Jack - Episode 86 | Move to Expedite

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

This week Jack Smith filed notice that DoJ will be appealing to the 11th Circuit Judge Cannon’s dismissal of the Mar-a-Lago indictment.We expect that he will request that the appeal is heard on an expedited basis.The sentences of many January 6 rioters who had a charge of obstructing an official proceeding are being revised due to the recent SCOTUS decision narrowing the scope of the charge.Plus we take several listener questions. 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 86 of Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. Given whether the special counsel is actually doing anything right now because everything's on hold. That's something else we can talk about. But it's Sunday, July 21st, 2024. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. All right.

As you all know by now, Judge Eileen Cannon has dismissed the Florida case against Trump, citing Clarence Thomas, that special counsel Jack Smith was appointed without having been appointed and confirmed by the Congress and also without Congress passing a law specifically creating his office. So we discussed that in detail in a bonus episode earlier in the week. Today, we're going to discuss Jack Smith's intent to appeal that ruling. Ah, yes. And we're also going to take a look at a case of a January 6th insurrectionist whose motion for release based on the Supreme Court's ruling in the Fisher case has been denied by Judge Lamberth, who's a Reagan appointee. But before we get to all of any of that, let's

do an installment of good week, bad week. I mean, this could take the rest of the hour. I mean, what a week, jeez. It's been- The longest decade this week. Exactly. Exactly, I mean, okay, so we started Saturday with an assassination attempt on former president Trump.

I mean, I think that alone puts you in really bad week if you're Trump, but you know, he survived it. So there's a bright side, I guess. Yeah. And there's so much going on. We're going to have to follow these investigations into the Secret Service and their deficiencies fairly closely. And you know, the FBI seized two of his phones, went in there, said they don't have enough to develop a motive based on what they found in there. This guy seemingly, apparently able to stay off social media in this day and age is kind of, I don't know, impressive.

And not in a good way. I'm not saying like, hey, well done. You know, just it's interesting. It's a point of interest, I think, for the FBI. They do know that he registered as a Republican a couple of days after his 18th birthday, but that's, you know, that, and I think his final search on the internet

was for pornography. He also looked for pictures of both Trump and Biden, and also Chris Ray, the FBI director and Merrick Garland. So he was very angry, I think with the government in general, I think, and you know, he turned up on a database developed by the Trump campaign, as father did at least as a high potential potential to be a gun owner and somebody who could be flippable to Trump, but seems like his father at least identified as a libertarian. That's right. And you know, I remember Donald Trump at the libertarian convention getting booed off the stage.

Not a good day for him on that one. No, very bad day for him. But, and we still don't have any medical reports from the Trump campaign or the Trump camp about what happened is treatment diagnosis prognosis after he got hit in the ear with something. But you know, that doesn't take away from the fact that somebody was shooting at him. So, yeah, no question assassination attempt. And that was going to be my question for you, the FBI expert, because it seems to, if you want, if the FBI refers to something as an assassination attempt, they do that without prescribing or being able to prescribe any motive, right? It's just

if somebody takes a shot at a high political figure, whether they hit miss or what they were thinking is not relevant to whether or not it was an assassination attempt. Do I have that right? Well, it's interesting at the initial point of any investigation of something like this or a mass shooting or maybe an attempted terrorist attack, people make a lot of, there's a lot of focus on how the FBI refers to the investigation. Are they calling it domestic terrorism?

Are they calling it an assassination? And the fact is how they think about their investigation and how they refer to it is really based on a very preliminary analysis of the circumstances. Here you have someone who clearly tried to kill the leading candidate for a particular political party. Obviously Donald Trump, the now nominee as of last Saturday, the presumptive nominee. So those circumstances alone are enough for the FBI to talk about this as an attempt at assassination. That's not the same as actually charging

someone with assassination, which is a federal crime. And it's the same as true in a terrorism situation. You know, we'll, we might say, you know, we think this is potentially an act of, let's say domestic terrorism. We're assigning it to be investigated by our counter terrorism division. Those are all very significant decisions, but it doesn't, it's not a fate of company until somebody's actually charged with something. Of course, domestic terrorism, there is no charge, but you know, you know, the point

I'm trying to make. Right. So I think it's pretty clear that they were reacting to the circumstances. I don't think it's inaccurate at all to call this an attempted assassination. Of course, there'll be no charge here since he so far is the only person they're looking at. They've had no indication anybody else might be involved. He also had some interesting stuff with him or nearby. He had what's described as a rudimentary explosive device in his car.

He also had a ballistic vest in his car. He had a drone in the car, additional ammunition. At home he had a transmitter with him on the roof, right? Yeah, fireworks remote transmitter, which could have been, he may have intended to use that with the explosive device to create a diversion. That's a, I don't want to say common because these things aren't that common,

but that's a tactic that assassins and terrorists have used in the past. He had additional stuff at home, many other guns, more explosives, other cell phones, you know, hard drives and a laptop. So they're sorting through all that. I think at this point, it's too early to say conclusively what they think of this guy, but the fact that there's not any indication of a very strong ideological affiliation or even political affiliation, I think is an interesting fact. You know, you have his

registration as a Republican when he was like the day after he turned 18 or something like that. I don't know that that's a huge indicator, especially for someone that young. There was talk about a donation to a democratic organization, although I think that donation is somewhat questionable at this point. They're trying to sort out exactly who did that. It may have been someone with a similar name. So the fact that there is no other evidence that indicates strong political belief combined with the fact that he was also looking at the dates of the DNC and information about

President Biden, information about Merrick Garland and Chris Wray, I think to me, it seems at least leaning in the direction that this was a guy who wanted to go out and do something that he thought was bold, that might be satisfying to him in some bizarre and disturbed way, you know, a way of addressing his grievance, maybe the way that he felt like life had treated him and people had been ignoring him. Some people do things like this simply to make a name for themselves.

I mean, think about John Hinckley, did it to try to impress Jodie Foster, which is insane, but that's why he did it. So we could, at the end of the day, be looking at a really unsatisfying answer along those lines. Yeah, I tend to agree with you on that. I think he did, I think Tom Winter at least at NBC looked into the donation and it's his

name and it matches his address and it was where he lived with his parents. Yeah, sure. So, but again, that's nine months before he turned 18. So again, not really indicative of much other than just kind of one of the like a lone wolf chaos agent guy, you know. It's not the same as like the congressional baseball shooter who had a whole list of Republican potential targets and somewhat of a history of supporting liberal causes and things like that. That was an easier situation to make a determination that that was truly an attempted political assassination. Yeah. And I think that they're going to not just look at his phones and say oh we give up, you know They'll go to his school to computers

He logged into they'll look at logs and see I mean because if he's building explosive devices or has rudimentary Explosive devices, maybe he looked that up in a library book. He checked out exactly something else besides his cell phone. Or I think there were two cell phones in this case. But they're supposed to leave no stone unturned as far as investigating. That's how we do it. Yes. I'm just thinking of the Mar-a-Lago. Let's not go into that closet situation. But he also had a site on Christopher Ray and somebody actually was just charged in Atlanta for death threats against the director of the FBI. So, well, not linked to the assassination attempt, but yeah, bad week as far as that's concerned.

Then of course, I mean, the news this week, we had that, we had the RNC happening, we had JD Vance announced. And still none of that really steered the media away from talking about Biden and his age and his performance of the debate. So it's been a very long week, um, at least I know for, for a lot of us and a lot of folks listening, but that, did you watch his RNC speech because the media was saying, Oh, he's a new guy. He's serene. He's going to unify.

And all he had to do was stay on prompter for 60 minutes. And he went off prompter for another 30 and went back to the exact same Trump that we've all seen for the last however many years. So I'm, I'm that anyone was surprised by that is surprising to me. Like people don't change, especially people like Trump. So yeah, change not common in, um, you know, what is he 77 year old narcissist? It's just kind of, uh, you common in, you know, what is he, 77 year old narcissist. It's just kind of, you pretty much, you pretty much who you are and who you're going to be at that point. I was also, I'm look, I mean, I can, I'm sure he was shocked and disturbed by what happened

on Saturday. I mean, I was, we all should have been, it's just a terrible thing. It's not how we want to see political issues getting resolved in this country. Although we have a deep, long, disturbing history of things like that, but we hope to try to rise above it. And I'm sure it affected him, but yeah, he's not going to change who he is. And I think that this, you know, I didn't sit, I did not listen to the speech last night. I just kind of couldn't, uh, I didn't watch it. I couldn't put the energy together to sit there for 90 minutes. Like, no, thank you. But I actually watched house of the dragon, which is actually a to, to escape, but it's

actually quite similar to what's going on. It's a little too on the nose with what's going on in the, in the real world. It's like, I'll watch this. It'll be totally different. And not really. Not so much. I'm, I really only watched the tour de France this month. So that's, you know, I always have a good race to watch at

night, which is great. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not surprised at all. You know, he gave the long kind of a discussion, his description of what happened at the, at the rally. And that's compelling to hear from a victim talk about what happened to them but you know that he could only do that for so long and then it was just back off the teleprompter and into the standard list of grievance and talking about himself and how horrible other people are. Not a lot from what I understand not a lot of talk about

you know plan for the future of America no like that but no and he did he avoided sharks and batteries so that I know but he talked about Hannibal Lecter yeah he talked about his the late great Hannibal first of all I don't think he did he die I don't remember I didn't see the third movie but anyway not a real guy though so it doesn't matter also not a real guy and I guess if you want to get technical about it With your you know, oh you worked for the FBI. You got to be all technical about who exists in real life Real Joe Friday, I know I can't get over it I just you know, I can't get past those things like not a real person and, you know, fictitious

character, but whatever. Okay. Yeah. Don't stop him. JD Vance's speech was boring. He's a terrifying figure, just funded by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who's destroying Twitter. Like, it's just everything is kind of up in the air right now. And everything, you know, is up in the air for Jack Smith right now. We're

in limbo because the Supreme Court has not sent the immunity case back down to the circuit court. They could have done it immediately, but they wanted to give everybody time to file a rehearing, which was not going to happen. And so we've got nothing going on in the DC case until the first week of August, at least. And as we know with the Florida case, Cannon has dismissed that and we're waiting for the appeal from Jack Smith. And we'll talk about that after this quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, on July 17th, Jay Bratt and David Harbaugh filed their notice of appeal to the 11th circuit on behalf of the special counsel's office. During the bonus episode,

we heard from a spokesperson for Jack Smith that they intended to file that appeal. And of course, since then, we got the official notice. It's very brief. It says, the United States of America hereby gives notice that it appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit from the order of the district court entered July 15th, 2024, docket entry 672. Now that's a reference to Judge Cannon's ruling on Trump's motion to dismiss

the superseding indictment based on the inappropriate appointment and funding of the special counsel. Yeah, 93 pages worth. And even though she didn't consider the funding of special counsel, because she just dismissed on inappropriate appointment, she went on to tell us how she also thinks he's inappropriately funded. Yeah. So what I'm looking for now, Andy, what everybody should be waiting for is to see whether Jack Smith files a motion to expedite the appeal and whether he will seek to have her removed from the case. So let's start with a motion for expedited appeal. For right now, I'm on the docket. It has not come up yet. It's not there. I'll check again before we sit before we say goodbye on this

particular episode. But it's not there. It's just so far, the latest thing is that notice of appeal that you just read. But for the expedited appeal, first, it's important to understand that the reason Jack Smith filed this notice that you just read is that he intends to appeal is because the government has a very limited number of days to file a notice protecting its right to file the full appeal. We've seen this time and again with every appeal to a circuit court, where the appellate, the person who's filing the appeal files a notice that they're going to

appeal. And that's like a space saver for them to now have a certain amount of time to file the full brief. And the government doesn't always follow up with a full appeal, but there's no reason to believe they won't do that here. They're totally going to appeal. If not, you know, just fold the tent, turn out the lights in the office and go home. Yeah, they're definitely going to follow up on this appeal. So we're waiting to get our hands on that thing. Yeah. And once you file your notice to appeal, the government typically has 40 days to file its full record on appeal brief. And

as Joyce Vance pointed out, she said appellate courts don't take evidence. They consider only material that was before the lower court, the trial court, including pleadings and transcripts. Appellate courts don't consider any information that isn't already in the record. That's from rule 10, which is called the record on appeal. If Jack Smith doesn't ask for an expedited schedule, the timeline gives him 40 days. That's the regular timeline. Then Trump would have 30 days to reply and then the government would have 21 days to respond to Trump's reply. And if everyone used up the whole time, that puts us in October, though I doubt special counsel would use the entire 40 or 21 days to issue their brief.

But I think they'll file for an expedited appeal here. We just haven't seen it. And I, or at least an expedited, I should say expedited briefing schedule. What did you, do you agree? I do. I do. You know, I mean, they're... Look, the clock is ticking for them, obviously. Though they don't talk about this publicly, I'm sure they're aware of the fact that we're not just closing in on the election, but closing in on the amount of time they'll have to work on this case in the event the election goes for Trump. And so I think they'll probably cut through their times as quickly as they can. So yeah, I agree with

you. If they can get that thing done in less than 40 days, I think we'll see it. Yeah. And they've done this before with the 11th circuit and Judge Cannon. That's right. And you know, they filed for an expedited briefing schedule in this case with the 11th circuit before the special master case, which Judge Cannon lost and was forced to vacate her ruling. Now Joyce goes on to say that if Jack Smith files for an expedited schedule and the 11th Circuit grants that request, that could be an early indicator that the 11th Circuit intends to overturn her ruling. Now something else to keep in mind, once the three judge panel is assigned, and as

of the day we record this, we don't have that assignment yet, those three judges will also decide whether or not to expedite the schedule, provided Jack Smith asks for it. If they do, the case must be fully briefed, meaning the government's brief, Trump's response, and the government's reply must be received seven full days before oral argument is scheduled. Hmm. That's interesting. And I have to think that special counsel may have most of this brief ready to go. I mean, I would have given the fact that this motion was made in February. Cannon sat on this motion to dismiss for 144 days. She also nudged Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira to join the motion. Like, Hey guys, you have

till July 10th to join this motion or what? I can't remember the June 10th, maybe. Don't you want to come to the party? Yeah. Hey, you might want to get in on this action. And she allowed amicus briefs and oral arguments from Amiki, which is beyond bizarre. So even if they don't ask for an expedited briefing schedule, they most certainly won't wait the full 40 days to file the brief. I think they have most of it probably done already. And in the special master case that you just mentioned, the one that the 11th circuit vacated for Judge Cannon. On September 30th, 2022, the Justice Department filed a motion with the 11th circuit asking for an expedited briefing.

They wanted the government stuff due on October 14th in two weeks instead of 40 days. A response by Trump on November 4th, which what gave him about, let's see, 17, 21, three weeks? And then a reply from the Justice Department a week later. So they wanted to go 14 days, 21 days, and seven days instead of 40, 30 and 21. Right, right. But lawyers for Trump argued back then that he would be unfairly prejudiced by a shortened schedule, which included shorter deadlines and oral arguments at the court's earliest convenience. Trump wanted oral arguments in January, which is months later. Of course he did.

Yeah. So they said no good cause has been shown as to why president Trump should have significantly less time than the government and less time than that provided under the rules to prepare and brief his arguments before this court in his unprecedented case. The appeals court granted the DOJ expedited briefing, but it gave Trump an extra week, which I like to refer to as the, oh, shut up grant. You know, like you're not really with her, but you're like, all right, give him a week and then I don't refer to as the, Oh, shut up grant. You know, like, you're not really with her, but you're like, all right, give them a week. And then I don't want to hear any more complaints. So essentially all briefing papers are due by November 17th.

So that expedited briefing schedule gave the parties 49 days as opposed to the 91 days allowed by the regular rules. And today we got notices to appear in the 11th circuit from Trump lawyer Emile Beauvais and government attorney James Pierce. Though Emile Beauvais made a clerical error and used another person's account to file his appearance so he had to go back and correct his mistake. Oops. James Pierce. Can I use your login? I mean, come on. What? Right? Okay. Yeah. James Pierce, he's going to argue for the government. He's written multiple briefs and argued several times for special counsel, including the brief opposing immunity filed with Judge Chuckin way long

time ago. And he was part of the oral arguments for Cannon's mini trial on the special counsel's appointment and funding So then the only question because well, I mean we still don't know if he's gonna file for an expedited briefing schedule But I imagine he will but that leaves the question as we wait for this appellate brief Whether Jacksmith will ask for Cannon's removal He didn't say that I but I don't know that you necessarily do

make that notice or if it's part of your appeal. I just don't know enough about the appellate court rules. I don't know if you have to notice the court, if you have to tell them, hey I'm also gonna ask to have her removed from the case. I don't know if you have to do that or not. But we'll know once we get the brief. But that brief will be at least, I mean, a month from now, if you think about it, because we have to wait for him to file the expedited briefing schedule. We have to get an approval if there's an approval for an expedited briefing schedule. And then they'll probably give the government at least two weeks. I imagine that's

what the government will ask for around that. So we're looking at it's going to be a while. Definitely, definitely. And I, you know, the question about the request for removal, like, I'm not sure about that either, to be perfectly honest, it's so rare, there's not a lot of examples to draw from. It could be that you would include it in your initial filing, or it could be a situation where they only ask for it in the event that their appeal is granted, or it could be they don't ask for it at all, and they just leave it up

to the court's discretion and are satisfied to live with the result, I find that option really hard to believe, but we'll see with the motion itself whether or not it's included there. If it is, then we have the question answered. If it's not, I think it's still kind of an issue hanging out there that we'll have to see how it develops. Mm-hmm, yeah, and it'll be interesting to see

if they do ask for removal on what grounds, because like you said, it's really, really rare and especially in the 11th circuit, where you have to make like extra judicial super biased statements in order to be removed. We do know, and I think we talked about this last week week that two judges, including her senior judge in her district, asked her early on to remove herself from the case and she refused, which is her right. Also, we had that witness list thing. She ordered to be released and there was a motion for reconsideration and she reversed

herself. So that kind of puts her back at zero. Then there's the special master thing, but you can't really rely on something that had already happened and you haven't asked for a removal yet. But I know that they will, at least on the appeal, talk about the clear error on the law in dismissing the case. But whether that combined with special counsel and a couple of other things alone are enough to get her removed from the case, I whether that combined with special counsel and a couple of other things alone are enough to get her removed from the case, I don't know. I really don't know. I haven't seen,

I've never seen a judge get removed from a case. I've only been following a couple of really specific investigations for less than 10 years, but I've never seen anything like that. Matthew 10.10 Nor have I. Never came up in any case that I worked on during my time in government. I agree with you. There's got to be, you know, typically, as I understand, and again, this is from talking to people who've had rare experiences with it, it happens in cases where there is some articulable cause, not necessarily proven,, a good argument that the judge has some sort of, uh, underlying bias or that the circumstances around the motion

could lead people to believe that there were some bias, not that there definitely is, but you know, that's like, uh, kind of like you have to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Right. So how they, how they think about that? I don't I don't know. I think things like reversing herself on the witness list Issue actually goes in her favor, right? Right. So It's it's not clear but one thing that I was thinking about here as we were getting ready for this show When you think about the fact that the 11th Circuit doesn't hear witnesses, doesn't see exhibits,

anything like that, they just simply look at the record in the case. Now, her decisions as to how she handled this motion maybe are a little more crazy like a fox than they were. Having the oral arguments seemed crazy. Having amicus briefs seemed nutty. Letting the amicus present for 30 minutes each during the hearing totally never happens

in a district court case. And I think many of us, myself included, so shame on me, we're like, oh my God, she's crazy. She doesn't know what she's doing. We're taking it simply as a sign of incompetence or something along those lines. And then she comes out with this 93 page massive order that really goes deep on all sorts of,

almost like Supreme Court level arguments and justification and historical research and semantic arguments and this very expansive, you know, she was creating a really broad, detailed, multifaceted record upon which to make this decision, even if you disagree with the decision, which of course I do, but she went way out of her way to write that thing and probably had been doing it for months. So now it looks like all those crazy decisions to have this long hearing and having all these people weigh in, it looks a little more premeditated. Like she wanted to put 10 tons of stuff on the record knowing she was going to go this

way in an effort to put as much in front of the 11th circuit as humanly possible. Yeah, that is a really good point because like you said, they can only take what's in the record and if her record is massive, you know, 30 boxes worth of documents, then you know, there you go. I mean, it's like she was taking her best swing. You know what I mean? Like she knew that the stakes would be high on this one. So she's really building a case. So anyway, we'll see. And there's a, by the way, a couple of other filings here on the docket.

Nothing with the expedited requests or anything from the government regarding the appeal. But there was a appearance for counsel from Jay Bratt filed for the government regarding the appeal, but there was an appearance for counsel from Jay Bratt filed for the government and appearance of counsel for John Pelletieri for the government. So we got a couple of additional lawyers filing for appearance in the appeals court, which you have to do if you want to argue, brief anything. So it makes sense that Pierce, all the lawyers for the special counsel's office that are going to write the briefings and appear at oral argument would have to file a notice of appearance. Yeah. It doesn't mean every one of those folks will stand up and make an argument. It just

means like that's their roster that they'll draw from. Each one of them has to be admitted to the bar of the 11th circuit, which is kind of an administrative manner. It's not like you go have to sit for another exam or anything. But yeah, so this is all just very standard kind of administrative boxes they got to check off. Yep. Yep. And so they're doing it and they did it right. They use their own accounts to file their own ECF accounts For appearance high five don't share into passwords. Come on. It's all about cybersecurity. Oh my goodness All right. We have more to get to including some stuff that's going on with the Fisher decision

Which of course as you know, Trump is in the DC case, charged with 1512C2 and 1512K, and the 1512K hinges on the 1512C2. And so we'll talk about that, but we do have to take another quick break. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. All right, we're starting to get more information on the fallout

of the Supreme Court's decision in the Fisher case. You'll remember there was an insurrectionist who attacked the Capitol named Fisher who filed with Judge Nichols, a Trump appointee in the district court saying that his case should be dismissed because 1512C2, which is obstructing an official proceeding, actually relies on the language in 1512C1. Meaning he had to just break into the building to stop the peaceful transfer power isn't enough of obstructing an official proceeding. It actually has to involve the obstruction of documents or creating false documents or destroying documents that 1512 C1 and 1512C2 are connected. And as you know, Andy, there were several filings made by Jack Smith about Trump's 1512C2 and 1512K charges saying that our charges in this indictment stand even if the Supreme Court got 1512C2 on it. Well, they don't say guts, but they

say on a narrower interpretation of 1512C2. It's the legal version of guts. And so that's what the Fisher case was. And Nichols, by the way, was the only judge out of I think 12, at least a dozen who decided that 1512 C2 has to have something to do with documents. The other judges said, no, we interpret the law differently. The government said we interpret the law differently. Supreme Court sided with Judge Nichols. And this is coming now from your colleague, Hannah Rabinowitz, over at CNN. Weeks after the Supreme Court narrowed how the Justice Department can pursue obstruction

charges in January 6 cases, federal prosecutors are beginning to offer retooled plea deals or drop that specific charge against members of the mob that attacked Capitol. These developments are slowly trickling in court filings, trickling out in court filings, I should say, as prosecutors make clear that they plan to continue holding the rioters accountable within the constraints of the Supreme Court decision. According to Justice Department statistics, there were about 259 defendants facing this charge, 1512 C-2. And there were 259 when the Supreme Court issued its ruling that narrowed how 1512 C-2 can be applied. Among those individuals are five alleged members

of the Proud Boys, though they aren't accused of being leaders. They're not the, you know, the seditious conspiracy Proud Boys. They're just obstructing an official proceeding Proud Boys. The general obstructors, not the full on organizing of the obstruction. So they aren't charged with coordinating it or anything. They are Arthur Jackman, Edward George Jr., Paul Ray, and the father and son duo of Kevin and Nate Tuck. And in a court filing just this past Monday, prosecutors said that each defendant has been offered a plea deal, a new one that does not include the obstruction charge. And now if they decline that deal, prosecutors said they would move to dismiss the charge and take them into trial on their other crimes.

Okay. So it's again, and this is kind of happening with a lot of these cases as the justice department sort of weeds through what they need to do with the new interpretation of the law. That's right. That's right. We knew this was going to happen. And so these are kind of our first indications of how they're thinking about it. So Hannah goes on to say, the Supreme Court opinion gave the DOJ room to bring the charge against some rioters who attempted to impact documents and quote, other things used in an official proceeding.

And prosecutors would have to prove that each defendant falls into that category by connecting them to the Electoral College certificates that Congress was certifying on January 6th, 2021. I should say here, that's one theory of how you could stick, continue to push this charge against one of those defendants. There's also other ways, if you had a defendant

who let's say broke into a congressman's office and destroyed documents in there, you might be able to use that activity, but nevertheless. Hannah goes on to say, prosecutors already moved to dismiss the charge against some defendants including Mark Sahadi a Massachusetts man who runs a straight pride group and Beverly Hills salon owner Gina Bisignano, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly in Bisignano's case Prosecutors wrote in court filings that they would, quote,

need additional time to evaluate its prosecution of the obstruction charge and are electing to drop the charge in the aim of keeping their current trial date. SONIA DARA, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC

ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MSNBC ANCHOR, MS. And you know, you wonder if I drop this charge, how does that impact the sentence and guidelines? Well, we've got a new case here that sort of gives us a window into that. Because a couple of days ago on July 18, Judge Royce Lamberth, as I said, he's a Reagan appointee, denied Alex Hostetter's motion to be released pending his appeal of his obstruction. Right. So he's already convicted of 1512 and likely other charges as well. And he's currently serving time. Yep. Multiple charges. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison about seven, almost eight

months ago, last December. 11 years. He's the ex-cop, right? Ah, yes. He brought the hatchet. That's that guy. And he, he filed a motion. Let me out of prison. I'm, I'm appealing based on Supreme Court's decision in Fisher. You should let me out of prison while I'm appealing. But he, that was denied. Here's some of what the judge said in denying his release. He said, Mr. Hostetter has neither demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that he poses no danger to the community, nor that his pending appeal, if successful, would even reduce his sentence by so much as to warrant his release. It might reduce

his sentence, but not enough to let you out while you're appealing it. And here's some other verbiage from what the judge had to say. As already discussed, Mr. Hostetter has revealed his capacity for violence by bringing a weapon into a restricted area, spurring on a violent mob and calling for the execution of public officials. Hostetter was impelled on January 6th by his ideological convictions and by the time of sentencing, he had not abandoned the theories that motivated his illicit conduct. Quote, the election was stolen. And he still quote, truly believed this. Indeed, Haastetter saw and continues

to see to see it as his affirmative duty to act as he did that day, which raises the substantial risk that he would be willing to replicate his behavior, particularly considering that the next election is just a few months away. So you're extra dangerous, sir. He actually said, I'll double down on what I did, why I was there, and that it was my oath to the country that drove me there. Hostetter points out in the court recognizes that due to his compliance with his pretrial release conditions and his stable personal life and lack of criminal history, the court did permit him to self surrender

rather than ordering him into custody immediately after sentencing. But the severity of his offenses viewed in light of his conduct during sentencing and coupled with the looming election, persuade this court that the present risk of releasing Hostetter is too grave. The fact that the court has afforded Hostetter lenient custodial conditions in the past does not preclude the determination today that he represents a threat to the community of released. Then he goes

on to say, moreover, even if Hostastetter were not a risk to the community, he nevertheless bears the burden to show that his appeal is likely to result in a reduced sentence shorter than the sum of the time he's already served and the time that it will take for the DC Circuit to resolve his appeal. He argues that absent his 1512 convictions, the guideline sentence for his remaining offenses would be six to 12 months. But even if this is so, Haastetter too hastily presumes this court would necessarily give a guideline sentence on remand. In crafting its original sentence, the court considered the sentence and guidelines, but also made its own assessment, as it must must of the factual, personal, and historical circumstances surrounding his offense.

While the Supreme Court's decision in Fisher may ultimately change the guidelines recommendation for Mr. Hostetter, Fisher does not dictate the court's application of discretion and the factors to Mr. Hostetter's remaining convictions. Okay, so the court may still consider Mr. Hostetter's serious conduct on January 6th, 2021, in its entirety, even if the Court of Appeals concludes that this conduct no longer constitutes a crime. To reduce his sentence from 135 months to 12 months would require this court to take a drastically different view of his conduct,

and the court is not persuaded that the pending appeal in this case will have such an effect because Haastetter has not met his burden. Your motion will not succeed. So it's denied. You cannot be released early while you're pending. I think one of the things that this really points out is the significance of acceptance of responsibility and remorse after you've been convicted. And I say that because here, clearly, what the judge is

saying is like, yeah, the fact that he's doubling down on everything he did really keeps this right in the hot zone of you're going to get hit pretty hard on sentencing. And this is something we've talked about a lot in the context of the Trump sentencing in New York. I know there's all kinds of other issues there now because of his appeal and he's going to make an immunity claim and everything else. That's somewhat confusing. But just on this straight up sentencing that ultimately Judge Marchano have to give, even though a lot of things about his crime up there would raise the maybe presumption that

he probably wouldn't get jail time. The fact that he has gone through this whole process and has absolutely zero acceptance of responsibility, that is a big, big factor to judges. And it is, I think, the worst thing he has going for him in that sentencing process. Yeah. It's what jacked his disgorgement fines from Angoran up to $454 million because Angoran said you are pathologically without remorse. It's pathological. And I kind of wish Judge Lamberth had said that. Had you accepted responsibility and shown remorse, we'd be in a different spot.

But you were like, I did it. I'm going to do it again. And I really thought it was very excellent that the judge pointed out, we have an election coming up. You've shown you're real bad with elections. Like it's just, you and elections don't get along real well with as far as violence is concerned, Mr. Hatchet. So how about no, you don't get to get out of prison right before another election with the same candidate running that caused you to attack the Capitol the first time. Yeah. And we're going to see a lot of these because those cases, you know, the DOJ has got

a lot they've got to figure out in these cases. I think most of the people that took convictions for 1512 C2 also were convicted for other offenses, many of which are violent. So they're not going to get completely cut loose. So they'll all appeal. Many of them will have those charges, those convictions overturned on the 1512 C2 issue. Then the question comes back to the district court to re-sentence. And I don't think this is the last one of these

you're gonna see. No, fortunately there's a handful of them. There's not many of the over 1200 convictions and plea deals they've gotten. But I'm pretty confident in because of Jack Smith's writing because, you know, Trump filed with Judge Cannon a motion to dismiss based on statutory ambiguity, right? And Jack Smith wrote in response, yeah, no, sorry, even on the narrower reading. And we don't have that decision yet. At the time, we didn't have the Fisher decision yet. It was still working its way up. And Jack Smith said, even on a narrower ruling, you can't possibly look me in the face and say, you know, with your mouth, that

you didn't obstruct procedural documents in this thing. You falsified, you know, you were part of a scheme to falsify electoral certificates. That falls into this. And the Supreme Court actually mentioned that in their Fisher ruling. They said creating false evidence would fall under 1512 C2 and our narrower interpretation of it. As if to say sending false, you know, electoral certificates to Congress straight up docs falls under this. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how the sequencing plays out with the immunity ruling work that has to go on, right? And is this something that they just kind of table until we figure out how much of this case

is actually still alive and going forward after we go through all the machinations of what was core conduct, what was official conduct, what's left, do you have enough evidence to prove those things? Even after that process, then he's gotta make some decisions about what do you do with this 1512C2 charge? Do you stick with it and defend it and take it,

or do you try to kind of narrow the scope of what you're doing, whatever's left of that, and just drop it entirely. So, it's a lot. Yeah, I think the sequencing will be... I mean, they have to figure out the immunity thing first. Once discovery is agreed upon, they have to figure out the immunity thing first because Robert said, you have to do this first.

This has to come at the early onset of a case to determine these, you know, what's immune and what's not. And then, you know, I think they'll go for trying to, if they have to, re-decide the case, maybe refile charges. I think they'll include the language, maybe, but they don't necessarily have to because it looks clear to me that Jack Smith actually wrote this indictment with the narrower version of 1512C2 in mind. Yeah, it's very possible they'll stick with it. All right. We're going to get to some listener questions. We do have to take one last quick break. If you have a question, there's a link in the show notes you can click to submit your question to us and we will answer those questions right after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back. Okay welcome back. Here we are at the question part of the part of the show. We have so many questions this week and many

of them have to do with what to expect on the appeal from Judge Cannon's order of dismissing the case in Florida. So I pulled a whole bunch of them up AG and I thought we could just kind of rip through and maybe kind of quickly to cover more ground here. Yeah, sounds good. His first one comes to us from Eric in the UK and he says when the appeal gets the 11th circuit What are the options? Could they refuse to hear it? So the dismissal of the indictment stands? Could they just tell Ken and she's wrong and to reconsider? What needs to happen for the appeal to be upheld and someone besides Ken and taking up the case?

So those are that's a pretty good recitation of the options Eric They could refuse to hear the case and if that happens, it's a pretty good recitation of the options. Eric, they could refuse to hear the case. And if that happens, it's over. Case has been dismissed. We all walk away. Or they could take the case, which I think is the most likely alternative. And then it's up to them.

If they think the judgment, they could affirm her judgment and then the case is over. Or they could overturn her judgment. And then if is over, or they could overturn her judgment. And then if they do that, they'll give some instruction on what they want to do with the case. As far as keeping Cannon on it or not, that, as we discussed earlier in the show, comes down to whether or not Jack Smith and his team

ask for that sort of relief. Do they ask for it in the initial motion, or do they make that request in the event they're successful on the appeal? Yeah. And I think, again, you know, we talked about whether or not he was going to ask for her removal, but I honestly don't think that the 11th Circuit will refuse to hear this case. They'll take it. And I'm pretty confident if Jack Smith asked for an expedited appeal, he'll get it because we have precedent for that. We've seen it

happen with this case. We've done it before. Right? So they've kind of acknowledged the important nature of the case and the need to move the case forward in a quick manner, as quick as you can without compromising the rights of the defendant. So yeah, I think there's a decent chance that that'll happen. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. So I think as far as Eric, your question goes, the thing that we just don't know for like for sure is whether or not he'll even ask to remove her from the case and whether

or not that would even be considered or granted by the 11th circuit. It certainly would be appealed to the Supreme Court. Yep. That's for sure. Okay. Next question comes to us from Canadian fan girl. She says, what is the role of Clarence Thomas in the 11th circuit appeal? Can he get involved and shoot it down? So what she's referring to here is the fact that each Supreme Court justice has kind of an administrative sort of oversight responsibility for a different circuit. And it just so happens that the Supreme Court justice that oversees the 11th Circuit is Clarence Thomas. But his role in doing that is really pretty administrative. It's not substantive. He doesn't hear cases down there. He doesn't tell them which cases to hear and

which ones to reject. So at the end of the day, I don't think Thomas really will have much of an effect on the appeal. Do you see it any differently? No. And, you know, generally what that, what Thomas can do here is grant or deny what's called an administrative stay. And that's the stay to hold the proceeding until the Supreme Court rules more broadly on a longer stay. And so whenever you hear somebody say, you know, Clarence Thomas or Alito has issued a stay, they've stopped the proceedings. Those are always temporary. They're administrative. And that's kind of really the limit of their reach. And that doesn't, again, that doesn't even happen until after the 11th circuit has heard

the case, has rendered a decision, and maybe until after the loser of that decision may request an en banc hearing of the entire 11th circuit. And if that is granted, then that process takes place. And then the loser decides to appeal to the Supreme Court. In that moment, the appellant to the Supreme Court would say, hey, I want the case stayed until the Supreme Court reviews it. And that very first decision of issuing a temporary stay would be in Thomas's hands. So it's not really... And not even the full stay, just the temporary stay would be in Thomas's hands. So it's not really. And not even the full stay, just the temporary stay.

Yeah, exactly. Because he has to take the full stay consideration back to the full court. Exactly. Yeah, and you brought up a really good point, Andy. Appealing to the 11th Circuit, asking for a stay from the 11th Circuit, Justice Thomas has nothing to do with any of that.

Right. All right, next question from Julie. With Judge Cannon dismissing the Mar-a-Lago case after Jack Smith appeals and hopefully wins. Can't Trump appeal to the Supreme Court? Then could this crazy Supreme Court just rule in Trump's favor? Julie, yes. Yes and yes. Yes and yes.

No. I know. I will say like five years ago, I would have said it's only justice Thomas who mentioned the appointment of Jack Smith in his immunity concurrence. And so I doubt- For no reason to apparent anyone on the planet other than him, but okay. No dictum. For any reason, I would have no reason to believe that any of the other justices would agree with him.

However, today is not five years ago. And so I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know whether the Supreme Court would find for Trump and say that the, I mean, I could very easily see them saying, hey, the appointment of special counsel needs a congressional law that's different from the one we have. I mean, they've done that already this term where a law wasn't enough. And so- I totally agree.

The deck is wide open. They could, if the 11th Circuit takes the case and they render a decision that overturns Judge Cannon, so they rule for the prosecution, it's possible that the Supreme Court wouldn't even take the appeal. They might say, no, there's no inconsistency in the law. All the other cases go in the same direction. This one now goes in that direction. There's nothing for us to resolve. That'd be terrific. Or they could go totally that way. Take the case, stay everything until they went through their leisurely approach to it. And there would be next term.

Throw the whole thing out again. This fall. And I could, I can hear them saying, this is an important question and we need to make a rule for the ages on whether or not special councils are appointed properly and funded properly. It's long past due that we address these issues, et cetera. And here's where I think they could do it. Because the law that allows Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel was written before the special council regulations as we knew them, the independent council regulations expired. And so I could see him saying, oh, these new special council regulations were written after

that law. You know, I just, it sounds ridiculous. There essentially is no specific law anymore. Right after the independent council law expired, DOJ reacted by just enacting their own regulations, enacting their own policies and having them... Based on a previous law. Yeah, yeah. But Reno went before Congress and said, we don't need a law.

We can just do this by promul, by, by promulgating this rule for the department, which is in place because of the judgment of the attorney general. That's kind of one of the things that Cannon like hinged her case on. Like you have no law. So it's not, it's not a real thing. But anyway, all right. So this next one, I'm going to kind of combine two questions because they both kind of go in the same direction. So this is from Paul from MoCo and the DMV, which those people where I live know that that's Montgomery County in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area.

So there's your local translation. So basically Paul is asking a couple of questions and he's concerned how do these cases always seem to end up in the 11th circuit? Would the judges on the 11th circuit have been keeping close tabs on this case and digesting all the briefs and rulings in anticipation of an eventual appeal? So that's his question. And then we also get one from, I don't know how to pronounce this name. It's L apostrophe E-A-U-X. Is that Lou?

Lou and Terry. Lou and Terry, they are mother and daughter. I think Terry is the mom in any case. They say, our question for you this week is the following, when Jack and the gang file their appeal and recusal request, is she the person that goes before the 11th circuit or would that be Trump's lawyers or the appeal and the recusal two separate actions? And if so, would they be handled at the same time? Okay. So this all is kind of cuts at that question. It was like, how does this happen?

Right? So generally, the 11th circuit, they will not have been reading any of the filings in this case regarding this issue. They do not start considering this issue until somebody has requested an appeal and they have granted an appeal. And much like the Supreme Court did in the immunity issue, if they grant the appeal, they're going to say, we grant it on the following question, right? They're going to frame what the issue actually is and then that will instruct the lawyers as to how they brief it. Once the lawyers submit their briefing, they can attach to it any documents that were in the record of the district court.

So they might point to their earlier arguments, they might... As we said earlier, the amicus briefs, the oral arguments, the testimony of the oral arguments, all that kind of stuff then becomes relevant for the 11th Circuit. And they will only really review that once they've gotten involved and start looking at the appeal. Nicole Forrest, MPH, CHES, MPH Okay, interesting. And then as far as a recusal request, as we said earlier, I don't know whether that piggybacks on the appeal and they include it in there or if they file it separately and if they need to file a notice that they are going to ask for her removal. I simply don't know. I'm going to keep asking, I'll reach out to Steve Vladeck, maybe he knows.

Steve knows everything. But I think part of the question was, is Judge Cannon the person? So let's say Jack Smith wants her removed from the case. Is she then- Does she go argue for herself? Right. Yeah, no chance. Does she file her own briefings? Does she-

No. Only the parties to the case go before the 11th Circuit. Now, no question, Judge Cannon's ruling dismissing the case in all of its 93 page grandeur will be central to this entire fight if in fact the 11th Circuit takes the appeal. That's what they'll be arguing about. The prosecution's memo will, you know, even though as you said earlier, they've probably done a lot of work on this, they've been anticipating it. That's true, but a lot of their work is really only they can only do

after they've seen what Judge Cannon's ruling was and what it was based on and what her logic and reasoning was because that's what they're going to attack. And of course the other side is going to come in and say she was right. She was right. So although she won't be there, she doesn't get to argue. She doesn't get to influence the court. So she doesn't defend herself. If so, if Jack Smith wants her the court. So she doesn't defend herself. If, if, so if Jack Smith wants her off the case, she doesn't defend herself. Trump's lawyers defend her staying on the case. That's my understanding. That's right. Okay. Yeah.

That's good to know. Cause I, I, I would, I, I like, I could imagine her having her clerks write up a reply brief for her to stay on the case. Madam Justice Cannon, may it please the court. I'd like to make arguments for myself. No, that's not going to happen. Send in an amicus brief and have a oral. Friend of mine. All right. So last question. Should we barrel into the last one? It's a shorty. Yeah, let's go into the last one.

You can even have a yes no answer if you want. This one comes from Barbara and she says, of course, oh, most attractive podcast hosts, which I love. Do you think it's possible that Eileen Cannon wants to be a Supreme Court justice? Every judge wants to be a Supreme Court justice. That's like saying, do you think congressman so-and-so wants to be president? Yes! All 435 of them do. Do you think this gymnast wants to go to the Olympics?

Yes, yes. Of course she does. And we've seen Trump, you know, praise her. And you know, I don't think he's... I know there was a fake tweet going around where he was offering her a job at the Supreme Court, which was fake. I don't think he specifically has dangled that in front of her because that would actually probably be grounds to have her removed from the case. But he has praised her on many occasions in his special wink and nod way that he does,

his mobster way. She's a fine judge. And even in their filings, Andy, we've seen so many times where like, it's despicable that Jack Smith said that to your honor, you know, like that kind of a thing. It's, there's a lot of, uh, of that kind of, uh, I think bootlicking going, robe licking, I don't know what you call it going on. But, uh, of you call it. Of course she wants to be a Supreme Court justice. And I wouldn't doubt that if Trump were to win a term, I happen to pretty much know that Alito and Thomas would retire because their spouses-

It seems to be a little sick of it. I don't want to say drunken rants, but after a few martini rants to Lauren Windsor made it clear that once he gets to step down and this is all over, I'm going to fly whatever flag I want. Yeah. Going to let a freak flag fly. So they both sort of expressed that there's an end coming to their terms. And I would not put it past Donald Trump to put a judge cannon, although usually you don't pull them straight from the district court. They usually come

out of a circuit and they usually come out of the DC circuit and he's got some appointees there that he might consider first. I don't know. And honestly, like he's not that loyal. No, he might like her today, but if he's president and he has an, uh,, you know an opening to fill I'm sure the app sure will be a lot wider than just one judge one district court judge in Florida So he'll probably expand the court, you know It's these are kind of goofy games to play like to think about these things in your head But at the end of the day not really relevant to what happens in the case

Is she making these decisions because that's what she wants? Who knows? The thing that's most important for us to focus on is these are the decisions she's making. What effect do they have on the case? I don't think there's any like, I mean, I can almost hear half of our listeners howling when I say this, but I don't think there's any like

really solid evidence of bias at this point. Is it a possibility that she's biased and she's, and she's thrown these things for Trump? Sure. But we're not to the point where it's clear that the 11th circuit is going to throw her off the case. That's all I'm saying. Right. I mean, I think about it as, you know, Bill Barr, when he wrote that, his memo, his application to be attorney general, there was no direct evidence that that is what he was trying to accomplish, but it worked and it was kind of obvious to all of us watching, but obvious doesn't get you legal results all the time.

So that's all you know what they consider circumstantial. Anyway, thank you so much for your questions. Brilliant questions. Please send your questions to us. Click on the link in the show notes and you can ask us anything. And I think we may have a clearer picture of what Jack Smith intends to do, perhaps by the next episode. At least I think we might see a motion for an expedited briefing schedule for the 11th circuit. and we can go from there. And as of course, we don't, we aren't gonna see anything

till the first week of August in any movement in the DC immunity situation. If he's gonna move for expedited, you do it quickly. That's the point of expedited. Like you don't sit around and be like, okay, let's do it now. So I agree with you, if they're gonna do it, it could come soon,

because it doesn't mean that that's them filing their brief, it just means they wanna start the clock, start a shorter clock running. So yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, and I just checked the docket, nothing yet. Nothing yet. All right, good, we'll have something next week to talk about. Yeah, all right.

Because we would never have, never enough news to fill a whole hour. There always never enough news to fill a whole hour. There always is enough news to fill a whole hour. Thank you so much. And Andy, thanks to you. And of course, thanks to everybody who came out to see us live. That was amazing last week.

Super fun and thanks for having me. It was a great experience. And we'll be having another live show with Andy, Pete, Glenn Kirschner, Brian Greer, our SEPA expert on August 16th in DC. There are still tickets available, but I, you know, I don't know how long they'll last. So take a trip out to the nation's capital. Heck yeah. Come on down. With your girlfriend, Jennay, and come and see, come and see us at the Hamilton. All

right. We will see you next week. I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Come and see us at the Hamilton.