Well, what the fuck is an insurrection then? Is that not treason against our Constitution? What am I missing?

Yeah, look, the thing is that, uh, you know, even if it isn't technically meeting the definition of treason, uh, because there isn't a external enemy, although let's just put aside Russia for a second.

We'll just put that away.

Uh, we, we still, we don't know where this could tie into foreign powers.

Even if there isn't a foreign power in play, it's sedition, and that is a crime.

And con- and conspiracy to commit sedition is a crime.

Sedition is the o- is, is the overthrow of the United States.

If you'd do me the favor, explain to my listeners what you meant here, and if this is why he's been praising the work of the committee in the recent days.

Where do you think that we'll find the smoking gun that finally breaks Donald Trump's back? Oh, gosh,

yeah, let's see.

I mean, look, I think that there's a couple of things going on here.

One is I know, I know, you and I very much see eye to eye on this part, the fact that the, you know, it's the documents that really matter much more than the witnesses.

If we're talking about the Trump Organization case, with the Manhattan DA and the New York AG's office, there's actually two cases, by the way, there, there's the criminal case, there's the civil case, and we can talk about that later.

But you know, there's been so much attention paid to Alan Weisselberg, so much.

And, you know, and yes, it's important to sort of focus on on his role.

Discuss this with me and what sort of reckoning is in store for Facebook, if any at all.

I'm curious what you think that Meadows can offer up, and do you think that he would flip, especially to save his own ass?

So yeah, Mark Meadows is definitely gonna be a key figure in all of this.

He factors into the Mar-a-Lago piece because he was there at the end.

Now how did these documents get to Mar-a-Lago in the first place? They never should've been down there to begin with.

Uh, choosing which documents were going to be trucked down to Florida was something that was going on right before January 20th, 2021 when Trump left the White House and Joe Biden was inaugurated.

Um, Bo- Mark Meadows was there for that piece of it, so presumably that's why Meadows is being questioned about the Mar-a-Lago documents, um, because he was actually part of that process in the days leading up to Jan 20.

Uh, the J6 thing, so that's bad enough because, you know, as we've been talking, the Mar-a-Lago case is looking very good.

IQBAR.com, code BAR20.

Do you think that this will be the case that, for lack of a better term or a pun, brings him to his knees, you know, so to speak, right? Or do you have another favorite case?

Well, that's a great question.

Um, I ...

Look, I, I think that we are ...

You know, if I'm gonna, I can use another, uh, pun or analogy or something.

You know, the, the, the jury is literally still out on whether or not we're going to, at least the grand jury is literally still out on whether or not we're really gonna see anything happen with this.

Uh, you know, so it's, you know, uh, a- as I'm sure your listeners know, it's, uh, it's, there's a grand jury open here in Manhattan now, uh, with the Manhattan DA's office.

What's your thought?

Well, what the fuck is an insurrection then? Is that not treason against our constitution? What am I missing?

Yeah, look, the thing is that, you know, even if it isn't technically meeting the definition of treason because there isn't an external enemy, although let's just put aside Russia for a second.

We'll just put that away.

uh we we still we don't know where this could tie into foreign powers even if there isn't a foreign power in play it's sedition and that is a crime and can and conspiracy to commit sedition is a crime sedition is the is the overthrow of the united states it's just a fancy word for a coup or some other interference in the functioning of the government and and then there's a lot of other federal statutes on the books about uh having uh about basically effectively interfering with the with the with an election interfering with a proper governmental procedure interfering with the proper uh et cetera et cetera there's a whole bunch of them that i can't remember off the top of my head but the the people have been talking about for a while and then conspiracy to commit any of those things so there are federal statutes on the books that are implicated here for sure so you know i think that part is is there You know, you bring up indicting, obviously this gets into one of the favorite parlor games that everybody has been playing, which is, you know, is DOJ actually doing stuff behind the scenes and we don't know about it? Or is DOJ doing nothing yet? And, you know, the surest way to get a bunch of anti-Trump people to start yelling at one another online is to take a strong position about how you feel about Merrick Garland, right? uh you know i have i have come to the conclusion that um there's a couple things one is that i agree with your assessment that the documents are are critical here and we the thing is look we're about you know 10 to 15 years in to texting being kind of a ubiquitous activity that everybody engages in pretty much all the time people text more than they call they text more than they email Things that used to be emails are now done as text, even for business purposes.

The sheer quantity of text messages that people send is enormous.

And all of that stuff is evidence.

And you don't need the person's phone.

If you do me the favor, Explain to my listeners what you meant here, and if this is why he's been praising the work of the committee in the recent days.

gosh.

Yeah, let's see.

I mean, look, I think that there's a couple of things going on here.

One is, and I know you and I very much see eye to eye on this part, the fact that it's the documents that really matter much more than the witnesses.

If we're talking about the Trump Organization case with the Manhattan DA and the New York AG's office, there's actually two cases, by the way, there.

There's the criminal case and there's the civil case, and we can talk about that later.

But, you know, there's been so much attention paid to Alan Weisselberg, so much.

Discuss this with me and what sort of reckoning is in store for Facebook, if any at all.

It sounds as though they're on very shaky ground legally.

Incredibly so.

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, yes.

So there are a number of lawsuits about this already and they are moving forward, you know, slowly, but surely.

Um, and then it has come up in a lot of these other cases in which Doge, I insist on using square quotes whenever I say the word, um, in which Doge is actually implicated, uh, It is not, it has not been set up in a way that is legally appropriate.

There's just really no two ways about it.

Like he

And, and, and while, while people may disagree on, on, like, Chevron, that idea that you were just going to let the executive branch decide what, what things meant all the, what all laws meant that affected that branch, I think that was a bad precedent now, and it's, it, it, it, it has ended up with this sense in the Trump world especially that executive power is unitary and unbounded.

Right.The kicker though is that you've got this interesting split even within conservative legal thought on this, that still is there, even though they've, even though the ones that are winning are trying to pretend there isn't still a split, but there is. Chevron, Chevron was originally supported by the furthest right jurists of that day, including Scalia, and back, back before he got totally bought, Clarence Thomas. And they, the th- the thinking there was much more of sort of a Reagan, Bush, like, "Executive power, good. It means we can get things done." You know, it was more sort of like a Teddy Roosevelt sort of like, you know, uh, you know, basically a lot, a vigorous executive branch, so it's a good thing for the courts to have to defer, 'cause that's what Chevron said, that the courts had to defer to the agency's interpretations of these things. Now that's gone, it turns out that that was something that they, that the r- right wing today really wanted because it's allowing them to sort of take a, take a hatchet to environmental regulations, labor regulations, a whole bunch of other things. But it turns out t- that not having Chevron deference could be really, really bad if Republicans are in power and now they're the ones running the agencies. Courts are gonna look at them and be like, "We don't care that this is-"

Sure.

Really, the kicker is that, uh, it does work for things that it, it do- there is some qualified immunity for things that are definitively within the scope of one's powers. Uh, and, and, but it doesn't really go down... The, the notion that then you can't, uh, a- another thing is you, the notion that you can't indict a sitting president, that doesn't apply to anybody else. Even though it's deeply misguided Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel memos that, that are the problem there, that then a lot of this awful monstrosity of a doctrine has been built on, this like initially, uh, terribly misguided, uh, basis. Those decisions even specifically say that as to the vice president, that doctrine does not apply. A sitting vice president may be indicted. They actually can be for federal crimes. As for, as for then the question of the immunity which is slightly separate, there is some, there is some qualified immunity for other government officials, but it's only when they're acting within the scope of their power. The kicker... And then you can have debates over like, was this something with- that was in their power to do? Uh, you know, I think is to say Musk-... when they won't even say that he actually is the administrator of Doge, uh, which itself doesn't really, only sort of quasi maybe exists. But to the extent that it does, it wa- there's a, didn't follow a lot of legal niceties that it was supposed to follow. The idea that he was running yesterday's cabinet meeting, despite the fact that he's not a cabinet level official.