Bill Richman is back in studio with us to talk about Elon Musk, Johnny Depp, and Amber Heard's legal troubles. He's a brilliant lawyer and an astrologer, and has been working behind the scenes on some of the most interesting legal matters in the news.
00:00:00.000Welcome to the latest installment of Ash Wednesday Now, by popular request, my half-Asian lawyer, Bill Richman, is here in studio.
00:00:24.000Yeah, he still works with us, but he's been working behind the scenes on legal matters.
00:00:28.000I want to let you know this was pre-taped on Friday on the legal matters that, of course, are taking place with Elon Musk and Twitter and Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
00:00:37.000We thought it'd be great to have a world-class lawyer in.
00:00:41.000If some of this doesn't fully make sense because, well, this has changed, I want you to actually watch this through the lens of, we spoke about this on Friday, and not only is he a brilliant lawyer, but apparently an oracle, because some predictions are made that, in context now, are frighteningly spot-on.
00:01:01.000I'm on the road, while you're watching this, taping some super videos that are going to be coming up here in the future that I think you'll be excited about, but for right now, enjoy It's been a while since we've done one of these.
00:01:12.000is half-Asian Bill Richmond, this Ash Wednesday.
00:01:31.000He never really went anywhere, but we get so many complaints.
00:02:23.000So, HR Tim's always been like, hey, get out here, you know, Tokunawa was like, get out here, and I was like, I got the laws, but hey, we're going to talk about some fun topics today.
00:02:31.000No, yeah, I'm really glad to have you here, and it's one of those things where you were, a lot of people don't know, you were pinch-hitting, right?
00:02:38.000Because we were like, there was a point where we were kind of rotating third chair before Dave was here, and we were just sort of trying out, and then it was just, we were, you know, short-staffed, and so like, hey, Bill, can you come in, and then you just, you happened to be good at it, and so then I kept asking you, where you were like, I'm going to have to go back to being a lawyer, and I'm like, okay, but for I mean, it helped when I chained myself into the third chair and they were like, well, okay, I guess we'll make this work.
00:03:04.000Oh, by the way, we're smoking today Master's Blend 3 from Oliva, and shout out, you can actually get the Crowder 7 Plus 1 Sampler at Cigars Daily.
00:03:14.000A friend of mine over there, Tim Swanson, good guy, has a great channel, and not a sponsor of the show, just the guy's been a solid dude, so you can do the Crowder 7 Plus 1 Sampler, has my favorite cigars there, and he's giving you a good deal.
00:03:52.000LawTwitter's been blowing up about it, which is ironic given that Twitter's at the heart of all this, but in the long run, it's a lot of bluff calling.
00:04:01.000Elon essentially saying, I'm going to openly try and change the face of something that I don't like, and now the board is stuck between exercising their poison pill, trying to do shareholder rights plans, the fiduciary duties.
00:04:14.000Can you explain to people, because the term poison pill is thrown around quite a bit.
00:04:17.000I mean, here's the layman's interpretation of it.
00:04:19.000Elon Musk basically said, hey, I will buy out Twitter.
00:04:23.000I will gladly buy it, and at something like a 20% higher than the market valuation at that point, if I'm not mistaken.
00:04:29.000He said, I'll buy it outright to own 100%.
00:04:31.000And then he said, and if the board doesn't accept my offer, I may have to reconsider my stake in Twitter, which we know would probably cause their stock to take a nosedive, right?
00:04:41.000So, those are kind of the options, but then people have talked about how the board instituted a poison pill, and even Jack Dorsey said this is their dysfunction.
00:04:50.000Most people don't know what the poison pill means.
00:04:51.000Sure, so, I mean, a poison pill is a general topic, it's a general concept of something that's going to make the acquirer not excited about acquiring the company, or make it harder to do.
00:05:02.000Generally what that means is you've got shareholder rights plans, you've got preferred pricing, the ability for other shareholders to buy at a discounted price, or a cap on what powers you can exercise once you reach a certain threshold.
00:05:16.000So normally in these kind of takeovers, you'll get someone who acquires a position, 9.2 in this case, but then they'll go to 10, they'll go to 15, they'll go even higher than that.
00:05:26.000And your corporate raters, which is in the 80s and 90s terms when this first came around, The boards had to figure out a way to stop them.
00:05:33.000So they would say, well, we'll put together this thing that's going to maybe hurt the company, but maybe not.
00:05:39.000We're just trying to slow the process to make sure that everyone ostensibly gets a voice.
00:07:28.000I hate when you have these people who are basically born into royalty or ill-gotten gain or gain that they just didn't earn by themselves and they try and tell everyone else, I know business.
00:07:44.000Twitter's been consistently doing this.
00:07:47.000This is another sort of how I see it, and I think how the public sees it.
00:07:51.000It sounds to me, from what you're saying, they're almost using legal maneuvers that kind of reflect the exact suspicions that we've had.
00:07:57.000It's the elites in power, the board, those people, versus the people who actually want to see real change at Twitter, namely in the direction of free speech, and that's even a lot of the shareholders.
00:08:07.000It's in the interest of everyone, except for the corporate board who want to maintain control.
00:08:11.000So what you haven't seen the board say yet, but what you've seen other people say, particularly on the left, is, oh, he wants more free speech?
00:08:21.000And that is, while the board isn't saying it, that's what everyone sees they're trying to put forward.
00:08:27.000They're trying to say, well, if Elon is going to do what he actually says and make this platform more open, we really want to pump the brakes on that.
00:08:35.000And they're using the legal maneuver to say, well, we're investigating it, we're evaluating it, we're trying to understand.
00:08:40.000Well, the one part that they do have a leg on is there's not a competing offer, right?
00:08:44.000So right now, it's not like someone else has come in and said, other than just the market value of the shares, right?
00:08:49.000No one's come in and said, this is what we're willing to offer, or is this ownership group good?
00:08:54.000Anyone who's done any investing knows that, you know, you can buy a great horse, but you put a bad jockey on it, no good, right?
00:08:59.000Right, they have to be at least four foot five or below.
00:09:13.000But here you are going to a person who has successfully built multiple companies and multiple industries, who has successfully leveraged the very company itself through his platform, become one of the biggest voices, and of the top ten, the most active of all of the top ten with follower counts on Twitter, and they're saying, well we're just not sure whether or not He really knows what he's doing and it's in the best interest of the company.
00:09:40.000So what we're going to see now, or shortly, is you're going to start seeing shareholders take action.
00:09:45.000They're going to start sending demand letters.
00:09:48.000They're going to start sending disclosure requirements if you have a big enough stakeholder, depending on the rights that Twitter has under their stock plan.
00:09:55.000You know, hey, what is the evaluation that you're doing?
00:10:00.000And ultimately people will start suing.
00:10:01.000You will find shareholders who will say, Nope, we're going to take the board and try and hold them accountable and really bring a lot of this to light.
00:10:17.000I think one way or the other he's going to get it, but I don't think he's going to get it by himself.
00:10:21.000They've already done the poison pill, but what I think Twitter's board is miscalculating, and I think what I would call left Twitter is miscalculating when they get out there and they scream, I don't want free speech, Elon Musk's free speech is dangerous, it's fascist, it's totalitarian, that the average American and the average shareholder is looking at that going, So, if the Twitter board has on its side a Saudi Prince, pretty much everyone else should agree that this is the right thing.
00:10:51.000Yeah, tell you what, Saudi Prince, when your women can drive by themselves, we'll start talking about free speech.
00:10:56.000Okay, what do you give the over-under if Jack Dorsey gets, sorry, Jack Dorsey, if Elon Musk gets Twitter, how quickly before Donald Trump is reinstated?
00:12:12.000That's considered a threat to our institutions and he's gone.
00:12:15.000The Ayatollah Khomeini is still there.
00:12:17.000Like you said, interim governments of Afghanistan, still there.
00:12:21.000It's, um, you know, Dinesh D'Souza talked about this with me and I think we've gone over this.
00:12:24.000You don't have a country of laws just because you have laws.
00:12:27.000You really only have law and order if the law is applied equally.
00:12:30.000And I think, especially with this explosion of big tech, it's not really something that we were prepared for.
00:12:37.000It's always funny to me when you hear leftists say, like, oh, well, the Second Amendment was back when there were only muskets, which we know is untrue.
00:12:42.000There were cannons, there were puckle guns, Girandoni air rifles, there were high-capacity guns.
00:12:48.000But this is one of those things where it's very hard to imagine a handful of companies that were more powerful than any national or world government and don't have the kind of regulatory oversight that just Ford Motors does.
00:13:08.000Yeah, but not when it affects elections and it's a de facto public square.
00:13:12.000Right, or just the common concern of, you say you have a policy, you're not applying it equally, you know, this is deceptive, right?
00:13:20.000You know, you are telling folks that this is an open platform when it's really not.
00:13:24.000And all of the real credible, I mean, some people are, you know, they'll say, well, I don't understand, and I get these all the time.
00:13:30.000People will reach out and they'll say, well, I've been, you know, the platforms are messing with me, and I'm like, well, but what you did is very obviously a problem, and these were the rules.
00:14:23.000The light that has been shed here His offer, his tactics have put a spotlight on what the board is.
00:14:30.000And that, of anything, is they can't hide from pushing this agenda.
00:14:34.000Yeah, it's often why people, when people ask me, like, why don't you think about running for office?
00:14:39.000Because look at what Elon, someone like Elon Musk, and I'm not comparing myself at all to Elon Musk, but look what he was able to do in the private sector versus the politicians who we know, many of whom we've spoken with, have been just having hearing after hearing after hearing and accomplishing nothing.
00:15:24.000So I think, and we can talk more about when we go to Mug Club, uh, you know, YouTube and how you, how we met, how a half Asian lawyer, Bill Richman and I met, you can hear the origin story and, um, kind of the changes just that we've seen in, I mean, dramatic changes, uh, that have happened on the platform.
00:15:40.000I was just talking about this last week, but we can move.
00:15:43.000This is something everyone is talking about.
00:15:45.000Law and crime, I think, YouTube channel is one thing that's actually doing really well as far as streaming right now on YouTube, because they've changed that too.
00:15:54.000This is a scenario that has people really riled up.
00:15:57.000Again, what I see is almost everybody with whom I speak goes, I just can't believe Amber Heard is such a monster because they've listened to the audio with her admitting to hitting Johnny Depp and mocking him and pooping in his bed.
00:16:09.000But there was still an article from Variety talking about how this shows the privilege of rich white men.
00:16:24.000So, to be clear, for people who don't know, I don't want to waste, I don't want to, since you're by the hour, I don't want you to have to explain the beginning part.
00:16:30.000So, she left Johnny Depp, filed for divorce, claimed that he had assaulted her, okay, then instead settled, right, they settled out of court, she got seven million dollars, and then wrote a veiled article in Washington Post about how she's a survivor of
00:16:45.000abuse and of course the direct inference was that it was Johnny Depp.
00:16:50.000And then that caused him to lose at least $50 million.
00:16:52.000I mean it's Pirates of the Caribbean job.
00:16:55.000So he is suing her for defamation because he's saying he never physically assaulted
00:17:01.000And as a matter of fact she did to him and committed mental abuse.
00:17:04.000Is there anything else that people need to know in there before we kind of get into the sort of details of what a horrible person she is?
00:17:09.000Well, I mean, those are long and in-depth and we're going to get into those.
00:17:13.000What's important is folks have already kind of forgotten the original, where this originally came from in the legal realm, which was his lawsuit against The Sun.
00:17:23.000So under, you know, under British law... They called him a wife-beater.
00:17:27.000Right the wife beater and you know they're ultimately in a British law they had to prove it and in what Johnny Depp's lawyers described of the trial result there that it was a perverse and bewildering ignorance of the evidence, right? I mean, they literally,
00:17:42.000the judge in there, the way that they described it was just ignored
00:17:44.000testimony, evidence, written evidence, oral testimony, recordings, etc. about what Amber Heard was doing and her
00:17:55.000demonstrating that she was neither afraid of being abused, had not been abused, was more clearly the person who was
00:18:02.000engaging in the abuse. You think when you say that, I didn't, I have been looking high and low. I
00:18:07.000I haven't seen any evidence that she's presented of abuse.
00:18:11.000Beyond her claiming so, and at one point claiming that this mark came from him.
00:18:14.000I mean, she's got a lot of circumstantial, inferential, right?
00:18:19.000Well, this is, you know, the marks, the conversations, taking certain contexts, you know, what she's done is to go out there in this instance and say, look at all of the crazy things that he's done, which anyone who's lived a life has done crazy things where, in a photo, taken out of context, a snippet, you know, you always say, Take a snippet, look at the first 30 seconds before, look at the 30 seconds afterwards, and then you'll more likely know what is the truth.
00:18:45.000Yeah, like last week I said, I want more women who are raped to come forward and, you know, bring their accuser to justice or to carry a firearm so they're not a victim of rape.
00:18:56.000And some people just took, I want more women to be raped.
00:19:03.000You know, I mean, you see this example all the time, right?
00:19:05.000The lion who's holding the cub by the neck, and you're like, yeah, no, no, no, that's the cub of that mother lion, and she's dragging him to come with the other cubs because there's an alligator over here, right?
00:20:03.000There's a paucity of evidence on her side.
00:20:06.000There's a lot of evidence on his side to say that what she was talking about, I mean, first of all, the fact that she's even trying to say, well, it could have been about anyone.
00:20:49.000I haven't seen any evidence from her side, and I want to get to... Okay, it's a defamation case here in the United States.
00:20:55.000Um, correct me if I'm wrong, and then I want to get into sort of, um, the importance, you know, we talked about this last week, marriage and marriage laws in the country, and how it now is discouraging people from getting married because it's just a risk that men don't want to take, and it's one of the only contracts that I can think of in the United States where if one person makes significantly more money, uh, one side is financially incentivized to break it in certain no-fault divorce states.
00:21:32.000I know it's cynical, but the truth is... But I would say that that's, you know, this might cut against it a little bit.
00:21:37.000It's kind of a tale as old as time, right?
00:21:38.000It's not quite as old as the world's oldest profession.
00:21:41.000But, you know, the MRS hasn't been a joke for, you know, a hundred years because... It's not all that different from the world's oldest profession.
00:23:11.000It's a little different when you're a public figure and this is the person in relationship with you.
00:23:15.000From what I understand with defamation, it's a pretty high bar to clear.
00:23:18.000And if you're not a public figure, right, you need to prove that you lied, That you lied negligently, when it's a public figure, that you lied with malice of forethought, so even more, that you lied to a third party, which in this case obviously had taken place, and then that there are significant reputational damages that you need to prove.
00:23:35.000Is there something else that I'm missing, or is that kind of the bar?
00:23:37.000I mean, that's, in broad strokes, yes.
00:23:38.000I mean, there's, you know, for example, there's a limited purpose public figure, which is between a private citizen and a true public figure.
00:23:45.000Then there's, I mean, there's endless case law about how someone crosses in that threshold of being a general public figure, and whether or not They have to get to this malice standard, you know, that you knew what you were saying was wrong, right?
00:24:58.000But we talk about this tension, right, which is people to be able to say things, to be able to say them, and in certain instances, you know, whether through comedy or news or otherwise, you know, for the public good, there's a lot of kind of exceptions to it.
00:25:09.000You can make statements that you may not know are 100% true, but you have a good faith reason to believe they're true, or you're doing it for the public good and there are exceptions there.
00:25:19.000This is someone who is in the relationship with the guy.
00:25:21.000Right, not only is she in the relationship, not only did they have a resolution, not only did she do the op-ed, not only did she try and skirt around what her agreement had been, but then it's very clearly intended to be wrong.
00:25:32.000Like, there's no way to be like, well, you know, I heard from Amber that's what happened, and I interpreted her words, and so I said something about it.
00:25:39.000This is her saying, first person, I was there, these horrible, horrible things happened to me consistently, and You know, don't listen to my phone calls, don't look at anything I've written, don't look at any of the facts.
00:26:22.000It's like, we're just gonna believe no matter what.
00:26:24.000Whatever's gonna happen, we're not gonna take any thought to evaluate it.
00:26:28.000And here, the argument is the same, right?
00:26:30.000It's the other side of the coin of saying, we're just gonna go say what it is and it needs to be believed and, you know, we're just gonna let it happen.
00:26:36.000But what are we doing about false accusations?
00:27:02.000People still run with things that after the investigation, which was conducted, was proven to be false.
00:27:06.000For example, that party didn't happen on that night, and it couldn't have happened in that house because it didn't exist, and those people couldn't have possibly been there.
00:27:14.000And they just remember that accusation, and those in the media, unfortunately, because there's such a lack of fear of any retribution or even accountability, they just go with it.
00:27:24.000And that's also what I see with Amber Heard in this.
00:27:26.000This is someone, if you listen to the calls, the taunting, the, you're not a man, you're a pussy, you know, these kind of things.
00:27:32.000This is not a woman who is afraid of being abused.
00:27:36.000And this is a woman who also admits on the call to abusing him.
00:27:40.000And it doesn't seem like it's a woman who fears any accountability in a legal system.
00:27:43.000And I will say I get a lot of messages from young men, as someone who has been, you know, an open advocate for the institution of marriage.
00:27:51.000But I am conflicted, because there's the biblical view of marriage in a holy institution, and then the government really has screwed it up in a lot of ways with divorce laws, where it is kind of, no fault is not no fault.
00:28:41.000It is very rare, and it comes in very extreme public situations, or it comes in situations where it's a slam dunk and they're willing to just do it.
00:28:50.000But a lot of the times, you know, the way our criminal system is set up, overworked prosecutors who have long, long, long, long dockets, longer than you can imagine.
00:29:01.000You go into any DA's office around the country, they've got long lists of products, and when they have to choose between murders, Embezzlers, you know, those types of things.
00:29:10.000And then going and prosecuting someone for making a false claim, it tends to fall to the bottom, regardless of the harm of the true victim, which is the person who was falsely accused.
00:30:29.000The end all be all is if you do not take action against false accusations, you create an environment where people don't feel like they have any protection from the system.
00:30:41.000I'll tell you what it feels like for a lot of people watching.
00:30:44.000A lot of people watching think, this woman was, and your cigar went out, if you need to relight it, that's fine, I can take the torch for a little, I can take the mantle for a little bit.
00:30:55.000That's where you toast it, you light it, and then you blow out, and it'll create a fireball, and that'll purge that sort of ashy taste that happens when a cigar goes out.
00:31:03.000No, I like, I like, I like ashy melons.
00:32:08.000So most people are watching this going, okay, at best this was a tumultuous relationship between two parties.
00:32:15.000At most likely, this was an abusive relationship from a woman to a man, which we talked about last week.
00:32:20.000It's actually far more common than male-to-female, the domestic abuse incidents.
00:32:23.000Same thing with single mothers versus single fathers.
00:32:25.000It's like 200-something thousand, 230-something thousand mothers abuse their children physically versus only 130-something thousand fathers per year.
00:32:33.000A lot of people don't know this because the story doesn't get told, and that ultimately harms children.
00:32:36.000But most people watching are saying, this is a woman who was abusive.
00:32:39.000Emotionally, physically to Johnny Depp and did undoubtedly cause him to lose his job through what she said.
00:32:48.000But I don't think anything's going to happen anyway because the hurdle is too high to clear.
00:32:57.000I always thought he was kind of an affected prick, but my heart goes out to him.
00:33:00.000I feel like most people who are watching this, this is when people lose faith in their institutions where they go, this seems really clear, but we have no hope.
00:33:31.000And look, the system is going to play itself out and we're going to find out.
00:33:33.000And people are always going to say, you know, I hear this from clients, I hear this from folks who are just commenting on the system, they go, Well, you know, the trial court got it wrong.
00:33:41.000And I was like, guys, we've had appellate courts to review trial courts since the beginning of courts.
00:33:46.000So we've already known that there are going to be times when your trial courts are going to get things wrong, and that's why you have the appeal system.
00:33:53.000But that being said, it doesn't remove the frustration of knowing that to get there is going to be a problem.
00:33:58.000I tell people all the time, they come in and they say, oh, I want justice.
00:34:02.000And I say, well, let me just let me just stop you right there.
00:34:04.000If it was justice, you wouldn't even have to be talking to a lawyer.
00:34:07.000Someone would just, you know, Just decide, and the decision would be done correctly, and you wouldn't have to go spend money, or relive the pain, or have to deal with the accusations.
00:34:17.000But that's where our system is, and you're right.
00:34:19.000People are losing the faith to believe that we're going to look and apply the law fairly.
00:34:24.000Whether it's policies at a big tech company, whether it's the laws on defamation, whether it's, what I would say is, really a Hypocritical application of the idea of equality.
00:34:38.000So many folks on the left will say, well, you have to believe all women.
00:34:41.000I'm sorry, I thought all people were equal.
00:35:29.000And then you gotta get people to back up and enforce it!
00:35:32.000Because someone like Amber Heard, who, again, like you've been saying, like we've been seeing, lack of evidence on her side, lots of evidence on his side.
00:36:20.000I think the problem is, that's a hashtag, but it's also sort of a foundational stone of our current legal system as it relates to a lot of marital law.
00:36:36.000That's what is unfortunately eroding, far more than this idea of same-sex marriage.
00:36:40.000It's eroding marriage because states are basically saying, well, if you're a man and you're a provider, you really have, ultimately it's what the woman says goes.
00:36:48.000And that's, and you have to prove that it's not true.
00:36:50.000And like you said, if someone doesn't have the resources of Johnny Depp, well, they lose their kids or they lose their shirt.
00:38:20.000I'd rather give it directly to the kids.
00:38:21.000We have a court system that says, basically, you give this money to the mom, and the mom's going to look out for the best interest of the kids.
00:38:27.000I think that's where a lot of people see themselves, even though they didn't parent children together.
00:38:30.000Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were so many voiceless men, or women who were the daughters of men treated that way, or sisters, go, this is the problem with our court system.
00:38:42.000been seen in numerous cases where you know one parent says you know let's say for example oh i'm a i'm a doctor so i can take care of my kids better this this woman doesn't know anything you should give them to me well are you a good father that's the question flip it to the other side well i'm the mother i i'm definitely going to take care of them okay but you We're going to apply all the good things that these other women did to this situation, and we're going to institutionalize that bias when we need to evaluate the situation.
00:39:21.000And the number of dads that go into these situations, into divorces, into disputes, or even after they're divorced, right?
00:39:27.000The alimony situation, the child support situation.
00:39:30.000The system is built in, in almost every single state and every court, that the dad comes in one or five steps behind.
00:40:23.000And if that is the case, is there any kind of hope for reform to a legal system that, you know, puts people on an equal footing?
00:40:31.000Well, the first thing I'm going to say is this, and this is not for you because you get the terms right, but for all you people out there saying, is he, is he going to go to, is she going to go to jail, or is he going to go to jail at the end of this civil lawsuit?
00:40:51.000We still got things to go in the trial.
00:40:52.000We still got rulings for the court, even after the evidence is in, to determine whether certain things are still in, whether they can be considered, what weight they're going to give.
00:41:00.000But, you know, it's looking as though the evidence that really needs to matter gets in.
00:41:05.000So many people will go to a court and they'll say, well, I heard everything.
00:41:18.000But what you forget is that the judge can make decisions about what evidence come in, right?
00:41:23.000In the criminal case, motions to suppress.
00:41:26.000Evidence that never comes in or evidence that's never given by the prosecution to help the person in the defense.
00:41:31.000Similarly, in a civil case, evidentiary rulings that were made in the beginning that will impact what evidence is even shown in the first place.
00:41:37.000But here, you're getting to see so much more of the evidence that, in my mind, it's painting more of the real story than what happened in the Sun case before.
00:41:47.000But then it comes down to... And that's good.
00:41:49.000That is going to bear more in Johnny Depp's favor to be able to clear that high hurdle.
00:41:54.000It seems to me like maybe the likelihood is they say, okay, sure, this was, you know, defamation, but we're not going to give you the money.
00:42:01.000They could go and say, this was a false statement, it was never true, but, you know, everyone thought you were a bad actor anyways, or you weren't going to get those movies, that Fantastic Beasts spinoff, you know, nobody wanted, you were a has-been anyway, so he's going to have hurdles there too, right?
00:42:16.000He's still going to have to jump over all those hurdles because someone decided to make false accusations against him, and he's going to fight every part of that.
00:42:25.000As the plaintiff, he's going to fight every part of that.
00:42:30.000Like you just mentioned, this is civil.
00:42:33.000How can people be hopeful that the system is reformed so that there are criminal charges brought against people who make false accusations that destroy people's lives?
00:42:40.000Because destroying someone's livelihood is a much bigger deal than people give it credit for.
00:42:59.000The number of judges who are being elected into positions at the trial courts, the appellate courts, with not only no experience, but actually maybe even worse is folks who have detrimental experience who don't know what they're doing.
00:43:13.000They're the ones that are hamstringing the parties from really being able to get any semblance of justice or even being heard to tell the real story and let the chips fall where they may with the true story.
00:43:23.000You've got to get active in those elections.
00:43:24.000But even talking about your political positions, your appointed positions, the people who are appointing the folks who decide what the rules are, your legislature who decides what are the rules of evidence.
00:43:35.000Oh, you can go ahead and bring these kinds of claims.
00:43:37.000There's no way to just deal with it early on like an anti-SLAPP lawsuit right at the beginning.
00:43:47.000I mean, you can have one county over, and it's an entirely different legal protocol.
00:43:52.000I mean, that's why some people were saying it was a big deal that this is in Virginia, as opposed to California, because that's where, I think it was the Washington Post, where the article was posted.
00:44:02.000And the laws are different, where you may have a better chance.
00:44:04.000That's how big of a difference it can make.
00:44:07.000And that is also how much of a difference you can make being involved locally.
00:44:11.000More so than I know it's tough with politicians when you're thinking about presidents and
00:44:15.000senators like well how much can they really do they have one vote.
00:44:17.000A judge can make a huge difference and your local legislature can make a huge difference
00:44:22.000as it relates to what is allowed in your courts.
00:44:26.000And maybe an unpopular opinion but I'm going to say it anyways.
00:44:29.000There are you've got to look past the R or the D or the L or the I next to the name on
00:44:36.000If you're in a state that votes, or if you're in a state that does retention voting or that kind of thing.
00:44:41.000Because there are judges who are dedicated to following the laws in both parties.
00:45:05.000But you've gotta take other action if you're gonna see change.
00:45:08.000Otherwise, we're gonna go the way of people who don't trust their government and believe that anything the government is doing is probably wrong.
00:45:20.000I don't think it's entirely misguided to think that there's a lot wrong with America's institutions right now, but you've got to do more than just bitch about it.
00:45:26.000Okay, speaking of which, you guys let me know who else you would like to see in the next Ash Wednesday.
00:45:30.000I know we kind of do these intermittently because a lot of people, it's not like Tim Pool, by the way Tim, hello, love you buddy, where everyone has to come out in studio, but when we do the Ash Wednesdays, we do, since it's a sit-down, a long sit-down, we want them to come in studio, let us, let me know, comment below who you'd like to see.
00:45:44.000Should we, should we stop swatting Tim?
00:46:03.000You guys can go get the Crowder 7 Plus 1 Sampler.
00:46:06.000Again, they're not an official sponsor of the show, but Tim over there is a great guy, and he has a great YouTube channel if you want to learn about cigars.
00:46:12.000We are going to actually discuss some of the origin stories and what's been going on with Big Tech on Mug Club YouTube.