George Conway Is Back—and Trump Gave Him PLENTY to Work With | Illegal News

George, is it legal or is it illegal?It sounds illegal to me.Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Illegal News.I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark.And today, got a hot one for you guys.I am welcoming my old friend, George Conway, namer of this show, in fact, back from the trail, from the campaign trail.

George, it's great to see you, man.

It's great to be back.I'm very nervous.

Are you?

Yeah, I haven't done this in a long time.Just take it easy on me. I'll take it easy on you.

Here was my first question.When you were on the campaign trail and big legal news was breaking, did you have to be like, OK, I've got to focus on this?But were you desperate to talk about things?Did it drive you crazy not to be able to constantly opine on national news?

It drove me crazy not being able to have time to follow it.to the extent I normally would.I mean, for example, I missed the last couple weeks of the Supreme Court's term, basically, because I was just totally checked out.And then I did a podcast over the weekend where I actually had to talk about some of the major decisions, like the Voting Rights Act case and the birthrights.And I hadn't read any of them, which I normally do.I mean, there are three levels on which you can learn about judicial opinions.

One is you can read the newspaper, which is the worst way to learn, because you have no idea what it's about.The second best way is really just to skim the opinions, because you know what they're saying.If you've read enough of these things, you get where they're coming from.But I didn't have time to do that.And then there's a third way in which you read them over and over again, and then you see stuff in there that probably doesn't matter, but you become obsessed with.But that's too much for the illegal news.

Well, I'm happy to see you.Happy to have you back.It's like coming home.Don't be nervous.These are your people.

These are your people.These are my people.Hello, people.

We're glad to have you back to do the real work, George, of a podcaster.

The real work of a podcaster, yeah.

Well, let's jump into it and just like get our rhythm back, because I wanted to start with Trump's new plan to sell early access to his truth social posts.Because let's not just do insider trading.OK, we got to monetize insider trading like Publicly, like it's just a wild wild thing.So I just want to for for people's so for people who don't know, uh, The new service announced by trump media, uh, which is called truth psi Will allow wall street firms and other financial businesses to get access to trump's posts Milliseconds before the posts are public the early access is intended to allow subscribers the ability to make stock trades and similar deals To profit off the subsequent moves in the market once Trump's posts go live.The company hasn't released the details yet on the cost of the subscription or who can enroll, but it says they already have subscribers signed up.George, is it legal or is it illegal?

It sounds illegal to me.

It should be completely and totally illegal.I mean, at the very least, it's incredibly unethical on a number of levels.I mean, let's set aside the insider trading aspect first.I mean, there are two things that essentially Donald Trump is getting the benefit of this money because he is a big shareholder in Truth Social.So essentially, I mean, these people might as well be writing him checks, first of all.That's one level upon which this is corrupt.

The second level upon which it's corrupt is he's essentially being incentivized to make statements that move the markets, whether they be the oil markets, the securities markets, the commodities markets, other commodities markets, or prediction markets.The more stuff he says, the more he creates statements but we people are going to be willing to pay for so he's incentivized to say more rather than less and not that he really needs that incentive because one day he says we're at war with Iran and we're going to destroy them and the other next day the next day he says oh we have a peace deal coming and you know he one day tariffs are up one next day tariffs are down you know he's all over the place he already makes plenty of statements but he's being incentivized by this to make even more statements.That's the second level upon which it's corrupt.The third level upon which it's corrupt is the insider trading aspect, the fact that people who pay for this service are getting advanced notice and therefore have a market timing advantage over people who do not pay.So they're essentially paying for inside information and that's illegal.That's something if you pay an investment banker for advance notice of a deal that's going to be announced at the open at 10 o 'clock on Monday morning and you pay in advance and you trade on the after -hours exchanges, you're engaging in insider trading.

And if the banker is being paid for that, that person is also guilty of insider trading.So that's the third level on which this is completely corrupt and illegal.And it's worse than that in the sense that it doesn't evennot even worse than that, but it doesn't take much time of advanced notice for this to be profitable to somebody.Because there's a lot of the trading that goes on today is program trading.So even if you have just a few seconds or maybe even milliseconds of advantage in knowing what statement is going to be made, what the subject of the statement is, You have an advantage if you pay these fees.

So this is absolutely, everybody who's involved in this should go to jail.Even if the president has criminal immunity, and even if the president is not subject to ethics statutes, statutes and ethics provisions, the fact that somebody is paying for information that is confidential and not known to the public, and that is being issued in an official capacity by someone who has a duty to act in the best interest of the country, it's comparable to a CEO who has a duty to his shareholders.And if that CEO, to give the hypothetical, says to his friend, hey, we're going to announce our merger on Tuesday and you should trade on Monday night, that's illegal.And this is every bit as illegal.So even if Trump has some kind of criminal immunity for this, but I actually don't think he does, which I can get to in a minute.It's illegal for everybody else who's participating in the scheme, including the people who are signing up for this service.

They should be prosecuted as well.And I think we should be pretty sure that the Justice Department isn't gonna prosecute this because they turn a blind eye to any profit -making scheme involving Donald Trump or his cronies or beneficiaries.But it's illegal.It should be illegal under state law.So, for example, if there's trading on the New York Stock Exchange, I don't see why Attorney General Tish James couldn't go after this whole scheme and prosecute it as an illegal insider trading scheme.But to go to the one other point about the criminal immunity, Donald Trump's criminal immunity, and I know in our prior incarnation.

We talked a great deal about the problems with the Supreme Court's decision in Trump versus the United States involving the January 6 trial.That immunity only extends to the outer perimeter of the president's official responsibilities.Now, issuing the statements alone is within the outer perimeter of that authority, but receiving money for it and providing advanced access for it and being a participant in a scheme to profit from the statements, that's not within the scope of presidential criminal immunity.And the Supreme Court said that in a footnote in the Trump versus the United States decision where he said that, well, yes, this The president can't be held criminally liable for his official acts, whether that be whatever that is, but he can be held liable for bribery.So if the president takes cash in exchange for doing something and receives cash, that's illegal.And as long as you have the ability to prove through public means that he made the statements and you have the ability to prove otherwise that he was benefiting from those statements, I think you could prosecute this.

But of course, this Justice Department won't do it.It will have to be a succeeding Justice Department.and we hope someday that will occur.

Yeah, that we'll get one of those.I'm pretty obsessed with this in part because One of the crazy things about it is it was clearly already happening.Like, we have been watching the Iran war news specifically, right?The market hangs on Trump's truths, his bleats on truth social, to figure out what he is going to do with Iran because it's going to have a direct impact on oil prices and therefore futures and therefore so many other commodity goods that rely on oil, transportation, I mean, just a million things.And we were watching the markets move.And also Trump himself, like you could start to plan.

uh how things were going to go in terms of announcements about the war because on sunday nights trump would always announce a deal barack ravid is right there to be his stenographer and say no no no no a deal is close and they were doing it specifically because when the markets opened on monday they wanted the markets nice and calm um but also you could see people in the movement you could see that like some people were getting insider information on on stuff that trump was gonna And now it's almost like, forgive me if I don't explain this correctly, this theory, but it seems to me like sometimes Trump does things that are patently illegal, and then they try to just bring them out into the open, like the illegality of them, to try to codify them and litigate them so that the stuff that they were doing behind closed doors that was illegal, it like takes the sting out of it or something?Am I overthinking this?

No, no, I don't think you're overthinking it at all.I think one of the things that has been confounding about the whole Trump era is that for the most part, the corruption and the criminality has been out in the open.They don't, you know, one of the things that they, the arguments that they seem to like to make is, well, this wasn't criminal.There was nothing wrong with it.because we just did it out in the open.If we were, if we meant to be criminals, we would have hit it.

And they hide a lot of things.

During the daytime, it wouldn't have been illegal.

Right.And, and that's, that's, that's part of that's one of their many, many tricks, one of their many, many techniques for arguing that what they're doing is not illegal.And I think also it's just, the other aspect of it is they know they're not going to be prosecuted.They think they are completely immune from prosecution.Everybody is out there knowing that the Justice Department isn't going to prosecute this because the Justice Department is totally beholden to Donald Trump, which in and of itself is an impeachable offense.It really is just the quintessence of the The overt corruption is really, really staggering.

They're not making much of an effort to hide it at all at any level.And to go back to the statements, the Sunday night statement, the Barik Ravid stories, it doesn't even matter whether what Trump is saying is true or not.The fact that he makes the statements makes the markets move.And so if you know he's going to make a statement, which you almost know just sort of instinctively, but It's better to know specifically in advance that there is something that is going to be said and what that something is.It moves the market.So basically, he can just say things without regard to their truth and move the markets, tell people in advance that he's moving the markets, and they pay him to move the markets, and everybody profits.

It's insider trading, but it really is a massive, massive March.manipulation scheme.A scheme that manipulates all sorts of markets all at once.The stock markets, the futures markets, the commodities markets.the commodities futures markets.And it seems, given the volume of trading that is going on, that you can see that there's somebody front -running this.

And then you see the volume of the president's own stock trades, a guy who never really traded stocks that actively, all of a sudden started trading stocks in January of 2025 like never before, buying shares of companies in which that whose stock prices are affected by government actions.And then he also makes statements that are favorable to companies that he happens to take a position in.I mean, this is corruption on a scale that we have never seen.And this is only one aspect of the corruption.Even if you just took this alone, this is more corruption than we've probably seen all prior administrations in the history of the United States, and this is only one aspect of the corruption.clearly some kind of market going on for pardons.

There's the emoluments he's receiving from foreign governments who are buying shares in companies that he's invested in or buying crypto.Or that his kids own.Or that his kids own.And we saw these situations where the Pentagon gave a big contract to a company that that a firm in which Don Jr. is invested in has a big position.I mean we're seeing it's impossible to keep up with and it's likewe're getting like a teapot dome or a water gate every couple of days.

It's really incredible.And what's even more mind -blowing to me is that It doesn't seem like a lot of people are paying attention, and the Democrats don't really, I mean, some of them are making a big deal of it, like Senator Ossoff, Senator Schiff, Senator Murphy, but it just doesn't seem to break through, because most people are just completely tuned out.And they also don't understand how it affects them, which is also scary.

That's really true.Can I just do one just on this thing?So I don't know if you heard about this, but I bet you did, where Trump's teleprompter guy was betting on what words Trump would say in his speeches.And because as we've been talking about futures and the markets forever, you also forget that now there's all these betting markets just for like regular people, right?So it's like Cauchy and Polly Market and whatever.And so that guy, the teleprompter guy, is under investigation by the Commodities Future Trading Commission.

So this exists.There's a thing.They're meant to regulate this.for using insider information to bet and win tens of thousands of dollars on the prediction market, Kelshi.He was placed on unpaid leave by the White House.Trump called the guy a disgrace, and the White House reportedly issued an internal memo telling staffers not to bet on non -public information.

How is the teleprompter guy any worse than what Trump himself is doing through the release of these posts?

Well, his failure is that he's not a member of Mar -a -Lago, and then he's not betting in big enough tranches.I feel bad for him.He's kind of like if we, you and I, played Trump's speech box.

We would be good at that.

We would be good at that.You know, slurred word.Transgender for everybody.No, this poor guy, I feel sorry for him.He's the one who should get a pass.I mean, he's just doing what everybody, he knows everybody else is doing.

It's a culture of corruption.And he's the least of the problems.

I think about this all the time, about the way that people sort of process information.And I hear voters say some version of, well, if it was illegal, somebody would stop it, right?Like, there's this sense among the public that if what Donald Trump was doing was so bad, well, then come on, we've got things to deal with these things, you know, like nobody's doing anything about it.I think because the DOJ doesn't prosecute it, it gives people the sense that like, oh, well, this must be okay, because otherwise, they wouldn't let them get away with it.But you know, who else knows how to get in on this business is foreign governments.

Oh, yeah.

Is there not?Isn't there like a different I don't know, FARA.Aren't there other things out there meant to govern foreign interference that could engage on this?Because I got to ask, as somebody who basically feels a little bit similar to the voters, it's like, if this is really as bad as it seems it is, Do we not still have mechanisms remaining to do something about it, not just DOJ?Is that the only entity that can do something about this?

We should, but if we have a federal government that is, you know, that is profiting off of the same activities, or a federal government whose principal actors are profiting off the same activities, you're not going to see that kind of enforcement.And what people can't get their heads around isdon't understand that the same guy who's profiting and the same group of people who are profiting from the illegal activities effectively have control over the enforcement mechanisms.And that's the fundamental problem.And that's why this is so corrupt.And that's what, you know, I mean, I think we need a Madyar in our country, like, you know, the new prime minister of Hungary, who was elected very surprisingly last year, who went around the countryside of Hungary explaining to people how the corruption affected them.

And we need somebody like that here in the United States to do that.And I mean, the only person I see who's really doing it that effectively is Senator Ossoff.

Yeah, Ossoff.He has been after my heart a little bit.

Yeah, same here.

I appreciate his straightforward communication style.I wish we could clone him.All right.I want to talk.Now that we've talked about Trump's corruption, I'd like to talk about his vindictive prosecutions.

Also corruption.

Which is another form of corruption.But first, let's hear a word from Laundry Sauce.Your laundry should not smell like the same things you use to disinfect your bathroom.Enter Laundry Sauce.Oh, look, George has got the Laundry Sauce right there.Look at that fancy packaging.

Is there chocolate in there?Oh, no.Don't eat those.

Don't eat those.No.Egyptian rose.

Well, it looks nice.

Am I going to get like, is this like something James Tallarico would use?Well, I was just going to ask you, is that masculine enough for you?I don't think it's masculine enough.Is this low tea?I don't know.Oh, I don't care.

It just smells so nice.So you got the pods, right?Yeah.

The premium scented laundry pods that don't just click.your clothes, they elevate them.Say hello to fine fragrances.

Go ahead, show me what else you got.You have the little beads you put in there.Oh, I could get high off of those too.Very great.

I'm just going to say, okay, keep going.

Also with the Egyptian rose.And this is for the dryer.

Oh, okay.

And then after you're done, you can spray your clothes.Don't spray your laptop, though, because you get this on your screen.

Now you're going to have to take that dryer sheet and wipe the camera down.

Oh, that's a great idea.You know what?What an alternative use.

You look like you've got a Carrie Lake filter now.

Look at that.It is a multi -purpose product.I really like it.I love it when I like the products that you advertise.

All right, let me just read this and then we'll get back to how incredible you smell.Say hello to fine fragrances made by the world's top perfumers that last until your next laundry day.Imagine stepping outside on the perfect summer morning with your clothes smelling like Australian sandalwood.See, that smells masculine.

I don't know, Australian sandalwood, Siberian pine.

That's what Connor uses.

I have Australian sandalwood I've used, Siberian pine.

Have you tried the limited edition Brazilian vanilla?

No, that sounds interesting.

That's their limited edition one.

There's a French saffron.And then Italian Bergamot.Did I say that right, Bergamot?

Italian Bergamot, yes.

Bergamot or Bergamot?

Because laundry sauce isn't just about smelling incredible, it's engineered for performance.These highly concentrated pods are packed with the cleaning power of bioenzymes that obliterate stains from muddy hikes, backyard barbecues, and that inevitable iced coffee spill, which is in the notes and is what you're drinking.

Let me try.Let me let me try it off.Great purported together, right?See what happens.No laundry sauce also just made its target debut.

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Smell like George.Okay, that's a good one.That's a good slogan.That's a good tagline, right?I will say that was a very clean ad read.Very clean.

Thank you.I've gotten better since you've been gone.

No, I mean clean, clean, clean, you know.

Oh, look at you, the punmeister's back in town.All right, let's talk about these New York Times subpoenas.You know, Trump continues to attack his enemies in the media.We've talked about that a lot on this podcast.Today's no different.I want to ask you about the DOJ subpoenaing reporters at the New York Times and their families.

And their families which is the big new piece of information here The whole thing relates to reporting the times did earlier this month regarding trump's new qatari air force jets speaking of corruption Um, and the secret service's security concerns, which makes sense Uh regarding the jet which led the president to use a different plane to fly to fly back from turkeyThe Times, that relevant story ran on July 8th and 9th.Two days later, the reporters each received subpoenas from the U .S.attorney in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, who you may know that name because he is now Trump's pick for DNI to replace Tulsi Gabbard, so they asked him to appear before a grand jury to testify about their potential violations of criminal law.DOJ made a court filing that indicated subpoenas also went to the phone carriers for the journalist's phone records as well as the phone records for the journalist's spouses and one's mom.

The New York Times has moved to quash all of the subpoenas.First of all, I guess, did I miss anything or any facts you want to add to that?

The only additional fact I would add is that some of these subpoenas apparently have dates that call for information going back to the beginning of the year, which strongly suggests that it really isn't just about the recent stories about the Qatari 747 and its failure to contain for appropriate and necessary security protections for the president.So there's a lot going on here, and it's hard to avoid the inference that this is meant to punish the press.But before we get into all the things that are legally problematic and constitutionally problematic about this, let's think about what really is happening here.The New York Times was doing a favor to Donald Trump.was doing a favor that helps his personal security because it was calling into question whether or not this airplane was safe for him.They were protecting Donald Trump.

It's a great point.And he's mad about that because he cares less about his own personal safety.than he does about the glitz of having this decked out, already decked out 747 that he's been bragging about for a year and a half.

Wait, can I let me just add to this?It's not that he doesn't care about his personal safety.He just like, doesn't care about the security concerns, right?Like, he would care if he was gonna die from it.

But if it's just that the Qataris get information or that they're otherwise exposed that they can use it to get you think I mean, I think if you crash the plane, well, it's more than just whether or not I don't think it's about whether or not the plane is secure from electronic surveillance by its prior owners or anyone else.This the question is whether this plane has been sufficiently outfitted with anti aircraft anti missile missiles.electronic countermeasures to jam potential attackers, and all sorts of things that the regular 747s that takes years to construct, that are constructed from the bottom up by the Boeing company on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, and have these things built in so you don't have to rip the airframe apart to install them.That's what really is at issue here, and that was, I think, the real problem.And that is, like, they were doing him a favor.Of course, he doesn't see it that way because, you know, this is the guy who didn't care about the magnetometers on January 6th because he wanted the crowd.

It's the same kind of mentality.But then to go, you know, let's go beyond that.He doesn't like the fact that he was embarrassed by the fact that this planewhich he made such a big deal of and that he intends to keep.I mean, that's one of the reasons why they didn't really necessarily bother with all this security stuff is he wants to keep this plane when he's gone, when he's out of office, if he's ever out of office.I don't know that he really intends to be out of office, but it was supposed to be given to the Trump presidential library, which I'm sure is a thing.

Well, and he would basically get to keep it after he was president as part of the library.And that's you know, that's part of the reason why they probably didn't really care that much about or he didn't care about tricking the plane out with all the proper electronics and air defense stuff.You could fly it around in the United States, but you can't really use it for foreign travel, particularly when you're going to a place like Turkey, which is where they flew it to, which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Iran and the entire Middle East.So that's part of what's going on there.First Amendment issues or the legal issues surrounding the subpoenas, there is a qualified privilege that journalists have from subpoenas and court process that's recognized in the U .S.

Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which covers New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and where the motions or the subpoenas were issued from and where the motion to quash has been filed.And that you know, creates a significant protection to journalists, requiring that there be a court engaged in balancing of the interests of the journalist, the First Amendment interest of the news organization, against the government's need for the information, and in particular,whether the government can obtain the information anywhere else.And even apart from that, criminal and civil subpoenas are subject to rules that they can't be unduly burdensome and they can't be vexatious.And here, there's no question, no matter what test you apply to these subpoenas, they are not narrowly tailored to obtain information to protect the nation's security, they are blunderbuss.They are seeking all phone records.

They are seeking phone records of one journalist's mother, who is a psychotherapist, and one journalist's wife, who is the general counsel of a major law firm here in New York City.And the subpoenas are going back to January 1st, which vastly exceeds the period, goes beyond the time period of the reporting that they are objecting to.And beyond that, it's not clear how this affects national security in a negative way, this reporting.impacts the national security in a positive fashion because it's basically drawing to the government's attention and to the people's attention a security threat to the President of the United States.I know some people might not view that as a good thing, but I think we should protect the President of the United States from foreign actors trying to take his plane out.So I don't know how the government is going to prevail on these subpoenas before a good judge in the Southern District of New York.

And also one of the things that's most amazing about it is that, well not really amazing given this is the Trump administration, is that the Justice Department manual contains very, very strongrules to be followed.They're not enforceable by law, but there are procedures that historically have been followed by the Justice Department and that are recorded in the Justice Department manual, which is the guidebook by which, if you're a federal prosecutor from Maine to Hawaii, you have to follow.this, you know, you don't do this, you don't subpoena journalists as a matter of course, only in the most extreme circumstances.And you want to do that anyway, because you want you want to do it only in the most extreme circumstances anyway, because court courts don't like this stuff.And you don't want to lose in court.

But here, it's not about.

Well, he loves losing in court.He loves losing in court.And also he was, I think, apparently just loser in court alive.Yeah, he was just, he was mad that they wrote the, like the president, this is done at the behest of the president, that they're doing the subpoenas.And it's because he's mad that the New York Times got the story before like DOJ, like he had, the New York Times had it before like his own people had the chance to go through it.So he's just mad about that.

So he's subpoenaing the records.It's insane.We'll stipulate that this is insane.

The insane illegal news.That could be the next title of the podcast.

Yeah, but it's also like, this is what Trump has been doing.It's almost like it's an old story at this point, that Trump's assault on the free press, which by the way, where all my free speech peeps at who, you know, we're so turned up, wrapped, you know, during the Biden administration.They've all disappeared.It's so funny.You don't hear many of them anymore.All these incredible salts on the First Amendment.

Well, yeah, no, it's just like all the anti -war protesters.Where the hell are they now?

I would like those guys to get back out there.

Yeah, I would, too.I'd be out there with them.

There's an actual war now.

Yeah, there's a war, and that's actually happening.us and a 19 -year -old kid from Texas.She died in an airstrike, a drone strike in Jordan the other day.

Yeah, 18 service members have been lost.

Yeah, and a whole bunch are injured, and they're not telling the public about it?

Yeah, that's a whole different topic.It's not quite the one I have teed up for us next.though I'm happy to go wherever you want to go.

I have a tendency to do that.

No, it's OK.

As your longtime viewers know.

My best co -hosts are the people where we just, you know, we bob and weave.We do our thing.But there was one weird issue I wanted to ask you about, because there's this thing called the Alien Terrorist Removal Court that has sat dormant until now.And over here at The Bulwark, we are, in terms of all the illegal corrupt things that are happening one of the things that for some reason also doesn't seem to capture an enormous amount of attention but i would say we are generally obsessed with at the bulwark for good reason is the this regimes attempt to treat immigrants as like People that they can just shoot with impunity where you can't all the ice officers have masks on you know just the amount they send people to foreign gulags without due process like all of this stuff to me is one of the most alarming.parts of this administration.So this is just a weird thing that's happening, right?

There was a court that was created 30 years ago, but it had never been used, not once, until last week when the DOJ submitted the first application for removal of an alien terrorist to the court on July 15th.Now, I might be equating or conflating my outrage about the way that this administration, like DHS, how much they lie to us, how little information they're giving us, withnew court that they've suddenly activated, like, maybe it's not a big deal, but can you just talk me through it?Because I've been wondering about it.

Yeah, I don't think at the end of the day it's going to be a big deal compared to all of the other outrages.That's my bottom line, but let's unpack it a little bit.There was an anti -terrorism law that did a lot of things in 1996, and this was one of the provisions it contained.And it created a special court called the, what was it called again?

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court.

Removal Court, right.And this, the first I ever heard about it was less than 24 hours ago, when you said, hey, let's make this a topic of the podcast.And I read something that my friend Steve Vladeck, who I had on our predecessor show to talk about.This was a law that was created in 1996, probably in response to concerns about terrorism that followed the first World Trade Center bombing in 93.And there are lots of specialized courts like this, like the FISA court that we've all heard about.How they are formed is that they get a special mandate to hear special kinds of cases.

The FISA court is similar in the sense that the reason why there's a special court is they can employ special procedures to keep classified intelligence information under wraps.And so this was the analogist court for alien terrorists who needed to be removed, but you didn't want to go into a regular federal district court without the protections of having a special court with special judges with security clearances review the matter in top secret fashion.And I suspect the reason why This was never really invoked was that if we had an alien terrorist in the United States, we'd probably prosecute them.And instead of just sending them somewhere else, or we put them in Guantanamo, I don't, I just think - Isn't it like the Boston Bomber?

Like, wouldn't they fall into this category?

Yeah, but you, well, you could, they could, they could have been, I guess, I mean, I haven't read the details of the statute, apparently it's very complex, but they were aliens.Were they aliens?I mean, if they were aliens, they were certainly alien terrorists.But I think if you had an alien terrorist that set off a bomb in a major American city and killed and maimed a whole bunch of people, we're not going to support that person.We're going to fry them.So that's probably one of the reasons why this court was never really used.

But nonetheless, it's existed now for 30 years.And the way that these courts are put together is that the Chief Justice of the United States, and this is the same with the FISA Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which is the appellate court that George keeps saying FISA, but I would pronounce it FISA just in case the audience wants to make sure they maybe you're pronouncing it correctly.But I don't know.I don't think there's I don't think there's I don't think it's defined by statute.I guess I'm saying FISA because I've been watching too much of the World Cup.But You know, the chief justice picks a bunch of judges, usually district judges from throughout the country, and he designates them to sit on these courts.

And generally speaking, those are the best federal judges of different pedigrees, not just Republicans but Democrats.He has a very good job, and Rehnquist did a very good job before them by all accounts.If you look at, you know, I don't know all of the judges on this particular court.I looked at their brand new website.They finally had to put up a website because they hadn't done anything for 30 years.These are good judges, the ones that I know.

They have good reputations.And so that's the reason.of the reasons why I'm not terribly concerned about the Trump administration discovering this statute and using this statute, is because at the end of the day, this is an Article III court.with Article 3 judges, and not just with any Article 3 federal district judges, really good judges, and they don't have a big caseload because this is their first case in 30 years, and they're going to look at stuff really, really carefully.And they're going to provide all the due process that anybody could possibly want.And I don't think, and even apart from the judges, this court has a whole set of statutorily required procedures that it has to follow.

This is cumbersome.This is much more cumbersome than what the administration has been doing with aliens or with undocumented aliens is that they've been trying to avoid process.So they try to avoid federal district judges.They try to use just the immigration courts.They try to remove people in the middle of the night before they have time to get lawyers and time to go into court to seek a federal judge's intervention.So this is a situation where they're actually going into the maximum process This has got to be the most difficult way to remove an alien you could think of, and you have to provide all the information that you are using to make the determination that the person is an alien terrorist.

The government has to provide that to the court.The court has to assess it.Now, the due process concerns come in, in the fact that unless the alien that is the subject of removalproceeding is a legal permanent resident, if it's somebody with a green card, a legal permanent resident, the statute for this court provides that that person gets a lawyer who has a appointed for him or her who has a security clearance and who can review the materials or summary of the materials.Whereas if you're not a legal permanent resident, you're just a regular alien, you don't get that.But at the same time, it requires the preparation of a summary of the information, I guess where all the sources are blacked out, to the lawyer that's going to represent the alien.

There are just a lot of procedures here that really, that are that are in the statute that these judges are going to follow, it just gives me the impression that this is not going to be a major problem for civil liberties or for innocent people.I think this is something that's going to be more of a one -off, occasionally used situation.I don't know what the facts are of the particular application that's being made currently that basically triggered the court into having to create a website and issue its first order in 30 years.But I think these judges are going to be very, very careful because they're doing something new, because the statute is very clear, and I think these are judges who are very conscientious of all political persuasions who are going to take a great deal of care in doing what they do because they don't want, you know, we've seen how the federal district judges have done with immigration generally.They've been terrific.They've been terrific by and large.

And I think in a situation where this is a limited and narrowly focused statute with lots of protections,built in, and with the most qualified federal district judges being selected.It's kind of an honor to be selected by the Chief Justice of the United States to participate in a funky court.And they're going to be really, really careful.And if I were even the most scummy Department of Justice Trump Trump beholden lawyer, you know, I try to avoid this court as much as possible.So I don't know what triggered this particular application, but I just don't see it as a big threat.

Yeah, you know, I could be wrong, maybe that maybe we'll see more of it.And but if we do, what will it'll it'll all come out.And it'll be another outrage to be outraged about.But right on the theory on the scale of outrages are on the list of outrages.It's probably way toward the bottom.

Yeah, you've made a great point, which is basically we want more due process.Like that's been the thing that's been missing.And so to the extent that this court is adding opportunities for due process, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.Yeah.

I mean, it's not a perfect process, I'm sure, because, you know, because, but it never is when there's classified information that is held in camera.But you know, there, this is, this is, this is a high process process that the Justice Department has selected here, so it's hard to see trouble.I just so don't trust these people.Of course.

It looked to me like some weird workaround they were trying to figure out, but you have allayed my fears.

Yeah.But I could be wrong.I mean, they're capable of taking anything and ruining it.

Sure.

No doubt.You have to keep an eye on everything they do.

All this Paramount stuff has been going on while you've been gone, which has been a disaster for me because you're my go -to on mergers.There was a court, a judge just basically put another hold on the Paramount deal, or there was a group of AGs, but I just wondered what you made of that.have landed with that Paramount deal so far.

I don't know the precise antitrust issues, because I don't know what, you know, I mean, there's a there's a lot that goes into antitrust law, what the relevant market is, and what the relative degree of concentration is.But I will say this, I mean, I, I participated in a protest, one of the things I did over the last few months in downtown against the Paramount Warner merger.And the reason why I feel kind of strongly about it is that we have a situation here where, I mean, you're bringing together two ideas from American history and American law.First is the constitutional idea of the framers that you had to decentralize power to protect liberty, which is why we have federalism, why we have the separation of powers.But there also is from the 19th century, the antitrust laws, which were enacted because people felt there was too, Congress felt that there was too, that economic power had become too concentrated, that it was a danger to the republic, not just to consumers, but to the republic generally, that economic power had been concentrated in the hands of a few.And what this merger represents to me is an unholy alliance between You know, political power, where there are political operatives, political types who want to overcome the restrictions on the concentration of power that the Constitution provides.

That's the Trump administration.And then you have private enterprises who are essentially in cahoots now with the politicals, the government types, to concentrate power externally, outside the government, economic power, and worse yet, this is economic power in relation to communications.and the speech that is used, that we need as part of the checks on government.And this is, to me, this is a five alarm fire.Now, in terms of the actual merits of the case, I don't know.I think we need to reform our antitrust laws to make them less effective.

necessarily, our antitrust laws, the way that they've been interpreted, particularly over the past 30 or 40 years, is focused on prices and making sure that there is not sufficient market power among entities that merge or entities that grow so that they can charge monopoly prices.But I think we need to have sort of a more, a broader look at the antitrust laws, one that I think more motivated the 19th century framers of the antitrust law to look at the concentration of power generally.I'm not sure how you look at that generally, but the concentration of economic power because it's a threat to democracy.It's not just a question of whether, you know, I'm paying $3 .99 per movie or $4 .99 per movie.It's a question of whether or not there are sufficient outlets for information that are not chilled by the government to reach me and to educate the public.So I think this is a very, very important case in terms of the actual merits of the antitrust case.

The states have the power to bring actions on behalf of their people to enforce the federal antitrust laws and state antitrust laws.And in the context of a corrupt government where antitrust decisions are being made by officials beholden to the President of the United States, it's of paramount importance that state officials fill the breach, at least until we have a non -corrupt government again.And I think federal district judges are going to take these actions very, very seriously because they are charged in the normal course with enforcing the antitrust laws and hearing cases that are brought under the Clayton Act to enjoin illegal mergers, particularly in the court where this is going to be centered in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.And they understand that this kind of lawsuit by state AGs is filling a gap.And obviously, because there was a temporary restraining order against the merger issued today or yesterday against the merger, I'm hopeful that the district judge will take a good, good, hard look at this merger.

of paramount importance, no pun intended.George, it's so good to see you.It's so good to have you back.I missed you, buddy.

The illegal puns.

Yeah, new listeners may not have known this, but that this show's name comes from a bit that George and I used to do, where we would say, George Conway explains all the legal news, and then George would say, no, it's the illegal news.

And I was like, it always was.

We ain't talking about nothing legal today.George, welcome back.We've got so much more to talk about.We didn't even get into all the lessons you might have learned on the trail.I want to just get you back in the saddle doing the legal news.

I learned that I'm not a good politician.And my big pitch was, I'm not a politician.Vote for me because I'm not a politician because people don't like politicians.But it turns out you have to be a really good politician to make that pitch and I'm not.

Well, we'll do a special episode, a very special episode at some point where we dig through all of that.And I can't wait for it.Guys, thanks for listening to another episode.of The Illegal News.We'll be back next week.Go rate, subscribe, do all the things that we do, become a Bulwark Plus member, you know, YouTube, all that.

George, we'll see you again soon.