Dear listeners,
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. After Santos first raised these claims in a letter to Kimmel, Kimmel dared Santos on national television to sue him — “such a fucking client,” says Ken — and now Kimmel has gotten his wish.
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. It’s not that it will be especially hard for the government to prove that Hunter had a cocaine problem — he wrote a book about it, after all — but Hunter’s team has a point when he says this shows the government isn’t taking the somewhat-bizarre gun prosecution against him very seriously.
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 part of his decision-making is likely to be an in camera conversation with Terrence Bradley, Nathan Wade’s former law partner who blabbed to Ashleigh Merchant about Wade’s love affair with Willis but now says whatever information he was talking about was actually subject to attorney-client privilege. That private conversation between Bradley and McAfee will be an opportunity for McAfee to consider whether the privilege really applies; if it doesn’t, there could be yet another public hearing on this sordid matter. (And after we recorded, Trump’s attorneys revealed they had subpoenaed Wade’s phone records, which they say show Wade frequently visited Willis’s home and even twice spent the night there before the date when Willis and Wade have claimed under oath that the relationship began. Sigh.)
Finally, turning to New York, 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. We also talk about bankruptcy — Alex Jones and Rudy Giuliani filed personal bankruptcy after facing huge trial judgments, but we have some reasons to believe Trump will not follow suit, beyond the most obvious one (he may not be insolvent). Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. We plan to take more of them next week, so if there are things you want to know, please write in to the RICO Hotline and ask.
Paid subscribers get the full episode. Free subscribers get the conversations about furries and sawdust but will have to upgrade to get the rest.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
