Dear listeners,
Did you know Ken is a huge Kendrick Lamar fan? Well, not really. But he is psyched that Lamar and Drake have produced some truly hilarious litigation for us to discuss.
Drake and Lamar, as you may be aware, have beef that goes back years. They have traded diss tracks, and earlier this year, Lamar released a particularly vicious and popular one called “Not Like Us.” Among other digs, the track calls Drake a “certified pedophile” who’s “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor.”
Is that defamation? If you’re a regular listener to this show, you know it very likely isn’t — defamatory statements must be provably false statements of fact, and especially in the context of a diss track, “certified pedophile” is likelier to be an insult than a disprovable factual claim. And even Drake isn’t quite ready to sue for defamation. But he has filed — in two different states — petitions for pre-litigation discovery, to explore the possibility that Lamar and their shared label, Universal Music Group, may have committed various torts against him. What torts? Well, in the Texas petition, he wants to look at defamation. In New York, he wants to explore the possibility that Lamar and UMG competed against him unfairly, by nefariously over-promoting the song, or something. He also suggests this could be the RICO! Ugh.
Meanwhile, as expected, Jack Smith has moved to dismiss the January 6-related case against Donald Trump on the grounds that the Office of Legal Counsel has long prohibited prosecutions of sitting presidents. DOJ is also dropping its appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision throwing out the documents against Trump — but the department is not yet dropping the appeal with regard to his co-defendants, meaning there will be at least a part of this prosecution left for Trump’s DOJ to cancel. And Jussie Smollett’s conviction got tossed by the Illinois Supreme Court, for much the same reason that Bill Cosby’s was in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago — when the state agrees not to prosecute you, that agreement may be contractually binding, and in these cases, it was.
Plus, a lot of you sent in questions for Ken, and he answers several of them. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
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