Transcript
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MSW Media. Hey everybody, it's ag and welcome to Refried Beans, where we play an episode of the Daily Beans podcast from the same week either one, two or three years ago so we can see how far we've come. So please enjoy this episode from days gone by and note the date in the intro.
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Refried beans. I like refried beans. That's why I want to try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good and we're wasting time.
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Swearing.
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Jelly beans. Jelly beans. Jelly beans. J be.
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Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Friday, December 15, 2023. Today, a new York court has denied Trump's appeal of his gag order and then denied his request to appeal to the highest court. The the jury has the Moss and Freeman defamation case against Rudy Giuliani. Jim Comer has a shell company. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta is leaving the Justice Department. The European Union opens accession talks with Ukraine. The Supreme Court leaves the Illinois assault weapons ban in place. And a judge rules that Elon Musk must sit for another deposition in the SEC's investigation into Twitter. I'm your host, Alison Gill. The schadenfreude for Elon never ends, and I don't think it will anytime soon. Hi everybody. Happy Friday. Dana will be back next week. I'm very excited. But thank you again for hanging in there with me doing this solo. I appreciate that. Later in the show, we'll be joined by John Fugal saying you should check out his show on Sirius XM progress channel 127. It's called Tell Me Everything. It's weeknights at 9:00pm Eastern. Also, you do not want to miss this weekend's episode of the Jack podcast. I'll be joined with Andy McCabe, obviously. And you do not want to miss this weekend's episode of the Jack podcast. Along with Andy McCabe, who is always my partner in crime, or I should say injustice. We'll be joined by law professor and SCOTUS nerd, self proclaimed Steve Vladek. And he's going to answer my questions because I have many about the Supreme Court taking up the Fisher case. That's the case about the obstruction of justice charge two that Trump is facing. But this is for the Fisher case. That's Title 18, U.S. code Section 1512. Boy, you've heard me say that a million times. And we'll go over the neck and neck race between the circuit court and the Supreme Court on hearing Trump's absolute immunity claim. And we're gonna look at the timing of that March 4th trial. But specifically that February 9th jury selection date. I don't know that we're gonna make that one. So that might push the whole shebang back a little bit. So tune in to that. If you're wondering what the heck is going on with Actis Reyes and Mens Rea and how the 1512 case could impact the Trump indictment. You don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss it. I have questions for the law professor. So we'll suss it all out together. And there is a beans patron happy hour tonight. It's at 4pm Pacific, 7 Eastern. We'll go for an hour. I will take your political questions and we will have cocktails and mocktails. The final happy hour of the year. This is because I will be off on the 29th. So if you're a patron and you have some questions, feel free to hop on and we'll email you the link. And if you're not a patron and you want to become one, you can do that for as little as 36 bucks a year. Head to patreon.com mullershirote if you sign up at the $5 level, you also get early access ad free episodes of the Jack podcast. You get Jack and the Beans kind of cool. And again, we'll be doing that happy hour today at 4pm Pacific Time. And you know, also we have a whole patrons helping patrons thing. I haven't brought this up in a while, but it is the holidays. And if you, if you know there's a lot of folks who can't swing 36 bucks a year for a premium subscriber account, but you can purchase a year's worth of premium beans for someone for just 36 bucks. You can do that or sign up to be on the list to get one of those donated one year premium subscriptions. You can do that at DailyBeansPod.com, scroll down on the front page to patrons helping patrons. We've had hundreds and hundreds of people donate one year subscriptions. So thank you. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. All right, that is it. That's the intro to the show. We have a lot of news to get to, plus John Fugal saying plus good news. So let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes notes. First up from Reuters. A New York State appeals court on Thursday denied Donald Trump's bid to overturn a gag order restricting the former US President from publicly talking about court staff in his New York civil fraud trial. The judge overseeing the case, Arthur Engoron, issued the gag order October 3rd. And the former US president, well, he shared on social media this is why he issued the gag order, because Trump shared on social media a photo of the judge's law clerk posing when with U.S. senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and falsely calling her Schumer's girlfriend. The post left the court inundated with hundreds and hundreds of threats made by Trump supporters. Now, Trump, the front runner as we know for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination for now, appealed the order last month, arguing it violated his constitutional right to free speech. No sorry hon. But on Thursday, the mid level state appeals court known as the Appellate Division, said the gag order did not have a major impact here. Quote, the gravity of potential harm is small to Trump given the gag order is narrow, limited to prohibiting solely statements regarding the court's staff. That's what the order read. Trump's lawyers did not respond to a request for comment because they were cleaning up ketchup from the walls. Testimony concluded on Wednesday in the trial over a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general seeking to fine Trump at least $250 million and sharply curtail his ability to do business in New York, meaning probably taking it away altogether. That's home to several of his iconic properties, and she's doing that for lying about his net worth to dupe lenders. Angoron has already ruled that Trump's financial statements were fraudulent, largely limiting the trial to just damages. Angoron is expected to issue a verdict in writing after closing arguments on January 11th. Trump has denied wrongdoing, calling this a scam. The gag order was initially paused by a judge on November 16 when Trump appealed, but. But the panel of judges reinstated it two weeks later. The Appellate Division later on Thursday rejected Trump's request for permission to appeal the reinstatement of the order to the Court of Appeals. That's New York's highest court. They call their Supreme Court the Court of Appeals. So reject it again. But do you, anybody else get the feeling every single court at every single turn is rejecting Donald Trump? He just got rejected for his immunity plea in the E. Jean Carroll case. This is the second time he's going to trial for defaming E. Jean Carroll, but it's the first time he defamed her when he was president. We've got the Supreme Court willing to hear arguments for an expedited petition to grant a writ of certiorari. That basically means, you know, the Supreme Court is saying, hurry up, we want to decide if we're going to even hear this case. Trump's response is due on the 20th. We've got the appellate court in D.C. setting up a blisteringly fast briefing schedule for his immunity appeal there. He has to turn everything in by December 23rd. We talked about that yesterday, saving Christmas no longer the Grinch because it's not due on the 26th. DOJ due by the 30th. Response from Trump due on the 2nd. That will be done. Briefing on January 2nd. But remember, the jury selection begins in that trial on February 9th. And that is probably going to get pushed back a little bit, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. Again, we'll talk about all that on Jack. But he's losing at every turn. I mean, ever since the 60 plus lawsuits that he filed against the election results back in the day, one that went up to the Supreme Court, that was a Texas lawsuit signed on by 17 attorneys general, he's been rejected on all of them. All of his privilege battles with Jack Smith and other investigators trying to get information from people he had private conversations with. His lawyers have lost all of their, most of their, I should say, attorney client privilege battles because of the crime fraud exception. He keeps losing and I think he will continue to keep losing. I am a little bit concerned about what the court does with the 1512. But again, I'll be asking Steve Vladic those questions when it comes up on Jack this weekend. But remember, he's charged with two other counts besides 1512 counts. And 1512, if that went away, it would negate the 1512 K, the conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. But the other two counts, conspiracy against rights and defrauding the United States, are still there. So we'll see what ends up happening. And again, like I said, I have many questions for Steve Vladek. Now, as we know, Judge Engoron fined Trump a total of $15,000 for twice violating the order, fines which have been paid. Trump faces a raft of other legal troubles, Reuters says, as he campaigns to face President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election, including four criminal cases. He has pled not guilty in all four. He'll never take a deal. He'll never be offered one, honestly. Next up, and I know you've heard a lot of this before. I know you've heard a lot of this story before here on the beans and on cleanup on L45. But there's some news in here. And this is from the Associated Press. Rep. James Comer, multimillionaire farmer, boasts of being one of the largest landholders near his rural Kentucky hometown. And he has meticulously documented nearly all of his land holdings on congressional financial disclosure documents, about 1600 acres in all. But there are six acres, just six, that he bought in 2015 and co owns with a longtime campaign contributor that he has treated a little differently, transferring his ownership to Farm Team Properties, a shell company he co owns with his wife. Interviews and records reviewed by the Associated Press provide new insights into the financial deal, which risks undercutting the force of some of Comer's central arguments in his impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. For months, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and his Republican colleagues have been hounding Biden for how his relatives traded on their famous name to secure business deals. In particular, Comers attacked some Biden family members, including the president's son, over their use of shell companies that appear to be designed to obscure millions of dollars in earnings they received from, quote, shadowy middlemen and foreign interests. Such companies typically exist only on paper and are formed to hold an asset like real estate. Their opaque structures are often designed to help hide ownership of property and other assets. But as Comer works to, quote, deliver the transparency and accountability that the American people demand. Oh, and by the way, that's a quote from him. He wants to deliver the transparency and accountability even though during the vote, Democrats wanted to add an amendment to the impeachment inquiry about transparency and the Republicans said no. But anyway, as he works to deliver his transparency, his own finances and relationships have begun to draw notice as well, including his ties to prominent local figures who have complicated pasts after Democrats blasted him for being a hypocrite after the Daily Beast disclosure of the company last month. That's what we talked about here on the beans and over on cleanup. Comer countered by calling a Democratic lawmaker a Smurf. That's Moskowitz, by the way, and saying that the criticism was the kind of thing only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on. The Associated Press found that Farm Team Properties functions in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens, masking his stake in the land that he co owns with the donor from being revealed on his financial disclosure forms. Those records describe Farm Team Properties as his wife's land management and real estate speculation company. Without providing any more details. Now, it's not clear why Comer decided to put those six acres of the 1600 he owns in a shell company or what other assets Farm Team Properties may hold. On his most recent financial disclosure forms, Comer lists its value as about a million bucks, which is a substantial sum but a fraction of his overall wealth. After this story, first published Thursday, Comer responded during an appearance on Fox News stating that FarmTeam Properties has five different assets and a lot of revenue. He didn't reveal what those other assets might be. He also falsely claimed that the donor, Darren Cleary, wasn't a campaign contributor at the time the property was purchased. Cleary and his family have donated to Comer's political campaigns since 2010. He lied on Fox News. I'm shocked. Ethics experts say House rules require members of Congress to disclose any assets held by such companies that are worth more than a thousand bucks. Hmm. This impeachment's gonna be fun. Gonna raise a lot of money off of that. And from Reuters, A federal judge on Thursday tentatively ruled that Elon Musk must testify again for the U.S. securities and Exchange Commission's probe in his $44 billion Twitter takeover, handing the SEC a victory in its latest skirmish with the world's richest person. During a hearing In San Francisco, U.S. magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler quickly rejected arguments by Musk's attorney that SEC officials do not have the authority to issue subpoenas, saying the agency has broad investigative powers and that no judge would, quote, second guess an SEC probe. Bealer told the sides to figure out when Musk would sit for one more four hour deposition or I'll make you do it, quote if you don't work it out, then it's in San Francisco in February, she said. The SEC sued Musk in October to compel the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to testify as part of an investigation into his 2022 purchase of social media giant Twitter, which he subsequently renamed X. Musk refused to attend a September interview for the probe. The agency is examining whether Musk followed the law when filing the required paperwork with the agency about his purchases in Twitter stock and whether his statements in relation to the deal were misleading. Thursday's face off is the latest spat in a years long feud between Musk and the top US markets regulator dating back to 2018, when he tweeted that he had funding secured to take the electric carmaker private. The SEC has been probing Musk's Twitter takeover since April of 2022, when he first disclosed he had purchased stock in the company. Musk gave the SEC documents for its probe and testified via video conference for two half day sessions and the SEC said that in a filing. So he sat for two of these two half day sessions. It was considered one deposition. SEC attorney said they have more questions from Musk after receiving new documents and had sought additional testimony in September. But Musk didn't comply. In response to the SEC's October lawsuit, Musk's lawyers urged Beeler, the judge, to deny the SEC's request, calling the probe misguided, quote, the SEC's pursuit of Mr. Musk has crossed the line into harassment, they wrote in a filing last month. They also argued that based on a clause in the Constitution relating to official appointments enforcement, staff conducting the probe are not lawfully appointed and therefore lack the power to issue subpoenas. The judge said she's inclined to take the SEC's view on the issue, but I'll take a closer look before I issue the order. She's also conceding the demands of long running investigations. They can be frustrating, she says. But she still sided with the sec, emphatically dismissing Musk's attorney's arguments. You've got one more four hour deposition, one more day of depositions to survive and it's over. It seems unlikely there's going to be any more hassle, she said. Musk and the SEC have been sparring since his funding secured tweet in 2018. Like I said, the SEC settled that case, but the commission sued Musk again in 2019 for breaching that settlement. The tweets also prompted a shareholder lawsuit. A jury in February found Musk was not liable for misleading investors. Over the years, the agency has opened multiple other probes into Musk and Tesla. In April of 2022, Musk disclosed he'd require 9.2% stake in Twitter. It was 11 days after the SEC's deadline for such disclosures. Musk initially indicated that regulatory filing that he planned to be a passive stakeholder, meaning he didn't plan to take over Twitter. Later that month, however, he announced plans to buy Twitter for 44 billion. He subsequently tried to get out of that deal, alleging Twitter was not disclosing the full extent of bot activity on its platform. After being sued to complete the deal, he closed his acquisition of Twitter in October of 2022. Next up from CBS the Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block an Illinois law banning assault style weapons, leaving the measure in place while proceedings before the federal appellate court continues to so that probably take about a year, year and a half or so, according to Law Dork. The decision from the justices with no noted dissents marks the second time they've declined to halt Illinois's statewide ban, which a gun rights advocacy group and gun shop owner argued violates the Second Amendment. It has also left in place a similar ordinance in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. I hope I'm saying that properly. Chicago the unsigned order from the court rejecting the request from the pro Second Amendment organization comes on the heels of the latest spate of shift shootings, one at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Austin. In San Antonio, Texas, the shootings have reignited. Now familiar calls from President Biden to Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines. And next up from Hannah Rabinowitz at cnn. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta is leaving the DOJ after three years of overseeing some of the administration's most contentious legal issues, ranging from pro protecting abortion rights to criminal and police reform efforts. That's according to the department. Gupta is the first woman of color and first civil rights attorney to hold the Justice Department's number three post, which oversees the department's civil litigation sections, including antitrust enforcement as well as civil rights and environmental and natural resources divisions. Her departure early next year is expected to come after the Justice Department completes its critical incident review of the law enforcement response to the Uvalde shooting. In a statement to cnn, Merrick Garland thanked Gupta for her work and being a trusted advisor, quote, vanita's commitment to the pursuit of justice and her relentless focus on bringing people together to find common ground has made her an incredibly effective leader in dealing with some of the most complex challenges facing the American people. Vanita has played an essential role in our work to fulfill DOJ's mission to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe and protect civil rights. I am confident that her enormous contributions to the department will continue to be felt long after her departure. And our final story today is from the Times. European Union leaders agreed Thursday to officially open accession negotiations for Ukraine to join the bloc to join the eu. It's an important breakthrough for Kyiv as it tries to bolster support from its allies. Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, announced the decision on Twitter. The move came at a crucial time for President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had just returned from a bruising visit to the United States, where he pled for desperately needed money for his war effort that was being held up by Republicans. Even though the accession to the EU will take years, the announcement on Thursday was symbolic. It was a symbolic win that's likely to rile President Putin of Russia has decried Ukraine's European ambitions as a form of aggression. The European Union also approved session talks for Moldova. Remember Moldova? Remember the guy Trump pushed out of the way at the summit? Yeah, that's Moldova the impoverished neighbor to Ukraine's south that's also threatened by Russia. Both nations have struggled to overcome entrenched corruption which has hindered progress toward EU membership. At the start of the EU meeting on Thursday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary said he planned to veto an official opening of Ukrainian accession talks, arguing that the country was not ready and that Ukraine's entry would be bad for the bloc and for Hungary. But in the end, Orban appears to have abstained from the decision to let the talks begin. Actually, he walked out so he wouldn't have to vote. The next immediate hurdle for Ukraine in the two day EU summit is to secure 50 billion euros. That's about $52 billion in aid for the country. Mr. Orban, who has in the past delayed some EU sanctions against Russia and is seen as Putin's closest ally in the bloc, said the aid should come only after Europe wide elections planned for the summer, which we are totally going to be, we're totally going to be interfering with. Meanwhile, we're still trying to get Ukraine funded here in the U.S. senator Schumer says the Senate will be here next week to continue talks, but the House has gone home for the holidays to hide from their constituen back at home. All right, everybody stick around after this break. We have John Fugal saying, and then that will be followed by the good news. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages.