Dear listeners,
Welcome to the first Serious Trouble episode of 2025! For all subscribers this week, Ken and I have a discussion of Luigi Mangione’s prosecutions, plural. He’s been indicted in both Pennsylvania and New York, and he’s also the subject of a federal criminal complaint. Both New York and the Feds look eager to prosecute him, and there’s going to be wrangling over who gets to go first, with an important difference in the stakes — he’s facing a capital federal charge, while New York does not have the death penalty.
While the murder case against Mangione looks solid, New York’s top count — murder as an act of terrorism — poses some challenges for the state to prove. In New York, “terrorism” is not merely any crime committed for a political purpose; the crime must be aimed at influencing the government, or at intimidating or coercing a civilian population. There are several other plausible conceptions of motive in this case — revenge, making a political statement, seeking to influence the actions of a private corporation — that would not meet the definition. Meanwhile, the federal charges are bootstrapped in an interesting way, because murder is not generally a federal crime. But interstate stalking is a federal crime, and using a gun in the course of a federal crime is a crime, and specifically using a firearm to commit murder in the course of a federal crime (i.e., interstate stalking) is a capital crime.
Our discussion of the law around Mangione and the likely forthcoming wrangling between state and federal prosecutors is for all listeners this week. Paying subscribers get much more:
A look at dueling lawsuits brought by the actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, each accusing the other of wrongdoing during and after the making of their hit film “It Ends With Us.” As described in a bombshell New York Times story, Lively says Baldoni sexually harassed her and then retaliated against her for complaining by pursuing a PR campaign to damage her reputation before she could publicly accuse him. Baldoni has sued the New York Times for defamation, arguing they ran a one-sided story based on Lively’s account that willfully ignored exculpatory context around the text messages that formed the basis of the story — and he has text message receipts of his own that bolster his account. One of the big questions around this case — how did Lively obtain the internal communications of Baldoni’s PR team in the first place? — seems likely to be answered as the litigation proceeds.
A discussion of the appellate ruling that upheld one of the judgments E. Jean Carroll won against Donald Trump. Trump says evidence of past bad acts — other accounts of him sexually assaulting women, including his own account from the “Access Hollywood” tape — was improperly admitted in the trial. This has been a fruitful avenue for appeal in some other cases we’ve followed, including one of Harvey Weinstein’s. But Trump lost here, and Ken and I take a look at why.
A look at why Matt Gaetz, even after resigning from Congress, couldn’t block the release of the ethics committee report that alleges he had sex with a 17-year-old in violation of Florida law.
And an update on the civil lawsuit against Jay-Z, who will continue to defend himself against a rape allegation from an anonymous plaintiff — and about how his hyperaggressive lawyer, Alex Spiro, is pissing off Judge Analisa Torres.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
