Serious Trouble

Dear listeners, We’re back with more serious trouble! On this week’s show, we take a look at the (partial) report of a Georgia special grand jury that had been investigating efforts to interfere in that state’s reporting of its 2020 presidential election results. The report says the grand jurors think they heard some perjury. And its unreleased portions may contain recommendations about criminal c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Elon Musk got a big win in the civil trial over whether his “funding secured” statements defrauded shareholders. We talked about how “that’s Elon being Elon” can be an effective defense. We also talked about Sam Bankman-Fried and the ever-sprawling pool of potentially-cooperating witnesses who might tell prosecut...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week, we talk about how not to stay out on bail (yes, once again, it's Sam Bankman-Fried), and how the judge is likely to respond to him contacting FTX employees. We also talk about David DePape, who seems pretty nuts — but not nuts enough to have an effective insanity defense for his attack on Paul Pelosi....

This week, Ken and I talked about a substantial sanctions order — nearly $1 million — that Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba must pay for the frivolous RICO lawsuit they brought against dozens of defendants. As sanctions orders go, this is really big — and Ken thinks Habba should worry about being disbarred — but is this really an effective deterrent against Trump, who got lots of publicit...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Ken is utterly dismayed that Sam Bankman-Fried has started a Substack, where he’s writing in great detail about FTX. Then: Ken and Josh talk about the classified documents found at President Biden’s home in Wilmington and the Penn Biden Center in Pennsylvania, if there is legal exposure for the president, among o...

In some ways, George Santos is having a pretty good year. The congressman-elect's new salary is $174,000 a year, which is a lot more than he was making at the Dish Network call center. Of course, there are some other things that aren’t going so great for him. He is a big lying liar who lies , and while lying about whether you ever worked at Goldman Sachs isn’t a crime, some of the lies Santos told...

We talk a lot on this show about bad clients — people in legal trouble who disregard advice, talk when they should shut up, and generally make their lawyers' lives miserable while increasing their own odds of facing a large judgment award or ending up in prison for a good, long time. You know, clients like Sam Bankman-Fried and Donald Trump. So we thought it would be good to talk about what it tak...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Sam Bankman-Fried… boy, is he in serious trouble. He’s been indicted on several counts, with the central accusation being that he defrauded customers, lenders, and equity investors doing business with his now-bankrupt companies, FTX and Alameda Research. Importantly, the story Bankman-Fried has been relentlessly...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Sam Bankman-Fried is in serious trouble! And he has a strategy: tweet through it. We talk about the legal risks that come from tweeting through your legal risks — it’s not just that SBF risks providing evidence to help the government prove he committed crimes; he may also be committing new crimes, like wire fraud...

In this episode of Serious Trouble, we discuss: - An order granting the New York Attorney General’s request for a monitor to oversee Trump Organization financial activity, and some troubles the Trumps face in this civil action that they would not face in a criminal case. - An acquittal on all counts for Tom Barrack, a businessman and associate of Donald Trump’s who was accused of acting as an unre...

We answer a listener question about what’s likely to happen to InfoWars, now that Alex Jones and his companies are subject to a $965 million defamation judgment. We also talk about legal difficulties at Fox News — including one that’s overblown. And, after receiving a lot of requests from you to discuss this topic, we talk aboutd the prospects of chess prodigy Hans Niemann’s lawsuit, in which he s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Someone close to attorney Christina Bobb is making sure reporters hear it was definitely not her fault that she incorrectly told investigators in June that Trump had already handed over all the marked-classified documents remaining at Mar-a-Lago. Bobb insisted on adding a caveat to her declaration, saying it was...

There’s been a lot of legal news in the last ten days, and so today’s show is on the long side: nearly an hour and it’s also free for all listeners in its full length. We talked about the oddly snippy correspondence between Judge Aileen Cannon and the much more senior federal judge she’s named as special master overseeing the Mar-a-Lago documents, we answer a listener’s question about whether Trum...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Whew, it’s been a big news week! Big enough that we had to record this episode one and a half times: on Wednesday, following the first conference with Special Master Raymond Dearie; and again on Thursday, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals made Dearie’s job much easier by saying the DOJ is free to use approx...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show If you are a lawyer, it is important to make sure you get paid for your work, especially if your client is someone like Donald Trump, who has very complex legal needs and a history of trying not to pay his vendors. So we weren’t surprised that attorney Chris Kise, one of the big shots on Trump’s legal team, has c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Dear listeners, It’s another week of serious trouble! This week, Ken and I talk about the unsealed application for the Mar-a-Lago warrant, such as it is — most of the juicy bits are blacked out, but we did learn some things about what the government is investigating and who does not seem to be a target. The gover...

It’s another action-packed week for Serious Trouble! On today’s episode, we talk about former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg’s plea deal that will send him to Rikers Island for about three months for tax crimes — and won’t involve testifying against Donald Trump personally. We look at the legal fight over the sealing of the application for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, and at Trump’s… f...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Now we’ve seen the warrant! On this week’s show, we talk about the search of Mar-a-Lago, and what it tells us about why the FBI wanted to poke around there. We discuss how Merrick Garland avoided pulling a Comey, when we might see the affidavit supporting the search warrant, we answer a question from a listener a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show Well, there’s been some serious trouble this week. The FBI executed a search warrant, looking for documents at Mar-a-Lago. According to former president Donald Trump, they even broke into his safe! What had to happen for such a warrant to be approved, and why federal prosecutors would have sought it — can it real...

In this episode, Ken and Josh discuss the cross examination of Alex Jones in the trial that will determine the damages for the defamation claim on which he already lost to parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. After Jones repeatedly failed to comply with orders to turn over records and documents (to the point that he lost by default because he was so uncooperative), Jones’ lawyer a...

On this episode of Serious Trouble, we talk about developments in Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s investigation of efforts to steal Georgia’s electoral votes in the 2020 election. Willis sent “target letters” telling all 16 members of the fake Trump slate they might be prosecuted. When do DAs send letters like that, and what should you do if you get one? Plus, we discuss a memo from Attorney Genera...

Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter. He doesn’t want to buy it anymore. Twitter wants to enforce the contract that requires him to buy the company, and so they’re arguing in the chancery court in Delaware about what will happen next. What is a chancery court? What is “specific performance”? Will a Delaware court actually force this company — an entity with employees, customers, and significant societa...

Ken and Josh discuss an apparent agreement for Pat Cippolone (or “Patsy Baloney,” if you ask an auto-transcription system) to talk with the January 6 committee, and why his interview will be a little complicated because of privilege issues — both attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. We look at how that might matter, and what he might say that’s of interest. Plus: grand jury subpoenas...

Surprise! This is an extra , unscheduled episode of Serious Trouble, about some breaking news in investigations related to the January 6 riot — a federal search of attorney John Eastman’s electronic devices, and a unexpectedly scheduled hearing with testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. (We said we’d do at least 40 episodes a year, bu...

To find episode notes, transcripts, a discussion thread and to become a subscriber (so that you receive all Serious Trouble episodes), visit us at serioustrouble.show . This week's episode is all about the Uvalde massacre, the botched police response, and what legal  rights  you have to expect the police to perform their jobs. You may be surprised to learn they’re pretty limited. Ken and Josh...