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Jan. 17, 2025 - Viva & Barnes

01:32:36

TOO MANY LAWYERS! Friday Afternoon Law Panel Co-Stream! Viva Frei & Gang!

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	Audience to get involved.
	I am not a lawyer here, and I don't know necessarily what is going to be a great popular subject.
	So what I am looking to do, and I'm exploring, whether it be software, surveys, forms, whatever, pulling the subjects through email.
	Try to find a way where people can vote on topics as well, and then they can flow up or down according to popularity or desire of people to do them.
	Hundley, why am I not live on my channels?
	We should be co-streaming this.
	I show Ron's live.
	Last week, I wasn't able last week also.
	Well, you're live on your channel, Ron.
	So this is how I am.
	I'm pleasantly surprised.
	I'm not live, but I didn't try.
	I tried it twice now.
	I see a bunch of links going across the top.
	This is not something you really...
	This is the first time I've co-streamed, but I'm looking to see...
	If anybody is watching this, please comment.
	Thank you.
	It took a little time to refresh, and let's just see if we're live on Rumbles.
	Good! Okay, it took a little while.
	All right, interrupt me in this moment.
	Cool. So I wanted to put it out there, and if anybody knows of a good tool or something that can be shown on the web and that people can vote on or what have you, please let me know.
	If they have story ideas, in the description there should be a form that people can, you know, fill out and submit story ideas, whatever it is.
	But I want to try to crowdsource some of this, if at all possible, both for myself and also for the lawyers, because some lawyers may be more interested or less interested in topics.
	My only thought would that this would be a good opportunity to maybe customize a basic website, which would allow people to submit that and then pin it at the top of your Twitter, pin it on your YouTube and things like that.
	I think that's going to be maybe the best way to aggregate those sort of things.
	But just like today...
	You know, you and I were messaging back and forth about what the topic might be that we're going to talk about today, and then all of a sudden the TikTok decision hit.
	Well, if news breaks, news breaks.
	And that's what we're going to be going on.
	But I do think that it is a matter of a little bit more ahead of time.
	But I personally don't have the knowledge or bandwidth to come up with it on my own.
	That's just the reality of it.
	So I wanted to put it out there to everybody right at the jump of the show.
	And, you know, I defer to all of you.
	You guys are far smarter than me.
	Obviously, the lawyers are, but the audience, everybody's smarter than me.
	So I do appreciate that.
	So let's go ahead and jump in to the topic of the moment, which is kind of a big deal, and that's TikTok.
	And the Supreme Court...
	Again, this is my layman opinion, but it seems like they actually literally probably made the right decision, but they have refused to intervene with Congress's law that's banning TikTok.
	Any thoughts on that?
	Well, I think they came to the right conclusion.
	I read through the opinion and the concurring opinions, by the way.
	There was no dissenting opinion, so everyone agreed.
	That Congress had this authority because it was a neutral content statute.
	Basically, they weren't targeting a particular person or a type of speech, and they had a legitimate government interest for doing it.
	And in fact, I thought it was good in the opinion.
	They actually cited to a noise ordinance law, and they said that's...
	Constitutional, because it has nothing to do with the speech or who the speaker is, but it says, you know, after a certain amount of time in the day, you can't be so loud with a loudspeaker.
	And that's the same sort of thing here, that if there's a legitimate government reason for it, then it gets the lesser scrutiny, not the strict scrutiny.
	And then they applied it to the national security reasons, and I thought it was a well-reasoned opinion.
	And even the concurring justices that said, well, I have some doubts.
	I think it should have been higher.
	But still, at the end of the day, we concur with the outcome.
	So it was actually shorter than I thought it was going to be.
	I think it was 19 pages for the whole opinion.
	But it was...
	It's a good read and well-reasoned from my end.
	Kurt always said, or was it Joe?
	I can't remember.
	Somebody always said, when you're talking about national security and the border, that is the strongest position that the government has.
	I haven't read the decision, but my issue or concern with it is that when you say it was platform neutral or content neutral, it was literally specifically targeting one company in particular.
	And so if it were national security issue, then it would be broader and not basically, I don't know if it's a bill of attainder would be the right word, but how do they work around the fact that it was specifically targeting one company on the basis of, if it's national security, on the basis of what other laws already exist to protect? So the court specifically said that it doesn't name TikTok, but by action, it affects TikTok stronger or more on the nose than any other company.
	So it did take that into consideration and gave it the mid-tier scrutiny because of that, but because of the way the language was written and because of basically admissions by TikTok that, yes, we don't share the information, but we could if we're compelled to by China and we're gathering this very specific information, The court said, like...
	Just because it affects one company or one person more so than others doesn't mean that it's not facially neutral or not unconstitutional.
	So that was the approach that they took with regard to that.
	Now, again, because this is my layman's terms, is the basis of this, and I think, Ron, you've been in front of the Supreme Court, so I'd definitely love to hear from you, a case of...
	What Congress did technically is not unconstitutional, therefore the Supreme Court's not going to jump in?
	I'm not sure I understand your question.
	How would that be different from every other?
	Okay, well, I mean, this isn't like an executive order or something that came down.
	This is actually Congress.
	They wrote a law.
	It's their department.
	Their department is to write laws.
	And the Supreme Court said, hey, Congress wrote a law, and it's not really unconstitutional.
	Right, and there's no constitutional problem with it, and therefore the law...
	I mean, in fact, my case in front of the Supreme Court was, hey, there's a law.
	It's an old law.
	But under constitutional doctrine, as we understand it now, is it under constitutional?
	Supreme Court says, yes, it is.
	You've got to pull this part out.
	And therefore, that part of the statute was deemed constitutional.
	Here, the Supreme Court said, as everyone listening to oral argument, I'm sure, expected they would say.
	This is okay.
	So if we can give sort of a summary, when a law is being challenged on constitutional grounds, in this case it was First Amendment grounds, the court has to look at it and first say, does it actually invoke a restriction on your First Amendment right?
	The court looked at this and said, yes, it does, because it involves communication of speech.
	But then the question then turns to, Are we going to presume that it's unconstitutional and then the government has to prove that it is, which is sort of the scrutiny standard?
	Or are we going to use a lesser tier?
	And the court has, throughout the years, developed sort of an analysis that if it is factually neutral, meaning we're not targeting a particular type of speech, a particular word, a particular argument, or a particular person or entity, then we're going to call it neutral.
	And if it's neutral...
	Then we're going to take a look at this with a little bit lower of a threshold.
	Even a neutral law, though, could be considered unconstitutional if its effect disproportionately impacts one individual or type of individual.
	But the court in this case, as I addressed earlier, determined that it doesn't.
	It just happened to affect TikTok more so.
	It'd be the same thing if Facebook had an agreement with...
	Another government entity to share data or potentially share data.
	The government would then have a compelling interest to step in.
	So it just happened to affect TikTok in a particular way because of who owns them.
	Now, by the way, just because we are cross-streaming and some people might not know who everyone is here on my side of the aisle.
	I think they do.
	But Ron, MLS, just before I follow up with my question, I think everybody knows you on my end, Ron, right?
	MLS, you might be the one who people might not have yet met.
	That could be.
	I'm Ron Coleman.
	I'm a lawyer in New Jersey.
	I used to do a blog when there was blogging, and I'm very active on X, and I do a lot of free speech law and constitutional law, and I'm a really funny Jewish guy.
	You're the only guy on the internet that makes GIFs of his own reactions that I know of yet.
	You know, and it's not because...
	I mean, I can do it because I'm an actor.
	But it's not because of vanity that I do it.
	I do it because I realized I was using GIFs from podcasts and shows that I had never seen.
	So on the one hand, I didn't know necessarily what all the associations are.
	And secondly, I realized, why are there...
	Expressions any better than mine.
	Now, there are some that are really, really famous, so I know what they are.
	But then I really started having fun with it.
	Yes, the Ron Coleman collection of GIFs.
	And one of the privileges people get if they subscribe to me on my YouTube channel is, at the highest level, I will make a GIF for you at your request.
	But that's the real thing about me.
	And I am Attorney David Helm.
	I am a practicing attorney out of Michigan.
	And I have a YouTube channel as well.
	I'm active probably more so on Facebook than X. But my claim to fame is that Viva read one of my opinions or the judge's opinion on one of my cases back in 2020 when I sued Whitmer over the COVID.
	Sorry. So that's my history.
	What kind of law, David?
	I call myself a litigator.
	I do a lot of commercial litigation as well as some criminal defense and family law.
	But I take about anything that takes you into the courtroom because I like the courtroom dynamics in the argument.
	You're a trial lawyer.
	This was before we even knew each other existed.
	Did you win or did you lose in that decision?
	No, I lost.
	And you argued, or you had pulled up the Court of Appeals arguments and said it was like this circular logic, which I agreed with.
	And I actually tried to use some of your words in filing an appeal.
	But we ended up, we got what we wanted, but it was just by compiculation, not a judgment.
	So it was good.
	And Nate, on the top, everyone knows, Nate and I go way back, like 480,000 subs now.
	Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.
	Definitely go back.
	Nicholas Sandman, that was the OGs of the Law Vlogs.
	The question was this.
	Eric, I flipped you the PDF of the legislation.
	And having not yet read the Supreme Court ruling, did they address any void for vagueness or ambiguous drafting of the legislation where it talks about directly or indirectly under the control or ownership of?
	Was there anything addressing potential vagueness of the bill as drafted?
	There was nothing that I read that stood out that they were arguing anything regarding vagueness.
	They did argue whether or not it was specifically targeted at TikTok or not.
	And then there was a Super Chat that came up that it was addressed a little bit.
	With regard to whether or not a foreign entity has First Amendment rights when they're located in a foreign country, and they don't.
	Yeah, I don't think they do, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so that was specifically addressed, but not any vagueness argument.
	All right, and we had a debate, and I've got conflicting legal positions on it.
	The First Amendment right to here, did they address that, or is that not a consideration in the decision?
	They didn't touch it at all.
	They've addressed that before.
	Where Amy Coney Barrett wrote the decision, she says, the right to hear is BS.
	It essentially is extending third-party standing to people.
	You're exercising the right to speech, so your right to hear is essentially irrelevant to the First Amendment argument.
	Specifically, she said there was extremely limited cases, but the general right to hear is not nonsense, but not applicable.
	And there's a general opinion and then there's two concurring opinions.
	Speaking of which, here's the guy that brought that suit.
	Joe's argument didn't even make the opinion.
	Didn't even.
	The TikTok decision is kind of on point with your argument about Trump in the sense of the right to hear versus the right to speak.
	I think that's what people are saying.
	It's not really the same.
	It's not really along the same lines, because TikTok is much more along the lines of right to hear.
	Mine is much more about we establish that I have a right to hear.
	It's understood.
	There's no machlokas there.
	That's something that...
	I thought you didn't have a right to hear.
	No, that the media has a right to hear.
	The question is the unconstitutionality of his speech.
	Okay. So in other words, once we establish, there's an established thing that the press has a right to hear, that's not what's really being debated.
	This is really, I love these kind of discussions because it's a deep analysis as to what's happening here.
	The press has a right to hear.
	The question is whether they have a right to silence his speech.
	If they have a right to silence his speech, then I don't have a right to hear.
	If they have a right to silence his speech, that will supersede my right to hear.
	So it's really more a freedom of speech thing that I have access to make the claims on his behalf because it's an understood right for me to hear his legal speech.
	You know what?
	Let me pull up Amy Coney Barrett's opinion on the right to hear because she essentially rejected what Joe just said.
	So let me find it so we can just hear from the Supreme Court's mouth.
	If she rejected what I just said, then you misunderstood what I just said.
	Respectfully. Joe is cranky today.
	Joe may be right.
	He may be right.
	No, no, no.
	My point is this.
	What a conviction was in New York, right?
	I misunderstood it.
	I misunderstood it.
	It's possible I poorly articulated what my point was.
	My point was that the media has a right to hear from a defendant who wants to speak.
	No one's disputing that.
	The media has a right to hear if that defendant has a right to speak.
	Why does the media have more rights than a citizen?
	There's a freedom of press right to hear from a...
	From any particular person on a matter of import.
	That's weird.
	Ooh, I can imagine all kinds of slippery slopes.
	I'm sorry, Joe.
	I'm going to need case law.
	When I submit my op-ed to the local paper and then refuse to publish it, damn it.
	Of all the things the first department rejected me on, that was not it.
	That was one thing that walking into it, I had a big concern.
	Maybe they'd be like, I don't have a right to hear.
	Never once did they say, I don't have a right to hear.
	Well, sometimes in frivolous arguments, they just want to address it and go to the arguments that have some substance.
	So, I don't know.
	But, again.
	Show me the case law and you'll prove me wrong.
	So hold on.
	So they upheld the ban.
	Did they issue any delay for...
	No. No delays for...
	What's the next step?
	Under the law, they could still sell the controlling shares to a non-Chinese entity.
	So under the law, they could do that.
	But the ban has, the law has been upheld, the decision by the district court, the D.C. Circuit Court has been upheld, and there is no stay.
	Now, Trump in theory could not enforce it.
	Well, okay, a question on that while you're talking about this, because it's interesting, and this is not a perfect analogy, but it does make me think of, The cable wars, as in a network wants to raise a raise with a cable company,
	and the cable company doesn't want to pay the rates or whatever, so then the network shuts off their feed, and there's a big football game coming up, and that's to kind of force the argument, get people mad at the cable company, so then they give way as part of a negotiation.
	Do you think that TikTok...
	It's like a government shutdown.
	Right. Do you think that TikTok is going to...
	Go ahead and shut down on Sunday to get their, you know, hundred million, couple hundred million users screaming at the representatives to kind of pressure the situation and not even bother trying to sell it off ahead of time.
	But use the pain of the public as a negotiation tactic.
	I'm curious your thoughts.
	I mean, it's a business decision, right?
	At the end of the day, they either have to sell for less than they want to because negotiations broke down and maybe not make as much money or go your route, you know?
	And I don't know.
	I don't know what they should do or could do.
	I don't use the platform.
	I haven't heard my children screaming, or I haven't heard the echoes of cries of children across Florida.
	Is it operational now?
	Yes, Sunday.
	Sunday is the drop-dead day.
	Sunday, everybody will get to hear about it when they go to church.
	This will be a war about the kids and the parents, I think, because the kids love TikTok.
	This leans right into conspiracy thinking.
	Go ahead, David.
	I'm sorry.
	I cut you off.
	I was just going to say, I use it to...
	Actually, it has great reels with regard to war coverage because people are uploading a lot of things like that.
	So I use it for actually war coverage overseas more than anything else.
	But, I mean, if I lose that, I guess I'll have to find it somewhere else.
	So they have until Sunday, and then what?
	They're shutting off the spigots?
	It will not be operational as of Sunday, or as of Monday?
	On 19th is the drop dead.
	So the app will stop working?
	Is that going to happen?
	Yes. They've already told Apple and Google it must be removed from the app stores.
	Who's that?
	Congress. Is that in the statute that it must not be available?
	I believe so.
	I have to read the whole statute, but I believe so.
	I've never read the statute.
	I don't know.
	That's what I've read.
	I'm asking only because Kalshi has a market for this, and it's at 88% chance that TikTok will be banned before May.
	And I'm reading the rules on what banning constitutes, what it constitutes banning.
	And it says the payout criterion encompasses the expiration values of TikTok being prohibited in the United States.
	This could be done by, among other things, a prohibition on transactions with ByteDance or its subsidiary.
	The government requiring or pressuring ByteDance to sell its TikTok American operations to another company to fulfill it.
	Remove it from the apps.
	How do you remove it from the phones?
	You can do that.
	The way this is supposed to work is that they are penalizing.
	It's like with abortion.
	You penalize the doctors.
	You don't penalize the women.
	So they're saying, for the app stores particularly, you cannot have this on.
	You cannot.
	Promote this on the App Store.
	You can't offer this on the App Store.
	So if you already have it, it's one thing.
	But by not being able to promote it on Apple, whatever, whatever, then people don't get access to it.
	And then the second part is also about the transactions.
	So right now...
	Well, Nate, it goes further than that.
	But I'm saying just a summary as of Sunday.
	Well, it's like Parler, Nate.
	It'll be removed from the apps.
	It's like Parler.
	Remember Parler?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Of course.
	It's a very similar deal.
	The enforcement mechanism here would be to, the government will go after Apple if Apple still has it on the App Store.
	They're not going to go after ByteDance.
	But here's the thing.
	I was just overseas and I couldn't access my Dropbox and I couldn't access the state website.
	So I got a VPN.
	And if I put a VPN, I mean, I have it on my phone.
	If I was to say, well, I'm in Canada now.
	Would my app still work?
	I don't know.
	There's a lot of dancing involved with that because, again, if the app, you know, because the app can be deleted remotely, sadly, we don't have control over our phones.
	So if they do have the app and it's blocked, and if Apple removes it from the App Store everywhere, if they just do it universally, then you're hosed, to use a Canadian term there for David.
	But... I think it gets shaky.
	And I remember Parler, and I don't think that that's far out because they removed Parler from the app stores.
	It just completely destroyed them.
	And then here's the other problem is they can block the data center.
	So, yes, you might be able to get around it with a VPN or something, but you're probably going to have to be using a browser on your phone in order to use the app.
	And who the hell wants to do that?
	I mean, if they make it so difficult, people just won't do it.
	It's still paying.
	Interesting thing is that Apple just rolled out a new program for their phones that you can...
	It's basically...
	It's private relay, which is like a built-in VPN for your phones.
	Yeah, it's been there for a few years.
	It's been there for like two or three years, yeah, I believe.
	Well, I mean, if you turn that on, how would that affect it?
	Because if it says...
	If Apple doesn't know where I'm at...
	In theory, I shouldn't know where I'm at.
	In our locals community, one of our members said that Biden said he's not going to enforce it, so he's going to leave it up to Trump on Monday to determine what to do with it.
	And Trump has claimed he won't enforce it.
	Yeah, but the problem is that there are multiple issues with this.
	Number one, even just talking about the enforcement issue, even if no one enforces it, eventually, if someone comes and says, I will enforce it, then...
	They're going to be screwed.
	So it's like you got to kind of follow it just because this guy says.
	And with Trump and Biden, so on Sunday, I'm assuming it's going to go down, but Trump can, through executive order, give them like a 90-day lifeline, and that lifeline is supposed to allow them to find a buyer.
	So in other words, all right, you have 90 days to find a buyer, and they can figure all that out.
	And Trump essentially says he's going to do that to see if he can extend it.
	And I think it's important for everyone to know.
	This was Trump's plan, because when he was president, he was the one who initiated this whole process down the road.
	So now he's reversed course, but this was, you know, Biden is taking credit for it, but this was Trump's plan.
	This is actually Trump's belt.
	I mean, yes, and by the way, that's why the date of the 19th is so significant, because it's supposed to be shut down the 19th.
	So it may be a 24-hour shutdown.
	I don't know.
	And that could be also a great way for TikTok to work out the negotiations to do it.
	Again, shut it down for that day and let the pain commence.
	And then they turn it back on for Monday.
	They're not selling.
	They said they don't want to sell.
	Right. So now we've got a huge impasse.
	And, of course, a lot of people who are security minors are saying, well, why don't they want to sell?
	Why won't they do this and that?
	Because they really want that data.
	They want the data from the users.
	I don't know.
	It's a weird situation.
	And one of my issues with the bill, though, does anybody find it odd that it does only specifically name TikTok?
	It doesn't just say any company that is foreign-owned, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which would include TikTok, but also hit other companies.
	The fact that it names TikTok explicitly is sort of...
	It makes the law...
	Brush it over.
	You would think it would make the law more of a...
	More of a potential problem as a habeas corpus type of thing.
	You're not allowed to make a law against a specific company.
	But, yeah, I want to apologize to you, Nate, if I came off as being rude before.
	My point was...
	We always argue.
	so don't worry about it.
	Yeah, don't write my piece down the corner.
	The point of apologies, Happy New Year.
	The point I was trying to make is that my case is really not related to this particular case.
	That was really my point.
	I wasn't arguing with you about your interpretation of what Amy Coney Barrett is saying.
	I was simply saying that my case is really not tied into this case whatsoever because the right to step in and intercede on behalf of someone who's able to speak.
	Has been established in New York, and that remained unchallenged throughout the entire process.
	That was the point.
	I agree.
	No, what you're saying, it's funny because sometimes I think you forget that we argued about shit months ago.
	I sent you the case and said, hey, and you know what you said?
	The exact same thing.
	And then when I say it again, you're like, no, I'm like, hold on.
	I literally said the same exact thing.
	More breaking news, guys.
	More breaking news.
	CNN liable defamation.
	How much?
	How much?
	I don't know.
	It's literally breaking right now.
	I haven't even been following.
	To whom?
	To the Navy veteran.
	I think his name is Young.
	He sued him for a billion dollars.
	They basically created a whole hit piece on him saying that he was part of a black market operation that was trying to get people out of Afghanistan.
	You're talking about Afghan nationals who were being threatened.
	And he had a business where he was trying to help them escape.
	Somebody said 5 million.
	That's it?
	So the verdict comes down now.
	Don't they have the liability, the penalty phase?
	How much is CNN going to pay?
	It looks like they came in with a verdict and with damages.
	Oh, wow.
	$5,000 per user.
	Oh, wait.
	That's a TikTok fan.
	Sorry. Over on my Rumble channel, there is Occupant42.
	It says, could TikTok have an eminent domain?
	The government is taking something from them, so may government pay fair market value for it?
	But the thing is that people forget that if they're owned by states, because that's the argument, right?
	They're owned by China.
	China doesn't have constitutional rights.
	So stop thinking about China having First Amendment rights.
	Maybe that's why they don't have rights.
	So none of these arguments work, and that's what the Supreme Court is saying.
	These arguments don't work.
	There's literally one sentence in the opinion that said that.
	And that's probably why, to cut that off.
	Yeah, TIDA has no customs, no rights to anything.
	All the rights we enjoy, that doesn't apply to TIDA.
	What about torches interference of the creators who are on there and making a living?
	They can sue.
	But the thing is that they may be able to sue, but you'd have to have an underlying tort.
	So what is the underlying tort?
	Well, you have a contract with TikTok, and you're earning an income from them, and that's being removed.
	That's with TikTok.
	That's your issue with TikTok.
	It's not the issue with the government.
	The government can regulate foreign governments and saying they don't have constitutional rights and we don't want their stuff in here.
	That's essentially what this is saying.
	If anybody agrees with me, let me know.
	But China does not have constitutional rights.
	I might be wrong, but I believe the case also involved some TikTok users, not just the company.
	So in that case, those issues were already addressed.
	I might be wrong in that, but I thought I read that.
	Because I understand what Eric's saying.
	Eric's saying kind of a go-around, right?
	Have the creators sue for this connection to TikTok, but again, the government's going to say, well, we're not dealing with the creators.
	We're just dealing with China.
	China owns it, so we're saying they have no constitutional rights, and now anything else that comes from it is not our problem.
	It's between the Chinese government and the TikTok creators.
	Well, I mean, sadly, they're the only people I actually care about at all, are the creators, because there are people...
	Who will be harmed by this?
	There are a lot of creators that are earning a living on TikTok, and that's being completely yanked out under.
	And I know a lot of people say, well, that's what happens when you're on somebody else's platform.
	Then what are you going to do?
	You YouTubers should know better.
	All true, but it's still living, and it still kind of sucks for them.
	You would think that they would judge by a yardstick, especially when you're talking about when there's such an obvious and blatant impact on the First Amendment right of these creators.
	You would think they would be looking to the ones who have the strongest right towards civil liberties and then scrutinize as to whether or not the law applies as opposed to finding the weakest entity with respect to civil liberties and then applying it.
	That's what you would think philosophically is the way it should be approached.
	But there would still be an end around against...
	Because essentially you have a China-owned company just because they've got Americans...
	Like, I understand what you're saying, but the beast in the room is China, right?
	It's like, do they have the rights to run this company in your country?
	And are we going to afford them constitutional rights to do so?
	And the government's saying, hell no.
	And so Trump could do...
	What? I mean, basically, the court has ruled he could reverse the piece of legislation, or, I mean...
	Well, there's two...
	No, no, not reverse.
	So there's two things he can do, as of right now.
	He can do...
	Well, Joe Biden is now changing the Constitution by decree.
	So, certainly...
	You mean the commuter-in-chief?
	Yeah, commuter-in-chief.
	Trump can do two things.
	Number one, he can set the pause.
	It's like a 90-day pause if there's a viable buyer for TikTok.
	Now, there's like 10 viable buyers for TikTok, so Trump can say, through executive order, yes, we're going to let this process play out because they need 90 days.
	But somebody's got to sell it.
	If I can't say, screw it, I'm not selling.
	But you'll have 90 days to figure it out, and then he gets probably convinced in the political arena to reverse the law.
	Then second, he can just not enforce the law, saying, well, you know, we're not going to enforce this in the sense of these nonsense.
	But the problem with that is that he's only in there for four years.
	And when he leaves, the next guy can come in and say, we're enforcing it from the time you started breaking the law.
	And that's a whole other hill of beans.
	So if I'm that company, I'm not dealing with that.
	I'm going to follow the law as it is now.
	If this is a stupid question, the limitations on an executive order are what?
	He cannot annul a piece of legislation?
	No, it goes back to Andrew Jackson.
	Like, oh, you made your law.
	Now let's see you enforce it, right?
	No, I appreciate that.
	By executive order, it's presidential powers.
	He cannot annul the act of the legislature, but he can...
	Not enforce the legislation?
	By way of executive order, he cannot annul formally a piece of legislation?
	No. The only thing he can do is he can refuse to enforce it.
	Scalia wrote the opinion about the executive.
	It's one of his most famous, it was a dissent.
	But he was essentially saying the executive is the person who's deemed to go out and then if the executive chooses not to enforce a particular law, you can't force the executive to do anything because of the, what's it called?
	The separation of powers.
	So Trump can say, I'm not going to enforce it.
	But it's like what Obama did with the illegal...
	Or like what Biden did with the border for four years.
	Or what Biden did with the border for four years.
	I'm just not going to enforce immigration law and then people can run wild.
	But that doesn't mean that someone else can't come in.
	Like now Trump is coming in and saying, I'm going to hold all those people accountable for them breaking the law into Biden.
	Which, now if I'm Apple...
	Really take it from their perspective.
	Apple and Google, right?
	You keep it in the app store.
	You say, okay, he's not going to enforce it.
	Four years later, you get a Democrat comes in there, says, I'm going to enforce it.
	Then you're under that person's heel because now you've got billions of damages.
	Also, Nate, not only that, couldn't Congress, and you guys help me out because I'm not sharp on this, couldn't Congress call Tim Cook and say, hey, Tim, come here.
	Talk to us.
	Is your company not breaking the law that we just wrote?
	Yeah. And go after them for contempt of Congress or something?
	I'm just curious.
	Does Congress have any of that or that kind of authority to call the companies to the carpet and say, hey, you're not doing this?
	Let's say that does happen.
	Let's say if Eric Singh does happen, then it'll be back on Trump to enforce that, right?
	TikTok, you don't enforce it.
	I'm assuming Trump and the Justice Department are not going to prosecute.
	Because, again, it'll be essentially an end around of enforcing the law.
	And obviously, there's a lot of people who violate congressional subpoenas who are not prosecuted.
	Unless you're Steve Bannon and the other guy, then they prosecute you.
	Well. Okay.
	Let's talk about subpoenas.
	So, CNN defamation, I thought, was kind of a cool thing.
	We just blew by it.
	Yeah, I'll put it up.
	What is the amount?
	Do we have an amount on the same end?
	It's $5 million.
	The jury went back and they were supposed to answer two questions.
	Guilt and award how much?
	If he's guilty, how much?
	So they do it all in one shot.
	For those of you who remember the Depp v.
	Hurd trial, he was found liable.
	Then they figured out how much.
	So this they did in one shot.
	Here's a screenshot of what happened.
	What were the statements?
	I have to refresh my memory.
	There was a whole hit piece they wrote on the guy.
	And it's...
	And if you want to talk about actual malice, more than the actual malice that we as lawyers know when it comes to defamation cases, recognition of the falsity of the case, there actually was text messages which showed colloquial actual malice, where they were like, we're going to F this mother effer up.
	And before they dropped the headpiece, that they would determine they hated this guy young, and they wanted to destroy his life.
	Right. CNN even ate an apology.
	Whenever you talk about defamation, you have to hear an apology.
	You're screwed.
	Yeah, that was really bad.
	I watched a lot of this trial on Nick Staroff's channel.
	He was streaming it last week or two weeks ago.
	Last week.
	The testimony from, I forget his name, was really compelling.
	And then they go back to the news article, not the article, but the video, and they play it again.
	And it's like, you just basically accuse this guy of, I don't want to say all the words, but really bad stuff when that's not at all what he was doing.
	Court proceedings showed CNN staff calling Young a shit, quote, expressing their desire to nail this mother effer and describing Young as having a, quote, punchable face.
	Messages also showed Chief National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt, who delivered the segment against Young, giving the Navy veteran only two hours to respond to a detailed list of questions.
	Young told Marquardt that was not a realistic deadline.
	That's an old game that they do.
	Taylor Lorenz is famous for that shit.
	Yeah, they can do less than two.
	I've seen them do under an hour.
	This is amazing.
	How long was it?
	Well, also, not only do they do that, Ron, not only do they do that, but they'll do it at like 6 a.m. or 4 a.m.
	You have two hours to respond.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, I mean, they could be really despicable.
	It's amazing.
	You realize, yeah, well, in this case, I wonder if had Sandman gone to trial or any of the Covington kids, what we would have seen by way of internal messages had...
	You've got to wonder.
	I still don't understand.
	I think that was just sloppiness, to tell you the truth.
	Viva, you've spoken to Robert, so you know what really happened to Sandman.
	We don't so speak!
	Hold on a second.
	Robert did the other Covington kids, not Sandman, so he may not have the right knowledge.
	I don't think I know anything.
	What happened to Sandman?
	Everyone thinks he got a gigantic...
	I don't know anything.
	I'm not of the opinion that he got a $250 million settlement.
	Nothing close.
	I think he got less than what this guy got by a long shot.
	But I don't know any of that.
	I have no insider information.
	I'm just wondering why they didn't go to trial.
	It's a different political climate.
	I have no doubt there would have been internal correspondence of CNN.
	Well, I remind you, the 11th Circuit reversed the dismissal of a complaint I drafted on behalf of Project Veritas against CNN.
	This was a case we filed over two years ago where They...
	Who's the potato?
	Stetler. Stelter.
	Oh, Brian Stelter.
	Brian Stelter, or whatever.
	Stelter said that the Project Veritas had been banned because of misinformation, which was false.
	And, you know, we had a right down the middle defamation claim.
	District courts just dismissed this crap.
	But finally, the 11th Circuit sat on it so long that Project Veritas is no longer Project Veritas.
	I don't know where the case is going to go now, but that a little bit got lost in the sauce because James did do a video on it because it still was a vindication.
	Yeah. To get the difference between this and the case that just got won, is it because O'Keefe is a public figure and it was much harder than this person who I'm guessing might have been coming in as more of a private citizen?
	Or am I off base?
	No, no.
	I think that must have...
	It was inevitably part of it that does get...
	The actual malice standard has the effect of jamming open...
	Every other element of a claim in a way that it's really easy for judges to dismiss cases.
	But I think it was along the lines of no reasonable person would have thought that they meant what they said.
	But no, that was bullshit.
	My hair looks like your yarmulke.
	I got jokes that might be misinterpreted, so I won't say them.
	But did we ever...
	I mean, we've never talked about this.
	I think of this judgment on the merits, or judgment on the verdict, and Fox News paying $787 million to Dominion, which I cannot reconcile these two wildly...
	That was ridiculous.
	That was utterly, utterly ridiculous.
	It had to do with the politics of Tucker Carlson.
	More than anything else.
	They got caught out there.
	Fox just got caught out there.
	Caught out what?
	That's why they had to settle for 50 cents on the dollar.
	They got $700 million.
	How could they have ever proved damages like that?
	I know that if you're suing Donald Trump or Alex Jones, you're allowed to make up any number on Earth.
	Maybe it's also true for Fox.
	This idea of defamation as a free-floating tort that can be used for suppressing the speech or the platform of anyone you don't like and then slapping eight- and nine-figure verdicts on people.
	But let's just be clear, though.
	Fox admitted they lied.
	It's not like they didn't admit they lied.
	They lied.
	I'm talking about the damages, though.
	So we're talking about how much, and then Fox says, when it comes to damages, Fox says, I want to pay $750 million.
	So let's say Dominion had claimed that their damages was $100 billion.
	Would that be like, let's pay 50 cents on the dollar?
	The point is that the numbers were just completely made up.
	Right. Yeah.
	CNN just admitted they lied.
	Jake Tapper apologized.
	But still, the damages was only $5 million.
	The point that David is making and that Ron is making and that I'm trying to make is that why would you settle for such an insanely high number when there's no reason to expect in the world that a jury is going to come out with a number anywhere near What you're settling for, and the only reason you would is for the political reasons behind it, that you want to send a message to the public that we don't like.
	It's like you're willing to take it on the chin yourself.
	I'm telling you, look, and Nate, to push back, I don't think Fox, I don't think anybody admitted they lied because, first of all, I think a number of the statements were not lies in any event, or certainly at least were questionable, not lies.
	I think it was Murdoch who said, yeah, we endorsed lies, and it was Bartimola, whatever, and Lou Dobbs.
	My personal view of that is, I don't know how bad internal correspondence could have been, given the ones we just saw in this case.
	But I think there was money laundering going on somewhere in there, and an attempt maybe to make Tucker Carlson.
	But I will say, as you pointed out, Eric, that you really did have the colloquial definition of actual malice in this case, which is that sort of...
	Something where, you know, in a law school kind of, you know, when explaining this tort to people, you often end up saying that you would need a smoking gun.
	Where they basically say, let's take down this MF-er.
	And here you have it.
	Okay, so that takes it to the level where they know the information is false and they're using it anyway with the explicit purpose of harming the other person.
	Which you would think, if anything, that that would affect the damages, right?
	I mean, really beyond getting to a point of liability, you would think that when a jury sees that CNN...
	He aired this piece for this express purpose of trying to destroy this man's life.
	So why don't you go to punitive damages?
	Why don't you go to punitive damages?
	Not to actual damages.
	No matter how much I hate you, when I step on your foot, I only stepped on your foot.
	That was a good point.
	Hold on.
	The punitives are not set yet, according to our chat.
	That's what I've seen now.
	Now that makes sense.
	Well, that's great then.
	So the actual, that sounds like a good solid number.
	Yes, that's great.
	If that's his actual damages, it's $5 million.
	But does Florida cap?
	They're arguing it right now.
	Does Florida cap punitive?
	Because I know like Virginia, for instance, and Johnny Depp v.
	Heard, they capped it at $150,000.
	And Texas caps punitive.
	So I'm assuming Florida may cap punitive.
	Is there a formula, Nate?
	Like, maybe, I'm curious, like, do some states maybe say that punitive can be X amount of a multiple of the actual damages?
	So, like, if it's 5 million actual damages and there's a formula of, like, 5, then it could be 25 million punitive versus 100,000 would only be one.
	Is there anything like that?
	A plaintiff can only receive up to three times the amount they receive in compensatory damages.
	There it is.
	So that $5 million is a good start.
	$15 million.
	So he can make $20 million.
	What's the difference between actual and compensatory?
	I don't understand that.
	Oh, sorry.
	I don't know what that means.
	Punitive damages.
	The calculation is three times compensatory.
	But Colin Stewart in the chat wrote $4 million actual, $1 million compensatory.
	That doesn't make those actual and compensatory the same thing.
	Yeah. It was broken down.
	Oh, is it pensatory like legal expenses and stuff like that?
	Oh, maybe.
	No. It could be out of pocket.
	Yeah, I'm just curious.
	I don't know.
	Attorney's fees would not be decided by the jury where attorney's fees are statutory.
	In other words, provided by a statute as opposed to a contract.
	They're not part of the proofs.
	They're not heard by the jury.
	The final fact is not involved.
	It's decided by the court after the verdict.
	How about this?
	Four million for emotion, one for lost earnings?
	I don't know.
	It was broken down.
	I'm just going to see what the breakdown was.
	But it was four and one.
	So just hold on.
	Five million for the veteran.
	Five million in compensatory.
	Okay, now where was the four to the one?
	Here, four million in financial damages and one million for emotional damage.
	Okay. Together, it's compensatory damage.
	Yeah, and then they're going to have punitive.
	Which also was the highlight of the absurdity of the Fox decision, where they're giving $700 million to a company that could not have demonstrated that much financial loss.
	But this wasn't a decision.
	Yeah, this was them saying...
	I'm telling you, it was...
	You've got to make it seem like they could only get paid $5 million.
	If they did, then the Fox's lawyers are the dumbest lawyers on the planet.
	It was not a lawyer call.
	It was a C-suite call.
	It was preposterous.
	Come on.
	No, here's the thing, though.
	My theory on this is...
	That they agreed to a settlement amount where they basically said, we're not paying you the full $700 million that we're settling on.
	We're going to have a public statement about the $700 million, and you're going to waive a considerable portion of it.
	And that way, this is my theory.
	We would never know about that.
	So in that sense, the reason that both sides would want to do that.
	The reason both sides would want to do that is Dominion would want to have a ridiculously high number floated out to the public because that would chill anyone speaking ill of Dominion in the future and make it look as if they were really grievously wronged.
	And it would also fulfill Fox's ambition of basically making it look like, wow.
	You're saying they agreed to a much smaller payment?
	Collusively. Under the table.
	They collusively agreed to him.
	That's my theory.
	There's no reason for them not to.
	Because why would Fox agree to pay $700 million out of their own freaking pocket?
	You're all in agreement that that number is insanity.
	So I think it makes a lot more sense for them to publicly throw out there this number and behind the scenes that after they have basically written up there that you're going to be waiving.
	You're going to be waiving.
	$600 million out of the $700 million.
	Look, I'm making up a number.
	It could be where they're waiving $200 million or $500 million.
	My point is, I don't think they paid the full $700 million, and that was an agreement before they actually ended the settlement.
	I've never been involved in a case where anything like that happened.
	Have you ever been in a case where there was a consent to $700 million in a settlement?
	Of all the cases I've been in involving consent to $700 million, that certainly didn't happen.
	I've been involved in many cases where a public statement was made that there was a settlement in terms of confidential, and it was agreed by both sides that we'd make it sound like more than it is.
	Actual number on it.
	I mean, this is a public company.
	They have auditors.
	They have insurance.
	I didn't think about the public company element.
	That has to come off as a payment.
	It has to be in the books.
	They have to account for it at the end of the year.
	But they don't have to disclose the confidential agreement like, hey, we're going to put it out there publicly.
	But they would have to show the income of $700 million, right?
	Wouldn't they?
	Well, Dominion would.
	Only what they got.
	And I also think they're equating Dominion to this other case.
	Depends on if they're cash or accrual.
	Yeah. I think Dominion with this other case is not even...
	Because Dominion had losses.
	Like the full state of Texas stopped using Dominion and all these cases.
	And so their business model was severely hungry.
	We're talking about millions and millions of dollars.
	Maybe not 700 million, but there was a lot of money.
	I'll say millions and millions of dollars that they lost in terms of...
	In terms of worth, because of the Fox lies.
	And I think they can show that.
	$700 million is ridiculous.
	I agree with everyone.
	But I do think it wouldn't have been $5 million.
	I'm thinking we're talking about maybe in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Fox would have been liable for.
	So maybe $70 million.
	Yeah, something like that would have been more reasonable.
	I agree with that.
	Let's jump to this one.
	Dave shared this story that I guess is just coming through.
	You can always rely on old Joe for saying something.
	Is he correct?
	That's interesting.
	I can't wait to get rid of an inept president whose first name is Joe.
	Oh, it's just interesting.
	So on his way out during his final statement.
	In between commuting every criminal in the country.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, no, during his last, whatever, address to the nation on Friday, he indicated that he believes that the Equal Protection Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is, in fact, part of the Constitution now, when it's not.
	And this just raises a lot of legal issues, and I wanted to see...
	I thought amendments were part of the Constitution, because they're amending the Constitution.
	No, the ERA for essentially making, well, for you lawyers out there, you'd understand this, for making...
	For making, what's it called, gender, like if a man and a woman, what's it called, strict scrutiny.
	Now, instead of implying intermediate scrutiny, the court would apply strict scrutiny to gender issues, which is a nightmare, which is a nightmare scenario, but that's essentially what they're asking.
	But hold on, help me out with the amendment and constitution thing, because I really thought, like, first amendment was now part of the constitution because the constitution was amended for the Bill of Rights.
	This is the Equal Protection.
	This is basically no discrimination based off of gender, sex, national origin, race, things like that.
	Oh, it's not the Environmental Protection Act?
	Hold on, Ron shared this.
	Let's see if this is more clear.
	Yeah, there we go.
	It's not the law of the land, yeah.
	Okay, regardless of their sex, yeah.
	But see, the problem with that is that The issue with that is that generally for the tiers of scrutiny, as the Supreme Court likes to call them, when race, if you discriminate based on race...
	What, Ron?
	Go back and scroll down.
	If you discriminate based on race, the Supreme Court holds it under strict scrutiny.
	In other words, they're going to really, really look into it and say, hey, it's going to be very limited.
	You'll be able to do it.
	When it comes to gender, because men and women are different...
	Certain things you can discriminate between sexes.
	For instance, Title IX, for instance, is legal discrimination based on gender.
	You have to have this specifically for women, yada, yada, yada.
	The Equal Rights Amendment would essentially overturn Title IX because it says you can't do that.
	So that's where you'd have a lot of these issues where you have these progressive things for feminists.
	Like the laws that allow women to get certain grants and things of that nature.
	All of that would now fall under strict scrutiny instead of intermediate scrutiny, which would essentially erase all of those divisions between men and women.
	So that's the argument of why it hasn't passed, because men and women, both physically and in society, have different needs.
	The history of this is that in the 1970s, this amendment was proposed and passed by Congress, but it was never ratified by the states, which is required.
	But the argument is that because I think Virginia ratified it five years ago, which got to the right number of states, that it should be part of the Constitution, and they're pushing for that.
	Although five others had rescinded their...
	But isn't there a question of whether you can rescind?
	I think there's a legal question.
	That is a more interesting legal question than the one of, is it permissible for an amendment to have a self-limiting deadline in it?
	Remember the last amendment?
	It was on a shelf from the 1700s, and no one ever did anything about it.
	Then when one state came two years ago, I was like, we're going to pass this.
	And then that's when it was the last amendment.
	Who was the last amendment?
	I remember that.
	It's about raising raises or something, right?
	Yes, yes, yes.
	It was about basically congressmen giving themselves raises.
	It doesn't take effect until the next session.
	And that sat on the shelf for 100 years or more.
	And this one only goes back to the 1970s, 1972, I think.
	So the question is, did this actually become ratified when Virginia ratified it five years ago?
	And if so, what are the legal implications?
	But the archivist has not recognized...
	Biden's own DOJ said he couldn't.
	Yeah. In 2021.
	But he says on Friday that he...
	He didn't say anything.
	Here's what he said.
	Moral meal.
	Okay. What if he does this?
	What if he has his secretary?
	Who's the one that does this?
	The Secretary of State?
	Because I know one of the secretaries does it and pronounces that as part of the Constitution.
	Why don't they go through that process?
	Because they can technically, Biden can say, okay, now this is, and have that formal ceremony.
	Would that now make it law?
	If the archivist recognized it under the proper rules and procedures, then yeah.
	I mean, at the end of the day, the archivist is the one that has to receive it properly.
	And if the archivist doesn't receive it properly, then it's not law.
	I don't know what the steps would typically be.
	In theory, they could try.
	He's got, what, three more days?
	Two more days?
	Does the archivist work on Sunday?
	It's the weekend, Dave.
	He's not working.
	Yeah, okay.
	He would have beaten Trump, right?
	Biden would have beaten Trump.
	That's what he keeps saying.
	I just thought, and it was most interesting because it was brought up on Friday and literally nothing else was done with it.
	It was just, he just sort of brought it up.
	I think he's going to make a move.
	I think he's going to make a move to try to just say, hey, it's all done, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And then that's when you're going to have the shit hit the fan.
	And how that would screw up Title IX and everything else is, it's just going to be, maybe, Maybe that's the plan.
	Like, set this up so that it's complete turmoil for Trump coming in.
	Well, he's doing a lot already.
	I mean, will there be anybody left to investigate and prosecute?
	I mean, his pardon pen seems to have endless ink and commutation.
	I mean, I do like my—that's mine, by the way, the commuter-in-chief.
	That is my new term for the day, because that's kind of what this guy's doing.
	He's got a lot of ink, but until he pardons Liz Cheney and Sam Bankman-Fried, I won't be celebrating.
	If he pardons Donald Trump, you will hear me shouting cheers of joy.
	Then another 2,500.
	I would ordinarily agree with a lot of these things in terms of commuting non-violent offenses, but the 37 on death row who were cop killers, murderers, and wife murderers, I mean...
	Well, except if two of them, somebody was telling me, I think it was on here, I don't remember who it was.
	People who had their sentences commuted are saying, uncommute, uncommute, damn it, we're trying to fight this case, and you are taking the jeopardy away, which means that we will be in prison for the rest of our lives for a crime we didn't commit their claiming.
	So that's an interesting quandary too, and I'd love a defense lawyer here or a criminal lawyer to talk about what kind of situation that would be.
	Well, I mean, if they're doing a death penalty appeal and then the sentence is commuted so there's no longer a death penalty, then yeah, that takes all the steam out of it.
	If your only recourse is an appeal because it's a death penalty and you've used up all of your other appellate rights, then yeah, you would be screaming, like, don't take this away because this is my opportunity to prove my innocence.
	Argue DNA or whatever it might be.
	What a horrible situation to be in.
	But if the question someone's asking, like, he won't take it, do they, you do have a choice of not accepting the pardon?
	Do you?
	Oh, I don't know.
	Do you?
	I mean, does it matter?
	I mean, the conviction's a state act, right?
	So then commuting would be a state act.
	I don't think you'd have a say in it.
	Yeah, because he's just saying that that goes away.
	It's kind of like a DA can drop charges.
	Can you say, no, don't drop the charges?
	I want to be charged.
	Well, here, this is what...
	Grok has to say it's possible to refuse a pardon.
	Legal precedence in the United States.
	One notable example was Burton v.
	United States, 1906, where the Supreme Court ruled that a pardon could be rejected by the person to whom it was offered.
	The rationale is that accepting a pardon implies an admission of guilt, and some might not wish to make that admission.
	That's interesting.
	What about a commutation?
	What about a commutation?
	No, I don't know if it is.
	Because a commutation, you still are guilty.
	You still did the crime.
	It's just saying this is the end of the sentence.
	No, because I think a commutation is an iteration of a pardon.
	So it's a different variation of it.
	Yes, it's possible to refuse a commutation.
	Similar reasoning.
	It's just a manifestation of the pardon.
	But I didn't think that accepting the pardon was an admission of guilt.
	Let me ask that.
	You guys are the American lawyers.
	So it's interesting.
	You can refuse it because it is accepting a pardon.
	We're American lawyers, but how often does this come up?
	It doesn't, you know.
	So speaking, I don't know if this is, I don't know whose pardon you're talking about.
	I walked in.
	I had to go away for a minute.
	Are you talking about, did you guys discuss the concept of Joe Biden pardoning himself?
	No, no.
	We're talking about pardoning Trump.
	We're talking about commuting all the death row inmates and how two of them Have asked to be uncommuted because it's screwing with their appeals.
	Right. Well, because this is a conversation I actually had with Ron recently where he presented a point that I'd never considered before.
	Because the question, a lot of people speculate that Joe Biden is going or may pardon himself.
	It's an expectation he's probably going to pardon James Biden, his brother.
	And that leads to the conversation, can a president pardon himself?
	And I was always of the impression that he could.
	That it's plenary authority, and that he has the right to pardon himself from any crimes.
	When I was talking to Ron, and you can correct me if I'm misstating your position, he made a great point that I'd never considered before, that the term pardon as a definition implies that you're pardoning a third party.
	And when you're saying pardon me, for example, you're not...
	You're demanding a pardon.
	You're requesting a pardon from a third party.
	The definition of pardon means I'm not forgiving myself.
	It's that someone else is expressing forgiveness for me.
	And that, I thought, was that your point, Ron, just so I understand?
	Yeah, I mean, just axiomatically, pardoning, it's like saying I'm going to give something to myself.
	Right. It's impossible.
	You can say it poetically.
	I'm going to give myself a gift.
	But you're not.
	You're buying something for yourself.
	You can't.
	You can only pardon someone who has offended you.
	So, and my question is, my question, my pushback on that is something, because I expressed this, I was so impressed with that thought that I had never had before, that I shared it with my audience, and a day later, someone in a random chat through something I thought was a great counterpoint that I wanted to ask you, Ron, your thought on, and ask all the other attorneys here also their thoughts about this concept.
	What about the fact that he...
	The office of the presidency is expressing the pardon, and that office may express it to Joe Biden, the individual.
	So now he's using the office.
	Now, it's not that Joe Biden is pardoning himself.
	It's that the president of the United States, the office, is pardoning whoever they want, including Joe Biden.
	Will we then say that presidential immunity only applies to the office, and you can now hold a...
	It does!
	That's bullshit.
	It's stupid.
	It's metaphysics.
	The reason, in fact, you don't need...
	The reason you don't need the ability to pardon yourself is, in fact, because you're immune.
	But you're not immune from everything.
	We've got the personal versus...
	I'm going to push back from the personal level.
	You should not be.
	You should not be able to pardon yourself.
	I mean, it's a freaking republic.
	It's not a monarchy.
	Who would think that you...
	Ron, I think in your idea that you can't pardon yourself because it's something you give to a third person, the pardon is of an act, not of a person.
	And so the act is embodied in the person, but you're pardoning an act of criminality or an act of something in whom or whoever that manifests.
	No, you're pardoning a person.
	No, I say you're pardoning the person for committing the act.
	When I say pardon, you say you're excused.
	I think that's what Ron's saying, right?
	Yeah. I mean, let's face it.
	These are all alchemic arguments.
	It's fun.
	It's a philosophical question.
	It's obviously not explicitly anywhere to be found in the Constitution.
	Law professors will look at how...
	Early courts have alluded to these concepts in earlier decisions, but...
	Has a governor ever pardoned themselves?
	That's a great question.
	But I think that would be different.
	Has a governor ever pardoned themselves?
	One thing about the pardon power in the federal government is the Supreme Court has essentially said it's absolute, right?
	So it's just now we're talking about taking it to the next.
	Biden's not pardoning himself because he probably doesn't have enough time left for anyone to make use of any good prosecution on him.
	It would take like three, four years to prosecute him and it's 80-some-odd...
	Okay, no one thought that joke was funny.
	Okay, I've got another question.
	It's kind of along that line.
	Could Hunter Biden now be called as a witness against Joe Biden?
	And the Biden family, because there is no longer any...
	He's not under any threat.
	I know there's a term for that.
	Double jeopardy.
	Right. So he has to testify, because he can't be convicted of it.
	He's completely free and clear.
	So that kind of puts Biden in a trap, doesn't he?
	That he's got to pardon everybody else involved, because technically, every time they're pardoned...
	I expect this question to come up on my citizenship exam.
	But the answer is...
	Every DEA says that that's true.
	Every DEA makes that claim.
	We saw with Little Woody, for example, that you can't plead the Fifth because you're being exonerated.
	Because they're giving you immunity.
	Yeah, they're giving you immunity.
	And that immunity means you don't have any Fifth Amendment defense because you can't be charged.
	That is ridiculous.
	It's ridiculous philosophically because just because you have immunity from a DA doesn't mean you can't be charged federally.
	And if you have a pardon from the President of the United States, that doesn't mean you can't be charged.
	But Joe, it's a state crime.
	That's the point.
	That's the point, Eric.
	So in that case, he has a pardon from his father for all federal crimes.
	Why should anyone philosophically?
	Look, I hate...
	Hunter and Joe with a passion, but the reality is, philosophically, it makes very little sense to say that Hunter Biden has no possibility of incriminating himself when he can basically create state charges against himself.
	I'll go.
	I'll raise stakes then.
	Okay, Gavin Newsom gives him a pardon because he's a California citizen now and says, okay, your pardon of anything in California.
	I ran him off.
	I think...
	Go ahead.
	I think his little woody example is astute.
	But I also think, though, because I've done immunity deals.
	And generally, if you have a smart enough attorney, if there's federal liability, we have to, we would, well, again, this is what we did.
	We would have to go to the AG's office and get them to sign off on the immunity so the person could have.
	So it's not like we're only giving you immunity to the state charges.
	If they, like, for instance, a lot of...
	There are gun cases that we'd run.
	We would want immunity for that person to testify against someone else, but we would then have to go to the federal feds and ask them if they would sign off on the immunity deal, because if they didn't sign off, then the person, then because that person still has liability with the feds, didn't have to testify.
	So my analogy works.
	If Gavin Newsom gave him a pardon as well, then there would be nothing, right?
	Hypothetically, there's other state charges if there's interstate.
	There are other states!
	And by the way, in your case, Nate, I'm going to share something with you about the law that I learned during the Glenn Maxwell trial.
	Glenn Maxwell had immunity that was gifted to her because of the deal they cut with Jeffrey Epstein from the Southern District of Florida.
	She was still charged up in New York, and when she said, hey, I have immunity because of Epstein's deal, and he specifically named me as someone, and they agreed to name me individually as someone who has immunity, the court ruled, and they found a ton of case law on this, which said that when you get immunity from a federal That gives you immunity only in that district, which was the Southern District of Florida.
	It doesn't give you immunity in the Northern District of Florida.
	It sure as hell doesn't give you immunity in the Southern District of New York, which is crazy to me.
	But I just want to be very specific.
	I agree with everything you're saying is correct, but what I'm saying is that...
	Most cases, the jurisdiction of who can prosecute who is clear.
	And I think the Hunter Biden case, we should limit it to the crimes of what he did overseas, because that would fall strictly under federal jurisdiction, and there would be no state claims.
	So in that instance, the claims that are only deriving from the federal government, I believe he will have to testify if they're limited to that.
	Anything that may give him jeopardy against state, his lawyers won't let him testify.
	But I think anything that's just federal...
	I think he would be, unfortunately, he'd have to testify.
	I love this conversation more than can possibly describe.
	I just have a million things I've taken care of.
	So I've got to bow on out of here.
	But have a phenomenal weekend.
	God bless the United States of America and Donald Trump.
	Long may he rule.
	Hopefully for many, many, many, many, many years, just because that would make the leftist minds explode.
	Have a phenomenal week.
	Just four, just four.
	No, no.
	I know what I said.
	Take care, my friends.
	By the way, if any of you are going to be in D.C., I'm going down to D.C. for the inauguration.
	I got a ticket, and I plan on being there Sunday and Monday.
	If any of you are going to be there and you want to grab a beer or something like that.
	I'd love it if you text me.
	Where are you sleeping, Joe?
	That's why I don't want to.
	No, I got a hotel.
	I booked a hotel a long time ago.
	All right.
	Take care, gentlemen.
	Trump on day one issues an executive order extending his presidency indefinitely.
	Someone in the chat said you can't pardon treason, but it seems that you can pardon every crime except for impeachment.
	I think you can pardon treason.
	Yeah, no.
	It's only having been impeached that can't be pardoned, which kind of makes sense.
	Well, impeachment is not a crime.
	Impeachment is not a crime.
	Impeachment strips them of executive immunity, I would think.
	Or presidential immunity.
	But let's say Congress impeaches the Secretary of State.
	Can Biden pardon that?
	And no, he cannot pardon that because it's a function of the...
	That's the legislative prerogative.
	So he won't be able to pardon people.
	But the most that can happen is they just lose their job.
	Yeah, you lose your job and you won't...
	And you can't...
	Well, it all depends.
	You generally can't serve in government.
	Okay, but again, the stakes aren't quite the same.
	Like if Secretary of State murders somebody, they can be impeached or removed from office.
	They're still...
	Could be prosecuted for the murder, and he could pardon them for the murder, correct?
	Yes, yes.
	Okay. Well, it depends.
	If he did it on a military base, absolutely it is.
	If they do it in Congress, absolutely.
	Anyway, sorry.
	Eric is a lawyer now.
	Eric's going to turn into a lawyer.
	I'm going to turn into an American here.
	I can't read this.
	I can't bring up my screen, but let me read the king of Biltong, who said, kick off your health journey by adding some tasty high-protein meat snacks.
	Biltong is packed with B12 iron.
	Zig, this is not an ad.
	This is Rumble Rant.
	Creatine. Go to BiltongUSA.com, code Viva for 10% off, and then ChafedBum, or ChafedBM says, then Trump can preemptively pardon a hitman, and that hitman...
	No, you can't preempt for a crime that...
	First of all, you can do preemptive pardons.
	No, no, no, not for a crime that hasn't happened yet.
	With the word we're using, preemptive pardon, which is retroactively, not prospectively.
	Okay. Yeah.
	That's why he's got to wait until the last minute to pardon his family.
	Ten years, he's pardoned for these crimes and anything you did within a past decade.
	It's to clarify that the preemptive is retrospective and not prospective, so you can't pardon for a crime not yet committed, but you can preemptively pardon for one that hasn't been charged yet.
	Correct. Correct.
	Yes, exactly.
	By the way, there is one record of a territorial governor pardoning himself in the 1850s.
	Ah, did it stick?
	Well, there's a whole dispute about whether or not it actually happened, but it seems to be the only one out there.
	But here's what happened.
	Well, no, the documents were burnt in a fire, you know, those sort of things.
	Oh, shit.
	Allegedly pardoned himself, yeah.
	Well, there'll be news stories or something else, I would think.
	Yeah, there's a ton of resources.
	We could dig into at the time.
	He seemed to corroborate that he, in fact, a territorial governor of Washington in the 1850s pardoned himself.
	Wow. This is the one and only time that I could find.
	But all that was territorial and not state, so maybe there's even more leeway because it wasn't technically...
	I'm just saying, I don't know.
	Right, but are there different rules?
	Like, can the governor of Guam, do they have more rights?
	Or what about Puerto Rico?
	Do they have more rights than a state?
	Are there different standards?
	I don't know this, I'm asking.
	Yeah, I have no idea.
	Hold on, say it again.
	What's the question?
	Well, he just said it was a territorial governor, so this was not a state.
	It was before Washington was a state.
	So this is more like somebody in Puerto Rico or Guam.
	Pardoning themselves.
	And I'm asking if the standards are different when they're not a state.
	I don't know.
	It would be different, yeah.
	I don't want to even go down.
	It's a long road to go down, whether it's incorporated, whether it's non-incorporated territory.
	Because in incorporated territory, the Constitution applies, so probably not.
	But in unincorporated territory, the Constitution applies only on a limited basis.
	So you'd have to know what type of territory.
	The case is on point for that.
	I forgot the name of the cases that dealt in the 1800s.
	The insular cases.
	They dealt with all that.
	So it all depends on what type of territory it was at the time.
	So, for instance, like Hawaii.
	When Hawaii was incorporated, but they weren't a state, but the Constitution fully applied, then yeah, they wouldn't be able to do it.
	But like Puerto Rico, the Constitution applies.
	They're an unincorporated territory.
	So only part of the Constitution applies.
	So they don't have full constitutional protections.
	Well, what about Texas?
	If we're going to get into that, because Texas was a country, and then it was a territory, and then it became a state.
	Nothing applied to Texas until it was incorporated as a state, because at that point...
	No, it was annexed before that, so that's a good question.
	During that state, when it was annexed territory, before it became a state.
	Right, because I know that there was actually different standards to Texas, like from what I understand, and I can be wrong...
	Texas could split itself into multiple parts and has that ability on record from when they got pulled into the country.
	It was like part of the negotiations.
	Yeah, they could submit themselves to the federal government for statehood broken up into five different states.
	But since they admitted themselves as one, I don't know if they could still technically do that.
	I think they have a provision in their constitution that allows them to do that.
	So, for instance, California also had that same provision, which allows them to break up if they choose to.
	California could become its own country.
	I'll tell you what, I'm surprised.
	They can't leave.
	You can never leave.
	When you're a corporation, you can never leave.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	But I'm surprised that California doesn't have people trying to do that because California is very, very different.
	Not everybody in California is blue.
	There is a lot of red in California.
	It's just the bigger cities that dominate, they're all blue.
	But like Northern California, there's a lot of red.
	Orange County's red.
	Anyway, there's a lot more red than people think.
	There's actually more Republicans in California than any other state in the nation.
	Could you imagine California and Texas both splitting themselves up and then Texas becomes more red overall?
	Or California becomes more red overall than Texas.
	That would happen.
	I think Texas would be a majority blue.
	You know what country in the world has the largest number of Muslims?
	Probably the U.S. or Michigan?
	India. India.
	Oh. Ooh.
	Okay. Well, they'd have even more if they didn't split up Pakistan, right?
	Right. And the whole idea was to avoid, you know, to give the Hindus a country.
	And so...
	It's like Republicans in California.
	Good point.
	And they have more in India, huh?
	I want to show you guys.
	This is one of my professor days when I taught law school.
	But I found my American territories thing.
	California's been trying to split since the 1980s.
	So if you're in the incorporated part, the only one is Pamara Atoll, and that means the Constitution will fully apply.
	So anybody born on this island in the middle of the Pacific, if you're born there, you are fully a United States citizen, you have all rights, and the Constitution fully applies.
	That's the only one we have now.
	And the unincorporated territories like Puerto Rico, all these people are citizens up top, but they're only citizens through statute.
	Congress passed.
	They're not natural citizens because you're born in Puerto Rico.
	The Congress passed the statute of making them natural-born citizens.
	And we have an unincorporated, unorganized territory, which is...
	I don't know if you guys know what a U.S. national is, but in American Samoa, they are U.S. nationals.
	So they're not citizens.
	They're not citizens of any country.
	They're U.S. nationals, which allows them to work.
	And if they want to become citizens...
	They have to apply through regular citizenship.
	But they can do everything an American citizen can do except for become a cop and run for off.
	I love this graphic.
	Where do the Virgin Islands fall into this category?
	The Virgin Islands is up here.
	They're in the unincorporated organized.
	So where will Greenland and Canada fall in?
	You would start here with the unincorporated.
	That's where you'll go.
	And then you move up, and Congress passes a law.
	And that law, it's called usually the, I forgot the name of it, the Organic Act.
	And they'll say, okay, everybody who lives on this island are American citizens, and you have a functioning government.
	So only part of the Constitution applies here.
	Then you move down here to the, over here to the organized.
	And the last person who was over here was Hawaii.
	Hawaii was an organized territory, and then it became a state.
	So this is where, so Puerto Rico really wants to move over here to be organized.
	Ron has thoughts about this.
	Go ahead, Ron.
	I like this.
	It's educational.
	One would think, but okay.
	Listen, reading the dictionary is also education.
	I think there are a lot of people that want to know these things.
	I'm just not one of them.
	The insular cases.
	But it's a body of law that's interesting, and I want to see how they deal with Panama, because Trump wants Panama back, so what happens there?
	And don't forget, John McCain was born in the Panama zone.
	Panama's an interesting case, because from what I understand, and I don't have it on hand, there was a clause in there that it was given to them on the condition that there was no security threat, or there was something written into the gift of the contract, and... Hopefully one of you guys has studied that, because if that is the case, then there could be something there, correct?
	If it's saying that this is yours, as long as I'm giving it to you and it's not a security risk, then could we not snatch it back?
	This is why I did bad in school.
	When the subject becomes...
	Esoteric and mildly.
	The donkey in my head has been spinning around.
	Yes, this is very interesting.
	My question is, when do the Virgin Islands stop being virgins?
	Okay. Well, I know that the Panama Canal and, you know, all worldwide shipping claims and the fact that they're running Chinese up to, you know, invade the U.S. is boring.
	But, hey, you know, future security of the country, I guess, does...
	The Panama Canal, that is much more interesting.
	The beef that is going on between Michael Yan and Jack Posobiec as relates to their differing opinions on the Panama Canal, very interesting.
	Well, let's do this.
	Let's go over real quick.
	Our over and under.
	Who's going to be confirmed in Trump's cabinet?
	It's looking like everybody right now.
	Here we go.
	Here we go.
	The test is going to be RFK Jr.
	He's going to be the one that is going to be the most...
	I think Tulsi.
	I think Tulsi is the test.
	No, no, I say the biggest.
	It's going to be Tulsi and RFK, but I think RFK is the one who's, I say, most at risk, or at least they're going to have the most...
	No votes have been taken, though, right?
	No, no, no.
	The existence of this chart is a little bit misleading.
	Okay, so Hegseth was going to be the one that everybody or many people thought he wasn't going to make it.
	And the performance of the Democrats was so poor, it appears that some of the people who were going to vote against him will have to vote with him in solidarity.
	Just because of the way the Democrats were asking.
	So that's a bit of a change.
	Some people like Marco Rubio will probably not only be confirmed, but carried out on people's shoulders.
	I mean, that's like a love fest.
	Hegseth's odds went up to like over 90%.
	But what was amazing is that under 49, or there was 49 or less, was that 20% and went down to like 9 or 10% last time I checked.
	I mean, we all watched it.
	It was embarrassingly...
	Hirono's a sexual deviant.
	I want to ask her if she's ever had...
	Have you ever had to...
	I thought it was funny because she sounded drunk when she was asking him about drinking.
	I was going to make that joke, but then you have to be careful because it might be an accent or it might be...
	I know.
	It could be absolutely whatever.
	Between her and Duckworth, people could make fun of that, but if they have a medical condition or something...
	I get it, but her questions are pretty stupid.
	They're retarded.
	I mean, stupid is an understatement.
	They're sexual, deviant, intellectual retardation of questions.
	And you wonder what kind of pervert she is to be starting off.
	But she might not be a pervert herself.
	She just knows exactly what goes on in Congress and Senate.
	And they know that they pay off these settlements all the time.
	So they're all a bunch of sexual deviants.
	And so that's her starting point.
	Or her staff could be writing it for her.
	Well, she's reading it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I don't know.
	I mean, but her questions are horrible.
	What is this document you're looking at?
	Where did this come from?
	Oh, this is just a news write-up of Trump's confirmations from AP.
	Oh, okay.
	Zero confirmed.
	Okay. Yeah, nobody's going to be confirmed yet.
	I think the biggest issue is probably going to be Tulsi, RFK, and Hegsek.
	But I think Hegsek, I think he's on his way.
	I think he's done enough to get the votes.
	Hegsek is going to be interesting.
	RFK is going to be interesting because he's going to pick up Democrats and lose Republicans.
	So he's a weird one.
	What's going to be amazing with...
	I think of all of them, the performance is going to be the best from RFK Jr. and then Tulsi Gabbard.
	Heck Seth was good, but there were some things where he could have answered a little better.
	Bondi was awesome.
	Oh man, she was great.
	She was sharp.
	She was not so sharp.
	She achieved the extremely unusual...
	Being a witness and yet at many moments taking control of the questioning.
	Combative. Combative without losing the face.
	Hundley, could you bring up Nada's comment?
	Viva being too scared to make fun of someone is why he will never be an American.
	I'm not scared to make fun of someone.
	Don't win his Twitter account.
	You can't make fun of someone for physical disabilities, speech impediments, things that they can't control.
	You make fun of people for poor judgment and being degenerates.
	And that's why we got Matt Gaetz up here, right?
	I will say this, though.
	When I told you guys Matt Gaetz would not be Attorney General, he was not going to make it.
	I took all that crap from the chat, so now I get to say, yes, I told you guys.
	Matt Gaetz was not, but it was a joke, and he is not.
	So I just feel my vindication for that needed to be done.
	Okay, so you've got the one, so what about the left?
	Go back to the left?
	Is Steve Carell from The Office running for...
	He was appointed to the cabinet?
	Lee Zeldin was the most boring thing I've ever seen in my life.
	Marco Rubio, I didn't watch Rubio at all.
	You don't have to watch Rubio.
	All my friends are going to vote for me.
	I mean, even Duckworth was...
	Giving love to Rubio.
	I'm not kidding.
	She was like, oh, you were so instrumental in helping me.
	Rubio's is just...
	That's part of the reason that Mark, my show partner, hates him the most.
	That means he's the biggest deep state guy of all.
	He's like the left and the right wing deep state guy.
	Nobody's going to get against him.
	Where is Cash on this list?
	I don't know.
	Well, and there's a Secret Service guy, too.
	What do you guys think about that?
	That just got announced.
	The head of Trump's detail.
	Oh, it's not Bongino?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	The Secret Service chief is the head of Trump's detail.
	Details, details.
	Are there confirmation going on right now, I thought?
	There is.
	There's hearings, yes.
	They're going to be continuous.
	All right, well...
	On that note, I know we've got a hard out for some folks at 1.30, and I want to give people a chance to, you know, say what's going on and whatnot.
	So, Nate, what do you have coming up?
	Well, I'm doing a whole revamp of my channel.
	Now, I know for you longtime subscribers, everybody, everybody's like, why things are going so well?
	You get millions of views about why revamp.
	Because you can't, you know, I revamp every year.
	Because you can't keep things stale.
	And the reason why I get 10, 15 million views a month is because I keep changing things.
	So, yes.
	So, I haven't had a lot of videos going out, but I'm trying to, again, revamp and hopefully I'll get things going up.
	So, one of the things I'm going to be doing is a lot of the stories that you hear us as lawyers talk about that we say interesting and interesting.
	What I'm doing is I'm going to take those stories and turn them into essentially comic books.
	So you'll see some of the more interesting cases that people don't have visuals for.
	We're going to visualize them and see if people like that type of thing.
	Like Ray Williams, right?
	Or whatever his name is?
	Yes, like Ray Williams.
	Or any interesting legal case from back in the day.
	Like the case with the blank case.
	There's one case where the person set up a shotgun in their driveway because somebody kept robbing their house.
	The shotgun kills the person.
	And then, you know, is that murder?
	Yeah, is that murder or something like that?
	So that's what I'm going to be doing.
	And just some other stuff.
	So please just bear with me.
	But that's what we're getting into.
	And hopefully you guys enjoy it.
	And we might even have the Nate and Eric thing going.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Yes, that is something that we were planning on doing.
	But the problem is, I don't know if you guys...
	Any of you guys are all doing this, but I'm really going into, I'm really getting into AI, research, development, storyboarding, all that stuff.
	So it's just taking me a really long time to do that, but hopefully it'll pay off at the end because I want to be able to pump these things out, but I still want to be able to give you deep dive.
	So that's what we're working on.
	Sorry about the long guided thing, but we will get there.
	David. Same old.
	I'm the exact opposite of Nate.
	I don't like revamp.
	I don't like change.
	I'm just going to keep plugging away and raging against the machine.
	Nothing's coming up.
	Sunday night show's coming up.
	Standard stuff.
	I'm going to go locals.
	I'm going to come to you guys and do a separate thing later on because I'll end this stream and then come on over.
	First of all, I got a new...
	I'm going to fix the tech issues.
	Can I touch it?
	Look what I got, guys.
	A Scarlet Solo.
	This is from Encryptus.
	It has solved the problem.
	So this was the guinea pig test run with the new equipment.
	I went through two of those.
	I found that I had problems with them both.
	Replace them with...
	I can't move it.
	Replace them with a Bowcaster 2. I've got a Bowcaster 2 as well.
	They're much more reliable.
	Alright, whatever.
	Who cares?
	I can tell you which one didn't work.
	The freaking Behringer.
	Oh, Behringer's awful.
	With the cloud lifter thing, and then I, it's done.
	So this was it.
	This was the inaugural audio-free, audio tech, tech audio-free street, whatever you are.
	Well, Ron, while we've got you, what do you have coming up?
	I'm going to be traveling to Florida.
	First, I'm going to go a little bit early to see my dear old mom.
	Tuesday, I'm going to be on Elijah Schaefer.
	And that should be interesting.
	What's the subject there, Ron?
	Because I'm curious on this one.
	What are you guys talking about on Elijah's show?
	Well, I don't know yet, but we're going to be talking about Israel and anti-Semitism on one of his two programs.
	I'm doing two.
	I don't really quite get how it works yet.
	We're deciding which one it's going to be on.
	But he's been someone who has been difficult.
	I was thinking that could be contentious, if that's the person I'm thinking of.
	We're friendly.
	Okay. And I don't think he's been entirely responsible, but we're going to talk it through.
	That should be really interesting.
	Yes, it should.
	If you can, get on Candace Owens as well.
	No, she's a lunatic.
	She's just going crazy.
	I don't know what's up.
	What happened?
	I'm sorry, Dan.
	Dave, what do you have coming up?
	I'm still technically on vacation.
	I don't have any streams coming up until February, other than these little things, you know, joining other panels and talking about stuff into my $20 microphone right here.
	But yeah, so I'm going to watch the Lions tomorrow, destroy the Washington Commanders, and that's about it.
	All right.
	Well, folks, if you like what you're seeing here...
	Please hit that button below.
	You'll be getting a hint on the way out.
	But also, remember what I opened with.
	I do want to hear from all of you.
	There is information.
	You can follow me on X. That's a great way to reach out, to suggest subjects, things like that.
	Also, if you know of any software or something that I can use to build a webpage or website to start tracking subjects, things like that, to plan ahead for Fridays.
	I'm all ears because there's a lot of technically gifted people out there who could probably put me on the right path.
	So thank you so much, and we'll see you soon.
	All right, you're in my courtroom now, buster.
	And let me tell you, there are so many of you here that are downright guilty of not subscribing to Laid Back Law, yet watching full-blown episodes.
	Why don't you get your life together and just hit that button already?

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