Serious Trouble

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Judge Juan Merchan has found Trump in contempt of court and fined him $9,000 — $1,000 per violation of the terms of his gag order, the maximum authorized by New York law. He also noted those fines might not be large enough to influence Trump's behavior, and he threatened to jail him if he violates the order again. Is that threat credible? Ken says so. Plus: witness testimony in Merchan's courtroom, another New York judge declines to reduce E. Jean Carroll's award, the Supreme Court hears oral argument about presidential immunity, Arizona announces a fake electors indictment, and Harvey Weinstein's New York convictions have been overturned. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for the full episode and our newsletter.

The trial has begun! Judge Juan Merchan seated 12 jurors and 6 alternates in three days of voir dire. We discuss the pace of jury selection and complicating factors (that strong opinions about this defendant are common and often expressed on social media), plus: Ken discusses his philosophy of choosing a jury as a defense lawyer, why it’s more of an art than a science, and how it will matter that this Manhattan jury is unusually highly educated. We also discuss a question that, as we sent out this episode, remains before Judge Merchan — should Trump be held in contempt for his repeated public statements about witnesses and the jury, in spite of the gag order on him? And we talk about the theories of the case laid out in opening statements from the prosecution and the defense. And amid all this, George Santos has clawed his way back into the news in a small way. Yay! Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York has begun, with jury selection underway. Ken and I discuss Trump’s last-ditch efforts to get this trial delayed, and public support he has gotten from a surprising advocate: imprisoned ex-attorney Michael Avenatti, who phoned into MSNBC from his oceanfront Los Angeles home to say he thinks the case is seriously flawed. Meanwhile, in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon did something we said she might: She declined to make any decisions about those jury instructions she asked attorneys a bunch of weird questions about. Smith is in a bind. We discuss why. Plus: Incompetent ratfucker Jacob Wohl and his sidekick Jack Burkman are in trouble again. And actress Gina Carano (from Disney's "The Mandalorian") is a character on Serious Trouble for the first time this week.

Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced. And at his sentencing, we saw a not-too-uncommon pattern for sentencings in major white-collar cases: Judge Lewis Kaplan read him the riot act, ruled against him on all the key issues driving the sentence guideline calculation; accused him of lying on the stand; and then sentenced him to far less than the guideline sentence. Speaking of BS of interest to investors, Trump Media & Technology Group is worth billions of dollars, at least for now. Donald Trump has to wait six months for his share lockup to expire before he can start passing his shares off to new bagholders. So in the meantime, he’s suing his co-founders, saying they were bad at their jobs and therefore shouldn’t get to keep their shares. Is that how it works? Plus, Trump faces an expanded gag order in his Manhattan trial — one whose limits he appears intent to continue to push. And in Florida, after we recorded, Judge Aileen Cannon ruled (sort of) about issues related to the Presidential Records Act. Plus: updates on Hunter Biden and John Eastman Vist serioustrouble.show for a transcript and to sign up for our newsletter This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

A panel of New York appellate judges has reduced Donald Trump’s bond in the New York Attorney General’s civil case to $175 million, an amount he can probably afford. Ken and I discuss possible reasons the court took this surprise action — as is typical for this kind of decision in New York, the judges didn’t really explain their reasoning — and the likely course of Trump’s appeal to come later this year. Meanwhile, in New York Supreme Court (which is the trial court), Trump’s criminal trial over falsification of business records starts next month — we have pretrial updates, including on the gag order for the former president modeled on another recent gag order. Plus: why are law clerks quitting Judge Aileen Cannon's chambers? And Rod Blogojevich is told to "just go." Sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode at serioustrouble.show. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan was slated to start next week, but it will be delayed due to the late production of a large volume of documents from the US Attorney’s office. And Trump has said he can’t find a bond for the New York Attorney General’s civil judgment against him, so you can expect to see Attorney General Letitia James starting to collect on that judgment by other means quite soon. In Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee has decided not to disqualify Fani Willis or her office from the RICO prosecution of Trump and his associates. But McAfee’s decision is otherwise scathing. Nathan Wade wins our Senate Twink Memorial Award for Belatedly Good Judgment for changing his mind about an interview on “Meet the Press." Good call, Nathan! In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon has issued some more bizarre orders in the documents case. What she's doing is not exactly what you would do if you were trying to tank the case, but “incompetent” and “malevolent” are not mutually exclusive theories of what Judge Cannon is up to. And finally, we answer an excellent listener question sent in by Ben Dreyfuss about what lawyers in movies sometimes do when their clients to lie to them. Free subscribers get the conversations about New York and a bit of the goings on in Georgia. Paid subscribers get the whole shebang, including a conversation about why some of the charges in the Georgia case have been dismissed, and Ken’s explanation of why he’s less like those movie lawyers and more like Alan Dershowitz. Visit serioustrouble.show to upgrade and you'll hear the whole thing.

It’s a hat trick for Sen. Robert Menendez: his superseding indictment has been superseded once again, this time with charges that he and his wife obstructed justice, including by directing their lawyers to lie to the government about a Mercedes C-300 convertible she received as a bribe. Ken says this sort of thing — lying so your lawyer will lie for you — is not a good idea, but just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean it doesn't happen...a lot. Plus: Trump posted a bond of nearly $92 million in the second case E. Jean Carroll won against him. The bond is good news for Carroll — it means she’ll get paid, sooner or later, and without the need to chase Trump through the courts hunting for his assets. But Trump still faces a looming deadline to post a much larger bond in the New York Attorney General’s case, and if he is unable to (or chooses not to) we’ll still see what it looks like to pursue him with debtor’s exams and liens and the like. Visit serioustrouble.show to find a transcript of this episode and our newsletter sign-up. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

The Supreme Court is asserting itself in matters related to Donald Trump. The justices held unanimously that states may not block Donald Trump from their election ballots on the grounds of 14th Amendment disqualification, though the justices did have a sharp disagreement about the court’s choice to foreclose other non-congressional federal paths to disqualifying Trump or other candidates who may have engaged in insurrection. Meanwhile, the court will consider Trump’s claims about presidential immunity, and on an expedited basis — oral arguments will be next month, with a decision expected by late June. That sets up the awkward possibility that Trump’s criminal trial related to January 6 will begin in the fall and be ongoing on Election Day, if Judge Tanya Chutkan is serious about her stated intention not to let a defendant’s busy schedule get in the way of a trial. Trump’s deadlines to post his appeal bonds approach, with courts so far unimpressed with his requests for delays and discounts. What happens if he fails to post sufficient bonds? And where could hundreds of millions of dollars come from? Allen Weisselberg is getting a little more prison time — this time for lying about the lies about the size of Trump’s penthouse — and Ken and I discuss why we feel… well, we don’t exactly feel sorry for him, but we do find something a little odd about how it’s Allen who keeps getting sentenced to custody when he’s not exactly the primest mover behind Trump-entity misdeeds. And Hunter Biden talked to a congressional committee, and when he did so he really talked. Visit serioustrouble.show to find a transcript of this episode and to sign up for our newsletter. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

The mess in Georgia continues. As a reminder, this all bears on the question of whether Fani Willis and her office will be disqualified from conducting the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and his various co-defendants over his efforts to steal Georgia’s electoral votes. This week, Ken and I invited Georgia attorney Andrew Fleischman back on the show to talk about just how this case got so prurient and stupid, what might happen with it next, and whether this is just what happens when prosecutors have to defend and defense attorneys have to prosecute. Meanwhile, in New York, District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants Donald Trump under another gag order — raising some questions that courts have gotten better at answering over the last few months. And out west, Biden accuser Alexander Smirnov got sprung from jail and almost immediately re-arrested, as Los Angeles-based Judge Otis Wright sought to ensure that he could not flee the country. And another SoCal federal judge, Cormac Carney, is in a spat with the Ninth Circuit over his unusually expansive view of when a defendant can get off on the grounds of selective prosecution. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show George Santos is back, and Ken couldn’t be happier about it. This time, George is on the left side of the v., for once: he’s suing Jimmy Kimmel over copyright infringement. The most shocking part is he may have a good case. Santos says Kimmel committed various torts when he ordered many embarrassing Cameo videos from Santos — in one instance, the request was for a video congratulating “Beav-a-Pus” on going to work at Arby’s in his “fursona” — paying only for personal-use licenses, but then broadcasting the videos for commercial purposes on ABC and across various social media platforms. Alexander Smirnov, Hunter Biden’s now-indicted accuser, says he had contacts with Russian intelligence. And Hunter himself remains combative with federal prosecutors — pointing out that one of their pieces of “evidence” that Hunter had a cocaine problem is a photo of sawdust that was sent to Hunter as part of a message urging him not to use drugs. For paying subscribers: in Georgia, we’re all waiting for Judge Scott McAfee to decide whether to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and others. And we took a number of the questions you sent in about the large judgment Trump now owes to New York State for business fraud — including about why this money even goes to the state, and about what will happen if he is unable or unwilling to post an appeal bond covering the amount he will owe if his appeal loses, and bankruptcy. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions — we plan to take more of them next week.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Late Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron issued his long-awaited verdict in the civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and it orders Trump and his affiliated entities to disgorge nearly $400 million to the state of New York for what he says are ill-gotten profits and interest savings made possible by financial misrepresentations. It’s a big judgment — and like the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case, one he’ll have to put cash up for pretty soon, even if there will be years of appeals. Ken and I discuss what this means for Trump and his businesses, and whether (again, like in the Carroll case) he ended up with a worse legal outcome because he was so obnoxious during the trial process. Plus: in Washington D.C., the Supreme Court is considering whether to overturn Colorado’s decision blocking Donald Trump from that state’s presidential ballot on 14th Amendment grounds. It can be hazardous to read into oral arguments, but the judges’ questions did not seem auspicious for Colorado. Meanwhile, the court must now decide (and will, probably any day now) whether to involve itself in Trump’s January 6-related federal criminal case. Special Counsel Robert Hur decided not to recommend any criminal charges against President Joe Biden related to his handling of classified documents, but the White House was less than thrilled about Hur’s report explaining why. A Biden accuser faces his own indictment — from Special Counsel David Weiss, who’s also prosecuting Hunter Biden — for making up allegations about the Bidens, Burisma and bribes. And finally, we talk about Georgia. What a mess. District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand in a hearing about whether she should be disqualified from the RICO prosecution she brought against Donald Trump on conflict-of-interest grounds related to a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case. The two-day hearing was salacious. Visit serioustrouble.show to become a paying subscriber to our show, and then you'll be able to hear the whole episode.

A little less than a month after hearing oral arguments, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected Donald Trump’s argument that he is immune from being prosecuted for acts within the “outer perimeter” of his presidential duties. That should clear the way for Judge Tanya Chutkan to again move toward the start of a criminal trial, unless the Supreme Court decides it wants to consider the case. Ken and Josh talk about the judges’ reasoning, reasons the Supreme Court might decide to sit this one out, and when Chutkan could realistically proceed toward trial under various scenarios. Plus: Fani Willis' responds to a Georgia RICO defendant regarding her personal relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to oversee the case, Taylor Swift's lawyers send a nastygram to a college student tracking her private plane, Jack Burkman's giving up his law license, and it turns out that the Senate employee who filmed a sex tape in the Hart Building had the good sense to exercise his Fifth Amendment right not to talk to Capitol Police, which means he has better judgment than about half the people we talk about on this show. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and to find transcripts of our episodes. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

The verdict has come down in the latest E. Jean Carroll defamation case against Donald Trump and the award is enormous: $83.3 million, or more than 16 times the $5 million she was awarded in the first defamation trial. Trump’s bizarre trial strategy is a likely culprit behind the huge judgment: his choice of a combative-yet-incompetent lawyer, his tactic of making as obnoxious a spectacle of himself as possible, and his insistence on relitigating questions that were supposed to have been settled in the first case, all failed to combine to send the jury any message like “this man has already been ordered to pay enough money.” Huge damage awards often get reduced — will this one? Also in this episode: Peter Navarro is sentenced to jail time, a judge is sick of hearing that the January 6 defendants are getting a raw deal, another judge does not think it is cool that an IRS contractor illegally leaked Donald Trump’s tax returns, and many listeners correctly identified the first federal judge we deemed "long suffering." Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and access a transcript for this episode. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show The centrist political group No Labels sent a letter to the Justice Department last week, and it’s really something. No Labels plans to run a third-party presidential ticket on dozens of state ballots later this year and mainstream Democrats really don’t like the idea. So they’ve been playing political hardball: filing objections to No Labels’ ballot petitions, conducting opposition research on potential candidates, telling operatives aligned with No Labels that they’ll never work in this town again, etcetera. That’s politics. Right? Well, No Labels says it’s actually a criminal RICO conspiracy to deprive them, their donors, and their potential voters of their civil rights, and they would like DOJ to prosecute some people over it. Free subscribers will hear that conversation. Paying subscribers get much more — new developments in the divorce debacle that threatens to engulf Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump and many of his associates under the Georgia RICO statute (it's messy), an update on the second E. Jean Carroll civil trial against Donald Trump in Manhattan, which has been going less than smoothly in Long-Suffering Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan’s courtroom, and Alec Baldwin’s latest indictment for involuntary manslaughter in New Mexico, and the evidentiary issue that is going to give the government a lot of trouble securing a conviction. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up as a paying subscriber.

Donald Trump wasn’t supposed to give a closing statement at the New York AG’s civil trial, but he gave a brief one anyway — and why not? There’s no jury to influence and, let’s be honest, Judge Engoron seems to have made his mind up. Plus: Rudy Giuliani is bankrupt and faces the creditors’ committee of his nightmares. Michael Flynn has a performative defamation lawsuit against Andrew Weissmann, over the allegation that he was actually guilty of the crime he pleaded guilty to. And Bill Ackman says he’ll sue Business Insider for reporting that his wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, committed plagiarism — though really, Oxman would have to sue, and an unwinnable lawsuit (as it looks to be) is likelier to serve his PR goals rather than hers. Visit serious trouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and to support our show. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

It’s a big week for Donald Trump being literally, physically in court — on Thursday, he'll be in court for closing arguments in the New York AG's civil case against him, and he attended Tuesday’s appellate hearing over his claim that presidential immunity shields him from Jack Smith’s prosecution related to January 6. Ken and I talked about how those arguments went — the judges had some interest in procedural issues, like whether they should even be hearing an appeal before the case is decided, and whether Trump is judicially estopped from saying he can’t be tried since Alan Dershowitz argued during his second impeachment that he was susceptible to trial and that was a reason for the Senate not to convict. But the judges also gave signs they might get to the meat of the question, and that they were unimpressed by the argument that, even if a president ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent, he couldn’t be criminally tried unless he were first impeached and convicted by Congress. Plus: the pending civil case against Trump from E. Jean Carroll, Roger Stone apparently venting about killing two members of the House, Bob Menendez running his mouth on the Senate floor, and then there's Fani Willis, who just might be in very serious trouble. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

It’s a new year and we’re back with more Serious Trouble. This week: the ongoing appeal in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, where Donald Trump argues he is presidentially immune from trial over his actions that led up to the January 6 riot. This appeal has paused the clock on the criminal case, but probably not for much longer — the appeals court is moving the appeal very fast, and it’s unclear the Supreme Court will have any interest in reviewing their decision. The case may be back in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s hands by the beginning of February. Plus: can Trump turn this trial into a circus? Why were charges dropped against SBF? Why isn't Michael Cohen going to get out of supervised release early? And was getting fired for making vegan porn a violation of a (now former) state university chancellor's First Amendment Rights? Let's find out. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter, find a transcript, and support the show. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Thank you for all the questions you sent in this week! On a related note: take our “explicit” content warning extra seriously this week. All subscribers get our discussion about the Colorado Supreme Court deciding Donald Trump may not appear on that state’s presidential primary ballot, the multiple routes that SCOTUS has available to overturn their ruling, and what might happen if SCOTUS upholds the decision. If you've been thinking about becoming a paying subscriber to the show, this is the week to do it. serioustrouble.show/christmas gets you a discount, and you'll get to hear about: Rudy Giuliani's $148 million judgment for his lies about two election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss; another instance of citing fake cases in a brief submitted to the judge (and this time it involves Michael Cohen); the Senate sex video and the potential criminal implications of it; and the presidents of three elite universities who appeared on the Hill, seemingly more prepared for a deposition than for an argument with Elise Stefanik on national television. Finally, we have a little time to talk about George Santos, and how the justice system might interfere with the launch of his reality TV career. And we talk about what Ken hopes not to talk about in 2024. We'll be back in January! Thanks for listening.

We have two episodes coming for you this week, one right now and one near the end of the week. On the second episode, we’ll be taking your end-of-year questions — if you have a burning question for Ken, please send it to the RICO hotline by Wednesday morning so we can consider it for inclusion. On today’s show, we talk about a couple of significant matters that stand to delay former President Trump’s federal trial for actions related to the aftermath of the 2020 election. One is his appeal of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that he is not presidentially immune from trial. It seems likely an appeals court will rule as soon as mid-January, and it’s not clear the Supreme Court will have any interest in taking the case up after that. We'll see. The potentially thornier matter is a separate case the Supreme Court is considering, in which the court could reject the expansive theory of “obstruction of an official proceeding” that federal prosecutors have used in charging many cases related to January 6. Plus: the state of the gag orders on Trump and Hunter Biden. Hoo boy. He already faced a kind of weak-ass gun charge in Delaware, and his lawyers have some pretty good arguments about why that case should be dismissed. But now he’s also been indicted in Los Angeles for felony tax evasion, and the complaint in that case is brutal. There’s lots more to talk about this week, including the huge defamation award against Rudy Giuliani — we’ll be taking that and some other juicy stories up in the next episode in just a few days. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show One of Donald Trump’s favorite arguments is that the presidency shields him from legal proceedings. He’s made that argument in criminal cases and in civil ones, but this week, we talk about rejections of those arguments from two different judges. Plus: Jack Smith wants to introduce Trump's political statements and actions going all the way back to 2012; serious trouble for Alina Habba; gold bars do have serial numbers, you know; Rudy doesn't show up in court; and was that wrong — taking a phone call while on the witness stand? Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for full episodes of our podcast and find episode transcripts.