It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

Barb (00:10)
Welcome back to Hashtag Sisters-in-Law with Kimberly Atkins-Dore, Jill Winebanks, and me, Barb McQuade. Joyce is continuing on her book tour, but she will be back soon. I have both read Joyce’s book and listened to Joyce’s book, and both are a joy. we hope you’ll do the same. ⁓ We also have our hot new resistance hoodie available to order. It was designed by our very own Kimberly Atkins store with a short and sassy look. So you can go to politicon.com slash merch for the hoodie and all of your other ⁓ desirable sisters in law merchandise. ⁓ Here’s what we have planned for you in today’s show. This week we will be discussing the court hearing to disqualify Lindsay Halligan in the Jim Comey and Letitia James cases.

⁓ DOJ official declares war on judges and President Trump’s pardons of Rudy Giuliani and others charged in the fake electors scheme. But first I wanted to ask my sisters, are you familiar with the giant tire between Detroit Metro Airport and downtown Detroit on Interstate 94 in Detroit? Yes. Does anyone have that tire? You own a royal tire? You know that one, Jill?

Kim (01:26)
You and a royal tire!

Jill (01:31)
I don’t know that one, but I’ll be looking the next time we do a live show in your area.

Barb (01:35)
All right.

Kim (01:36)
Call it the Statue of Liberty of Detroit. that’s Statue of Liberty. It’s like the monument you think of.

Barb (01:42)
It

is, it is, it’s great. If you’re driving in from the airport, you’ll see it. It was originally, for our listeners who have not had the privilege of seeing this giant Univroyal tire, it is a huge tire on the side of the road and it was originally a Ferris wheel. At the time, it was the world’s largest Ferris wheel. And the city of Detroit, or Univroyal bought it as an ad and they covered it in rubber and make it look like a tire. So it’s this giant. on the side of the road. So it’s kind of an iconic Detroit-y thing. But I was driving by the giant tire the other day. When my kids were little, they used to love to pass it. We took them to daycare in Detroit every day and drove home to Ann Arbor. And they would ⁓ compete for whose side the giant tire was on, not realizing that it was always on the right side on the way in and the left side on the way home. So it was about a 50-50 proposition of whose side. And they’d say, giant tire, my side. And they would get so excited, like they won the game.

Well, yesterday I was driving along I-94 with my mother in the car and just as I said, giant tire on my side, I blew a tire. I hit a pothole or something and like started, you know, that horrible sound of like rumble, rumble, rumble, thump, thump, thump, thump. Oh man, I think I just lost a tire. And I had a little gauge that said my tire pressure was going down to 20 to 10 to one. And so I pulled over. Oh man. So I haven’t had car trouble in a long time, knock on wood.

And thankfully it was the middle of the day, I was able to get help and we were back on our way relatively quickly. But have you guys had any memorable automobile car trouble mishaps?

Kim (03:21)
I’ve had so many barbecues. Yes, we’ve talked about the time my car was set on fire on the street in New York City, yes. And I blame the Red Sox bumper sticker. even before that, when I was still living in Michigan and I was in college, ⁓ there was one night that I was driving home from Wayne State University and I was on Northwestern Highway. And I went to make a turn, a Michigan left for y’all who, if you know, know.

Barb (03:23)
You know about your burning car, your car in fire?

Yep, know it.

Kim (03:50)
And all of a sudden I just feel this loud sump and like the back passenger side of my car, a huge Buick just dropped down. And so that’s even a worse sound. Your tire was the sound of just a whole side of your car dropping down and then like of, you know, steel against concrete. So I get out and somehow my axle broke.

Barb (04:06)
my god!

Kim (04:20)
and it flew to the other side of the street.

Jill (04:24)
⁓ my god.

Kim (04:26)
So nobody was hurt, which is an important thing. I call my dad. You know, this is back in the day. So had to run to a pay phone and call my dad. like, oh, wow. And he comes out and I was like, what do we do? Do we have to call the insurance? Like, do we have to do it? He’s like, wait, wait a minute. And he gets underneath the car. You know, he puts up some cones. You know, he’s a construction guy.

Barb (04:35)
Okay

Kim (04:47)
He puts on some cones. He gets down, he looks underneath. Meanwhile, he’s still wearing his suit from work. He looks underneath and he’s like, all right. So he reaches in the, he goes in the trunk, gets a jack, jacks the car up, sticks the wheel back in the jack, I back in the car, and then lets it back down. And he’s like, I will drive this, you drive my car. And I will drive back. And I’m like, dad, you can’t. He’s like, he drove the car back home.

He looked underneath and it’s like, yeah, that axle’s broken, but I can get it home. And it reminded me just of another instance when my mom had the car mishap. She was backing into the carport of our house and she accidentally hit one of the pillars of the carport and then the pillar came off and part of the carport roof just buckled down. And she was like,

Jill (05:22)
Man.

Kim (05:45)
So she calls my dad, he comes home. She’s like, what do I do? Do we have to call the homeowners insurance and what do we do? My dad’s like, wait, wait, wait. He goes out and he looks at it. He gets out a jack and he puts the thing on the jack, crank, crank, crank, and puts the pillar right back on the foundation.

Barb (06:04)
Pretty handy.

Kim (06:05)
to help both my mom and me out of our car trouble. That was my dad.

Barb (06:09)
Yeah,

you know, they go to dad’s school or something and they learn this It’s amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Jill (06:16)
Your

dad was a real hero. was- Oh, one, Kimberly.

Kim (06:19)
The Jack of ⁓

Barb (06:24)
Very good. How about you Jill, if you had any good auto mishaps?

Jill (06:28)
I have had so many auto mishaps. My friends at one point said that I needed to hire a driver, that I should not be permitted to drive my own car. But, and of course Chicago is known for its potholes, I have blown so many tires, particularly my current car has low profile tires, and I am now looking for a car that’s narrow enough to fit in my garage, and that does not have low profile tires.

But I would say out of all of my experiences with tires, my most memorable was ⁓ when you guys were so young. I had moved to Florida, which was supposed to be a permanent move, but ended up being a year. And at the end of the year, my husband and I and our two dogs at the time were driving back from Florida with all our possessions and had not one but two different blowouts. The second was on Labor Day. so finding anywhere that was opened was impossible. We had to find a motel that would take us and two dogs, which was not an easy task. In fact, I can think I can now admit because it was in 1991, the statute of limitations has run. We snuck our two dogs in to the room that we rented and

Barb (07:27)
jeez.

Jill (07:55)
paid extraordinary amount of money to buy a tire to get put on on Labor Day so that we could continue our journey. So I’d say that was my most memorable blowout, but there was one on Lakeshore Drive where I had to pull over and luckily was near enough a little indentation that I could. So I’ve had a lot of blowouts on my car. And if anybody has a recommendation for a narrow car, 70 inches or less wide with not low profile tires, text me or I guess contact me through PolitiCon and I will be looking at that car soon.

Barb (08:34)
You know, there’s an Oscar Meyer Wienermobile in my ticket bill.

Kim (08:41)
Pickles on it and it’ll be like a Chicago dog.

Jill (08:43)
I have an Oscar Mayer Wiener whistle that is one of my prized possessions, because I actually was in the Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile when my father, the hero, brought them to the playground he created to keep the neighborhood kids safe.

Kim (09:00)
Chill.

Barb (09:01)
Wait, It’s true. You’ve written in the Oscar by our wiener mobile. Of course you have. Of course you have.

Jill (09:06)
I have. I have.

Kim (09:10)
You need to write another book, Jill, and in all the stuff.

Barb (09:12)
I’m working on a

Jill (09:14)
I am and I’m going to talk about my father the hero the wiener mobile and a secret ride on silver with the Lone Ranger holding the reins

Barb (09:27)
Wow. Look at that’s gonna have to wait for another day.

Kim (09:29)
You have a

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Barb (10:58)
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Barb (11:51)
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Kim (13:14)
Well, this week, the attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who were fighting separate indictments in the Eastern District of Virginia, well, they joined forces in a joint hearing seeking to get President Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, Lindsay Halligan, disqualified, a move that could torpedo both cases. Comey’s facing charges of lying to Congress in the testimony he gave back in 2020. to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s investigation into links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. And James is charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection to a mortgage on her property in Virginia. Both charges, in my opinion, are politically motivated. But I want to hear my sister’s thoughts here, Barb. What did the attorneys for Comey and James argue in this hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Cameron Curry. And by the way, Judge Curry is from South Carolina. So why was this case even being heard? South Carolina judge in the first place.

Barb (14:25)
Right. It’s a little bit unusual procedurally. Well, they are challenging the legality of Lindsay Halligan’s appointment as the U.S. attorney there. And the court is potentially conflicted on this particular issue in the case, which is why they brought in a judge from another district just so that she doesn’t know any of these players. And that’s because the challenge they are making is to something called the Vacancies Reform Act. So ordinarily, for a US attorney to be appointed, they have to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But Halligan was appointed as an interim US attorney. So it doesn’t use that process. It uses a different process, which says the attorney general may appoint an interim, but only for 120 days. And after that time expires, ⁓ and there’s no, you know, presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed US attorney. Then it is the court that appoints a successor until such time as there is a permanent US attorney in that place. That’s why the court could end up playing a role in this and they wanted all the judges to be out of this decision making. But what they’ve argued is that Trump already appointed, or I guess it was Pam Bondi, the attorney general already appointed at interim, that was Eric Siebert.

You may remember he said he resigned. Trump said he fired him because he refused to indict Comey and James. ⁓ After his 120 days expired, that’s when ⁓ Lindsay expired. The court appointed him to continue in that role. ⁓ Once he left, Donald Trump appointed Lindsay Halligan, who was a White House aide. She’s an insurance lawyer to replace him.

she promptly filed this indictment. So what they’re arguing is because they already got their first 120 day US attorney, they don’t get a redo. And in fact, there’s even a memo, I think we’ve mentioned this before, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that said when this 120 days expires, the president doesn’t get a reset and do it over. Otherwise, it would just circumvent this rule that you have to get Senate confirmation

for your picks, right? A president could just keep reappointing people for 120 days. And the author of that Office of Legal Counsel memo was none other than now Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. And so what the Comey lawyers and the Letitia James lawyers are arguing is that their indictments, because they were signed by Lindsay Halligan, and she in fact was the only person in the grand jury room when these indictments were obtained, are therefore

null, void, and invalid.

Kim (17:19)
Wow. So Jill, how did the DOJ defend ⁓ against those arguments?

Jill (17:25)
very poorly would be my conclusion because their arguments were ridiculous. They made sort of two arguments. One, ⁓ it’s just a paperwork error. Well, no, it isn’t. The law is quite clear. And ⁓ as Barb said, the Department of Justice already said that you can’t do it multiple times because that would invade separation of powers where Congress would no longer have a confirmation role. But they also argued

Yeah, no matter what we said before, we have an unlimited right to appoint 120 days anytime we feel like it. So we’re going to just keep on appointing for 120 days. Then there was a sort of third argument, which is that Pam Bondi reviewed the indictment and that she approved it so that it wasn’t just Lindsay Halligan who was the only one who signed the indictment, the only one who appeared before the grand jury.

And the reason that that’s true is because no one in her office, no professional prosecutor was willing to go ahead with this case. They prepared a declination memo that advised her that there was no legitimate basis for this indictment. But that didn’t stop her. She went ahead with it. And that’s where we are. The argument of the plaintiffs ⁓ is very well, the defendants who are making the motion, the movements, not the plaintiffs.

is quite clearly the winning argument.

Kim (19:00)
Yeah, you know, Judge Curry seems to agree with Jill. mean, she didn’t really seem convinced by the DOJ. One of the most interesting things, I think, ⁓ one of the most interesting questions that she asked the DOJ attorneys was whether or not they thought that Judge Cannon, remember Judge Aileen Cannon down in Florida?

whether she made the correct ruling in finding that Jack Smith was improperly ⁓ appointed to the special counsel role. And it’s not exactly the same statute, but it’s pretty close. It’s basically it’s twin. And she held, of course, as we mentioned in the past, that he was improperly appointed because he was not Senate confirmed. I thought that that was a telling question. Barb, what did you think? What are your predictions about how this may play out?

Barb (19:56)
Yeah. So that was super interesting, wasn’t it? Where they said that, well, you know, we don’t endorse everything that Judge Cannon did there. We think that although that was improperly appointed, the remedy was wrong to dismiss the case. And so this case shouldn’t be dismissed either. I think one of the things that’s super interesting here too is the judge seemed very bothered about some irregularities in the grand jury transcript. She said that Pam Bondi claims

Jill (20:05)
Go on!

Barb (20:26)
to have retroactively appointed Lindsay Halligan now as a special attorney so that she’s not utilizing this clearly expired 120 days and that she went back and reviewed the grand jury transcript and sees that everything was done procedurally, properly, and therefore she is ratifying ⁓ everything that Lindsay Halligan did. And I think number one, the court says, I’m not sure that’s how it works that you can sort of

backdate the appointment that way. And even if you did, she said the transcript just like suddenly stops at 428 PM. The grand jury was in the room until 630 PM. Like where’s the missing transcript? So that’s sort of an

Kim (21:11)
I mean, what a dumb blunder to make. When you submit something that the court asks you for, you make sure that it’s exactly what they asked for and they sort of gave half the information that was asked for, which was such a self-own when you already have an upward hill to climb in making your case in the first place. That was just wild.

Barb (21:32)
We’re so, in many ways, we’re very fortunate that the Trump DOJ is so incompetent. Imagine how dangerous they would be if they could actually do their jobs.

Kim (21:40)
Well, Jill, this can have really big implications for the case, right? Couldn’t they get dismissed ⁓ altogether? what does the fact that, well, I’m going to ask you a two-point question. If they are dismissed, can these cases just get refiled? mean, is this just delay is the only problem? ⁓ And what does the fact that three other prosecutors have been disqualified by other courts, including

one of our favorite people to talk about, Alina Jaba, although that case is being appealed and she’s still in her position as that appeal goes on. But three times the DOJ has tried all kinds of shenanigans to get around this Vacancies Reform Act, including this argument that Pam Bondi is essentially saying she built a time machine to go back in time and properly install Allekan. And so everything is fine now.

I mean, you know, what do you think based on those ⁓ other cases ⁓ could happen here?

Jill (22:46)
In those other cases, there were other prosecutors who were legally appointed and serving, who were in on the grand jury and who were in on the indictment. So the results could be very different. I think that those where there were legitimate prosecutors involved, the case won’t be dismissed. I think in this case where no legitimate prosecutor was involved and if it is ruled,

like these other three, that Lindsay Halligan was not properly appointed, that the case could be dismissed. And that would be the end of it because the statute of limitations has run. There is one little hook on this that could change my answer about it couldn’t be refiled. And that is that there is a rule that if your case is dismissed, not based on the statute of limitations or on substantive grounds, but on an error of this sort.

that the prosecution can refile even though the statute of limitations has run within six months of the dismissal. There are a couple of problems with that. One is you would need a legitimate attorney to do that. And that’s going to require hiring someone from a district outside of the Eastern District of Virginia or adding a new AUSA in the Eastern District who’s willing to go ahead with this because no one existing in the office has been willing to.

and then they’d have to re-present it to another grand jury. And they would also not have time to appeal this ruling assuming that the case is dismissed because with only six months to file, they’d have to choose one or the other. So it’s a little complicated, but I think the bottom line is the case was bad. It had no substantive grounds. There’s no evidence that supports this accusation. It should be dismissed and ⁓ it should be

dismissed because Lindsay Halligan should be out of the office.

Kim (24:51)
you

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Barb (26:06)
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Jill (26:53)
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Barb (29:16)
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Kim (29:54)
And don’t forget the toilet tablets, Barb. The toilet tablets are fantastic.

Barb (29:58)
I’m contractually prevented from saying that word on air.

Jill (30:00)
But you go, you do you.

Barb (30:03)
Who do you? Go ahead.

Kim (30:05)
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Jill (30:45)
you

Wasn’t it Joe DiMaggio who said deja vu all over again? Well, that’s what I feel like now. Yo-Ghibera. Yo-Ghibera. Yo-Ghibera. of course. I knew I’d get it wrong, but Barb, I knew you’d fix it. Yeah, Yo-Ghibera. Almost every week, DOJ does one or more things we think violate the rule of law and the principles that we held dear when we, is Joyce, Barb, and I served at justice. And this week is no exception.

Barb, let’s start with Trump’s personal attorney turned number two at DOJ and his announced war on judges. We’re talking of course about Todd Blanch. Would you fill in our listeners, please?

Barb (31:31)
Yeah, this is really a disturbing thing. So Todd Blanche is the Deputy Attorney General. This is the number two official at the Justice Department, the person who really runs the operations day to day while the Attorney General is out traveling the world and doing other things as a cabinet official. So Blanche is speaking at a meeting of the Federalist Society. This is an organization of conservative lawyers and law students. It’s not a political organization. It is a legal organization, a 501c3, but

During this event, he makes a recruiting pitch to join the Justice Department. Again, fine. He wants lawyers who are hungry and thirsty. Great. But then he says, we need you, I’m quoting now, because it is a war and it’s something we will not win unless we keep on fighting. He said, it’s hard to get the media, it’s hard to get the American people to focus on what a travesty it is when you have an individual judge be able to stop an entire operation.

or an entire administrative policy that’s constitutional and allowed just because he or she chooses to do so. So it’s a war. Boy, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that is this idea that if a judge rules against you, somehow they’re at war with you. The judiciary has a very important role in our society. Sometimes you disagree with a judge’s decision. You’re allowed to say you disagree with a judge’s decision.

But to suggest that the judge is at war with the American people because they rule against you, that is a violation of respect for the rule of law and the role of the independence of the judiciary. Casting a judicial decision against you as war, I think is irresponsible and harmful. And we’ve got people like Donald Trump’s referring to judges who rule against him as a radical left lunatic, as he did about ⁓

Judge James Boesberg, the chief judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia. We’ve seen JD Vance saying that when judges have ruled against the Trump administration about snap benefits and other things, that that’s absurd, that the judiciary is trying to tell the executive branch how to use its executive power. That is what courts do. And so when they slam them in this way, I think they are undermining a very important institution that protects our democracy.

Jill (33:56)
Kim, you know, there is one judge who has now resigned this week because he felt he had to speak out on behalf of the rule of law. And you interviewed him and wrote an excellent piece about it. Tell us what he said and why he felt compelled to resign and speak out.

Kim (34:16)
Yeah, so Judge Mark Wolf, who was on the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, that’s the trial level federal court, he was appointed by Ronald Reagan. ⁓ He was a senior judge, which meant he still was a member of the bench. He still had lifetime tenure and all the benefits that come with it. But he gave that up because he said he did not want to stay silent ⁓ anymore. And he wrote in

amazing essay in the Atlantic. And a couple days later, I was able to talk to him. know, judges, we talk about judges speaking publicly and not speaking publicly, particularly when it comes to trial level and appellate level federal judges. I’m not talking about the, I’m leaving the SCOTUS aside here for a moment. Trial and federal level judges really do not speak out about things like even the attacks on the rule of law or the threats that they’ve been receiving.

and things like that because they want to make sure that in the event a case comes before them involving the administration, there is not even a hint of a conflict of interest, that they know that they are going to be ruling on the basis of the strength of the case and not on anything else. And even the appearance to the public that it’s otherwise is really detrimental to the rule of law. So I actually had been, since January, talking to a number of federal judges at the trial and appellate level.

And they’ve been telling me privately about their concerns about this. And I’ve been trying to get them even on background just to say something so I can really capture their feelings in a column and they’ve all declined. And I get why, but it’s a problem because that’s the kind of stuff that the American people need to hear and understand. So I was so grateful that Judge Wolf spoke to me and is speaking to other media. And I hate that he had to give up his job to do it. But what I found

you know, amid all of the terrible things that are going on with respect to the rule of law, the attacks like we talked about coming from folks ⁓ like Todd Blanch, was he made it really clear how this is supposed to work. The power that Donald Trump is amassing and seeking and trying to force judges to give him never belonged to him, right? The power always belonged to the people. It still belongs to the people. The way this works is the people delegate that power. They lend it.

They never give it up. They lend that power to their lawmakers in Congress, for example. Lawmakers in Congress then lend a little bit of that power to the executive with limits, limits imposed by law and by the Constitution. And what the courts do is they’re the people who decide whether or not the executive goes beyond those limits. It is an essential function of court to say, yeah, no, the law doesn’t allow you to do that, or yes, that is okay. That is not.

⁓ being at war, that is not being rogue. That’s doing exactly what the Constitution is set up to do. That’s the role, of course. That’s why they have lifetime tenure, so that they don’t have to worry about elections or politics as they do that job. That is why they are a separate branch of government, so that they can look at it independently. That was the way the framers sought to keep the judiciary independent. So what Donald Trump and

focusing Congress in the GOP caucus who are backing him up or saying about these judicial rulings just show how little they regard the power that the American people that they serve have. Because that’s only there, it’s only borrowed and that’s why they’re there to do the job to do the work of the American people, to ⁓ not do the work that they’re there to do and then also gaslight the American people about it. And that’s exactly what Donald Trump is doing. And I was really glad Judge Wolf laid that so plainly.

Jill (38:10)
And of course, we’ll put in our show notes your ⁓ interview with him because it really is good and does make all these very important points about the basic premise of our government, which is three co-equal branches, each serving its purpose and having oversight to balance the power of the other. And they obviously want a unitary executive and to eliminate all other branches of government. And so far, Congress has ceded its powers.

because it’s under his sway.

Kim (38:40)
No,

Congress has ceded the people’s power or tried to cede the people’s power to the president and he doesn’t, they didn’t have it to cede, it didn’t belong to them to cede in the first place and the president does not own that power.

Jill (38:53)
So, Barb, but there’s something that bothers me even more this week that DOJ did. It frightens me, it upsets me, and that is a reported meeting in the White House Situation Room with Attorney General Bondi, FBI Director Patel, and once again, the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche with a member of Congress, Representative Boebert.

There are so many things that are wrong with this picture, but let’s fill in what we know and why it’s wrong. And what are they so worried about that they are doing this pressure on a member of Congress to vote in a certain way on the Epstein files?

Barb (39:40)
Yeah, you know, it’s not really clear what happened at this meeting, but there was a meeting at the White House regarding this effort to release the Epstein files. so Lauren Boebert, who has been one of the few Republicans who has put pressure on and signed a discharge petition to say that this should be released, all of these files, she has been part of that group. After the meeting, she posted something like, ⁓ I want to thank the White House officials for meeting with me today.

we remain committed to ensuring transparency to the American people. ⁓ It is the least transparent message about transparency. Yeah. Like what? So ⁓ I don’t know. It does appear that they continue to try to do damage control about what’s in the Epstein files. Boebert obviously is one of these people whose constituents want the files released. She is pushed for the release. And we know that the Justice Department has been really slow walking the stuff.

We’ve seen some release, including this week, some more emails, but it’s only a small portion of all of the material that’s in the Epstein files. There may be some very good reasons to withhold some of this stuff. There’s material relating to survivors, I am sure, whose privacy should be respected. But Donald Trump could end all of this right now by just saying, anything that refers to me, just go ahead and put it out there in the public domain. ⁓ Anything about other people who are other than survivors, go ahead and put it out there.

But he hasn’t done that. And in fact, there’s news reporting today that says the Justice Department is now going to investigate prominent Democrats whose names appear in the Epstein files. So again, it’s just another effort to distract and deflect from whatever it is Donald Trump doesn’t want released in the Epstein files. Maybe there’s nothing there, who knows? But he sure is acting like there’s something there.

Kim (41:30)
Isn’t that like, this is like ⁓ the Streisand effect on steroids, right? Yes! Had he just released them right from the beginning like he said he would, no, we would not be talking about this right now at all. Like nobody.

Barb (41:42)
But there’s gotta be a reason, right? That’s all I can think of. He’s making it worse.

Jill (41:45)
Yeah. Well, time will tell. Let’s wait and see what comes of this.

Kim (42:01)
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Barb (42:38)
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Jill (43:24)
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Barb (44:45)
Yeah, that body butter’s the best. It smells so good, I want to eat it. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s like a frosting or something. It’s the best. You too can give the gift of glow this holiday season with our listener discount on Osea’s clean, clinically tested skincare. Just use code SISTERS10 for 10 % off your first order site-wide at oseamalibu.com. That’s 10 % off your first order with code SISTERS10 at oseamalibu.com.

The link is in our show notes.

Well, earlier this week, President Trump issued a new round of pardons for people who participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In addition to the 1,500 that he pardoned on Inauguration Day. Jill, can you tell us who are the beneficiaries of this latest round of pardons?

Jill (45:45)
Barb, you asked about beneficiaries, and I want to answer that in multiple parts. First, there are those who are pardoned, about 77, for helping Trump interfere in the 2020 election. I’m not sure there are any real beneficiaries there because they’re all charged with state crimes. So whatever he did, pardoning them at the federal level is not going to impact any state trials. ⁓

group includes Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, one of my favorite bad people, Sidney Powell, Mark Meadows, ⁓ Eastman, ⁓ and they’re all facing charges or have pled guilty in Georgia, Arizona. So I would say they’re not really beneficiaries. There are some others who he did pardon in the past who have now been reindicted for new crimes.

⁓ So I’m not sure whether he will pardon them again or not. ⁓ And that’s the, you know, there’s just a partial list of these people. ⁓ And it shows the abuse of the pardon power. But addition to all of these, he’s pardoned many in his first term, as I said, who have now gone back to a second thing. And I am reminded of pardons that maybe weren’t illegal, but were

or at least not corrupt, his pardons of the other people involved are people who in some way benefited him. They either paid him money or made him rich with cryptocurrency. mean, Gerald Ford ⁓ from your home state, Kim and Barb, has been criticized for pardoning Nixon, but he did it out of his own moral values, out of his own policy beliefs, not because it was a benefit to him.

And I don’t think you can compare that pardon to anything that Donald Trump is doing. Donald Trump is doing this for personal benefits, not because of anything that has to do with someone being wrongly convicted. So it’s a really bad set of circumstances.

Barb (48:02)
Yeah, you know, Kim, one of the things that’s noteworthy about these pardons is, as Jill said, some of these people were charged in state court. None of these people have been charged in federal cases. These are all people who were wrapped up in the fake electors scheme. So can you explain the limits of the pardon power?

Kim (48:19)
Yeah, I’d be happy to. So the pardon power, on the one hand, is one of the most broad powers that a president has. There’s very few limits. Actually, I don’t think there’s really any limits at all on the ability of a president to issue a pardon and have that pardon stick. But those pardons can only apply to federal charges, as Jill said. So if someone was ⁓ convicted in state court, like

I don’t know what the president was, then that would not ⁓ be subject to a pardon. The president also said that he would not pardon himself, right? Because he’s such a great guy. None of the pardons he issues would apply to himself. So, okay, great. ⁓ Another thing that I think ⁓ I mentioned on social media that seemed to relieve a lot of people is that pardons are only for criminal…

offenses as well. this was a state ⁓ action anyway, but all civil actions. A president cannot pardon someone from civil liability. And so people weren’t really sure how this might affect ⁓ Lady Ruby and Shea Mahus, for example, in that judgment against Rudy Giuliani. It doesn’t. They have settled that ⁓ under terms that aren’t released. All we know is that Rudy Giuliani didn’t have to give them his house, which actually kind of made me sad.

But that still is not disturbed by these pardons. So all in all, it’s really symbolic. It’s just something, it’s like, know, given a little token to these people who he loves so much. And I suppose if there was any new investigation that started that wasn’t time barred involving the election interference, it would apply to that. But that’s a really long shot. And under the present circumstances, these pardons really don’t mean much.

Barb (50:10)
Yeah, although, know, Jill, it makes me wonder, as Kim said, they don’t really mean much as a matter of law. You said the same. And so it seems to me that maybe these pardons are instead an effort to rewrite history by suggesting that the challenges to the 2020 election are totally legitimate. This is how we expose fraud. Is there any concern that this is perhaps laying the groundwork for challenges to future elections?

Jill (50:35)
Yes, ⁓ it is. And it’s part of a piece of his attempt to rewrite history. I I hate to pick on Lindsay Halligan, but one of her jobs before she became the interim U.S. attorney was working for the White House at the Smithsonian to fix all of the historical references in the Smithsonian that might have offended Donald Trump, ⁓ which is all part of an effort to rewrite history.

And I think, you know, as David French wrote this week, just like a corrupt king, Trump is transforming the American system of justice into his personal plaything. Friends of the crown break the law with impunity. Enemies of the crown experience the sharp end of the law, whether they deserve it or not. I think the idea of amending the power of pardon is really important because as Kim has already mentioned,

It is unlimited and can easily be abused, especially when you combine it with the immunity that the Supreme Court gave to the president. There’s like no way to control him. so I think it’s a real problem and he is rewriting history in every way he can. ⁓ Signs that national parks have been changed. This is all part of his alternative facts and the world in which he lives versus the reality in which all of us live.

Barb (52:03)
Yeah, I mean, the pardon power is in the Constitution. The Constitution would have to be amended to change that. Or we could elect better people. that’s the solution.

Jill (52:12)
That’s the best answer.

Kim (52:14)
Power is with the people. Don’t forget it.

Jill (52:26)
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Barb (53:24)
That sounds amazing. I want to eat that too.

Jill (53:29)
Are you hungry, Barb? Do we need to feed you before we record this show?

Barb (53:33)
I must be listening to all these things. Well, actually, Jill, I really love the Australian sandalwood, speaking of things that smell and taste delicious. It’s warm, rugged, and quietly confident, kind of like Jill, except for the quiet part. Between cedarwood, eucalyptus, suede, and amber, you get a scent that’s clean and classic that never misses and always makes you feel on top of your game. They also have a French saffron.

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Kim (54:20)
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Jill (55:53)
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Barb (56:30)
Well, now comes the part of the show that we really do like the best, the part where we answer your questions. If you have a question for us, please email us at sistersinlawatpoliticon.com or tag us on social media using hashtag SistersInLaw. If we don’t get to your question during the show, keep an eye on our feeds throughout the week, where we’ll answer as many of your questions as we can. Our first question comes to us from Amy, who asks,

Why did the case brought by Kim Davis to reverse marriage equality get all the way to the Supreme Court? I know they didn’t take up the case, but how did it get that far? Kim, you’re our Supreme Court analyst. do think?

Kim (57:12)
Yeah, that’s a really great question, Amy. So the answer really is it didn’t get to the Supreme Court. As you pointed out, they didn’t take up the case. The only thing that happened is Kim Davis, who, if you recall, was a ⁓ town clerk ⁓ in Kentucky who refused after the Obergefell ruling in 2015 to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. ⁓ She

in refusing to do that, one of those couples sued her and won a jury verdict against her. So now she’s challenging that jury verdict. She’s appealing it. ⁓ She has lost at every step of the way so far. And she ⁓ appealed to the US Supreme Court by filing something called a petition for certiorari. But she didn’t just seek to get her ⁓ jury verdict overturned. She could have left it at that saying she’s arguing that

⁓ It violated her religious freedom her religious exercise, right? I Know I know she could have just taken that argument saying that because of the her first amendment protection of freedom of religion that this jury Award could not stand but she went further. She was like, and also can you overturn a Bergfeld and the court without comment just turned like just slammed the door in Face didn’t even let her inside the courtroom and said no, we’re not going to take it but it

Barb (58:11)
I’m so tired of that argument.

Kim (58:36)
That doesn’t mean it reached the Supreme Court. Anyone can file a petition for Saoirse Arare. The Supreme Court gets thousands of petitions for Saoirse Arare, and they turn the vast majority of them down. That doesn’t mean the case made it to the Supreme Court. So that’s a better way to think about it. It caught the attention of the press because of who she is. ⁓ But this is no different than any of the thousands of petitions that are filed that just get turned away as a matter of course.

Barb (59:04)
A very good explanation. Our next question comes to us from Tom, asks, why are attorneys general from states that had fake electors not pursuing criminal charges? Jill, you want to answer that one?

Jill (59:16)
I do because, actually they are pursuing state charges. Arizona and Georgia have pending charges. They had charges against several defendants who pled guilty and have been sentenced to five or six years of probation and who have been disbarred or have their law licenses suspended as a result. So the state system is pursuing these cases.

So feel good about that.

Barb (59:47)
I will say in Michigan where some of the fake electors were charged criminally, the charges were dismissed. They were charged under a forgery statute, so I’m not sure that was the best fit. you know, each state’s going to have its own law and different abilities to prosecute and different facts.

Jill (1:00:02)
That’s how the system works exactly, is we need to have the laws of each state observed and where it violates state law and federal law, you can proceed with both. It’s not double jeopardy because it’s a different sovereign.

Kim (1:00:17)
a good point and bringing this back to the people. State lawmakers can enact laws that more, that fit into a circumstance closer to this now that this has happened. That’s a whole point of, or one big job of lawmakers. When they hold hearings and things, when they’re examining something that’s happened, it’s in part so that they can say, huh, do we need to amend our laws? We need to pass a new law. Do we need to do something in order to better address?

this kind of problem to ensure that justice is done. So I know some states have, even on the federal level, that the way that the electoral count is done was amended after January 6, 2021, in the wake of that, so that one person cannot just block the electors from being counted. So you can let your lawmakers know, hey, I want stronger laws that prevent this kind of shenanigans from happening.

Barb (1:01:09)
That’s a great word. Our final question comes to us from Anne in Philadelphia. Anne asks, can you give us a sense of what actually constitutes the Epstein files? This is a great question. I’ll take this one. So we don’t know exactly, but I will tell you the kinds of things that are typically gathered up in a criminal investigation. So one of the things would be all the statements of witnesses that they’ve talked to. It could be…

just based on informal interviews with FBI agents. That’s often the first way that an investigation begins talking to a lot of people. It could also be transcripts of witness testimony, grand jury transcripts, even depositions from civil cases. So there’s all of that. But in addition, and it’s one of the reasons that when Pam Bondi said, we’re gonna release the grand jury transcripts, it was such a feeble attempt to appease critics because

That’s likely to be a very small percentage of it. In addition would be items obtained from search warrants and from third parties. So third parties might be things like phone records, bank records, credit card records, flight logs, and hotel records. You can learn an awful lot about what’s happening from those kinds of records. And then the stuff that’s really valuable, and that is the fruits of a search warrant. So first they would go in and they did conduct searches at his New York City home.

and his Palm Beach, Florida home. And so in the physical search, they would have obtained notes, diaries, journals, objects, photos, videos, audio recordings, anything in the houses that could be evidence in this case. And teams of agents go through the house and look for all of these kinds of things. In addition, they would have seized his electronic devices and had separate search warrants to look at all of those. So cell phones,

tablets, laptops, desktop computers, and all of the things that can be found there. Email messages, text messages, photographs, videos. The other thing that can be obtained from the phone company is cell site location information. It requires a search warrant, but it can tell you where that cell phone was located at particular dates and times. So as you can see, it is a treasure trove of information. And the stuff we’ve seen, the little scraps of

you know, some little memos and some emails and the grand jury transcripts. It’s it’s we’ve barely scratched the surface. So there’s a lot more information there that I think is why people are so eager to see all of this. Well, thank you for listening to Hashtag Sisters in Law with Kimberly Atkins-Stor, Jill Winebanks and me, Barb McQuade. Joyce will be back soon. Please follow Hashtag Sisters in Law wherever you listen and please give us a five star review. It really helps others to find the show.

And please show some love to this week’s Wild Alaskan Company, Helix, Blue Land, Osea Malibu, and Laundry Sauce. The links are in the show notes. Please support them because they make this podcast possible. See you next week with another episode, hashtag Sisters in Love.

Kim (1:04:18)
Whoa, it is 421. That might be a record.

Barb (1:04:21)
Right.

that slow talking Joyce, look how fast we can go.

Kim (1:04:26)
With her accent and the way she says insurance.