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 RICOhotline@serioustrouble.show.

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.

Josh thoughtfully attempted to wreck Ken right out of the gate by using the terms “missionary position” and “Donald Trump” in the same sentence of the cold open, live, in person, in Ken's office. He’s referring, of course, to Stormy Daniels’ frankly disturbing testimony about a sexual encounter with Trump, an encounter that sounded not particularly consensual. The rest of the proceedings were more substantive than salacious, with the prosecution steadily building a case through notes, Michael Cohen’s secretly recorded conversations with Trump, and witness observations. But can they convince the jury this was all in service of a different crime, as required for a felony?

Meanwhile, Judge Merchan found Trump in contempt over a whiny social media post about jurors but rejected the DA’s motion as to three other posts. In Florida and Georgia, the prosecutions of Trump are lagging. Who's surprised?

Plus: Nathan Wade thinks workplace romance is as American as apple pie, Rep. Henry Cuellar is in trouble, and the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.

Judge Juan Merchan has found Trump in contempt of court and fined him $9,000 — $1,000 per violation of the terms of his gag order, the maximum authorized by New York law. He also noted those fines might not be large enough to influence Trump's behavior, and he threatened to jail him if he violates the order again. Is that threat credible? Ken says so.

Plus: witness testimony in Merchan's courtroom, another New York judge declines to reduce E. Jean Carroll's award, the Supreme Court hears oral argument about presidential immunity, Arizona announces a fake electors indictment, and Harvey Weinstein's New York convictions have been overturned.

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The trial has begun! Judge Juan Merchan seated 12 jurors and 6 alternates in three days of voir dire. We discuss the pace of jury selection and complicating factors (that strong opinions about this defendant are common and often expressed on social media), plus: Ken discusses his philosophy of choosing a jury as a defense lawyer, why it’s more of an art than a science, and how it will matter that this Manhattan jury is unusually highly educated.

We also discuss a question that, as we sent out this episode, remains before Judge Merchan — should Trump be held in contempt for his repeated public statements about witnesses and the jury, in spite of the gag order on him? And we talk about the theories of the case laid out in opening statements from the prosecution and the defense.

And amid all this, George Santos has clawed his way back into the news in a small way. Yay! Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode.

Jack Smith is attempting to salvage his two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump with a superseding indictment that removes evidence about Trump’s presidential acts from the document backing his charges over Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election. The new indictment removes the allegations that are closest to the core of presidential powers — for example, Trump’s efforts to get the Department of Justice to open a bogus investigation — while retaining other acts Smith believes he can successfully argue were unofficial. Plus: Jack Smith counters Judge Cannon's dismissal of the documents case; Arizona defendants in the case about the state’s fake-elector scheme are using the state’s very odd anti-SLAPP statute to argue their charges should be dismissed; onetime-superlawyer Tom Girardi was convicted of stealing huge sums from his clients; the Ketamine Queen now has a prominent defense lawyer; LiveNation’s CEO may have to be deposed in a lawsuit over the Astroworld music festival disaster, despite the apex witness doctrine and Texas’s efforts to position itself as the pro-business court state.

Finally, we have a correction from last week. When we talked about a motion Disney made in a wrongful death case arguing a litigant would have to arbitrate because he entered into an arbitration agreement as part of his Disney+ service contract, we misidentified the prestigious law firm that surprised us by making the argument. It was White & Case, not O’Melveny & Myers. We regret the error.

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Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York has begun, with jury selection underway. Ken and I discuss Trump’s last-ditch efforts to get this trial delayed, and public support he has gotten from a surprising advocate: imprisoned ex-attorney Michael Avenatti, who phoned into MSNBC from his oceanfront Los Angeles home to say he thinks the case is seriously flawed. Meanwhile, in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon did something we said she might: She declined to make any decisions about those jury instructions she asked attorneys a bunch of weird questions about. Smith is in a bind. We discuss why.

Plus: Incompetent ratfucker Jacob Wohl and his sidekick Jack Burkman are in trouble again. And actress Gina Carano (from Disney's "The Mandalorian") is a character on Serious Trouble for the first time this week.

Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced. And at his sentencing, we saw a not-too-uncommon pattern for sentencings in major white-collar cases: Judge Lewis Kaplan read him the riot act, ruled against him on all the key issues driving the sentence guideline calculation; accused him of lying on the stand; and then sentenced him to far less than the guideline sentence.

Speaking of BS of interest to investors, Trump Media & Technology Group is worth billions of dollars, at least for now. Donald Trump has to wait six months for his share lockup to expire before he can start passing his shares off to new bagholders. So in the meantime, he’s suing his co-founders, saying they were bad at their jobs and therefore shouldn’t get to keep their shares. Is that how it works? Plus, Trump faces an expanded gag order in his Manhattan trial — one whose limits he appears intent to continue to push. And in Florida, after we recorded, Judge Aileen Cannon ruled (sort of) about issues related to the Presidential Records Act.

Plus: updates on Hunter Biden and John Eastman

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A panel of New York appellate judges has reduced Donald Trump’s bond in the New York Attorney General’s civil case to $175 million, an amount he can probably afford. Ken and I discuss possible reasons the court took this surprise action — as is typical for this kind of decision in New York, the judges didn’t really explain their reasoning — and the likely course of Trump’s appeal to come later this year. Meanwhile, in New York Supreme Court (which is the trial court), Trump’s criminal trial over falsification of business records starts next month — we have pretrial updates, including on the gag order for the former president modeled on another recent gag order.

Plus: why are law clerks quitting Judge Aileen Cannon's chambers? And Rod Blogojevich is told to "just go."

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Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan was slated to start next week, but it will be delayed due to the late production of a large volume of documents from the US Attorney’s office. And Trump has said he can’t find a bond for the New York Attorney General’s civil judgment against him, so you can expect to see Attorney General Letitia James starting to collect on that judgment by other means quite soon.

In Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee has decided not to disqualify Fani Willis or her office from the RICO prosecution of Trump and his associates. But McAfee’s decision is otherwise scathing. Nathan Wade wins our Senate Twink Memorial Award for Belatedly Good Judgment for changing his mind about an interview on “Meet the Press." Good call, Nathan! In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon has issued some more bizarre orders in the documents case. What she's doing is not exactly what you would do if you were trying to tank the case, but “incompetent” and “malevolent” are not mutually exclusive theories of what Judge Cannon is up to. And finally, we answer an excellent listener question sent in by Ben Dreyfuss about what lawyers in movies sometimes do when their clients to lie to them.

Free subscribers get the conversations about New York and a bit of the goings on in Georgia. Paid subscribers get the whole shebang, including a conversation about why some of the charges in the Georgia case have been dismissed, and Ken’s explanation of why he’s less like those movie lawyers and more like Alan Dershowitz. Visit serioustrouble.show to upgrade and you'll hear the whole thing.

It’s a hat trick for Sen. Robert Menendez: his superseding indictment has been superseded once again, this time with charges that he and his wife obstructed justice, including by directing their lawyers to lie to the government about a Mercedes C-300 convertible she received as a bribe. Ken says this sort of thing — lying so your lawyer will lie for you — is not a good idea, but just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean it doesn't happen...a lot. Plus: Trump posted a bond of nearly $92 million in the second case E. Jean Carroll won against him. The bond is good news for Carroll — it means she’ll get paid, sooner or later, and without the need to chase Trump through the courts hunting for his assets. But Trump still faces a looming deadline to post a much larger bond in the New York Attorney General’s case, and if he is unable to (or chooses not to) we’ll still see what it looks like to pursue him with debtor’s exams and liens and the like. Visit serioustrouble.show to find a transcript of this episode and our newsletter sign-up.

The Supreme Court is asserting itself in matters related to Donald Trump. The justices held unanimously that states may not block Donald Trump from their election ballots on the grounds of 14th Amendment disqualification, though the justices did have a sharp disagreement about the court’s choice to foreclose other non-congressional federal paths to disqualifying Trump or other candidates who may have engaged in insurrection. Meanwhile, the court will consider Trump’s claims about presidential immunity, and on an expedited basis — oral arguments will be next month, with a decision expected by late June. That sets up the awkward possibility that Trump’s criminal trial related to January 6 will begin in the fall and be ongoing on Election Day, if Judge Tanya Chutkan is serious about her stated intention not to let a defendant’s busy schedule get in the way of a trial.

Trump’s deadlines to post his appeal bonds approach, with courts so far unimpressed with his requests for delays and discounts. What happens if he fails to post sufficient bonds? And where could hundreds of millions of dollars come from? Allen Weisselberg is getting a little more prison time — this time for lying about the lies about the size of Trump’s penthouse — and Ken and I discuss why we feel… well, we don’t exactly feel sorry for him, but we do find something a little odd about how it’s Allen who keeps getting sentenced to custody when he’s not exactly the primest mover behind Trump-entity misdeeds. And Hunter Biden talked to a congressional committee, and when he did so he really talked.

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The mess in Georgia continues. As a reminder, this all bears on the question of whether Fani Willis and her office will be disqualified from conducting the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and his various co-defendants over his efforts to steal Georgia’s electoral votes. This week, Ken and I invited Georgia attorney Andrew Fleischman back on the show to talk about just how this case got so prurient and stupid, what might happen with it next, and whether this is just what happens when prosecutors have to defend and defense attorneys have to prosecute.

Meanwhile, in New York, District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants Donald Trump under another gag order — raising some questions that courts have gotten better at answering over the last few months. And out west, Biden accuser Alexander Smirnov got sprung from jail and almost immediately re-arrested, as Los Angeles-based Judge Otis Wright sought to ensure that he could not flee the country. And another SoCal federal judge, Cormac Carney, is in a spat with the Ninth Circuit over his unusually expansive view of when a defendant can get off on the grounds of selective prosecution.

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George Santos is back, and Ken couldn’t be happier about it. This time, George is on the left side of the v., for once: he’s suing Jimmy Kimmel over copyright infringement. The most shocking part is he may have a good case. Santos says Kimmel committed various torts when he ordered many embarrassing Cameo videos from Santos — in one instance, the request was for a video congratulating “Beav-a-Pus” on going to work at Arby’s in his “fursona” — paying only for personal-use licenses, but then broadcasting the videos for commercial purposes on ABC and across various social media platforms.

Alexander Smirnov, Hunter Biden’s now-indicted accuser, says he had contacts with Russian intelligence. And Hunter himself remains combative with federal prosecutors — pointing out that one of their pieces of “evidence” that Hunter had a cocaine problem is a photo of sawdust that was sent to Hunter as part of a message urging him not to use drugs.

For paying subscribers: in Georgia, we’re all waiting for Judge Scott McAfee to decide whether to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and others. And we took a number of the questions you sent in about the large judgment Trump now owes to New York State for business fraud — including about why this money even goes to the state, and about what will happen if he is unable or unwilling to post an appeal bond covering the amount he will owe if his appeal loses, and bankruptcy. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions — we plan to take more of them next week.

Late Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron issued his long-awaited verdict in the civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and it orders Trump and his affiliated entities to disgorge nearly $400 million to the state of New York for what he says are ill-gotten profits and interest savings made possible by financial misrepresentations. It’s a big judgment — and like the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case, one he’ll have to put cash up for pretty soon, even if there will be years of appeals. Ken and I discuss what this means for Trump and his businesses, and whether (again, like in the Carroll case) he ended up with a worse legal outcome because he was so obnoxious during the trial process.

Plus: in Washington D.C., the Supreme Court is considering whether to overturn Colorado’s decision blocking Donald Trump from that state’s presidential ballot on 14th Amendment grounds. It can be hazardous to read into oral arguments, but the judges’ questions did not seem auspicious for Colorado. Meanwhile, the court must now decide (and will, probably any day now) whether to involve itself in Trump’s January 6-related federal criminal case. Special Counsel Robert Hur decided not to recommend any criminal charges against President Joe Biden related to his handling of classified documents, but the White House was less than thrilled about Hur’s report explaining why. A Biden accuser faces his own indictment — from Special Counsel David Weiss, who’s also prosecuting Hunter Biden — for making up allegations about the Bidens, Burisma and bribes. And finally, we talk about Georgia. What a mess. District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand in a hearing about whether she should be disqualified from the RICO prosecution she brought against Donald Trump on conflict-of-interest grounds related to a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case. The two-day hearing was salacious.

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A little less than a month after hearing oral arguments, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected Donald Trump’s argument that he is immune from being prosecuted for acts within the “outer perimeter” of his presidential duties. That should clear the way for Judge Tanya Chutkan to again move toward the start of a criminal trial, unless the Supreme Court decides it wants to consider the case. Ken and Josh talk about the judges’ reasoning, reasons the Supreme Court might decide to sit this one out, and when Chutkan could realistically proceed toward trial under various scenarios.

Plus: Fani Willis' responds to a Georgia RICO defendant regarding her personal relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to oversee the case, Taylor Swift's lawyers send a nastygram to a college student tracking her private plane, Jack Burkman's giving up his law license, and it turns out that the Senate employee who filmed a sex tape in the Hart Building had the good sense to exercise his Fifth Amendment right not to talk to Capitol Police, which means he has better judgment than about half the people we talk about on this show.

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George Santos has pleaded guilty and will likely be sentenced next February to several years in federal prison. Santos also lost his copyright claim against Disney over his Cameo videos that were broadcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Disney had less luck trying to argue that a customer whose wife died of an allergic reaction would have to arbitrate any wrongful death claim because of an obscure clause in the service contract for Disney+. Several associates of Matthew Perry were indicted for their roles in getting him the ketamine that killed him, and DC Councilmember Trayon White, last seen saying dumb things about the Rothschilds, is now a defendant in a very dumb bribery case.

The verdict has come down in the latest E. Jean Carroll defamation case against Donald Trump and the award is enormous: $83.3 million, or more than 16 times the $5 million she was awarded in the first defamation trial. Trump’s bizarre trial strategy is a likely culprit behind the huge judgment: his choice of a combative-yet-incompetent lawyer, his tactic of making as obnoxious a spectacle of himself as possible, and his insistence on relitigating questions that were supposed to have been settled in the first case, all failed to combine to send the jury any message like “this man has already been ordered to pay enough money.”

Huge damage awards often get reduced — will this one?

Also in this episode: Peter Navarro is sentenced to jail time, a judge is sick of hearing that the January 6 defendants are getting a raw deal, another judge does not think it is cool that an IRS contractor illegally leaked Donald Trump’s tax returns, and many listeners correctly identified the first federal judge we deemed "long suffering."

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The centrist political group No Labels sent a letter to the Justice Department last week, and it’s really something. No Labels plans to run a third-party presidential ticket on dozens of state ballots later this year and mainstream Democrats really don’t like the idea. So they’ve been playing political hardball: filing objections to No Labels’ ballot petitions, conducting opposition research on potential candidates, telling operatives aligned with No Labels that they’ll never work in this town again, etcetera. That’s politics. Right? Well, No Labels says it’s actually a criminal RICO conspiracy to deprive them, their donors, and their potential voters of their civil rights, and they would like DOJ to prosecute some people over it.

Free subscribers will hear that conversation. Paying subscribers get much more — new developments in the divorce debacle that threatens to engulf Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump and many of his associates under the Georgia RICO statute (it's messy), an update on the second E. Jean Carroll civil trial against Donald Trump in Manhattan, which has been going less than smoothly in Long-Suffering Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan’s courtroom, and Alec Baldwin’s latest indictment for involuntary manslaughter in New Mexico, and the evidentiary issue that is going to give the government a lot of trouble securing a conviction.

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Donald Trump wasn’t supposed to give a closing statement at the New York AG’s civil trial, but he gave a brief one anyway — and why not? There’s no jury to influence and, let’s be honest, Judge Engoron seems to have made his mind up. Plus: Rudy Giuliani is bankrupt and faces the creditors’ committee of his nightmares. Michael Flynn has a performative defamation lawsuit against Andrew Weissmann, over the allegation that he was actually guilty of the crime he pleaded guilty to. And Bill Ackman says he’ll sue Business Insider for reporting that his wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, committed plagiarism — though really, Oxman would have to sue, and an unwinnable lawsuit (as it looks to be) is likelier to serve his PR goals rather than hers.

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It’s a big week for Donald Trump being literally, physically in court — on Thursday, he'll be in court for closing arguments in the New York AG's civil case against him, and he attended Tuesday’s appellate hearing over his claim that presidential immunity shields him from Jack Smith’s prosecution related to January 6. Ken and I talked about how those arguments went — the judges had some interest in procedural issues, like whether they should even be hearing an appeal before the case is decided, and whether Trump is judicially estopped from saying he can’t be tried since Alan Dershowitz argued during his second impeachment that he was susceptible to trial and that was a reason for the Senate not to convict. But the judges also gave signs they might get to the meat of the question, and that they were unimpressed by the argument that, even if a president ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent, he couldn’t be criminally tried unless he were first impeached and convicted by Congress.

Plus: the pending civil case against Trump from E. Jean Carroll, Roger Stone apparently venting about killing two members of the House, Bob Menendez running his mouth on the Senate floor, and then there's Fani Willis, who just might be in very serious trouble. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode.

It’s a new year and we’re back with more Serious Trouble. This week: the ongoing appeal in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, where Donald Trump argues he is presidentially immune from trial over his actions that led up to the January 6 riot. This appeal has paused the clock on the criminal case, but probably not for much longer — the appeals court is moving the appeal very fast, and it’s unclear the Supreme Court will have any interest in reviewing their decision. The case may be back in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s hands by the beginning of February.

Plus: can Trump turn this trial into a circus? Why were charges dropped against SBF? Why isn't Michael Cohen going to get out of supervised release early? And was getting fired for making vegan porn a violation of a (now former) state university chancellor's First Amendment Rights? Let's find out.

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Thank you for all the questions you sent in this week! On a related note: take our “explicit” content warning extra seriously this week. All subscribers get our discussion about the Colorado Supreme Court deciding Donald Trump may not appear on that state’s presidential primary ballot, the multiple routes that SCOTUS has available to overturn their ruling, and what might happen if SCOTUS upholds the decision.

If you've been thinking about becoming a paying subscriber to the show, this is the week to do it. serioustrouble.show/christmas gets you a discount, and you'll get to hear about:

Rudy Giuliani's $148 million judgment for his lies about two election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss; another instance of citing fake cases in a brief submitted to the judge (and this time it involves Michael Cohen); the Senate sex video and the potential criminal implications of it; and the presidents of three elite universities who appeared on the Hill, seemingly more prepared for a deposition than for an argument with Elise Stefanik on national television.

Finally, we have a little time to talk about George Santos, and how the justice system might interfere with the launch of his reality TV career. And we talk about what Ken hopes not to talk about in 2024. We'll be back in January! Thanks for listening.

We have two episodes coming for you this week, one right now and one near the end of the week. On the second episode, we’ll be taking your end-of-year questions — if you have a burning question for Ken, please send it to the RICO hotline by Wednesday morning so we can consider it for inclusion.

On today’s show, we talk about a couple of significant matters that stand to delay former President Trump’s federal trial for actions related to the aftermath of the 2020 election. One is his appeal of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that he is not presidentially immune from trial. It seems likely an appeals court will rule as soon as mid-January, and it’s not clear the Supreme Court will have any interest in taking the case up after that. We'll see. The potentially thornier matter is a separate case the Supreme Court is considering, in which the court could reject the expansive theory of “obstruction of an official proceeding” that federal prosecutors have used in charging many cases related to January 6. Plus: the state of the gag orders on Trump and Hunter Biden. Hoo boy. He already faced a kind of weak-ass gun charge in Delaware, and his lawyers have some pretty good arguments about why that case should be dismissed. But now he’s also been indicted in Los Angeles for felony tax evasion, and the complaint in that case is brutal.

There’s lots more to talk about this week, including the huge defamation award against Rudy Giuliani — we’ll be taking that and some other juicy stories up in the next episode in just a few days.

One of Donald Trump’s favorite arguments is that the presidency shields him from legal proceedings. He’s made that argument in criminal cases and in civil ones, but this week, we talk about rejections of those arguments from two different judges. Plus: Jack Smith wants to introduce Trump's political statements and actions going all the way back to 2012; serious trouble for Alina Habba; gold bars do have serial numbers, you know; Rudy doesn't show up in court; and was that wrong — taking a phone call while on the witness stand?

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Unfortunately we taped this episode before Elon Musk urged Disney CEO Bob Iger to go fuck himself. If we had waited, we would have been able to discuss how Musk had reinforced one of Ken’s points about Twitter’s lawsuit against Media Matters for America over its report showing that Twitter served up ads for major brands next to neo-Nazi content. That discussion is at the end of this episode. We also talked about Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against former president Donald Trump that looks likely to produce some judicial clarity on the under-litigated question of how courts must balance the free speech rights of defendants with the prerogative of judges to oversee orderly trials. Plus: more statees debate Trump's eligibility for the ballot, Hunter Biden dares House Republicans to invite him to testify in an open hearing, and if you're a RICO defendant, is it wrong to tag witnesses on social media?

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Donald Trump “re-truthed” a post calling for a “citizens’ arrest” of Judge Arthur Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Normally, when people ask Ken whether a statement is illegal incitement, the answer is a quick “no,” but this case is closer. Also in New York, Mayor Eric Adams looks to be in somewhat serious trouble. The FBI raided the home of his chief fundraiser and his own electronic devices were seized. Hunter Biden wants to subpoena documents about his prosecution from Trump administration officials, going all the way up to the president himself, as part of an effort to make a defense of selective prosecution. There’s one big problem — he isn’t being prosecuted by the Trump administration.

In Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis says Trump’s RICO prosecution is likely to stretch into 2025 — no surprise to you if you listen to this podcast — and some of the minor defendants have been making trouble. And in Washington, something seems to be in the water at the Capitol building. Congressman Tim Burchett says former speaker Kevin McCarthy intentionally elbowed him in the kidney — which would be assault, but not the kind of assault that ever gets prosecuted. And the House Ethics Committee says George Santos spent campaign funds on botox, OnlyFans, and a modest shopping spree at Hermès — not only illegal, but behavior he’s already under indictment for. Not smart.

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Elon Musk has produced some new legal issues for us this week. He has sued a coalition of advertisers for colluding to boycott the Twitter platform, saying this is an antitrust violation, and Musk is also the subject, along with Donald Trump, of a labor law complaint before the National Labor Relations Board, filed by the United Auto Workers.

Plus: Trump may sue the federal government over the Mar-a-Lago raid, Missouri will not get the Supreme Court to consider whether its voters were harmed by the gag order in Trump’s New York criminal case. Saying that JD Vance fucked a couch isn’t defamatory (it’s satire) and saying Trump wasn’t almost in a helicopter crash with Willie Brown isn’t defamatory either (it’s true). And Trump’s campaign was hacked. And oh my god, the Young Thug Georgia RICO trial, it’s an even bigger mess than the Trump Georgia RICO trial.

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Welcome to this week’s episode of Serious Trouble, in which Josh attempts to troll Ken about maximum sentences. Sam Bankman-Fried was speedily convicted by a jury that took only several hours — one of them spent at dinner — to deliberate. Will the government bother to try him on the remaining charges? Meanwhile, also in New York, Trump and his lawyers continued on a strategy best described as “burn everything down and see what emerges from the ashes.” Plus: former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ publisher sues him because he’s allegedly made statements to Special Counsel Jack Smith that contradict the 2020 election narrative in his book. But Josh and I want to know — what exactly did the publisher think they were paying for? Finally: John Eastman. And Lizzo.

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Donald Trump may be in serious trouble, but Michael Cohen’s testimony isn’t the reason. On this week’s episode, Ken and I talk about the thud with which Cohen’s testimony landed at the civil trial over alleged fraud at various Trump businesses. Judge Arthur Engoron called a little impromptu hearing in which Trump took the witness stand, testifying about who exactly he was referring to when he told reporters a person sitting “alongside” the judge was even more partisan than him. In DC, Judge Tanya Chutkan has un-stayed her broader gag order, so Trump is again permitted from “targeting” court staff, the prosecution team, and likely potential witnesses.

Plus: in Colorado, there’s a trial to decide whether Trump can even be on the state’s presidential ballot, or whether part of the 14th Amendment bars him from serving as president again on the grounds that he participated in an insurrection or rebellion in violation of his oath of office. And: an update on Sam Bankman-Fried, who has testified in his defense — we talk about how that went. Finally, from Long Island, an update on George Santos.

Paid subscribers get this whole episode. Free subscribers get just the conversations about the proceedings before judges Engoron and Chutkan — so if you’re a free subscriber and you want to hear the full episode, sign up at serioustrouble.show.

It’s been a heated week at Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York. Judge Arthur Engoron was enraged at Trump’s failure to fully comply with an order to take down a web post attacking his law clerk and he imposed a $5,000 sanction. Trump attorney Christopher Kise also drew the judge’s ire for his rude and dismissive comments to that same law clerk and to one of the attorneys from the New York Attorney General’s office. Not great.

Plus: we're up to four guilty pleas in DA Fani Willis' RICO prosecution, Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a written version of the gag order she’d already announced in court, but then issued a stay pending appeal. That stay means Trump remains free to run his mouth as he likes (except about Arthur Engoron’s court staff) and he has been. In New Mexico, prosecutors plan to take Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter charge to a grand jury again — we discuss what could be going on here. And Ken and I talked some about whether it might be a good idea to put Sam Bankman-Fried on the stand to defend himself, and after recording, we learned his defense team intends to do just that.

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When it rains, it pours: Donald Trump is now subject to not one but two gag orders, and the new one is more expansive than the first. Judge Tanya Chutkan's order isn’t as broad as the government requested — Trump is still free to criticize Judge Chutkan herself, as well as the US government and the Justice Department, though not the individual prosecuting attorneys — but it’s broad enough to be constitutionally questionable. Trump will appeal the gag order — and Ken is pleased that this case will present an opportunity to develop law in this area, since it’s currently unclear what the Constitution demands when balancing defendants’ speech rights and the courts’ needs. Of course, there’s also the open question of what Judge Chutkan will actually do if and when Trump violates her order.

Also on this episode: two superseding indictments for members of Congress — Senator Bob Menendez and Representative George Santos. We take a look at Sam Bankman-Fried’s ongoing trial and at how being in federal custody might affect your access to Adderall. We talk about DA Fani Willis’s apparent intention to call Alex Jones to testify in the upcoming “cheese and crackers” RICO trial of Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.

And we have an update on the case of Prof. Francesca Gino, who sued Harvard (and several of her fellow behavioral scientists) after Harvard suspended her without pay following concerns those scientists raised about data fraud in her papers.

A transcript of this episode is available at serioustrouble.show.

Donald Trump withdrew his lawsuit against Michael Cohen so he wouldn’t have to sit for a deposition on the holiday, but Columbus Day didn’t stop us from bringing you a new episode of Serious Trouble. This week, we look at Trump’s first gag order: The former president’s gratuitous social media attacks against Judge Arthur Engoron’s law clerk enraged the judge and led him to order Trump (and also the other parties in the New York AG’s civil fraud lawsuit) not to publicly criticize his staff. We also talk about scheduling. Trump has asked Judge Aileen Cannon to delay his criminal trial in the documents case, which is currently set for May. We talk about defamation litigation — Rudy Giuliani is suing Joe Biden for calling him a Russian pawn, a California college student is suing Elon Musk for accusing him of being a fake white nationalist, and a Georgia voter is suing Dinesh D’Souza for calling him a ballot mule. And we look briefly at the Georgia RICO case, where one minor defendant is pleading guilty and cooperating — though it remains to be seen how that will effect the cases DA Fani Willis can present against more prominent defendants.

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The McDonnell line of Supreme Court cases isn't likely to save Bob Menendez; Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani and Robert Costello, who is suing Rudy Giuliani; Judge Tanya Chutkan isn't going anywhere

Rudy Giuliani's ex-lawyer is suing him for non-payment; Hunter Biden is suing the IRS for airing his dirty laundry; the FTX bankruptcy estate is suing SBF's parents for being morons; Ray Epps, still not a Fed, is pleading guilty; Jack Smith wants a gag order on Donald Trump.

This episode starts in Georgia and with Mark Meadows, who lost harder than we expected in his efforts to keep his RICO trial in federal court. And we discuss the report of the investigative special grand jury, which recommended charges against 39 individuals — way more sweeping than the already-cumbersome 19-person indictment that DA Fani Willis got from the regular grand jury. Plus: a very strange open letter from some criminal defense attorneys to Ken Chesebro, urging him to protect his interests by pleading guilty. A reminder: You shouldn’t take unsolicited legal advice offered over the internet, and you shouldn’t really offer it either — though as Ken notes, this isn’t professional misconduct, it’s just stupid. And speaking of stupid, we talk about Peter Navarro, who walked himself into a federal criminal conviction through a set of actions even the Wall Street Journal editorial page couldn’t defend.

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Here’s what’s on tap in this week’s episode of Serious Trouble.

- The sentences that have been coming down for some of the prime movers behind the January 6 riot at the Capitol

- Fulton County DA Fani Willis says it will take her four months and 150 witnesses to try her big election RICO case — and that each trial will take that long, whether it involves one defendant or all 19. Really?

- Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro want to be tried separately, but the judge said no. And Trump wants to sever his case from the other 18 defendants.

Plus: an even bigger Georgia RICO case, Trump takes another loss in E. Jean Carroll's other civil case against him, Elon Musk threatens to sue the ADL, and prosecutors say they might soon indict Hunter Biden on gun charges, which seems odd.

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Rudy Giuliani and Michael Avenatti both used to be good lawyers — or, they at least used to seem to be good lawyers — but those days are long past. This week, Ken and Josh discuss Giuliani and Avenatti — a two-fer — and how Giuliani’s drinking actually poses multiple problems for Donald Trump’s likely legal defenses in Jack Smith’s January 6-related case. We also talk about the trial date that’s been set in that case — March 4 — and the mess that could ensue if Trump tries to skip his own trial, which could result in Chutkan deciding whether it’s worth the drama of having him arrested for violating his bail terms. And we talk about the expanding complications in the prosecution Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has brought against Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators, all of whom she hopes to try in one single trial. Some of the defendants want to delay the trial, while others want to go to trial quickly.

Free subscribers get our conversations about Georgia and Giuliani. Paid subscribers also get the conversation about the DC case and the March 4 trial date, and Michael Avenatti. Visit serioustrouble.show to become a paying subscriber.

As we’ve discussed, the Supreme Court threw a major wrench into the various prosecutions of Donald Trump with their ruling on presidential immunity. The RICO prosecution in Atlanta was already so hopelessly fucked that they probably won’t need to think about it for a couple of years, and the documents case in Florida is, for now, dismissed. But in New York, Judge Juan Merchan is proceeding toward sentencing, notwithstanding immunity being one of Trump’s several issues for appeal, and in Washington, DC, Judge Tanya Chutkan is trying to figure it out, though the issue probably won’t even be fully briefed until after the election.

Plus: Judge Chutkan has ruled that Trump was not a victim of selective or vindictive prosecution. A committee of the District of Columbia Bar Association has recommended that Jeffrey Clark’s law license be suspended. Sen. Bob Menendez has been convicted — showing that bribery is still illegal. The Washington Post has a somewhat odd story about an investigation in a possible Egyptian effort to bribe Donald Trump that did not amount to much. And the QAnon Shaman has won a court order instructing the government to return his headdress.

The big action this week was again in Georgia, where 3 of the 19 defendants in Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s RICO case sought to remove their cases to federal court. Removal of criminal cases is unusual — it’s much more common in civil court — so the law on when a federal officer must be tried in federal court is less well developed than you might hope. Ken and Josh talked about the varying strength and creativity of the removal arguments from Jeffrey Clark, Mark Meadows and David Shafer. And we’re still waiting for the removal notice from Trump himself. The whole situation is a bit of a mess — expect Fani Willis to keep moving straight ahead — it could take years to resolve.

In other news, we’ve learned more about the demise of Hunter Biden’s proposed plea agreement, including some signs that Republican political pressure was an important factor in the deal falling apart. And we talked about a remarkable and bold threat from Hunter’s lawyer — that they would seek to put Joe Biden on the stand if Hunter went on trial. Yikes. And we talked about further signs of the financial strain legal troubles are putting on Rudy Giuliani — and about the former president’s limited willingness to help him out with that.

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Okay, now it’s RICO. Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators have been indicted on 41 counts in Fulton County, Georgia, and the headline count is RICO: District Attorney Fani Willis alleges this group constituted an enterprise trying to steal Georgia’s electoral votes (and those of other states) in violation of Georgia’s version the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. We’re skeptical of Willis’s plan to take this thing to trial within six months. In fact, we think the whole thing is overcomplicated and excessively vulnerable to constitutional challenge. Georgia defense lawyer Andrew Fleischman joins us to discuss the overreach and excessive creativity in this indictment, and the likelihood that any Georgia RICO prosecution will drag on for years, with Trump's own trial very possibly moved into Federal court. Not great.

The big Georgia indictment came out late Monday night, conveniently released around 11pm eastern, with many counts and many defendants, including Donald Trump. We will soon have an episode for you about it — but that's not what this is. This show, taped on Monday morning, covers developments in Trump's federal criminal case in DC, Twitter's unsuccessful effort to get the right to warn Trump about a search warrant, Sam Bankman-Fried's return to jail over his improper dealings with witnesses (and why Trump gets more leeway), more legal bumbling from Rudy Giuliani, and a fancy hotel's defamation lawsuit against a very unlikable rich kid who nonetheless has constitutional rights that a court has been trampling on. We hope you enjoy the show and we'll be back with more on Georgia later this week.