Dear listeners,
As we discussed last week, the Sean Combs jury had some challenges in its deliberations, but in the end they produced a mostly favorable verdict for Combs — convicting him of two counts of facilitating the interstate transportation of individuals for prostitution (i.e., the violating the Mann Act) but acquitting him on more serious sex trafficking and RICO charges. It’s a good outcome for Combs, but not a great one — he remains in custody, with Judge Arun Subramanian declaring him a danger to the public given his long, documented history of domestic violence. He’s likely to end up getting a few years in prison when he is sentenced in October, and federal prosecutors are spinning that as a win, but it’s an underwhelming result for what they argued was a vast criminal conspiracy.
In another bizarre sex-related case, two founders of OneTaste, a new-age-female-empowerment-business-slash-sex-cult, have been convicted of coercing their employees into sex acts. The defendants ran an aggressive PR campaign against the prosecution, and neither the Justice Department nor Judge Diane Gujarati was amused — the founders, like Diddy, have been remanded in custody pending sentencing, even though, unlike Diddy, they had been granted bail before trial. A no-apologies PR campaign about how you’ve been railroaded can work out (see Read, Karen), but if you lose, it may just annoy the judge and lead to harsher treatment.
Also this week, we have an update on D.H.S. vs. D.V.D., a case where the Supreme Court’s orders have been fairly inscrutable and the litigants have now been deported to South Sudan. We look at another shadow docket victory for the administration (8-1, this time) and we discuss the Trump administration’s lawless claim that it can waive the TikTok ban and how there’s probably no way for their action to be remedied in the courts. Speaking of no remedy, we can talk about what can be done when a president extracts bribe-like payments from corporations, and we look at the trouble the administration created for itself by fanning the flames of Epstein conspiracies it now can’t document.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
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