The Megyn Kelly Show - 20240202_crime-friday-frozen-kansas-city-chiefs-fans-and-fa

All Episodes

Previous Next

Plain Text

Feb. 2, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:36:43

20240202_crime-friday-frozen-kansas-city-chiefs-fans-and-fa

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
Bail Bonds and Court Returns 00:14:28
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon.
	With Alec Murdoch's attempt to get a retrial, what drama in that case this week?
	And I'll be joined by the former attorney general down there.
	He's been following the case very closely.
	But we start with two Kelly's court favorites, the OGs on the docket today.
	Have you heard about the Kansas City Chiefs fans found frozen outside of their friend's house?
	They were out there for two days and the guy didn't notice.
	So he says, big developments in that case this morning.
	Plus, the latest on the Michelle Trakonis trial in Connecticut.
	She's the alleged affair partner of the husband who was accused of murdering his wife, Jennifer Dulos, after he was charged.
	He died by suicide.
	Now the affair partner is on trial for helping him, accused of disposing of Jennifer's belongings.
	Developments on that trial as well as many, many more.
	We're going to get to some great cases today.
	Arthur Idala is a partner at Idala, Bertuna and Cayman's and host of the Arthur Idala Power Hour.
	And Mark Iglars is a defense attorney at Iglarsh Law, which you can find at speaktomark.com.
	Hey guys, I didn't know about speaktomark.com.
	That's a good idea, Mark.
	What can we do?
	What are they doing?
	Speak to Mark.com.
	Oh, they get to speak with Mark.
	Anytime you want to speak to Mark, Megan, you just call speaktomark.com and I'll answer.
	That's amazing.
	Look at Mark.
	He looks so healthy and tan.
	I look like old pasty.
	I mean, no, it's Mexican living versus Florida living, I guess.
	It's pickleball, it's no sugar, and it's training for a half marathon.
	Those are those, those are the things that keep me spiritually fit.
	Can I ask you, is it hard to go no sugar?
	I would like to go no sugar, but I really like my sugar.
	Then have it.
	I mean, life is short, Megan, but I choose happiness, Megan.
	Choose happiness.
	That's it.
	Thank you, Arthur.
	My guru.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Well, I managed to swear off the French fries.
	I don't think I can get rid of the ice cream too.
	It's too important to me.
	Okay.
	So much to get to.
	I don't even know where to begin.
	So let's start in New York City.
	We'll start in one of our towns.
	Arthur, still living in New York, working in New York.
	And this case of the migrants who got arrested and then no bail, walking out, flipped the double bird, as we call it, the double barrel.
	Has beyond New Yorkers infuriated.
	They were let out because of our soft on crime policies, which doesn't like bail for criminals, accused criminals, which is what they are.
	These guys beat a cop, allegedly, who was trying to move them on from loitering and potentially doing some sort of nefarious, possibly drugs, near 42nd and 7th, right in the heart of Times Square.
	So the cops go over, a lieutenant, another guy, and before they know it, they're getting gang jumped and beaten by some eight guys.
	And they've arrested now seven of the eight.
	Five were already reigned, and the other two, I think, were brought into custody last night.
	They're still looking for one.
	They got all got out without bail.
	Most, not all, but most.
	And now they've left town.
	The reports are they're believed to have gotten on a bus and high-tailed, high-tailed it out in possibly California, Arthur.
	So, how does it happen that the guy who subdued that guy on the subway trying to protect people?
	He's facing trial for what negligent homicide.
	And these guys walk out after beating cops, flipping the double bird on the road to beautiful sunny California.
	Well, my firm is actually involved in the Daniel Penny case, which is the subway, and he's charged with more than criminal negligent homicide.
	He's also charged with manslaughter.
	So, last night on my radio show, I had chief of the NYPD chief of patrol, John Schell, on the program.
	He's the direct supervisor of the two cops.
	It was a regular police officer and a lieutenant.
	They are so like upset besides the fact, okay, what these punks did was horrible.
	But the Manhattan DA's office did not ask for bail and a sitting judge who has the power, even though they don't ask for bail, to set bail herself.
	And it didn't happen.
	And the way I grew up in that system, you know, I mean, that this is my system where I live.
	It's insane.
	It's absolutely insane.
	Forget about the way we grew up as children where touching a cop was just beyond your imagination.
	But it's on video.
	You know, you got the right guys.
	And here's, forget about dangerousness when it comes to bail laws.
	It was always about, are the people going to return to court?
	And what did you look at?
	Community ties.
	So in a positive case, you'd be like, Your Honor, my client is married.
	He's got little kids.
	He's lived at his own house for 15 years.
	His parents live down the block.
	His mother and father are here today.
	Please don't sit bail.
	And if you're worried about him coming back, he's probably coming here.
	Guys, the only contact they have is a cell phone.
	That's it.
	They're living in a migrant center.
	The fact that a judge does not set bail on this case on those first four is ridiculous.
	Now, someone else went in last night while I was on the radio.
	The chief got a text.
	They did set $50,000 bond and $15,000 cash on one of these guys.
	So tell us what it took to make that judge post or require bail of that defendant.
	Different judge.
	It was just a different judge.
	But also, there was a show of force.
	All the cops showed up.
	Yes, in the courtroom.
	Absolutely.
	They showed up.
	They sat there in the courtroom to shame the judge into doing the right thing.
	Like, you're not going to just keep letting these guys go.
	They flee with impunity.
	Go ahead, Mark.
	Okay.
	I know what the right thing to say is to appease the audience, but let's break this down.
	First, I agree with Arthur.
	The actions of these guys were abhorrent and they deserve to be severely punished for it.
	I don't want the viewers to be misled, however, Megan.
	I know you didn't mean to, but these guys are still facing penalty.
	The bond is solely to determine where they will be during the penancy of the case and will they return to court?
	It's not supposed to be punitive.
	Now, should they have been, you know, should they have posted a bond?
	Maybe.
	I don't know all the unique facts and circumstances.
	But as long as they show back up to court when they're supposed to and they haven't yet fled, then everything is okay.
	What do you mean?
	Where they fled, but you're saying if they can come back.
	Yeah, that's it.
	No, no, no.
	You could say you could, you know, fled and leaving are kind of the two same things, right?
	As long as they come back to court when they're supposed to and ultimately either take a plea or go to trial, no harm, no foul.
	The birds, yeah, that's outrageous.
	It just want you want more, there's a lot more venom and you want to hate the guys even more.
	I get that.
	And I'm not defending them.
	What I'm saying is the bail part is just should they come back to court?
	Yes or no?
	No, how dare you judges should have done something.
	And that's it.
	They come back to court.
	No harm, no foul.
	Well, I don't know what they're doing.
	What about state, don't leave town?
	You're allowed to get on a bus and go across the country to California.
	They're not coming back.
	These guys got no money.
	They're on a bus to California.
	God knows how much that costs.
	You think they're going to go there and then pay the fare and come back again to show up their court appearance?
	There is no accountability.
	We have no formal jury.
	They're going to come on the bus back to Mexico.
	That's where they should be.
	Not until they're punished.
	So Arthur, Arthur, standard bond in that jurisdiction, what?
	They post a $2,500 bond.
	That's going to make the difference between them showing up and not.
	Sure.
	A bond like that should be.
	They don't have $2,500.
	This is Venezuela.
	So no bond is what you want to do for guys who just don't have the money to get out.
	That's what you're going to do.
	You don't have community ties, who have no reason to come back to court, who have no reason to fight these charges.
	They are going to leave and thumb.
	They gave two middle fingers.
	You know where their head is at.
	They gave the middle fingers to the press.
	You may be right.
	I'm not defending these guys.
	There is no respect for the system.
	I don't like what they did.
	I'm not at all a fan of them.
	But understand the same policy that you and Megan want to apply to these guys.
	You got to do it to everybody and let's do it in every system.
	I agree.
	The jails be prepared to build thousands of more jails because then nobody's going to be able to do it.
	No, Mark.
	No, that is the policy in New York.
	The debate with the bail in New York is New York is one of, I believe, two states in the whole, all 50 that does a judge is not allowed to take dangerousness into their analysis of to set bail or not.
	In the federal system, they can do that.
	In 48, you could say it's dangerousness, but in New York, you can't.
	The only standard is, is this person going to come back to court?
	And that is, that's the way it's been for decades and decades.
	Here, it is so obvious that they're not going to come back to court because they have no home.
	They have no money.
	They have no family.
	They're facing the wrath.
	Look, they saw that press and no citizenship.
	Get out.
	Go home.
	They come.
	They commit crimes.
	They beat up on cops.
	They get a free pass out of jail.
	And then it's the double bird to the rest of America.
	All of this.
	This is me taking advantage of your whole stupid ass system.
	Megan, then they go avoid any penalty.
	There's no accountability.
	You send them home.
	I don't care.
	Like, get them out of here.
	They only commit a crime by coming to the country illegally.
	Go ahead, Arthur.
	Let them do a year in jail.
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Why are you sending them accountability?
	Have fun.
	Let's do a year in jail and come back home.
	They've got to.
	We'll see how cocky they are if they do spend, spend some time in Rikers.
	Go enjoy Rikers, where I'm sure they're going to be really happy to have a bunch of people who sneaked into the country and are completely disdainful of Americans show up like giggles.
	Right now, they're still searching for the eighth.
	Not all of these guys are illegals, a couple of them.
	One guy's homeless.
	One guy's from the Midwest.
	I think it was Minnesota, was it?
	But four prior arrests.
	I mean, multiple crimes behind a couple of these guys.
	And the main problem is they've turned Times Square into a migrant shelter.
	I mean, that's an illegal immigrant shelter.
	And one of the things that comes out to me from this is it's not just that you're bringing in a bunch of people who you don't know the background of.
	You don't know whether they're dangerous.
	There's clearly no respect for our laws.
	But the mere creation of these migrant centers is like a call to criminals.
	Come here, do your drugs here.
	The local residents in the post today are just describing they call it Uh, Times Square, shelter from hell, and it's because all the criminals decided oh, this is a great place, we can make contacts, we can push drugs, we can.
	And so anybody who lives around there you know Hell's Kitchen or near Time Square is having to deal with this nonsense.
	The cops are having it.
	They're already outmanned now they have this burden and, as you guys well know, it's not just New York.
	I, like this can't go on.
	Right, this can't go on.
	I don't disagree with anything you just said, by the way.
	And those who harm police officers who are out there risking their lives to serve and protect us, there should be significant penalties imposed.
	Each of these guys should face incarceration for daring to be violent with officers who are risking their lives for us.
	Do not mistake my views, initially concerning bond, as it relates to penalty, they shouldn't be sent back.
	They should be sent back after they pay the piper for what they did to the officers.
	So Megan, a couple of things that you just said.
	Number one is well, first of all, i'm on 40, i'm on 45th and 5th.
	I am literally three blocks away from where this happens.
	Just with you.
	I know, Marion and I uh went to a Broadway show last night.
	We walked through Time Square.
	We had dinner right in Times Square.
	I will say there's a tremendous show of force by the police there right now.
	Um, and what chief Chell told me again last night was they're actually looking for more people now because now they're saying more video, they can see what more that's going on.
	But he also said this and I made him confirm it on the air.
	He referred to New York as the safest big city in America and I said chief, I know that was true, is that still true?
	He said, absolutely and to your point.
	That's really scary, because New York is not as safe as it was and we're the safest.
	So what about Chicago, San Francisco Houston Miami, etc.
	That's very problematic for this country.
	And how about the Manhattan DA'S Office who works hand in hand with the NYPD?
	On almost every single case, and one of their own basically, a cop gets beat up and they don't even ask for supervised release.
	They ask for nothing judge, just let them go.
	That is insane.
	In the membrane, that's nuts yeah, uh.
	Well, they got the message once.
	All those cops showed up to sit there on behalf of their beaten down brother and in blue and their lieutenant to say, look us in the eye and let him go without that.
	Look us in the eye and that.
	And the new judge didn't do it.
	Go ahead, Mark.
	More importantly Arthur, what show did you see?
	Did you guys enjoy it?
	Yeah, what show did you see?
	We, sure we saw, saw the show Six, which is about the six wives of Henry V8, and it is very very, very.
	Marian loved it, loved it.
	Okay, I don't go to see, and Juliet, at least not if you're a 12 year old girl I talked about on the show yesterday.
Fentanyl, Friends, and Foul Play 00:13:14
	It's fine.
	I mean, it's like one of these.
	It's a fun.
	I saw it.
	Yeah yes, we saw.
	The music is great.
	It's modern day music twisted into like uh, Shakespeare supposed to be that Juliet Reimagined If She Lived.
	I thought it was going to be a romance between, you know, her and like the next guy.
	And instead, it turns out it's like trans people talking about trans love and guys making out on the stage.
	It should be disclosed.
	That's all I'm saying.
	People coming in from the Midwest, not expecting that shit.
	They're thinking, oh, Ruth Shakespeare.
	Sure.
	Whoa, whoa.
	Okay.
	I did not know what was coming my way either, but unfortunately, living where I live now, it's like, oh, go, okay.
	It's like almost become common.
	Okay, everyone's, someone's got to be gay.
	You know, it's got to be a twist.
	It's got, okay, all right.
	Here, that's the gay guy.
	Okay, no problem.
	Move on.
	It's true.
	I know.
	But like, gay, yes, you're going to Broadway.
	Hello.
	But trails and kissing.
	And like, all right, like, it's a bridge too far.
	Like, and what?
	Okay.
	Let's move on.
	The music was good.
	The Kansas City situation is bizarre.
	Like, I have had almost everyone I know is like, can you believe what's going on with those Kansas City G fans?
	Like, what happened?
	What happened?
	So best as I can understand it, these guys went over, three friends were together and went over to this fourth guy's house.
	The three friends were later found frozen dead outside of the fourth guy's house in the guy's backyard.
	Now, this guy was known for making drug cocktails, according to the New York Post, among others, the fourth guy who lived and had been dubbed, quote, the chemist, according to a cousin of one of the dead men.
	And this may be why they went over there.
	Now, this has been the theory that potentially, because the guy, the chemist who was inside is saying, I didn't see him.
	Two days passed and the fiancé of one of the guys said, where is he?
	And called 911.
	Like, I think, you know, he went over to this house.
	Sure enough, he was frozen dead outside.
	Three guys were.
	But the chemist was inside the house, not dead.
	The police went and knocked on the door.
	The guy opens the door reportedly in his underwear and with a glass of wine.
	So like, what on earth with three dead guys out the backyard, right?
	So this is video that the neighbor caught of it.
	Go ahead, Mark.
	What are you going to say?
	Yeah.
	No, I think this is real simple.
	Follow me on this.
	Last night I learned on another show, we had breaking news that they released the toxicology reports on the dead guys and they all had lethal doses of fentanyl in their system, three times the legal limit.
	Okay.
	Strike that.
	Three times the lethal limit, not legal limit, lethal limit.
	So they're all stoned out of their minds.
	Again, whether they knowingly ingested fentanyl or whether something was laced with it, which is very common, we don't know.
	But now you got three guys who are just out of their mind.
	And there was also cocaine allegedly and marijuana found.
	So they are doped to the hilt.
	And then the guy inside who just went to rehab realized he has a problem.
	So he's all messed up as well.
	That's what happens.
	And people freeze and crazy things happen.
	Well, this is why you don't do drugs and you don't go to somebody called the chemist and ask him to make a cocktail for you of any kind.
	But the real question is whether this guy, the chemist, as they're referring to him, should not be in rehab, but should be in a damn jail for serving these guys up cocktails that reportedly had fentanyl in them.
	Here is News Nation interviewing Caleb McGee, who's the cousin to one of the decedents, Clayton McGee, referring to this guy, Jordan, the so-called chemist, and adding some color about him.
	Listen to Sophie.
	Jordan's a chemist, bro.
	Jordan's what?
	Jordan's a chemist.
	They all knew him as that.
	It was easy for them to go have fun, but he fucked up.
	He made a mistake.
	Jordan was the chemist.
	He's a scientist, right?
	He does what he needs to do.
	Now, to use my cousin, my best friend is a guinea pig.
	Jordan is somebody that is known from high school as like creating drugs for people to make them feel better in certain situations.
	Okay, well, you want to do this?
	Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to make this for you.
	I'm going to make this for you.
	I'm going to make this for you.
	And handing him out.
	So, Arthur, if you're the DA overseeing this case, which has really come under national scrutiny, do you get to make an arrest understanding that these guys had, as Mark points out, they had what's the like the lethal limel would be 30 units of fentanyl or 10 limit units and they had 30 inside of them?
	Well, especially based on some of the other cases we're going to cover today, where people aren't that involved, like people who are not actually pulling the trigger, and yet they're being charged for conspiracy to murder.
	If that's what we're going with, if that's what we're looking at, then absolutely an investigation has to be done into what this guy knew, meaning Jordan, what he put in there.
	And I mean, what the confusing part of me to me is even though I know what Mark is saying is accurate about three times the lethal limit, that all three of them, not one of those, I mean, these are 38-year-old men.
	These aren't little kids.
	One of them, I don't know, had the wherewithal to break a window and get inside or call for help or anything like that.
	But I mean, we have charged people in the past who have been drug dealers with killing people.
	It doesn't happen often.
	And Mark just handled the drug case today, so he may be in a better position to talk about it tonight.
	I actually, I have a case right now where my client from a wonderful family fell into drug use.
	His dear friend, also from a wonderful family, also, I think, getting her master's degree, they were doing drugs together.
	She overdoses doing a certain, she was doing heroin or what she thought was heroin.
	It was laced with fentanyl.
	So she overdoses.
	My client is now charged with first degree felony murder because he supplied her with the drugs.
	And I checked in Missouri has the same felony murder statute.
	So if this guy, this homeowner, supplied these people with the drugs, it fits the law there.
	You should be facing a potential life sentence.
	And Mark, does it matter if he knew?
	You know, the Chinese, of course, with these Mexican drug cartels are lining these pills with fentanyl and, you know, these substances with fentanyl and the people, if he didn't know, if he thought he was just giving them, you know, forgive me, but like regular drugs, does it matter?
	No, it doesn't.
	It doesn't matter.
	If you are in the commission of a felony and someone dies, it's felony murder.
	So by him trafficking and giving them the drugs, he's committing a felony.
	And in doing so, they passed away.
	That is Missouri's felony murder statute.
	What's surprising here?
	I'm not going to mention that they willingly took the drugs.
	You know, it's not like he slipped in a Mickey.
	They wanted him.
	I wish it did because those are the facts in my case.
	And again, my client's facing a potential life sentence.
	Go ahead.
	How about the fact that law enforcement was saying off the bat, oh, we don't see any foul play here.
	We don't see any foul play here.
	The families of the deceased are going appropriately going crazy.
	Hold on.
	What do you mean you don't see any foul play here?
	You have three grown men, almost 40-year-old men, just freeze in the backyard, one sitting in a lawn chair.
	What do you mean?
	There's no, how could you come out of the box saying we don't see any foul play here?
	And what Mark is saying is accurate.
	If these guys were given drugs that they thought was X and it turned out to be Y and it killed them, then there is foul play here.
	And I think, by the way, Jordan's lawyer, I'm sure, is involved, gave him great advice, telling him to get to rehab because it shows some act of contrition.
	But the quote that someone gave on Jordan's behalf was the death of his three friends was a wake-up call for him.
	And so he's going, he's going to rehaul.
	wake-up call for him?
	Oh my God, I'd hit him in the head with a bat, a wake-up call for him.
	Give me a break.
	Right.
	I mean, I don't, I still don't get, and I realize if you're a drugged up person, and obviously he took some sort of drugs too.
	I don't know what was in his system, but I think they may not have tested his blood, which is another problem.
	Then you could sleep two days.
	You could sleep two days.
	You could be in bed two days or maybe he didn't look out the back of the house, but the back of the house has got some six windows in it.
	I mean, how do you not, how do you not know there are three dead men out there?
	And how, after partying with them or, you know, serving them drug cocktails, even not knowing that there was fentanyl, if that's the case, do you not say, hey, where are my friends?
	What happened to my friends?
	Gee, I must have passed out, whatever.
	Let me shoot him a text.
	You know, this guy's, there's way more to this story.
	Here's what the Post is reporting is actually breaking.
	I think News Nation broke this.
	They're basing the reports on fentanyl on a family member who has to remain anonymous saying Coke, fentanyl, and THC showed up in the preliminary drug results.
	This is per News Nation's national correspondent, Alex Caprariello.
	The family source says level 10 fentanyl is enough to kill.
	The Kansas City three were at level 30.
	He later added that the information was backed up and confirmed by a separate family source.
	So that's where we're getting it.
	The police haven't yet specifically weighed in on this.
	The guy, the so-called chemist, is an HIV scientist.
	So I guess knows his way around a lab, but him being completely coked up himself, you know, out of his mind, is that a potential defense?
	Is any sort of intent required in these crimes?
	Even if he didn't know fentanyl was in there, can he get out?
	Could your drug dealer friend have gotten out of the charges, Mark, if he was so coked up, he didn't know what he was doing?
	You know, he didn't have capacity to make decisions.
	No, and I'll go one step further.
	He and her both thought that they were doing heroin.
	He did the same batch she did.
	He didn't think that there was any adverse reaction from fentanyl.
	For whatever reason, she did and she died.
	You know, when the police say there's no, they don't suspect foul play, let me defend them for a second.
	What I believe that they're saying is we don't believe that anyone has committed any crimes that we can then establish probable cause from.
	And by that, I mean, if there's no evidence that the homeowner provided the drugs that caused their death, let's assume that for just one moment, then what do you have?
	You got a drugged out homeowner who probably cares about his friends.
	So he certainly didn't intentionally cause them to die.
	He's tripped out.
	He's messed up inside the house.
	It is a wake-up call for him because, oh my God, you know, I'm so out of it.
	I could have saved my friends, but I was in such a drug-induced, you know, just mess that I didn't help them.
	And then what do you have?
	There's no crime.
	The only crime here would be if you could prove that the homeowner provided them the drugs.
	And I don't know if police, you know, in my case, they had extensive text messages between the two so they can tell that my client bought the caps that caused her demise.
	But absent that evidence, you don't have it.
	But you know, you know, beginning of an investigation, we have three grown men who are dead, frozen outside a house.
	It's just what an investigator usually says.
	We see no foul play.
	What do you say?
	The standard thing.
	We're investigating it.
	We're going to look at everything.
	We're going to interview all the witnesses.
	We're going to canvass everyone around.
	There's no foul play.
	And then we'll figure out where the evidence takes us to.
	You're right.
	But don't punish them for giving an answer based upon what they see.
	They don't think that there's foul play.
	They don't think anybody locked them out.
	If that's your brother or your cousin who's frozen out, I mean, it's just a weird scenario going on here.
	The investigator who's in charge of everything goes, yeah, there's no foul play.
	Let's just, you know, let's marry him and we'll call it a day.
	Don't you want to hear?
	Well, they may not have the text messages yet because the three dead men, you know, you can't just get on the phone if you don't know the password.
	You're going to have to get iCloud and all that.
	So they may not have their access to their phones.
	And the man who's just checked himself into rehab, the so-called chemist, was probably spending his first few moments deleting, deleting, deleting because he wasn't arrested.
	It's not like the cops came and arrested him on site.
	He's been free and now he's checked himself into rehab.
	But that's, you know, there's no such thing as deleting.
	It's always there.
	They're going to find it.
	They're going to figure out what the baby is clear as your case.
	Maybe they did get the text messages and he didn't say, hey, guys, are you ready?
	I'm coming downstairs with some fentanyl for you guys to ingest.
	My guess is that there's probably nothing in text messages.
	And these guys partook.
	And I don't know that there's any eyewitnesses who are alive, unfortunately, who can say that he's the one who provided them with the drugs.
	Absent that evidence, they got nothing.
	It's disturbing.
	And it's yet another reminder.
	I mean, I know I keep repeating myself.
	Just don't do drugs.
Eighty-Three Million Dollar Judgment 00:15:54
	Just stop it.
	Just don't do it.
	Just say no, Megan.
	Just say no.
	Just say no.
	I think we can all agree unless it's like chemo or something you really need.
	Yeah.
	It's like, you have to give these rules to your kids.
	And you say, like, I'm like, just don't take a drug.
	Don't take a drug from anybody you don't know.
	And then my kids, of course, are like, not even the doctor?
	Not even like, if I'm at a friend's house and they offer me a Tylenol, the mom because I fell.
	I'm like, well, there are exceptions.
	I needed the pills after back surgery.
	So again, up across the board, we really agree.
	Don't say yes to drugs.
	I mean, I'll say whatever.
	I don't know.
	Maybe in certain ways.
	Don't do recreational drugs and don't take drugs from somebody you don't know.
	And certainly not from somebody who goes by the name the chemist who's known as a nefarious person.
	All right.
	Stand by.
	Quick break.
	So many other cases to get to from Murdoch to this Traconis to Fannie Willis.
	A lot more to get to.
	Stand by.
	Quick foray into politics while I have you, because there's been a couple of big developments in the cases against Trump that I just want to get your quick take on.
	Fanny Willis remains in trouble.
	The divorce case of her alleged paramour has now been preliminarily settled as the heat got ratcheted up.
	Nathan Wade, I think, saw fit to just make his ex-wife Joselyn go away and they've reached some sort of a settlement.
	Okay, that's fine.
	So Fanny Willis no longer has to testify in that divorce case as she had been subpoenaed to do.
	But she is still going to have to testify and answer to the motion that's been filed for her to recuse in the Georgia case, right?
	That one of the defendants in that RICO case filed a motion saying she should be kicked off the case.
	She's having an affair with this co-special prosecutor and he's flying her all over the world on the taxpayer dime, yada, yada, yada.
	She has announced she refuses to recuse herself.
	She's not going to recuse herself.
	So if she goes down, she's going to go down swinging.
	So I think we've talked about this before.
	Generally agree, it doesn't look good for sure.
	I mean, I don't think there's any question she's violated her ethical obligation to remain above the appearance of impropriety.
	But let's talk brass tax.
	The odds of the judge throwing her off the case.
	She's refusing to go.
	And in the end, a judge down in Georgia is going to make the decision.
	Let's assume it's all true.
	She had the affair, Arthur.
	She's having it still with the special prosecutor.
	She's paying him more.
	Maybe they can prove it.
	We'll see.
	We've seen documents suggesting it's true than at least one of the other co-prosecutors, the guy who has all the RICO experience.
	This guy has none.
	He's getting more than that than the specialist.
	And then she's profiting on it by flying all over the world with this guy on the taxpayer dollar.
	Do you think the judge throws her off the case?
	Because I'll just add why I'm asking, more and more speculation in the Atlanta press and beyond that if it's not Fannie Willis, it's nobody, that they're going to have a very hard time finding another prosecutor to take the case.
	So truly, Trump's fate in this case could come down to whether this judge bounces Fannie Willis off of this.
	Well, Megan, an open disclosure, I'm not that worried about Donald Trump.
	I am very worried about my client, Rudolph Giuliani, because we represent Rudy Giuliani in this case.
	So I have to also watch all the words that are coming out of my mouth right now.
	But obviously, our position is that, you know, we're joining in the application of this defendant, who's a co-defendant of ours, saying that her ethics and her judgment have been so compromised by the way she's handled.
	You know, it's not like she's, this has to do with a different case and we found this out that she's doing something on another matter.
	It's on our case.
	And you appropriately and accurately cited the facts that this guy's getting paid more than the people with more experience.
	And, you know, she's out there saying, I'm not going to recuse myself on February 15th, as of the airing of this show before I came on.
	I just checked.
	On February 15th, there's supposed to be a hearing with the judge where everything gets, you know, put on the table.
	And since she's refusing to recuse herself, the judge may make that decision.
	And I do believe you're right.
	There may be a, we're looking up the Georgia law, but there may be a law saying if the DA, not an assistant DA, but the DA gets thrown off the case by a judge because of an ethical breach, no assistant DA in her office can step in and take her place because they're all kind of tainted by her.
	I mean, they work for her.
	She pays them.
	So they would have to find either a different district attorney's office, or I think the judge may have the power to appoint a special prosecutor, meaning someone in private practice, a Mark Eiglosch and say, I want, I'm going to anoint you right now as special prosecutor.
	But obviously, on behalf of Rudy Giuliesni, you know, we're very much hoping that this judge, you know, we're very much hoping that this judge does the right thing and says, listen, your judgment is so clouded and so beyond being an objective, you know, a prosecutor is a quasi-judicial function.
	They're not, Mark and I zealously represent our clients.
	Olscu's not supposed to.
	That's supposed to weigh everything out.
	And that judgment, her judgment and her ethics have been compromised and therefore she should not be the prosecutor on this case.
	So Megan, I can answer a little bit more directly since I don't represent Giuliani or anybody.
	First, I agree with you.
	I think that if this is true, and again, I wasn't there, but let's say it is true.
	It certainly creates the image of impropriety.
	It gives people an argument that the system isn't necessarily fair.
	So in the abundance of caution in cases like this, I'm always a fan of just saying, you know what, there's nothing really that nefarious and we can certainly handle the case.
	But in the abundance of caution, we're going to then, certainly for appellate purposes too, we'll pass and let someone else handle it.
	That said, if she chooses not to, for whatever reason it is, maybe her ego is not her amigo, or because there's too much to be lost if some other agency takes control of this case, then it comes into the hands of the judge.
	And I think the chances of the judge removing this office are about as good as my odds of finally making it into the NBA.
	I am almost 56 years old and my jump shot sucks.
	Why?
	Why do you think that?
	Because I haven't practiced, Megan.
	I didn't grow up.
	Very good, Mark.
	Very good.
	Thank you.
	Very quick.
	Why?
	You don't think he is going to look at this?
	I don't know if it's male or female, but that the judge is going to look at this and say, you are benefiting as a result of your relationship with the special prosecutor that you brought in with no RICO experience.
	It looks to the taxpayer like you are pushing this thing because you're going to get another free trip to Aruba.
	That's a reasonable conclusion a taxpayer could draw from your breach of your ethics.
	Yeah, the judge may absolutely believe that.
	The judge may sign that.
	I don't believe, and I haven't done the research, but I don't believe that there's any case that mandates this judge then to say, I'm going to make the decision then that you're off, go find somebody else.
	I just, I don't see that happening.
	Those motions are rarely granted.
	I will, I will just chime in with this, Megan.
	It's a, it is a male judge.
	And although he's been pretty impressive in terms of controlling the courtroom, controlling, you know, there's a lot of egos in there, but he's also relatively new.
	He's relatively new to the bench.
	And, you know, it does take a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to basically throw, throw, you know, a sitting elected DA off of a case and throw her whole office off of a case.
	Is the judge elected?
	Do you know if the judge is the judge elected or appointed there in the state court?
	I should know.
	I did know.
	I don't want to give you the wrong answer.
	So I'm not sure.
	I don't remember.
	No, no.
	But because that matters.
	Bottom line is what Mark is saying, though, is let's just say the judge doesn't throw her off and this goes forward.
	This is a dark cloud hanging over the system.
	Like this is a dark cloud going to hang over this whole case.
	And it feeds right in, right into Trump's narrative.
	And, you know, it's the stack of the deck is stacked against him.
	I mean, it really gives a lot of fuel to that fire.
	All right, let's switch over to Eugene Carroll, who's still celebrating her big $83.3 million defamation verdict against Trump.
	That's one of the amazing things.
	She didn't get the money for alleged sexual assault.
	They only gave her $2 million on that in the first trial.
	For the alleged defamation of Trump calling her a lunatic, et cetera, for making this charge, he now has to pay her $83.3 million.
	She was seen partying after her big verdict with, of course, all these media types, supposedly a media event.
	And they decided to, I guess, have Eugene Carroll there.
	She just showed up there, whatever.
	She was seen with half of the staff at MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell, Washington Post, Sarah Ellison, who is the worst.
	She's a completely unethical person in my experience.
	I could keep going, but they're all super happy that Egene Carroll has won this verdict.
	The press is completely overjoyed.
	And I really have questions about what Trump should do because let's say, I know he says he's going to appeal.
	I think he's got a shot on appeal, but personally, I don't think it's a great shot.
	I think it's a shot.
	I don't know if it's a great shot.
	So my question is, Mark, normally a normal person who got an $83 million punitive damages plus some compensatory, 11 and compensatory damages award against them, would probably just file for a bankruptcy.
	They would declare bankruptcy to try to avoid the judgment.
	Trump, well, I don't know if Trump does that given his financial situation.
	And let's not forget, he's probably looking at a $370 million judgment coming down against him within the next few days in that civil fraud trial that's up against him.
	So now, I mean, literally, he could be looking at a half a billion dollars, just under, in judgments against him in civil courts within a week or two.
	So what does he do?
	What's available to him to try to get out of paying it?
	We know that that would be a last resort for him, you know, declaring that half a billion somehow sinks him.
	So I don't know that he would ever want to go that route, but let's discuss if he could.
	And he wanted to go that route.
	I'm unfortunately going to have to answer this like a lawyer, which really bothers me and probably everybody else because I can't give you a definitive answer.
	We'll start generally.
	Generally, you can declare bankruptcy and that would generally preclude you from having to pay certain judgments against you.
	But there is some law which suggests that certain judgments for certain acts would not then be get you off the hook.
	And there's one category of any type of intentional acts against others.
	And I don't know if they're referring to acts of violence or does defamation fall within that category.
	So I have to tell you, I can't say with certainty.
	Maybe.
	So if a court thought that defamation is an intentional act against another and it was more akin to like an assault, an assault, then they might say you can't get rid of that debt by declaring bankruptcy.
	Yeah, I can't say I wanted to give you a black and white answer.
	I can't.
	If he was not the president or running for president, you know how many times Trump's declared bankruptcy?
	Many times.
	Like a lot.
	Who coffee cups at the kiosks selling coffee, trying to raise money for Donald Trump after he declared bankruptcy one of the many times?
	I was there.
	I remember back in the 90s, like it was a joke for Donald Trump.
	Yeah, but I mean, it's a tool.
	It's just one of the tools in the bag of tricks that his lawyers have, his tax lawyers have.
	Mark is correct.
	There are certain debts that are dispensable and disappear during bankruptcy.
	And there are some that are absolutely not.
	So in my opinion, this would be one that's not dispensable.
	Otherwise, everyone who would lose a civil trial would just file for bankruptcy.
	Here's the issue regarding the appeal.
	It's really not the 83 million.
	Like we hear the 83 million, and I did some legal research on this.
	The 83 million is 65 or something like that is punitive damages.
	Punitive damages have been ruled even by the Supreme Court of the United States could be up to 10 times of the lower number, the compensatory damages.
	So just to make it, break it down, compensatory.
	We're going to compensate you for your damages.
	So you lost your job in the law firm and you were making $2 million a year.
	And in six years, it's $12 million.
	We're giving you $12 million.
	That's the compensatory damages.
	To punish this guy, to make sure he never does it again, we're going to add another $60 million on top of that.
	And courts have ruled that the $60 million is okay.
	It's whether or not she really proved she had damages that total the $11 point something million dollars because that part I don't see.
	I know Judge Lewis Kaplan.
	I've appeared before Jewish Judge Lewis Kaplan.
	He clearly had his thumb on the scales here, but he's been on the bench almost 30 years.
	He's a Bill Clinton appointee.
	He knows how to make judgments and make rulings with enough savvy to make sure he's going to win on appeal.
	He'll push enough to get what he wants, but he'll do it in a way that it survives the case law that would otherwise reverse the decision.
	And I'll just give you one quick example.
	Ms. Abba, before Donald Trump takes the stand, I want to know what questions you're going to ask him and what answers he's going to give.
	Now, he said, this is a civil case, not a criminal case.
	And for us criminal practitioners, that's insane to hear.
	But here, because he was already deposed, that was permissible.
	That's why, and he said, no, you can't ask that.
	No, you can't ask that.
	No, Trump was on the stand for less than three minutes.
	And I think in less than three minutes, three of his answers were stricken.
	So if there's any area where the three judges on a circuit court may say, look, Judge Kaplan, we love you, we admire you, but you really didn't give this guy a fair shake.
	I think it would be on how much he limited Trump's ability to defend himself.
	Because he let himself out.
	He let Trump say, I didn't do it.
	Period.
	He didn't let him go on at all about how I've never met this person.
	I've never seen her.
	He didn't want to get back into all that stuff, which Trump would have been able to do had he shown up in the actual first trial against him, in which they litigated whether he sexually assaulted this person.
	He did not show up.
	So he did not give testimony there.
	He did show up to this one.
	Once he was found liable, he showed up for the damages and the defamation piece of it.
	And it was kind of too late.
	And this judge said, all the stuff's been litigated.
	You weren't here.
	You're not going to get another go at it.
	Question for you, Mark.
	One of the things that Roberta Kaplan, Robbie Kaplan, said when she was arguing to the jury, you know, Eugene Carroll needs this money.
	She needs to go redeem her reputation out there.
	She's been really damaged.
	But she said something like she's going to have to go on conservative media.
	And I'm trying to remember the shows that she specifically named a couple of conservative hosts.
	I think maybe Joe Rogan, who's not conservative, but he's not woke anyway.
	He's not like whatever.
Damaged Reputation in Conservative Circles 00:04:31
	She named a couple of right leaners.
	If she doesn't, because so far, where's she gone?
	She went to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.
	He's not exactly known as a Republican.
	She went to Rachel Maddow.
	She went to, I think, Anderson Cooper.
	Like she's done CNN.
	These are not conservatives.
	This is not conservative media.
	She's not doing the thing she said she needed to be compensated for because she had to repair her damaged reputation in conservative circles.
	The liberals see her as a hero.
	There was no harm done in Trump attacking her whatsoever.
	So if she's got to do any repair work, it's over on the other side of the aisle.
	She's done zero.
	Does that affect this argument at all as she goes, as they go back to Judge Kaplan and ask him to lower the amount or as they bring it up to the Second Circuit?
	I don't think so.
	No.
	Same way an accident victim says, I may need therapy, I may need surgery.
	And then it turns out that they don't engage in that because they choose something else.
	I don't think the appellate court's in the business of tracking what did the person actually do.
	Did they follow up with that?
	I don't think so.
	I think that in the realm of possibility, she might need to do conservative shows.
	She might need to do this and that.
	And, you know, sometimes she doesn't and she changes her plan.
	But based upon what she possibly might need to do in the future, the award was given.
	Why does she need money?
	Why does she need money on conservative media?
	Like, I mean, we don't accept money from the guests who want to come on the show.
	It's normally just so people know in a jury, you need money to, I lost my job or I got into this accident.
	I lost my leg.
	I'm not going to be able to work for the rest of my life.
	I'm 35 years old.
	I have two kids.
	They do this mathematical computation.
	And yeah, here's $11 million.
	It should hold you over to raise your kids, get them through college to pay your overhead and you and your bride.
	And that's where the money comes from.
	Here, I don't know what damage that she took on this woman who's an elderly person.
	So they look at her life expectancy where it adds up to that number.
	Well, that's the thing is they, I don't think they actually look for real damage.
	I mean, he said she was a lunatic.
	He never met her.
	And the jury said, we don't believe you.
	We think you actually did do something to her in Bergdorf.
	They didn't find him guilty of rape, but they not guilty, liable for.
	But they did say you sexually assaulted her.
	And then they said all that stuff where you called her a kook.
	That's defamation because we believe the charge.
	But I mean, the actual damage that she suffered, she's a heroine.
	She's, did you see the giddiness with which they were celebrating this award all over the mainstream media this week?
	The only people who don't like E. Jean Carroll as a result of this whole skirmish are the diehard Trump supporters.
	And the reason they don't like her is not so much what Trump said about her as it is what she said about him.
	They just, they don't want anything bad said about Trump.
	They don't believe anything about Trump.
	They would have not liked Eugene Carroll, even if Trump had never responded to any of this.
	I don't think his alleged defamation of her caused her any more damage than her opening shots at him did.
	In any event, a jury and a judge see it differently.
	Okay, we have much, much more to get to with the guys.
	We're going to go back with Martha.
	Martha, I like that.
	Maybe I should use that.
	Martha stays with us.
	I may have used that once before.
	And while I have your attention, it's Friday.
	And on Fridays, we do something great.
	And that is we send you our one email of the week.
	There's another Megan on this show.
	Her name is Meg Storm.
	And Meg Storm and I work on this thing.
	And we put together the best stories from our show over the week.
	And we give you all the news that will give you an overview of what happened this week in one minute or less.
	It's called the American News Minute.
	So go to megankelly.com, M-E-G-Y-N, Kelly.com, sign up for it, and we just send you the one.
	We don't harass you.
	And it's super fun.
	We get the best feedback on this email.
	And you always get your Strudwick updates.
	Yesterday, I came downstairs.
	Strudwick had gotten in the pantry again.
	It was lentils.
	It was cornmeal.
	It was croutons.
	It was fried onions.
	It was a whole bag of shredded coconut.
	I could go on, subscribe, and you'll hear the rest.
	Okay, so Martha rejoins.
	My team is reminding me that we dubbed you that back in the Americas newsroom days.
	We launched that show in 2007, guys.
	That's how long we've been together, even before, even before that, because it used to be Kendall's court before I got my divorce from my first husband.
Parental Clues and School Drawings 00:15:06
	Remember?
	Yeah.
	Oh, I remember.
	Yeah.
	I mean, wait.
	I remember you on the steps of the Supreme Court.
	Megan Kendall reporting live from the Supreme Court.
	Britt Hume really tried to convince me to keep the last name Kendall.
	He's like, it's a very nice last name.
	I'm like, forget it.
	I'm going back to Kelly.
	That's my name.
	I'm getting it.
	Anywho, here we all these years later still doing what we do.
	Let's talk about this case of Jennifer Crumbly.
	So she is the mom of the shooter.
	We'll just call him the shooter.
	I know everybody knows what his name is because he has the same last name as his mom, but we don't like to say the shooters have the names of mass shooters on this show.
	Her son is a teenage convicted killer who went into his school and shot and killed four people in Michigan and wounded, I think, seven others.
	And this case is very unusual because he's in jail for the rest of his life.
	That one's done.
	But they charged his mother and father for contributing to the deaths of these people because they say that they were on fair notice, that their son had mental health issues, that the school had called and said they had found these disturbed drawings and threats with blood and bullets.
	And the parents did nothing.
	And that understanding their kid had these issues, they bought him a nine millimeter and then failed to keep it away from him.
	And therefore, in a novel case, they're trying to pin the murders not just on the shooter, but on the shooter's parents.
	So Jennifer Crumbly is taking the stand.
	She's going first.
	The husband will go later.
	She took the stand and talked about how she claimed she had no mental health concerns about her son, which is, I say, frankly, it's tough to believe.
	But here, listen to this in Saad 8.
	In terms of your relationship with your son, how did you think your relationship was?
	I thought we were pretty close.
	I trusted him.
	And I felt like I had an open door and he can come to me about anything.
	I mean I felt I felt as a family where we were the three of us really close.
	Did you ever believe that your son needed mental health treatment, therapy, counseling, anything?
	No, I mean anxiety about what he was going to do after high school, whether it was college, military.
	So he expressed those concerns to me, but not to a level where I felt he needed to go see a psychiatrist or a mental health professional right away.
	No.
	So what do you make of this one, Mark?
	I'll start with you on whether.
	I'm so glad you're starting with me.
	Okay.
	I am so outraged that they're bringing these charges against her and her husband.
	Okay.
	This is not about whether she's a good mom.
	It's not about whether she was a good wife because she had to admit to an affair.
	And it's not about whether she thought maybe her son needed some counseling and she didn't get it.
	Those are, those are, those are not criminal issues.
	What they're trying to suggest is it was so reasonably foreseeable to her that he was going to shoot up a school that she should be held criminally responsible.
	It falls so short of that, the evidence does, that I'm outraged that I think that they're caving to politics if they're bringing these charges.
	She showed yesterday, and I get, I watched all two hours of her testimony, that she is your average typical mother who loved her son, who like any teenager had issues, but she had no clue that he was going to shoot up kids at this school and certainly not to the level required of culpable negligence.
	They should drop the charges now.
	I don't know, Arthur.
	Go ahead.
	Well, I mean, there is the ability to drop the charges.
	There are 12 people there who are from her community who are listening to all of the evidence.
	And if they agree with Mark, they'll say not guilty.
	You know, look, my approach on guns is very different.
	I live in a very compact area of the world, New York City, where, you know, you shoot one gun and you can hit all 14 of the wrong people and you miss the one you want.
	So to give a young person of that age for their birthday a gun is just not the world I live in.
	But if you add to it that the school is calling and saying, not that we think he has some issues, but he's drawing pictures of guns and bullets and blood.
	And then shortly thereafter, you're buying him a gun.
	Does it rise to the level of criminality?
	No, no, not immediately.
	But 12 jurors are going to hear it.
	And Mark, I don't know about you, but when I was in the DA's office, I remember there were two cases that I had to try.
	And I wasn't really thrilled to try them, but they checked off all the boxes.
	And I was hoping the jury would find them not guilty.
	And one, actually, they did in both.
	The jury did the right thing.
	This shouldn't go to a jury.
	Let me explain.
	Let me rebut some very fine points you just made.
	Number one, she made it clear she didn't buy the gun for the son.
	The husband was responsible for that to use for target practice.
	It's his right.
	They didn't do it when they said, oh, he's got mental issues.
	They did it at a time where they didn't think that there were any issues.
	That's number one.
	And it was the husband's failure to keep it under lock and key that caused access to it.
	That was clear.
	And the evidence to her needs to be separated from the evidence against the husband.
	Secondly, when they went to school that fateful day and they showed some of the drawings, and they're very disturbing drawings, they had a discussion.
	They had a discussion with the people at the school and they gave them the option.
	They said, we're not saying he needs to come home from school.
	We're saying it's up to you.
	And the parents, again, didn't think for a second that they were dealing with a school shooter and said, okay, he's probably better off in school.
	And she texted him right before the shooting.
	How you doing, son?
	You good?
	Yes, I love you, mom.
	And the next thing you know, he's shooting up kids at a school.
	That's, again, a parent's worst nightmare, but to charge her criminally makes no sense to me.
	The drawings included for the listening audience, a gun and the phrases, my life is useless.
	Also drew a bullet and the phrase, blood everywhere.
	The thing is, though, and look, I'm waiting to hear all the evidence, but I just don't believe that the mother did not understand how mentally disturbed he was.
	Somebody like this who's about to shoot up a school is going to have a long list of other problems.
	And maybe the school doesn't see it, but the mother sees it.
	Come on.
	It's very rare.
	Look, I know Columbine, we've got like, but this mother, she said she hid bullets from him.
	She tried to say it's all the dad's fault that he brought him the gun, but I was sure to hide the well, why'd you hide the bullets?
	Why were you doing that?
	Because there's no lockup safety law in Michigan.
	She didn't have to do that.
	So what was it?
	And then when she found out he got in trouble at school, she sent him some text mark like, LOL, you're not in trouble.
	Just don't let them find out about it.
	Don't let them see these things.
	Like she wasn't taking any of the warning signs seriously enough.
	Megan, it's so easy after the fact to go back and put some pieces together and go, okay, I see it now.
	Maybe.
	But when you're a parent, look, I have the last of my three kids is still a teenager.
	He lives in my house.
	He's 17 years old.
	I don't know what the hell he's doing at night on his computer, on his phone.
	I'm not going to go and grab it from him.
	I know some parents think you should do that.
	So if this kid is running some major illegal enterprise, people would say, oh, you should know.
	I don't know.
	And most parents don't know exactly what their kids are up to.
	If they're being this was a little bit more than that.
	Look, I don't feel very strongly this mom should be going to jail.
	Okay.
	I've got to put that out there.
	But it's a little bit more than what you're saying.
	It's like, oh, my kid, you don't know what my kid is doing inside, you know, on his computer.
	This is the school's calling you up.
	She says, she admits, I know he had some mental issues, but I didn't think they rose to the level to take him to a psychiatrist.
	That's her words.
	So you know something's going on.
	I mean, you don't give someone a deadly weapon.
	I'm not even having to give them the keys to the car.
	Like, you know, you're monitoring it.
	You keep your eye on them.
	You make sure your 17-year-old is healthy.
	Okay.
	You feel comfortable letting them do whatever they want at the computer.
	If a parent did, I actually wrote an article about this one time.
	If a parent did give a kid keys to a car, let's say the parent gives a 12-year-old keys to a car and that kid drives the car and kills somebody.
	The parent could be held liable under the negligent supervision doctrine.
	And it's a dangerous instrumentality.
	And you know that is the parent and you endangered the public and this specific person too.
	So it's sort of an offshoot of that.
	You know, you gave someone who was mentally unwell and you knew it a gun, a nine millimeter at he was a minor and you saw signs of unwellness.
	And then you got notified by the school about these disturbing messages and you did nothing.
	It's a similar argument, Mark.
	I agree with you in theory.
	I think they should prosecute parents under certain circumstances.
	And the one that you gave is an appropriate one.
	It's fact sensitive.
	I listened to her testimony.
	If the facts were that he's plucking like a chicken and or indicating to her that he's going to harm someone or do anything other than shoot at a non-moving target with that gun for practice, then yeah, there's a bit more there.
	I can tell and the jurors hopefully can tell she didn't know.
	She said that she wished he had shot her because the truth is she's horrible about what happened.
	It's it's let's listen to that.
	It's soundbite nine.
	Do you believe there were things you were thinking at the time, I should do this, but I'm not doing it?
	Do you look back and think that?
	No, I don't.
	I mean, I, of course, I look back after this all happened, and I've asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn't know.
	If you could change what happened, would you?
	Oh, absolutely.
	I wish he would have killed us instead.
	Wow, Megan, I'm having trouble feeling sorry for her.
	I'm sorry, but there are four parents who will never see their children again.
	Thanks to her.
	Hold on.
	I was going to give you that.
	Two remarks, one brilliant and one equally as horrible.
	Meaning, yeah, I wish it was me.
	The emotion was there.
	That was perfect.
	The one before that, I would have done anything differently.
	I would have prepped my client to make very clear what she's saying.
	Look, if I know now, again, what I know now, if I knew it then, of course I would have done something different at the time.
	No, but Mark, the point is no.
	No, but what she's doing by giving that answer is she's reinforcing like, I didn't know.
	I didn't know he was so off the wall.
	So no, there is nothing I would have done now.
	I wouldn't have read into anything.
	He's texting me.
	I love you.
	Everything's okay.
	But listen, as far as I understand, there was one pivotal meeting at the school on November 30th, the day of the shooting.
	It was hours before the shooting.
	The allegations about, you know, you didn't pay attention to warning signs from the school are only about that day.
	It's the other warning signs prior to that at home that she's also being questioned about is my understanding.
	But the school employees testified earlier this week in this case that they brought her in, they showed her the drawings and that they recommended that the parents take this kid out of school and get immediate mental health assistance.
	But the parents declined to do that, saying they did not want to miss work.
	They said he was allowed to return to class.
	Now, I mean, look, all of this is where he took a hidden gun out of his backpack and opened fire.
	All this begs the question of why the hell did the school allow this kid to go back into class?
	If they're saying to the parents, oh, he's really disturbed, take him out.
	Why didn't you kick him out?
	There's supposed to be zero tolerance.
	It's not up to you, parents.
	Get him out.
	That was not her testimony.
	And she seemed very credible, but she's saying the school gave her the option, number one.
	I know, that's bad.
	That's bad for the prosecution.
	Yeah.
	And I think we're on the same page.
	If the school was so alarmed, his behavior was beyond defensible, then why didn't the school say it's it's over?
	Get him out of here.
	Now they're trying to charge her criminally for not seeing it, but the school clearly didn't see it.
	Because school shooters do not announce to the world that they're going to do their abhorrent acts, Megan.
	For the most part, they do.
	And parents want to believe in the most positive scenario rather than the most negative.
	So if you see a child doing some disturbed drawings, you confront them.
	And if there's any scenario consistent with, yeah, no, it's just a little dark side.
	I didn't mean anything by it.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Go back to school.
	And hey, honey, are you doing okay?
	Yeah, I love you, mom.
	I'm doing great.
	And you think everything's okay.
	In hindsight, you live with the blood on your hands because you theoretically could have done something different.
	But in the moment, I believe that she didn't have a clue he was going to do something like that.
	All right, let me interrupt with some breaking news on a case we were just discussing.
	Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis has just admitted that she had a relationship, a personal relationship with the outside prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she appointed to manage the election interference case against Donald Trump and his allies.
	This is relevant to you here, sir, and your client, Mr. Giuliani Idala, in a, but she denied that the relationship had tainted the proceedings.
	In a 176-page court filing, this is per the Washington Post.
	Willis called the claims against her meritless and salacious, asking a judge to reject motions from Trump and other co-defendants seeking to disqualify her and her office from the case and to do so without that February 15th hearing.
	She does not want to be called to testify.
	That's why she's admitted she did it in this submission.
	She denied claims of misconduct and said there was no evidence that the relationship between her and Wade had prejudiced the case.
	Quick thoughts on that, Arthur, as somebody with a with a dog in this hunt.
	Well, I mean, I haven't even seen 176 pages, but I, of course, she doesn't want to be on the stand and be cross-examined.
	I mean, talk about being embarrassed, and that's the nicest way I could put it.
	Is it going to be enough for a judge to say, okay, we believe you and I'm not going to even have a hearing?
	I hope not.
	I mean, you're talking about, forget about my client, who happens to be a pretty prestigious person in the country, but you're talking about the former president of the United States, the leading candidate for the Republicans to be the next president of the United States on her word.
	I didn't do anything wrong.
	Everything's fine.
Controversial Indictment Rounds for Actor 00:11:11
	Everything's above board.
	Let's just pass this on.
	I mean, if I'm a judge, at the very least, I am having a hearing, you know, looking at some finances, looking at who spent what, where.
	Look, here's the truth, Megan.
	If this lawyer has millions of dollars in the bank and the 600,000 he's gotten so far is meaningless, well, you look at it in what way?
	If this lawyer was kind of a struggling guy and he had $50,000 in the bank and now he's got $600,000, well, then I think you look at it a very different way.
	And why did she appoint him?
	I mean, there's a degree of corruption there.
	That's a degree of political corruption.
	If I'm the judge, I want to see his resume.
	I want to ask him all the cases he's done.
	And then I won't prove him.
	Why did you pick him?
	The judge is not going to let her avoid this hearing.
	That's not happening.
	And even if by some miracle, she did manage to avoid it.
	She's going to be giving testimony.
	Jim Jordan just subpoenaed her from the U.S. House.
	There's a Georgia legislature looking into this as well.
	I can't remember if it's the State House or the Senate down there in Georgia.
	I think it's the Senate.
	So she's been subpoenaed by a couple of different entities.
	She's going to give testimony about this, and she's not going to be able to dodge.
	So we're going to get the full enchilada at some point soon.
	Biggest problem.
	I know you want to move on, but the biggest problem she's going to have is the lack of credentials of her lover to handle this particular case.
	Yeah.
	And yet he's getting paid more than the guy who has all the credentials in the world.
	Go ahead, Mark.
	Yeah, the judge, the judge doesn't make that determination and say, well, he then shouldn't be on the case.
	That's not for a judge to decide.
	That's for her to decide.
	Mark, it goes on to understand.
	I still believe in it, but it's a caution.
	It gives the image of impropriety.
	Just have someone else handle this case so we could stop all these rumblings.
	But it is relevant.
	It is relevant, Arthur, because it goes to the ethical violation.
	It's the same thing as Corey Bush being criminally investigated right now by the DOJ.
	It's part of the squad representative because they're saying you paid your husband.
	It looks like we haven't confirmed.
	This is what it's based on, but it sounds like you paid your husband all this money to provide security for you, even though he's not a licensed guard.
	He's not some security expert.
	And you paid him what we think is potentially above market rates.
	And that's not okay.
	You can't use funds like that to line the pockets of a lover or a family member.
	Same thing, Mark.
	So it is relevant, Mark.
	I'm going to disagree with you.
	It is relevant what his experience is.
	If he is a form of federal prosecutor, he's handled cases like this before.
	He's done five recoil cases.
	And you know what?
	It passes the smell test.
	But of all the lawyers in her office, which is a big office, all the lawyers in Georgia, he's the one who has no experience with Rico.
	And she picks, make at least, the case doesn't even start.
	We're not even in pre-trial hearings.
	He's made almost three quarters of a million dollars.
	I know you make a lot of money, but that's a lot of money.
	Great argument in the court of public opinion.
	It fails in a court of law.
	The judge is not going to take the extraordinary step of removing, even though there is the image of impropriety.
	Next.
	So we looked it up.
	This judge was appointed.
	Sounds like maybe there was a vacancy and he got appointed to the bench because he's now running for re-election to be re-elected to the position.
	He was appointed by the Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
	Don't know anything without further searching about this judge's personal politics, but that's, we did look it up and that's what we found.
	Okay, so we'll see.
	Fanny's trying to get out of testifying.
	Good luck, Sista.
	Not going to happen.
	Finishing up on Crumbly, I just, I do want to play some sound to the prosecutor because I thought the prosecutor made a pretty compelling argument to the jury.
	This is assistant prosecutor Mark Keist in trying to explain why Jennifer, the mother, is on trial.
	Like, why, why are we charging her?
	Take a listen to SAT six.
	They died on November the 30th of 2021.
	They weren't in a car crash.
	They weren't sick.
	They were murdered in an act of terror committed by Jennifer Krembley's 15-year-old son.
	Jennifer Kremley didn't pull the trigger that day, but she is responsible for those deaths.
	I mean, he's kind of putting it out there.
	In civil court, 51% preponderance of the evidence.
	Is it reasonably foreseeable?
	51%.
	Different story when you're holding parents accountable for criminal acts that were not known to her.
	Different story if he said a number of times, you know, mom, I'm going to kill some of these kids with this gun and she just didn't take him seriously.
	And he constantly talked about killing people.
	Then you start to get closer.
	But the text messages that he had were between him and his friend.
	And he told his friend how he had, he was hearing voices and he was this and that, paranoid and this and that.
	That was never shared with her.
	She didn't know it.
	You can't impute that.
	Okay, but it's still negligence, Mark.
	I know it's a different standard.
	Obviously, we all know between civil.
	We agree.
	We're done.
	But it's still negligence.
	It's criminal.
	It's negligence that's so severe.
	It rises to the level of criminality.
	And as opposed to being punished by money, you get punished by jail.
	I'm not saying that.
	One thing about this is it feels like a before and after moment for parents and in the school shooter realm.
	Like I'm all for holding parents accountable if they really do know and they don't do anything and they're negligent.
	And as a result, somebody dies.
	Really, there are cases that are very strong.
	I agree.
	This case may not be the one.
	So we'll see.
	We'll let the jury have the final say after they listen to everything.
	Alec Baldwin, guys, back in the news pleading not guilty after charges were revived against him in New Mexico for this shooting of Helena Hutchins, the cinematographer on the set of his movie Rust.
	He got charged and then they dropped him and then they brought him back and now he's entered a plea of not guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
	They say in a court TV write-up about this, the grand jury indictment provides the special prosecutors, because remember the main prosecutor got bounced for some reason, with two alternative standards for pursuing the felony charge against him.
	One would be based on the negligent use of a firearm.
	A second would be he'd be found guilty if they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused her death without due caution or circumspection, also defined as an act committed with total disregard or indifference for the safety of the life of others.
	That sounds like a difference between negligence and recklessness.
	So if it's just negligent use of a firearm, I mean, are they going to be able to prove that?
	Because look, the FBI, others are going to be able to say, you pulled the trigger.
	You pointed it at her.
	You pulled the trigger.
	That's how she died.
	I know you didn't know it was loaded, but you didn't check it.
	And that's industry standard.
	So I'll give you this first crack at this one, Arthur.
	Well, the FBI actually is the one who cleared him.
	It's the FBI, the initial first FBI report said that the gun could go off the way he said it did, which is like, I didn't even pull the trigger.
	And the new indictment is based on an Arizona company who went through the gun and said, no, no, no, no, you would have to pull the trigger.
	What he said immediately thereafter is actually a lie.
	And so that's what the indictment is based on.
	By the way, I think it's an interesting fact.
	The gun actually broke during the testing period of it all.
	But look, the three of us have covered hundreds of cases.
	It is so rare that there's like, there's charges, then there's no charges.
	Then there's an indictment, then there's no indictment.
	Now there's an indictment again.
	It really comes down to, in my opinion, the woman who is in charge of the handling of the gun and whether she lived up to her obligations, whether she has criminal negligence, because you can hate Alec Baldwin.
	No, there's not supposed to be a live round anywhere on that set.
	And that's not an actor's responsibility to figure out, oh, are there any live rounds?
	I mean, maybe now actors are doing that.
	I wouldn't blame them if they were doing it now, but that's not his role.
	That's not his job.
	He's trusting that the gun that they're giving him and the bullets that are in there are bent.
	Megan, let's change the facts for a second.
	Let's say the day of shooting, instead of using the gun that had been carefully selected for him, Alex said, and these are not the facts, but let's say he says, you know what, let's just use my gun.
	I want to use trusty, you know, trigger here.
	And he's not sure whether it's loaded.
	He thinks he emptied it.
	Maybe he didn't.
	And he pulls the trigger without even looking.
	Ah, culpable negligence.
	Alec, you should never have done that.
	When you hire someone whose sole purpose is to ensure that the gun is safe and that's handed to him, he is an actor on the set.
	He is no expert in guns.
	He's not supposed to know live rounds versus fake rounds.
	He hired someone to do that.
	This is not a close call.
	Putting aside anyone's disdain for Alec and his politics, putting aside what you feel about him as a person, this case should not be in criminal court.
	Take him to civil court and sue him for damages.
	And I don't even know if he, I don't even know if they win there, Mark.
	I don't even know if they're not.
	I'm not saying, listen, I'm not saying that winning.
	I'm not just saying take it out of criminal.
	That one would be basically negligence.
	But they already said that you have people all around you that you trust all the time.
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	But you're going to have testimony by top actors saying the standard of care in the industry is to check the gun yourself.
	Even if they hand it to you, the armorer or the first assistant director as here hands it and says, cold gun, the standard of care in the industry is you look yourself.
	That's a layer of protection that he failed to do.
	He'll deny it, but that's, you know, they clearly handle the guns.
	I mean, I'm just wondering, do you think Julia Roberts knows how to check a gun and see whether I'm not being facetious?
	No, she knows.
	I've been raising this point all along.
	Here's the thing.
	The bullets were, it's been a while since I've looked at this, but there are the live rounds, which are actual bullets that can shoot you and kill you, were not supposed to be in the gun.
	But then there's dummy rounds in there, which are basically like beauty guns.
	They're bullets.
	They're supposed to look just like a real bullet.
	It's supposed to look and fool an audience that it's a real bullet because you use them for like a Colt 45 where the audience can see the bullets and they have to look real.
	And there's the way the armorer tells them apart is to shake them.
	And one shakes a lot and one shakes very little.
	You know, you don't hear a sound.
	And that's how the gun expert tells.
	So, no, I think you're raising the good point.
	How is the actor supposed to go through this whole thing on the set by looking at the dummy rounds versus the real?
	This is why the charges are controversial.
	The actor is an expert on memorizing lines and knowing what side he looks good from and focusing on his body language.
	He's supposed to also be an expert in that moment.
Michelle Traconis Affair Allegations 00:06:02
	No, that's why they paid good money to that person.
	But they also say you don't point the gun at.
	anybody on a set, that it's not, you shouldn't have pointed directly at her.
	He denies he did it.
	Clearly, he did it because she got shot and she died.
	So, all right, let me pause it there.
	We have no clarity on the Alec Baldwin case, but I agree with you that that prosecution is by no means a done deal.
	More on the Nathan Wade, Fannie Willis thing.
	It's pouring in as reporters like Tamar Hellerman from the Atlantic Journal Constitution weighs in.
	In an affidavit included with the DA's filing, Nathan Wade, he's the alleged paramour, her special prosecutor she brought in, says he and Fanny Willis developed a personal relationship in 2022 after he was hired on the Trump case.
	Quote, no funds paid to me in compensation for my role as special prosecutor have been shared with or provided to D.A. Willis.
	Now, I'm sorry, but that seems like a sleight of hand because we know from, we think we know from the credit card records that were released in the divorce case that he bought Fannie Willis plane tickets to Miami.
	They went on a cruise together down to Aruba, that they went out to Napa together and he paid for those plane tickets.
	So money being fungible to me, the way I read this, Arthur, is he's trying to say, prove that I took my exact paycheck I got from Fanny and transferred it over to Fannie's plane tickets or Fannie's cruise tickets or, you know, gave her cash from that check.
	That's, that's not how this works.
	Maybe he's arguing she paid him back.
	I don't know what the, but we saw the receipts that he bought her and in one instance, his mother tickets on a lovely cruise and a lovely trip.
	They were all taken.
	In fact, two or three of them.
	I actually think the bigger question, the bigger point that he raises there, which I was, you're giving me breaking news right now.
	So I haven't had time to think about this.
	But if he's saying, well, she appointed me first and then we fell in love, you know, that may change the calculus a little bit.
	I want to know what was their relationship before she appointed him, because I do think that changes the, if I'm being absolutely candid and honest here, I think that changes the equation is they were lovers and then she appointed him versus he was a total stranger, that she heard he was a good trial lawyer.
	No, he wasn't a stranger.
	He was a mentor to her.
	He was on the bench for a short time with smaller cases, nothing big like a federal RICO or anything like that.
	But he was allegedly a mentor to her and she brought him in.
	Now, it's also the case that the day, I believe, let me try to get this right.
	The day after the divorce case was filed against his wife, or I think it was the day after the divorce case was filed, he got hired by Fannie Willis, which is kind of interesting.
	Well, okay, there's a little coordination there, that's for sure, because he was going to make a lot of money doing that.
	And I don't know how that would play out in the laws of the state of Georgia.
	Look, to me, this screams out for a hearing that has to be had.
	The judge just needs to hear the facts.
	Maybe Mark is right and nothing's going to happen, but it'll stink to high heaven if the judge just says, yeah, I got their papers.
	I believe them.
	Next, you know, let's just move on.
	That's not going to satisfy the public policy of transparency in a case of this magnitude, or quite frankly, any magnitude.
	I don't care if the guy was on trial.
	It's a defendant on trial for DWI.
	It's, you know, everyone, there's no one above the law.
	There's no one beneath the law.
	Let's find out what happened here and let the chips fall where they may.
	Yeah.
	Well, look, she's getting she will be giving testimony.
	I don't know whether it's in this court.
	I think it will be in this court and before the U.S. Congress, before the Georgia Senate, there's a few different bodies looking into Fannie Willis.
	It's not over.
	And the way it works in the laws, you don't get to just say that.
	You don't get to just say, oh, trust me, I didn't pay for any trips.
	We'll find out.
	You'll have to give that testimony under oath.
	And look, as an officer of the court, if that's a lie, he's already in trouble.
	So more to follow.
	All right, we got to pause there.
	We'll save Michelle Traconis for another day, the Connecticut woman who was alleged to have been in a love affair with this guy, Fotus Dulas, who was accused of killing his wife, Jennifer.
	One thing I want to say about that case, though, is what's alleged is that he was having this affair with a woman who's now on trial.
	She's on trial for helping him dispose of things that Jennifer Dulos was allegedly wearing the day of the murder.
	He will never be held to account because he took his own life by suicide.
	Jennifer Dulos, all this time, has been alleged to be missing by his defenders and even by Michelle Traconis' defenders saying, oh, she was having an affair she didn't know.
	You know, we don't know whether Jennifer's dead.
	She's been declared dead by a court.
	But the testimony we heard this week in this court has made clear beyond any doubt that Jennifer Dulos is dead.
	She was murdered.
	She was murdered by Fotus Dulos.
	And what they have produced to this jury includes her bloody clothing, her bra and her blouse, and a razor blade, all with her DNA on it, sliced right down the middle, other items of clothing that she was wearing.
	She's dead.
	She was killed by her husband.
	And this woman, Michelle Traconis, is on tape with him the night of the murders, disposing of those very items that I just ticked off for you.
	The prosecution in my case, in my view, is doing a very good job of proving to the jury she did work with him to cover it up.
	She lied for him repeatedly.
	She told the cops that she was with him that day and she wasn't.
	She later had to admit it.
	So we don't have time to get into the whole thing, but you guys tell me quickly before we go.
	Do you think she's going to be convicted in this case, given what you've seen?
	I'll go Mark and then Arthur.
	Here's the short version.
	Yes, and I didn't disagree with anything you just said.
Covering Up Murders on Tape 00:02:19
	The video just showed, you know, she originally said they were to get morning.
	This is an alibi list.
	Once they cross-examine her, not on trial, but the investigators, she gave it all up and said, well, no, that's not true.
	That's not true.
	So it looks like her hands are pretty dirty in terms of disposing of all this evidence and the conspiracy to murder.
	I mean, you know, you're involved.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	There's no question she's been lying from the start and she ought to be held to account.
	I certainly am rooting for a guilty plea, a guilty verdict in that case.
	Guys, you're the best.
	Martha strikes again.
	Loved talking to you both.
	Thank you for having us.
	I'm always a pleasure.
	Good to see you, Arthur.
	Bye, guys.
	Okay.
	Up next, we go in depth on the Alec Murdoch trial and what just happened in his push to get a new one with a former attorney general of South Carolina.
	I've been listening to this guy on a podcast of his own since this case began.
	He's very good.
	He's very knowledgeable, and he's going to explain what's happening.
	I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
	It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
	You can catch the Megan Kelly show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.
	Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
	You can stream the Megan Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are.
	No car required.
	I do it all the time.
	I love the SiriusXM app.
	It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.
	Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.
	Go to seriousxm.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free.
	That's seriousxm.com slash MK Show and get three months free.
	Offer details apply.
	Let's talk Alex Murdoch.
	Big update in that case this week.
	And we are joined today to discuss it by former Attorney General of South Carolina and co-host of the podcast called Murdoch Murders, Money and Mystery, Unsolved South Carolina, Charlie Condon.
	Welcome to the show, Charlie.
	It's a pleasure to meet you.
	Same here.
	Happy Friday, Megan.
	Oh, and I really enjoy the show.
Justice Toll and New Trial Bar 00:13:30
	I listened to the three of you throughout the whole trial and thought all of your analysis was terrific.
	So thank you for doing the podcast.
	I'm sure you're a busy man.
	So what happened this week in court was Judge Toll, who had been brought in to decide whether he should get a new trial or not, decided he's not getting one.
	And it was interesting because she set a very high bar for the defense to meet in order to get a new trial.
	She could have said, you just have to prove the court clerk interfered with the jurors.
	And if she had set that as the standard, they probably would have gotten a new trial.
	Or she could have said, no, the standard is interference, plus it mattered.
	Plus the jurors say, you know what, it actually did influence our verdict.
	And she decided to go with that much tougher standard.
	And still, the defense did a pretty good job of meeting it.
	I mean, you tell me, and she still said, nope, because things unfolded in a way on the stand that really kind of persuaded her.
	It wasn't quite enough.
	But were you stunned when Juror Z took the stand and testified, you know what?
	The court clerk did kind of say some things to me.
	And yeah, I did feel influenced.
	Wow, I'm really impressed that you have kept up with that closely.
	Your analysis is impressive.
	But hear me out on this because I was not surprised when Juror Z testified, she did say the magic word, so to speak, that, hey, what the clerk told me affected my verdict directly.
	But the defense went further, though.
	They then introduced her affidavit in which she said that the verdict was the product of being coerced by other jurors, not by information by the clerk.
	And Justice Toll, she's a very experienced judge and also a trial judge and has lots of legal experience.
	She then asked really the magic question at that point.
	And the question was this, is what you just said that you were pressured by other jurors more accurately reflect what you mean to say in effect?
	And she said yes.
	Questioning stopped.
	And so I think Justice Toll has a really good record to be upheld on appeal, regardless of whatever standard our Supreme Court applies in this case.
	Now, there is some dispute as to what the standard ought to be, but I thought when you, I sat there for the entire day, when you sat through the testimony and heard it firsthand, I do think that the record is good for Justice Toll to be upheld on appeal.
	Here's Justice Toll explaining why, notwithstanding the juror's testimony, that the court did say something to her, the clerk did say something to her that made her feel like, quote, he was already guilty before a verdict.
	The judge was going to say he doesn't get a new trial.
	Here it is in SOT 10.
	Take a listen.
	I simply do not believe that the authority of our South Carolina Court requires a new trial in a very lengthy trial such as this on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity influenced clerk of court.
	This is a matter within the discretion of the trial judge.
	And I am the trial judge at this moment.
	I do not feel that I abuse my discretion when I find the defendant's motion for a new trial on the factual record before me must be denied.
	And it is so ordered.
	So, Charlie, one of the things that people who are Johnny come lately to the case may not appreciate is truly the amount of evidence against Alec Murdoch.
	And it sounds like Judge Toll, though she wasn't the one who tried the case, was very well versed in the mountains of proof against this guy.
	Well said.
	A Himalayan mountain of evidence.
	I sat in that trial for six straight weeks.
	And Alec Murdoch would have to be the most unluckiest man in the universe not to have committed these murders.
	The evidence just came rolling in day after day after day.
	And he himself didn't help himself when he testified.
	So you're right.
	I think the backdrop to this, and Justice Toll did say that she read the entire record.
	And what also needs to be said is, of course, we had that one juror, Zura Z, that I think was the best defense witness.
	But there were 10 other jurors that testified on Monday and one that testified on Friday.
	And they were very clear in that their verdict was the product of only the evidence in court and nothing extraneous that the clerk may or may not have said.
	So it's a really strong case for the defense, I mean, for the prosecution.
	And I do think, again, they're going to do their best to get this reversal and appeal.
	And they may have another issue relative to the admission of financial crimes.
	But on appeal, I do think the record favors the prosecution.
	And I do expect the case to be affirmed.
	Dick Harpulian was one of the lawyers representing Alec Murdoch, and he got his chance to cross-examine court clerk Becky Hill.
	It was interesting because I listened to you guys on this podcast talk about Becky Hill.
	You've been around the South Carolina court system your adult life and people seemed to really like this woman.
	She was, you know, warm, sounds like a warm southern lady who is, you know, a charmer.
	And I, you correct me if I'm wrong, I heard some skepticism on the part of you and your colleagues when these allegations are first made that she may have interfered with the jury.
	And then the more you got to look at what she was alleged to have done and the investigations into her, allegedly working with her son, who was also employed by the court to spy on other court employees who may have been investigating her.
	And then, you know, the cross-examination that the judge did of her and of Harpulian, you guys realize, I mean, I sensed a change in you, Charlie.
	Like, whoa, okay.
	Maybe we misjudged Becky Hill.
	Well, says, I didn't know Becky Hill before the trial started, but having been there for six straight weeks, and she was really courteous, spent lots of time with her.
	I remember one lunch I had with her, which was delightful.
	And you just thought that she ran a really good courtroom and did a really good job.
	The case, which was a massive case for the small southern county, was just so well run.
	I just had the highest respect for her.
	But I must say, as the book came out, the plagiarism allegations and the cross-examination by the defense and by Justice Toll in particular, her credibility was shot.
	And you just have to think that some things that untoward went on.
	And we'll see where the future holds, what the future holds for her.
	I do think she could be the subject of some really serious criminal investigations now in light of her testimony.
	We had some investigations going on already.
	It's been a disappointment because, like you say, I did think the highest of her.
	And I do think she's really basically a nice lady at heart.
	But I think Justice Toll said it well when she said that the siren call of publicity caused her to do things that went on.
	I wish her the best going forward, but I do think that the issues that have been raised are really serious.
	Siren call of celebrity lured Becky Hill in.
	She was attracted by it.
	She wanted to write a book, said the judge, about the trial and made that clear.
	Here's a little of, well, I'll start with Justice Toll grilling Becky Hill on how she wanted a guilty verdict.
	Again, this woman is accused of interfering with the case, of going and saying to the jurors before they had deliberated, make sure you watch him and don't be fooled by the evidence presented by Alec Murdoch and his lawyers.
	Pay attention, like totally inappropriate if said.
	She denies it, but the judge, Justice Toll, knew that Becky Hill was not a truth teller.
	Take a listen to SOP 13.
	You wanted a guilty verdict because it would increase the sales of the book.
	Did you ever say that in an email or verbally or in any other way?
	No, ma'am, I did not.
	It didn't matter to me if it was guilty, not guilty, or a mistrial.
	Well, in your book, you suggest that the guilty verdict was what you wanted, and you were fearful that a guilty verdict would not be rendered.
	You say that a lot about your feeling about wanting a guilty verdict, do you not?
	I do agree that that is said in the book.
	This is way that you were describing a time way before the verdict was rendered when you wrote about those things in the book.
	Isn't that correct?
	It is, yes.
	And you even have something where you said your eyes met with jurors and others at Moselle, and y'all have an understanding, unspoken, that he was guilty.
	You said that in the book, did you not?
	I did say that in the book.
	Kudos to Justice Toll.
	Can I ask you, Charlie, Zoom out?
	Here's this, she seems so nice.
	You're, you know, you're a lawyer, so you got to have a level of skepticism about you, just as a natural person.
	I can relate.
	She seems like such a nice lady.
	Alec Murdoch, same.
	He was beloved.
	These guys were kings of South Carolina.
	And what we've learned over the past year plus, as we've watched this trial go, is be careful, be careful, you know, judging these books by their covers, because even though they can sweeten it up with a smile and the southern drawl, which I think we all kind of love as Americans, dig more, pay attention to the facts and not so much the affect, because you could be getting misled.
	Very astute point.
	I didn't know Alec Murdoch, but I knew his dad well.
	I knew his grandfather well.
	And so any thought that he would be involved in any criminal conduct, it wouldn't occur to me that that could have occurred.
	Same with Becky Hill.
	Again, I'm not saying she's guilty of anything.
	She's presumed innocent and hasn't been found guilty of any crimes.
	But when you watched her testify very directly that she didn't have anything, didn't have any motivation for the book, guilty verdict or not.
	And then her dear, she said it was her friend.
	Her friend, the clerk of Barnville County, then testified just shortly thereafter, the exact opposite.
	It was really disappointing.
	And I do think that you're right.
	You can't judge a book by its cover.
	It's necessary to look beyond that, particularly when it comes to important matters.
	So Alec Murdoch is going to go back to jail.
	He's back in jail now.
	He's already been convicted on the financial crimes for 27 years.
	And then this is a life sentence for him, double life sentences for the murder of his wife and his son.
	I agree with you, for all intents and purposes, it's done.
	I don't have any hope for his appellate chances, with all due respect to his lawyers, who are very good.
	And so what does this whole thing say to you now?
	I mean, this case has been the focus of the nation for years as the big reveal came out that, oh my God, it appears to have been Alec Murdoch.
	You know, no one knew at first.
	This pair is dead.
	My own impression from up here as a Yankee is the South Carolina courts and system did a very good job of trying this case.
	And there was the height of professionalism on both sides.
	Nothing's perfect.
	But this guy was running a fraud for a long time within his respective law firm.
	He was hurting a lot of people.
	There may have been allegedly more than one murder.
	That's all being investigated.
	So how do you see it now with some 2020 hindsight?
	Well, 2020 hindsight, very good question.
	It has surprised me that he was able to get away with this.
	I think the first fraud that he's testified or admitted was 2014.
	And when you looked at the number of people that he victimized and how he victimized them, it was apparent to me he couldn't have done alone.
	And of course, that turned out to be correct, that the banker had another lawyer involved.
	And so I do think has caused a lot of self-reflection among us in the legal system here in South Carolina.
	How can we stop this in the future?
	And I don't know if we have any sure way of stopping it other than to recognize that there's a trust element that has to go on with the legal system.
	We have to have procedures in place.
	Do not just simply sign off on something because somebody prominent is asking you to do that.
	I do think that might have happened in his case.
	But at the end of the day, I think it calls for everybody in the legal system, judges, lawyers, paralegals, corpses, you name it, be on guard for things that may be amiss and stop them as soon as you're aware of anything going wrong.
	What a crazy case.
	It's been absolutely riveting.
	And I'm glad she came to the right decision.
	We don't need to go through this again.
	And Becky Hill will be watching to see what happens with her.
	I'm still interested.
	I don't think it's going to end well for her either.
	Charlie, I want to invest in you and your colleagues.
	Thank you.
	I don't know if you caught that.
	By the way, the defense says they're going to name somebody that may have committed these murders in the near future.
	I don't think that will go anywhere, but stay tuned on the Murdoch case.
	Yeah.
	OJ's out there looking for the real murderers, too.
	All the best.
	See you soon, I hope.
	Thank you.
	And don't forget, folks, we'll be back on Monday with my pal, Paul Murray from Australia with an in-depth look at how they keep out millions of illegal immigrants trying to get across their borders.
	Why can't we do the same?
	Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:20 Bail Bonds and Court Returns
00:14:49 Fentanyl, Friends, and Foul Play
00:28:04 Eighty-Three Million Dollar Judgment
00:43:59 Damaged Reputation in Conservative Circles
00:48:30 Parental Clues and School Drawings
01:03:37 Controversial Indictment Rounds for Actor
01:14:49 Michelle Traconis Affair Allegations
01:20:52 Covering Up Murders on Tape
01:23:12 Justice Toll and New Trial Bar