The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell 10_2_23 - Breaking News Oct 2, 2023
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00:00 And is it true that Mottie Walsh is going to be the moderator at the Boston event?
00:07 There's no Boston event. Although every time I have met somebody from Boston since you lambasted me over that on TV,
00:17 every single time I have been getting a bollocking over not doing a Boston event.
00:23 But you are doing a Western Massachusetts event, which is kind of rare.
00:30 Most people do it the other way because that's where the people are.
00:33 But I have to say, in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
00:37 you are writing a lot of historic imbalances by doing the western part of the state instead of where the people are
00:45 and where the bookstores are in the eastern part of the state.
00:49 There are plenty of people in western Massachusetts. We just keep a little more social distance.
00:54 We like a little more elbow room.
00:56 Rachel, by the way, I want to commend you for your coverage of the Trump campaign today,
01:02 which took place, of course, in a Manhattan courthouse.
01:06 That's exactly the way I saw it. He wasn't there for the trial.
01:11 It was all about how he was going to campaign in the hallway and try to hijack the coverage of the trial,
01:19 which has mostly worked if you surveyed a lot of TV news today.
01:25 What Donald Trump says outside of the courtroom gets more attention than what is said inside the courtroom,
01:30 which is not the way we're going to be doing it in this hour and is not the way you did it in your hour.
01:35 I will say that it is interesting to me to see the way that this particular trial makes him proverbially yelp.
01:45 Apparently, the public exposure of the smallness of his business is the thing that spurs him into action,
01:57 much more than the threat of prison or any of the other potential consequences of any of the other charges against him.
02:03 It is simply about being exposed as smaller than he'd like to be seen in a financial sense.
02:08 That is the thing that gets him almost uncontrollably emotional in the courtroom today,
02:15 if the reporting from reporters inside the room is to be believed.
02:20 Rachel, we're going to go inside the room to the extent that we can with Adam Klossfeld, who was in the room today.
02:26 And at the very end of the hour, we are going to be joined by Congressman Andy Kim, who you mentioned at the end of your hour,
02:35 the announced candidate Democrat running against Robert Menendez if Robert Menendez runs in New Jersey.
02:41 Andy Kim in the House of Representatives, he was the very first member of Congress in the House or Senate to call for Senator Menendez to resign.
02:51 He's going to be joining us at the end of the hour.
02:53 Fascinating. Well done. Thank you, Lawrence.
02:55 Thanks, Rachel. Thank you.
02:58 Well, Donald Trump went to court today and once again, New York City did not care.
03:04 Now, you might recall that there was much misplaced public worry about what could happen the very first time
03:11 Defendant Trump had to go to court in New York City facing his first criminal indictment,
03:16 what seemed like years ago, but was actually a very pleasant spring day only six months ago.
03:25 Donald Trump has been indicted three more times since then in much more serious cases,
03:31 making that first court appearance in New York as a criminal defendant a distant memory now.
03:37 Donald Trump publicly begged his supporters then to show up and protest in Manhattan on that day when they refused to come.
03:50 Even though there are millions and millions of Trump voters living within an hour's drive of Manhattan,
03:57 and as the violent Trump supporters who were willing to riot for him were already in prison,
04:05 were out on bail awaiting trial for the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.
04:10 One of the effects, intended effects, of criminal prosecution is deterrence.
04:18 And every potentially violent Trump nut in America now knows that there is nothing Donald Trump can do
04:28 to save them from going to prison if they want to go to an American courthouse and go to war for Donald Trump.
04:39 So there hasn't been a whiff of violence or any even unruly protest at any of the Trump court appearances.
04:51 And today in Manhattan Donald Trump became just another guy from Queens whose life took enough wrong turns
04:57 for him to end up as a defendant in the Manhattan courthouse.
05:02 He is a civil defendant, in this case charged with fraud, by New York State's Attorney General.
05:08 Donald Trump has obviously decided to attend the trial not because of what happens in the courtroom,
05:13 but so that he can dominate the media coverage of the trial by making statements outside of the courtroom
05:20 before and after the court session and during the recess breaks.
05:24 Donald Trump did that relentlessly today.
05:27 We will show you nothing of what he had to say in those statements because they are filled with lies.
05:35 Lies about New York's Attorney General and the judge in the case,
05:40 and what we will show you, the occasional outright hallucination about Joe Biden.
05:48 If I didn't run I'd be sitting right now at a beach like Biden does.
05:55 Everything Donald Trump said outside the courtroom was specifically designed to distract
06:01 from the actual elements of the case inside the courtroom.
06:04 He did say one thing that is relevant to his defense in the case,
06:10 and that is the fraud that he is accused of perpetrating by overstating his wealth
06:16 and obtaining bank loans actually harmed no one.
06:20 Here's what Donald Trump said outside the courtroom about those loans.
06:24 They were paid back on time, there was no default, there were no problems,
06:29 the banks got back their money, again it was never a default, it was never a problem,
06:35 everything was perfect, there was no crime.
06:39 Andrew Weissman will analyze the legal validity of that statement in a moment.
06:44 The hundreds and hundreds of other words Donald Trump said for the cameras
06:50 were entirely irrelevant and/or outright lies and hallucinations,
06:56 including his vicious lying attacks on New York's Attorney General, Letitia James,
07:03 and his even more intense attacks against the judge in the case who Donald Trump lied about relentlessly.
07:10 If you're really eager to hear Donald Trump lying about the judge,
07:13 you can hear that on other programs or online, but not here.
07:19 Donald Trump's plan in showing up at the courthouse today was to get TV coverage for his lies.
07:26 The ongoing challenge in covering Donald Trump continues to be, as it always has been,
07:33 how to cover Donald Trump without helping to amplify his lies and deliver them to even more people.
07:41 Donald Trump did speak in the courtroom today, but only in portions of a video recorded deposition for the case.
07:49 In the deposition testimony revealed in court today, we discover that of course,
07:55 Donald Trump's in-house accountant, Allen Weisselberg, who has pleaded guilty to committing criminal fraud
08:05 while working for Donald Trump, is not a real accountant.
08:09 Competence has never been a reason for Donald Trump to hire people,
08:13 and that is certainly the case with Allen Weisselberg, who in his under oath testimony, admitted
08:20 he doesn't know anything about generally accepted accounting principles,
08:26 which in accounting are identified by the initials G-A-A-P, pronounced GAP.
08:36 If I said the phrase GAP, G-A-A-P, are you familiar with that acronym?
08:42 I've heard of that, yes.
08:43 Okay. Tell me everything you know about GAP. What is GAP?
08:47 Generally accepted accounting principles. I don't know what's in GAP.
08:51 I never took the CPA exam. I never studied for it.
08:54 So I don't know all the various components of what GAP is.
08:58 Are there any components you know about what GAP is?
09:02 Not really.
09:05 Accountants who don't take the exam come cheap, and of course, Donald Trump's guy never took the CPA exam.
09:12 He's never studied for it. The fraud case is about GAP, generally accepted accounting principles,
09:20 and Donald Trump's continued violation of generally accepted accounting principles,
09:25 which he, in his under oath testimony, in his deposition, blamed on Allen Weisselberg.
09:36 To meet your obligation here, of presenting the information in accordance with GAP,
09:45 was Allen Weisselberg responsible for that?
09:48 Object to the form.
09:50 I would say yes.
09:53 So Donald Trump, in his under oath deposition, said the person whose obligation it was to follow generally accepted accounting principles
10:03 was Allen Weisselberg, who testified under oath that he doesn't know what they are.
10:10 Leading off our discussion tonight is Adam Classfield.
10:14 He is the senior legal correspondent for The Messenger and was in the courtroom for today's proceedings.
10:19 Tim O'Brien, senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion, an author of Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald.
10:26 He is the host of the Bloomberg podcast Crash Course and an MSNBC political analyst.
10:31 Also with us, Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel and former chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of New York.
10:37 He is a professor at NYU Law School and co-host of the podcast Prosecuting Donald Trump.
10:43 Andrew, let me begin with you.
10:45 The one word of defense, line of defense, that we heard from outside the courtroom,
10:51 the only thing that actually pertains to the case in any way, and that's him saying,
10:56 "Look, none of these loans involved any problems for the banks. All the loans were paid back.
11:04 And so even if there was some inaccuracy or disagreement about the value of the assets that are listed in obtaining the loans,
11:16 what matters is the loans were all paid back."
11:20 How does that work as a line of defense?
11:23 >> Well, legally, it's irrelevant.
11:28 That is just not a defense to the six counts that are under trial.
11:35 Remember, one count has already been found guilty by the judge.
11:40 The issue here, the two potential defenses are intent.
11:46 In other words, was there an intent on the part of each of the defendants, including Donald Trump, to mislead?
11:53 And there seems to be, based on what the judge has already said, there's going to be significant evidence of that.
12:00 And the other is, did the banks or insurance companies rely on the false statements?
12:07 Meaning, did they care about it or did they make their own determinations based on their own analyses?
12:13 Again, I think on that, it's important to remember that it is necessary, and the judges said that, that you have to find it.
12:21 But if you asked a bank officer, would it make a difference to you if the person asking for a loan is an inveterate liar
12:30 and has committed fraud in the course of their business,
12:34 it is hard to imagine that an executive from a major financial institution is going to say, "No, it does not matter."
12:41 That sort of objective view of the person who's asking for millions and millions of dollars
12:50 is going to be something that is important to the bank.
12:53 It is also just, remember, what the person says is going to be relevant to not only the size of the loan that you might make,
13:00 but also the rate that you charge the person.
13:04 So whether you ultimately pay it back, that's not your call.
13:08 The issue is whether the bank would be willing to give you the loan for the size and at what rate.
13:14 It just is not a defense, and it's also one where, remember, this is tried to the judge, not to a jury.
13:21 So the judge is not in any way, shape, or form going to be buying off on something that is just not a legal defense.
13:28 Tim O'Brien, I'm waiting for the testimony from the bank official who says,
13:34 "Well, I read Tim O'Brien's book about Donald Trump lying about his wealth and his assets."
13:40 Or, "I would like to know from those bank officials, if they didn't read your book, why didn't they?"
13:46 Because in some cases, I think they were just willing to go along for the ride with Trump during his flush years in the media
13:56 because it was simpler to give him the loan and then look the other way.
14:01 Or in other cases, I think they believed the hype.
14:04 The thing that you raised about GAAP, it is both Donald Trump and Allen Weisselberg certainly know what GAAP is.
14:13 They may not know what every component of a financial statement is that allows you to say it comports with generally accepted accounting principles.
14:23 But they know essentially that it's a good housekeeping seal of approval.
14:27 And in fact, one of the documents, well, the document that Trump routinely brought it out to the media
14:33 and gave to his bankers a statement of financial condition was this semi-ridiculous document
14:39 that Trump and Allen Weisselberg concocted at the Trump Organization to inflate the value of all of his assets
14:45 and put it out into the world as a statement of what his worth was.
14:50 And in every single one of those documents, it said, "This does not comport with GAAP."
14:56 The people that put that in there were his own accountants.
14:59 And Trump routinely tried to strong-arm his accountants to say that the documents he was floating to banks
15:05 comported with GAAP, and they wouldn't do it.
15:08 And he knew why. And he knew that they wouldn't do it because they didn't believe him.
15:13 And because he was sitting there with a bicycle pump, essentially, pumping it up and down every day around every asset he owned.
15:20 And I think the banks either looked away, the banks took him at his word, or the banks were afraid of getting savaged in the media
15:28 if they dug too deeply into this tissue of lies he kept putting in front of them.
15:32 But in any case, however that played out, they were willing to go along with what he was telling them.
15:39 Adam Glasfeld, because you were in the courtroom, I want to give you the last word privilege as guests who are in the courtroom always get.
15:49 Tell us anything you think we need to know about what happened in the courtroom that we don't yet know,
15:55 and don't even know how to ask about, and whatever you think was the evidentiary high point or important points of the day.
16:04 Well, one thing that won't come across on the written record of it that was immediately evident upon going into the courtroom
16:13 and seeing Trump entering the courtroom was a note that we basically started this show with,
16:20 which was the fact that Trump was deeply unhappy.
16:23 Now, I attended Trump's, his arraignment in the hush money case in New York,
16:28 his arraignment on the election obstruction case in Washington, D.C.
16:33 This was the sourest I have seen Trump enter a courtroom.
16:37 And it seems that legal journalists covering these cases might have to find new synonyms for glowering.
16:43 He entered the courtroom very hunched over, taking very deliberate steps until he sat at the defense table for the day to begin.
16:52 And it goes to the point that was made just at the start of this show that this case, though a civil case,
17:00 though not one of his four indictments, has cut to the heart of things and has made the former president deeply unhappy.
17:10 And Adam, in the last few minutes of the day, apparently, the judge indicated that there is a statute of limitations restraint
17:19 that could come to bear on a certain amount of the evidence in this case.
17:23 How do you expect that to affect the case going forward?
17:27 Now, that was a very interesting moment because it was just a split screen about how the day started
17:33 and that glowering posture that I mentioned.
17:37 And what Trump's reaction was at that moment is that he put both of his hands up and gave two thumbs up
17:43 when the judge made an issue of the statute of limitations
17:48 and basically said it in the context of we have had the first witness testimony of the day
17:53 and the testimony related to conduct that was around 2011.
17:58 And in order to the judge said, hey, if you don't connect this to conduct from later on in 2014, this stuff isn't really relevant.
18:08 Now, Trump had a different take on that, a little bit more expansive take on that after the day was over.
18:15 But the judge was very clear in his ruling.
18:19 I encourage folks to read the ruling that the statute of limitations issue was an argument from Trump's attorneys that he rejected.
18:27 It's an important issue. It's an issue that will come up on appeal.
18:31 And the judge is definitely going to hold the AG's feet to the fire in terms of admissibility to make it clear that the testimony she brings in
18:41 and that the evidence that she elicits go to the heart of when the time frame of this case is.
18:50 Adam Glasfeld, nothing like being in the courtroom, always invaluable.
18:54 Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
18:56 Tim O'Brien, thank you. Andrew Weissman, thank you for starting off our discussions.
19:00 And when we come back with the first speedy trial speeding toward us in Georgia at the end of the month,
19:07 a district attorney has already flipped one co-defendant into into a cooperating witness for the prosecution,
19:14 while another subpoenaed prosecution witness is demanding immunity in exchange for his prosecution testimony.
19:22 That's next. Fifty nine year old Scott Hall has decided he's willing to spend exactly zero years of the rest of his life in prison.
19:35 Scott Hall knows much more about the perils of the criminal justice system than Donald Trump does.
19:42 And most, if not all, of the Trump co-defendants, including former U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani,
19:48 who used the U.S. attorney's office as primarily a launching pad for his pursuit of elective office in New York.
19:56 Scott Hall is a Georgia bail bondsman. Every day of his job is spent taking money from people to help them escape the hells of jail while awaiting trial.
20:11 Scott Hall is one of the criminal justice system's profiteers.
20:16 He's in a position to understand what the odds are for criminal defendants in Georgia like himself.
20:25 And he is betting on Fulton County District Attorney Fonny Willis instead of his own criminal defense lawyers
20:32 by pleading guilty and accepting a sentence of five years probation and agreeing, quote,
20:41 to testify truthfully at any further court proceedings to include trials of any co-defendants.
20:50 Sidney Powell is one of the co-defendants who is scheduled for a speedy trial beginning at the end of this month.
20:57 The indictment says that Scott Hall and co-defendant Sidney Powell, quote,
21:03 unlawfully conspired to use a computer with knowledge that such use was without authority
21:10 and with the intention of taking and appropriating information, data and software, the property of Dominion Voting Systems Corporation.
21:20 We can now expect that Scott Hall will be testifying at Sidney Powell's trial,
21:25 accusing her of doing exactly what the indictment accuses her of doing and testifying that he did it with her.
21:34 The case against Sidney Powell just went from strong to overwhelming.
21:40 Another witness now subpoenaed to testify at that upcoming speedy trial of co-defendants Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbrough
21:48 is Bernard Carrick, who has already been convicted of crimes committed while he was New York City's police commissioner,
21:56 which he was promoted to by then-Mayor Giuliani after serving as the mayor's chauffeur.
22:05 Bernie Carrick's criminal defense attorney, Tim Parlatore, said in a letter to the District Attorney's office, quote,
22:11 "Mr. Carrick intends to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer any questions."
22:16 And today, Mr. Parlatore said this.
22:20 Would he potentially be helpful in a case against Sidney Powell? I think he would.
22:25 And I think that that's kind of a wrinkle to this case that's difficult on a whole bunch of different levels.
22:32 So I could see why they would want him to testify relevant to Sidney Powell,
22:38 but if you're not willing to give him the basic protections that any normal prosecutor
22:43 in any other prosecuting office in the country would do, then you're just not going to be able to force him to testify.
22:51 Back with us is Andrew Weissman, and joining our discussion now is Amy Lee Copeland,
22:55 a criminal defense attorney and former Georgia federal prosecutor.
22:59 Amy Lee, it looks like the speedy trial prosecution case was significantly strengthened with this plea deal.
23:11 It does, Lawrence. Good evening.
23:13 You know, last week, Sidney Powell filed a 213-page motion.
23:17 It was about 23 pages of writing and about 180 pages of exhibits laying forward what seemed to be her trial strategy,
23:24 just telling the DA that the evidence that she had put together showed that she really didn't have anything to do with it.
23:30 Now, at about page 210 of her attachments, there was the Sullivan Strickler's CEO's deposition that said Sidney Powell was her customer.
23:40 But sometimes in life, it works in law that the nail that stands up gets hammered.
23:45 And having laid out what looks like to be her defense and what she thinks the weaknesses are in the case,
23:50 we all of a sudden see Mr. Hall getting a plea deal, and then we see Mr. Carrick becoming more of an interesting witness to the prosecution.
24:00 I just got to finish writing that down. The nail that still stands up gets hammered.
24:05 Okay. I'm going to need that in the future covering this thing.
24:09 Andrew Weissman, two things here. You have the new, very willing now, prosecution witness,
24:16 clearly going to be a powerful witness in the case against Sidney Powell.
24:20 And also this issue with Bernie Carrick, how do you expect that to be resolved as the issue of his testimony approaches?
24:30 Will he get an immunity deal to testify?
24:34 So what you're seeing play out is when you have a strategy like Fannie Willis's, which is you indict big,
24:43 you are putting more pressure on people like Mr. Hall and Mr. Carrick and others to cooperate.
24:50 And you see people starting to point fingers.
24:53 In the same way, in the little clip of Donald Trump pointing a finger at Allen Weisselberg,
24:58 you have now Tim Parlator, the lawyer for Bernie Carrick, saying, you know,
25:04 you might want to give him immunity because he can help you on the Sidney Powell deal.
25:08 But that's that's a you know, that's a real prosecutorial decision.
25:13 You know, those are the things why you're sort of paid the big bucks,
25:17 which is to decide whether you really would give immunity to somebody like Bernie Carrick.
25:23 And it's unusual to me to see his lawyer essentially making that argument on television.
25:30 To me, it suggests that there's may not be playing out so well when he's having private conversations with the prosecutors,
25:38 because immunity is asking for quite a lot for somebody who is already a convicted felon.
25:45 He was pardoned, by the way, by Donald Trump.
25:48 And I could see the prosecutors thinking, you know, I'm not so sure it's worth the bargain.
25:54 Remember, they just got a new witness with respect to Sidney Powell,
25:58 and they indicted the case without having any of those people and felt confident they would win the case.
26:04 So I don't know if they are willing to strike a deal that's that favorable to Bernie Carrick,
26:11 unless he really has the keys to the kingdom with respect to Sidney Powell and others.
26:18 Anyway, Tim Pawlatory, Bernie Carrick's lawyer, released a letter that he wrote to the district attorney's office,
26:25 a very angry letter insulting to the district attorney's office in the way they've been operating,
26:30 and saying that if he doesn't have a deal, he's just going to go into court and take the Fifth Amendment on every single question.
26:38 First of all, how do you think the DA's office received that letter of his that he released publicly?
26:45 And what would you expect to see happen in court now with witness Carrick?
26:51 Well, it was not a genteel letter, Lawrence. It was a scorcher.
26:57 He not only vindicated his own rights or sought to vindicate his own rights by saying, I'm going to take the Fifth,
27:02 he really went out of his way to say, and by the way, all these co-defendants who can't cross-examine me if I take the Fifth,
27:08 that's a Sixth Amendment confrontation clause violation, too.
27:12 So he wasn't leaving any stone unturned in that letter.
27:16 It'll be interesting to see what plays out. To get immunity in Georgia, the judge actually has to approve it.
27:21 The DA has to go to the judge to get an immunity deal.
27:25 And so Mr. Carrick's attorney says, basically, you have two options.
27:29 Either give me immunity or we'll have a hearing before the judge, and he'll determine if this is incriminating or not.
27:36 Mr. Carrick's whole point through his attorney was, this is a creation of yours, DA Willis, that you named me as an unindicted co-conspirator.
27:45 And if you want to retract that and assure me in writing that I'm not going to be prosecuted, I'll be your witness.
27:50 It's interesting, though, he is on Ken Chesbrough's list, too, and there are some issues with trying to get an out-of-state witness to testify in the state of Georgia.
27:59 It would be much more of a burden for Mr. Chesbrough to testify.
28:03 With him being named as an unindicted co-conspirator, I can't imagine Mr. Carrick would do anything other than take to fifth if he were a defense witness.
28:11 Amy Lee Copeland, thank you very much for your invaluable local knowledge of the way things work in Georgia courts.
28:18 Andrew Weissman, thank you for joining this discussion.
28:20 And Andrew, please stay with us for the next one, because coming up, it's working.
28:25 The pressure on Clarence Thomas is working to the point where he has recused himself for the first time from a case involving the attempt to overturn the presidential election, which his wife was praying would happen.
28:43 That's next.
28:47 The pressure on Clarence Thomas is working.
28:50 Today, in a Supreme Court ruling rejecting an appeal of an earlier case by Donald Trump's co-defendant in the Georgia case, John Eastman, the Supreme Court revealed that Clarence Thomas recused himself from that case.
29:03 John Eastman is a former law clerk of Clarence Thomas, but the Supreme Court justices are constantly hearing cases in which their former law clerks appear as lawyers representing one side or the other.
29:16 And they don't recuse in those cases.
29:19 John Eastman's failed appeal to the Supreme Court was an attempt to reverse a lower court ruling that forced him to turn over emails to the January 6th committee that John Eastman said should have been protected by attorney-client privilege.
29:33 Federal Judge David Carter forced John Eastman to hand over his emails because of the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.
29:42 The judge wrote, "The illegality of the plan was obvious."
29:46 That was not something that bothered Clarence Thomas' wife about any of the plans to overturn the last presidential election, thanks to the January 6th committee's subpoena for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
30:00 Text messages, we know that two months before the January 6th attack on the Capitol, Clarence Thomas' wife texted Mark Meadows, "Do not concede. It takes time for the Army who is gathering for his back."
30:15 It took exactly two months for the Army to gather and attack the Capitol.
30:20 A week later, Clarence Thomas' wife texted Mark Meadows, "Just forwarded to your Gmail an email I sent Jared this AM. Sidney Powell and improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and fraud exposed in America saved."
30:38 Sidney Powell is of course now a criminal co-defendant with Donald Trump in Georgia.
30:44 As Judge Carter said, "The illegality of the plan was obvious."
30:49 Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from a Supreme Court decision involving Mark Meadows' text messages, which means Clarence Thomas ruled in a case that involved the text messages of someone who was text messaging with Clarence Thomas' wife about matters that are now considered criminal by prosecutors.
31:12 But because he is finally feeling the pressure, Clarence Thomas has now finally recused himself from a case involving criminal plots that Clarence Thomas' wife was relentlessly cheering on.
31:27 While watching Rudolph Giuliani participate in what is now an accused criminal conspiracy lying about the election on television with hair dye flowing down the sides of his face, Clarence Thomas' wife saw that and texted Mark Meadows saying, "Tears are flowing at what Rudy is doing right now!"
31:52 And after the attack on the Capitol, Clarence Thomas' wife, who attended the rally before the attack on the Capitol, texted Mark Meadows, "We are living through what feels like the end of America. Most of us are disgusted with the VP."
32:09 Clarence Thomas' wife was disgusted with the Vice President who followed the law and cheered on Donald Trump and his criminal co-defendants every step of the way.
32:20 So with us is Andrew Weissman. Andrew, this recusal by Justice Thomas, like all Supreme Court recusals, well not all of them, but many, did not include a reason. It's not exactly clear what that reason is.
32:37 It isn't clear, but I think you hit the nail on the head just to use the same expression as Amy Lee in that it would be very surprising if it was just the fact that John Eastman was his law clerk, since it's quite common for law clerks of Supreme Court justices to appear in front of the court.
33:02 It's actually one of their, becomes one of their prime jobs after leaving their clerkships is taking on that role.
33:11 So you have to assume that he has rethought, to put it charitably, whether he should be presiding in these kinds of cases.
33:22 And I do think that it is beneficial, even though it is far too late, and it'll be interesting to see whether he continues to, and it'll be interesting to see whether Justice Alito does so.
33:35 We have a lot of cases that are coming up at this current term where there are a number of financial entanglements that suggest just as much of a reason, if not more so, to be recusing.
33:50 And the conduct of certain of these justices has really caused the court to be held in increased disrepute.
34:02 And I think if you ask probably most of all by other members of the federal judiciary who are bound by rules of ethics and who do not do anything remotely close to what has been reported by ProPublica about two of the justices.
34:22 Andrew Weissman, thank you very much for essentially co-hosting the first three quarters of this program with me this evening. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Andrew.
34:31 You're welcome.
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41:13 (Applause.)