Serious Trouble – Details, episodes & analysis

Josh and Ken discuss developments in the Data Colada-Francesca Gino-Harvard case, Sarah Palin's defamation case against the New York Times (for free subscribers), and (for paying subscribers) the different philosophies the judges have about how the presidential election should affect the scheduling of the Trump criminal cases they preside over.

Plus: Hunter Biden's Alford plea, the Tenet Media FARA case and whether it’s okay to be an unregistered foreign agent if you’re the agent of a Belgian, and a pre-indictment preview of the serious trouble that awaits New York Mayor Eric Adams and many of his aides.

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You probably saw the moronic TikTok trend in which check fraud became trendy and was rebranded as a “glitch” that allowed you to get large amounts of money out of any Chase ATM, even if you had little cash in your account. It’s federally illegal, it’s illegal in every state, and “I saw it on TikTok” isn’t a defense. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean every one of these cases will be interesting to prosecutors.

Speaking of stupid criminals: Jacob Wohl and his sidekick Jack Burkman are back in the news; Russians are indicted over a scheme to pay right-wing influencers; Trump tries (again) to get his hush money prosecution removed to federal court, but is still unlikely to succeed.

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We have a real parade of idiots on tap for you this week. Jacob Wohl, Alex Jones, Robert Menendez, Nathan Wade, Justin Timberlake…oh, and Donald Trump too. Strap in, because they’re all doing shit that’s pretty stupid. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode.

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Dear readers,

Serious Trouble is not a Trump show — it’s a show about law. But the top legal story this week is about Trump, so that’s how we’re starting: with a discussion of the theory of Trump’s criminality advanced by the January 6 investigating committee.

What would it entail to prove in court that Donald Trump criminally sought to interfere with an official proceeding, and should the Justice Department try? What sort of criminal defense would Trump mount if it got to trial? Would Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani end up on the witness stand?

We also talked about how some of the witnesses in deposition videos presented by the committee seemed to be almost enjoying themselves, especially former Attorney General Bill Barr. Can a deposition be fun? Ken has some thoughts on why it can be a good strategy for lawyers to try to keep things feeling fun and light even when the matters at hand are deadly serious.

And we talked about our ambivalence at having missed the defamation lawsuit between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard — arguably the most prominent defamation case in decades and also a huge, embarrassing mess. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how hard it is to prove defamation, especially against a public figure — so how did they both prevail on at least some of their claims? And what does the verdict mean for future defamation litigants?

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you have questions or responses, please share them in the comments section below, or you can email us at [email protected].

And here are some links to documents and statutes we discussed on today’s show — you might find these useful as you listen. We’ll prepare a list like this for you to accompany every episode we release.

* Here’s a transcript of the episode.

* Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512(c)(2) is the statute prohibiting obstruction of an official federal proceeding — did Trump violate it?

* Title 18, United States Code, Section 371 contains both the plain-vanilla federal law prohibiting conspiracy to violate federal statutes and the prohibition on defrauding the federal government — did Trump violate that?

* What does “defraud the United States” mean? Well, we know what the Department of Justice thinks that it means — take a look at the relevant section of the United States Attorney’s Manual, which includes the case Ken quotes in the episode.

* What law governed the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial, and what issues were actually before the jury? Read the jury instructions and find out:

* Here’s the SNL cold open about the Depp/Heard trial being “for fun”:

We’ll be back with another episode for you next week.

Very seriously,

Ken White, Josh Barro & Sara Fay

Nathan Wade went on CNN, and had to be stopped by his handlers mid-interview because he was about to answer a question about when he and DA Fani Willis started having sex. Then, he went on The Daily Show and said he wasn’t sleeping with his boss because Willis was never his boss, but was more like his client. Shut up, Nathan Wade! Why does he do this?

This week, besides that debacle: the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision in U.S. v. Rahimi, which doesn't bode well for Hunter Biden; Steve Bannon reports to prison; continuing chaos in the YSL trial; and a news report that Judge Aileen Cannon turned down some colleagues’ polite suggestions that she might want to let a different, better judge handle the Trump documents case.

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Hunter Biden has been convicted on three federal felony gun charges. In this case, Hunter has the same misfortune as Donald Trump in the Manhattan DA’s case: were he less famous, he’d likely never have ended up in court over these charges.

Plus: updates on Trump's probation interview, an update from FLorida and election-related charges in Wisconsin, and then there's Georgia.

In Georgia, Fani Willis’s RICO case against Trump and company remains on hold indefinitely while an appeals court considers whether Willis should have been required to recuse herself. It’s not like this case was going to trial anytime soon, but now it is surely going to be years. Shouldn’t have slept with the special counsel! And another one of Willis’s RICO cases — the one against rapper Young Thug and alleged members of (what prosecutors allege was) his street gang, Young Slime Life — has gone completely off the rails, with Judge Ural Glanville holding an ex-parte meeting with prosecutors and a key witness, getting very angry when defense attorney Brian Steel found out about the meeting, and then ordering Steel to jail for contempt of court. Steel is supposed to serve ten weekends in jail; Judge Glanville granted his request to be jailed alongside Young Thug so they can keep preparing for trial. Steel has also appealed the contempt order; this case, too, is likely to be getting appellate review before it’s even over.

The verdict is in! Ken and Josh discuss the jury's relatively quick decision, the path to sentencing, whether Trump is likely to face a custodial sentence or community service or what, and (for paying subscribers) the arguments Trump will raise on appeal, which courts he can raise them in, and what prospects he has for getting his conviction overturned.

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It’s Wednesday, and the jury in Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial has had his case for about half a day. On Wednesday morning, Judge Juan Merchan instructed the jury on the law — a long and boring process that Ken says jurors often basically ignore — and sent them out to deliberate. And now we wait.

Ken and Josh discuss closing arguments in which prosecutors dryly laid out the facts of the case they had presented, while Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche employed the “cockroach in the spaghetti” strategy, arguing the government’s case relied on claims and observations from Michael Cohen, whom a reasonable person would not trust. Indeed, Blanche deemed Cohen the G.L.O.A.T. — the “Greatest Liar of All Time” — a phrase that may overstate how great Cohen is at lying.

Plus: updates from the documents case in Florida, Rudy agrees to stop lying, Jenna Ellis gives up her law license and the Menendez case hits a speedbump.

We'll be back when there's a verdict... Sign up for updates at serioustrouble.show.

Happy Birthday to America’s Mayor, now 80 years old! Rudy had a big bash to celebrate his 80th birthday last Friday, down in Palm Beach. He posted a photo from the party on social media, taunting Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for her failure to serve a summons on him for his indictment for trying to steal that state’s presidential election. And then, around 11pm, agents from Mayes’s office approached him to serve his summons on person.

Plus: the cross-examination of Michael Cohen, Trump reportedly edits the statements of the given by his surrogates who say what he’s not allowed to under the gag order, Paul Pelosi's attacker is sentenced but there's a hitch, and Hunter Biden is in serious trouble.

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New York prosecutors have been using Michael Cohen not just as a vehicle to introduce documents, but to offer his own recollections and assessments of Donald Trump’s state of mind, including why he chose to pay for Stormy Daniels’ silence. Meanwhile, Trump has had friends visiting him at court — Republican politicians, some of them vice presidential hopefuls, who have made statements to the press that Trump himself is gagged from making. Indicted Rep. Henry Cuellar looks to be in even more serious trouble than he was last week, and Sen. Bob Menendez's trial has begun, with jury selection aided by a high-priced jury consultant. Steve Bannon has lost his appeal and will likely to have to serve out his (short) sentence for contempt of Congress before Trump has a chance to pardon him. And Rudy Giuliani is being sued again, this time in pursuit of a court order to bar him from lying — good luck with that.