In the ongoing defamation trial of Mike Lindell, who accused Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer of personally conspiring to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, Lindell isn't bothering to argue that his claims were true. Instead he's saying he believed them at the time he said them. Is that a good defense?

Plus: a federal appellate decision upholding an injunction against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's efforts to harass the pressure group Media Matters for America over its campaign against Elon Musk, an unsuccessful lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania claiming the school fostered an anti-semitic environment, the Trump administration's odd dealings with the Harvard Law Review, and a look at a couple of articles about the ongoing fallout from the decisions by major law firms to settle with the Trump administration over its transparently illegal executive orders against them. We also have updates on ongoing litigation over Trump's tariffs, and a look at the seven-year sentence for 87-year-old disgraced lawyer Tom Girardi.

Visit serioustrouble.show to find a transcript and sign up for our newsletter.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show

This week’s show is heavy on economic policy. Yay! We discuss a ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade that many of Trump’s beloved tariffs are illegal and then, a strange shadow-docket order in U.S. v. Wilcox, a case about the National Labor Relations Board that raises a key economic question: Does that mean the president can fire the entire Federal Reserve Board, too?

For paying subscribers: an update on the administration’s dealings with Big Law, updates about the Mahmoud Khalil and Kseniia Petrova cases, the Francesca Gino saga, and about Trevor Kirk, the LA County Sheriff’s deputy convicted of using excessive force who the Trump administration is trying to keep out of prison.

Upgrade your subscription at serioustrouble.show!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show

This week, we look at the indictment of Judge Hannah Dugan and the end of Ed Martin's reign at the US Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. For paying subscribers, we have an update on family business at the Sean Combs trial, where James Comey's daughter Maurene is facing off against Mark Geragos's daughter Teny. We have updates about new rulings about the Alien Enemies Act, about Marco Rubio's efforts to personally revoke the visas of students who annoy the administration, and about the frog embryos case. To get the full episode, go to http://www.serioustrouble.show and become a member. Thank you!

This week on the show: Jury selection for Sean Combs' eight-week RICO trial, which is moving along very quickly for for a complex federal criminal case.

Plus: a ruling in the Alien Enemies Act cases, a ruling that gets at the heart of the policy question: whether there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” that triggers presidential powers under the law in the first place. It's a strange one.

Another long-running case where ICE contends it doesn’t matter that it violated a court order about how to remove a person due for deportation, since he’d still be removable even if they did everything right.

Long-Suffering Federal Judge Beryl Howell takes a shot at the many firms that chose to settle with the Trump administration instead of fighting. Meanwhile, the firms that settled have been insisting that they agreed to very little, and we may be about to get some information about how true that is.

Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show

We've got a lot for paid subscribers this week: Updates on several removal cases, a look at the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, our first look at the litigation over Trump's tariffs, a cautionary tale about what happens when you accidentally file your internal deliberations about the weakness of your case on the public court docket, some forecasts for George Santos's time in federal prison, a discussion of why Sarah Palin lost (again) in her case against The New York Times, and more. If you want to upgrade to hear all of that, go to https://www.serioustrouble.show.

This week, Ken and I have a discussion of Harvard’s lawsuit fighting the Trump Administration’s effort to punish the university for failing to submit to what amounted to a demand to place the university in a kind of federal receivership. We look at the Supreme Court's middle-of-the-night, weekend rebuke to the Trump administration, ordering a halt to Alien Enemies Act removals from the Northern District of Texas. The subtext of this order is that four of the court’s conservatives have noticed the administration’s nose-thumbing over the orders in the Abrego Garcia case and aren’t pleased about it. In other cases, Trump is trying to use his position as president to get out of paying the larger of the two judgments E. Jean Carroll won against him. The AP is learning that the relief it obtained in theory from Trump’s retribution means little in practice. And Nadine Menendez will soon be relieved of the need to take her Mercedes C-Class to the dealership for servicing.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

The Supreme Court is getting increasingly involved in the sprawling litigation over Donald Trump’s many aggressive executive orders. In J.G.G. vs. Trump — the case seeking to prevent removals under the Alien Enemies Act — the high court issued an emergency ruling saying detainees are entitled to due process but they must seek it through petitions for habeas corpus in the jurisdictions where they are actually being held. Is this a rebuke to the administration, relief, or neither?

We also discuss the Abrego Garcia case, the ACLU trying for a national injunction against AEA removals under a habeas approach, and a Trump-appointed judge prohibiting removals from his South Texas district under the AEA, for now. Plus: in the Mahmoud Khalil case, the federal government is broadly asserting its power to revoke green cards because it doesn’t like their holders’ speech — setting up a likely Supreme Court confrontation over the extent of non-citizens’ First Amendment rights.

Sign up for our newsletter at serioustrouble.show

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show

There has been a cat-and-mouse game about venue in several of the cases brought by people protesting the Trump administration’s efforts to remove their visas and remove them from the country. For example: if you thought your client was in New York when you filed your lawsuit, but he was really in New Jersey, and now he’s in Louisiana, should the case be transferred to New Jersey, or to Louisiana? It sounds technical but the stakes are substantial. That conversation is for all listeners this week.

For paying subscribers: an update on the Trump administration’s war on law firms, the firms that are fighting instead of holding, how much it matters to a fancy law firm if its junior attorneys are unhappy, and whether their businesses are likely to survive the president’s assault. Plus: an analysis from law professor Steve Vladeck, who’s looked at the unusually large number of temporary restraining orders entered against the Trump Administration’s executive actions.

If you want to hear all of that, go to www.serioustrouble.show to upgrade! Unlike Paul Weiss, we don’t cost $2,000 an hour, and we promise that we will never enter into a letter agreement with the Trump administration that contradicts our principles.

Paul Weiss is the third law firm to come under attack from the Trump administration and the first one to cut a deal, agreeing to certain terms about its practices in exchange for Trump withdrawing an executive order that effectively aimed to bankrupt the firm. The firm had different things to say about the agreement than Trump did — and we discuss what a capitulation like this might do for its business, staffing and more at Paul Weiss and throughout Big Law.

Plus: Columbia University has similarly given in to demands from the administration, an appeals court panel has backed up Judge James Boasberg, declining to disturb his temporary restraining order that bars the administration from more renditions under the Alien Enemies Act, for now. And the Houthi war planning Signal chat is now the subject of a lawsuit — also before Judge Boasberg, lol — alleging that the administration is disobeying the Federal Records Act by setting those messages to auto-delete.

Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find episode transcripts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

The latest, most brutal entry in the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake comes in the form of a motion to dismiss. Drake, you will remember, sued Lamar’s record label (which is also Drake’s record label) for defamation, alleging that Lamar’s hit single “Not Like Us” defames him by calling him a pedophile. But as UMG’s attorney Rollin Ransom points out, rap battles are well known to feature hyperbolic accusations and insults that are not necessarily factual, which means they are unlikely to be defamatory. Plus, Drake explicitly dared Lamar to call him a pedophile — or, more specifically, Drake released a track in which he used an AI-generated Tupac Shakur voice to urge Lamar to “talk about [Drake] likin’ young girls.” It’s all very embarrassing, but as Ken notes, while UMG has a strong argument that it did not assist in defaming its own client, their argument is one a judge might not agree to consider in its entirety at this stage in the case.

Plus: Trump tries to give Paul Weiss the Perkins Coie treatment, several of Trump’s major executive actions are facing new roadblocks in the courts, Nancy Mace faces a defamation lawsuit where the speech or debate clause is likely to provide her an important shield, and Ed Martin continues to Ed Martin.

Visit serioustrouble.show to find a transcript of this episode, relevant links and to sign up for our newsletter.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe