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It's the first Serious Trouble of the new Trump administration. We start with a discussion of pardons: the ones Joe Biden gave on his way out of office and the ones Donald Trump gave on his way in.

For premium subscribers: the Jack Smith reports (the one about the January 6 prosecution which was released publicly, and the one about the documents prosecution, which Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked from being released to Congress), New York Mayor Eric Adams’ overt campaign for a pardon, a defamation lawsuit that CNN lost (and apparently deserved to lose, says Ken), and finally, we express our thanks to Drake for filing consistently entertaining legal actions that we get to cover — in this case, a defamation lawsuit against his own music label.

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The Supreme Court declined to save Donald Trump from being sentenced in his New York criminal case, but the justices said that decision was in part because there wasn’t much to save him from: Judge Juan Merchan had indicated that he would sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge, i.e. no punishment. In other Trump-criminal-case-wind-down news, Judge Aileen Cannon has continued to make trouble for DOJ officials seeking to release parts of a report about Trump’s two federal criminal prosecutions. Plus: Smartmatic’s defamation case against Fox News (and Fox Corporation) moves closer to trial; an FBI informant lied to the government about Joe and Hunter Biden receiving $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian sources and he was also evading taxes, and so he ended up being prosecuted by the same prosecutor who was prosecuting Hunter Biden for evading taxes, and he pleaded guilty, and now he's been sentenced; and Rudy Giuliani is now in double contempt, in federal courts in New York and Washington.

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It’s already a busy 2025 for some of our favorite characters. On this episode: Rudy Giuliani has been held in contempt in proceedings in Judge Lewis Liman’s courtroom, where he has stalled the liquidation of his assets for the benefit of two women he defamed. Donald Trump gets an "unconditional discharge" penalty from Judge Juan Merchan and is trying to stop the release of Jack Smith's report. George Santos asks a judge to delay his sentencing so he can develop and monetize his podcast (!), Eric Adams wants to know who's accusing him of what, and finally: did Josh defame Luigi Mangione?

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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

Welcome to the first Serious Trouble episode of 2025! For all subscribers this week, Ken and Josh discuss Luigi Mangione’s indictments in both Pennsylvania and New York, and he’s also the subject of a federal criminal complaint. Both New York and the Feds look eager to prosecute him, and there’s going to be wrangling over who gets to go first, with an important difference in the stakes — he’s facing a capital federal charge, while New York does not have the death penalty. New York’s top count — murder as an act of terrorism — poses some challenges for the state to prove.

For paying subscribers: The dueling lawsuits brought by the actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, each accusing the other of wrongdoing during and after the making of their hit film “It Ends With Us;” a discussion of the appellate ruling that upheld one of the judgments E. Jean Carroll won against Donald Trump; a look at why Matt Gaetz, even after resigning from Congress, couldn’t block the release of the ethics committee report that alleges he had sex with a 17-year-old in violation of Florida law; and an update on the civil lawsuit against Jay-Z, who will continue to defend himself against a rape allegation from an anonymous plaintiff — and about how his hyperaggressive lawyer, Alex Spiro, is pissing off Judge Analisa Torres.

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This is our last episode of 2024! We'll be back right after the new year to discuss new messes. Today, we look at the substantial settlement that Disney-owned ABC has agreed to pay over George Stephanopoulos’s repeated assertions that Donald Trump had been found “liable for rape” by a jury or juries. And Trump sues CBS, Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. Plus: Judge Juan Merchan has ruled that the Supreme Court decision establishing a sphere of presidential immunity does not compromise the guilty verdicts Trump faced in his court — we discuss the reasons. Meanwhile, Mike Flynn has lost an incompetently-litigated defamation case against Rick Wilson; a Blue Cross customer faces criminal charges for telling a call center worker “you people are next” in an argument over a claim denial; and Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Eric Adams’ longtime right-hand woman, continues to find ways to annoy Ken by not shutting up about her impending criminal charges.

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People get really weird when a murder suspect is hot, huh? Luigi Mangione needs to be extradited to New York, and he’s resisting that — we discuss why it can make sense for a defendant to delay the inevitable. Also in New York, Daniel Penny has been acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the killing of Jordan Neely. Juries can get weird. Plus: InfoWars may not be sold to The Onion after all, an expert witness in AI used AI to write his testimony and it hallucinated some fake cases (oops!), we have learned that John Doe is Jay-Z, and some Trump associates are now facing charges in Wisconsin related to defrauding the fake electors.

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Joe Biden has committed the ultimate act of snowplow parenting: a presidential pardon for his son, and not just for the specific acts he faced charges over, but for anything he did between 2014 and five days ago. This week, Ken and I discuss exactly how unusual this pardon was and exactly what kinds of norms about pardons even remain to enforce, and rumors that Biden might hand out a lot more preemptive pardons for figures who could be targeted by an FBI led by Kash Patel — and what it would mean for the rule of law if he did.

That’s for free subscribers. For paid subscribers, we have Atlanta criminal defense attorney Andrew Fleischman back with us this week, to talk about the ignominious end to the Young Thug RICO trial, plus a look at Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormack’s repeat rejection of Elon Musk’s $50+ billion pay package, a discussion of Judge Arun Subramanian’s repeat rejection of Sean Combs’s request for bail, and answers to listener questions about Drake’s legal beef with Kendrick Lamar.

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Did you know Ken is a huge Kendrick Lamar fan? Well, not really. But he is psyched that Lamar and Drake have produced some truly hilarious litigation to discuss. Their beef goes back years, and they have traded diss tracks — in Kendrick's latest, he calls Drake a “certified pedophile” who’s “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor.” Is that defamation? If you’re a regular listener to this show, you know it very likely isn’t — and even Drake isn’t quite ready to sue for defamation. But he has filed — in two different states — petitions for pre-litigation discovery, to explore the possibility that Lamar and their shared label, Universal Music Group, may have committed various torts against him. What torts? Well, in the Texas petition, he wants to look at defamation. In New York, he wants to explore the possibility that Lamar and UMG competed against him unfairly, by nefariously over-promoting the song, or something. He also suggests this could be the RICO!

Plus: Jack Smith has moved to dismiss the January 6-related case against Donald Trump on the grounds that the Office of Legal Counsel has long prohibited prosecutions of sitting presidents. DOJ is also dropping its appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision throwing out the documents against Trump — but the department is not yet dropping the appeal with regard to his co-defendants, meaning there will be at least a part of this prosecution left for Trump’s DOJ to cancel. Jussie Smollett’s conviction got tossed by the Illinois Supreme Court, and Ken answers several of the questions you sent in.

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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

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Wouldn’t you know we recorded this show Thursday at 11am Eastern, just in time for Matt Gaetz to withdraw his candidacy for Attorney General a bit after noon? Don’t worry — we went back and recorded a new beginning of the episode, tossing out the now moot (probably?) conversation we had about the ethics report everyone in Washington wants to see. Ken and I still took the opportunity to talk about how a DOJ under someone (probably?) more competent will look different than one that Gaetz would have run. And we look at another cabinet nominee — Pete Hegseth, slated to run the Department of Defense — who also stands accused of sexual misconduct that also never resulted in criminal charges.

Paying subscribers (thank you for your support!) get a bunch more, including:

* Drama over The Onion’s attempt to buy Infowars at a bankruptcy auction

* Donald Trump’s new anti-SLAPP motion, and an update from Ken on a defamation case he successfully defended on anti-SLAPP grounds.

* The raid on Diddy’s prison cell

* Another lawsuit from a celebrity John Doe! Plus, more Rudy Giuliani nonsense.

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

Last week’s presidential election, which has made Donald Trump once again the president-elect, will obviously have profound effects on the various criminal cases against him. On this show, we cover the Department of Justice winding down the two federal prosecutions and why they're doing it now, and the prospects for the prosecutions in Georgia and New York.

For paying subscribers: a deeper conversation on what should have been done differently in the handling of all these prosecutions. How could this have played out differently? Would it have been different, after all? Plus: an update on the search for Rudy Giuliani’s assets — he showed up to vote in the very same Mercedes convertible his creditors have been having trouble locating — and one FTX-related story we missed last month.

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