
First thing. I love that for you.
Joe Patrice:
So they settled, seemingly it’s complicated, but they seemingly settled the series of lawsuits that were going on, and I got a bunch of people writing me or adding me on the Twitters telling me that I’m awful and Ron DeSantis kicked their ass and all this sort of thing. So I decided it was, I can reevaluate priors. So let me take a look at what the settlement agreement said, and I was going with this.
Ron didn’t come out of it nearly as well as I think he probably expected to. The real deal for those who weren’t following along with us all along, there was a special, Walt Disney World owns a lot of land, and on that land they need things like sewers and water and fire departments. And rather than have some neighboring town pay for all that with property taxes, they pay for it out of pocket. And what they get in exchange, or historically they’ve gotten in exchange was they could make those payments as though they were kind of getting quasi-governmental, like a quasi-government. And so they got tax advantages. They were really acting as the government over that land basically. That was a thing that when DeSantis got mad at them for saying that gay people exist, he decided to go after that. He made a series of bumbling efforts to do so, culminating with him replacing the board, but forgetting to pay attention to the outgoing board’s meetings. And the outgoing board created the world’s best rule against perpetuity hypo, where they signed over to the Disney Corporation control of the place until the death of the last surviving he of King Charles III plus 21 years. So
Kathryn Rubino:
I mean that, I know you’ve written about this, and this is a while ago as these things move, but it was really just chef’s kiss moments of
Joe Patrice:
Lawyering. Listen, everybody who’s taken a bar exam hates the rule against perpetuities. And everybody saw for once like, Ooh, I could see a positive value of this. But those deals are now all gone as part of this settlement agreement, which
Liz Dye:
I hate that so much. That was the most lovely. I mean, it was the best contract to just blow up the contract. It’s just rude. I really take it as a personal affront, having written about it myself. Come on, you should have left that one for me. I
Joe Patrice:
Mean, my favorite part of it was that when people started criticizing, I think it was the Wall Street Journal reached out and found a law professor in Florida who is a specialist in specifically land use and corporate governance, who was a former Republican legislator. And they were like, so this is all crazy. And he’s like, Nope, this is airtight. He’s totally right. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. But they did give it up, which is the source of the superficial belief that people had that maybe DeSantis
Kathryn Rubino:
If you don’t actually read the agreements and you’re kind of looking at,
Joe Patrice:
But you read the agreement coverage a little bit closer. And so they do forfeit those deals. Disney does. On the flip side, the new board forfeits, all the deals they tried to make to screw Disney’s and everything goes back to where it was in 2020 before anything was going amiss. Now what happens from there, it’s a little bit more wrinkly, and this is not even in the settlement agreement, but there is a new person who now is in charge of that board. So DeSantis agreed to have a new person come in as the administrator, partially because the other one was serving in that job illegally as it turned out. But they got a new one who seems to have been a negotiated settlement with Disney on its own to the extent it’s someone from DeSantis orbit who is a known tourism industry ally, who has worked with Disney in the past, so on certain deals.
So that seems like a good sign. There’s a carve out. There are some carve outs in the settlement agreement saying that the board is now obligated to no longer attempt to frustrate, but indeed to help Disney get certain tax benefits from this, which kind of brings it back to the exact tax benefits they were getting all along. And the final aspect of it is rather than release everybody, which usually in a settlement agreement, it ends with everyone releases everybody. We drop all of our cases, we forgive each other in perpetuity, yada yada. They don’t do that with one case, which is the 11th circuit appeal of the First Amendment and contracts clause case that one, they just agree to, all the parties agreed to defer and let that one sit in limbo with no statute of limitations, problems, whatever. So it just gets to sit there pending future negotiations, which read to me as Disney Reserves the right to go after you on this case that a lot of us thought was a slam dunk if these negotiations don’t go our way, which seems like a bit of a loaded gun left at DeSantis, pointed ominously, right at DeSantis.
So yeah, I dunno. Look, he gets a win. On one hand, he gets to say he won, he beat Disney somehow. But when I’m looking at the actual substance of this thing, yeah,
Kathryn Rubino:
I mean Disney did not need this as a PR win. They needed the substance to be correct so that they can continue to operate in the efficient way that we have come to know and fear from Disney World, and they got what they wanted
Joe Patrice:
On that front. Yeah.
Liz Dye:
I have one important question though, is Bridget Ziglar still on the new board?
Joe Patrice:
They have not changed the board. So you’ve got all the regular people who think fluoride makes people gay stuff on there, but
Liz Dye:
You guys know who Bridget Ziglar is? She’s had some unfortunate personal information. She’s that lady who was married to Christian Ziglar and they had the interesting sex life, even as they were trying to protect children from the horrible gay woke mind virus. And it turned out that they like to bring other ladies into their relationship, which is fine, no shame here. But it was a little hypocritical. And then her husband was investigated for sexual assault and had to resign a bunch of things. Her husband, Christian Ziegler, who was a big muckety muck in Florida, GOP politics. So I wonder if she’s still on this board. She was kind of shouted out. I think she refused to resign, but she might’ve been shouted out of another position as her husband was sort of shouted out. And I, she’s still going to be in charge of Disney. So I think that there’s definitely space for more crazy times to come here.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. DeSantis has not, as far as I can tell, removed her from that board or the school board that you’re talking about. I think she’s still on both of those. That’s nice. And the other person I alluded to, whose name escapes me is a simple board. Mihir, maybe. Yeah. Okay. Maybe there’s a central Florida person who has publicly said that Fluoridated water is what’s making children gay. And that dude’s still on the board too. But seemingly the board now is both substantively constrained by some of these covenants. Covenants is covenants, covenant, substantively constrained by those, but also constrained by having a new administrator who the buck stops with. Really? And who seems to be that mate. Oh, okay. The new administrator’s name is, it’s like a Greek name, I think it’s Or something like that. Yeah. Well, because the person you’re thinking of is the person, I think is the person who lost that job because they were holding it illegally because they simultaneously on some other board and And that was ruled by an ethics board to be illegal anyway, whatever.
Liz Dye:
So the plan to put the Supermax prison in the parking lot of Disney, which is what DeSantis people just threatening, I guess that’s off.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Yeah. So that appears to be off the table for now. So minor win for DeSantis, major win for Disney. And we all go back to go back. Look, he needed something. He’s spent, as I put my piece, he spent the last several months getting his ass kicked by Nikki Haley of all people. So you got to find some kind of a take your
Liz Dye:
Ws where you get Yeah. And he’s a lame duck.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, yeah. He really is looking forward to that secretary of, I’m trying to think of what the most humiliating thing Trump can make him be is, but Secretary of Something job.
Liz Dye:
Remember when he shifted Mick Mulvaney? Mc Mulvaney was the Oh, that’s right. Mick Mulvaney was the press secretary and he kind of got shunted aside from Mark Meadows. And so then he got shoved out to, I think he was ambassador to Northern Ireland or something, and he was like, it’s a great honor. What a step up. And people were like, cool.
Joe Patrice:
I don’t know. I would take, and this is an open thing to anybody who’s interested, I will take any of those cushy ambassadorships. I’m willing to.
Liz Dye:
I’m glad you’ve thrown your hat into the ring. I have.
Joe Patrice:
I want that on the record. Alright, well let’s take a break and come back for another topic. Closing things off, Liz, you cover a lot of what’s going on with the Trump legal world. He’s had some gag orders before he’s got more.
Liz Dye:
Yeah, and they’re functionally the same as the ones before. I mean, I think I wrote this for you guys, but I read a lot of places. He’s had a lot of gag orders and in the beginning he had a robust First Amendment challenge and he said, it’s unfair to gag me. But the problem for him is that when you run your mouth all the time, courts kind of work out the details and then they just kind of take out and photocopy the one that was in and they say, okay, we’re going to put the Supreme Court of New York on this one because it was already blessed in federal court. So we’re pretty sure it’s fine. Trump has been running his mouth as per usual in the New York civil fraud case, which is going to trial on April 15th. I think jury selection is supposed to begin that day.
He already had a gag order down the hall in Justice Arthur anger on’s Courtroom because he was so abusive to the LawClerk in that case. And he had a more wide ranging gag order in the DC election interference case. So Judge Tanya Chuin imposed that gag order and then it was kind of paired down by the DC circuit, but the DC circuit ruled on all of his sort of First Amendment arguments and most of his arguments were bs. They were ridiculous. But having had a federal court rule on these claims, because Trump tried to make an argument that it was basically the incitement standard, so it had to be imminent lawless harm, sorry, imminent harm. He had to basically be found guilty of incitement to have a gag order. And the court said, no, that’s not real. That’s not the standard. So he’s not allowed to attack the Courtroom staff.
He’s not allowed to attack in dc He was not allowed to attack court staff. He was not allowed to attack the prosecutor’s staff. He was not allowed to make derogatory comments or were derogatory comments about any of the witnesses in the case. And so that was more or less exactly what district attorney Alvin Bragg asked for in New York when he requested a gag order with the addition of, please do not threaten any of the jurors, or please do not talk about any of the jurors. And Trump has formed for that one too. In the Roger Stone case, he published the personal information about the jury foreperson and kind of accused her of in pretty racist terms, basically voodoo maing her powers over the rest of the jurors to convince them to convict poor innocent Roger Stone. And so there was an imminent danger that he will do that in this case.
And look, we’ve had a lot of time now to watch Trump threaten people on social media. Every judge in every case has had death threats, including Judge Eileen Cannon. But Judge Tanya Chut has had death threats. And in Atlanta DA Fanny Willis has had death threats. The chief of police has had death threats, so we now kind of know. And so he’s done it so many times that his arguments against it are going to get shot down. They’ve been shot down before. And indeed here, justice Mayor Shawn said, cool, I’m just going to copy what Judge Tanya Chut did in DC and we are done here.
Joe Patrice:
What gets me about these is I understand the logic of it in in getting around the First Amendment implications such as they are, most of these orders don’t cover the judge themselves. So they’re like, you can say, I can take it, you can say what you want about me, but not these other folks. And unfortunately that has, or perhaps maybe weirdly fortunately, Trump has taken that inch and run with it and is consistently going after judges and their families and is doing so again, which if he wants to piss off the person who’s going to referee his trial, that’s certainly something he can do, I suppose.
Liz Dye:
Right? I mean, it’s certainly something he’s done every other time. But here, I mean, I know what you’re talking about, you’re talking about here. Justice Han’s daughter is a democratic political strategist, and Trump has attacked her as he did with Justice Arthur and Goran. He attacked the judge’s wife and judge’s family. And in completely false terms, like yes, the justice’s Justice Han’s daughter is indeed a democratic political strategist, but the social media posts, which he attributed, he Trump attributed to her were not hers, as he did with Justice Arthur Geron, justice Aron’s wife was not the owner of a specific account. And Trump kind of directed all of this political violence toward her anyway.
Joe Patrice:
And so I see the reasons why a gag order may not, probably shouldn’t cover badmouthing judges, but yeah, he’s definitely taking advantage of that. And in a way that’s a little dangerous to the extent, as you said, the death threats are coming. We have had a judge be attacked by a crazy person in the last few years. It’s worrisome, but he’s got to do something to keep Trump social making money. Oh wait, hold on. I’m watching in real time a stock ticker as it’s going down and down.
Liz Dye:
Right, right. Well, just to put the capstone on that story, Bragg asked, I think on Friday to expand the gag order to include the judge’s family. I don’t know what Justice Han is going to do about that because there is, as you said, such a strong social taboo among judges or professional rule that they will not protect themselves. And Trump has countered that by saying, if you want to expand this gag order, you have to go through a whole full round of briefing again, you can’t just sue a Ponte issue, a new broader order.
Joe Patrice:
And that takes time, which is all that he really cares about at this point. I actually heard right before this started, I saw the argument out there that he may actually start firing some of his lawyers and start using that as an argument for why things have to be delayed because he’s got to get a new legal team. I don’t know. I
Liz Dye:
Mean, lots of luck fella. Yeah, justice Mershon is not going to delay this trial. Trump’s lawyers were so clearly dilatory and their last motion in which they accused the government accused the state of failing in its discovery obligations because the federal government delayed so long in producing. And Justice Mehan was so pissed at that thing because the trial was supposed to start on March 25th, and instead Trump’s lawyers kind of trotted out these bogus allegations of misconduct by the District attorney. And at that hearing, justice Mehan was very angry. So I mean, I think Trump could say, I fired all my Counsel. I have to do this pro se. And the judge would say, cool, see you April 15th. Which would be so beautiful for us. Every one of us in our profession.
Joe Patrice:
Alright, well I think that’s everything we had for this week. Thanks everybody for listening. You should be subscribed to the show so you get new episodes when they come out. You should give us reviews, stars, write something, you should be following other shows. Kathryn’s the host of the au. I’m a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. Liz has her own show at Law and Chaos. You should be following us on the various social medias, the corpse of Twitter. We’re at ATL blog and at Joseph Patrice and at Kathryn One and Liz, you’re not there anymore, right? I’m
Liz Dye:
Not really
Joe Patrice:
There. You’re not really there. Over at Blue Sky? I’m at Joe. Patrice Kathryn’s at Kathryn one still. Are you on Blue Sky?
Liz Dye:
I’m @lizdye. I think I’m @lizdye yeah.
Joe Patrice:
Okay. Okay. Yeah, I am still thinking Blue Sky is the right alternative, but if people think others, Aren still working on it, others are better, let me know. I
Liz Dye:
Think it’s going to wind up threads. All right.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, and with all that and the other shows on the Legal Talk Network, and with that said, we will check in with you all next week. Peace.
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Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Above the Law's Joe Patrice, Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams examine everyday topics through the prism of a legal framework.