Serious Trouble

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Well, there’s been some serious trouble this week. The FBI executed a search warrant, looking for documents at Mar-a-Lago. According to former president Donald Trump, they even broke into his safe! What had to happen for such a warrant to be approved, and why federal prosecutors would have sought it — can it really be just about the Presidential Records Act? Who is entitled to what information, and when? Trump has been complaining a lot about the raid, but he hasn’t shown us the search warrant detailing exactly what the Feds were supposed to be looking for and what potential offenses they were related to. Plus: Alex Jones. Will he actually have to pay close to $50 million to Sandy Hook families? And how come his lawyers failed to claw back the private documents they accidentally produced to the plaintiffs? Well, maybe they didn’t have a lot of better options. Visit serioustrouble.show to subscribe, and to access discussion threads, links and episode transcripts.

In this episode, Ken and Josh discuss the cross examination of Alex Jones in the trial that will determine the damages for the defamation claim on which he already lost to parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. After Jones repeatedly failed to comply with orders to turn over records and documents (to the point that he lost by default because he was so uncooperative), Jones’ lawyer accidentally shared the entire contents of Jones’s phone — including texts about Sandy Hook — with the plaintiffs’ attorney and then failed to take the necessary steps to assert privilege over any of the contents and retract them. Ken and Josh also discuss the questions jurors had for Jones.

For a transcript of this episode and to hear bonus material, go to www.serioustrouble.show.

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On this episode of Serious Trouble, we talk about developments in Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s investigation of efforts to steal Georgia’s electoral votes in the 2020 election. Willis sent “target letters” telling all 16 members of the fake Trump slate they might be prosecuted. When do DAs send letters like that, and what should you do if you get one? Plus, we discuss a memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland, which lays out the cautions US Attorneys should take before bringing politically sensitive indictments. And, Indiana’s Attorney General called the doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old girl from Ohio “an abortion activist posing as a doctor, with a history of failing to report,” on national television, and he suggested she might have committed a crime. What’s her recourse in Indiana?

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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

Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter. He doesn’t want to buy it anymore. Twitter wants to enforce the contract that requires him to buy the company, and so they’re arguing in the chancery court in Delaware about what will happen next.

What is a chancery court? What is “specific performance”? Will a Delaware court actually force this company — an entity with employees, customers, and significant societal influence — into the hands of a buyer who doesn’t want to own and operate it?

Listen to this episode where we discussed all those matters. For a transcript of this episode visit serioustrouble.show.

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Ken and Josh discuss an apparent agreement for Pat Cippolone (or “Patsy Baloney,” if you ask an auto-transcription system) to talk with the January 6 committee, and why his interview will be a little complicated because of privilege issues — both attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. We look at how that might matter, and what he might say that’s of interest. Plus: grand jury subpoenas in the Atlanta DA’s investigation, what happens when an interested third party is paying your legal expenses, and a Washington Post op-ed claims it’s easier than people say to show Donald Trump had the requisite intent to commit certain crimes. Is that true? We don’t think so, and we’ll address why.

For a transcript of this episode and other resources, go to www.serioustrouble.show.

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Surprise! This is an extra, unscheduled episode of Serious Trouble, about some breaking news in investigations related to the January 6 riot — a federal search of attorney John Eastman’s electronic devices, and a unexpectedly scheduled hearing with testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. (We said we’d do at least 40 episodes a year, but that’s a floor, not a ceiling!)

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This week's episode is all about the Uvalde massacre, the botched police response, and what legal rights you have to expect the police to perform their jobs. You may be surprised to learn they’re pretty limited. Ken and Josh also talk about where the idea of qualified immunity comes from, and when it does (and doesn’t) protect police from liability for their actions. And they discuss why Texas law may put the various government agencies involved in this debacle on pretty solid ground when they refuse to disclose embarrassing documents, such as body camera footage.

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Dear readers,

Serious Trouble is not a Trump show — it’s a show about law. But the top legal story this week is about Trump, so that’s how we’re starting: with a discussion of the theory of Trump’s criminality advanced by the January 6 investigating committee.

What would it entail to prove in court that Donald Trump criminally sought to interfere with an official proceeding, and should the Justice Department try? What sort of criminal defense would Trump mount if it got to trial? Would Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani end up on the witness stand?

We also talked about how some of the witnesses in deposition videos presented by the committee seemed to be almost enjoying themselves, especially former Attorney General Bill Barr. Can a deposition be fun? Ken has some thoughts on why it can be a good strategy for lawyers to try to keep things feeling fun and light even when the matters at hand are deadly serious.

And we talked about our ambivalence at having missed the defamation lawsuit between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard — arguably the most prominent defamation case in decades and also a huge, embarrassing mess. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how hard it is to prove defamation, especially against a public figure — so how did they both prevail on at least some of their claims? And what does the verdict mean for future defamation litigants?

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you have questions or responses, please share them in the comments section below, or you can email us at [email protected].

And here are some links to documents and statutes we discussed on today’s show — you might find these useful as you listen. We’ll prepare a list like this for you to accompany every episode we release.

* Here’s a transcript of the episode.

* Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512(c)(2) is the statute prohibiting obstruction of an official federal proceeding — did Trump violate it?

* Title 18, United States Code, Section 371 contains both the plain-vanilla federal law prohibiting conspiracy to violate federal statutes and the prohibition on defrauding the federal government — did Trump violate that?

* What does “defraud the United States” mean? Well, we know what the Department of Justice thinks that it means — take a look at the relevant section of the United States Attorney’s Manual, which includes the case Ken quotes in the episode.

* What law governed the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial, and what issues were actually before the jury? Read the jury instructions and find out:

* Here’s the SNL cold open about the Depp/Heard trial being “for fun”:

We’ll be back with another episode for you next week.

Very seriously,

Ken White, Josh Barro & Sara Fay

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