Surprising Federal Crimes

This week’s show takes a look at federal charges in the widely discussed Charlotte train murder case. Murder, of course, is not generally a federal crime, but because the murder happened on a train, the Feds have charged it as a violation of 18 USC § 1992, which prohibits “an act, including the use of a dangerous weapon, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury to any person” in various transportation-related places, including on train tracks.Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will soon weigh in on the IEEPA tariffs case — the court has set a fast briefing schedule and will hear arguments in June. Also in this episode: The Babylon Bee lawsuit that got California’s anti-deepfake law thrown out as unconstitutional; FBI agents suing over their political terminations (and why they stand a better chance in the courts than the various fired commissioners); the collapse of Michigan’s fake elector prosecution; another court decision upholding a judgment E. Jean Carroll won from President Trump; and the unhinged pro-se filings from would-be Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh (filed, of course, to Judge Aileen Cannon).Visit serioustrouble.show to find a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This week: Jeanine Pirro has returned to her roots as a prosecutor, but prosecutors in her office have failed to secure felony indictments in at least three cases they brought to grand juries, including the case of “Sandwich Guy” Sean Dunn, who will face only misdemeanor charges for launching a submarine sandwich at a CBP officer.Trump lost another appeal related to many of his tariffs (IEEPA!); Trump’s weird lawsuit against federal judges in Maryland was thrown out; Alan Dershowitz lost his appeal of his defamation lawsuit against CNN; Kash Patel’s girlfriend Alexis Williams has filed a Macron-like lawsuit against a conspiracy theorist who says she can’t actually be attracted to him; the Trump administration continues to try to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia; and we take a look at the administration’s new tool for pursuing political enemies: allegations of mortgage fraud.Visit serioustrouble.show to find episode transcripts and sign up for updates. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

As Eric Adams says, New York is the Zagreb of America. People from all over the world come to New York to make their dreams come true. And sometimes, those dreams are illegal. Today we talk about the second indictment for longtime Adams consigliere Ingrid Lewis-Martin for taking a TV series cameo in exchange for impeding a street safety redesign that would have complicated access to co-defendants Gina and Tony Argento’s Broadway Stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Other aides are swept up in that case too. And then there's Winnie Greco, Adams’s longtime liaison to the Chinese-American community, who apparently tried to give approximately $140 to reporter Katie Honan of THE CITY, a sum that was placed in a red envelope stuffed inside an empty bag of potato chips.Greatest city in the world.In non-Eric Adams news, John Bolton’s home outside Washington D.C. was raided by the FBI early Friday morning, apparently searching for classified documents. Ken and I discuss what showings the DOJ must have made to get the search warrant. Plus: Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s arguments that he is being subjected to selective and vindictive prosecution, an appeals court in New York threw out the nearly half-billion dollar disgorgement penalty against Trump and his businesses, Newsmax will pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle defamation litigation about the 2020 election, and a judge’s decision that Alina Habba isn’t the US Attorney for New Jersey, and we look at a favorable ruling for the beleaguered Media Matters for America.Visit serioustrouble.show for a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

Judge Paul Engelmeyer has refused the Trump administration’s request to release the grand jury transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s prosecution. He notes forcefully that he’s reviewed the grand jury transcripts and there’s no there there — everything of interest disclosed to the grand jury became public at trial. Indeed, the only reason Engelmeyer considered releasing the transcript was that it would serve the public interest of showing the government had been lying about what’s in the transcript. But he said that wasn’t necessary, either, because the government ultimately admitted in subsequent filings that the transcript didn’t contain interesting information. So what, exactly, have we been doing here?In other news, some idiot threw a sandwich at a CBP officer sent by Trump to patrol the streets of Washington and the Justice Department is hot to make an example him. Laura Loomer’s defamation suit against Bill Maher continues.Plus: tariffs, a look at a couple of favorable rulings for Trump out of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, an update on US Attorney Bill Essayli’s effort to keep former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Trevor Kirk out of prison, and the misfortune of Mohamed Bahi, an aide to Eric Adams who does not seem to enjoy the same protection from federal justice that Adams himself has.Visit serioustrouble.show to find episode transcripts and sign up for updates from us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This week Ken and Josh discuss the next steps the Trump administration may be considering to deal with the Epstein mess: what to do about the files, what to do about the transcript of Todd Blanche's meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, who was moved to a much nicer federal prison, has a colorable argument that her conviction should be thrown out because she was supposed to be covered by the sweetheart deal Jeffrey Epstein cut with federal prosecutors back during the Bush administration.Plus: Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl are pleading no-contest to Michigan state crimes relating to their voter-suppression robocalls, the Ninth Circuit has denied the government a stay with regard to the temporary restraining order restricting the grounds on which ICE can detain suspected illegal migrants, and in the Valley, former NBA star Gilbert Arenas has been indicted for running an illegal poker game, updates in the Trump v. Murdoch case and regarding an apparent DOJ investigation into James Comey.Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and find a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showGhislaine Maxwell has sat for a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who not very long ago was serving as President Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney. The idea seems to be that Maxwell could offer some “help” getting to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in exchange for some sort of leniency. That’s for free subscribers. For paying subscribers this week, there’s much more:* Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron’s libel suit against Candace Owens* The machinations that have kept Alina Habba in charge, for now, at the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey* Another ruling blocking the administration’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship* A strange Supreme Court order saying lower courts should do a better job inferring what its decisions on the shadow docket mean, and a concurrence from Justice Kavanaugh that says the lower courts really do need more guidance — guidance that only a more proactive and meddlesome Supreme Court can provide.To get the whole episode, go to serioustrouble.show

Donald Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal over its story saying he wrote a weird poem to Jeffrey Epstein and drew a caricature of a naked woman with his own signature as her pubic hair as part of a book wishing a happy 50th birthday to the New York financier. Ken and Josh discuss the suit, which looks more like an exclamation point on his claims that he never even liked that Epstein guy! than a serious effort to win damages from (or extort) the Rupert Murdoch empire. Meanwhile, Trump is seeking the release of grand jury testimony from the investigations into Epstein and his henchwoman Ghislaine Maxwell — a release that wouldn’t be likely to include any books of ribald poetry.Also this week: Trump’s lawsuit against Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster — claiming that Woodward and S&S violated Trump’s copyright by publishing the audio of interviews Trump thought were only for use in a written book — has been dismissed; Trump is facing difficulty with another novel application of IEEPA — this time, not tariffs, but an effort to sanction the International Criminal Court, there’s a certified class in the birthright citizenship litigation; a federal judge in California says ICE can’t pick people up just because they look Mexican; and some government immigration lawyers have started appearing anonymously in immigration court; an extra-bizarre civil RICO suit against Eric Adams and the NYPD, from Adams’s own ex-interim NYPD commissioner; Douglass Mackey, a.k.a. “Ricky Vaughn,” has won an appeal of his conviction for trying to trick Hillary Clinton voters into “voting” by text.Visit serioustrouble.show for a transcript of this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This week, we discuss the mostly favorable verdict for Sean Combs, a.k.a. P. Diddy and his upcoming sentencing. In another bizarre sex-related case, two founders of OneTaste, a new-age-female-empowerment-business-slash-sex-cult, have been convicted of coercing their employees into sex acts.Also this week: an update on D.H.S. vs. D.V.D., a case where the Supreme Court’s orders have been fairly inscrutable and the litigants have now been deported to South Sudan; another shadow docket victory for the administration; the Trump administration’s lawless claim that it can waive the TikTok ban and how there’s probably no way for their action to be remedied in the courts; what can be done when a president extracts bribe-like payments from corporations; and we look at the trouble the administration created for itself by fanning the flames of Epstein conspiracies it now can’t document.Visit serioustrouble.show to sign up for updates and to access episode transcripts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showFor all subscribers: a discussion of the Sean Combs jury deliberations and a look at the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. CASA that says trial courts (generally) can no longer issue nationwide injunctions. As Ken and I discuss, the ruling is sure to greatly change how aggressive executive branch actions get litigated, but the exact nature of the change is not yet clear.Paying subscribers also get a look at Gavin Newsom’s new defamation suit against Fox News (sigh), Donald Trump’s gambit to get his lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer back out of federal court, an update on the cooperating witness against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Trump’s weird lawsuit against all the federal judges in Maryland, and Susman Godfrey’s victory in court over Trump’s executive order seeking to punish the firm.Sign up at serioustrouble.show to get the full episode.

More shadow docket news on this week’s show: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority blocked an order from a federal judge in Boston that had imposed due process requirements when the Trump administration tries to deport migrants to countries other than their countries of origin. As is often the case with shadow docket orders, the judges in the majority did not explain their reasoning, leaving the lower courts without clear guidance on what to do next: was the order blocked because the class of affected detainees was too broad, or for some other reason?Plus: an update on California’s litigation over federalization of the National Guard, a look at the whistleblower allegations against now-federal-judicial-nominee Emil Bove, a look at the bail decision for Kilmar Abrego Garcia (who’s likely to end up in ICE custody regardless), and a discussion of the Trump administration’s decision (and Joe Biden’s decision) not to assert executive privilege as the House Oversight Committee looks into theories about autopen use in Biden’s administration.Go to serioustrouble.show to sign up for our newsletter and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe