Opening Arguments

OA1311 - Matt runs through a string of DOJ losses this week: researcher Kseniia Petrova's smuggled frog embryos case, a grand jury's decision on Cassidy Hutchinson, and Trump's libel suit against the Wall Street Journal over the Epstein birthday letter, an exit package you have to hear to believe. We close out with a Canadian tourist charged with animal cruelty for abducting a flamingo from the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas.
Cases discussed:
United States v. Kseniia Petrova (dismissed vindictive prosecution case)
Grand jury declines to indict Cassidy Hutchinson
Trump v. Dow Jones ($10 billion Wall Street Journal libel suit, dismissed)
Trump v. BBC (defamation suit over January 6th footage)
Nevada v. Mitchell Fairbarn (the Peachy the Flamingo case)
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VR49 - Live midterms watch party! Thomas, Matt, and Jenessa parked in front of three screens on election night and just let the good vibes happen. We've got Mike Johnson saying something out loud on camera that he absolutely should not have said days before results came in. We've got Idaho forcing its voters to pick one official state gun (you can't have them all, Idaho). And we've got Ken Paxton's unhinged AI attack ad against James Talarico, possibly the worst political ad ever produced. Plus a genuinely enormous amount of good news that none of us were quite emotionally prepared for.
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OA1310 - We all know by now that election fraud is rare, but do you know why? What mechanisms are in place that make us so sure it's rare, and not just rarely reported? Jenessa walks us through election security protocols, what happens to your ballot at every step in the process, and what election security experts are actually worried about.
Cases and sources discussed:
Brennan Center Election Cybersecurity Summit
Voting Rights Lab election risk heat map
We recorded this before charges were filed against James O’Keefe because he decided to prove me right by getting caught attempting voter fraud
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OA1309 - With Matt out sick, we're doing a GG crossover, with a hot off the presses new story suitable for Rapid Response Friday. Back in August, James O'Keefe's rebranded operation, now calling itself the Citizen Justice League, sent people dressed in racist Muslim garb into Minneapolis polling places to test Minnesota's voter "vouching" law. Does the full footage actually show what the viral clips claim, or do the poll workers do exactly what they're supposed to? And what happens when the "random" names O'Keefe and Cameron Higby used to vouch for strangers turn out to belong to real, very surprised Minnesota voters? Thomas and Lydia go through the new documents and the county attorney's press conference, line by line.
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WE WATCHED A MOVIE SO CHRISTIAN WE HAD TO DOSE IT OUT IN TWO SITTINGS.
Thomas and Matt are joined by Lydia for Alleged, a 2010 Christian retelling of the Scopes Monkey Trial that somehow decides the real villains were the evolutionists. We've got Nebraska Man resurrected as a gotcha, H.L. Mencken slandered into oblivion, and a wildly invented eugenics subplot that never happened in Tennessee. Matt actually read the real trial history, so we get to find out just how much of this is "alleged" fact and how much is pure fan fiction built to make William Jennings Bryan the hero.
Alleged (2010), dir. Fenton Bailey (fictionalized Scopes Monkey Trial drama)
Cases discussed:
State v. John Thomas Scopes (Scopes Monkey Trial, Rhea County, TN, 1925)
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
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