Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Putin War Crimes Prosecution & SCOTUS LGBTQ+ Persecution

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

Welcome—Legal AF Midweek edition with your hosts Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo. On today’s :40 minute pod, Popok & KFA do a deep dive concerning the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the likelihood of a Putin war crimes prosecution for targeting civilians, and the US Supreme Court’s decision to decide in October whether a straight web designer has the First Amendment right to be a bigot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF Podcast. I'm Michael Popock. I'm Karen Friedman Agnifalo. And we welcome you to come and get this week serving of Legal and Political Analysis straight from Legal Practitioners Popock and KFA. We're gonna dive down into two topics today. One, I hate to say it's on the front pages, and it's on everybody's hearts and minds, but we're going to talk about the invasion and the human rights violations in the Ukraine by Russia

and by Putin, but more particularly since we are a legal show, we're going to talk about the International Criminal Court and war crimes, which have been committed already, we are a legal show. We're going to talk about the International Criminal Court and War Crimes, which have been committed already, which we have all observed, unfortunately, on Twitter, social media, on every video feed we can find. As soon as Putin started bombing and targeting civilian sites, including the Kiev TV station this afternoon, killing five people, and the second largest city in Ukraine, targeting that as well, killing over 20 people.

He basically committed a war crime under the Rome protocol that has established the International Criminal Court. We're gonna talk about it. And then we're gonna end the episode today with just KFA and I bouncing around about what it all means when the Supreme Court decides in a recent conference earlier in the week to call up a case involving a Colorado website designer who for religious reasons says that she should not be compelled to create wedding websites for LGBTQ community members

that it violates her First Amendment rights and Supreme Court has framed it in a novel way, which may actually tip their hand as to how they're going to rule. We'll talk more about that in the back end of tonight's podcast. First of all, KFA, how you doing? Oh, I'm doing great. I spent the day in court today in the Eastern District of New York watching, watching my husband, Mark Agnifalo on trial in a pretty big federal trial. Yeah, see, that's something that other podcasts don't bring, don't bring the street cred of legal AF, Ben Masalis, my co-anchor, on the weekends, me, you are day-to-day practicing attorneys, litigators, trial lawyers, and we give our opinions and are some people like to call it speculation, but based on a season to approach from years and years

and years of experience, and you live and breathe it every day even when you're not on legal aap, even when you're not in the office, because your husband is a well-known and successful criminal defense lawyer the way you are. And so that was great that you got to, I mean, I'm sure you didn't just watch, what were you able to do today?

So he likes me to come to the big moments in his his trial to give him real feedback and he knows I will give him real feedback So today there was the cross examination of the main cooperator. This is a a case involving Goldman Sachs and an individual named Roger Ring and a 1MDB Malaysia fund where the allegation is that they were bribing everyone from the prime minister to the king to just everybody under the sun and some pretty big names are coming up during this trial. I've heard Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Chris Christie, Leonardo DiCaprio. I mean, this cooperator is. You're quite the name dropper on to this podcast. It's the cooperator. It's stunning. It's stunning. The people he is implicating as being involved in this massive

the people he's implicating as being involved in this massive bribe scheme of people who are either involved in it or representing him or pallying around with him. He's a big name dropper, so it's very interesting. Well, one name it doesn't sound like he dropped is Putin, Vladimir Putin. And that's somebody who we're now gonna talk about in our discussion of what is the international criminal court. Where does it come from?

What kind of jurisdiction does it have? And can it actually arrest and prosecute and put on trial? Vladimir Putin for being the person most responsible for the war crimes that we are watching unfold unfortunately in the Ukraine as that or in Ukraine. I'm sorry, I keep calling it the Ukraine because I am Ukrainian American and for the longest time it was the Ukraine but since it's independence, it's just Ukraine. As it fights for its survival and eventual membership, thank God, in the EU, which it looks like it's being fast-tracked to do. And where does this all start? And let me talk about, let me frame it. And then you and I, KFA can

dive in. The International Criminal Court is not to be confused with any segment of the United Nations. The United Nations has its own tribunals, not really going to criminal issues, but the International Criminal Court, while it cooperates and collaborates at times with the UN, is independent completely from the United Nations. It does not take a vote of the United Nations to make a referral to the ICC, which is how it's referred to, in order for it to be animated in order for it to have life. If that were the case, then Russia would never be the subject of a prosecution because it has, as most people know now, ultimate veto power on the Security Council to veto any resolution against it. You'd think, well, don't they have to be recused? How are they voting on themselves?

And the answer is no, the way the U.N. is set up. They can actually veto a resolution, They can actually veto a resolution condemning them for bombing civilians in the Ukraine. But that's not the international criminal court that we're talking about, which was formed in the 1990s. And the foundation document that created it is something called the Rome Protocol. And now there's over 125 countries who have signed on to the Rome Protocol and have passed it by resolution or otherwise. That court sits in the hague in the Netherlands and it is headed by, you know, there's a there's a president and a vice president, but there's an office of the prosecutor. And the lead prosecutor, Kareem Khan, has already announced that he is opening an investigation

into whether war crimes have been committed and other atrocities have been committed by Putin. The other interesting aspect of the International Criminal Court is that it is funded by these 125 or so member states, member nations. It, um, Ukraine is not a member state but has, um, signed on to the Rome, uh, the Rome Accord, as recently as, uh, 1999 and 2000 and then again, uh, 2013 and 2014. So it is, even though it's a non, technically a non-member, it does have the rights to trigger investigations and prosecutions under the international.

Criminal court, Russia, of course, is not a member of the ICC, which makes the arrest warrant and the execution of that arrest warrant and who's gonna to put a black bag over Putin's head and be able to get him over to the ICC. We'll talk about that in the back end of this segment because they are not, and I'm just going to make this clear up front, they are not by the Rome protocol.

The ICC is not going to try Putin in abstentia, meaning there, he has to be present in order for this trial to take place. They have some protocols for not having the defendant present, but not in the case of a full-blown trial. So Putin's going to have to be caught and captured and brought before the tribunal, the ICC, in order for them to prosecute. And then the other interesting thing about it is from a jurisdictional standpoint,

like what are the crimes? And right on the books of the Rome Protocol, the Rome Court, is targeting intentionally civilians, which is exactly what we're watching happen right now as Putin, a frustrated Putin thought he'd be taking Kiev in the first day or two, has been frustrated. And now he's decided he's going to go to the most heinous set of atrocities and start just firing on civilians, including, I don't know if you saw this today, Karen, they bombed

the Holocaust. I mean, on purpose, this is not an accident. There is a Holocaust memorial, a very famous one, Bob and Yara in purpose, this is not an accident. There is a Holocaust memorial, very famous one, Bob and Yarr in Ukraine, which is a memorial to all of the Jewish Ukrainians, and there were millions of them, definitely hundreds of thousands into the millions that were exterminated during the genocide

of the Holocaust. They literally went out of their way to bomb that, I mean, and the freedom square. So what's your takeaway from ICC and Putin and war atrocities, Karen? So this whole will Ukraine situation and this war against them is fascinating for many, many reasons. I mean, it's taken on the hearts and minds. It's certainly, if certainly President Zelinski is one over the hearts and minds of the world in a way that I don't think Putin predicted. And I think it wasn't that way with Crimea.

It hasn't been that way with other sort of, other times in recent history when Putin has done what Putin does. But this one in particular, I think he miscalculated. And I think that's significant from the perspective of the ICC, because the ICC had an investigation open involving Putin that they pressed pause on, I think in 2014, due to lack of funding. And I think part of that is there just wasn't the will.

But this one in particular, I mean, in the middle of it, during it, there was this announcement that, you know, there's reasonable cause to believe that war crimes have been committed, we're opening up an investigation. And I think the fact that this really does have worldwide bipartisan support is a major factor here in why they're going forward. The ICC, the International Criminal Court, is commonly referred to, I think sometimes is the war crimes tribunal or sometimes people say the Hague, you know, the ICC is the

court, but it's referred to differently depending on who you talk to colloquially. And it's made up of prosecutors who go there for a period of time and conduct these trials. I know several prosecutors who were secunded to the Hague to prosecute war crimes over the years. And it's so... What does that mean, Karen, secunded? So it means that, it means that in the case that I'm thinking of, in the individuals

that I'm thinking of, there were prosecutors who worked for the Manhattan D.A.'s office who applied for the job, and they were accepted for the job and Sy Vance, the district attorney, permitted them to go and prosecute war crimes and for a period of time, for a period of several years as a public service and before they would come back and be a prosecutor at the Manhattan DA.A.'s office. Yeah, that's very interesting that that happened and they ended it. Do you know which one, which

war tribunals, war crime tribunals they actually worked on? It was the ones that I'm thinking of were regarding the Yugoslavia, the various trials involving Yugoslavia and there were several right there were several and These are long trials. These aren't trials like sometimes, you know like my husband's trials Gonna be probably six weeks maybe two months, which is also considered a long trial Some of these trials that go on at the ICC in the Hague they go on for years They could go on for many, many, many, many years. And these are trials that don't have a jury. Instead, it's several judges.

I believe it's three judges, and they present evidence. And it's a real trial. Why don't they go on, let's say Putin, let's say, I could think of a couple of countries that have the ability and the desire to put a black bag over Putin's head. Let's say that happens and somehow they are able to pick him up and bring him to the Netherlands and put him on trial and put him in maybe in a box like the trials of Nuremberg when the when the Nazi war criminals were picked up and tried by primarily American judges and former American judges, but other judges from around the world participated in that world as well. And they bring them on and it's all about, well, maybe they string together a bunch of things, but it's certainly

all about what's happening now in Ukraine. Why would it take a number of years to try that kind of case against them? I think because it's so significant to bring a case, I think there's only been about 45 individuals who have ever been prosecuted by the ICC. And it's a very, it's a significant thing to accuse someone of genocide or accuse someone of war crimes or to accuse someone of crimes against humanity. Targeting civilians here. Yeah, exactly. So those are, that's a whole pattern of conduct. You have to prove, for example, that it wasn't an accident. I think they bombed a preschool today that was being used as a shelter and people died. And I think one of the things you have to prove

is that it was not an accidental, that was a targeting of civilians. That's part of it. And part of it is because you really do have to show that there is this long-term, these long-standing sort of acts of aggression, another term of art, a crime of aggression, another term of art, a crime of aggression, you know, that are being committed by these governments, you know.

So, I mean, this is a major world leader and you're going to want to put on evidence that this isn't just, you know, he's gonna have all kinds of defenses and his own justification about why- I had no knowledge that the TV station and the middle of Kiev during its regular broadcasting right before invasion of arm tanks, you know, a whole group of 40 tanks for coming. I had no idea they were going to, that was a total accident. We were aiming for the park behind it. Yeah, I, I, I, I,

I see. Well, he's also, also think about the language that he's using. It's a peacekeeping mission, right? He has justification. He believes this is not an active war and that this is completely legitimate and that he's permitted to do this. And, you know, you've got, you've got the Belarusian sort of, you know, underscoring that by kind of giving aid to Putin, right? That this is okay. And so, you know, they haveoring that by kind of giving aid to Putin, right, that this is okay. And so, you know, they have their own version of facts that you're going to have to disprove,

to prove that this was an act of war. In the beginning of this, about a week ago, I was noticing that Putin's military, they were allowing reporters from CNN to videotape them. And I thought, with tanks, I mean, they're literally videotaping them going in. And I was thinking, how could they possibly be allowing this? I mean, it's-

The allowing American journalists to be embedded with the Russian military. Right, because it's so clear that that's proof of what they're doing. But in my mind, it just goes to show how delusional they are. And they don't realize they genuinely believe they are justified in doing this and that they're not doing anything wrong. I think they think they're going to intimidate the world and show how strong they are. And I think they really miscalculated that the entire world would turn against them

in doing this and support support Ukraine. Well, they have accomplished, Putin's accomplished more in gaining national stature EU admission and potentially NATO admission for Ukraine than they ever could have done in the next fight. He collapsed five years, accelerated five to 10 years. The Germans who were sitting on the fence with, well, we'd rather not. They're now let them into the EU. That sounds right. Everything.

So, you know, he really galvanized in that way. And the one last thing before we leave the International Criminal Court, which we will follow as this prosecutor, Kareem Khan, opens his investigation and Karen and I will report back on developments that are publicly announced related to that. Or if anybody from the Manhattan DA's office goes over to assist in the prosecution of Putin, you'll let us know about that too. The last thing I wanna leave it on is as Karen and I have alluded

to or implied, people are prosecuted by the ICC, not nation states. So it's not gonna be Russia that's on trial. It is the person, human being, most responsible for the war crime or the atrocity or whatever the ground the jurisdictional ground is. In this case, obviously, it's Vladimir Putin. That's going to be the defendant on the other side of the V. Opoch, how can the ICC have jurisdiction over Putin if he's not a member state? Yeah, that's a good question. I looked into that. Apparently, you know, it's similar to our analysis that we use an American court system for how a defendant can be dragged in to, you

know, whether it's criminal or state under a jurisdiction or civil under a jurisdictional analysis. If they've done things to, I'd just say to target somebody or injure somebody in that state or that country, that's enough of a jurisdictional hook. So even though his country is not a member state of the ICC, he has done a war of aggression against a member state and therefore has given the prosecutor a proper jurisdictional hook to drive them in. I think there are certain crimes that they have jurisdiction over him on and certain ones that they don't. So I think you were exactly right with the war crimes.

If there were civilian intentionally against civilian targets, crimes against humanity, like rapes and murders, etc. genocide. However, there is the crime of aggression, which is a new crime that was added to the ICC and the Rome statute in 2018. And this is a new crime that apparently he cannot be prosecuted for unless the United Nations Security Council refers that to the ICC which is why the veto you were talking about earlier is so important and so significant. So I think the crime, and I think crime of aggression is probably the thing that he's so clearly has committed. It's easier to prove. But I think that's the issue here is in order to get jurisdiction over him and be able to prosecute

him, they want, they're going to have to have clear violations of war crimes and the civilian targets, I think are going to be the ones and the ones that are Are going to be key to the success in that in that prosecution. That's a very good observation about and then tying it back to the UN and Which sometimes unfortunately becomes sort of a feckless entity Because it is so tied up in knots with the way their governing documents give to the superpowers Especially Russia veto power while they set on the Security Council, documents give to the superpowers, especially Russia, veto power, while they sit on the Security Council, which is really the leading entity within the UN.

It really controls everything that's important to anybody, especially when it comes to these kind of issues. So, more to come, unfortunately, I am sure there's going to be more counts of war crimes that we're going to watch unfold on our nightly news or throughout the day. And then KFA and I will report back on that and give our analysis and our good faith observations from our experience about what's happening. Let's move on to our last part of our midweek edition of legal AF. We're going to talk about the Supreme Court of the United States, SCOTUS, and what on February 22nd it's decided to do at one of its conferences,

where it decides which case it's going to hear for the remainder of the term. And they have now decided after much speculation that they're going to hear the case. That sounds innocuous on its face when I give you the title or the plaintiffs and the defendants, 303 creative LLC versus Colorado or the Colorado Secretary of State. Sounds pretty innocent until you get down to what are the fundamental constitutional issues that are in play and why has this newly constituted 6 to 3 supermajority Supreme Court decided to take this case at this time. Now, this particular case is arises out of a anti-discrimination law in the state of Colorado. Colorado rightly has on its books

something that says, you cannot discriminate, you can't be a bigot. You can't discriminate against people because of their ethnicity or their race or their, in this case, their gender or sexual orientation or their LGBTQ status. You cannot do that. You can't say you're going to do that. It's not a First Amendment issue. You can't advertise. No gaze allowed. Just like you can't advertise. No Jews allowed, which unfortunately was in this country in the 1930s and 40s. And even earlier than that in Miami Beach. There were signage and hotels that said that and you can look that up.

So you can't do that anymore. And the foundation for that is the first amendment, which has two clauses. It has the freedom of speech clause, which we'll talk about at length today and it has the free exercise of religion clause. And the owner of this web design company doesn't want to make wedding websites for gay people

basically, but you'll do other work for them, apparently. She just doesn't want to sanction their marriage because she thinks that's only between heterosexuals. Male and female heterosexuals, actually. And so she, but not really her, a church group, a church-based group that's collecting a lot of money and is publicly funding the lawsuit in order to change the law and have it look like what they think the Bible world should look like, which is inconsistent with the Supreme Court. Fortunately look like what they think the Bible world should look like, which is inconsistent with the Supreme Court. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for the progressives that follow Legal AF and KFA and me, they have the numbers. And so there's a precedent from 1990 that talks

about when governments, if they're being even handed on how they regulate this area, it's okay under the First Amendment, the Constitution. And there is a recent case of coming out of Colorado that just happened when they didn't quite have the numbers when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still around in 2019, in which a baker didn't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, also in Colorado, against that same statute. And there, that Supreme Court came close to addressing whether he had a First Amendment right to basically be a big hit, but stopped short because they had a technical procedural issue about whether the agency responsible for enforcing the law properly gave proper credit

to his alleged religious view when they, you know, find him for not baking cakes came close. And so as soon as they had the numbers and there was a new test case, what did the Supreme Court do? Let's now decide Colorado statute again under these facts under the web design. Now the one thing we've right turn it over to KFA, the good news is the newest justice, one good news is the newest justice, um, Katanji Brown Jackson will be seated by then. And even though she's not around, may not be around for the briefing, although I think she's going to be, that doesn't matter.

She can still decide the case and participate in neural arguments and hopefully work behind the scenes and conference to shape a proper result. KFA, what do you think? What's going on with SCOTUS? What are they doing here to monkey around with First Amendment and gay rights? Well, when I first saw this case, I thought, oh, there's no way that they can't, there's no way this has any merit whatsoever, they can't do this. But it's a very nuanced case. And I think the way they've nuanced it, I think it's into we're in trouble, frankly.

And I think the issue that I saw that were that's sort of interesting is the question that is being posed is can somebody refuse to service public customers in violation of the public accommodation law based on the idea that fulfilling this would be a creative act. So, and they're saying that the creative act of fulfilling it is free speech. So I thought this was going to be an exercise of religion, first amendment case, but it's really a free speech case because it's like if you were rejected that, right? They did reject that. They did reject that. They did reject that.

They did reject that. They did reject that. Taking the case on free exercise of religion prong, and they went to first amendment free speech. Right. Because that one is, that's, that's why I thought initially, others know way this case. I mean, and they were smart enough to reject it on that because that's a tougher case for them. But, you know, when you think about it, you can't for if she if she ran a McDonald's franchise, she couldn't

put a sign on the wall that says we're not going to serve LGBTQ customers because that's just anti-discreet. That's just blatant. Or blocks or his ban. Or anybody else. Correct. That's just blatant discrimination. Where they are making a distinction is that they don't provide a service that is just kind of the same for everybody. That the service they provide requires creativity. And the creativity is really their free speech. And it's their first amendment right to free speech. And so what they're saying is that if I serve,

if I serve as somebody who's gay, you're forcing me to say something that I don't want to say. And so they're really, it's a really a first amendment you can't force someone. Free speech involves both the ability to say what you want, but also to not be forced to say things. So I think that's where it's going to be tricky. And I think that if I had to guess, I would guess that it's, it's not going to go well. And that's really disappointing. it's not going to go well. And that's really disappointing. Yeah, what we're teaching our legal AF law students

is that the way that the agenda is set by the question that's presented that the Supreme Court announces that they will be addressing on the case. They take all the briefs. They take all the issues. Even issues that weren't even raised below at the appellate, at the court of appeal just below them,

or at the trial level, because they can raise any issue as the ultimate highest authority of the land. And the way they frame that, it looks simple, it's one or two sentences, usually one sentence, but the way they write it is so is so pregnant with information about I think how they're going to rule and how they set it up, right? How

they tilt the playing field by the way they write the question. So the question is, as written, while applying a public accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or to stay silent. Does that violate the free speech clause of the First Amendment? I mean, the way that they set it up, it's like putting both thumbs on the scale about how they're going to rule. Because I'll do it this way. We're, we're podcasters. Karen, you're a podcaster. That's great. We're on episode eight, but we're podcasters. Can we decide expressing ourselves in the first amendment, which is what we're doing every time we take this microphone? Are we, can we say, oh, by the way, on legal AF, we're never going to have any Polish people or any or any black people on the show.

Sorry, that's just my first amendment right, not to interview those people or talk about those issues. Am I permitted to do that in a state that doesn't allow, as anti-bigotry law on the books, or anti-discrimination law on the books? Am I allowed to do that? Today, I'm not. Yeah, I was going to say you can't discriminate. I mean, but what's what's interesting about this question is if let's say it goes the way we think it's going to go, it basically says that you can that any

business that custom makes anything is going to say is going to be basically be able to discriminate. And so let's just think of a basic t-shirt company that is just makes t-shirts and like say you order it online and there is no human creativity. Let's just say the creativity is the person who's making the t-shirt kind of you know putting whatever they want on a t-shirt ordering it from a computer and it gets printed from from a computer and it mailed from a computer. Are they, I mean, how are they going to define creativity and custom made and what is,

what is it, first amendment free expression, what is expression versus? There's a slippery slope, but you're identifying, that you're identifying so well, where does it end? I mean, I never really thought of a website design, I'm sorry for the website designers that follow legally F, I never really thought about it being as overly creative process. It's not Michelangelo doing the Sistine Chapel, just as I don't think podcasting is an overly creative process. I like it. Some people seem to like our show, but you know, I'm not sure that I would put myself in the category of an artist under this. What's going to be this new Supreme Court ruling? So it's going to be heard in October.

It sounds like you agree with me. The way they frame the issue sounds like they've already concluded, you know, they got the votes for this particular issue. It took them not one, not two, not three, but four conferences to decide to take this case up, meaning they didn't have the votes for the other three. I think you have to have four votes to pull up a case if I'm getting my math right. Not to decide it. Just to decide whether you're going to hear the case. You need to have four sitting justices and it sounds like they didn't have four

until this last go-around. I can imagine who the four are. I could probably re-both all of us in the Ligolay Fland could name the four. I'm sure that are in there, Alito, Thomas, and then either Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and our Amy Coney Farron, I'm not sure. I'm not sure Roberts did because it's going to be sailing against recent precedent. How many, how much precedent can one Supreme Court in one term try to overturn? I mean, what happened to the concept when you and I were in law school? When I thought, you know, starry decisis, the legal doctrine that, you know, precedent will be used for the unlike other other jurisprudence, other bodies of law around the world, legal systems around the world, that hours was based as a bedrock principle that precedent would be used and precedent would only be overturned

in extraordinary circumstances. But that's gone now. No precedent is safe when the Supreme Court has a super majority of one right wing. I mean, listen, I'd like to see a super majority of the left wing of the temp progressive Democrats. I'm not sure I'm going to see that in my lifetime. I'm probably not. But certainly in the hands of them, it's like every hair-brained idea that Clarence Thomas has ever had over the last 40 years, he's now able to execute because he's got the numbers. And I hate to say it, our Constitution is under assault.

And the Constitution that I grew up with and I was taught and that I respect is under his underfrontal assault by the Supreme Court. That's just my view. What do you think, Karen? I very much do. And when you think about it, I was talking about this with some people and their initial reaction was, well, but what if their religion is that they don't believe in gay marriage?

And as soon as you transpose gay marriage for being black, being Jewish, being a woman, and I think that's what hits home with people when they realize, you know, enough, enough marginal enough looking for ways to continue to marginalize LGBTQ. You know, legal, it's been it's now your it's it's a constitutional right. It's to to be able to marry who you love. And it's time to change and not go backwards in terms of marginalizing people who are already marginalized by society.

And it's just patrocious. Agreed. And let's be clear about what we're not saying on this show or otherwise. We're not saying that a person doesn't have a first amendment right to express themselves in a certain way, that would be considered bigoted or off putting or off color or improper short of certain things that you're not allowed to say out loud. We're not saying that. You want to tell your daughter not to marry the woman of her choice because you're a big

it. You can do it and you're not violating any statute or law you're allowed to and you're we're not talking about thought police we're not talking about what you think in your heart of hearts and in your darkest moments about people or things we're talking about expressing it in your workplace or otherwise in a way that's discriminatory in violation of anti-discrimination laws that are on the books in these various cities and states or that's guaranteedatory in violation of anti-discrimination laws that are on the books in these various cities and states or that's guaranteed by the US Constitution. That's what we're talking about. And this artistic expression exception, which it looks like the Supreme Court is considering,

because I hold a paintbrush. I can be a bigot. I mean, I really don't get why that that steam rolls the US Constitution because I have aet and a beret. Sorry, this is my artist. You're right. You're right. You're right. But in addition, think about it. She can not only just, will this give her license to advertise that they do not do gay weddings, which is what she wants. She can also advertise. I don't do interracial marriages. I won't take black customers. I mean, she could, there's no end to this. If you allow this.

Well, let me use an example that I started with from Miami Beach, because I lived everybody knows I lived in Miami for 20 years and kind of got into the history down there. There in the 1930s, in sections of Miami Beach Hotels would advertise literally higher a printer and put out an ad that they put in magazines and put on their walls in their hotel and One hotel in particular had an ad campaign that was the following

Always of you and never a Jew You can look it up. I am not making this up. And then there's a museum in Miami that actually has all these things up. So could you, so why isn't that? But current Supreme Court, why can't a hotel advertise? Hey, good news.

We always have a view. We never have a Jew. And why doesn't, why doesn't that satisfy? Oh, because they're not an artist. Okay. So the artist says, I'm great news. I do, I do portraitures of your favorite portrait, portrait, unless you're you're a dirty Jew. And then I'm not going to do it. That's okay. It will be after this, after they're done with this case. Right. Because they live in her men, they live in her hermetically sealed world.

This is, this is why I thought it was fascinating that that that and what a breath of fresh air in every way, shape and form. Um, KB KBJ is going to be when she hits the, um, the bench because she's the only person who's a federal public defender in the history of 230 years in the Supreme Court, phrasey statistic. She's the only person other than Sadamayor, who was a trial judge. The rest of the judges came up through either appeals or like Kagan kind of skipped the whole judge process altogether. She was a part time solicitor general for a while and it's super bright, but she wasn't a trial judge either. So 10-year trial judge,

federal public defender, federal sentencing guidelines. As I said on the show last on this past Saturday, she has, and this is no hyperbole, she has a more accomplished body of work than any senator who is going to judge her for her position, bar none. And yet they're going to. Yeah. So that's who we are. We've finished another midweek episode. My favorite Wednesdays are with KFA of legal AF.

And so everybody, you'll, you're watching us tonight. You're going to download, hopefully, and listen to us on every place that you can download a podcast that on Saturdays We have the longer one hour sometimes two hour version of legal a f where we wrap up the whole week's developments with my co-host and lawyer Extraordinary Ben Missalis and we want you to tune into that also and now we've tried a new thing which We got a taste for and I think we're going to do a lot more often. We're going to do Twitter spaces, which is sort of a real time instantaneous. Let's all jump on a into a room into a digital room. And Karen and I will talk about an issue that might have just happened 20 minutes before. We just did

it for the recent developments at the Manhattan DA's office, KFA's old stomping grounds related to Alvin Bragg and the Trump prosecution. And we had 25,000 people that tuned in and listened to us on that. And so I got a hankery to do more of those. What about you, KFA? Absolutely, I thought it was a lot of fun. Yeah. I want to we have to think of a way to end

these podcasts though because I have to say I am so upset like at you know we talked about this case this LGBTQ case and I'm so upset and angry because I can't believe this is where our country's headed. I need to I want to figure out a way to end on a high note and I think that's why I love mailbag because that's you that's all the more. Yeah, listen, unfortunately, we don't blow smoke or sunshine. And sometimes Ben said to me at the end of last legal AF where we went over all these issues, including starting off with a discussion of what was happening in Ukraine

and what ends Alinsky and leadership and how it, and all those things. And at the end, I was kind of dour throughout most of the episode. And when we broke and doing a little post-production, Ben said, are you okay? I said, yeah, but I'm really down about what's going on in the Ukraine.

I mean, that's part of my heritage. And my relationship is from that region. She's from Belarus. And so, it really is really hitting home. And it's really a downer. But anyway, that's from Belarus, and so it's really hitting home, and it's really a downer. But anyway, that's, you know, you know, that we're not comedians, this is not, this is not a, they're not tuning in for that.

They're tuning in for kind of serious, but collegial dissertation and respectful dissertations about what's going on in the world. So I'm glad we were able to do it today. I'm Michael Popock. I'm Karen Friedman Agnithalo. And we'll see you next Wednesday.