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Alexander Jo's avatar

Hi Josh and Ken, loved the episode. I am curious if you guys will cover the story about a woman charged with threats to conduct a mas shooting or an act of terrorism in Lakeland, Florida for ending a call with her insurance company with the words "Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next." This seems to be protected speech. It's a phone call in the context of an insurance denial can it really be treated as a "true threat?" Finally, a $100,000.00 bond for a woman with no criminal history and no means to make good on her threats (she claims she does not own any firearms) seems excessively high, is that the norm for these types of cases? Thanks in advance for any light you guys can shed.

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Laurence Yarosh's avatar

As Ken said previously, there is no right of free speech inside a courtroom. Try exercising your free speech rights in the security line at an airport! Another situation: you're accused of robbing a bank by passing a note to the teller saying, "I have a gun", but you actually don't. Being unarmed in Florida is a problem that can be solved in a few minutes.

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Alexander Jo's avatar

But this is not inside a courtroom, the issue is over something she said on a phone call to an insurance agent. I'm just not sure why this speech would not be protected by the first amendment. They seem to be arguing there's a true threat exception but I'm not sure that exception applies.

The comment regarding the guns was not whether she could be arrested despite not having guns but whether the bond should be so high when she claims to have no means of making good on her threat. Passing a note to a teller claiming to have a gun when you don't puts the teller in fear of their life and is slightly different from the issue here.

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Jeremey Condon's avatar

You expect me to believe that people representing Alex Jones were presenting information in a hysterical, nonsensical way? All right you two, you've found the limits of credibility!

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Erika Sealing's avatar

I was curious about Ken's reaction to the Karen Reed trial up in massachusetts with a similar jury issue.

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Joanne Minish's avatar

Is the jury entitled to know whether a charge goes away because of acquittal vs mistrial?

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Julii's avatar

Friend who used to be a DA asked this question about Mangione. Does anyone have insight ?

"ATTENTION PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES: Can anyone explain to me why Luigi Mangione was charged with first degree murder as AN ACT OF TERRORISM for the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO? People shoot multiple grammar school children dead without such a charge. What's going on here?"

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Robert Kalanda's avatar

Another great episode. One humble request:

Please continue to come up with reasons for Josh to continue playfully repeating the name "Hunter DeButts". Because I'm a simple man with simple pleasures.

Also, 100 bonus points (and a hat-tip to Jimmy Carr) if you title a future episode about Jay-Z as "Now Jay-Z Has 100 Problems"

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Xiao's avatar

The Onion's take on it is pretty great:

A bankruptcy court has denied the sale of InfoWars following a month of drawn-out legal proceedings. The experience was long and punishing for all involved, and the final outcome is inconclusive: The InfoWars assets remain in limbo. Everything is now in doubt and everyone is worse off than before.

In short, it is the kind of world we at Global Tetrahedron have always envisioned. One in which wealth begets wealth, power begets power, and the process itself inflicts daily suffering on innocent parties for no reason.

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Kyle's avatar

Re the Onion/Infowars stuff:

I naively understood the winning bid to be along the lines of "The winning bid is the Onion's for 1.75 million instead of PseudoJones for 3.5 million because the CT folks agreed that if the Onion wins they will forgive 20 million of debt" or something to that effect -- which obviously would seem to be a slam dunk.

At first, I thought that the reason that the judge rejected it is that the terms were a lot more squishy, and it wasn't clear precisely how much debt would be forgiven.

Now, it seems like there was other stuff that was problematic as well.

Which brings me back to my original incorrect understanding. If the CT folks said they would forgive some massive, specific chunk of debt relative to the size of the bid, would that likely be sufficient for the win? And then they could figure out how to share the $$ with the Texas plaintiffs on the side?

Could they say "We accept the 1.75 million bid as being worth 35 million, and in lieu of payment of 33.25 million to the CT plaintiffs we will accept lifetime subscriptions to the Onion."?

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