The Trish Regan Show - BREAKING: Letitia James Facing DISBARMENT After EXPLOSIVE New Ethics Complaint for Fraud Allegations
Aired: 2025-05-04
Duration: 35:24


=== Letitia James Ethics Complaint (11:03) ===

[00:00:01]  Welcome to the program, everyone.
[00:00:02]  We got some big news breaking on Letitia James I want to get to, as well as this one.
[00:00:07]  It looks like Donald Trump is firing his first cabinet member, Mike Waltz, who was over at NSA National Security Advisor, is reportedly out.
[00:00:17]  This is over Signalgate.
[00:00:19]  I have a lot to share with you on all of that, but we begin here on Letitia James.
[00:00:24]  Letitia James in a lot of hot water.
[00:00:27]  I mean, we knew this day was coming, right?
[00:00:30]  It just took a little bit of due diligence.
[00:00:31]  Somebody went back a lot of years to get all the goods on her, and sure enough, there's a lot of them.
[00:00:36]  Okay, so they're filing now an ethics complaint against Letitia James.
[00:00:41]  This is a big deal.
[00:00:41]  This is America First Legal.
[00:00:43]  Yes, it is a conservative group.
[00:00:45]  Yes, it is Trump-leaning.
[00:00:47]  Yes, Stephen Miller started it, okay?
[00:00:49]  But it doesn't change the fact that they found some really interesting, important stuff.
[00:00:53]  And now they're bringing this forward here to the state of New York, saying we need to have an ethics investigation.
[00:01:01]  This is a big deal.
[00:01:01]  This is an ethics complaint against her because what she is allegedly possibly guilty of doing is actually really, really, really significant.
[00:01:11]  I mean, really significant because, you know, you're the attorney general.
[00:01:15]  You can't actually be telling people that you live in one state and that that's your primary residence and getting the benefits of the mortgage in that state while you live in another.
[00:01:27]  I mean, for goodness sakes, you were even thinking about running for governor at one point, weren't you, Leticia?
[00:01:32]  I mean, that doesn't really work to be telling everybody that your primary residence is in one location when in fact you live in New York.
[00:01:38]  So this is the new call right now to disbar Letitia James.
[00:01:43]  They are asking for an ethics investigation.
[00:01:46]  And I'm telling you guys, they're going to get it.
[00:01:47]  Take a look here.
[00:01:48]  You know, the part of this letter that they sent to the New York Bar Association shows that basically this William Pulte found that and has actually gone to one Pambondi and requested that Pambondi do an investigation as well.
[00:02:05]  So like there's going to be investigations up the wazoo.
[00:02:07]  They found that there was evidence that Ms. James. had falsified some bank documents and property records.
[00:02:13]  Oh, gosh darn it.
[00:02:14]  Doesn't that sound kind of familiar to what she accused Donald Trump of doing because he inflated some square footage, even though it was a private transaction?
[00:02:21]  This is different.
[00:02:21]  This is not a private transaction, right?
[00:02:23]  She's benefiting from government-backed assistance, loans, and more favorable loan terms while serving as the Attorney General for the state of New York.
[00:02:29]  Ms. James purchased a home in Norfolk, Virginia, and in the process declared that she intended to, quote, occupy this property as my principal residence.
[00:02:37]  I mean, think about it.
[00:02:39]  She's the AG in the state of New York, and yet she's saying, oh, I'm going to occupy this property as my principal residence.
[00:02:46]  she would have had to have been a full-time resident of Norwalk.
[00:02:50]  Norfolk, forgive me.
[00:02:52]  The obvious reason for making the certification would be to obtain a lower interest rate on the mortgage loan.
[00:02:58]  Additionally, on another occasion, Ms. James appears to have misrepresented the number of dwelling units in a multi-dwelling building that she owned.
[00:03:05]  She continued to misrepresent the number of dwelling units in subsequent years to obtain additional benefits to which she was not entitled, they write, including a mortgage refinancing through a federally backed lender at a lower rate than what would have typically been offered in the private market.
[00:03:22]  Okay, this is really bad.
[00:03:25]  Like her problems have just swollen to epic levels.
[00:03:29]  She's come out and she's trying to diffuse it a little bit.
[00:03:32]  I'm going to get to that.
[00:03:33]  But the America First legal team is saying, you know, first of all, what Mr. Pulte is showing is, or alleging, I should say, is that one, there's the issue of the primary residence, right?
[00:03:44]  She didn't live in Virginia, even though she was saying she lived in Virginia.
[00:03:47]  She lived, in fact, in New York.
[00:03:49]  And then they're also saying that she basically tried to falsify the number of dwelling units so that she could qualify for a certain federal housing program and benefit from that lower mortgage rate.
[00:04:03]  It's really bad, guys.
[00:04:04]  I mean, what do they say?
[00:04:05]  Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.
[00:04:10]  It's kind of amazing because she was going after Trump for something that was actually far less, again, because it was a private transaction.
[00:04:17]  But here they write, as the New York rules of professional conduct states, a lawyer is an officer of the legal system who has a duty to uphold the law and promote the administration of justice.
[00:04:28]  A lawyer should further the public's understanding, trust and confidence in the rule of law in the justice system, because in the constitutional democracy, legal institutions depend on the popular participation and support to maintain their authority.
[00:04:43]  I Mean further, the legal profession is largely self-governing.
[00:04:47]  So if you have a legal profession with people like Attorney General of New York Letitia James, that are willing to engage in fraud, This is what is being alleged.
[00:04:57]  And look, they get the documents to prove it.
[00:04:59]  She's out there saying, oh, it's four units instead of five.
[00:05:03]  And she's saying my primary residence is in Norfolk, Virginia, instead of in the state of New York where she's holding political office.
[00:05:12]  I mean, I think that pretty much sums it up and says it all, don't you?
[00:05:16]  I think this is going to be a serious problem.
[00:05:18]  I mean, this is a massive issue for Letitia and actually should result in her being disbarred because this is the kind of conduct that would get you disbarred.
[00:05:28]  In all seriousness, I mean, they have something here.
[00:05:31]  Fox outlined some of these allegations.
[00:05:33]  Let me go to this just recently.
[00:05:36]  James tried to prosecute the now president Trump in his second term.
[00:05:41]  I just want to read a couple things.
[00:05:42]  Criminal referral, then a response from James' office here in New York.
[00:05:46]  James, for both properties listed above, this deals with real estate now, going back decades really, appears to have falsified records in order to beat certain lending requirements and receive favorable loan terms.
[00:05:56]  All right.
[00:05:57]  Her office responded by saying the A.G. James is focused every single day on protecting New Yorkers.
[00:06:03]  Specialist administration weaponizes the federal government against the rule of law and the Constitution.
[00:06:07]  She will not be intimidated by bullies, no matter who they are.
[00:06:10]  The issue here is what property she owned and whether or not she owned it, whether or not she was married, and whether or not her father was involved in all this.
[00:06:17]  Without going into the weeds of the details, this stems from a case in 1983 and the year 2000.
[00:06:23]  That's a minimum of 25 years.
[00:06:27]  Someone had to do some digging to find this.
[00:06:30]  Am I right about that?
[00:06:30]  Yeah.
[00:06:31]  Bill, the most I know about the case, I just learned from you.
[00:06:35]  I saw it on Breaking News this morning.
[00:06:38]  This case was sent to us from Bill Pulte.
[00:06:41]  We have not seen it.
[00:06:42]  I inquired right before I walked out here.
[00:06:45]  No one in my office has read it yet.
[00:06:46]  We haven't looked at it.
[00:06:47]  Of course, we'll be reviewing it.
[00:06:49]  You just told me more than I've heard about it so far.
[00:06:52]  Hey, we aim to please with some breaking news of our own.
[00:06:54]  Indeed.
[00:06:55]  All right.
[00:06:56]  Attorney General Pam Bondi.
[00:06:57]  So Pam Bondi is pretty happy that they found this.
[00:07:01]  And yes, it required some due diligence.
[00:07:04]  And Letitia's going to say, oh, it's so political.
[00:07:06]  It's so political.
[00:07:07]  They're going after me because I went after him.
[00:07:09]  Well, you better believe it, honey bunny.
[00:07:11]  It is political.
[00:07:12]  And you went after him.
[00:07:13]  And like I said, those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.
[00:07:17]  You had to have known that you did some illegal stuff yourself, and yet you were willing to go after him.
[00:07:25]  She's trying to downplay this.
[00:07:26]  Oh, this is no big deal.
[00:07:27]  They're just going after me for political stuff.
[00:07:29]  She's with Chris Hayes.
[00:07:30]  I respond to these baseless allegations at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way, but I am 100% confident, confident that it will not result in any criminal indictment or action against me.
[00:07:47]  And that it is nothing more than a revenge tour, and that Donald Trump just ultimately got to the J's, and I was next.
[00:07:58]  The key allegation again, it sounds like you don't want to address them here, but I'm just going to put it out so people understand that a property that was owned in Virginia and a mortgage that you signed, if I'm not mistaken, for that property, that they say you falsely represented yourself as a resident of Virginia.
[00:08:17]  And that that was essentially amounts to mortgage fraud.
[00:08:20]  Since you're a resident of New York, what is your response to that?
[00:08:25]  It's baseless.
[00:08:26]  Everybody knows i'm a resident of New York, specifically Brooklyn.
[00:08:30]  Um, and again, we will respond at the appropriate time in the appropriate way.
[00:08:37]  Um, to these baseless allegations and some media outlets like the Daily NEWS over the weekend has indicated as much, okay, baseless allegations, really baseless.
[00:08:49]  They're all just political because You went after him and therefore now he's going after you.
[00:08:55]  You know, I remember when you thought that everything was just being reduced to politics, right?
[00:09:02]  You tried to tell us that you didn't campaign against him.
[00:09:07]  Oh, but it turned out you did, right?
[00:09:09]  Because there's this little thing called the internet and we got the tape.
[00:09:12]  We're going to roll it.
[00:09:14]  The president of the United States has complained that I'm engaging in some sort of political witch hunt, that I've got some personal vendetta against him, that I campaigned against him.
[00:09:23]  That is not true.
[00:09:24]  This illegitimate president who sits in the White House.
[00:09:29]  That president, because he's not my president, he's an illegitimate president.
[00:09:32]  His days are numbered.
[00:09:32]  His days are numbered.
[00:09:33]  We've got to get ready to mobilize and we've got to get ready to agitate and irritate until victory is won, but more importantly, until Trump is defeated.
[00:09:45]  We will all rise up.
[00:10:02]  Okay, okay, I won't torture you guys with more, but you get the impression, right?
[00:10:24]  She was extremely political despite saying, oh, this isn't politics.
[00:10:28]  And by the way, I don't think that Trump would.
[00:10:31]  Dispute that he's being political.
[00:10:34]  I mean, he's like, you came for me.
[00:10:35]  And well, it just so happens that some people may be coming for you, including Pambondi.
[00:10:42]  But, you know, Pambondi has to.
[00:10:43]  Like, you can't not act on this stuff, guys.
[00:10:46]  When you're hearing, for example, that somebody was, you know, residing in one place and yet applying for a loan that would provide them with a better interest rate courtesy of the federal government because they said they were living in another place, that's a problem.
[00:11:01]  Oh, and then there's the whole, you know, father on the original mortgage.

=== Pete Hegseth Replacement Talk (12:02) ===

[00:11:05]  who was listed as a husband allegation.
[00:11:08]  That just gets into like, I don't know, Ilhan Omar territory.
[00:11:11]  I'm sorry.
[00:11:12]  But I think she's got it coming to her.
[00:11:14]  I really do.
[00:11:15]  I think she's scared.
[00:11:16]  She's got it coming to her.
[00:11:18]  And it can't happen fast enough because I'm just going to tell you this.
[00:11:20]  You know what?
[00:11:21]  We can't have lawyers that are rabid political animals like Letitia James in the system that are, by the way, abusing the system allegedly for their own benefit so that they can get better mortgage rates.
[00:11:31]  And then they go out after Donald Trump.
[00:11:33]  By the way, not even the Court of Appeals thinks she has a case.
[00:11:36]  Remember when Judith Vail representing Letitia James? got out there in front of the judges and said before she got anything out of her mouth, got hit with a whole, we don't think you have a case here.
[00:11:48]  I'm still waiting on them.
[00:11:50]  Yeah.
[00:11:51]  They should have kicked this thing out by now, but I think somebody's using it as leverage.
[00:11:56]  Corruption, right?
[00:11:57]  We need to root out this corruption.
[00:11:58]  But anyway, let me take you back to the appellate court where they basically told the lawyer representing Tish James she was high.
[00:12:08]  May it please the court, Judith Vail for the New York Attorney General's Office.
[00:12:11]  All of the defendants repeatedly violated.
[00:12:13]  Ms. Vail, can you identify any previous case in which the Attorney General sued under Executive Law 6312 to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners where the supposed victim had the ability and legal obligation to discover?
[00:12:32]  The allegedly misrepresented matters by conducting its own due diligence, where the supposed wrongdoer advised the supposed victim through written disclaimers to conduct its own due diligence and to draw its own conclusions, where the alleged misrepresentation almost entirely concerned inherently subjective valuations of properties and businesses.
[00:12:54]  Yes.
[00:12:55]  And where the victim never complained about any fraud in the transactional losses from it.
[00:13:01]  Because I've gone through the cases which you've cited.
[00:13:03]  And all of them always involved the consumer protection aspect, it involved protection of the market.
[00:13:10]  Oh, several responses.
[00:13:11]  And I want to add to his question and little to no impact on the public marketplace.
[00:13:17]  Exactly.
[00:13:19]  Okay.
[00:13:20]  So, Letitia, good luck.
[00:13:21]  Good luck with all that.
[00:13:22]  I have a feeling you're going to be disbarred.
[00:13:25]  I have a feeling the penalties could even be more severe than that.
[00:13:30]  Another breaking story, breaking news we want to get to right now.
[00:13:33]  Mike Waltz is out.
[00:13:35]  This just coming to us, the report first coming from the Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump is firing Mike Waltz, national security advisor over the entire Signalgate thing.
[00:13:45]  Remember Signalgate in which you had all of those people discussing war plans?
[00:13:51]  Pete Hegseth has been tarred and feathered because he was sharing some of the information on what was going to be going down in terms of the schedule.
[00:13:58]  It was a successful operation, but nonetheless, the fact that it was on signal and a reporter was also mistakenly added to that signal chat now has Donald Trump moving.
[00:14:10]  And Mike Waltz is the first casualty in this.
[00:14:14]  He tried to explain what happened to Laura Ingram.
[00:14:17]  She was perplexed.
[00:14:18]  This is about a month ago saying, how could this happen?
[00:14:21]  How could you put the Atlantic reporter on the signal chat?
[00:14:25]  He took full responsibility.
[00:14:27]  Let's watch.
[00:14:28]  What staffer is responsible for this right now?
[00:14:31]  Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible.
[00:14:34]  And look, I take full responsibility.
[00:14:36]  I built the group.
[00:14:37]  My job is to make sure everything's coordinated.
[00:14:40]  But how did the numbers work?
[00:14:41]  I mean, I don't mean to be pedantic here, but how did the numbers work?
[00:14:43]  Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else's number there?
[00:14:49]  I don't know if you make those mistakes.
[00:14:50]  Right?
[00:14:50]  You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact.
[00:14:54]  So, of course, I didn't see this loser in the group.
[00:14:57]  It looked like someone else.
[00:14:58]  Now, whether he did it deliberately, Or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out.
[00:15:04]  So, your staffer did not put his contact information.
[00:15:09]  No, but how did it end up in the email?
[00:15:10]  Well, that's what we're trying to figure out.
[00:15:13]  Okay.
[00:15:13]  But that's a pretty big problem.
[00:15:15]  That is what, that's how we've got the best technical minds, right?
[00:15:18]  That's just the same.
[00:15:19]  And that's where, I mean, I'm sure everybody out there has had a contact where it was said one person and then a different phone number.
[00:15:26]  But you've never talked to him before, so how's the number on your phone?
[00:15:29]  I mean, I'm not an expert in any of this, but it's just curious how's the number on your phone?
[00:15:32]  Well, if you have somebody else's contact, And then it and then somehow it gets sucked in.
[00:15:37]  It gets sucked in.
[00:15:38]  Was there someone else supposed to be on the chat that wasn't on the chat that you thought?
[00:15:42]  So the person that I thought was on there was never on there.
[00:15:46]  It was who was that person?
[00:15:47]  Well, I'm not.
[00:15:48]  Look, Laura, I take responsibility.
[00:15:51]  I built the group.
[00:15:52]  Okay.
[00:15:53]  So that's that, but look, that's the part that we have to figure out.
[00:15:57]  And that's the part that we embarrassing, yes, but Pete and I are veterans, we know these operations.
[00:16:04]  He has been an excellent Secretary of Defense.
[00:16:08]  And this was an operation that, I mean, it amazes me.
[00:16:12]  I guess the Democrats were fine to leave all the sea lanes shut down, were fine to have destroyers fired on dozens of times by this terrorist group, and fine to have Iran keep supplying them missiles.
[00:16:23]  That was okay.
[00:16:24]  The president takes decisive action.
[00:16:26]  And now we're seeing some real success in taking down their air defenses, opening the sea lanes, taking out their leadership.
[00:16:32]  We don't want to talk about that.
[00:16:33]  We want to talk about this.
[00:16:35]  Wow.
[00:16:36]  Okay.
[00:16:36]  So this is a big deal.
[00:16:38]  He's going to be out.
[00:16:39]  I can tell you that he had already ruffled a few feathers within the administration prior to this.
[00:16:46]  Now, I realize the media has been going after Pete Hegseth and they're really targeting, like he is a target on his back.
[00:16:51]  And we'll get to that in a moment.
[00:16:54]  But in terms of most favored nation, right, within the White House itself, in terms of, you know, if this is a popularity contest, I'm telling you, Pete Hegseth is winning that all day.
[00:17:02]  Whereas Mike Waltz had run into some issues, including with even his staffers, because it was seen within the White House that many of his staffers didn't really appeal to the MAGA base and weren't exactly sort of part of the president's priorities in terms of national security.
[00:17:19]  Well, he's your national security advisor, so obviously you want people that are in line, shall we say.
[00:17:24]  He was also somewhat ideologically out of step with Donald Trump vis-a-vis Ukraine, vis-a-vis Iran, and he clashed with a lot of people within the White House.
[00:17:35]  And so all of this kind of was creating this bad blood.
[00:17:38]  Atmosphere and then you get this Doozy right and I don't know like.
[00:17:42]  I have a lot of questions about how the heck this happened.
[00:17:45]  Like how did how did the Goldberg from the Atlantic actually wind up on this?
[00:17:52]  And they conducted an investigation.
[00:17:53]  Apparently in the investigation is suggesting that it really was just human error and that Mike Waltz or his staff added Jeffrey Goldberg to the thing.
[00:18:02]  So that's a little again you're like lacking trust, right?
[00:18:05]  If you already have some suspicions about the staff, if you already have some suspicions that Mike Waltz is not necessarily on board with you or is in sync with you on national security issues, then this is what is going to happen.
[00:18:17]  So now there's talk of who's going to come in.
[00:18:21]  We'll see.
[00:18:21]  We can get to that chapter, I guess, in time, because this is actually just being reported.
[00:18:28]  Donald Trump has made the decision to fire Mike Waltz.
[00:18:34]  I'm not sure why he's not being afforded the opportunity to resign, but maybe they're trying to send a message here.
[00:18:40]  This is a big deal.
[00:18:41]  I mean, he's only been in office about 100 days.
[00:18:44]  This is the first cabinet member to go.
[00:18:46]  Of course, he did fire the NSA chief, but this was his pick.
[00:18:48]  Like Mike Waltz was his pick, and he's abandoning his pick pretty soon into this.
[00:18:54]  But again, as I say, if you've got a popularity contest going on, Mike was not going to win that.
[00:19:00]  Pete Hegseth is somebody the president trusts.
[00:19:02]  Pete Hegseth has been by his side for years, years.
[00:19:07]  And he knows that Pete is loyal.
[00:19:08]  He trusts Pete.
[00:19:09]  And so when the media is coming for Pete, he's like, what are you talking about?
[00:19:12]  This happened just recently.
[00:19:15]  As the interview he just did with ABC News, where the ABC News reporter, who was basically humiliated in the whole thing, it was actually kind of funny.
[00:19:21]  We talked about that yesterday, went after Pete, remember?
[00:19:24]  One question about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
[00:19:28]  There's a lot of turmoil at the Pentagon right now.
[00:19:32]  There's the signal chat with his wife on it, where he's discussing that attack in Yemen.
[00:19:35]  There's another signal chat discussing the attack on Yemen.
[00:19:38]  There's a reporter accidentally involved.
[00:19:40]  You said the other day that you had a talk with the secretary.
[00:19:44]  Did you take him to the woodshed?
[00:19:46]  I had a talk with him.
[00:19:48]  Whatever I said, I probably wouldn't be inclined to tell you.
[00:19:53]  But we had a good talk.
[00:19:55]  He's a talented guy.
[00:19:56]  He's young, smart, highly educated.
[00:20:00]  And I think he's going to be a very good defense, hopefully, a great defense secretary.
[00:20:05]  But he'll be a very good defense secretary.
[00:20:07]  You have 100% confidence in this interview.
[00:20:09]  I don't have 100% confidence in anything.
[00:20:12]  Okay?
[00:20:13]  Anything.
[00:20:13]  Do I have 100%?
[00:20:14]  It's a stupid question.
[00:20:16]  Look.
[00:20:17]  It's pretty important for you.
[00:20:18]  I have.
[00:20:19]  No, no, no.
[00:20:20]  You don't have 100%.
[00:20:21]  Only a liar would say, I have 100% confidence.
[00:20:25]  I don't have 100% confidence that we're going to finish this interview.
[00:20:28]  We will.
[00:20:32]  Funny.
[00:20:32]  No, that should have been the opportunity to get up and walk out and say, yeah, no, actually, we're not.
[00:20:38]  Anyway, this is. interesting in that don't forget Laura Loomer, right?
[00:20:43]  Laura Loomer went down to the White House a few weeks ago.
[00:20:46]  She's kind of a conservative activist that's popular on Twitter.
[00:20:51]  And she met with the president and she questioned the loyalty of some of the people around him.
[00:20:57]  I don't know if Mike Waltz was one of the people that she was questioning.
[00:21:02]  Entirely possible.
[00:21:03]  Because again, as I just told you, I think that within the White House circle, within the MAGA base circle, Mike, Waltz was not seen as very much as in sync.
[00:21:13]  He was kind of viewed as a little bit more of like a neocon type.
[00:21:17]  And so it is entirely possible that she may have put, you know, something in his ear suggesting that Mike was not the loyal soldier that he needed.
[00:21:27]  I don't think there's any doubt that Pete is absolutely loyal.
[00:21:30]  So he doesn't worry about Pete in that sense.
[00:21:33]  He may worry about him in just that, you know, it's a big job for a young guy who was just on TV, you know, a few weeks ago.
[00:21:39]  And now suddenly you're running the Pentagon.
[00:21:40]  And that's that's kind of a change of pace.
[00:21:44]  But in terms of Waltz, there were questions about whether or not he was completely in step and in sync with what the president wanted.
[00:21:52]  So you have to wonder if that's coming into play.
[00:21:54]  And so he's a little less willing, shall we say, the president is, to forgive and forget when you do things that are going to be costly.
[00:22:01]  I mean, it's one thing to add Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic, but what if he had added like somebody that could have actually jeopardized that entire operation?
[00:22:10]  If I'm Pete and the president is talking to me, don't forget, they just had a meeting the other day.
[00:22:14]  If I'm Pete and the president is talking to me about, you know, you got to do better.
[00:22:18]  You can't be on signal.
[00:22:19]  You can't be talking to your wife and your brother and this and that.
[00:22:22]  The media is going to come for you.
[00:22:23]  Pete may have fired back with, well, you know, Mike Waltz is the one who put Jeffrey Goldberg on this thing.
[00:22:30]  And what kind of sort of mistake was that?
[00:22:34]  Like that was kind of a real like no-go zone.
[00:22:37]  So I think he's been losing status up until this moment.
[00:22:43]  And you need to have somebody in place at national security that that can that can actually do the job and that has the trust and backing of the President of the United States.
[00:22:53]  Laura Loomer may have done some damage in that we know a bunch of NSC folks were ousted.
[00:22:59]  These were some of the staffers that Mike Waltz had put in.
[00:23:03]  Mike Waltz survived that round, but now he is gone.

=== Elon Musk Legal Costs (09:42) ===

[00:23:07]  So major, major development.
[00:23:10]  And it probably had to happen.
[00:23:12]  Listen, it had to happen, right?
[00:23:13]  Like if somebody screws up that badly and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and think, oh, maybe it was hacking, whatever.
[00:23:18]  And I've talked about that.
[00:23:20]  But they did the investigation and they're coming back to the reality that, no, somebody just slipped up and we can't tolerate that.
[00:23:30]  So there you have it.
[00:23:31]  Mike Waltz done after 101 days, 102 days.
[00:23:36]  You know who else is done?
[00:23:39]  Elon Musk is getting out of the White House.
[00:23:42]  He's still involved.
[00:23:43]  He's still got his Doge team there on the ground, but he is out.
[00:23:47]  And it's in part because take a look at the first quarter earnings.
[00:23:50]  They were down 71% there for Tesla.
[00:23:52]  I mean, he's got a company to run.
[00:23:53]  Thank you very much.
[00:23:55]  People had talked about him leaving at some point.
[00:23:57]  The president even communicated this.
[00:23:59]  That got leaked, by the way.
[00:24:00]  That was not great.
[00:24:01]  But this was out there.
[00:24:03]  He said he'd stay for the first 100 days and then he'd go back to business.
[00:24:07]  Well, the board of directors really wanted him to go back to business.
[00:24:11]  They've actually, according to the Wall Street Journal that had this story exclusively, been looking for a replacement.
[00:24:18]  They were looking for a replacement because check out the stock price.
[00:24:21]  Okay, you see there, I've got it up on the screen.
[00:24:24]  You see exactly when he started Doge and then you see it sink.
[00:24:28]  Because Elon's like all in, right?
[00:24:29]  Whatever he does, it's like a thousand percent of him.
[00:24:33]  And so when he started Doge, he was absolutely a thousand percent about Doge.
[00:24:37]  Even when he was campaigning for Donald Trump, he campaigned.
[00:24:40]  I mean, he really put his heart and soul in it.
[00:24:42]  And we love him for that, right?
[00:24:43]  I mean, he's brilliant.
[00:24:45]  He's a genius.
[00:24:46]  We wouldn't even have an electric vehicle industry.
[00:24:48]  Thank you very much that the left loves so much if it weren't for Elon Musk.
[00:24:52]  We're sending people up into space because of Elon Musk.
[00:24:56]  We're probably going to be colonizing Mars.
[00:24:58]  Because of Elon Musk.
[00:24:59]  I mean the guy is brilliant.
[00:25:00]  He's great and I think he thought he could really make a difference in a super positive way and he did and he his legacy is going to continue to live on and he's still going to have a role there But look they want him back at Tesla He was sleeping on the factory floor, right?
[00:25:16]  He's super involved.
[00:25:17]  He micromanages people say But that's not all bad, especially when you're trying to excite people about doing something really really really different according to the Wall Street Journal.
[00:25:30]  They write Early last year, after some two decades of running Tesla, however, Musk had confided to someone close to him in late night texts that he was frustrated to still be working nonstop at the company.
[00:25:44]  As I said, sleeping on the company floor, especially after a Delaware judge struck down his multi-billion dollar pay package.
[00:25:51]  Do you guys remember that?
[00:25:52]  That was like amazing to me.
[00:25:56]  Here's this guy who's working for nothing.
[00:25:58]  Like he doesn't even take a salary.
[00:25:59]  And he said, okay, well, I'll just be compensated in stock.
[00:26:04]  And if I do a good job, I'll get more stock.
[00:26:07]  Well, he did a good job.
[00:26:09]  And so guess what happened?
[00:26:10]  The stock price went up, which meant before you knew it, he was owed $56 billion, $55.8.
[00:26:20]  It was a pay package that was approved by the board of directors at Tesla.
[00:26:25]  He was taking no money.
[00:26:26]  He's sleeping on the company floor.
[00:26:28]  And he's like, listen, I don't want anything.
[00:26:30]  I just want to get paid in stock.
[00:26:32]  So if this company does well, I get a portion of it.
[00:26:34]  It's his company that he built and he's working for.
[00:26:39]  But you know what?
[00:26:40]  A judge, a judge said, nope, we're not going to allow that.
[00:26:45]  That's a Delaware court judge.
[00:26:46]  It was mind-boggling to me and obviously mind-boggling to Elon so much so that Elon hightailed it, said, who the heck would want to register their corporation in the state of Delaware?
[00:26:56]  I'm moving to Texas.
[00:26:57]  Thank you very much.
[00:26:58]  And he re-registered his corporation in Texas.
[00:27:00]  But you know what really got me in that whole story?
[00:27:02]  It was amazing.
[00:27:03]  The lawyers.
[00:27:04]  that brought the suit.
[00:27:06]  You know how much money they wanted to get?
[00:27:09]  $6 billion.
[00:27:10]  Ladies and gentlemen, they didn't build a company.
[00:27:14]  They didn't sleep on the company floor.
[00:27:15]  They didn't have anything to do with the success of the EV industry or what Tesla had become.
[00:27:20]  And yet, because the guy who created the company said, I'm not going to take a salary.
[00:27:25]  I'll be paid in stock.
[00:27:26]  If the company does well, I do well.
[00:27:28]  Because the company did really well, they sued saying that this was just egregious and it was too much money.
[00:27:35]  And you know what?
[00:27:37]  They wanted $6 billion for their time.
[00:27:40]  To take it away from the guy who's creating this, they create nothing.
[00:27:47]  Zip, zero, nada.
[00:27:49]  All they create are a whole bunch of headaches, and yet they want to go in there and collect some $6 billion.
[00:27:54]  I mean, I think it wound up being somewhere around $345 million because the judge said, yeah, you know, that might be a little too much.
[00:28:00]  You think it's a little too much?
[00:28:02]  You know what this tells you?
[00:28:03]  It tells you, we need some tort reform.
[00:28:05]  We need some tort reform fast because think about it.
[00:28:08]  If you're going to have lawyers that are so greedy, they're going to get in there to get their fair share for themselves.
[00:28:18]  I mean, it's not like shareholders would have benefited from that.
[00:28:21]  It would have been the lawyers pocketing the $6 billion.
[00:28:24]  You know what would have happened to the company?
[00:28:25]  I mean, it is happening to the company.
[00:28:27]  It's losing Elon Musk.
[00:28:28]  It's losing the guy that is the visionary because he's sitting there going, well, if I can't get paid because I got these lawyers doing crazy things, then what is it all worth?
[00:28:37]  This is an example, shall we say, of tort reform going or needed because this kind of legal insanity is costing our economy overall, costing our economy.
[00:28:50]  And I've been thinking about it a lot, not just in terms of Elon, because that was an amazing story and just disgusting to me that these lawyers wanted so much money.
[00:29:00]  But you think about what the drain is on society in general, right?
[00:29:03]  You've got lawyers out there doing everything they can, the ambulance chancellors, everything, the guys that are going after people like Elon just trying to create a great company.
[00:29:12]  And those frivolous suits are resulting in 443. billion per year in cost to the American consumer.
[00:29:20]  Who needs that?
[00:29:21]  I mean, if you drill down, you look at, say, car insurance, the premiums have gone up by $300.
[00:29:27]  Why?
[00:29:28]  Oh, because of these frivolous lawsuits.
[00:29:32]  You have hospital visits that cost roughly $650 more than they did the previous year due in part to the legal system abuse, which is driving up liability and defensive practices.
[00:29:42]  I mean, this is happening everywhere.
[00:29:44]  And we got to get a handle on this.
[00:29:45]  Like somebody actually has to step in.
[00:29:47]  I mean, Donald Trump's out there trying to lower health care costs, right?
[00:29:50]  Well, Have you thought about this?
[00:29:53]  I mean, think about the malpractice suits and the amount of money that one has to spend in settlements, $4 to $5 billion a year, not to mention all the insurance costs, right?
[00:30:02]  You're looking at malpractice insurance costs for these hospitals of $10 to $15 billion.
[00:30:06]  Your career can be ruined, right?
[00:30:09]  If you have one of these, even if it's a frivolous claim and you're a doctor and you get one of these frivolous claims against you, God forbid you get two of them, I mean, it could be lights out for you and your profession and your career.
[00:30:20]  And so I'm not adverse.
[00:30:22]  to giving consumers a stand in all this, right?
[00:30:26]  Like you ought to be able to sue somebody if something goes really, really wrong.
[00:30:30]  But you've got people suing things that are not going really wrong.
[00:30:34]  Like it is just complete bedlam.
[00:30:36]  Elon's one example on the shareholder lawsuits.
[00:30:39]  And then you get all the malpractice suits where so many of them are just ridiculous and they're costing our healthcare so much.
[00:30:47]  Do you know that the U.S., the U.S. of A, has the highest tort cost per capita of any developing country in the world?
[00:30:56]  I once asked my cousin who's married to a woman from South Korea about the health insurance industry and just health and healthcare in general in South Korea.
[00:31:06]  He spent a lot of time living over there.
[00:31:07]  By the way, they have like a superstar daughter who became the youngest.
[00:31:12]  She's half American, half South Korean.
[00:31:13]  I'm so proud of her.
[00:31:14]  She's my little cousin, Casey Fair.
[00:31:16]  She became the youngest player to ever play in the World Cup.
[00:31:21]  I think she was like barely 16 years old.
[00:31:23]  This was just last year.
[00:31:24]  And now she plays out in LA for a professional team.
[00:31:26]  She went pro.
[00:31:27]  She's amazing, like totally, totally, totally amazing.
[00:31:30]  My cousin's a former soccer player too.
[00:31:31]  Not at that level.
[00:31:32]  But anyway, he and I, we love to talk about some of these things.
[00:31:36]  And like I am someone who loves to look around the globe and look at sort of case studies that are out there.
[00:31:41]  And the South Korea example is really interesting to me because you know what they do?
[00:31:45]  They limit the crazy lawsuits.
[00:31:48]  They're like, okay, you know what?
[00:31:49]  Like we have to, we have to get a handle on this.
[00:31:52]  And so they made the decision that they could help bring down health care costs by having a system that didn't sort of reward all these crazy lawyers.
[00:32:02]  For example, you can't get a jury case because those are very, very emotional, right?
[00:32:06]  Like you get a jury case and that tends to have these crazy awards amounted because people feel, obviously, you know, but you have to, like for the greater good of the system, at some point say, all right, we're going to do something that is reasonable but not excessive.
[00:32:21]  And I'm not saying we go the path of South Korea, which, by the way, is a different legal system than us, but I am saying it's time to wake up and realize these costs, what they're costing society.
[00:32:34]  And you have to think about it even in the context of what was going on with Elon Musk, because Elon's looking at it saying, why the heck do I want to work for this company, right?
[00:32:43]  Why do I want to work for this company that I'm building?
[00:32:46]  And by the way, I'm kind of the only guy that can do it when they're not even going to pay me.

=== New Demands and Warrants (02:33) ===

[00:32:50]  I'm sleeping on the floor.
[00:32:52]  He's telling a friend, like maybe I should be doing something else with my life.
[00:32:56]  Yeah, you know what?
[00:32:57]  That's what these crazy lawyers are costing us.
[00:33:02]  They're costing us all the creativity and the work ethic and the engine that makes America, right?
[00:33:08]  So to preserve capitalism in this case, I think we've got to do something about that.
[00:33:13]  That's my little soapbox for the day, shall we say.
[00:33:16]  I would also say we want to get to this big story.
[00:33:20]  There are new demands being made of illegals that, or I should say new demands being made on ICE of illegals.
[00:33:30]  We've been talking about this.
[00:33:31]  I think this is going to heat up in a massive way.
[00:33:34]  So I want you to keep an eye on this story.
[00:33:36]  This is that Jennifer Thurston.
[00:33:37]  She temporarily blocked border control agents from making warrantless arrests.
[00:33:41]  of suspected illegal migrants without probable cause before a warrant is obtained.
[00:33:48]  So she's saying if you want to go after them, you have to have a warrant.
[00:33:51]  They're arguing back that that's not really something that's possible.
[00:33:55]  It's not possible because guess what?
[00:33:58]  Guess what?
[00:34:00]  In many cases, they flee, right?
[00:34:03]  You believe they're involved in a criminal activity.
[00:34:06]  You don't have a warrant.
[00:34:07]  And guess what?
[00:34:07]  They're gone by the time you can get them.
[00:34:10]  So this is, it's all turning into kind of a really nasty legal battle as we discuss some of these legal issues.
[00:34:16]  I got to tell you, we have much more to get to and we will do more on the show tomorrow.
[00:34:21]  I want to remind you as we look at a market right now that is trading higher, we actually are up.
[00:34:26]  This is the wrong lower third.
[00:34:30]  They do fear a slowing economy, though.
[00:34:31]  We can leave it there.
[00:34:32]  76research.com, the company I own and have created really for you guys because I want you to have the best in class access to financial research.
[00:34:40]  I want you to go over there, check it out.
[00:34:42]  There are a lot of fears right now, but I'm going to tell you the fears are misguided.
[00:34:46]  I think that we're righting the ship, so to speak.
[00:34:49]  Besson's out there doing deal after deal after deal.
[00:34:52]  Donald Trump is very open to deal, so we're going to get a lot of tariff deals.
[00:34:55]  I don't think the tariffs are going to be as painful as some in the left-wing media would like you to believe.
[00:35:00]  So I stay optimistic in this environment.
[00:35:02]  Go check out 76.
[00:35:04]  Thank you for all being here.
[00:35:07]  I know it's an earlier day.
[00:35:09]  Leslie, I saw your comments there.
[00:35:11]  We are here earlier, but you know what?
[00:35:14]  I had to bring you that news on Mike Waltz.
[00:35:16]  Cat Crazy, you made it as well.
[00:35:18]  Mike Costa.
[00:35:18]  Wow, guys.
[00:35:19]  Impressive, impressive.
[00:35:21]  I didn't even give you much of a heads up.
[00:35:23]  Thanks for being here.
[00:35:23]  We're going to talk tomorrow.