Serious Trouble

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Humphrey’s Executor , which has been obviously dead for some time, is now officially overturned . Except! The Federal Reserve is special and unique and in a historical tradition. Also this week: John Bolton has pleaded guilty to mishandling national defense information and might even get jail time. In Florida, fe...

David Lat joins Josh Barro for a conversation about the state of the legal industry under Donald Trump — how Big Law and the legal industry are faring after those executive orders and settlements — and they talk about how AI is changing the work of law firms, from staffing to billing rates. Plus: a look at the unusual breakdown in Thursday’s Supreme Court decision in the Monsanto case. We hope you...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show The U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago has dismissed another high-profile case — this one a COVID fraud case — that had been led by AUSA Sheri Mecklenburg. We discuss that and more developments in the Broadview Six case. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, federal prosecutors have obtained a conspiracy indictment against sel...

This week: the grand jury transcripts from the Broadview Six case show an array of embarrassing misconduct by AUSAs from the office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. As Ken describes, these are things that AUSAs are very clearly taught not to do. And yet. Also this week: a couple of new flavors of AI hallucination trouble in the courts; Donald Trump’s legal team that’s suin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week’s Serious Trouble comes to you live from a perch overlooking the soon-to-be-built Trump National Championship Golf Links at East Potomac Park by Donald J. Trump. Or, maybe — as I looked over the federally administered national parkland along the Potomac River, I was looking at a suite of projects where...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show The ‘Broadview Six’ case was one of the Trump administration’s prominent prosecutions of anti-ICE protesters. Federal prosecutors in Chicago brought felony charges to fanfare, then curiously dropped them, keeping only misdemeanor counts. Now we know why: they engaged in egregious misconduct to obtain the felony i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Donald Trump has announced a new $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to be doled out as he sees fit to “victims” of the “weaponization” of the Justice Department. It's financed from the Judgment Fund, a strange legal creature — it’s a permanent, unlimited appropriation the federal government can use to pay j...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show The lurid JP Morgan sex case has gotten more interesting: apparently, the bank offered a $1 million settlement to the banker who wanted an eight-figure settlement related to the lurid sex-harassment allegations he has made against a senior colleague. Something is weird here. Also this week: The Justice Department...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show There's a lot of stupid litigation to cover this week, starting with the lawsuit so many of you asked us about. An ex-banker who has made salacious allegations against a former JP Morgan colleague , but how credible are they? And what can you do if you are a bank or a banker and someone makes preposterous allegat...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss the James Comey indictment, this time, purportedly for threatening the president with seashells . They also discuss the criminal complaint against would-be assassin Cole Tomas Allen and Maurene Comey’s lawsuit over her firing for being James Comey’s daughter . That’s this week’s fre...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss several big defamation suits. The Atlantic has reported that Kash Patel is often drunk and derelict in his duties as FBI Director. But Patel says he’s only guilty of working really hard, and he’s suing the Atlantic . He’s got a theory he says is a “slam dunk” — The Atlantic defamed...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss Eric Swallwell and how prosecutors in Manhattan and Los Angeles are looking into sexual assault allegations against the now-former congressman. Meanwhile, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro — who oversees local felony prosecutions in the District of Columbia — has set up a hotline for victim...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss updates on three of their favorite characters: Michael Avenatti, Pam Bondi, and Ed Martin. That's for all subscribers. Paying subscribers will also hear their conversations about: * Trump’s emergency motion to lift the stay on construction of the “desperately needed” White House bal...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss Anthropic's big win, the injunction on Trump's ballroom construction, and what to make of the block on Trump's executive order defunding PBS and NPR since Congress has rescinded their funding. That's for all subscribers. Paying subscribers will also hear our conversations about: * C...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss Judge Lewis Kaplan losing some patience with Sam Bankman-Fried, and not just because Bankman-Fried’s mom tried to communicate with him ex parte . SBF has been making purportedly pro se filings, at least one of which appears to have been dictated to and FedExed by his mother , and he...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss the Afroman trial and also look at a rough hearing for AUSAs in New Jersey , as the Trump administration decides it will hire candidates straight out of law school to work in US Attorneys’ offices . That’s for all subscribers. Paying subscribers will also hear our conversations abou...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss the Customs Service saying its computers won't let it refund IEEPA tariffs, more situations where courts are telling the Trump Administration it can’t just ignore the need to get officials confirmed by the Senate , and another decision about ICE. That's for all subscribers. Paying s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss how The Trump Administration surprised observers by withdrawing its efforts to appeal its losses against all four law firms that challenged its legal orders against them. Then, it surprised observers again by changing its mind and asking to appeal the cases after all . We discuss wh...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss more on tariffs — what awaits litigants like FedEx who seek refunds of payments they made under President Trump’s now-invalidated tariffs, and what courts might do with his efforts to reconstruct the tariffs under non-IEEPA legal authorities that come with their own difficulties . W...

This week Ken and Josh discuss the Supreme Court's ruling in Learning Resources v. Trump , throwing out the massive country-specific tariffs the president purported to impose under the Nixon-era International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The opinion was messy: 6-3, but with the six-justice majority not agreeing on exactly why the tariffs were illegal. Also this week, we look at a contempt order...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss a D.C. grand jury declining to indict Democrats in Congress, Don Lemon's new high-profile lawyer, and Trump's lawsuit against the IRS. That’s for all subscribers this week. Paying subscribers get more conversation: * A look at a highly consequential ruling from the Fifth Circuit, up...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week, Ken and Josh discuss Julie Le, the DOJ lawyer who vented in court that it "sucks" to represent this government. They cover what you should do if you’re a lawyer whose client is frustratingly non-compliant and taking actions that bother you; venting to the judge is the wrong course of action, but there...

This week Ken and Josh discuss how the Feds got an arrest warrant for Don Lemon after all. Before prosecutors got the grand jury indictment, they tried through some really irregular channels to get Lemon arrested more quickly. When a magistrate judge rejected an arrest warrant application for Lemon last week, rather than applying again or proceeding to the grand jury, prosecutors asked Judge Patri...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week, Ken and Josh discuss the end of Lindsey Halligan's purported reign in the Eastern District of Virginia, and news reports that ICE is relying on a secret legal memorandum asserting that it can enter homes to search for aliens subject to final orders of removal, even if there’s no warrant from an Article...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Fed Chair Jerome Powell dropped a bombshell on Sunday: a video disclosing the Fed had been subpoenaed in a criminal investigation related to his congressional testimony about cost overruns in the Fed’s headquarters renovation. Powell said bluntly that the investigation is an effort to use the DOJ to assert contro...