Jack - Episode 84 | Presidents Become Kings (feat. Steve Vladeck)

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

Steve Vladeck joins Allison and Andy to discuss the immunity ruling from SCOTUS. The Roberts Court showed that it is more beholden to ideology than the Constitution.What’s next for the Trump prosecutions? What’s next for the country? Steve Vladeckhttps://twitter.com/steve_vladeckhttps://stevevladeck.substack.com/ Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJ Brian Greer’s Quick Guide to CIPAhttps://www.justsecurity.org/87134/the-quick-guide-to-cipa-classified-information-procedures-act/ AMICI CURIAE to the District Court of DC https://democracy21.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Attachment-Brief-of-Amici-Curiae-in-Support-of-Governments-Proposed-Trial-Date.pdfGood to know:Rule 403bhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_40318 U.S. Code § 1512https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 Prior RestraintPrior Restraint | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information InstituteBrady MaterialBrady Rule | US Law |Cornell Law School | Legal Information Institutehttps://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brady_rule#:~:text=Brady%20material%2C%20or%20the%20evidence,infer%20against%20the%20defendant's%20guiltJenksJencks Material | Thomson Reuters Practical Law Glossaryhttps://content.next.westlaw.com/Glossary/PracticalLaw/I87bcf994d05a11e598dc8b09b4f043e0?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)Gigliohttps://definitions.uslegal.com/g/giglio-information/Statutes:18 U.S.C. § 241 | Conspiracy Against Rights18 U.S.C. § 371 | Conspiracy to Defraud the United States | JM | Department of Justice18 U.S.C.  § 1512 | Tampering With Victims, Witnesses, Or Informants Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AGFollow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

MSW Media I signed an order appointing Jack Smith. And those who say Jack is a fanatic. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. What law have I broken? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is?

Send me to jail! Welcome to episode 84 of Jack, probably the most important episode of this podcast so far. It's the podcast about all things special counsel. It is Sunday, July 7th, 2024. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Randy McCabe. As you've, I'm sure, heard by now, the Supreme Court has rendered its decision

on Trump's immunity, absolute immunity motion. Yeah, the monarchy motion. The monarchy motion, yeah, which thought it was a joke when I came up with that, but I don't know. It's looking pretty prescient at this moment. And so today we're going to discuss the implications of that decision with Georgetown Law professor and New York Times bestselling author, Steve Flattick.

Yeah. I'm excited to talk to Steve. I have so many questions for him and he always has the best answers. So Andy, do we bother with good week, bad week? You know, it does seem pretty obvious, but I think it's still worth mentioning bad week for democracy, bad week for this country, bad week for our future and our ability as citizens to understand and exert some, you know, have some trust that the people we elect, the person we elect to the highest position in the land will actually follow the laws that we all have to follow. So bad week, I think. Yeah. And a very good week for Donald Trump in his bid for immunity. Also in his bid to get Jack Smith tossed off the case entirely for being inappropriately appointed and funded or unconstitutionally appointed

and funded, thanks to a little Easter egg from one Justice Clarence Thomas. We'll talk about that later in the show. And so we do have a lot to get to today. And it's especially weird that this happened on the week of Independence Day. Yeah. You know, so I agree. I think it was a bad week for democracy and a good week for Donald Trump. Those two things kind of go hand in hand. They certainly do this week.

Wow. But this is what we have to do now. We have to think, you know, coolly. We have to kind of really dig into this decision and the many reactions to it and see how it's affecting the people whose decisions and actions we are concerned about. And, you know, it's not like, it's not enough just to sit back and complain and get kind of frustrated and angry and sad or whatever about it. We have to like really start thinking about how does this change who we are and who we think we are going forward

as a nation? And what does this make us look for in people who are running for public office? And how does this kind of maybe reprioritize integrity and accountability, the willingness to hold yourself accountable? So anyway, yeah, I think we're, we got to keep moving, keep marching and try to react to this. All right. Well, let's learn more about this ruling with our guest today, an expert on the Supreme Court, law professor at Georgetown. Now moved up to Georgetown, used to be down in Austin, author of the bestselling book, Shadow Docket, and he writes the one first newsletter on Substack. Please welcome Steve Vladeck. Hi, Professor. How are you? Good. How are you guys?

Good. I'm great today. Thanks for having me. As good as can be expected. Yeah. It's great to have you back here. So thanks very much for making time for us. One of the problems with the Supreme Court slipping into July besides what actually came with the slip is also just, you know, this is supposed to be a week off for a lot of us. And not just on, but on very much of an emotional roller coaster. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes, for sure. And, you know, I had said it's going to be the last decision on the last day, and I wouldn't be surprised if it spilled into July. And that's exactly what happened. Now, and going into this, Professor, we knew one of three outcomes was gonna happen, right? Either absolute immunity, no immunity, or something in between. And most of the experts I've been paying attention to

were expecting something in between, but it appears that what we got is a fourth choice. Absolute immunity for some things, presumptive immunity for most other things, and no immunity for private acts. Can you give us a basic overview of the Supreme Court ruling on immunity? Yeah, I mean, that was, A.G., basically it.

I mean, I think really, I've been describing it as there are really four holdings in the decision. So, you know, the first is that there is this body of what the court calls conclusive and preclusive presidential power, where the president has absolute immunity, and that's basically in the discharge of his core constitutional functions. Query what those are. Then there's the sort of the broader category of official acts that are not like express exercises of preclusive Article 2 power

and those get presumptive immunity but that immunity can be overcome if the prosecutor can show that like it wouldn't like unduly interfere with the president's duties. If they could show something super vague. Basically right. Well, it's not just vague if you can prove a negative, right? You know, prove that this won't have an effect in the future. Then there's the whole, if it's not an official act, then Thundercats are go, you can prosecute. But then there's the fourth hold-in.

I have to say the part that really surprised me was the fourth hold-in, which is to some, superfluous discussion of evidence. And the idea that, you know, conduct that is otherwise immune because it's an official act also can't be introduced as evidence to try of former president, even when everyone agrees that the underlying conduct is not covered by immunity. And I guess, guys, if the court had stopped after the third holding, I wouldn't have agreed with it, but I would have understood it.

But to me, it's really like the extent to which the evidentiary holding handcuffs, not just Jack Smith in the context of the January 6 prosecution, but any future efforts to prosecute a president, handcuffs both not just Jack Smith in the context of the January 6th prosecution, but any future efforts to prosecute a president. Handcuffs both because there's at least some body of evidence that's going to be out, but also because there's now going to be this massive debate over which evidence is in

and which evidence is out. And that debate is going to have, gosh, first, poor doctrinal contours, but second, you know, triggers of interlocutory appeals. And so it's really like, it's just, it's a recipe for a whole lot of chaos. Yeah. And it's, it's intriguing to me. I started going back through the arguments to kind of see where this came from, because I don't remember like really indexing on this, uh, in the arguments and pretty early on, you know, prove me wrong,

but by my research, Alito is the first one to really bring this up. And when given the opportunity to question from Roberts, he says, when you say that the official acts should, and he's talking of course to Sauer, who is Trump's attorney. He says, when you say the official acts should be expunged from the indictment, that in itself would not achieve very much unless evidence of those official acts were precluded at trial. So is that what you're saying?

The prosecution should not be permitted at trial to prove the official acts as part of the conspiracies that are alleged. And Sauer then of course, taking that massive signal, would you like a free piece of pie, Mr. Sauer? Well, of course I'd like some pie. Sauer replies, absolutely. And we think that's just the clear implications

of Brewster and Johnson and their discussion in this very analogous context. So yeah, and I don't remember anyone else really kind of pushing that. So I'm kind of, I'm fascinated that this really sort of fringe theory or interpretation from Alito ends up making its way into the majority opinion. I mean, not only that, but just if I can be a big federal courts nerd for a second, like

it shouldn't have been part of the case. Right. Because, you know, it doesn't actually bear directly upon the immunity defense. And at the, you. And because this was an interlocutory appeal, right? A denial of emotion to dismiss based upon immunity, the only thing the Supreme Court should have been deciding is the scope of the immunity and not any subsidiary questions about what evidence can come in. So, the other thing I was gonna say is,

even in a world in which you were sympathetic to the idea that there's a body of evidence that ought to be excluded, lest we interfere with the president's conduct of his office, we already have a doctrine for that. I mean, that's executive privilege. Right. And I don't know why, if that's where the court wanted to go, you have to make up this whole new thing, as opposed to saying, drop a footnote that says, of course a former president would be free to assert executive privilege as a basis

for the withholding of the non-introduction of evidence that's otherwise covered by the privilege. What does this new thing do that executive privilege didn't do? The court never grapples with that at all. Yeah. No. And I want you to talk for a second about the fact that, I guess the bigger ruling was 6-3, but this ruling on the evidence was actually 5-4 because Amy Coney Barrett disagreed with

it. She said, to make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo, the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quo, even if the quo, standing alone, could not be a basis for the president's criminal liability. So they're not being charged. We've talked about this previously about how if you're going to get somebody for fraud, of course, saying this is a Cadillac when it's a BMD or when it's not is free speech. But when you use that knowing lie to defraud someone, that's the evidence. And so that I think is what Amy Coney Barrett was pointing out here. But you said in the bigger picture, the fact that this falls along ideological lines for such a big decision is it kind of lays bare the

Roberts court as of late. And so I wanted you to address that. And a question that Roger Parlov had, and he asked why Amy Coney Barrett concurred if she dissented with this critical part of the ruling. He says, is the truth that presidential bribery can't dissented with this critical part of the ruling? He says, is the truth that presidential bribery can't be prosecuted anymore? Is that the truth? Roberts obscures this anomaly from himself by allowing prosecution in theory, but setting

up an insuperable evidentiary obstacle. How do others interpret footnote three? I was wondering if you could talk about your broader tweet about the ideological rulings in the Roberts court, but also why is, why wasn't it five, four all around? So, I mean, she's very clear that she agrees that there is at least some body of immunity. And, you know, that's enough for her to join in the judgment.

I mean, keep in mind guys, the judgment, right, was vacating the DC circuit. And she agrees with that. She says, yes, I agree we should vacate the DC circuit. What is striking about her opinion is not just that she disagrees about the evidentiary point and indeed affirmatively says, I'm with Sotomayor on this.

It's that she went out of her way to basically provide a roadmap for how she would apply the new immunity test on remand. And you know, she has a series of footnotes where she says, you know, this charge in the indictment to me is not an official act, right? Like she said, Hey, like, this is how this should go. And what's really striking about how this ended up is that that should have been the opinion of the court. An opinion that says, yes, there's immunity, but it's not categorical and it can be overcome.

And hey, Judge Chutkin, here's how you overcome it here. That opinion, I think, would have sat a lot differently with a lot of us. And I think it also might have peeled off, at least Justice Elena Kagan, if that had been the, you know, if Kagan had been in a position to form a majority with Barrett on that point. So, you know, I think the ideological point is really about the chief justice. And I wrote about this in my newsletter for last Thursday, that really, what is striking about the Trump decision is what is striking about the entire term, which is how much John Roberts specifically seems to have turned to the right. And, you know, I mean, he's always been a conservative guy who wrote, you know, Shelby County and Rucho. I mean, no one no one except for his critics all the way on the right

think he's a liberal. But we've seen Roberts in the past try to be an institutionalist in these kinds of cases. He wrote both of the subpoena cases in 2020 where he found relatively narrow ways of keeping most of the court together. In the Dobbs case, he wrote a narrower concurrence and we shouldn't be overruling precedent if there's a narrower way to uphold the Mississippi anti-abortion law.

And that guy's nowhere to be found in this term. He writes the Trump immunity decision where he clearly was the median since Barrett writes separately. He wrote the majority opinions overruling Chevron in a context in which he didn't have to. He wrote the majority opinion in the SEC versus Jarkzzie case. He's the median vote in the Colorado ballot disqualification

case, where again, Barrett wrote separately to say, why are we going further than we have to? Right. And, and SEC jarkasy is where they've decided that there has to be a jury trial. The SEC just can't find people for being in the civil context. And, you know, I mean, I know without, without, without going like all the way down the rabbit hole of each of these cases, what's striking about all of them is that John Roberts comma institutionalist is nowhere to be cases. What's striking about all of them is that John Roberts, comma, institutionalist is nowhere to be seen. Yeah. But John Roberts, lifelong person who's been committed to this idea of dismantling

the regulatory state, very much still alive. Right. And I'll say, and John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, lifelong defenders of Article Two power. Yep. Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, lifelong defenders of Article 2 power. Yeah. I think folks tend to forget because his confirmation became about so much else that when Brett Kavanaugh was initially nominated in 2018 to replace Justice Kennedy, the principal debate was about how radical his views were on executive power. Right.

And whether they were too radical to get him confirmed. And then the you know, the Christine Blasey Ford allegations came out and everything got turned into a different conversation. And we sort of forgot that, you know, the real knock on Kavanaugh had been just how extreme his Article Two views were. Well, here they are. And I think, you know, to me, guys, the problem is not like, sort of short-term problem about the Trump prosecution, although obviously there are problems. The problem is what this portends for future cases and especially for efforts by Congress

to assert itself at the expense of the executive branch because this is as powerful an endorsement of not just presidential power, guys, but presidential power that Congress can't take back. Right. Completely unrestrained. As any opinion the Supreme Court's ever written. Yeah. Yeah.

Fundamentally inconsistent with the idea of the checks and balances of three separate but equal branches of government. I mean, there's just so much that's not addressed in here and that they gloss over with this single-minded focus on protecting the ability of presidents to make bold and decisive decisions. And while I think everybody can agree that that's an important thing for president to be able to do, is there any evidence that in the last 250 years presidents have not been doing that? While during that time they also thought they were

they could potentially be held liable under some circumstances under criminal law. Right. I mean, how many presidents have actually complained like, oh, I would have done this thing to protect the country. I just couldn't make enough decisions quickly enough. I mean, come on. Well, and the other part of this, I mean, I'm hardly the first person to make this point,

but if you applied the gloss of the decision in the Trump immunity case to Nixon. Nixon is rolling over in his grave right now. He's like, 50 years too early. I mean, what Nixon's infamous comment about, if the president does it, it's not illegal, which has been held up for 50 years as this. As a joke. As a joke.

He's like, how do you like me now? Yeah, and Mueller's obstruction charges also. And I think that, I mean, this is Mueller's obstruction charges also out the window. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, this is to me the sort of the last thing to say about the Trump case, which is what is most mind-boggling to me about it is how completely either oblivious it is to the current state of Congress, right? Yeah.

Or how much it's capitalizing upon it. Because in a world in which we had a robust impeachment process, I mean, right? Or how much it's capitalizing upon it. Because, you know, in a world in which we had a robust impeachment process, I mean, right, Nixon, Nixon was more worried about being impeached, at least at first, than he was about being, you know, prosecuted. In a world with a robust impeachment process, there'd still be plenty to deter a president from engaging in criminal conduct. Right? The reason why we're here is because the impeachment process has become sort of paralyzed and feckless. And this opinion just hits so much differently to me in a world in which impeachment is not realistic than in a world in which it would have been. Yeah, totally agree. Agreed. All right, we have to take a quick break.

But we just have a couple more questions for the professor. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. We're talking with law professor at Georgetown University, author of the one first newsletter and the bestselling book, Shadow Dock, it's Steve Vladeck. So I wanted to ask you, Steve, what's next procedurally? Because a lot of people are asking, who's like, is the ball in Judge Chuckin's court now? Or do we need to wait

for a mandate to be issued by the Supreme Court? What does this look like? Yeah, this is the nerdiest of nerdistry when it comes to the Supreme Court. So- Thank you.? Yeah, this is the nerdiest of nerdistry when it comes to Supreme Court. Thank you. Thank you for calling my questions nerdy. No, I love it. It's actually a high compliment. So here's a distinction that no one will ever care about ever again, but the Supreme Court distinguishes between mandates and judgments. When cases come to the Supreme Court from state courts, they get mandates. When they come from lower federal courts, they don't.

They just get judgments. Wow. There you go. So but but I mean, the reason why this is so silly is because it is a distinction without a difference because the rules are the same for timing. So basically, the way it works is 32 days after the Supreme Court hands down its opinion, right? So handed down its opinion on July 1. 32 days later is what August 2. So 32 days later, the judgment is sent down, meaning it goes back to the DC Circuit. The reason why just for 32 days, it's a random amount of time,

the Supreme Court's rules give parties 25 days to seek rehearing. And so 32 is to sort of give the court a week to receive any rehearing petition from the end of the 25 days. So unless the court shortens that, which it could, unless the court shortens that on August 3rd, the judgment goes back to the DC circuit, which I think would rather, rather quickly send the case back to Judge Chuckin. And so at that point, the ball is in her court,

but guys also it's in Jack Smith's court. For sure. Because I think there's a lot that the special counsel could do to try to mitigate the effects of this ruling. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw an effort to file a superseding indictment that tries to crystallize the charges in a way that limits how much he has to rely upon, conduct that might be excludable.

So I think a lot is going to happen in August. And I think some of that's going to depend upon what the special counsel does. And some of that's just going to be Judge Chutkin figuring out what the next steps are one way or the other. But they all have to wait until it gets back into Judge Chutkin's court. I mean, at least in theory, could, you know, could Judge Chuckin start having discussions without being in contempt of the Supreme Court? Probably, like as a matter of technically, you know, there's no injunction in effect. She wouldn't be actually...

Well, Trump got real mad when Jack Smith was filing stuff. And I think Judge Chuckin put out a rule that said, you got to get permission from me first or something like that. And, and, and, because I mean, technically the balls in her court, I think she would not be defying the Supreme Court's rules to have even like a sort of a status conference. But I also think that she's not going to want to even risk that. And so, you know, that she's going to go buy the book and that probably means waiting for the judgment to come down first from the Supreme Court to the DC circuit, then from the DC circuit to her. So probably

we're talking guys, the first week of August when she gets the green light. And once she gets the green light, I just had a few questions that have been posed to me that I don't know the answers to because I know a lot about federal trial proceedings and pretrial stuff, but as learning through the years here. But as far as these evidentiary hearings, I mean, I know Cannon has had a ton of them down in her court, these little mini trials and more to come. But, you know, Lawrence O'Donnell was positing that it could be like a four week hearing and there would be witnesses and subpoenas. But I was wondering if

subpoenas could be, if like the people subpoenaed could file motions to quash those subpoenas. But I was wondering if subpoenas could be, if like the people subpoenaed could file motions to quash those subpoenas, which would be appealable. I'm just trying to put my head around what this hearing would look like because it's, first of all, it's all we're going to get before the election. And so I imagine Jack Smith would want to get as much information out there as he could. But I think it would have to be narrowly tailored to determine what evidence could go forward in trial. What are your thoughts?

I mean, my first thought is, you know, we're sort of making this up as we go along, right? We've never had a pretrial hearing in a criminal prosecution of a former president to decide which evidence is and is not protected by the immunity the Supreme Court recognized on July 1st, 2024. A brand new immunity. Right. So my first thought is shrug emoji. Poop emoji, maybe?

I don't know. Yeah, all of the above. District court, I mean, you guys both know this. District courts have a lot of discretion when it comes to how they manage pretrial proceedings. That's even true in the context of criminal prosecutions. And so, you know, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Judge Chutkin had some kind of hearing with regard to ascertaining which acts can and cannot be

charged and which evidence can and cannot be admitted, it seems to me that there are legal questions to resolve there before we get to factual questions. Yeah. Right? And so, Andy, I could see at least some of this being like a two-step process where first you reach some. And that's how I've been thinking about it.

She's got to first think about the indictment in whatever form, whether it's in its current form or in a superseded form, about just parsing out what's official and what's not official, i.e. what's left for Jack Smith. Then basically the ball is back in Jack Smith's court to do the sort of review that prosecutors do before they ever indict a case,

which is to look at all the evidence they have and make a kind of unitary decision, do I have enough evidence that I could get admitted in this trial that would be enough to secure a conviction and sustain, secure a conviction at trial and sustain one on appeal? And it could be that at that point, the case dissolves. If what comes to him as unofficial conduct is so narrow

and knowing he has to exclude any evidence derived from official conduct, he may decide it can't go forward. But if he does, then you have that round two determination of, okay, here's the evidence I'm proposing to use and how much of it can I get? I think that's right. And it's only going to be if there is some question of fact I think that's right. And it's only gonna be if there is some question of fact that you get to a pure evidentiary hearing where if Chutkin says, hey, determining whether this comes in or not

depends upon something about what actually happened or who spoke to whom, right? That's when we get to an evidentiary hearing. But I think we're a bunch of steps away from that. And a bunch of steps, both from the perspective of Jack Smith, who I'm sure is already rejiggering the indictment, and from Judge Shuck's perspective as well.

Well, this is going to be fascinating to watch this play out. I wanted to ask you one more quick question about, you know, in the first segment there we talked about the vagueness and proving negatives because Roberts wrote that at a minimum the president must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch. And what this says to me is, the way that I kind of read that is we're not just saying that this is true, solid, clear facts for all future presidents. It's more like saying, hey, just ask us and we'll let you know on a case by case basis what we think. And I think that that, you know, you combine that with the Chevron deference

thing and the SEC stuff. It's like they want to be the arbiters of all things. And it's frightening. It's frightening and also, but it's also consistent. Consistently frightening. But, Ajit, if there's a through line through all of the court's big decisions this term, the through line is judicial power.

That's right. And judicial power at the expense of Congress, judicial power at the expense of states, judicial power at the expense of lower level executive branch agencies, but judicial power in the main. And I'll just say, I mean, I've beaten this horse before, but this is a court that just doesn't think anyone's going to push back because no one is pushing back. And, you know, I really think that the central problem of our

current Supreme Court is not who's on it, but is how unaccountable it has become, and how unworried it is about provoking, for example, Congress into limiting its powers, limiting its budget, doing anything whatsoever. And to me, the way that we fix this in the long term is actually less about who the justices are and more about Congress reasserting even a modicum of institutional authority over the court. And I think this term has given us dozens of examples of why that's so important. Yeah, totally agree.

Yeah, I think it would help if certain people weren't on the Supreme Court. Yeah, but if you go back through history, the history of the 117 or 118 people who have served on the Supreme Court is not a roster of saints. No. Right? Yeah, very well put.

And so we should not expect the justices to be saints. We should expect them to be, you know, sort of principled jurists who also understand the limits of their power. And even if they're not principled, understanding the limits of their power might still force them to act more responsibly. So is one way of addressing that issue adding additional voices to the court, not because of who they are, but because they'll have the effect of limiting this current court's approach to the issues. Do you know what I'm saying?

Is there a value in increasing the number of judges simply to kind of water down the strain that's there now? I mean, I understand why a lot of people think that. I don't. You know, I think expanding the court is both just never going to happen politically. And then those and also, I think, you know, sort of the wrong solution to the wrong problem, because there's no guarantee. I mean, even if it's for Democratic appointees, just because they might come closer to my policy preferences doesn't mean that they're going to be more accountable.

Yeah, that's a good point. And so, you know, I want us to have a conversation, not the three of us, I want we who are talking about the Supreme Court to be thinking about how to insulate us from the court no matter who's on the court. And, you know, and then to, and if we can get some better justices that would also be not a bad thing. All right. Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate you taking the time to come on and answer these questions and clarify some things.

Everybody you need to check out one first. It's an incredible newsletter. You can find it on Substack. It really helps explain things in terms that are easy to understand. It's where I get a lot of my information. So thank you so much for that. And of course, if you haven't gotten Shadow Docket yet, you need to. Do you have any final thoughts, Steve, before you get out of here? It's going to be quite a summer. It already is. The sigh was probably enough. Heavy sigh. All right. Everybody, stick around. We've got more show.

We'll be right back. Welcome back. What a great segment with Steve Vladeck. Always informational and Steve has just got a unique perspective on these things because of his incredible expertise on the Supreme Court. So that was great. So let's, AG, let's kind of tick off different aspects of the ruling and pieces of it and pieces of other people's reactions to it that I think are shed some light on what we're all thinking about here. I would turn our

attention first to a footnote from John Roberts that says that the cases can't go forward if Trump is elected, which was really kind of a shot out of the blue, not exactly on point with what anybody was with what they were talking about, but it was just kind of another gift on the side of the opinion. Well, this whole ruling was a shot from the blue. The circuit court below the Supreme Court ruled on this particular case. And you know, Supreme Court came in and said, we need to make a rule for the ages and just created out of whole cloth a bunch of shit that's not in the Constitution at all.

So it doesn't surprise me that there are more shots across the bow that come out of you know Like a like a bolt from the blue. Yeah for sure and I you know One of those to me was the the side mention that a president's motives are not reviewable or considerable in any of these inquiries where you're trying to figure out which level of immunity a president qualifies for, you're not allowed to even consider a president's motives. Just it's mind boggling. Like I don't know where any of this stuff comes from. None of it is, as you said, none of it is in the Constitution.

I think he handpicked some precedents, obviously, that would, in the short term, support what he was trying to say. But there's no, he's completely ignoring the bulk of history around the founding of this nation, I think. Yeah, I agree. But the DOJ did come back and say, hey, nothing prevents us from continuing the prosecution of Donald Trump if he is elected between the election and inauguration. And this seems like a kind

of a no duh moment. Like he's not the president until he's inaugurated. So the DOJ, I think just wanted to clarify that if he is elected, that between November 5th and January 20th, they will continue, their prosecutions will continue of Trump. But another interesting thing that Roberts brought up for no apparent reason is he decided to kind of put a sentence in here ending the independence of the Department of Justice, at least for those who don't like the Department of Justice to be independent. He said, this is on page 20, by the way, of the immunity ruling, the president may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his attorney general and other Justice

Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. And the Attorney General, as the head of the Justice Department, acts as the President's Chief Law Enforcement Officer, who provides vital assistance to him in the performance of his constitutional duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And that just flies in the face of DOJ policy that there needs to be a giant wall between the Department of Justice and the White House. What do you think about this seemingly out of nowhere sentence that just sort of allows the president to basically, you know, Trump's, one of Trump's plans, his retribution is to go after folks like you and Pete and people who wronged him, his political opponents, and using more than

the IRS to do so, right? He wants to use the Department of Justice to do that. And this seems like Robert's just given him the green light to do that. It certainly does. I think there's two important points to be made here is like the the radical difference from the way Virtually every administration prior to the Trump administration Regardless of political party has thought about the relationship between the White House and the Department of Justice and its component parts One of those of course being the FBI

so memorialized in the infamous contacts policy, which basically says no one in the FBI or in the Department of Justice is to have contact with the White House outside of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. And then there is a cutout, a little carve out in that policy for national security matters. So you can, as I had many, many interactions with the White House on purely national security matters to advise the White House on aspects of the international terrorist threat or the domestic terrorist threat, things like that. That's not conversations

about like, we're considering an indicting this person or that group. Do you think that's okay? Will you approve that? No, Those are exactly the kind of conversations that are not supposed to take place. There has long been, at least in the post-Hoover, post-Church committee era, there's been an acceptance that these decisions around enforcing the law and deciding who and how to prosecute individuals who we believe have violated the law. That is something that DOJ should do independent of political direction and that's kind of why we have the contacts policy. Well this is the other side of this history is that guys like John Roberts and Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas have really been for their entire lives dedicated

to this principle that presidents should have complete and total control of every aspect of every executive branch agency. And there should not be any room for professional bureaucrats in these agencies to make decisions independent of what the president would want. So now you layer in Robert's comments here in the majority holding, it's very consistent with what these guys have basically dedicated themselves to across the entirety of their careers. Starting out as a White House lawyer, John Roberts and the Bush administration, you know, worked on these very issues. Same thing with Kavanaugh. Alito has spoken about this many, many times. So this is, to me, another example in this opinion, the fact that it is not really constitutionally based. It's based on personal political ideology. These are,

that's this is a group of very conservative men accomplishing something that they've been dedicated to politically for decades. Yeah, it's kind of, well, it's very frightening. And, you know, the President Biden has come out and said, I'm not going to abuse this ruling, but we know that Donald Trump will. Now we just have some breaking news right now as we're recording this, Andy, and I want to preface this breaking news with the fact that Justice Thomas, again, for no reason whatsoever, weighed in in his concurrence on the appointment of special counsel Jack

Smith. He says, I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. And you can just already tell he just hates this prosecution. Yeah. In this case, he says, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as special counsel to prosecute a former president on behalf of the United States. And I want to break in here and say, that's what the regulations say. They're actually not supposed to come

from inside the government. He goes on to say, but I am not sure that any office for the special counsel has been, quote, established by law. And with that in mind, Trump has now made this filing with Judge Cannon, asking her to rely on this bit of Thomas's concurrence that Jack Smith's appointment and funding is unconstitutional. Andy, here is what he writes. I'm pulling this up as

breaking news as we're talking. Trump respectfully submits this local rule 7.8 notice regarding the impact of Trump v. United States on pending motions related to presidential immunity and the appointments of the Appropriations Clause. Trump, this case, he says, the immunity ruling, guts the special counsel office's position that President Trump has no immunity and further demonstrates the politically motivated nature of their contention that the motion is frivolous. Trump, this case also confirms that the special counsel's office cannot rely on official act evidence in this case. By separate motion, we seek leave to submit supplemental briefing on those threshold issues. Justice Thomas's concurrence in this case adds force to the

motions relating to the appointments and appropriations clauses. Justice Thomas cited Scalia's Morrison dissent, which is consistent with Justice Kavanaugh's comment at oral arguments in this case, the immunity case, that Morrison was one of the court's biggest mistakes. Highlighting grave separation of powers concerns, Thomas suggested that 28 U.S. Code 515 and 533 do not establish by law Jack Smith's position under the appointments clause. By extension, these statutes are not quote other law under the relevant appropriation and these essential questions should be addressed before proceeding. Respectfully, Todd Blanch, Chris Kyes. So they now have officially filed that, you know, they want further briefing obviously on the immunity stuff and she just recently had some hearings on the appropriateness of Jack Smith's appointment

and funding and is now again filing using what Thomas said in the immunity ruling to make his case for Judge Eileen Cannon to throw this whole thing out based on the fact that Jack Smith was inappropriately appointed and funded. Bizarro land just continues to get more bizarre, I guess. This is amazing because Thomas is, I guess it's a concurrence, but it's not really a concurrence because he raises this entire issue that is not even remotely related to the question the court agreed to take. So I know that sounds like a kind of a nerdy nitpicking criticism, but the effect of that is the government only briefs what the court says they're going to consider. So this issue is not before the court in any way.

And the government has never had an opportunity to present their arguments about it. So like out of the blue, Thomas just throws in his opinion on this totally unrelated issue that happens to be the subject, I'm sure he well knows of a kind of closely fought motion battle in the Florida case. Now it's a concurrence, it's totally off topic. So it is at most dicta, it's not precedent of anything and should not be considered, you know, a presidential or controlling by any court at any level. But we're talking about Eileen Cannon here. So I'm quite certain she's gonna rule it and give it a lot of consideration where she comes out on the issue, I don't know.

It does open another whole aspect of the kind of impact of the immunity case. And that is whether or not Judge Cannon is going to think, okay, well, now I too have to apply this official conduct, unofficial conduct test to the entirety of the documents case, which really shouldn't result in anything because the conduct that he's been indicted for took place when he was no longer president, with maybe the exception of actually physically taking the documents on his last day, last few hours in office. He's not charged with that conduct.

He's not charged with that conduct, although Trump's team will undoubtedly make the argument that it's inextricable to the conduct he was charged with and it's kind of a fruit of the poisonous tree thing and therefore it all has to be thrown out. So, or maybe he'll say, go back to defense number one of 600 and say, as president, I declared all this stuff, you know, not classified and not national defense information. And you cannot review that decision because now it's absolutely immune from consideration and you can't consider my motives and you can't use any evidence of it or evidence derived from it.

So who knows? Right, or evidence that he had any discussions with anyone at any other agency like the FBI or the NSA or the CIA. None of that is admissible. Before he left, before he left, that would be within the scope of at least presumed immunity. So yeah, it's going to cause some degree of chaos as if we didn't already have enough in the Florida case. Yeah. And we'll see if she throws this out on the appointment, the appropriateness of the appointment grounds. I don't think the 11th circuit would agree with that. And just

having one Supreme Court justice, maybe two agreeing with it. But of course, I am not going to make any more assumptions about the Supreme Court. So I think you could start just assuming the worst. Right. Like, yeah, they'll probably just throw the whole thing out. We'll definitely keep an eye on that for you. And one last thing I wanted to bring up before we take a quick break, an opening, there's a potential opening in this ruling for Jack Smith. Because Lisa Rubin says, think about going back up to the DC case about evidence being allowed in. She said, think about the various times that DOJ officials told Trump he lost or that there was no widespread evidence of fraud like BJ

Pack and Bill Barr. All of those instances are now off the table as trial evidence now because of the Supreme Court and the immunity ruling fully said nothing that you discussed with anybody in the DOJ. All of that is absolutely immune and so it certainly can't come in as evidence and something to think about. But an opening for Jack Smith here, and this is from the ruling, says there may, however, be contexts in which the president, notwithstanding the prominence of his position, speaks in an unofficial capacity, perhaps as a candidate for office or a party leader. To the extent that may be the case, objective analysis of content, form, and context will necessarily inform the inquiry. And those are the kind of things

that we're going to hear in the Judge Chutkin hearing about what can be brought in and what can't. So we have all of that to look forward to. I don't know if look forward to is a good way to put that. But I do want to talk about the dissent because the dissent written on behalf of Justice Jackson and Justice Kagan by Justice Sotomayor, this dissent is very pointed and I want to discuss that. And then we'll also take a listener question, but we have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey everybody. Welcome back. I wanted to bring up, you know, I was just talking about at the end of the last block block ways for Jack Smith to move forward. And Andy, I wanted to bring to your attention something that Marcy Wheeler wrote

in her empty will blog. She said that SCOTUS has remanded this case to Judge Chutkin. The Supreme Court has remanded this case to Judge Chutkin to determine which of the charges can be sustained as unofficial acts. As all lay out, she says, I think they've put their thumb on the scale and that none of them can be. But by all means, she is now required to spend the next four months figuring that out. So if I'm Jack Smith, I ask her to block out her time for the foreseeable future to do that, because the president cannot be prosecuted for anything considered a core presidential act,

like bribing Roger Stone with pardons. Jack Smith should issue a report of what Trump did with his core official acts. Nothing in this opinion prohibits Jack Smith from prosecuting everyone else, in this opinion prohibits Jack Smith from prosecuting everyone else save Trump's closest aides and Jeffrey Clark. So Jack Smith should roll out any and all indictments for Trump's associates that would otherwise have been introduced in this case in chief. And I wish I had Steve Vladeck back here so I could ask him if issuing a superseding, a superseder to clarify the charges, but also to add his co-conspirators, if that would in fact delay or hinder the hearing that needs to take place this summer in any way. I'm not sure that it would the same way it would delay or hinder a trial because none of the

other parties are subject to immunity. So this new immunity rule. So it doesn't matter if they want to join in or get in on the fun of, you know, trying to determine what evidence can go forward, at least as it relates to Trump. But I think that Marcy makes a very good point and I concur. I think that it could be time to, we're not going to get this before the election. There's no clock you're racing against anymore. Drop those indictments on the co-conspirators. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, there's a couple things here that I think are really worth pointing out and good for Marcy for bringing it up. I think that first of all, as I mentioned, when we

were talking to Steve, there's a possibility here that when Chutkin goes through, makes her final determination of what is non-official and therefore can be the substance of the indictment. And then that's no doubt appealed and ultimately resolved. Jack Smith's got to look at that, figure out if he has enough admissible evidence to actually prove charges on that conduct. You know, I think it's possible that the end of that review is, I can't, we can't go forward with this case. There's not enough evidence now because of the evidentiary aspects of the Supreme Court. So you don't ever put the report out

while the prosecution is still pending, or even if it's been concluded and there's things happening on appeal. But that might signal the end of the prosecution of Trump and therefore putting out a report chock full of every piece of evidence, everything you could have proven were it not immune against the president into a report I think would be an unbelievably important thing for the country to have forever. A historic document that would really, it's not as good as a jury verdict after hearing all the evidence in trial, but it may be as good as we ever get. As far as indicting the co-conspirators, I think you do that in a separate case.

You bring it in a separate case, technically it has no impact on the timing of the Trump case. Those, you know, it's the Trump case is so far along that really you can't as a defendant in the new case demand to be included in the Trump case. I see what you're saying. You just indict them separately and call Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Exactly. Now, this would raise all kinds of questions. Can you use evidence that would be inadmissible against Trump if it were him? So in other words, evidence derived from official conduct, which we now know the Supreme Court has told us is inadmissible against the president. Could you use that stuff as evidence against other people? I mean, I think you should be able to, but there's probably will

be a hotly fought battle around that. That'll be another interlocutor. Yeah, it's almost kind of a, you know, it's almost like a presidential privilege type of fight. But nevertheless, you could get through that and still have a salvageable case against any number of co-conspirators. Right. Because it sort of treats it, this new immunity ruling sort of treats the president like the speech or debate clause treats members of Congress. I'm thinking specifically of Mike Pence when Judge Beryl Howell was trying to decide what

evidence could be admitted from Mike Pence. She determined that his role as president of the Senate on January 6th gives him speech or debate clause immunity. And so she didn't allow two things, Pence's discussions with the parliamentarian about his job in the Senate that day and Pence's discussions with his counsel. I think it was Marc Jacob maybe or Marc Short about his role, about what he could and could not do as president of the Senate that day. Those two pieces of information were not allowed in his evidence because they're shielded by the speech or debate clause and that kind of feels like what this is going to look like. But I don't know how it applies to other co-conspirators that aren't the president. And that, again,

that is, I think I would consider that an unlitigated question that will have to go back up to the Supreme Court and likely will. But I think the key idea here is to get all of this information out as much as you can ahead of the election. And maybe you can do that by indicting a separate case for all the co-conspirators. And writing the report on what you found about Donald Trump. Right? That was...

It's not prosecutable anymore. If it's not prosecutable anymore, there's no reason that that information can't come out. Okay. Does DOJ typically write a report about cases they decided they can't bring? No, but this is not that situation. Jack Smith is actually obligated to provide a report to the attorney general once the work is done relative to a particular target. And I just think like, that's what I'd be focused on between November 5th and January 20th, if Trump wins the election, he's got a very limited window of opportunity

to provide for the history of this nation exactly what the result of this investigation was. Yeah, I agree. Before we get to a listener question, I just wanted to share some parts of the dissent, which I know that a lot of people have already heard. So let me read to you, this is Sotomayor, Justice Sotomayor writing for the minority. She said, today's decision to grant former president's criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle foundational to our constitution and system of government that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for bold and unhesitating action by the president. The court gives former president Trump all

the immunity he asked for and more. Because our constitution does not shield a former president from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent." She goes on to say this is later. I've just pulled out a couple of paragraphs here that stood out to me. She says, in sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of presidential immunity that was never recognized by the founders, any sitting president, the executive branch, or even President Trump's lawyers until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case and so it ignores them. That is harsh language.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love the fact that she's pointing out. Let's not forget that in his defense of his impeachment, the president's own lawyer stood in front of the Senate jury and said, don't do this because the appropriate step, if you believe he's guilty of these offenses is he should be prosecuted believe he's guilty of these offenses is he should be prosecuted after he's no longer president. So I guess change of opinion now. Right, right. So what other parts of the dissent stood out to you? Yeah, well, she goes on to say, the president of the United States is the most powerful person in the country and possibly the world.

When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he will now be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune. Immune. Immune. Let the president violate the law. Let him exploit the

trappings of his office for personal gain. Let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority's message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the president

and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. That's such powerful writing. And she concludes with a more powerful writing. Never in the history of our republic has a president had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law

that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent. Very notably, departing from the typical language that ends every dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court is typically says, I respectfully dissent. Here, the language is with fear for our democracy, I dissent. Yeah, no respect rendered for the majority decision. All right, we are going to pivot on that pleasant note. We're going to pivot over to a listener question because we got some really, really great ones this week. And I think we found one that sort of sums up the questions that a lot of folks submitted. Yeah, this one's from Brian. And, you know, I give Brian a lot of credit.

I'm going to read it just the way he wrote it because I think the way he wrote it really captures his frustration and maybe frustration of a lot of people out there. Brian says, What I don't get is why Biden doesn't use his new powers given to him by the Supreme Court. Why not just use your new executive powers? You know that the next Republican president, if Trump doesn't win, is going to use them. Why would we have a party that won't use these powers when the other party will just use or abuse them?

You might as well use the powers. It doesn't make any sense not to. You're tying your hands behind your back for no reason and getting nothing for it. Hmm. Yeah, this reminds me of when I thought about this and I've played out, I've gamed out a lot of scenarios in my head and I keep getting stuck on the fact that the Supreme Court has said in this opinion that basically it's going to be up to them on a case by case basis who is immune for what and why. So taking that into account and I understand this question because like for example, I know that most

Democrats I know do not think that money should be in politics. Ever since Citizens United, they think PACs with dark money that you can't look at and scrutinize is bad. But because that is the system and the world in which we live, Democrats take PAC money. Otherwise, they're at a severe disadvantage. Right? So I'm thinking same same Z's, Brian, why not use these newfound executive powers that you have since everyone else is going to use them At the you know, especially Republicans. I should say they're definitely Republicans are going to use them. Why don't we? use them, but then I started to think about scenarios like signing an executive order forgiving all student debt for example or lowering the Medicare age to 45, or allowing

everyone to get free health care directly from the government through the Department of Veterans Affairs, or something that we've always worked, expanding the court, right? Like all these, the problem is those aren't crimes. Those are policies. So he really has to commit a crime in order to be immune from it. Because what will happen is if he, let's say he is using executive order, goes around circumvent Congress and says, I'm putting four more justices on the Supreme Court. Even if you get the Senate to go along with you and you point a bunch of people, bam, bam, bam, it's going to be immediately sued. It's going to be immediately blocked. There will be an injunction in joining him from adding those Supreme Court justices to the court or lowering the Medicare age or forgiving

all student debt while the lawsuit goes up to the Supreme Court. And what do you think the Supreme Court is going to say? Sorry, these aren't crimes. You can't issue an executive order and circumvent Congress. That violates the separation of powers, even though we just took a big giant chunk out of the separation of powers with our thing. They're not going to allow it. Now, does that mean he shouldn't give it a shot? No. I think go big and go bold and make them tell you no. But maybe that's just me, but I can't think of any crimes that Biden should commit.

Yeah, I mean, and he's not that guy, right? No, of course he's not that guy. He said he wasn't that guy. We don't want anyone who is that guy. I mean, I do, so first I do agree with you, like Brian's question, and I'm not blaming Brian at all here. I appreciate the question deeply because I feel like it illustrates the problem. And the problem is like, for instance, part of the court's reasoning in

this opinion was, well, if if you know, prosecutor, if the president can be prosecuted, then that's going to erode our political system because every president's going to immediately prosecute his predecessor, which has never happened and there's no reason to believe that's true. But so to avoid that result that they clearly were concerned about, they instead went with a different problem. They created a new problem. They determined that from this day forward, every president can violate as many criminal laws as he wants with complete and utter impunity. So following Brian's question, why wouldn't you? You've essentially created a new reality in which, okay, you haven't contributed to this arms race of presidents prosecuting their

predecessors, which as we know, there's a million checks and balances in place to ensure that doesn't happen. That's why it's never happened before this. But now you have a new arms race where every single president from every party, every one of them will enter that office knowing that they cannot be held responsible for anything. The menu of options is limitless to them now. And there will be pressure on each one to outdo what the one before him did. So like I envision a, for me, as I consider my own choices as to who to vote for in presidential elections, I want a new litmus test added to the list of litmus tests.

Where are you on choice and abortion, those sorts of things? I want journalists to pin down presidential candidates, people running the primaries, and say, will you voluntarily pledge to the American people that if you're elected, you will do everything within your power to obey the federal criminal laws of the United States of America during your term. And anyone who's not willing to say, yes, I'll pledge that, I will never vote for. Yeah, but anybody willing to violate them is going to lie when they're asked that question.

I guess, but it's something. You know, like, it's just bizarre. At least it's getting it out there. Well, how weird is it that we would even think that would be a good question to ask a camera? Why would you have to ask someone? That will now clearly be due. That's where we live now, right? But, you know, Justice Jackson opined on this during oral arguments on April 25th

when she said the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority could go into office knowing there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes. And I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country. That is what she was envisioning. And we sat there like, no, this history precedent, surely not, surely not, no. But that's exactly what they did. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Excellent question from Brian. It is. Thank you, Brian. And if you have a question for us, there's going to be a link in the show notes as always that you can click on and submit your questions. It's been a really tough week. And I just want to tell everybody, it's okay to be not okay this week. Democracy just took a huge hit.

And once again, as is always the case, it is going to be up to the voters to preserve democracy. And I know that everybody who's listening to this program is on it already. And I just wanted to kind of give you a little bit of advice because I know there's depression, I know there's anxiety, I know this is terrible. But simple little things like writing postcards to voters in swing states, it can make a huge difference in how good you feel. I know it has for me. And I know we're in tough times, but I just wanted to recommend that.

And I also wanted to say that I see you and I hear you because this was a bad week and there's really no way to spin it. Yeah, I think you're right. I think there is no sufficient spin and there's, I mean, we shouldn't be looking for that. Anyway, this is like you have to, sometimes you suffer, things don't go the way that you plan, things don't go the way you very deeply feel they should. And in those moments, you have to acknowledge it and reassess, take a look at the ground in front of you

and reassess the strengths, the weaknesses, the high points, the low, and find a way forward because not moving forward is not an option. So it's hard to do, but you know what? You're right, Alison, acknowledge the way you feel about it and what's hard to do, but you know what, you're right Alison, acknowledge the way you feel about it and what's important to you. And then change your actions and your plan accordingly. Yeah, and feeling down and anxious and worried makes you a patriot.

It means that you care about these things. About democracy. That's half the challenge. Yeah. And I will say, there are some silver linings here. It means that you care about these things. That's like half the challenge. And I will say there are some silver linings here. Well, I wouldn't say silver linings. But for example, Norm Eisen put out a great piece for CNN. We went over it on the Daily Beans on Friday.

You can hear it in its entirety on that episode about how the Manhattan DA's case will likely not be impacted by this in any real way. And that sentencing will now be closer to the election on September 18th, which will not give him time to appeal it. Not that the judge won't allow him if he's sentenced to jail out during the pendency of the appeal, but we may get that sentencing closer to the election than we thought. And then of course, we will have, I'm pretty sure, a hearing in Judge Chutkin's courtroom about what evidence can

go forward. And I think that during that hearing or perhaps during what you suggested, Andy, about a report coming out or a superseder, the American people will get more information about what happened on January 6th, the head of the election, even though the trial won't go. So those are the little tiny nuggets of hope that I'm pulling out of this. But I am not here to be the hope monkey wrangler that I usually am because I can't spin this week. I can't spin what the Supreme Court just did to our democracy in a good light. So I just want to let you know I hear you and we're with you on this. We're going to roll up our sleeves and work to preserve democracy this November. There you go. All right, everybody.

I don't know what more could happen in the next week that we'll have to cover. I would so like a slow week for God's sakes. Is that possible? Could we, like for once, can I call you up and be like, hey, we don't have much to do this week. Let's do a look back episode. Maybe we call Judge Cannon's clerk and be like, could you just throw us a couple of emotions our way? I mean, come on, the team is down. We need some points on the board.

Never happen. It'll never happen. But again, submit your listener questions at the link in the show notes and we'll be back next week. Thank you so much for listening and thanks for supporting Independent Media. I've been Alison Gill. I'm Andy McKay.