I'd kind of like to know what your thoughts are on where are we with the rule of law? Is it threatened right now? Is it strong? Is it weak? What are your thoughts?

Well, I think Georgia does it better than a lot of other places.

I think the politics by and large are out of the judiciary in Georgia.

Certainly we're nonpartisan now, as we should be.

But that doesn't mean that when there aren't highly political cases that get decided up here, people don't attribute political motivations and don't say things.

You, you mentioned that you'd be surprised that attorneys quote things that aren't actually in the record, but now we're seeing a lot of attorneys quote things from AI, totally made-up cases

Um, where I took to task a lawyer-- I think that was the right one, where I took to task a lawyer for filing briefs that, that were very suspicious and seemed to be AI, and actually admonished him to, uh, go back and do three hours of CLE, and required it, um, as a result of doing that.

So yes, we, we, we see it.

We're dealing with it.

It's not good, but we're prepar-- And, and we only had sanctions available up to twenty-five hundred dollars, and we then went, took it to the bank and have increased that to ten thousand dollars.

Maybe that'll be a deterrent, maybe it won't, but certainly ten thousand will catch the eyes more than twenty-five hundred

I think that, as I've already said, that I think we do it in Georgia better than most other places.

Um, you know, places like North Carolina where it's, uh, partisan, uh, Wisconsin and, and other places where it's sometimes even Alabama, I think is partisan-

Right.

Um, you know, I, I, I really do think that the judges here are collegial, and they try to work together and, and find the right answer, even though our backgrounds may be different.

Um, I think that you really do get a fair shake here.

Um, I don't think there's, uh, there's an agenda by anyone here, even those, you know, uh, uh, those that are on the spectrum very different than me.

We tend to see things the, you know, we, we try to play it down the middle, and everyone tries to be fair about it.

It's a hardworking court, and I think that people are getting their money's worth for sure

never felt like i'm not safe in my job but once you get out into the to the world i mean if somebody really wanted to do harm to you or your family they could and that's scary but um i think we all need to be cognizant of that and we need to make sure that we do everything that we can to protect and The integrity of the judicial system.

It's almost unbelievable.

Okay.

So J. Tom was actually born and raised in Albany, Georgia.

We're 10 years apart in age, so I didn't know him growing up, and we went to different schools.

So the first time I met J. Tom was when I was elected DA, and he was already the DA in the Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit.

And so we knew each other for a few years before that trial happened.

And I'll never forget, I was driving up Dawson Road, which is one of the bigger roads in Albany, in my car and the phone rang and it was J. Tom.

You know, what did you really have to prove? What was the linchpin in hooking him up? Well, I mean,