Dear listeners,
President Trump said he’d stop using taxpayer money to air what certainly look like campaign ads, but then he kept doing it. So now, the Democratic National Committee is suing. An ongoing theme in cases about “can the president spend tax money on this” is the difficulty of establishing standing, but the DNC has a better argument than other plaintiffs we’ve seen.
Also this week: a Minnesota teenager arranged to buy an assault rifle to carry out an ISIS-inspired attack on the Mall of America — of course, it turned out the seller of the rifle was an undercover FBI agent, and the teen was arrested. Also in Minnesota, the government is mad at Patrick Schlitz and other federal judges for their public remarks criticizing the government’s disregard for their orders.
That’s for all listeners this week. Paying subscribers also hear about some particularly weird cases:
A manslaughter case in Arizona where the victim was allowed to give an impact statement despite being dead — his sister wrote a script for an AI-generated avatar to read in court. An appeals court didn’t like this at all, and said the defendant must be resentenced — by the same judge who handed down the first sentence, lol.
An IRS whistleblower who says the IRS maliciously leaked the fact that he paid his taxes late once, and an FBI whistleblower who says the government opened an unconstitutional investigation into anti-ICE protestors because the president saw a TikTok he didn’t like.
The UK’s explanation of why it wants the Tate brothers extradited, which includes allegations of lots of gross conduct, most of which occurred 10 or more years ago.
A fight over Dolly Parton’s estate, and
The “Shrek’s penis” trial.
If you want to hear all of that and aren’t yet a paying subscriber, hit the button below.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
