Opening Arguments

Latest Episodes:

Did Trump Just Violate the Logan Act? Aug 23, 2024

Show notes

OA1062

We begin with a brief update on Disney’s truly Mickey Mouse arguments in a Florida wrongful death lawsuit before discussing three other questionable legal claims from the week’s news:

As expected, Hunter Biden has tried to use findings from a Florida federal court that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed to have his own pending federal tax charges dismissed in California. Can this creation of Aileen Cannon’s imagination survive in the wild?
Speaking of the BIDEN CRIME FAMILY: we review the final report from the House Republicans in support of impeaching Joe Biden--for, well you know. Something. If anyone wants to get around to it. What are we even doing here?
News this week that presidential candidate Donald Trump may have discussed delaying a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu until after the election has set off yet another round of online demands for prosecution under the Logan Act of 1799. What’s the deal with this 225-year-old law--and are we ever going to get around to actually using it?
- Order denying Hunter Biden’s motion to reconsider his previous motion to dismiss (8/19/24)
- House Republicans’ Report of the Impeachment Inquiry of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (8/19/24)
- “Non-Enforcement by Accretion: The Logan Act and the Take Care Clause,” Daniel B. Rice, Harvard Journal on Legislation (2018)

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OA Bar Prep With Heather! T3BE37 Aug 21, 2024

Show notes

The answer for T3BE36 is coming your way, and we launch our next Bar Prep question with Heather!

Right now, the best place to play (if you aren't a patron...) is at reddit.com/r/openargs!

If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

A 9/11 Lawsuit No One Is Talking About Reveals Deep Saudi Complicity Aug 19, 2024

Show notes

OA1061

This week Matt shares a mostly under-the-radar story which has completely changed his understanding of the events of September 11, 2001.

As the 23rd anniversary of the attacks approaches, a mountain of information emerging from lawsuits filed by 9/11 families has revealed far more extensive ties between both al-Qaeda and at least two of the hijackers to the Saudi government than were ever previously known. Why has justice taken so long? How does the law even allow this suit to proceed, and why did Congress have to override Barack Obama’s veto to allow it to move forward? Why has some of the best journalism about this lawsuit been from Golf Digest? And has the time come for a second 9/11 commission to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew about the day that changed everything?

Complaint in Ashton v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (filed March 20, 2017)
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss (filed 5/10/24)
Plaintiffs’ Opposition to Motion to Dismiss (filed 5/7/24)
Blood, Oil and Golf: The emergence of LIV Golf highlights the Kingdom’s troubling influence Alan Shipnuck, Golf Digest (8/19/2022)
New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity, Daniel Benjamin and Stephen Simon, The Atlantic (5/20/24)
“The Declassified 28 Pages,” 28Pages.org
60 Minutes excerpt which includes Omar Al Bayoumi’s 1999 video of the US Capitol (6/20/2024)

If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

At Least One Disney Lawyer Needs to Be Launched Into the Sun Aug 16, 2024

Show notes

OA1060

This week Matt breaks down four very different legal actions:

1. Donald Trump is suing the United States--yes, the same United States that he is running to be the President of--for $100 million based on the FBI’s alleged violation of the Florida common law tort of “intrusion upon seclusion” in executing a valid search warrant on Mar-A-Lago two years ago. Is Trump just spiking the legal football after his big win in front of federal judge Aileen Cannon in Jack Smith’s documents case, or is there actually something worth talking about here?

2. Is the Walt Disney Corporation actually arguing that signing up for a 30-day trial of its Disney+ streaming service protects them from the tragically fatal consequences of negligence at a restaurant in its Disney Springs shopping center? Could that really be a thing that licensed attorneys wrote down, printed, reviewed, signed, and filed with a court? We consider what might be one of the most bizarrely evil defenses ever raised in a wrongful death suit.

3. Soul singer Isaac Hayes’s family has joined the dozens of artists who have spoken out against their music being used at Trump rallies, issuing a cease-and-desist letter to the campaign alleging that it has used Hayes’s song “Hold On! I’m Coming” at least 134 times even after being asked to stop. To what extent do artists have “moral rights” under US intellectual property law, and what alternatives are available to them when they don’t? We riffing on a particularly interesting failure to harmonize copyright and antitrust law.

4. French authorities have announced that they will investigate claims of cyberbullying against Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, a ciswoman from Algeria who was harassed online by J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and many more of the world’s finest people with completely baseless claims that she was not a biological woman. We debate the merits of this uniquely European approach to criminalizing speech and marvel at the unmatched powers of TERF ideology to rot the human brain (and soul).

Hayes Enterprises cease and desist letter (8/11/2024)
BMI’s “Political Entity Licensing Terms”
“License to Rock,” Leah Scholnick, Cardozo Law Review (4/7/2022)
Doctor dies after eating dinner at Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant at Disney Springs, lawsuit alleges | FOX 10 Phoenix (2/26/24)(includes full text of plaintiff’s complaint)

OA Bar Prep With Heather! T3BE36 Aug 14, 2024

Show notes

The answer for T3BE35 is coming your way, and we launch our next Bar Prep question with Heather!

Right now, the best place to play (if you aren't a patron...) is at reddit.com/r/openargs!

If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

You Can Run for Office. Yes, You! Just Ask RI Sen. Meghan Kallman! Aug 12, 2024

Show notes

OA1059

This week we welcome Rhode Island state senator Meghan Kallman for a conversation about the power of state lawmaking and ordinary people in elected office.

Meghan is a professor of sociology at UMass Boston whose work in both the theory and practice of how people organize led her to a parallel career in politics. As the Democratic Presidential ticket coalesces around a woman and (for the first time since 1980!) a non-lawyer, we discuss the unique challenges which women still face in US politics at every level as well as what it is like for someone with no legal training or no political experience to run for and hold elected office.

Also: How can state and local governments make progressive change even when the federal government can't or won't act? What is it like for someone with no legal training to write laws? And why is Rhode Island the last state in the Union to take an entire day off to celebrate the US victory over Japan?

Meghan Kallman’s campaign website
The Conceivable Future, Meghan Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli (2024)
“Sousaphone vs the KKK,” Christian Science Monitor (7/23/15)

Is It Illegal To Make Elon Musk Sad Aug 09, 2024

Show notes

OA1058

We begin with Neil Gorsuch’s recent appearance on Fox News. How normal is it for a sitting Supreme Court justice to go on Fox News, and did Gorsuch really just threaten the Biden administration over its relatively minor court reform proposals?

In our main story, we break down two major antitrust suits from the past week: Elon Musk’s ridiculous claim that corporations which refuse to advertise on a social media platform which has failed to regulate neo-Nazi and animal abuse content are violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and District Court judge Ahmet Mehta’s extremely reasonable findings that Google’s anticompetitive practices are in violation of Section 2. Also, Matt has some nice things to say about Richard Nixon.

White House announcement on Biden court reform proposals (7/29/24)
About GARM (WFANet.org)
"GARM's Harm" report from the House Judiciary Committee (7/10/2024)
Complaint in X v. GARM et al (8/6/2024)
“Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines” J. Bevendorff and M. Wiegmann, et al., Leipzeig University (2024)
Judge Amit Mehta’s full ruling in US v. Google (8/5/24)

If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

OA Bar Prep With Heather! T3BE35 Aug 07, 2024

Show notes

The answer for T3BE34 is coming your way, and we launch our next Bar Prep question with Heather!

Right now, the best place to play (if you aren't a patron...) is at reddit.com/r/openargs!

If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

Suing the CIA Over MKUltra Aug 05, 2024

Show notes

OA1057

We’re giving ourselves a break this week from Trump, the Supreme Court, and all things 2024 to indulge in one of Matt’s all-time favorite subjects: CIA mind control experiments! In this extra-carefully-researched episode, Matt breaks down the history of the federal government’s MKULTRA program to fund research in brainwashing, mind control, and LSD on unsuspecting U.S. and (for some reason) Canadian citizens, as well as the inherent legal issues in trying to sue the CIA for something you can’t remember and for which most evidence has been destroyed. Why was the CIA funding a sadistic mad scientist in Montreal, and is there any hope of justice for the families of his victims today?

BOOKS

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control , Stephen Kinzer (2019)
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: the CIA and Mind Control, John Marks (1979)(link goes to full text on CIA website)
The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government: David Talbot (2016)
CHAOS: The Truth Behind the Manson Murders, Tom O’Neill (2020)

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

Orlikow v. United States, 682 F. Supp. 77 (D.D.C. 1988)
CIA v. Sims :: 471 U.S. 159 (1985)
“PROJECT MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification,” (transcript of joint Senate hearing)(8/3/1977)
Judgment dismissing former Deputy U.S. Marshall Wayne Ritchie’s claims against the CIA in Ritchie v. U.S. (N.D. CA 2005)

ARTICLES

ANATOMY OF A PUBLIC INTEREST CASE AGAINST THE CIA, Joseph Rauh and Jim Turner, Hamline Journal of Law and Public Policy (Fall 1990)
MK-ULTRA: Quebec high court says U.S. has immunity in Canada | Montreal Gazette (10/3/23)
CIA Denies Conspiracy Theory That It Used MKUltra on Trump Shooter, Gizmodo.com (7/28/24)
“After Learning of Whitey Bulger LSD Tests, Juror Has Regrets,” PBS (2/18/2020)
“Before He Was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a CIA Mind Control Test Subject,” Washington Post (6/11/2023)

PODCASTS & DOCUMENTARIES

Brainwashed, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2024)
Madness, WBUR (2020)
The Sleep Room: CIA-funded experiments on patients in Montreal hospital (1998) - The Fifth Estate (CBC)
Wormwood, Errol Morris, Netflix (2017)

The SCOTUS Embarrassment That Was the EMTALA Case Aug 02, 2024

Show notes

OA1056

As the Trump campaign celebrates the “demise” of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, we check in on reports of its death to see just how exaggerated they might be. Does it even matter that the ultra-conservative push to remake the personnel and policies of the federal government run by people who talk like Bond villains is (allegedly) no longer in the policy game? And how did things get to the point that these people were too extreme for Stephen Miller?

We then discuss the Supreme Court’s recent decision to dismiss Moyle v US without a decision on the merits of Idaho's attempts to criminalize nearly all abortions. Why did the conservative justices rush to jump into this case only to find that they never should have done that? What can we learn from this week's unprecedented inside leaks about how this decision?

Finally, a quick check on the state of Donald Trump's gag order and Nikki Haley's weird attempt to get her name out of her treacherous former SuperPAC's collective mouth.

42 USC 1395dd (relevant EMTALA provision)
Idaho “Defense of Life Act”
St Luke’s Medical System’s amicus brief in Moyle (detailing specific harms to pregnant people of allowing Idaho’s so-called “Defense of Life Act” to go into effect)

If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

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