Jill Wine-Banks (3:28)

I am ready.

Joyce Vance (3:30)

Well, Jill, I think there's a question on voice for you.

Listener Caller (3:34)

Michelle here calling in from Northern California. There's an awful lot of analysis and discussion these days regarding the constitution, specifically Articles 1 and 2, the Fourth Amendment, and lately the War Powers Act. Does the chronological order of the two articles afford them different levels of power and importance? Puissance, you know, power of the purse.

Jill Wine-Banks (3:58)

Great question, Michelle. The order of the articles in the Constitution was actually a deliberate choice by our founding fathers. And so they picked the legislature as the most important part of the government. The articles 1, 2 and 3 set up how our government is run, the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. And by picking the legislative.

Jill Wine-Banks (4:26)

And by the way, that Article 1 is also the longest of the articles.

Jill Wine-Banks (4:30)

They picked that because they said in a democratic country, the representation of the people by the people, at the lowest level of possibility was the House of Representatives, for example, because you have the fewest people represented by a member of the House, more people are represented by a senator and even more by the president. So it was a deliberate choice on the part to make sure that that was Article one. And it gave them some very significant powers, including, and I just want to specifically mention this about the power of the purse, because Congress has sort of ceding that power to the executive, which isn't where it was intended. And it's particularly important now where newspapers are reporting that Donald Trump is going to issue an executive order that will allow him to pay TSA agents. And much as I want TSA agents to be paid, as all of us want them to be paid, he does not have that power. He can only spend money that has been appropriated by the Congress. And so if they're going to get paid, Congress is going to have to do the right thing and pass a rule that says TSA agents can get paid. They can withhold money from the rest of it from ice, from Border Patrol, but they have to do the appropriation. So thank you for that question, Joyce. Here's a great question for you that comes from Ann and Ann Asks, in light of Carol Lenning's report on top secret government reports taken by Trump for

Jill Wine-Banks (6:19)

his personal business interests, could a lean

Jill Wine-Banks (6:22)

Cannon be held judicially responsible and face disbarment?

Joyce Vance (6:28)

This is a really good question, and I've not heard this one before. Aileen Cannon, of course, is the judge in the Northern District of Florida who prevented the release of the report. And I don't think that you're going to like the answer very much, but I'm going to give it to you straight. I think the answer is no. She probably does not face judicial responsibility for her decision for the very simple reason that judges have judicial immunity. You know, we've all talked a lot about presidential immunity. Well, this is judicial immunity. It's a legal doctrine that provides judges with absolute protection from civil liability for actions that they take within their judicial capacity. And that applies even if they're accused of acting maliciously or erroneously, as I think would be the allegation in this case. There are good reasons for that immunity to exist. Its purpose is to ensure judicial independence and sort of to encourage fearless decision making. And you can imagine, right, if some of the district judges who were ruling against the Trump administration, if they faced penalties for doing that, maybe it would be more difficult for them to be brave. So this makes a lot of sense. However, there is a but here, and it's a big one. The but is judicial immunity does not protect judges from criminal prosecution or professional disciplinary actions. So if evidence of criminal conduct emerged, I have not seen any yet here that would have to be something specific, like taking a bribe, there would have to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, if that existed. There can be some form of action against a judge, whether it's criminal prosecution or proceedings before the bar association of the bar that licenses them as an attorney. And that has, in fact, happened from time to time. So, Jill, here's a question for you from Paul in Canada. He asks, this is a great one. It's international law. He says, as a member of the United nations, isn't the USA bound by its charter and the rule rules of war? And then he goes on, if so, would not the president's order to bomb Iran's civilian power plants be an illegal order? And therefore, wouldn't it be the military's duty to refuse to follow such orders to commit a war crime? I'm so glad that we have somebody who understands military law here, because I'm dying to hear the answer to this question.

Jill Wine-Banks (8:58)

This is, I mean, you know, one of our listeners said you always say it's a great question. Well, that's because our listeners ask. They are right.

Joyce Vance (9:07)

They're always good. They're thoughtful.

Jill Wine-Banks (9:08)

They're so good. So, yes, this is a very complex question and you asked it in a very complex way. So thank you, Paul. But yes, of course, we are part of the UN and under international humanitarian law, all of those things would be war crimes. Yes, you are absolutely right. There is a but. And I could go into more about why it's part of a war crime, but violating UN rules doesn't really get us very far because we are a permanent part of the Security Council and we can veto any action that's taken against us. And so you say, well, but there is the International Criminal Court. Well, there is, but we don't belong to that. So, yeah, they could have in absentia trial and say we're guilty, but it's not going to get us anywhere. So it's really a problem that we aren't a member of the International Criminal

Jill Wine-Banks (10:08)

Court and that we reject it.

Jill Wine-Banks (10:10)

We never signed, actually did finally get signed, but then it was never presented for the ratification by the Senate, so it never became a part of it. So the bottom line is, even though these are clear acts of war and Hecsett saying we will give no quarter, that's an act of war. That is horrible. All of these things that you're suggesting that you mentioned in your question are definitely violations of humanitarian law, the laws of war. So we need to do something in this country so that we are an acceptable part of of the world order,

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Jill Wine-Banks (13:28)

Joyce, Here's a great audio question for you.

Listener Caller (13:31)

Hello, My name is Kobi from Pennsylvania, and my inquiry is regarding the investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Is there a single consolidated archive, or do multiple official copies exist across agencies? Additionally, how is the integrity of potentially incriminating information protected and verified?

Joyce Vance (13:50)

Well, hey Kobie, thanks for the question. This is a really interesting one, and I'm not sure that there's a definitive answer, but I'll give you my prosecutor's answer because to the extent that there's a single consolidated archive, which you're asking about of the Epstein files, it would live inside of the FBI's investigative file in the criminal case. You know, Jeffrey Epstein is indicted. Ghislaine Maxwell is indicted. The government puts together all of its evidence, but the file is much larger than just the evidence that the government will present at trial. There are reports of interviews, there's probably documentary evidence that would be stored as bulkies, and the Bureau would need to collect all of that because prosecutors have an obligation to turn over not only what they are going to use at trial, but large categories of evidence defined by Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Anything exculpatory information about witnesses, all of that has to be turned over to the defense. So the FBI probably has the largest sustained compilation, and I suspect that that's the file that DOJ is working off of as it makes the releases to Congress that are required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. You know, I'm sure that you do to some extent find multiple files across the country. For one thing, it seems very likely that more than one U.S. attorney's office has been involved in investigations. And so there may be duplicates or even unique documents. For instance, out west where there's an investigation into this ranch that Epstein owned, I could envision that treasury might have some documents. And of course we know Congress has documents. We don't really know what exists in the White House. But in terms of a comprehensive sort of file, that would be the FBI's file. And you know, I, I know we all have a lot of questions about how the FBI is operating in this day and age, but the integrity of those files is protected because there's a chain of custody and they're inserted into what's. Now when I started out, of course, it was not a computerized automated system. Now it is where documents are assigned number and they're uploaded. And there is, I think, pretty good circumstantial guarantees of their integrity. Sometimes you might even notice. And I think that that has happened in the release a missing document when the sequential numbering is interrupted. And so there are some pretty interesting ways that we would find out if the documents were being monkeyed with, I believe. Jill, there's an audio question for you from Carolyn in my hometown, Los Angeles.

Listener Caller (16:41)

Hi sisters, this is Carolyn in Los Angeles. I'm wondering when corporations break the law, why do they get to settle and pay fines but individual people get thrown in jail? For example, bank of America concealing Epstein's financial activity. Don't tell me because you can't put a corporation in jail. Corporations are made of people who carried out the illegal acts. Plus Citizens United kind of decided they are people. Thank you.

Jill Wine-Banks (17:12)

I love getting audio questions because it's so much fun for us to hear our listeners voices. So if you're writing us questions, think about doing a voice memo and sending them to us by email. And of course, this is another great question. There is, I think, a misunderstanding in the question though, because the question assumes that there are no corporate executives who go to jail for corporate crimes. And I bet if you start thinking about it, you'll remember that there are

Quince Advertiser 1 (17:45)

a lot, there are a lot of

Jill Wine-Banks (17:47)

corporate executives who can be prosecuted and held liable both criminally and civilly, and they can and do go to jail. There are certain requirements for an executive of a company to be held liable. They have to have some personal participation and some knowledge of it. They can't just, you know, be at the top and someone at the bottom does something that never gets acknowledged higher up in the chain. So they have to be a responsible corporate officer and it has to be within the scope of their authority. So those are some of the things that would make them liable. But I just want to give you some examples because numerous executives have gone to jail for long periods of time. I mean, we all remember Samuel Bankman Fried and his horrible crimes, and he's in jail. Jeffrey Skilling from Enron, I mean, that's an older case, but that was one of the most significant, awful corporate crimes ever. Fraud. Bernie Evers from WorldCom, Elizabeth Holmes from her company Theranos. Also, what about Martha Stewart? All of these were corporate executives who went to jail. So don't assume, as the question does, that they can only be held civilly liable. They can be held criminally liable. And yes, so are the individuals who commit those crimes. So there's a lot of time for jail for people who are committing crimes

Quince Advertiser 1 (19:19)

at the corporate level.

Jill Wine-Banks (19:21)

Hey, Joyce, here's a question that's sort of related to the last question that you answered. This one comes from Theresa. I hope I'm saying her name right. Maybe it's Theresa in North Carolina. She asked if Eileen Cannon permanently sealed the Jack Smith report concerning the documents case. Is there an appeal or anything else that can be done to unseal it? Is there anyone who can sue to challenge her ruling?

Joyce Vance (19:48)

So this is sort of a fun and very tricky legal question. It's almost the kind of question that Barbara, I might put on an exam in an effort to trip a student up. And here's the way to unravel this sort of tangle. Of course, Donald Trump and his former co defendants, Walt Nada, et al, were the ones who asked Judge Cannon to permanently seal Volume 2 of the Special Counsel's report. That's the volume of the report that's about the Mar A Lago case. And the interesting thing about this is, you know, when you're in court, you have parties on opposing sides of the case, right? So you have Donald Trump and the United States of America. But here they're not opposing Donald Trump. Here, in effect, it's his former criminal defense lawyer, the deputy Attorney general who's running the show. And the government tells Judge Cannon, yeah, Judge, we think that's a good idea. Go ahead and seal those documents. So not really the adversarial process that the courts envision. And it gets interesting here because there were some public journalism entities who asked Judge Cannon for permission to intervene in the case. Intervention is a traditional legal doctrine, and it's made for situations like this where because of an unusual alignment of the parties, there's nothing adversarial going on. And so judges will frequently permit someone to intervene in the case so that they can represent the opposing side. Well, Judge Cannon didn't do that here. She just dragged her feet and she wouldn't rule on the petition for intervention. And it sat there for months. And so the Knight School of Journalism was one of the entities that wanted to intervene. They and the others actually asked the 11th Circuit for this unusual remedy for mandamus. They asked the 11th Circuit to order her to rule on the petition, not to tell her how to rule because that's not how mandamus works, just to order her to rule. And the 11th Circuit agreed and said she had taken an unconscionably long period of time. And so she predictably denied intervention. That's now on appeal. There will be oral argument in June in front of the 11th Circuit on that petition. You know, it's, it's hard to say until the oral argument happens, but there are very good arguments here to permit intervention. And so if the 11th Circuit does, it would be, in essence, it would be the journalists, the free press, who would be challenging Donald Trump's effort to keep volume two of the report perpetually secret. And I hope for all of our sakes that that will happen and that they will succeed because certainly there is a real public interest in knowing the truth here.

Jill Wine-Banks (22:40)

Thank you for listening to Sister's Sidebar with Joyce Vance and me, Jill Wine Banks. Keep sending us those questions. We love them and we love them by audio or by email. So send them to us. We hope to see you at our live shows in Denver, Colorado, at the Cervantes Masterpiece on April 23 and in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Buckhead Theater on May 3. Tickets are available at politicon.com tour so make sure you get them because they do sell out. And we want to see you follow Sisters sidebar and Sisters in Law wherever you listen. And please give us a five star review. That's what makes other people able to find us. So we really want your recommendation. And don't forget to pick up Sisters in Law merch and other goodies@politicon.com merch and see you every week on Wednesdays for Sister sidebar and Saturdays for new episodes of Sisters in Law. Look forward to seeing you. Thanks for joining us.

VRBO Advertiser (23:55)

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Joyce Vance (23:55)

I can hear you just fine.

Jill Wine-Banks (23:57)

You're both very quiet all of a sudden. I don't know what happened. What can I do?

Joyce Vance (24:01)

I just see a black box where Jill should be.

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Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for for the plot twists, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.