Legal Analyst
Appearances
20/20
Who Is The Delphi Killer?
It's not surprising that there are groups of Odinists proliferating sort of in that Midwest area. These are people who had worshiped the gods Odin and Thor, which most people know from the Marvel universe. I would see Odinism more as a social political movement that is concerned with changing America into a nation controlled by white people and white supremacy.
20/20
Who Is The Delphi Killer?
So runes are widely incorporated into our Odinist culture as well. So if there were runes in the crime scene, then that would be a reason to suspect pagan or Odinist involvement. So for instance, the sticks over the body, possibly a rune mark on a tree. It's not convincing to me as someone who studied these religions, but it provides an interpretation of some of the details of the crime scene.
20/20
Who Is The Delphi Killer?
At no point have we really seen the idea of ritual human sacrifice. This did not make any sense to me at all.
20/20
Who Is The Delphi Killer?
The Odinist theory, that Odinists were ritually sacrificing two young white girls to Odin, that was a baffling idea. Will he be convicted or will he walk free?
20/20
True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother
The key point here is less about how much did he know about these people and more, did he intentionally lie to get on the jury?
20/20
True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother
If it's true that she basically made promises to this critical witness to help him out, get him leniency in exchange for his testimony, and then didn't disclose it, that's a grave legal sin.
20/20
True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother
I think it's safe to say if we knew everything we know now, when she prosecuted this case, she probably wouldn't have gotten the conviction.
20/20
True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother
I'm surprised that prosecutors are moving forward with this case. I don't see how they're going to be able to prove it.
20/20
True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother
One of the things that made this case so powerful was that you had his longtime friend, one of his best friends, and his girlfriend at the time, testifying against him for the prosecution.
20/20
The Lies Beneath
She is facing three possible charges, second degree murder being the biggest one, up to life in prison.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
Introducing 'Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy'
Mr. Combs is a fighter. He's going to fight this to the end. He's innocent.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
Introducing 'Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy'
He used illegal substances and threats of violence to force Ms. Ventura into repeated unwanted sexual encounters with male sex workers.
KAREN: THE RETRIAL
Pin It On The Girl: S1-E7
This podcast explores themes of violence and death and contains harsh language. Courtroom testimony has been edited for clarity and time. Please listen with care.
KAREN: THE RETRIAL
Impasse: S1-E8
The defense at the end of the trial called in two witnesses that they had never spoken to before. They were these two accident reconstructionists, and they were not hired by the defense. They were not hired by the prosecution.
KAREN: THE RETRIAL
Impasse: S1-E8
It was just interesting, just strictly from a neutral perspective, that the defense was basically taking a gamble and... Having not really prepared with these witnesses, they didn't know what kind of answers they were going to get. And so, you know, they took that shot.
KAREN: THE RETRIAL
Impasse: S1-E8
And ultimately, I think with their conclusions being that the injuries to John O'Keefe were not consistent with being struck by a car and damage to the car were not consistent with hitting a pedestrian. I thought that was just an incredible way to sort of end the trial, calling up two witnesses they've never spoken to before and learning in real time what their conclusions were.
KAREN: THE RETRIAL
Impasse: S1-E8
kind of the world looking at this case and to use the words of the jury they were starkly divided and we've seen that all over the internet we've seen that you know in the courtroom we've seen it basically everywhere so if anything it was just a reminder this isn't clear-cut this is by no means a simple case and i think what a lot of people comment on of course is just
KAREN: THE RETRIAL
Impasse: S1-E8
The strategy of the defense and the way that the prosecution took six or so weeks to present their case, the defense was very aggressive during those weeks. And then for them to only call six witnesses and to end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.
Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Here's How Sabrina Carpenter Destroyed the NYC Mayor - The Mayor Eric Adams story
Should we talk about how I got the mayor indicted or...
Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Here's How Sabrina Carpenter Destroyed the NYC Mayor - The Mayor Eric Adams story
To have all of these press there, the media there, it was like perfectly choreographed. And what was the New York City mayor doing at this press conference, Your Honor? That just made it utterly political. And frankly, Your Honor, the mayor should know more than anyone of the presumption of innocence that he too is afforded when he's dealing with his own issues.
Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Here's How Sabrina Carpenter Destroyed the NYC Mayor - The Mayor Eric Adams story
And frankly, I submit that he was just trying to detract from those issues by making a spectacle of Mr. Mangione.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
How severely damaged, maybe even reduced to tatters to some extent, do you think the defense is right now?
The Binge Cases: Baby Broker
Scary Terri | 6. “I need some money, honey.”
To save any child's life, any person's life from spiritual deception. And that's what it was. It was spiritual deception and plain evil. Plain evil and greed. Telling this story will be closure for me. because if it impacts and saves anybody from that kind of evil, it'll be good enough for me.
The Binge Cases: Baby Broker
Scary Terri | 6. “I need some money, honey.”
Angry. Oh, Terry wanted this house.
The Binge Cases: Baby Broker
Scary Terri | 6. “I need some money, honey.”
Because there's no smoking gun.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
I was stunned that he was convicted. Yeah, I thought It was a pretty reasonable chance of involuntary manslaughter. I'm sure you've seen the TV, you know, the jury comes out, you know, malice murder, not guilty. And I'm like, that's right. You know, we expected that. Guilty of felony murder. I'm like, what? What? I was shocked by that. I was shocked by that.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
Both involuntary manslaughter. Two different grades of involuntary manslaughter.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
It was a little strong, I thought. The opinion, for example, the opinion said all this hospital business was baloney. There was no reason to, I mean, that's just, that doesn't belong in a courtroom, that kind of weird speculation that he chose Emery over Grady, you know, in order to make sure she died. Right. And then the whole second will.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
And we're going to spend days talking about maybe there was a second will. We don't know. We haven't found it. We haven't seen it. We haven't found the drafter. Nobody saw her looking at or reading a second will. One person says she asked me to make a copy of something and said it was my second will, but she never looked at it. And nobody ever said Tex had any knowledge of the site. Nope.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
And the Supreme Court said that's not the way we're going to decide guilt or innocence in this state. You know, this isn't, you know, a stupid TV show where you just throw in all the stuff and at the end it turns out the guy's guilty and he confesses.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
You know, it was days and days and days of jury deliberation. And the last thing that happened that day was they said, to be guilty of, I'll abbreviate it a little bit, to be guilty of felony murder, does that include intent to shoot? And to us, that question meant, we don't find the intent to shoot. So we were thinking, we're about to get an acquittal on that too.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
Because the judge said, oh yeah, if you're going to find him guilty of that, you've got to find the intended to shoot. Why would they have asked that question? So we were even more emboldened at that point not to ask for a mistrial, hung jury.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
I think they put together a good set of circumstantial evidence, which they hoped and succeeded at convincing the jury that you shouldn't just find pure accident. They succeeded at that. And I don't have a problem with the jury reaching a verdict of negligence. I'm not a big Second Amendment fan, to put it mildly.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
I think someone who has a loaded gun sitting in his lap needs to have his head examined. And conceivably with the trigger pullback, although it's in a bag, I mean, do you just discount all that? It's in a public grocery bag. Is that the way you intentionally shoot someone? Leave the gun in the bag? It was just so much nonsense.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
Your theory requires you to find that he's unbelievably devious and smart. and unbelievably stupid. And you take the stupid stuff and say, well, that's just because he's stupid. And all the other stuff you say, it's because he's devious. I think that's an unfair way to use our criminal justice system. It's fine for you to believe it. It's fine for anybody to believe it.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun
I don't think juries should decide like that. They didn't find that he intended to kill her. I mean, so we don't know what this jury was thinking. There was some kind of compromise. It was obviously a compromise. We're going to find them guilty of aggravated assault without intent to kill. That couldn't have been what was going on.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
It's pretty fair to say it's a way to come after people that had brought legal challenges against him before or done research and opposition work for people that were his opponents in the past.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
If a lawyer handles a case, say, for a government official, and there are sensitive materials involved in that investigation, in order to represent that client adequately, he or she would need some kind of security clearance and access to that material.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
So many things are federal buildings. Obviously, if you can't go to a federal court to represent your client, it would make it pretty limiting to represent that client. And probably most significantly, it directed agencies to investigate any federal contracts that the firm or its clients have and remove them.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
So many of the big companies that they represent... have very lucrative federal contracts. And if they work with that firm, they will lose it.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
It would be very meaningful to lose their clients. These law firms do make relationships with clients over a long period of time. So that's why it was pretty existential and could potentially destroy a firm. Losing their clients, that's kind of their main currency.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
So Perkins Coie took the case to court and immediately got an emergency injunction that blocked the order from taking effect.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
They've pushed back in court. I listened to the hearing. And since they have also called for the judge to be removed, the upshot of what the Justice Department lawyer was arguing is that the president should have the power to say who or what institution creates a national security risk and should have that discretion. That's the main legal argument that they have on their side.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
The law firm is one of the nation's top firms. It has 1,200 lawyers. It has some of the biggest clients that you could think of on Wall Street, Goldman, Blackstone, Apollo. So they're often in the conversation of some of the biggest players in the legal industry.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Their chair, Brad Karp, is a pretty prominent Democratic donor and in the past, especially during Trump's last administration, did assist the ACLU with fighting some of Trump's policies, particularly the policy that separated children and their parents at the border.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
In the order, it cited some pro bono work that Paul Weiss did for the attorney general in Washington, D.C., when they provided some legal help against the January 6th rioters who were accused of storming the Capitol. One, and then mentioning an affiliation with a former partner there, Mark Pomerantz.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Our reporting indicates that the other big firms did take advantage of some of this, the misfortunes of the other firms. And in fact, this client that we were just talking about, they went to another big firm, but they had to go somewhere. We've had reporting that there was some circling around. The sharks are going to shark. The sharks are circling. What options did Paul Weiss have?
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Paul Weiss had the option to sue to block the executive order. And then what they did was a little different than that. I would say a lot of people wouldn't have imagined the option they took was going to be possible.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Already over the weekend, all the partners at Paul Weiss were hearing from clients, talking to each other, what are we going to do? They hired a lawyer. They were preparing to sue. They were ready to take it to court to try to get an emergency order, an emergency ruling blocking the order from taking effect.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
The lawyer for Brad Karp, the chair of the firm, had another suggestion, to possibly talk to the president himself, to talk to him about how to get rid of the order.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
It could just make you bleed clients pretty much right away, almost immediately.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Defuse the bomb. As a reporter on it, I was very surprised that they didn't sue that Monday first thing, because like I said, this could be detrimental to a firm.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
They met in the Oval Office on a Wednesday. They talked for three hours, and by the end of the meeting, a deal had been reached.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Paul Weiss agreed to several things, the first of which was to give $40 million to certain pro bono legal services that the president approves of. They include veterans, things that are against anti-Semitism, and a few other things. They agreed to some sweeping language about merit-based hiring practices, which I think in Brad Karp's view
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
That's actually kind of a normal thing for firms to say. They're not necessarily trying to take clients because of a political, you know, that's the whole point. They're trying to be neutral anyway. So that was the agreement. And then Trump had a message on Truth Social on Thursday evening.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
I think it was pretty shocking because if Paul Wise took this to court, they'd probably win. And I think in the legal community, there's a sense of upholding what they call like the rule of law, just respecting that an executive wouldn't be able to take an action, so sweeping to target a firm like that. And the capitulation of such a major, powerful figure
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
maybe rattled people even more in the legal industry. That the president could have such power over the law firm. A lot of people in the legal industry were very upset by what happened.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Shock and fear, for sure, within those firms. It was a pretty dramatic move that could really destroy these businesses. So law firms have a lot of reason to be afraid for their business if they are targeted with an order.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Actually, Brad Karp did send a note over this weekend to his partnership explaining that the business was likely to be destroyed if the executive order were to stand. It was happening very fast, that competitors were swooping in. And he also said it was easy to complain from the sidelines when you're not faced with this existential crisis of your business being destroyed by an executive order.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
I think the silence and the chill that you're hearing from them is probably one answer. I should also say, getting a deal is not necessarily doable either. It's not clear if there can be a meeting with every single firm that Paul Weiss got. So I think they also are trying to stay out of the way of Trump in many ways.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
I think that the implications are that if you are a lawyer, your job is to represent clients. Yes, you choose your clients, but there's always been kind of a layer of protection for unpopular clients. You know, people represent people who are accused of murder and things like that.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
Obviously, that's not what we're talking about here, but there's pretty sweeping understanding that the role of a lawyer in the legal system is to have a vigorous defense of their client. So if you go after a law firm for taking on a client, it hits at the root of what this industry is all about. Trump has, I think we're tracking more than 120 lawsuits against his administration currently.
The Journal.
Trump's Attack on Big Law
And so far, the courts have been one pretty significant check on what has happened so far in this administration. And in the past, the legal industry has felt, at least big law, these big firms have felt very insulated from the political fray, from attacks by executive orders, the administration. And so this is a clear shift from that narrative.
The Megyn Kelly Show
GOP Keeps House Seats, Tariff Day Announcement, Feds Seek Death Penalty for Luigi: AM Update 4/2
Every decision made by a judge on behalf of a plaintiff would still go forward. but it would go forward only as to the plaintiff in front of him and not a nation as a whole.
The Megyn Kelly Show
GOP Keeps House Seats, Tariff Day Announcement, Feds Seek Death Penalty for Luigi: AM Update 4/2
The No Rogues Ruling Act does not eliminate the ability of judges to make decisions. In fact... every decision made by a judge on behalf of a plaintiff would still go forward, but it would go forward only as to the plaintiff in front of him and not a nation as a whole determined by one judge, neither elected nor appointed to a position of sufficient power to speak on behalf of the entire nation.
Today, Explained
Trump’s emergency powers grab
It's the president's duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. What we found in the legislative veto was that Congress would tell presidents after they had passed a law that they could or could not do things. This was Congress getting involved in the president's business.
Today, Explained
Trump’s emergency powers grab
We have a problem with peanut butter. We have a national shortage of peanut butter. And so can the judge, can the president declared an extraordinary emergency? Well, I think it probably depends on a number of— You like peanut butter? There's no limit. What you're saying is there's no limit.