The Gag Order Pt. 10

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Hello.

Kathryn Rubino:

Greetings and salutations.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Welcome to another Thinking Like. A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above. the Law coming to you from the Above, the Law offices today,

Kathryn Rubino:

Which I So an underground bunker somewhere.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, from an undisclosed location. You’re

Chris Williams:

In Zuckerberg’s house.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, no. So yeah, coming from there, I’m Joe Patrice, obviously. From Above the Law. I am joined by Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams. We are here as always, to talk about the big stories in legal from our urch at Above, the Law. How’s everybody’s week going? Here

Kathryn Rubino:

We are living the dream over here.

Chris Williams:

This kind of sounds like a small talk thing. Is this

Joe Patrice:

This small

Kathryn Rubino:

Talk? You’re trying for a new intro to small talk?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I mean, I hit the sound effect. I don’t know if it came through, it will come through, but if it did, it would be through on the recording, not on, not

Kathryn Rubino:

So we can’t hear it. Love that for us.

Chris Williams:

Got, I’ll just mentally add in the do to Lulu.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, right.

Kathryn Rubino:

I am doing pretty well this weekend is my baby’s first birthday party. Not just the party. It’s also her actual birthday, so I survived year one, you guys. Yay. This party is only nominally for the child. It is largely for me. That’s certainly how I’m taking it.

Chris Williams:

You know what they say about parenting first year, they scare you the second year they work you. Third year they bore you.

Kathryn Rubino:

I have not heard that, but I will add it to my repertoire of,

Joe Patrice:

I have heard that

Kathryn Rubino:

Of Singsong parenting advice. I keep saying the first year I kept her alive, so the first year was for her. The second year is for me as I kind of get my life back together. Not obviously to the same pre-baby life, but maybe I can sleep for more than three hours in a row. That’ll be a trip for me

Joe Patrice:

As a professional colleague. As a professional colleague, we are all very much hoping for you to get your life back together.

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh, that sounds

Joe Patrice:

Not for professional. Wait, that sounded worse than I meant.

Kathryn Rubino:

I would just like to make very clear, despite being on maternity leave last year, I still wrote more stories for Above, the Law than either of y’all. So there you go.

Chris Williams:

I pay homage, so I don’t really have the Joe issue here. I think your work ethic is phenomenal. I’m trying to get jokes, but speaking of young children, have y’all been following the Drake Kendrick beef?

Kathryn Rubino:

I thought you were going to go with the work ethic to make that transition because man Kendrick is working.

Chris Williams:

Ken. Oh my God. Yeah. Drake has been getting worked. Yeah,

Joe Patrice:

So I have a lot of thoughts. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s so hard to zero down to what the best response I’ve seen has been, but I think it was someone on Twitter said at this point, I’d rather piss off Boeing than Kendrick. I think that’s a pretty good one

Kathryn Rubino:

At least then the death will be quick.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Oh man.

Chris Williams:

Unrelated suicide.

Joe Patrice:

Well, I mean, yeah, assuming you believe that. It’s just so deep. The musicology levels of it, all of the A minor jokes, which obviously there’s the minor part of it, but also the keys are all the white. It’s so genius. It’s

Chris Williams:

So good. I’m just watching this and as I’m listening to the Kendrick’s demolishing of a Michael Jackson tier career and Drake’s whining as one’s accustomed, I have a copy of the 48 Laws of Power that’s just vibrating and humming in the back of my room, which casino just feels like it’s being summoned, and there’s a phrase that comes up in these things where it’s like, oh, something that happens that’s deeper than rap. There’s been a long history of rat beefs where Drake should have no longer been a household name. This is crazy because it’s not only we know Drake’s literally some Canadian actor, and I think that both of those things should be a thing that prevents you from being a big name in hip hop. But Drake, some house survived both of those things. But Kendrick is hitting him in his pockets. He’s like, Hey, everybody that collab, because one thing Drake will say is like, oh, future. I gave you your first hit all you people, I gave you your hits. But then Drake is like, they gave you your authenticity, which is much more valuable. And then he’s like, oh, by the way, I’m going to put it on the club bop so that they’re playing at a baseball games. This is like

Make Kendrick released the Child Predator electric slide. This is going to be at Cookouts Bar Mitzvahs. It’s going to be everywhere.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. I’ve already seen the mashup of a bunch of pictures of Donald Trump hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein’s set to not let us. So it is really taking on a whole new level.

Kathryn Rubino:

I’ve appreciated just the depth that Kendrick has gone to, sort of those lyric genius pages are annotated just to the nth degree. I mean, y’all are out there acting like Swifty is trying to figure out where all the Easter eggs and all the references and what they are, where they mean. It has been utterly fantastic.

Chris Williams:

I get it. When you have to attack somebody’s reputation. Come on, come on, come on. Anyway, that was

Joe Patrice:

No, no, no, no. I mean look, this thing has

Chris Williams:

Crossed genres.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, I was just going to say to make this quasi-legal so that it’s not just us talking about amuse, it’s just

Chris Williams:

It’s small talk

Joe Patrice:

Joe talk. It’s small talk, but the purpose of small talk is also to show

Chris Williams:

That we’re people

Joe Patrice:

That is purpose to show people, but also that it’s the title of the show would suggest that we can’t get away from Thinking Like A Lawyer that you can’t No, that is actually the point of the show. So I mean, my interest in this back and forth is at what point does Drake decide that he’s lost in reality and attempt to make a defamation claim or something like that?

Chris Williams:

Well, that’s one of the things I want to write on today. I think that

Joe Patrice:

Truth’s being a defense and all that. Well, yeah.

Chris Williams:

So my thing is Drake got curb stomped when Meet the Grams Happened. Us was just like a coup de gras.

I think that Drake’s only real response is to run out of the booth and go to the Courtroom, which apparently he tried to do with that. Apparently, one of the things that Kendrick said was he tried to get a cease and desist on that record. I think that he has to make some sort of defamation claim if it is the case that the kid diddling stuff that Kendrick is accusing him of that sports teams are playing or isn’t true. And then here’s the part that I think is fun where I’m saying this is an Avenger level threat, but if everybody is beating Thanos his ass because from the start, because there’s a point where Drake set a line, he was like Metro boom and shut up and going to make some drums hilarious in the moment. But the problem is Metro Boomin is an amazing producer. He then made drums. There are Japanese people rapping DIS and Drake. There are teenagers, DIS and Drake. But the thing is he

Joe Patrice:

Is dunking on Drake. Now, let’s just put that,

Chris Williams:

So in the thing, the unexpected victors of this rap battle, j Cole and Macklemore, I did not have that on the Bingo card, but the thing is, so Metro booming made a track for people to, he uploaded track said, if you do good on this song, I will give you a free beat. It’s called BBLD Drizzy. And the thing is, not only is it hilarious, I think the legal angle here is that Metro booming used an AI generated song to do so. So it can be like, Hey, Drake can be like, I don’t know which artist you stole from, but you had to use their IP for you to generate the underlying beat that you’re using, cease and desist, that blah, blah, blah. I think that would be a fun angle, but as the French say, that would be some sucker shit. Even if Drake go the legal route, which he arguably already has, that means that he’s not only lost, he’s reinforcing all of the culture Vulture claims that Kendrick is making. It’s one thing to admit in the rap battle, we don’t really mean we PPO and Dre Cole, but hey, he went out like a man. The quote like a lawyer, Thinking, Like, A Lawyer, and a rap battle is not what you want to do.

Kathryn Rubino:

That is a great line. But could you just imagine for a second what discovery would be like if this actually went to full on litigation? Those

Chris Williams:

Yes, yes. Actually yes. Actually, it would look like the YSL trial, be a bunch of lyrics and head bobbing,

Kathryn Rubino:

But just the discovery even before then be like, how did you get a copy of me, Ozempic prescription, all that stuff. Could you imagine those text messages back and forth through the whole thing? That’d be amazing. Oh God.

Joe Patrice:

Okay. You know what? We’re going to do something we don’t often do. We’re going to conclude small talk and take a break Before we get to our actual, what’s theoretically our first scoring 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 McDermott is about achieving excellence together. Their culture is collaborative and inclusive. You can build your dream legal career at McDermott, they focus on mentorship with training and wellness resources to support you. 73% of associates earned at or above Cravats bonus scale in 2023, all with a lower hour threshold. Want to see how your life could be better at McDermott? Head to careers.mw.com/ Above, the Law. Okay, so now let’s get to what is theoretically supposed to be on our agenda today, which is let’s begin the Trump Hutch money, whatever trial is continuing. This unfortunately seems like it’s going to be our top story for quite some time because it’s going to dominate the

Kathryn Rubino:

Continues a pace

Joe Patrice:

Continues a pace,

Kathryn Rubino:

But I mean, listen, it’s historic, right? This is a legal podcast. We’re a legal website. It is the first time former president of the United States is on trial, on criminal trial. That is something we should be talking about. We’re not just rehashing old stuff. We’re not just talking about farts here, but it is actually relevant.

Joe Patrice:

I don’t even know where to begin as of now. We are beginning this week, which will include the Stormy Daniels testimony, which I’m sure is going to be wild. But we’re coming off of a week where a few things have happened. The first of which is we continue to have contempt slap Trump. We got another contempt. He took another contempt loss off G or divide.

Kathryn Rubino:

So that’s his 10th contempt violation in the course of this trial. So I have one burning question that I absolutely need an answer from either of you on, which is what’s the over under for the total number of contempt violations in the course of this trial? Where are we setting the line?

Joe Patrice:

Okay, so with the caveat that there could be contempt for other reasons, I will set the line on the gag order contempts at 10, I think.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, 10 has already happened.

Joe Patrice:

I know. I don’t think there’s another one, and the reason for that is this particular violation, even though it was not part of the big bunch of nine that happened earlier, this particular violation had happened before the judge had issued his first $9,000 fine, which ended with, Hey, if there are more of these, we’re going to have to consider jail time. This one did not invoke jail time because it had already happened before that warning, but the judge has reiterated that that’s where we’re going if we get to 11, I feel as though no matter how unhinged the former president’s handling of this trial has been that someone has successfully gotten in his ear that there’s not really a recourse. If you hit 11 here, you will be held in some sort of a holding cell, probably a solitary cell so that there’s no risks to security or something like that, but something’s going to happen, and so

Kathryn Rubino:

I think that your supposition implies that Trump doesn’t see that there’s a benefit to jail time for him. That’s fair. Which I’m not sure. I think that that absolutely solidifies his role as a martyr to the far right. I think it invalidates the entirety of the proceedings for, and unfortunately large percentage of the country. So I think that he, first of all, it also implies that he thinks before he tweets or whatever truth socials or whatever we’re calling that, and I’m not sure that he does. I think a lot of it happens late night and I don’t think that there’s a lot of handlers around him at the time to sort of take the phone from his hand, but also even if he were sort of a rational actor trying to evaluate whether or not it’s worth it, I think that there is a benefit that he potentially sees in jail time.

Joe Patrice:

It’s certainly possible. So I will say one thing pushing against that is he did attempt to, and this is one of the stories we covered last week, he attempted to commit more gag order violations, but in a way that avoided getting him in trouble. He made a request, or through his lawyer, Susan Eckles made this request that the judge read a bunch of articles that his handler had printed off from the likes of Jonathan Turley. He wanted the judge to read those first to confirm that reposting these criticizing the jury would not be a gag order violation as the judge was not in the mood to issue advisory rulings, fine. But that one suggested to me that Trump understands gravity of going to jail and doesn’t want to do it. He then told his lawyers, I want to post this. My read of the situation is his lawyers then said no, and he said, well, you’ve got to ask the judge. I want you to ask the judge to make sure I can’t. But that read to me as though he is hoping to be able to keep doing what he’s doing without getting in trouble, which pushes against the idea that he’s gearing up to be a martyr.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I mean, I hear you. I think the trial’s not going to end sort of in the short term. How long does he remember this admonishment, I think is another thing that kind of plays into it, and who else is in his ear sort of whipping him up into a frenzy about the benefit and what his polling numbers look in certain places, whether or not he thinks that this or his fundraising, if he gets put in jail, I guarantee his fundraising numbers go through the roof.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, yeah, I,

Kathryn Rubino:

He’s there. If he’s struggling at any point, I would not be surprised to see that this happened, and I will say right now, if he does post something and he does go to jail, we should absolutely check the 24 hour fundraising numbers. After that, there’ll be a significant increase.

Joe Patrice:

He has also tried to argue, well, he also had a run in last week that was somewhat interesting. He went to the public and said that he, after promising he was going to testify, saying that he couldn’t testify because of the gag order. This was a move that he then looked at his lawyer, Todd Blanche, who seemed to nod in agreement, which is interesting to the extent that this is gibberish as a legal matter. This then set up an unfortunate tongue lashing the next morning where the judge went through and said, you understand that that’s not what the gag order does right now from misrepresenting what’s going on in court to the public. That’s a problem. That is something that gets somewhat contemptuous. The idea that his lawyers are backing. It raises some questions about whether or not they have any control over what’s going on. I’m sure it was intended to be some sort of get out of jail free unintended card to prevent himself from having to testify, which I think would any of us put him on the stand in any scenario? Is any good coming of that? I would say no. I would do it, but not for good,

Kathryn Rubino:

Not for the agent of chaos.

Joe Patrice:

So I think he was looking for a way out of it. He thought he could say this with no repercussions. That was a mistake on his part, but it was one that was like so bumbling. Obviously, the next thing the judge was going to do is say, Hey, I heard you said this. We need to make absolutely clear, because if the judge doesn’t do that, I don’t know. Maybe it sets up some attempt

Kathryn Rubino:

If the defendant wasn’t the former president that I think has all this political machinations going on behind the scenes. If this is an actual, you want to be very clear that that is not at all what the impact of the gag order is. Your rights as a criminal defendant remain intact. This gag order has not impacted that at all. If you wish to take the stand, you are of course, of course able to do so.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, and that’s basically how that played out for him. So yes, so this continues and it continues to be ridiculous. It’ll definitely have Stormy Daniel’s testimony having happened. By the time we do, we record again, so that’ll be fun. But for now, I guess, unless there’s anything else that concludes our Trump section of the day. So there are a couple of things going on uptown here at Columbia. Obviously that has been, there’s been a number of protests and counter protests and yada yada there. That really is somewhat outside the purview of what we deal with here. However, one, there are two major legal stories coming out of it at this point, one of which is the law school has instituted an optional pass fail set up to allow people taking the exams if they feel like it’s been a problem for them to do so, given the chaos that’s been going on on campus, they can take it pass, fail the law review as well as several of the other journals have written a letter saying, this is unacceptable. They would ask that all the exams be canceled or in the alternative, a mandatory pass fail be implemented.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’d be very, very difficult to get an accurate assessment via lettered final grades about what those students actually know. Given everything that’s going on.

Joe Patrice:

I’m anti canceling. I mean, I understand the emotion involved. I also understand, even if I’m not questioning their sincerity, but if it’s a negotiating tactic, then yeah, you start with, you open with cancel and you negotiate back to mandatory pass fail. So I support it on that level, but I don’t think that there is enough here to justify outright canceling the exams or putting them off indefinitely or anything like that. That said, I have long been an advocate of mandatory pass fail is better than optional pass fail. Well, sure. If you as an administration have already made the decision that pass fail is a necessary lever to pull in order to shield students from potentially displaying inaccurate or unfair to their actual ability grades, then you could do that. But optional is always going to be a problem because it will always, then, especially because it’s not optional after you see your grade either, but even if it were, it’s at the point that you go down the road of optional, you are asking students to give themselves a disadvantage vis-a-vis their class classmates over something. It also leads to a self-selection. You were involved and cared about this or had a friend who got their head cracked open or something. You then suffer as opposed to somebody else. That’s not great. Columbia is a good enough school. What’s whatever?

Kathryn Rubino:

Thank no one ever quoted me on that. You Yeah, and NYU grad said that

Joe Patrice:

Columbia is a fine enough institution that everyone getting pass fail for one term and everyone understanding that will be okay. It also helps that it’s the second term here. It’s not like, I mean, the way OCI is going at these elite schools, everyone’s already got their job off of their first semester grades.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s not quite that bad, but interviews have definitely started,

Joe Patrice:

Which is ridiculous that that’s how they’re doing it, but given that that’s how they’re doing it, it’s supercharges that this is not a hill worth dying on that you absolutely should just say mandatory pass fail, everyone move on. It will provide firms enough data to make decisions. Don’t worry about

Kathryn Rubino:

It. I mean, I will say I think that probably makes a lot of sense, but I do think the other potential wrinkle is how this impacts law review. You don’t have those full years of grades to really go on. It’s just a semester. If you think you were doing better in your second semester than your first, that might really sting, but maybe they just expand the scope of the write on competition.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, and that has been the trend in law schools for the last several years. The whole grade on component has been getting, by my understanding, it has been getting watered down over the years anyway, as they seek good writers more, which frankly always made sense. It was weird that it was based on anything but your ability to Blue Book, since that’s a hundred percent of the job, but nevertheless,

Chris Williams:

Quick decide, but I think it’s related. Is it Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, the only law schools that do the high pass pass low pass thing?

Joe Patrice:

Well, Yale has long done that. I don’t know necessarily the scope of everyone else’s version of that. That was always Yale.

Chris Williams:

I think part of the thing that makes the notion of switching to optional pass fail so much more complicated for schools that are still higher ranked but not the top three, is that they’re still using a grading system that has the varying smiley faces of A, B, C, what have you. I think that this would be less of a controversial position that one that the law review is advocating for, if not all high schools, if not all law schools, at least the higher ranking ones just switched over to a high pass pass

Kathryn Rubino:

System. Sure. I would think in that instance it would’ve already been accepted.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, that’s a good point. Given the view that Columbia has of itself as a peer of schools like Yale and Harvard, it should just go ahead and do this. Anyway, that brings us to our second ish wrinkle with Columbia, which is, this happened actually this week. 13 judges, federal judges have written a letter saying that they will never hire anybody from Columbia, either law school or undergrad until certain demands are met. Those demands are they want the participants in any protests, doxed so that they can tell who was involved their argument for collectively punishing all Columbia people for what only few of them did, and probably not the Fed SOC students that they hire as clerks. Their argument for that is, well, we can’t tell who’s really fed SOC and who isn’t unless you give us information on everybody who has been involved in every protest. They also want some vague promises of value neutral. I don’t quite understand their argument there. Their argument seems to be they want Columbia to treat conservative protests as nicely as they did the Palestinian protest. Given that they called the NYPD on that protest, I guess

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s like, okay,

Chris Williams:

Be

Joe Patrice:

Careful what you wish for.

Chris Williams:

I don’t know any professors that got dunked by the police during the white supremacy protest, so I feel like they’re already being treated better.

Joe Patrice:

Well, yeah, it was a weird question there. But then the third and what I think is the actual, the overlooked aspect of this, they demand viewpoint diversity hires be made, which is a popular form intriguingly from a number of judges who have railed against the concept of affirmative action. It is affirmative action for conservative scholars who might not be able to put together a resume. They

Kathryn Rubino:

Smart enough by themselves to get hired and as much as they want to hate on it right now, an elite institution, so we might as well give them a leg up.

Joe Patrice:

They defend this argument as well. It’s not really affirmative action. It’s about increasing the diversity of experiences that people are exposed to in the school, which is a perfect, but whatever.

Kathryn Rubino:

Hold on a second. Did you just stumble into the point?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, but again, as I’ve written about this before, because this has been a longstanding request from these sorts of folks, as I’ve written about before, it’s kind of the famous Martin Luther King thing on its head. It’s like I dream of a world where people aren’t judged on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin. It is attempting to say, oh, you have these ideas that a lot of people don’t like that you should be protected for those, but not for all of the stuff that’s actually discreet and insular. It makes one discreet and insular minority. Anyway,

Chris Williams:

The thing that gets me about that, about the thought diversity arguments, I wish people push it the full way because who’s not really represented much in the government? Probably anarchists. There are a lot of far left. There are actually far left, so not like, oh, maybe people shouldn’t have to pay $5,000 for each insulin shot left. I mean, hey, maybe it should be a right to be able to sleep if you happen to be homeless. Those people are hard to find. If you’re really going to go for thought diversity, let’s go for it. Let’s get all the horseshoes in there. That’ll be more preferred.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, this is an Overton window problem. They thing to push it one direct,

Chris Williams:

Which always skews towards the status quo. The Overton always skews towards the status quo. So all this conversation about, oh, people are left wing. This is some shit. You could probably find Reagan being a fan of a couple of decades

Joe Patrice:

Ago, mixed

Chris Williams:

In right thing. I saw a thing where, what’s the name? I just had a conversation with a friend talking about how oh, mark Zuckerberg is left wing because he was advocating for a prison reform. I found a bill where George Bush in 2007 was advocating for prisoner reform too. It’s like,

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, right? Nixon was responsible for the Clean Air Act and we’re about to gut it when they get rid of the Chevron deference in the Supreme Court, and

Chris Williams:

People act like, oh, if you think Sackett was poorly decided, then you’re Bleed heart liberal. No,

Joe Patrice:

The prison Prison furlough program that ended up sinking Michael Dukakis campaign because he had instituted it had actually been, Massachusetts was just implemented just like copycatting Reagan’s furlough program when he was governor of California. It’s just a constant, yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I mean, our whole Obamacare is just what MIT Romney

Joe Patrice:

Did. Obamacare. Yeah,

Chris Williams:

So my thing is if you really would’ve hang your hat on, then let’s actually get some thought point diversity, and I mean left of Jill Stein because there’s already what’s name Alex Jones is already in the, Hey, being a Nazi is bad camp, which is to say there are already people that are already to the right of Alex Jones that have clear talking points. Let’s get some actual lefties if you want. Make the thought diversity argument.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. My take on this has been, this is all fun and games, and a lot of people are starting to, on social media, go off on why is this just punishing the right wing kids at Columbia for things the left was doing, how stupid of a program this is, and that is an argument that I absolutely made when they did this.

Kathryn Rubino:

Also true. Yes.

Joe Patrice:

Well, wait, this is an argument that I made when they started doing this at Yale 16 months ago or whatever it was, but I have since kind of wised up to what the game is here. It has nothing to do with punishing them or whatever because it’s all a ruse Anyway, they’re going to keep doing this just like they did with Yale. It is two things. It is an attempt to get some free publicity for government servants who fancy themselves better than their station, and second, it is an opportunity to target specifically admins that they think are spineless to make these requests. They did it with Yale, Yale Law School. They’re doing it with Columbia where the president of that university is more or less signaled to the world that she’s willing to do anything to avoid even minor criticism. So that’s what’s going on here. I don’t think they intend to or ever will punish any Fed SOC student who wants to go to Columbia. This is just, they’ll either take their lumps and get their publicity and then never care about it again, or they’re going to exact a pound of reform flesh out of Columbia going on here.

Chris Williams:

The one thing that I would like, I think that this is judges punishing law students for acting on the First Amendment at this point is passe. I think that we need to have judges acting on students that use other constitutional things that are, they’re protected for. There needs to be a judge that’s like, oh, if you’ve ever decided to act to not waive your right to an attorney, or if you don’t just give a consent search to the police officers. I don’t ever want to hire you because I feel like this is on the same tier as that all the amendments are sacrosanct, right? A judge preventing a person from being able to do what the constitution protects their right to do, that’s shameful, and I wish there was more of that framing.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, and I have a lot of articles about this at Above Law that you can check out at listeners as we talk about this, but the course of this discussion, dating back to Judge Ho, beginning this with Yale Law School to here tracks a disturbing trend when you talk about constitutional rights and all, not that the first amendment’s necessarily involved here, but free speech as a general matter, it tracks an effort to recharacterize free speech into an authoritarian model, as I call it. It is no longer people have the right to speak. It is people who are invited to have a microphone and a platform have a right to speak uninterrupted. And that distinction, that distinction is critical to the kind of counter reformism that these judges are pushing. They want a model in which having that kind of power means you can’t be protested in any way.

They got mad that people picketed somebody that they liked. That’s what they’re trying to claim is free speech now. And that distortion flips the whole thing on its head, but also is particularly dangerous in a purportedly open society because in a world where they also are saying money is speech, this then sets up a condition where the powerful can always be bull horning down on everybody else, and no one’s allowed to say anything else. So this legal regime that they’re pushing is really problematic, and you kind of hit on it with this, right, and why are they focusing on this? Right? And I think it’s because they see an opportunity here to newspeak this particular right into something that it never has been in the past.

Chris Williams:

I see you. I hear you. Phenomenal point. I think I am thinking in a similar vein, specifically the fourth Amendment, the protecting procedures and the proliferation of cop cities or the way that people talk about, there used to be a, and part of it’s used to, I guess kind of like for white people. I don’t know if black people had this, but there used to be a presumption of innocence, but now it’s kind of like, oh, you didn’t give all the information. You must be guilty if you’re pleading the what have you. And I do think that that’s also happening, and I would be surprised if judges didn’t also move in that direction.

Joe Patrice:

And I think the one thing protecting us from that kind of a development is that there is still a, there’s not uniformity of thought on that among these kind of right-wing judges. There are the gorsuch’s of the world who are willing to be like, well, wait a minute, I have deep thoughts about criminal procedure. And dude, that’s not right. I mean, judge ho a signatory to this had that opinion. I think he was in dissent actually at the Fifth Circuit where he was just like, what are we talking about here? People, no cops can’t do that to a random citizen. So I think there are definitely Sam Alitos of the world who are ready to get rid of your whatever, but I think the one thing protecting us is the right hasn’t quite made up their mind on agreeing on that. And it’s fair,

Chris Williams:

Right? So when we get, right now we have Leos for the first what have you, but when we get on for the fourth, it’ll be a problem.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, yeah. Alright, cool. That seems like that’s our time. Thanks everybody for listening. You should subscribe to the show, so get new episodes when they come out. You should give it reviews, stars, write things, whatever You should check out the Jabot Kathryn’s other podcast. I’m the guest on the Legal Tech Weeks Journalist Roundtable. There’s also some shows on the Legal Talk Network that we are not on, but you should check out. You should check social media, blah blah blahs at ATL blog. I’m Joseph Patrice Kathryn’s, Kathryn one. Chris is writes for rent. I’m over at Blue Sky two at Joe Patrice. Others are their same handles. You should read Above the Law, you read these and other stories before we talk about ’em here and with all of that. Yeah, just keep your eye on CNN these days because that’s going to work. Starting to show up. I’m sitting here all dressed up for it later myself. Alright,

Chris Williams:

Bye. Peace.

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