Dear listeners,
Jeanine Pirro would like everyone to know this is all Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s fault. The wine-soaked US Attorney for the District of Columbia enthusiastically brought criminal cases related to the underperforming Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool — pursuing the president’s theory that the problems plaguing the shallow pool of standing water in full D.C. sun are the work of vandals — but then she issued a remarkable filing seeking to dismiss charges against former Olympian David Hearn. In the filing, Pirro wrote she’d been badly misled by the Department of the Interior, which was blaming vandals to cover up its and its contractors’ mismanagement of the project. It’s very embarrassing all around — DOI should have known better, but then, so should have Pirro — and it wasn’t even necessary for Pirro to offer really any explanation of her desire to dismiss the case. So why did she do it this way? We’re a little puzzled, but it seems that she’s kept her job, for now, after an Oval Office showdown with Burgum.
Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci refused to testify before a Senate hearing, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The situation raises a couple of interesting issues: can you take the Fifth when you’ve been pardoned? Can you take the Fifth when questioned if you start the hearing by offering an opening statement? Republicans say he’s in contempt of Congress and want DOJ to prosecute him, as happened in recent years when Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro ignored subpoenas. But Fauci has some arguments to which a judge is likely to be sympathetic — including that Trump has claimed the Fauci pardon is not actually in effect.
Those discussions are for all listeners, along with a look at what Todd Blanche’s letters to the Senate say and don’t say. Paying subscribers also hear about:
A lesson from Rep. Chuck Edwards, on how being creepy can constitute sexual harassment even if you never explicitly ask for sex.
Paramount’s litigation strategy choices.
Capital One’s arguments that it didn’t violate the president’s civil rights.
Judge Amit Mehta reluctantly vacating the case against Stewart Rhodes.
And Kash Patel being deprived of a default judgment in a bullshit defamation case for the court’s lack of personal jurisdiction over the defaulted defendant.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
