Serious Trouble

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Josh and Ken discuss developments in the Data Colada-Francesca Gino-Harvard case, Sarah Palin's defamation case against the New York Times (for free subscribers), and (for paying subscribers) the different philosophies the judges have about how the presidential election should affect the scheduling of the Trump c...

You probably saw the moronic TikTok trend in which check fraud became trendy and was rebranded as a “glitch” that allowed you to get large amounts of money out of any Chase ATM, even if you had little cash in your account. It’s federally illegal, it’s illegal in every state, and “I saw it on TikTok” isn’t a defense. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean every one of these cases will be interesting...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Jack Smith is attempting to salvage his two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump with a superseding indictment that removes evidence about Trump’s presidential acts from the document backing his charges over Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election. The new indictment removes the allegations that are closest to...

George Santos has pleaded guilty and will likely be sentenced next February to several years in federal prison. Santos also lost his copyright claim against Disney over his Cameo videos that were broadcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Disney had less luck trying to argue that a customer whose wife died of an allergic reaction would have to arbitrate any wrongful death claim because of an obscure clause i...

Elon Musk has produced some new legal issues for us this week. He has sued a coalition of advertisers for colluding to boycott the Twitter platform , saying this is an antitrust violation, and Musk is also the subject, along with Donald Trump, of a labor law complaint before the National Labor Relations Board, filed by the United Auto Workers . Plus: Trump may sue the federal government over the M...

As we’ve discussed, the Supreme Court threw a major wrench into the various prosecutions of Donald Trump with their ruling on presidential immunity. The RICO prosecution in Atlanta was already so hopelessly fucked that they probably won’t need to think about it for a couple of years, and the documents case in Florida is, for now, dismissed. But in New York, Judge Juan Merchan is proceeding toward...

On this week's episode, Josh and Ken delve into two defamation cases where Trump has survived motions to dismiss, and the close legal questions that allowed those cases to proceed. They also look at a civil lawsuit where Hunter Biden is making headway, and at Hunter's effort to rely on Aileen Cannon's favorable ruling toward Donald Trump to fight his own criminal cases. They discuss settlements fo...

Well, it’s been a more eventful week than usual. President Trump was shot in the ear at a rally — a shocking security failure by the Secret Service, and now the subject of an FBI investigation; there is much to look at even though there is no shooter to pursue. Ken and Josh discuss why “stochastic terrorism” isn't a useful concept when talking about law or policy, and how admonishments that people...

We’ve had some time to digest the Supreme Court decision on immunity, so this week Ken and I talked through the various criminal proceedings involving Donald Trump to discuss how they’ll be impacted. The short answer is: a lot. Also in this episode: Missouri has sued New York, saying the Manhattan DA’s prosecution and associated gag order have deprived Missouri voters of their First Amendment righ...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Remember when most people thought that the Supreme Court would find a way to help Donald Trump without making crazy new law? Well. About that. Ken explains why the Supreme Court’s decision on Donald Trump's appeal in the January 6 prosecution is the worst of all possible worlds. Josh and Ken discuss how this snar...

We have a real parade of idiots on tap for you this week. Jacob Wohl, Alex Jones, Robert Menendez, Nathan Wade, Justin Timberlake …oh, and Donald Trump too. Strap in, because they’re all doing shit that’s pretty stupid. Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get...

Nathan Wade went on CNN , and had to be stopped by his handlers mid-interview because he was about to answer a question about when he and DA Fani Willis started having sex. Then, he went on The Daily Show and said he wasn’t sleeping with his boss because Willis was never his boss, but was more like his client. Shut up, Nathan Wade! Why does he do this? This week, besides that debacle: the Supreme...

Hunter Biden has been convicted on three federal felony gun charges. In this case, Hunter has the same misfortune as Donald Trump in the Manhattan DA’s case: were he less famous, he’d likely never have ended up in court over these charges. Plus: updates on Trump's probation interview, an update from FLorida and election-related charges in Wisconsin, and then there's Georgia. In Georgia, Fani Willi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show The verdict is in! Ken and Josh discuss the jury's relatively quick decision, the path to sentencing, whether Trump is likely to face a custodial sentence or community service or what, and (for paying subscribers) the arguments Trump will raise on appeal, which courts he can raise them in, and what prospects he h...

It’s Wednesday, and the jury in Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial has had his case for about half a day. On Wednesday morning, Judge Juan Merchan instructed the jury on the law — a long and boring process that Ken says jurors often basically ignore — and sent them out to deliberate. And now we wait. Ken and Josh discuss closing arguments in which prosecutors dryly laid out the facts of the c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Happy Birthday to America’s Mayor, now 80 years old! Rudy had a big bash to celebrate his 80th birthday last Friday, down in Palm Beach. He posted a photo from the party on social media, taunting Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for her failure to serve a summons on him for his indictment for trying to steal t...

New York prosecutors have been using Michael Cohen not just as a vehicle to introduce documents, but to offer his own recollections and assessments of Donald Trump’s state of mind, including why he chose to pay for Stormy Daniels’ silence. Meanwhile, Trump has had friends visiting him at court — Republican politicians, some of them vice presidential hopefuls, who have made statements to the press...

Josh thoughtfully attempted to wreck Ken right out of the gate by using the terms “missionary position” and “Donald Trump” in the same sentence of the cold open, live, in person, in Ken's office. He’s referring, of course, to Stormy Daniels’ frankly disturbing testimony about a sexual encounter with Trump, an encounter that sounded not particularly consensual. The rest of the proceedings were more...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Judge Juan Merchan has found Trump in contempt of court and fined him $9,000 — $1,000 per violation of the terms of his gag order, the maximum authorized by New York law. He also noted those fines might not be large enough to influence Trump's behavior, and he threatened to jail him if he violates the order again...

The trial has begun! Judge Juan Merchan seated 12 jurors and 6 alternates in three days of voir dire. We discuss the pace of jury selection and complicating factors (that strong opinions about this defendant are common and often expressed on social media), plus: Ken discusses his philosophy of choosing a jury as a defense lawyer, why it’s more of an art than a science, and how it will matter that...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York has begun, with jury selection underway. Ken and I discuss Trump’s last-ditch efforts to get this trial delayed, and public support he has gotten from a surprising advocate: imprisoned ex-attorney Michael Avenatti, who phoned into MSNBC from his oceanfront Los Angeles hom...

Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced. And at his sentencing, we saw a not-too-uncommon pattern for sentencings in major white-collar cases: Judge Lewis Kaplan read him the riot act, ruled against him on all the key issues driving the sentence guideline calculation; accused him of lying on the stand; and then sentenced him to far less than the guideline sentence. Speaking of BS of interest to inves...

A panel of New York appellate judges has reduced Donald Trump’s bond in the New York Attorney General’s civil case to $175 million, an amount he can probably afford. Ken and I discuss possible reasons the court took this surprise action — as is typical for this kind of decision in New York, the judges didn’t really explain their reasoning — and the likely course of Trump’s appeal to come later thi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan was slated to start next week, but it will be delayed due to the late production of a large volume of documents from the US Attorney’s office . And Trump has said he can’t find a bond for the New York Attorney General’s civil judgment against him, so you can expect to se...

It’s a hat trick for Sen. Robert Menendez: his superseding indictment has been superseded once again , this time with charges that he and his wife obstructed justice, including by directing their lawyers to lie to the government about a Mercedes C-300 convertible she received as a bribe. Ken says this sort of thing — lying so your lawyer will lie for you — is not a good idea, but just because it’s...