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- [00:04]
Jill Wine Banks
Welcome to this episode of Sister sidebar with Joyce Vance and me, Jill Wine Banks. This is the show that is a spin off from Sisters in Law, where we answer your questions. So if you have a question for us, please email us@sistersinlawoliticon.com or tag us on social media using Sisters in Law. But don't just type your questions. We love to hear your voices and it's important and that's why we want to hear them. So you can email us a voice memo using one of your notes apps and we might play it on the show. Let's get started.
- [00:42]
KJ from Colorado (Caller)
Hi, it's KJ From Colorado. This question is about the slush fund. And Donald brought a case against the irs. And because there was no true adversary, there can be no case. And because there can be no case, there can be no settlement. And because there was no settlement, there can be no addendum to the settlement. So it seems to me that the IRS get out of jail free forever card is null and void. Your thoughts?
- [01:17]
Joyce Vance
Okay, so this is such a great question. Thank you so much for asking it like this, K.J. i'm sort of wondering if you're a law student because you make all the important steps here, right? Donald Trump sues the irs, but it's not adversarial. And we all know because we've talked about it in the past, that the Constitution requires that there actually be a controversy against parties with opposing interests before a court can consider a lawsuit. And you say since that's not the case, there can be no settlement. And because there's no settlement, and here's the most important part, I think the part of this whole situation that is sticking in all of our craws, you say no settlement, and that means there can be no addendum to the settlement. And that settlement, of course, is that get out of jail free card. I called it an almost a pardon that Donald Trump gets his acting Attorney General, Todd Blanch to sign just before Todd Blanch, coincidentally enough, is nominated to be the permanent attorney general. And that's this sort of forgiveness for Trump, his family, his businesses, from any sort of investigation by the irs, arguably even by other agenc misconduct that they knew about as of the date of the settlement. And it also acts as a forgiveness from Trump paying any back tax liability, which some news sources have reported could be as much as $100 million. So nothing to sneeze at. I think your argument is a really interesting one. And apparently so does a federal judge in the Southern District of Miami. That's where this lawsuit was originally filed. And Donald Trump applied for permission to have that lawsuit dismissed. And the argument that his lawyers made, and look, it's a correct argument, is that a plaintiff can dismiss a lawsuit that that plaintiff has brought without leave of court before the defendant answers. And that's what happened in this case. So it looked like it was regrettable, but on the up and up when it happened, then 35 former federal judges, a bipartisan group intervenes, and they say to the judge, look, you do not have to be a part of what, in essence is a fraud on the court, this settlement here. And they asked the judge to reopen her consideration of the case, even though she had dismissed it, pointing to a couple of rules that arguably permit that to happen. And the judge, in her order, she ordered the parties to brief this request. She points to an additional rule, Rule 11, which allows the court to sanction frivolous lawsuits or frivolous motions. And so now we're in the middle of a briefing schedule, and the government filed this brief. And the tone is just really sort of offensive, to be honest. The tone is sort of like, judge, you can't do anything. And how dare you even consider it. And look, even as, you know, an offended litigant, when you think that the court has done something that's really wrong, you still use a tone of respect and professionalism. And this brief really does not entertain that kind of a tone. So I'm going to be interested to see how Judge Williams ends up ruling on this request. The response by the judges who have filed in this case, and by the way, the government, I shouldn't say the government. It's really Donald Trump as an individual, although, of course, we all know that that, in essence now is the government. But Donald Trump is arguing that these judges aren't entitled to file a brief or be a party to the lawsuit. So that's something that the judge will have to consider, too. But their response was due right before we taped this episode of Sisters sidebar. And now the whole situation is ripe for the judge to issue a decision. And we'll get an answer to your question in that way. Well, Jill, that takes us to a question for you from Chris in Salt Lake City, Utah. Chris says, what's the safest way to renew our passports? I don't trust the administration.
- [05:24]
Jill Wine Banks
I love this question, Chris, because I recently had to renew my passport. And my biggest fear was that I would get one with Donald Trump's face on it. But let me first of all assure you that unless you request that you don't get his face on it so you don't have to worry about that aspect. The only advice I would have for you is while I don't trust the administration about much, I do think that they will renew passports as required. And the best advice I have is do it in plenty of time. And keep in mind when you look at your passport that for many things it has to be valid for at least three or six months after your trip to be able to be used. So make sure that you renew it way before it expires and allow at least eight weeks for the process to take place. I used an expediter because I wanted to make sure I had my passport in time for a trip I was planning and they did a great job and got me the passport really quickly just doing it online. So that's what I recommend. And by the way, online you never get Donald Trump's picture, so it's only if you're there in person and request it. And there's another question for you, Joyce from Jonathan Are crimes ever prosecuted posthumously? Why or why not?
- [06:53]
Joyce Vance
Yeah, so this is interesting. I love these inside baseball legal questions and there's a pretty succinct answer to this one. You can't prosecute someone who's dead. In fact, if you've got a prosecution that's in play and your defendant dies during the prosecution, prosecutors are required to immediately move to dismiss the prosecution itself. And even if someone has been convicted, if they die while the case is on appeal, then they get their conviction vacated. You know, this is all part of the strong presumption in our system that people have to have every opportunity, opportunity to defend themselves against criminal charges before they can stand convicted. And so you just don't see and won't see this happen. Really the only exception that I can think of, Jonathan, is just if you're sort of looking for the Jeopardy trivia answer here would be you might have someone as an unindicted co conspirator who's no longer alive and you could talk about their conduct, but you really can't charge someone and you've got to dismiss a case once somebody has deceased.
- [08:10]
Jill Wine Banks
After a meal or when everyone is together, being able to sit and tell their stories or hear them in his own words is something you'll cherish forever. It's something I wish I had had when my dad was still here and my grandfather because I would write so many questions. And of course back then I probably wouldn't have known to ask these. And now I so regret that I can't ask these questions about their life, about my grandfather coming from Lithuania to America. There's just so many questions I wish I had asked.
- [08:43]
Joyce Vance
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- [09:22]
Jill Wine Banks
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- [10:10]
Joyce Vance
Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm actually going to get my husband to do this because you know, getting him to tell stories can be a little bit like pulling teeth sometimes. And I think having this as a prompt is something where maybe he'll preserve for our kids some stories that they might not have heard otherwise. You know, families have used Storyworth to create over a million books. They have more than 50,000 5 star reviews and folks agree this will be a treasure that your family will love. So, you know, I used to love hearing stories from family members about what growing up was like. And it's why I love the question about what fascinated your dad as a child. These questions we don't always think to ask. It's whimsical, it's touching, and it can connect family to a part of your father or anyone else's life that came before we were in it. Even as adults, we sometimes forget that our dads were children too. And it's fun to draw comparisons to what life was like across generations. And it's never a bad thing to remind the younger members of the family that there was a time when people actually didn't spend time in front of screens.
- [11:19]
Jill Wine Banks
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- [12:41]
Joyce Vance
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- [13:23]
Jill Wine Banks
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- [14:05]
Joyce Vance
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- [15:38]
Jeff Wooldridge (Caller)
Hi Sisters in law. My name is Jeff Wooldridge from Portland, Oregon and I'm wondering why the Congress needs to vote to stop the Iran war when the War Powers act requires an affirmative action by Congress to continue the war beyond a timeframe that seems to have come and gone. Would such a vote be subject to a veto by the President? Thanks. Love the show.
- [15:57]
Jill Wine Banks
Great question Jeff. And you're right, the War powers Resolution of 1973, which is the War Powers act, is a federal law designed to check the US President's power to commit the country to an armed conflict without Congressional consent. It establishes a system of checks and balances that is part of our basic fundamentals of the Constitution to ensure both the executive and legislative branches participate in decisions involving waging war. And it requires that the President consult Congress before introducing our troops into hostilities and to report to Congress within 48 hours of such actions. Once forces are deployed, the president has only 60 days to withdraw them unless Congress declares war, authorizes the action, or grants a 30 day extension. And so it's a question of Congress can also force a withdrawal by a concurrent resolution. So I like your idea. If Congress does nothing, which is what the law says, they have to do something or else he has to withdraw troops. If they do nothing, then it's all over. It would require withdrawal. The power of the purse could also be used because they could refuse to give the huge amounts that are being spent to pursue this war in Iran. And I'm hoping that they will do nothing. If they do something, if they do pass this war resolutions thing, not authorizing the continuation, then maybe he could veto it. But if it's only a resolution, maybe not. So we'll have to see what happens. But so far, Congress is dead in the water. The Republicans have stopped it being a meaningful check and balance on presidential elections. Powers. Joyce, there's a great question for you from Carolyn.
- [17:53]
Joyce Vance
Hi, sisters. This is Carolyn in Los Angeles. Is Katie Feng really the only one who is suing Todd Blanche over the Epstein files? I don't understand. Could the American people sue him? Why are no organizations suing him? What am I missing?
- [18:09]
Jeff Wooldridge (Caller)
Thank you very much.
- [18:10]
Joyce Vance
Hey, Carolyn, thanks for the question and thanks for sending it in on audio. We really love it when y' all send us audio questions. And I want to encourage as many of you as comfortable doing that to do it because it makes this really extra fun and special for us, too. So I love this question. Many of you know that Katie Fang and I are very close friends in real life. But, you know, Katie did not tell me before she filed this lawsuit that it was coming. And so I had to call her up and say, girl, what are you doing, you know, suing the acting attorney general. What's this lawsuit about? And I was really intrigued by her answer. This is a case where she's suing Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, the nominee to be the permanent guy for failing to follow the terms of the Epstein Files Transparency act that Congress passed. And you know, the real problem that so many of these lawsuits challenging the administration have stumbled into is the standing question, who has the standing to sue the administration? There's a longstanding doctrine that makes it very difficult to bring taxpayer lawsuits. You actually have to find somebody who's proximate to the harm to sue. And so Katie is alleging that because Blanche has failed to comply with the Epstein Transparency act, it's impossible for her to do her job as a journalist. And I think that's a very clever way to try to thread the needle. We don't know yet if she'll be successful or not, but the lawsuit is in the works. And it has five specific violations that she alleges. She says that Blanche and the Justice Department allowed improper redactions where they illegally redacted the names of perpetrators, including potential co conspirators. She alleges that they withheld materials that they improperly concealed documents, specifically including records that would implicate Trump. And it's pretty fascinating how journalists have figured out that this happened. You can actually go back and look at the documents and track what's missing. And in a couple of places, there are key tranches of documents that have not been disclosed. There's also an issue with ignoring foreign language materials, declining to review or process those foreign language documents, which the law does not permit the Justice Department to do. They have failed to publish redaction logs. And that's something that's legally mandated. You have to give a redaction roadmap. You have to publish it in the Federal Register. DOJ did not do that here. And so she argues that there's journalistic harm that she can't do her job as a journalist. She can't investigate, she can't report on matters of public interest. And I think that this is a super interesting lawsuit, definitely one to watch because it's the first, you know, you ask, is it the only one? Well, there are other efforts, and certainly the survivors are trying to impact the court of public opinion while the lawyers work in court. But this case is a unique effort to hold the Justice Department and Blanche personally responsible for failure to comply with the act that Congress passed. You know, a bipartisan, a Republican led Congress, not fooling around, said, disclose the Epstein files. And this Justice Department has not complied. So, Jill, last question for this episode is for you from Tanya in Baltimore, Maryland. Tanya says if the president resigns, how long does it take for the vice president to be sworn in? Who is in charge of that process?
- [21:57]
Jill Wine Banks
Well, I have some personal experience with this question. When a president resigns or is ousted for another reason or dies in office or is assassinated, the vice president is sworn in instantaneously. As soon as Richard Nixon announced his resignation would be effective at noon, on the stroke of noon, Gerald Ford was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger, which who, by the way, I always thought Justice Berger looked exactly like a chief justice of the Supreme Court should look with his suave white hair. And he just looked great. I didn't agree with a lot of his stuff, but that doesn't matter anyway. He swore in Ford on the stroke of noon. U.S. district Judge Sarah Hughes swore in LBJ on the plane immediately upon the death of JFK. She, by the way, is the only woman to have had the honor of swearing in a president. So good for lbj.
- [23:03]
Joyce Vance
Well, thank you for listening to Sisters sidebar with Jill Winebanks and Joyce Vance. Keep sending in your questions. We need more of them for next week's show. And if you send us your question in a voice memo, we'll try to play your question during our next episode before we answer it. Follow Sister sidebar and hashtag Sisters in Law wherever you listen. And please give us a a five star review. It really helps others find the show. Show some love to this week's sponsors, Storyworth and Oneskin. Our links to them are in the show notes. Your support for them is essential because they make this podcast possible. Don't forget to pick up Sisters in Law merch and other goodies@politicon.com merch I am really enjoying my my Hoodie sweatshirt now that it's beach weather. And we'll see you every week on Wednesdays and Saturdays for new episodes of Sisters in Law and Sisters Sidewalk. Did you all hear me yell at poor Bob? Bob just wants his flamethrower.