Dear listeners,
This week, we got our hands on the actual lawsuit Eric Deters has filed against Kimberly Guilfoyle and her attorneys. Remember, this is the guy who says Guilfoyle asked him to pay a $100,000 Amex bill; she told the Wall Street Journal he made up fake text messages from her, has a reputation for blackmail, and owed her $100,000 anyway; he says all that’s false and he’s suing her for defamation. The lawsuit is amateurish in certain ways — despite his middle name literally being “Esquire” — but Ken says the core defamation claims sound plausible enough to have legs.
This week, Ken and I discuss that case, plus the investigation of Ilhan Omar — her attorneys say the government failed to follow restrictions a magistrate judge imposed on their search — and developments in the East Potomac Park case, where Judge Ana Reyes remains very displeased with the government’s conduct, and we also look at the indictment of Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas for running a marijuana dispensary.
That’s for free subscribers. Paying subscribers also hear:
An interesting RICO trend: civil RICO suits against personal injury law firms for allegedly cooking up fraudulent cases. Uber and FedEx have filed these in various places, as has the City of New York, which alleges that the firm Asher & Associates has, for example, prodded a man who’d been hit with a lead pipe in a fight on Thanksgiving to falsely claim that he’d hurt himself tripping on a city sidewalk. Civil RICO is very hard to plead, but in some places, courts are going for it.
Three stories about court officers who aren’t all there: A New Mexico prosecutor who may be disbarred for, among other things, accusing a defendant of witchcraft; a federal judge in Texas who appears to be having a mental health episode; and an alcoholic judge Ken helped nudge off the bench when he was a young law clerk.
And our take on “You Can See Everything” — the (fantastic) documentary on Elizabeth Holmes raises some interesting questions about what it’s like to be a prominent federal prisoner, including whether you might get in trouble for participating in a movie project from prison, and whether you can launch a new blood startup from a halfway house.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
