The Megyn Kelly Show - Mark Geragos on Scott Peterson, Kim Potter, Alec Baldwin, and the State of CNN ｜ Ep. 218

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00:00:14.020 Yeah.

00:00:15.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:17.500 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:26.820 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:28.380 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:30.680 Thrilled, thrilled about what we're doing today.

00:00:33.040 My guest today for the full show is someone I have long admired, Mark Garagos.

00:00:37.440 He's one of the most fascinating, accomplished, legit lawyers, trial lawyers in the country.

00:00:44.820 He has defended some of the biggest names in the most famous and infamous cases over the past few decades,

00:00:49.940 including several cases, several making big headlines right now and even today.

00:00:54.700 Here are just a few of his most famous clients.

00:00:57.280 Michael Jackson, actress Winona Ryder, actor Jussie Smollett, oh yes, Colin Kaepernick, and Scott Peterson.

00:01:06.660 Do you know that there's news in the Scott Peterson case?

00:01:09.400 This is one of the first cases I covered when I was at Fox News.

00:01:12.180 I was a young cub reporter.

00:01:13.900 I didn't know what I was doing.

00:01:14.980 I was much closer to being a lawyer than I was to being a journalist at that point in time.

00:01:19.500 And so I love this case because it had all the elements and the whole country was riveted by it.

00:01:24.620 Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his wife and their unborn child back in 2004.

00:01:31.520 Well, he was in court yesterday being resentenced.

00:01:35.280 He was given a death sentence at the time.

00:01:37.360 Well, he received a new sentence for those 2004 murders.

00:01:40.560 But Peterson might be getting a new trial as well.

00:01:44.620 So it's not just that his sentence has been effectively reduced.

00:01:48.560 He may be getting a new trial.

00:01:50.100 So we're going to get into why that is.

00:01:52.300 And Mark Garagos believes to this day that Scott Peterson is innocent.

00:01:55.660 Going to get into Jussie Smollett.

00:01:57.760 Talk about that.

00:01:58.660 And new testimonies underway right now in the trial of Minnesota police officer Kim Potter,

00:02:02.440 who's on trial for having shot Daunte Wright with a gun, which she believed was a taser.

00:02:09.020 So lots to discuss.

00:02:09.940 Mark Garagos is a trial lawyer and managing partner of Garagos and Garagos,

00:02:14.040 and co-host of the podcast Reasonable Doubt with Adam Carolla.

00:02:18.420 Thank you so much for being here, Mark.

00:02:19.720 How are you?

00:02:20.900 Thank you.

00:02:21.380 I'm wonderful.

00:02:22.280 It's, I guess, kind of come full circle.

00:02:25.640 I remember you covering the Peterson case and thought you had a bright future.

00:02:30.060 And see, I could prognosticate things then and now.

00:02:34.400 Oh, my God.

00:02:34.920 I would have been so honored if I had known that at the time.

00:02:38.220 I just watched you.

00:02:39.400 And you're such a skilled trial attorney, such confidence.

00:02:42.660 And you're at the peak of all these massive cases, a lot of pressure.

00:02:46.520 So that does mean a lot to me.

00:02:48.180 Thank you for saying that.

00:02:49.580 It was quite a different time.

00:02:52.680 You were just starting out.

00:02:54.140 Kimberly Goufoyle was just starting out, then married to the mayor.

00:02:59.360 And Nancy Grace just kind of blown up, so to speak. 1.00

00:03:05.080 And Court TV was really in its heyday at that point.

00:03:09.120 It's true.

00:03:09.540 I will tell you, I'll tell you, though, that I was thinking about a lot of those things

00:03:14.340 yesterday because, as you just mentioned, Scott was just resentenced.

00:03:18.360 And, by the way, I think that's a little bit of kabuki theater because the same judge

00:03:23.440 who has this, and you had mentioned that the California Supreme Court had reversed the death

00:03:29.980 penalty unanimously, by the way, because we had complained in real time the judge was using

00:03:35.340 the absolute wrong standard for excusing jurors.

00:03:39.880 If somebody didn't have a kind of a preference for the death penalty or not, he was just

00:03:48.440 excusing anybody who was against the death penalty, which is not the standard.

00:03:52.860 I was bitterly complaining at the time.

00:03:55.400 Yeah, he should have followed up and said, but can you still be fair?

00:03:58.660 Could you still impose it?

00:04:00.040 If the facts justified?

00:04:01.060 Which, by the way, was the law, and it was clear, it was U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

00:04:06.400 And the California Supreme Court, not only the poor judge DeLucchi is now dead, but not

00:04:12.500 only reversed it, but kind of excoriated the prosecution.

00:04:16.000 Why did you allow this to happen?

00:04:17.800 You know, this was basically a year-long proceeding, and what a waste of time.

00:04:22.640 My position has been, well, if you get kind of pro-death penalty jurors, you're getting

00:04:28.620 pro-law enforcement jurors, and that should have tainted the guilt phase as well.

00:04:34.840 What they did, instead of going that far, what they did is they issued, right after the

00:04:39.660 reversal, an OSC, Order to Show Cause, saying to the trial judge, look, there's this woman 0.95

00:04:46.460 who was a juror, Strawberry Shortcake is the way she was dubbed by the media. 1.00

00:04:50.820 And just to jump in, hold on, Mark, because I just want to make sure that our audience is

00:04:54.280 with us.

00:04:55.000 We're shifting gears a little.

00:04:56.120 He got a new trial instead of a death sentence because the judge shouldn't have been disqualifying

00:05:01.360 jurors who had doubts about the death penalty.

00:05:04.340 So that's why he got a different sentence on Wednesday.

00:05:06.760 Well, what he got was he got a different sentence, exactly.

00:05:08.840 Different sentence.

00:05:09.580 But he wants a new trial.

00:05:11.540 He wants a redo on the guilt or innocence phase based on something else involving jurors.

00:05:17.540 Yes, but it's a different issue, and it revolves around this, as you say, Strawberry

00:05:21.640 Shortcake.

00:05:22.280 Okay, great.

00:05:22.740 Go ahead.

00:05:22.980 Exactly.

00:05:23.660 Exactly.

00:05:24.100 And so what they've done is they had a, they issued the Supreme Court issue in order to

00:05:30.300 show cause.

00:05:31.020 So now there's, they're back in the trial court.

00:05:33.900 The same judge who resentenced him to life yesterday has now set a hearing for next year.

00:05:39.880 Um, and the kind of an interesting twist that hasn't been reported on, she filed a declaration

00:05:46.040 denying that she had lied or denying that she hadn't been truthful, but now she's got

00:05:52.000 a new lawyer and she's invoking the fifth amendment. 1.00

00:05:55.200 Oh, and so, wait, wait, wait, wait, so again, let's set it up because you people are not

00:05:58.940 as neck deep in it as you are.

00:06:00.160 Um, so this juror, the alleged misconduct is when you guys were going through, because

00:06:06.000 you were Scott's lawyer.

00:06:07.080 I mean, I guess we should remind people that again, you were his trial lawyer.

00:06:10.040 So when you were voidering the jurors and figuring out who you guys wanted on the jury, you and

00:06:14.940 the prosecution had to agree, um, that this woman filled out a form and did not disclose

00:06:21.280 that she had been the victim of domestic abuse while pregnant, which of course was the situation

00:06:28.340 being alleged right here.

00:06:29.940 Might have given, might have given us pause, right?

00:06:32.720 Yes, of course.

00:06:33.500 And as a defense lawyer, you can either bounce somebody for cause saying there's no way this

00:06:37.740 person can be fair, or you can use your perimptory challenges saying, I don't have to tell you

00:06:41.100 why I don't want her.

00:06:41.720 I just, I don't want her.

00:06:42.900 Um, you don't, you weren't given that opportunity cause you didn't know, you didn't know that

00:06:45.860 this woman had been abused while pregnant. 1.00

00:06:48.200 She kept it a secret orally in writing.

00:06:51.480 I guess it came up a couple of times.

00:06:52.500 She never disclosed.

00:06:53.640 And so I'll, I'll bounce it back to you on what, so now she's pleading the fifth.

00:06:58.560 Yeah.

00:06:58.960 She filed a declaration, presumably at the behest of the prosecution, because it was

00:07:03.480 attached, it was attached as an exhibit.

00:07:06.500 And then she gets a new lawyer. 0.99

00:07:08.080 Now she's, now she's asking for immunity, which is shocking to me, which if you read

00:07:14.240 between the lines, the prosecutor got her to say something, presumably that she no longer

00:07:19.600 thinks is true or didn't think was true at the time.

00:07:23.820 If they don't give her immunity, uh, then as you know, they'll strike the declaration and

00:07:29.400 Scott's got a better than even chance of getting a new trial.

00:07:32.220 What did she say in the declaration?

00:07:34.520 Because she, she, like, as I understood it, it's his defense counsel saying we came to

00:07:39.940 understand that she had this thing and she didn't disclose it.

00:07:43.980 Therefore we're entitled to a new trial because he's entitled to, you know, a jury that doesn't

00:07:48.240 have any sort of unfair bias against him.

00:07:50.680 Why was she submitting an affidavit or a declaration?

00:07:53.460 The juror.

00:07:53.920 Because they were trying to say, uh, the, the appellate lawyers were saying for Scott

00:08:00.400 that the, um, she had, uh, not disclosed this, that she knew that it was relevant.

00:08:06.280 Uh, one of the reasons that this was a hot issue, I had caught two other jurors who had

00:08:12.480 lied, prospective jurors who had lied about their background and having domestic violence,

00:08:17.780 um, and caught them in real time.

00:08:20.660 And they had fooled me.

00:08:21.860 I mean, one, one juror had gone back.

00:08:23.960 I mean, we're going back 17 years back then they had chat rooms and somebody had faxed me

00:08:29.380 a chat room, uh, conversation that one of these prospective jurors had where she had was bragging 0.98

00:08:35.680 that she fooled the dumb shit defense lawyer, me, um, and was going to get on this jury and 0.99

00:08:41.720 fry his client. 0.99

00:08:42.900 And I confronted her with that after I got that, I was a little ticked at my PI for not

00:08:48.900 finding it, but that was the kind of stuff we were dealing with.

00:08:52.560 That's where we coined the term stealth jurors, jurors who wanted to get on a jury for, you

00:08:58.260 know, some other agenda other than to do justice.

00:09:00.740 So what, so now this court is, uh, I guess February 20th, I think is what the February

00:09:06.420 25th, the hearing on whether he should get a new trial on guilt or innocence will begin.

00:09:12.500 And I wonder what you think.

00:09:14.580 I know what you want, but what do you think the odds are?

00:09:17.360 Cause I've read a lot of articles on it now and, and half of them say legal analysts say

00:09:21.840 it's very, very unlikely he's going to get it.

00:09:24.140 And then half of them say legal analysts say he has a very good chance of getting it.

00:09:27.880 Well, the, we're in the state court.

00:09:31.380 So, uh, the California Supreme court, as I indicated, had unanimously referred this back

00:09:37.880 to the state trial court.

00:09:39.600 It's an awful heavy lift for a trial court judge in a case like this.

00:09:44.440 Remember at the time you, you probably have a, uh, a pretty good memory of it.

00:09:49.680 I mean, this was the most hated man in America.

00:09:52.120 As soon as Amber Fry came on the scene, that was all she wrote in terms of the kind of pre 0.89

00:09:57.500 trial prejudice and animosity and animus towards Scott.

00:10:01.120 So it's, I hate to be a cynic, but it is a heavy lift.

00:10:04.820 However, if strawberry shortcake does not get it, get immunity and will not testify, um,

00:10:12.260 that declaration of hers gets struck and they're left with no evidence to rebut they being the

00:10:18.800 prosecution to rebut the OSC.

00:10:21.400 And so the, presumably the, he would get a reversal.

00:10:25.100 Now, if I, if you're asking me to prognosticate, I'm always more confident that that would happen

00:10:30.420 in federal courts and state court, but we'll see.

00:10:34.080 It let's go back through it because his sister, Scott's sister, Janie has been a tireless sister-in-law

00:10:41.680 has been a tireless advocate for him.

00:10:44.060 I watched a 48 hours piece not long ago that got into it in depth with her and, um, she

00:10:50.460 and his supporters maintain he didn't do it.

00:10:54.700 It's not just like the prosecution didn't meet its burden that he is innocent of this crime.

00:11:00.020 And the theory is, and just to remind the viewers, um, what happened was it was December.

00:11:06.380 It was, it was December 24th.

00:11:07.940 It was Christmas Eve, right?

00:11:09.220 2002.

00:11:09.700 And I'll let you tell him, Mark, what was the, the theory of the prosecution was what

00:11:14.000 happened to the prosecution was that he had, at least in the opening statements, they had

00:11:18.760 taken the position that he killed her on the 23rd, that he transported her in the back of

00:11:25.860 a boat up to the bay that he dumped her on the 24th and then came home and had made conflicting

00:11:32.540 statements, golfing or fishing, blah, blah, blah.

00:11:35.260 Um, during the trial and by closings, we had, I thought demonstrably proved that she was alive

00:11:43.220 on the morning of the 24th.

00:11:44.720 And the way we had done that is they had a forensic, uh, computer expert who was on the

00:11:49.660 stand and during cross-examination, I got him to admit that it appeared that the activity

00:11:54.720 on the morning of the 24th was consistent with the websites that Lacey would go to that

00:12:00.380 she had logged in and had all the signatures of Lacey.

00:12:04.000 So, and we had shown in the hamper that the clothes that were there would have been the

00:12:08.860 dirty clothes that she had won on the 20, uh, worn on the 23rd.

00:12:12.020 The prosecutor, Rick DeStasso, who's now a judge, by the way, um, got up in closing rebuttal

00:12:18.360 and said, well, it really doesn't matter.

00:12:20.280 Yeah, we may have been wrong.

00:12:21.820 We don't know when she was dead.

00:12:23.140 We don't know how she's dead.

00:12:24.400 We don't know where, but the fact is his alibi was in the Bay.

00:12:29.680 That's where she was found four or so months later.

00:12:32.780 So therefore, uh, you, you must convict a couple of the jurors in real time back then

00:12:38.280 said, but for her being found in the Bay, um, they never would have convicted.

00:12:44.080 Um, I always thought, and I publicly, before I took the case said, you know, there's guys

00:12:50.020 in state prison on a lot less evidence that the body washes up in the same location, um,

00:12:56.260 where your alibi was.

00:12:57.840 But the, the problem was it was a four month hiatus.

00:13:01.580 Everybody in the world knew where he had been.

00:13:04.100 And so that kind of takes away, if you will, the, uh, the causal connection.

00:13:09.680 And number two, that area where the Bay was searched repeatedly by four or five different

00:13:17.540 agencies and they found nothing until after this huge storm.

00:13:21.900 And that's when they found, um, Lacey's body and Connor's, um, body as well.

00:13:26.920 Because Lacey was eight months pregnant with their, their son, Connor.

00:13:30.840 And the theory of the prosecution was that he killed her because he was having an affair

00:13:36.420 with Amber Fry and he didn't want a child and he didn't want to be with Lacey anymore.

00:13:40.600 He wanted to be with Amber Fry.

00:13:41.780 Um, you know, the very beautiful blonde who, you know, she, it was the Gloria all red moment, 0.96

00:13:47.540 you know, that we see in virtually every case.

00:13:49.580 Um, and that was the bombshell because when Lacey was missing, the whole country was saying,

00:13:53.580 where is she?

00:13:54.000 Where is she?

00:13:54.400 Is this beautiful eight month pregnant woman, adoring mother, Sharon Rocha, you used to see

00:14:00.120 her everywhere.

00:14:01.640 Uh, Scott Peterson's a good looking guy.

00:14:03.220 It's like, oh, they seem like this all American couple.

00:14:05.040 My God, it's Christmas Eve.

00:14:06.640 What happened to Lacey and Connor, the unborn baby.

00:14:09.740 And then things turned when Amber Fry came forward.

00:14:15.300 Amber had been told by Scott, and this is one of the things that led people to hate him

00:14:19.100 and believe he did it, that his wife was dead.

00:14:22.240 She only met Scott Peterson on 1120, November 20.

00:14:25.760 And he said, my wife's dead.

00:14:27.660 This will be my first Christmas without her, which of course, you know, the prosecution

00:14:30.820 was like, that's foreshadowing by him.

00:14:32.340 Um, and then Sharon turned on him, uh, Lacey's family turned on him.

00:14:38.300 And then you tell me, Mark, because I know you don't like it when your clients give interviews

00:14:41.820 to the press.

00:14:42.600 I listened to you for years and I know you you'll dump a client for that.

00:14:46.940 Um, but he sat down with Diane Sawyer and spewed a bunch of nonsense that we all knew

00:14:53.280 wasn't true.

00:14:53.860 We actually pulled a clip because I wanted to ask you about how you, the lawyer thought

00:14:57.200 felt about this.

00:14:57.760 But here he is 17 plus years ago, talking to Diane Sawyer on, on GMA.

00:15:03.740 Did your wife find out about it?

00:15:06.140 I told my wife.

00:15:08.340 When?

00:15:08.780 In early December.

00:15:13.000 Did it cause a rupture in the marriage? 0.97

00:15:15.940 It was not, um, a positive, obviously, it's, uh, you know, inappropriate, um, but it was

00:15:29.420 not something that we weren't, um, dealing with.

00:15:35.140 A lot of arguing?

00:15:36.660 No, no, no, um, I, I, you know, I can't say that.

00:15:42.660 Um, that even, you know, she was okay with the idea, but, uh, it wasn't anything that

00:15:51.720 would break us apart.

00:15:54.180 There wasn't a lot of anger.

00:15:56.740 No.

00:15:58.420 The Diane Sawyer confused face speaks for us all. 0.99

00:16:02.660 Oh, she was fine with your affair?

00:16:04.120 Well, the, I used to say during this case that, um, the, uh, the absolute worst demographic 1.00

00:16:12.700 for Scott and for me was professional white women. 1.00

00:16:17.640 I have never seen, I could go to the gym in the morning during this trial and there would

00:16:23.000 be, because there were no cameras in the courtroom, which by the way, was probably my biggest mistake

00:16:27.660 because, um, things were being reported from New York and there were all these urban myths

00:16:33.260 and I could explain or disabuse somebody about any of the pieces of evidence, but ultimately

00:16:39.960 they would say, what about this?

00:16:41.560 What about this?

00:16:42.080 And I would debunk it, debunk it, debunk it.

00:16:43.940 And then it would always default to, yeah, well, I had an ex-boyfriend just like him and

00:16:49.240 I could see where he would have done this.

00:16:51.040 And you can't, you know, there's a, there's a visceral quality to that where you just can't

00:16:55.160 get over it.

00:16:55.800 And this interview, I mean, you've captured my sentiment exactly.

00:17:00.400 I tell people, funny, I, I suppose we may talk about Alec Baldwin, um, the, the idea that

00:17:08.080 somehow you need to go out and do an interview and you need to curate your image, so to speak,

00:17:14.280 when you're in the eye of the storm is, I can't think of worst advice consistently.

00:17:19.240 The only guy who ever did it with any success ultimately was Robert Blake.

00:17:24.320 Um, and, um, uh, other than that, I can't give you an example where it worked out well

00:17:30.100 for somebody to go do an interview while they're pre-charging or while the prosecutor's making

00:17:35.720 decisions.

00:17:36.300 It just makes no sense whatsoever.

00:17:38.100 No, I mean, he, I, I would say it's so obvious that he's lying.

00:17:42.520 He did not tell Lacey about his affair and there, there was no tension because she didn't know

00:17:47.840 there may have been tension for him.

00:17:49.240 And then the other thing he did, you know, apart from, I believe, murdering his wife and

00:17:53.100 unborn child.

00:17:53.800 Um, but the other thing he did was he, while he was at Lacey's vigil, you know, they're

00:17:59.840 having the vigils, like, where is she?

00:18:01.360 Where's Connor?

00:18:01.980 Because their body didn't come up as, as you say, until April, uh, at the Marina, he's

00:18:07.160 on the phone.

00:18:08.100 We now know Amber Fry.

00:18:09.260 She went to the cops when she realized the guy she was dating was the guy married to this

00:18:12.560 Lacey Peterson who everybody's looking for.

00:18:14.340 So to her credit, she went to the cops and said, I think I'm dating this man.

00:18:17.520 They had her do 29 hours worth of tapes with him.

00:18:21.000 And one of them, I will never forget is she's talking to him.

00:18:24.880 He's like, I'm at the Eiffel tower, Paris.

00:18:28.520 It's so beautiful.

00:18:30.000 He was at the vigil for Lacey Mark.

00:18:33.120 He is guilty as the day is long.

00:18:36.240 Well, I, you know what I, the, the counter to that is, and what I look, I'm with you.

00:18:42.040 The first time I heard it, I said, how are we ever going to get over this?

00:18:45.340 But then in talking with him, he said, look, I understood that the minute Amber surfaced,

00:18:51.420 that the minute she came out, all bets were off.

00:18:54.320 They were going to stop looking for Lacey.

00:18:56.120 I had to do something.

00:18:57.420 I had to keep her on ice, hoping that we would find Lacey.

00:19:01.700 And then that would solve the problem.

00:19:03.560 And I, I, you know, I've often said, people say, well, how can you, you're drinking the 0.77

00:19:09.680 Kool-Aid, you're inside, you know, you're psychotic.

00:19:11.820 How could you believe these? 0.89

00:19:12.800 Look, I've represented over the almost 40 years, probably, I don't know, 500 homicide

00:19:20.240 cases over the 40 years, maybe, maybe less.

00:19:23.720 But I, I know when somebody's good for something, I know when they're capable of it.

00:19:28.620 I've figured that out.

00:19:29.720 I can tell.

00:19:30.440 I know when somebody's a sociopath, I know when they're, I mean, I can just read it just

00:19:34.740 by going through it.

00:19:36.060 This guy doesn't have the capability.

00:19:37.600 And that's just my spending that amount of time with him.

00:19:41.900 And I'll tell you, based on the evidence, the evidence, I know that people say, well,

00:19:47.060 circumstantial, he didn't act right.

00:19:49.440 He, you know, the, the tapes you mentioned always are, are thrown back in my face.

00:19:54.560 And I said, yeah, but the problem is nobody can explain where this happened, how this happened,

00:19:59.760 how this guy who gets on an interview and, um, uh, does not acquit himself well, um, was

00:20:07.320 able to not leave a forensic trace anywhere, anyhow, of this crime.

00:20:13.120 How is it the perfect crime?

00:20:14.500 And by the way, why couldn't he have like smothered her or strangled her, which wouldn't

00:20:18.440 lead to, you know, blood evidence.

00:20:19.980 Her DNA would already be all over the house. 0.51

00:20:22.280 And then he, he got her body out of the house.

00:20:24.400 Yeah, but there wasn't anything that was consistent with that.

00:20:27.960 I mean, they went through, if you saw kinds of the, um, and we went extensively over the,

00:20:33.480 uh, forensic, they couldn't even find anything.

00:20:36.320 There would be excretions.

00:20:37.520 There would be evidence or telltale signs, trace evidence that would have been.

00:20:41.260 I got another one for you.

00:20:42.080 I got another one for you.

00:20:42.780 Why wouldn't, why wouldn't he take a polygraph?

00:20:44.480 The night cops came over the first day she was reported missing.

00:20:48.280 And they said, we, we take a polygraph and he refused.

00:20:51.120 Only because it's not admissible in California.

00:20:54.720 No, but this is at the point where she's missing.

00:20:56.600 He's supposed to be the grieving, terrified husband.

00:20:58.720 Where is she?

00:20:59.220 Oh my God.

00:21:00.060 Right.

00:21:00.300 Like if I go missing for a day and they say, Doug, will you take a polygraph?

00:21:03.280 Doug says, yes, of course, whatever, whatever you need.

00:21:05.560 But he didn't.

00:21:07.240 Well, it depends.

00:21:08.040 I don't know if Doug was playing around on the side, but he did not.

00:21:13.420 What do you know?

00:21:14.020 What?

00:21:14.520 No.

00:21:14.680 I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to ruin a, what appears to be a very happy

00:21:20.300 marriage.

00:21:20.680 So you never know.

00:21:22.520 But look, the, I, I always advise clients.

00:21:26.080 If you want to take a polygraph, I'm going to do it with my guy first.

00:21:29.600 I mean, polygraphs are notoriously, um, uh, slipshod.

00:21:33.680 There's a reason there's a code section that doesn't allow them in.

00:21:37.660 And there's people who know how to pass them and people who would never pass them, even

00:21:42.140 if you are telling the truth.

00:21:43.120 So to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

00:21:45.660 I, I still come back to her circle back.

00:21:47.980 There is no evidence.

00:21:48.940 There's absolutely no evidence, uh, of anything that shows where, how, or when.

00:21:55.300 Well, he, the evidence was all circumstantial about his affair, about him saying she was

00:21:59.760 dead, about him on Christmas Eve, weirdly going fishing in his boat.

00:22:05.120 He couldn't remember what bait he used when the cops asked him, he went fishing in the

00:22:09.800 very same place.

00:22:10.460 Her body and Connor's body washed up four months later.

00:22:12.500 He was researching the currents.

00:22:15.480 Um, like that was basically the case.

00:22:17.720 They never were able to say how he allegedly killed her or even as you point out when exactly

00:22:23.000 when.

00:22:23.300 And by the way, we did a, um, a demonstration in that boat of trying to toss a body over

00:22:28.840 and he would have capsized every, every time the judge would not allow that demonstration

00:22:34.440 to be admitted into evidence, which I thought was outrageous because he allowed it a prosecution

00:22:39.620 demonstration that did not replicate it.

00:22:42.020 Also on the fishing on Christmas Eve, it came out in trial.

00:22:46.180 I never knew this, that, um, Lacey's, uh, stepfather was fishing on new on Christmas Eve

00:22:52.660 as well.

00:22:53.220 He had never disclosed that even though people were saying who goes fishing on Christmas Eve.

00:22:58.300 Um, so, you know, there's a lot of things you can always weave together things that don't

00:23:02.680 look right.

00:23:03.380 But at the end of the day, this is not, this is a guy who's got absolutely nothing, a complete

00:23:09.860 pristine background.

00:23:11.160 And if you think he just committed cold-daunted murder, especially of his unborn son, which

00:23:16.280 nobody will tell you that he wasn't excited about having a son.

00:23:20.540 And I think that's what he wanted to say yesterday in the sentencing hearing, but the judge wouldn't

00:23:25.220 let him allocate.

00:23:26.280 Right.

00:23:26.760 I'll, I'll, I'll make just a couple of points for you.

00:23:29.520 Uh, the, the affect, his weird affect.

00:23:32.800 He was weirdly aloof.

00:23:34.200 He was smiling at the memorial, caught on camera with big smiles.

00:23:37.720 And people were like, that is not a grieving husband looking for his wife. 0.98

00:23:40.800 That's a, that's a sociopath.

00:23:42.740 But we recently had on Amanda Knox and she was talking about, you know, obviously she 0.94

00:23:47.900 was wrongly prosecuted by this crazy Italian prosecutor.

00:23:51.920 And she, her affect too, was a little off seeming at the time. 0.69

00:23:56.440 And it was used against her in a very unfair way.

00:23:59.420 You really can't go by that, uh, as it turns out.

00:24:02.500 And then the other thing is what the theory seems to be for, from Janie and others is

00:24:07.000 that there were robbers.

00:24:08.840 There were burglars in their Modesto, California neighborhood that they were seen that previously

00:24:15.040 we were told that the, the robbery or the burglary they committed was on the 26th, but

00:24:18.920 they have evidence that it actually happened on the 24th.

00:24:20.980 And that Lacey may have been walking. 1.00

00:24:22.640 Her dog may have seen them and may have been kidnapped by them.

00:24:26.100 Um, the dog was later found by itself with its leash still on.

00:24:30.760 Some believe Scott did that to make it look like somebody grabbed her and others, you know,

00:24:35.000 his side will say that the burglars got her.

00:24:37.000 So we'll watch all of it play out.

00:24:39.360 Um, I, I think it's fascinating if he actually does get a new trial, it will be the new trial

00:24:44.080 of the century.

00:24:45.320 It's going to like, I, no one will be able to pull it, peel their eyes away.

00:24:49.200 It's just got too many salacious, interesting elements.

00:24:52.960 Okay.

00:24:53.160 So much more with Mark Garagos.

00:24:54.400 He's represented everybody, everybody, including Jussie Smollett, including Michael Jackson,

00:24:58.940 going to ask him about Kim Potter, Ghislaine Maxwell, and much, much more.

00:25:02.100 Don't go away.

00:25:02.640 Okay, Mark.

00:25:25.420 So let's talk about Kim Potter.

00:25:26.860 Kim Potter is the police officer who's now on trial for having shot Dante Wright to death.

00:25:32.640 Um, where she clearly mistook her, her taser for her gun, or I guess her gun for her taser.

00:25:39.880 And, um, you can hear her on the tape saying, I'm going to tase you, taser, taser, taser. 0.95

00:25:43.920 And then she shoots with her firearm and he dies.

00:25:46.820 And it's obviously a tragic accident, but the prosecutor there has decided to treat it as a

00:25:51.620 crime.

00:25:52.140 She's charged with first and second degree manslaughter.

00:25:55.580 And, uh, boy, they are in a battle there in that courtroom.

00:25:58.620 I mean, both sides are fighting it out. 0.74

00:26:00.120 Um, this is the case in which the prosecution had, uh, I'm sorry, the judge had some lunatic

00:26:05.120 show up at her house trying to videotape her.

00:26:07.240 She spoke to that, uh, just the other day saying it was an effort to intimidate me.

00:26:12.560 Good luck.

00:26:13.200 Um, and the guy who did it was arrested.

00:26:15.900 But anyway, a new piece of videotape now showing Kim Potter after the shooting, we've all seen

00:26:22.500 the taser, taser, taser.

00:26:23.540 Here's a new piece of videotape showing her right after that upset and hear how her fellow 0.51

00:26:29.040 officer, officer Johnson tries to console her.

00:26:32.500 Listen, there's a lot of crying and then we'll get to the dialogue.

00:26:34.340 There you have it.

00:26:56.280 I mean, I don't know, Mark.

00:26:57.680 I think the average person looks at that and says, why are we charging her again?

00:27:01.460 She, she screwed up, but like, how is it criminal?

00:27:06.560 You know, there's, um, uh, I've been on obviously the criminal defense side.

00:27:12.340 I also do a, uh, probably half of my practice are suing police agencies in situations where

00:27:19.680 people have been wrongly killed.

00:27:21.300 And I've watched police officers almost uniformly get acquitted or have the judge dismiss at a

00:27:30.120 probable cause proceeding.

00:27:31.660 It's very, very difficult to ever convict a police officer.

00:27:36.180 This case, I think, um, is, uh, is very tough for the prosecution.

00:27:42.920 Um, and the, this tape, and I'm glad you played it certainly gives, um, you know, people often

00:27:51.200 say, well, they didn't show remorse or they didn't understand, or they, there wasn't, they

00:27:56.540 didn't act right.

00:27:57.680 I, you know, we I've spent a career defending people who didn't act right.

00:28:01.560 I mean, clearly here, this is somebody who's in the throes of, uh, a great deal of angst.

00:28:06.900 And I think that that is going to probably carry the day for it because remember, other

00:28:12.020 than people who are famous, police officers are the only other category of people that

00:28:18.120 truly get a presumption of innocence.

00:28:20.560 Interesting.

00:28:21.160 You know, to me, it boils down to the, what are the instructions going to be to the jury?

00:28:29.160 Because if the judge tells the jury that she can't have behaved recklessly, which is required

00:28:36.180 to prove first or second degree, um, she, she, if she can't have, uh, behaved recklessly

00:28:43.480 without knowing she was taking a dangerous risk, you know what I mean?

00:28:46.920 If she, if it was a true accident, she didn't realize she was pulling out a firearm and

00:28:51.480 shooting, then I don't see how she gets convicted. 1.00

00:28:55.260 Andrew Branca, uh, who's been amazing.

00:28:57.140 He's great.

00:28:57.580 He writes over at, um, legal insurrection.com.

00:28:59.960 They were amazing during the Rittenhouse trial and everything Andrew said was right.

00:29:03.140 Um, he put it as follows.

00:29:05.200 I was like, this is exactly it.

00:29:06.620 He says, the critical question is this, is the state required to prove that Kimberly Potter

00:29:11.040 was aware that she was holding a firearm in her hand in order to prove.

00:29:16.920 Beyond a reasonable doubt that her conduct in handling it was reckless and manslaughter.

00:29:20.780 Do they have to prove she was aware that she was holding a firearm?

00:29:25.140 The defense is, their position is that you cannot be engaged in reckless conduct that you

00:29:29.200 do not know you are engaged in, right?

00:29:31.320 Like you don't, you don't know you're firing a gun and the judge hasn't, hasn't instructed

00:29:37.080 the jury and it hasn't, and she hasn't given either side guidance on how this is going

00:29:40.720 to come down.

00:29:41.380 I kind of wonder, like, it all comes down to which way she wrote, how she, uh, informs

00:29:46.800 on recklessness.

00:29:48.440 Well, one of the problems is, and we've been arguing this in, uh, California state court

00:29:54.540 for years, the difference between the state of mind for what's called an implied malice

00:30:00.560 murder.

00:30:01.000 The difference in homicide between murder and manslaughter is whether there's malice.

00:30:06.480 Well, there's also what's called implied malice.

00:30:09.940 If you act in such a way, the law will imply that you had the malice for murder.

00:30:15.100 Um, I've often argued, and there's, I'm not alone here that sometimes the state of mind

00:30:22.320 when the jury gets the instruction on one of these manslaughter charges is very misleading

00:30:29.240 and, and a jury doesn't know what to do with it.

00:30:32.520 And here you've got, I can understand why the judge is not giving guidance, so to speak,

00:30:38.440 because they have what are called pattern instructions.

00:30:40.720 They've got instructions that have been either affirmed or, uh, blessed if you will, by the

00:30:47.640 appellate courts, but she probably in this case wants to hear how the evidence comes out 0.86

00:30:52.080 and then tailor it to that and tailor the instruction of that.

00:30:55.480 But it's a horrific job for jurors, for lay people to have to kind of parse through the language,

00:31:01.940 which never is very clear.

00:31:03.820 And then put that in context of what am I going to do with a police officer who didn't

00:31:09.800 go out there with the intention to do the killing.

00:31:12.800 Um, and so that's a, you know, God forbid that you're one of those jurors.

00:31:17.520 It's interesting because the defense seems to be hedging its bets.

00:31:20.240 They're going to argue that she didn't have a state of mind at all intending to kill anybody.

00:31:25.640 Obviously she didn't intend to fire her, her gun. 0.96

00:31:28.200 I think we can all give her that based on what we've seen, although some people aren't,

00:31:31.400 but they also seem to be kind of hedging by saying, even if she did intend to fire the

00:31:36.900 gun, she had cause because, um, the, the guy Dante Wright was, uh, was driving away with

00:31:44.560 an officer in the car, half in the car here is.

00:31:48.020 So they, what, what the prosecution did was they put on, um, officer lucky who was a three

00:31:53.100 year officer who she, she, Kim Potter was supposed to be training that day.

00:31:57.820 Um, and he was a prosecution witness sort of talking about his experience and what he

00:32:02.120 saw.

00:32:02.540 And then the defense attorney got up there and in like 20 minutes, seamless little boom,

00:32:07.940 boom, boom, boom, cross-examination got out the following, um, testimony.

00:32:13.460 Let's listen to it.

00:32:15.320 There's a voice that appears and says, Kim, that guy was trying to take off with me in

00:32:22.560 the car.

00:32:23.520 Remember hearing that?

00:32:24.920 Yes.

00:32:25.840 Whose voice was that?

00:32:27.480 Sergeant Johnson's voice.

00:32:29.160 Is this a high crime area for guns as well?

00:32:32.380 Yes.

00:32:33.300 And for drugs?

00:32:34.640 Yes.

00:32:35.540 And your intuition is formulated, um, by a number of things, but among them is that you've

00:32:42.060 been in this area all your life and know the streets as well as anybody and you ran the

00:32:49.180 plates, uh, found that, uh, the tabs were stale and then, um, you had a reason to stop

00:32:55.340 the car.

00:32:56.000 Is that right?

00:32:56.600 Yes.

00:32:57.040 So you wanted to find out what was going on.

00:33:00.380 Yes.

00:33:00.960 Cause you had an intuition that something else was going on besides the tabs.

00:33:04.740 Yes.

00:33:05.920 You didn't quite know, but you're a curious.

00:33:09.680 Yes.

00:33:10.120 And there was, uh, nothing wrong with, uh, you stopping the car for the reasons you said

00:33:16.600 you stopped it.

00:33:17.340 Right.

00:33:17.880 Correct.

00:33:18.480 No.

00:33:20.480 So he's just, he basically just trying to set up, it was a proper stop.

00:33:23.900 You were following order and that this was an area that was known for problematic, you

00:33:28.600 know, crimes and criminals and so on.

00:33:30.940 Um, and you know, you also get out the fact that the one officer was half in the car when

00:33:36.380 he tried to take off.

00:33:37.340 It's a, it's a technique that was used by the defense lawyer that he's probably, uh, been,

00:33:43.880 uh, gored by that, uh, countless times by prosecutors who go through that same litany,

00:33:48.900 um, when they're trying to convict one of his clients.

00:33:51.740 I mean, I've heard that kind of, this is a high crime area.

00:33:55.280 This is why you had an intuition.

00:33:57.020 This is why you did it, blah, blah, blah.

00:33:58.980 That's that, that's normally what the prosecutor would do here because you have a cop who's

00:34:04.540 on trial.

00:34:05.600 They, the other cop is going to support your theory.

00:34:09.500 You're being the defense lawyer and is going to give you what you want, which is exactly

00:34:14.040 what he just did right there.

00:34:15.400 And by the way, you're absolutely correct, Megan, because what this does is even if you

00:34:21.480 think that she, that she isn't being truthful when she says she had a gun, um, that even

00:34:28.520 with a gun, there is the, you know, she had a reasonable doubt as to what was happening

00:34:34.620 there and whether or not she could use the force that she used. 0.99

00:34:38.480 What do you think?

00:34:39.000 I mean, if you had to place a bet and I realized the trial's in the middle, but like, what would

00:34:42.780 you guess the jury would do with this?

00:34:44.620 Because I realized the prosecution is like, it was irresponsible.

00:34:47.620 You know, a man's dead.

00:34:48.660 She needs to be held accountable.

00:34:49.820 But it's like, you watch this distraught woman.

00:34:52.880 She's been on the force 26 years.

00:34:55.000 She's not like chauvin.

00:34:55.960 She doesn't have a litany of complaints against her.

00:34:58.160 She's a mom.

00:34:59.220 You can hear her distress.

00:35:00.520 They're really going to throw this woman in jail for upwards of 15 years that Keith Ellison 0.97

00:35:04.060 there wants to jack up the sentencing guidelines on her. 1.00

00:35:07.600 He wants them to throw the book at this woman. 0.99

00:35:10.160 Well, I'll tell you during, I'll give you an example during the written house trial.

00:35:14.060 One of the reasons I was kind of leery of predicting, even though I thought that it looked to me

00:35:21.240 like it was a self-defense, was you can't look or I can't see the jurors.

00:35:25.780 I mean, the jury selection, I've said this for years, is everything.

00:35:29.800 Most cases are over by the time you've sworn the panel.

00:35:32.000 Because you understand, I don't care how good you are as a lawyer, you're never going to

00:35:38.020 change people's view or their prism for what they look through and who they are.

00:35:44.020 So you have to basically pick a jury or deselect a jury that'll give you your best shot.

00:35:50.820 So I haven't seen their jury.

00:35:52.160 But I will tell you that so far, the way the evidence is unfolding, it sure is a compelling

00:35:57.640 argument for a not guilty.

00:36:00.180 And that, I think, is probably where it's headed.

00:36:04.520 Like I said, I'll circle back to what I told you before.

00:36:07.900 Cops get a presumption of innocence that a lot of other people don't get.

00:36:11.380 Hmm, that's true.

00:36:12.740 And they don't always deserve it.

00:36:14.880 But I feel like in this case, come on.

00:36:16.720 You know, the woman did it. 1.00

00:36:17.880 She made a terrible mistake.

00:36:18.940 She didn't have a history of negligence on the force.

00:36:21.260 You can show this is like a hothead or she's she never had any business having the badge.

00:36:25.660 Not only did she resign right after this happened, but the chief of police was forced out.

00:36:29.440 It was like, OK, by the way, the New York Times is reporting that there was a lawsuit against

00:36:36.000 Dante Wright's family, raising questions about whether Dante Wright in May of 2019, the woman

00:36:42.700 filing a lawsuit claims that Dante Wright shot her son in the head in Minneapolis, leaving

00:36:48.420 him severely disabled.

00:36:50.200 I mean, I don't know that the jury is going to hear anything about that.

00:36:52.900 But, you know, it's the cops walk up to these defendants not knowing what they're dealing

00:36:58.180 with, but they always have to presume the guy's got a gun and is willing to use it.

00:37:02.560 Well, the I saw that today and most probably that will not come into evidence because unless

00:37:09.480 the cop knew or had some indication that they knew about that incident, the judge would

00:37:16.160 probably rule that that's inadmissible.

00:37:18.100 But having seen that, it certainly, I think, would give pause to a prosecutor if they knew

00:37:24.200 about that when they were filing the case and what charges they were filing.

00:37:27.520 I mean, that's that's when you get back to prosecutorial discretion.

00:37:32.380 And part of the argument you've kind of implicitly made here, Megan, is why why are they exercising

00:37:39.620 their discretion in this way on this case?

00:37:42.840 What is the motivation for that?

00:37:44.580 Is it because they want to seek justice or are they pandering?

00:37:48.580 So that's Keith Ellison.

00:37:50.760 He's a he's a political hack.

00:37:52.740 I mean, he is he's a political hack and he's the A.G. there and he's the one who insisted

00:37:57.720 on jacking up the charges.

00:37:59.120 And now he wants to push for a jacked up sentence if she's found guilty.

00:38:02.960 It happened in the wake of George Floyd and it was in Minnesota.

00:38:07.440 So all that, you know, temperatures are already up and the nation is stressed.

00:38:12.540 And that was reflected, I think, in her reaction to what she did.

00:38:16.780 But we still need to be the laws of the law and not everything's a crime just because it's

00:38:21.100 awful. And she and the city will be sued. 1.00

00:38:23.960 I think they already sued and they'll get millions of dollars.

00:38:27.460 That's to me the remedy or a civil lawsuit, which is going to go the way of the family.

00:38:32.480 More with Mark Garagos.

00:38:33.580 We're going to pick up Jussie Smollett right after this break, who is represented by his

00:38:37.960 firm. Oh, that's exciting.

00:38:39.980 And remember, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every

00:38:45.240 weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

00:38:51.000 YouTube dot com slash Megyn Kelly.

00:38:53.920 If you prefer the audio version, a podcast, just go ahead and subscribe, download for free

00:38:58.420 on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher or wherever you like.

00:39:02.720 Subscribe now because we have a whole true crime week coming up in the week leading into

00:39:09.240 Christmas.

00:39:10.020 And one of the cases we're going to do a deep dive on is Scott Peterson.

00:39:15.380 So you just got a little preview.

00:39:17.060 So stick around.

00:39:17.780 So, Mark, Jussie Smollett, the trial is in deliberations right now.

00:39:29.040 The jury has had the case for about five hours is by my count to two hours yesterday after

00:39:34.500 closing arguments.

00:39:35.700 And now they began this morning right after nine central time.

00:39:40.400 So five hours they're deliberating.

00:39:43.080 And just FYI, the racial makeup of the jury is, let's say, they're white, the majority

00:39:51.260 white, middle aged, one black man, one black woman is an alternate.

00:39:55.320 And they are now kicking around whether they believe Jussie Smollett was the victim of a

00:39:59.760 hate crime or made the whole thing up for favorable publicity.

00:40:04.140 So I didn't realize until preparing for this that you your firm had a role in this case.

00:40:08.760 Well, I handled the case originally the first time it was dismissed and had I violated one

00:40:15.980 of my standard rules, which is I generally will not do a state court case, criminal case

00:40:23.720 out of state, out of California.

00:40:25.660 I just I think I'll do federal anywhere.

00:40:28.660 But state court criminal, I always think is the kind of a a weird creature, so to speak.

00:40:35.360 But we did it there, got it dismissed.

00:40:38.060 I thought that was the end of it.

00:40:39.920 And then lo and behold, the case was once again resurrected.

00:40:46.160 And I am kind of dancing on the head of a pin here because my New York partner, Tina, is 0.99

00:40:54.240 trying it with local counsel, Nenye.

00:40:56.140 And I was hoping, actually, that there would have been a resolution before this because

00:41:02.040 the judge has kind of indicated that he's issued an informal gag order.

00:41:06.520 And even though I'm not on the trial team this time around, my partner is.

00:41:09.940 So I'm trying to dance around that.

00:41:12.400 I will tell you that that I thought it was resolved fairly last time.

00:41:19.540 I have my own theories as to what's going on right now.

00:41:24.240 But since there's an informal gag order, I'm gagging myself.

00:41:27.700 But I have a lot to say.

00:41:28.940 And after a verdict or a resolution here, I'm happy to fill you in as to what I really think

00:41:35.540 is going on.

00:41:36.840 I accept.

00:41:37.300 You mean with it with a lengthy deliberation or with the fact that charges?

00:41:40.560 No, with why this was resurrected, why the case was resurrected and kind of the players

00:41:46.620 involved in everything that has transpired.

00:41:49.700 I think I think, frankly, it's outrageous that he's on trial again for the very same thing

00:41:57.500 that it was already resolved on.

00:42:00.280 What punishment did he face the first time around?

00:42:03.020 Well, the punishment was he was the case was dismissed.

00:42:06.340 He forfeited ten thousand dollars, which was the basically the 10 percent of the bail and

00:42:12.880 had performed some community service.

00:42:15.420 So that was all the things I I that's nothing he deserves.

00:42:20.380 I don't think he belongs in jail for a long time, but he deserves to be punished.

00:42:23.820 He made this whole thing up.

00:42:25.040 He undermined legitimate claims of racial attacks. 0.79

00:42:27.760 He did more to damage, you know, black people who genuinely get attacked by racists than

00:42:32.160 anybody's done in a long, long time. 0.97

00:42:33.420 And he should face trial and be punished.

00:42:36.220 OK, so you and I can agree to disagree.

00:42:39.300 I like it when you can't argue.

00:42:40.840 Yeah, I was just going to say, when I'm not muzzled, I'm happy to respond to all of that,

00:42:45.300 including the fact that he's maintained his innocence, testified that it didn't happen.

00:42:50.120 And the only so does O.J.

00:42:52.900 Yeah, well, the O.J., I always say the jury got it right in both cases in O.J.

00:42:58.280 The I understand that I understand that the proof argument in the O.J.

00:43:02.420 case, but that man killed his wife and her friend, Ron Goldman.

00:43:05.320 And there's absolutely zero doubt in my mind.

00:43:07.560 And the civil jury did their job.

00:43:10.460 That's right.

00:43:11.020 Exactly right.

00:43:11.500 All right.

00:43:11.700 So so we'll table Jussie Smollett and we will accept your invitation to come back and

00:43:16.720 discuss it.

00:43:17.220 I do think it's five hours is actually not that long because they have a lot to go through.

00:43:21.380 And I don't think I think it's too early to be drawing conclusions one way or the other.

00:43:25.640 You know, people who think it's clear are like, why didn't they come back two hours?

00:43:28.560 You know, but I think out of respect for the process, a lot of juries just want to go

00:43:32.280 through the evidence, go through the testimonies.

00:43:34.080 And you never know if there's a whole that's that's I've had jurors say that in high profile

00:43:38.700 cases.

00:43:39.160 I remember in a case I tried in Santa Monica 20 years ago that I asked them why they were out.

00:43:45.880 They came back and they acquitted the client across the board.

00:43:49.000 And they said, well, what were you hung up on?

00:43:50.960 They said, we really it really weren't hung up.

00:43:52.820 It's just it's a high profile case.

00:43:54.700 We didn't want people to think that we were just going to come back not guilty immediately

00:43:58.840 a la OJ.

00:44:00.100 So they jurors are aware of that.

00:44:02.160 They get that.

00:44:03.100 Yeah.

00:44:03.200 There is a question, an interesting piece over on National Review today about whether

00:44:07.820 Jussie Smollett should face perjury charges, because to people on my side of the aisle who

00:44:13.760 think he's clearly lying and have been listening to the police chief and everybody all along,

00:44:18.300 they they conclude what he said on that stand was so patently false that he should be facing

00:44:22.480 charges for it.

00:44:23.200 I mean, there's no question either he was lying or those two brothers were lying.

00:44:28.400 That both cannot be true.

00:44:30.580 So I get that you're going to keep torturing me with this when I can't respond.

00:44:34.900 Well, let me ask it this way.

00:44:35.920 Let me ask you.

00:44:36.520 I don't want to get my poor partner in trouble.

00:44:38.460 How unusual is it?

00:44:40.320 Now, I won't forget Jussie.

00:44:41.620 How unusual would it be to if there is an acquittal in a criminal case for the prosecutor

00:44:47.520 to then come back and charge the man acquitted with having perjured himself?

00:44:53.220 Well, let me give you a more an example that happens more often in federal court where you

00:45:01.060 have sentencing guidelines.

00:45:02.360 If you get on the stand and testify and lose, you get your sentence enhanced.

00:45:08.240 I mean, that's that because you did not accept responsibility.

00:45:11.480 You basically obstructed justice.

00:45:14.580 You lose three levels of acceptance.

00:45:17.300 So it happens in the reverse all the time, and it shouldn't be that way, but it is because

00:45:23.820 you've got an absolute right to go to trial, force the prosecution to prove their case.

00:45:28.940 You shouldn't get punished when you go to trial and try to prove that you're not by taking

00:45:34.560 the stand, which is waiving your Fifth Amendment rights.

00:45:37.280 So I take the opposite.

00:45:38.640 In fact, it reminds me of when people say, how do you sleep at night knowing that your

00:45:43.280 client is guilty?

00:45:44.240 And I said, I don't lose sleep over that.

00:45:45.920 I lose sleep over going away when I've got a client who I believe is innocent.

00:45:51.120 That's when I lose sleep and engage in alcohol therapy.

00:45:54.720 Right.

00:45:54.940 A hundred percent.

00:45:55.940 You know, when I went to law school, I used to be that person.

00:45:58.720 I wanted to be a prosecutor.

00:46:00.540 And there was a very well-known defense attorney who came in and started talking to us.

00:46:08.120 And the young, idealistic me actually asked that question.

00:46:11.980 How do you sleep at night knowing that you're getting guilty murderers and so on off?

00:46:17.640 And he answered it the same way you did.

00:46:19.980 I come around.

00:46:21.020 I'm definitely more prosecuted, prosecution oriented still.

00:46:24.280 But I love the role that criminal defense attorneys play.

00:46:26.980 And it is critical to to do process to the to the nation standing on the stilts upon which

00:46:33.960 it was built originally.

00:46:34.840 And I hate that it's being eroded, you know, more and more in various settings.

00:46:39.400 And you sort of you get railroaded for ideology if without a defense lawyer.

00:46:42.560 You know, it's an interesting flip that has taken place.

00:46:47.280 You know, I made my career basically in the 90s defending Susan McDougal, who was Bill and

00:46:53.340 Hillary Clinton's erstwhile business partner in Whitewater.

00:46:57.000 And I tried her case in Santa Monica.

00:46:59.520 I tried against the Office of Independent Counsel for an obstruction of justice.

00:47:03.700 We wanted Little Rock against Ken Starr.

00:47:05.740 Um, and all the arguments that we used to make and that the Democrats used to make in

00:47:12.120 the 90s about an office of independent counsel and a prosecutor who had political motives.

00:47:19.200 Well, now you see that those are the same arguments that President Trump was making.

00:47:24.380 Yeah, it's all been almost identical.

00:47:26.740 And the Democrats were all of a sudden embracing law.

00:47:29.540 All right, hold on.

00:47:31.180 Stan, I'm standing you by there.

00:47:32.360 There's much, much more to discuss, including Alec Baldwin.

00:47:34.480 Michael Jackson will do it right after this quick break.

00:47:41.960 All right, let's talk Alec Baldwin, because I did listen to your Reasonable Doubt podcast

00:47:45.780 with Adam, where you talked about that.

00:47:47.540 And as usual, you were fascinating on it and had some very strong thoughts on Alec's decision

00:47:53.380 to come out and fight the PR war before the legal war, which is the far more important war,

00:47:59.720 has been settled.

00:48:00.940 You can't stop these huge egos, you know, from going out there and doing what they believe

00:48:06.220 that is best for them and the brand.

00:48:08.860 And I want to play for the audience the the section I heard you taking particular issue

00:48:14.940 with on the question of whether he feels guilty.

00:48:18.500 Listen.

00:48:18.960 No, no, I feel that there is I feel that that that someone is responsible for what happened.

00:48:29.520 And I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me.

00:48:32.200 I mean, I honestly got if I felt that I was responsible, I might have killed myself if I

00:48:36.780 thought I was responsible.

00:48:37.780 So why did you not like that?

00:48:42.200 Look, there was an easy way to thread this needle if you're insistent on throwing yourself

00:48:47.840 on the grenade is obviously he is the the you say, do I feel guilty?

00:48:53.560 Yes, I feel horrible guilt in a moral sense.

00:48:57.180 But legally, do I feel responsible?

00:48:59.760 No, I would never have done this.

00:49:01.360 Blah, blah, blah.

00:49:01.740 I mean, there is a way to thread that needle this response he is going to get, you know,

00:49:07.160 I don't wish a criminal prosecution on anybody in the world.

00:49:10.740 I mean, it's the worst thing in the world, but to go through.

00:49:13.920 But he's going to have this thing at a very baseline level jammed right back up at him

00:49:19.420 in civil lawsuit deposition, all kinds of ways.

00:49:24.060 And it's a horrible, horrible look.

00:49:26.740 And by the way, you would mention Scott Peterson in the GMA.

00:49:31.400 As we're talking right now, as we speak, the judge in Mr. Smollett's case is apparently

00:49:39.120 reconsidering the GMA interview there.

00:49:41.960 I mean, one of the things I'm going to have a and I had mentioned Susan McDougal, one of

00:49:46.620 her kind of bet noirs in her prosecutions was the GMA interview.

00:49:51.840 So God knows if you're a criminal defendant, that's the axis of evil is to ever get on the

00:49:56.980 GMA, I'll tell you.

00:49:58.160 Do not do the GMA interview.

00:50:00.080 Do anything but GMA.

00:50:02.700 Yes.

00:50:03.100 You know, GMA is like they're big.

00:50:04.660 ABC in general is very big on crime.

00:50:06.420 So that's why they get all these exclusives, because they've made that part of their beat.

00:50:11.300 What would you do with that?

00:50:12.580 Like if you had Alec Baldwin on the stand and you were representing Helena's family, you

00:50:18.460 know, she was a cinematographer who got killed or some of the other guys that filed

00:50:21.480 lawsuits who witnessed it for emotional distress.

00:50:24.700 What would you do with that Alec Baldwin statement?

00:50:27.640 Yeah, there's a lawyer who's co-counseled, I think, with Gloria on one of these lawsuits,

00:50:32.320 and I know exactly what they are going to do with it.

00:50:34.420 They're going to take that.

00:50:35.380 They're going to they're going to jam it right back up.

00:50:37.620 What do you mean you don't feel guilty?

00:50:38.960 Who do you know that was responsible if it wasn't you?

00:50:41.340 Why are you saying that?

00:50:42.300 Why are you shirking your responsibility?

00:50:44.280 By the way, every actor from John Schneider on the right to George Clooney on the left

00:50:50.120 has already said this is an impossibility if you were careful, blah, blah, blah.

00:50:55.140 They're going to do a tap dance on him. 0.97

00:50:57.080 And by the way, he's going to walk himself into, you know, they've only got a tower, apparently,

00:51:02.340 if you believe what's being reported, of five million dollars in insurance.

00:51:06.120 He's going to walk himself right into blowing through that tower and being personally responsible

00:51:11.520 on top of it.

00:51:12.780 So I don't know what he's thinking.

00:51:14.900 I don't know why they think that image control is job number one.

00:51:19.620 Job number one is to keep you out of harm's way criminally.

00:51:22.900 Job number two is to deal with the civil liability.

00:51:25.860 Job number three is to make amends morally and ethically for, you know, your role in this

00:51:33.040 horrible, horrible situation, which I don't think it was intentional in the least.

00:51:37.900 I don't buy any of the conspiracy theories.

00:51:39.960 But at the same time, how do you you know, he could have said the the obvious solution

00:51:45.800 is it's very difficult for me getting up in the morning because I was the last person

00:51:50.380 who cocked that gun, whether I pulled the trigger or not.

00:51:55.300 I feel an enormous, enormous amount of guilt in a non-legal sense over that.

00:52:03.380 Right, right.

00:52:03.860 And the more he blames himself, the more our instinct would be to let him off the hook.

00:52:08.720 Right.

00:52:09.140 Like if you see him really beating himself up.

00:52:11.640 Right.

00:52:11.780 But he's doing the opposite.

00:52:13.940 I explain this to clients all the time.

00:52:16.460 Remorse is you can't fake remorse.

00:52:19.820 You can't you can't get up.

00:52:21.740 People can sense that whether it's a jury or a judge or a fact finder, either you're authentic

00:52:28.020 and you have remorse or you're a phony and you don't.

00:52:31.180 I mean, remorse, by the way, that tape you played earlier of the officer who shot Dante,

00:52:38.800 that to me is real, authentic remorse and immediate angst.

00:52:45.180 Yeah.

00:52:45.580 So, Alec, he didn't have to do this.

00:52:49.040 He's been speaking with the police.

00:52:50.320 Right.

00:52:50.480 And so in trying to stave off legal charges, that's the avenue.

00:52:53.640 Talk to the sheriff.

00:52:54.380 Have your lawyer there.

00:52:55.540 Make sure you're giving them all the information.

00:52:57.860 He appears to have ticked off the sheriff with that Stephanopoulos interview, because let

00:53:02.420 me play the soundbite that Alec said that that seems to be getting him in hot water because

00:53:07.380 the sheriff has now responded publicly, which is not what you want.

00:53:11.960 Here's Baldwin on whether he actually fired the gun.

00:53:14.920 So, I take the gun and I start to cock the gun.

00:53:17.760 I'm not going to pull the trigger.

00:53:19.200 I said, do you see that she will just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like 1.00

00:53:22.280 that.

00:53:22.500 And I cocked the gun.

00:53:23.320 Can you see that?

00:53:24.240 Can you see that?

00:53:25.020 Can you see that?

00:53:25.960 And she says, and then I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off.

00:53:30.500 I let go of the hammer of the gun.

00:53:31.820 The gun goes off.

00:53:32.620 At the moment.

00:53:33.760 That was the moment the gun went off.

00:53:35.140 Yeah.

00:53:35.360 That was the moment the gun went off.

00:53:36.420 It wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled.

00:53:40.340 Well, the trigger wasn't pulled.

00:53:41.440 I didn't pull the trigger.

00:53:42.360 So, you never pulled the trigger?

00:53:43.660 No, no, no, no.

00:53:44.340 I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them.

00:53:46.760 Never.

00:53:48.060 Right.

00:53:48.440 Because that really will get me sued.

00:53:49.920 Well, now the Santa Fe sheriff has responded saying, and I quote, guns don't just go off.

00:53:55.420 So, whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, he did that.

00:53:59.220 And it was in his hands.

00:54:01.800 What would you have thought if you saw that as Alex's lawyer?

00:54:05.920 I would have said, I told you so.

00:54:07.500 And I would have, you know, probably pulled a Harlan Braun and resigned like he did in Robert Blake's case.

00:54:14.520 I mean, you can't go out there.

00:54:16.720 This is not a public relations issue.

00:54:19.900 This is a criminal investigation.

00:54:22.500 You can't go out there and then inflame the very person who is investigating you.

00:54:28.140 You, as you said, you cooperate.

00:54:30.480 You try to show that you are anything but trying to provoke them.

00:54:38.420 But he's repeatedly done everything that he shouldn't do.

00:54:41.980 It's almost a textbook case of what you shouldn't do when you're in harm's way.

00:54:46.420 Yeah, he's not campaigning for an Oscar.

00:54:48.860 He's trying to keep himself out of jail and at a bankruptcy court.

00:54:53.340 Well, you know, he said the other day, I don't know if you saw it or if you've got the clip.

00:54:57.600 He said, somebody told me, basically, I'm not in harm's way. 1.00

00:55:01.380 I don't know who that somebody was, unless they're baiting you into being stupid. 1.00

00:55:05.720 So, it's mind-boggling to me. 1.00

00:55:08.420 If somebody's telling you that, I hope it isn't your lawyer.

00:55:11.980 Yeah, we haven't heard that from the sheriff.

00:55:13.420 Okay, so let's talk about speaking of famous clients with huge egos who believe they know

00:55:19.180 better when it comes to dealing with the press and how to handle law enforcement.

00:55:22.700 Michael Jackson, while you were dealing with the Scott Peterson case,

00:55:27.500 you were representing Michael Jackson on the child molestation criminal case.

00:55:33.320 And I realized that ended because you had to focus on Scott Peterson and Michael was like,

00:55:36.900 only one person can represent me.

00:55:39.260 But that was crazy.

00:55:40.560 You were everywhere.

00:55:41.680 I'll give you a backstory there.

00:55:44.300 The, originally, before that case was filed, I had had repeated conversations with the DA.

00:55:51.440 And his name was Tom Sneddon, I believe.

00:55:53.940 Yeah. 0.98

00:55:54.180 And I kept telling him, this case is a loser.

00:55:57.240 I don't know what you're doing.

00:55:58.860 This family, this Arvizo family, I've investigated.

00:56:02.080 I have figured out, and I did it in real time for Michael, because I'd represented Michael for years at that point.

00:56:09.200 And I knew that they, this was not a family that was going to end well for Michael.

00:56:15.920 And so I advised them, the Jackson team, they needed to kind of extricate themselves from this.

00:56:24.240 And sure enough, they did.

00:56:26.260 And then the Arvizo family went to the same lawyer that had previously represented the accuser from 1993 that Howard Weitzman, when Howard was represented.

00:56:38.160 Can you clarify something, Mark?

00:56:38.940 I just got a little lost there.

00:56:40.440 You told Michael to extricate himself from what really, like when he was friends with the boy and the family prior to them accusing him?

00:56:48.560 You were like, these are grifters, do not befriend them. 0.74

00:56:50.860 That was basically your take.

00:56:52.020 Yeah, I won't reveal the attorney client, but that's a pretty good synopsis.

00:56:57.540 And so then what happened was, is the Santa Barbara DA ended up indicting him so that they wouldn't go to a probable cause preliminary hearing.

00:57:08.640 In California, almost all criminal felony cases are prosecuted by way of a preliminary hearing.

00:57:16.840 They didn't want the witnesses on the stand because they knew what we would do to them, so they didn't end run.

00:57:21.140 And they indicted.

00:57:22.000 Well, when they indicted, they indicted him on a conspiracy.

00:57:25.500 That was the first count.

00:57:26.980 Well, I took a look at that, and I remember saying to Michael at the time, I said, hey, this conspiracy has nothing to do with you.

00:57:33.460 This was my investigation of the Arvizo family.

00:57:36.740 I'm going to end up having to testify in this case.

00:57:39.320 You need another lawyer, which is when we brought in, Johnny Cochran brought in Ben Brofman, my good buddy Ben.

00:57:46.120 Yes, because you testified.

00:57:47.680 I remember that.

00:57:48.320 You testified.

00:57:48.900 Not once, but twice that I was the one who did the investigation.

00:57:53.220 I was.

00:57:53.760 You couldn't blame Michael for that.

00:57:55.540 I was the one who was any so-called conspiracy, which was kind of manufactured by the prosecutor was at my behest.

00:58:04.420 I see.

00:58:05.240 Because they were like, Michael, you've been investigating this poor family, this poor young child.

00:58:10.260 And you were like, it wasn't him.

00:58:11.660 It was me.

00:58:12.120 So you couldn't represent him.

00:58:13.260 You were a witness.

00:58:13.840 I was a witness.

00:58:15.260 And like I say, I didn't testify just once in front of Judge Melville in the jury.

00:58:19.480 I testified twice.

00:58:20.760 And I'll never forget the second time saying something, which that jury found to be very humorous.

00:58:27.400 I think I was mocking the prosecutor.

00:58:30.120 And I turned to Pat Harris, who was then with me, and I said, this jury is never going to convict him.

00:58:37.200 This is a laughing jury is an acquitting jury.

00:58:40.980 That's an interesting rule.

00:58:42.940 So and you were right.

00:58:43.840 They did not convict him.

00:58:44.840 But of course, the stories about him would continue.

00:58:48.780 Well, yeah, because as you pointed out, the family had to like, they'd sued other people.

00:58:51.920 Like when you see these vexatious litigants who sue over and over and over again, it's like, OK, but the accusations against him would never stop.

00:59:00.280 And I've been dying to ask you about this.

00:59:02.640 And I use, you know, a lot of our listeners are just listeners.

00:59:05.940 They're not watching this on YouTube.

00:59:07.900 So I'm using air quotes.

00:59:09.880 The documentary about Michael that was on HBO and what you thought of those two accusers, James Safechuck and Mark Robson.

00:59:22.480 I'll tell you what I thought about that documentary.

00:59:24.880 I came very close to suing.

00:59:26.760 I came very close to suing in that case because I remember Adam actually on our podcast had played a clip from the documentary and they made it seem like I was saying, I'm going to land like a ton of bricks on top of these accusers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:59:45.500 That isn't what happened.

00:59:46.700 What the documentary filmmaker had done was he cut and spliced a press conference I had done.

00:59:55.260 The press conference was because when I picked up Michael from Vegas and took him to Santa Barbara to surrender, the air carrier, the private charter had installed a pinhole camera that had spied on my attorney client conversations with Michael.

01:00:14.080 Yes.

01:00:14.820 So I, you know how I found out about that.

01:00:17.600 Greta Van Susteren called me the next morning and said, there's a guy who's shopping a lawyer who's shopping your conversation on the jet with Michael, um, uh, for a million bucks.

01:00:28.340 And I, she gave me the name.

01:00:29.840 I called the lawyer.

01:00:30.640 I said, are you out of your mind?

01:00:32.140 You can't, you can't shop.

01:00:33.840 This is, this was attorney client.

01:00:35.640 You're, and he said, my client thinks he's won the lottery.

01:00:38.580 So I went to court, I got a restraining order, came outside and said, I'm going to land like a ton of bricks on you.

01:00:45.820 When you violate the attorney client privilege, the documentary maker cut and pasted that to make it seem like I was talking about the accusers, which I wasn't.

01:00:54.860 By the way, that guy who we got the restraining order against was later prosecuted federally convicted.

01:01:02.140 Um, and I got a $25 million judge or $22 million judgment against him, um, for, for that as well.

01:01:10.280 Well, the court of appeal reversed it and said that that was excessive.

01:01:14.380 So I'm sure the guy doesn't have $22 million anyway, but it's a moral victory.

01:01:17.660 I can't believe it.

01:01:18.620 Your life is so fascinating.

01:01:19.680 You've like, you've just done everything.

01:01:21.760 You represented every one.

01:01:23.000 So I saw that documentary and I was like, okay, it's not, doesn't look good for Michael.

01:01:28.180 That's for sure.

01:01:29.200 Um, but because I am a lawyer at heart, like you, I needed to know more.

01:01:33.860 So I started digging and digging and digging.

01:01:35.860 And then I found all this stuff in particular about Wade, um, about the, the lies he's told in his civil litigation against the Jackson estate about how he denied having shopped, written and shopped a book about Michael with laudatory things in it.

01:01:50.800 And then it turned out they found it, they got it from like random house or one of the publishers.

01:01:55.980 So he lied.

01:01:56.880 He got caught lying under oath at his deposition.

01:01:58.960 Then they demanded copies of said book from his computer.

01:02:02.520 He, he said he didn't have any, or so he basically lied at every step.

01:02:05.440 And then they proved that he had copies on his computer that he tried to write over.

01:02:10.000 I mean, he was lying all along and the other guy, James, every single point.

01:02:16.640 And that documentary maker should be ashamed of himself.

01:02:20.340 He didn't mention any of it.

01:02:22.300 He didn't mention any of it.

01:02:24.800 Exactly.

01:02:25.400 It was completely sanitized.

01:02:27.420 It was a complete rewrite of history, but you know, that's a, I, I hate to say that that's emblematic, but it certainly seems to be emblematic of what's happening in America right now.

01:02:38.600 And, and with the, what I think people on the right like to call mainstream media, but it's really kind of abhorrent as to what's happened with journalism and so-called journalism and the docu-journalism.

01:02:50.780 Well, then you get the imprimatur of Oprah at the end, like interviewing the documentarian, like, oh, tell us all, just as truthful as we think you are.

01:03:00.960 Are you even more truthful?

01:03:02.300 Your brilliance shines. 1.00

01:03:03.840 It was, this is bullshit. 0.99

01:03:05.240 I don't know what happened between Michael and either one of these men when they were younger. 0.99

01:03:09.360 I don't know.

01:03:10.060 No one knows.

01:03:10.600 We weren't there, but, well, they know.

01:03:12.680 Um, but the, the documentarian, again, air quotes, had an obligation to include that information about those two accusers because the other guy, Safechuck, um, had just been hit, I think, with a $500,000 lawsuit two weeks before he came out as an accuser.

01:03:28.560 You know, it's like, now, maybe that doesn't make him a liar, but we deserve as an audience to know.

01:03:33.440 We, we deserve to know.

01:03:35.080 And I, I go on this tear a lot, Mark, because I hate the absence of due process and trial by media, even though I'm in the media.

01:03:41.900 Um, and what I hear from everybody is, though, yeah, but he was a molester.

01:03:46.300 Yeah, but he did it.

01:03:47.220 Yeah, but he, it was a long line of boys that he molested.

01:03:50.440 And I don't, I don't know whether that's true or not.

01:03:53.380 I actually, I don't know whether it's true.

01:03:55.480 I heard, I heard the same things everybody else heard.

01:03:57.760 People, people would say, would you take your son?

01:04:00.460 Because my, when I was representing Michael, my son was 10 years old.

01:04:05.100 They used to say, would you take your son, Jake, to Neverland?

01:04:08.020 And I said, well, actually, I did several occasions.

01:04:10.680 So.

01:04:11.040 Yeah, but did you let him stay overnight?

01:04:12.360 I don't know.

01:04:13.220 I don't know anything about the other accusations.

01:04:15.680 I do know that the accusations, when it involved the case I was dealing with, were ludicrous.

01:04:21.920 But what about that, right?

01:04:22.760 Because I would not allow my son to spend an overnight with any parent, with any grown-up.

01:04:29.280 You know, I would like, that's weird, and you shouldn't allow it.

01:04:32.680 And Michael was a large child.

01:04:34.740 I mean, I've read you say that, too.

01:04:38.160 But still, you just don't let your six-year-old spend an overnight with a grown-up under any circumstances.

01:04:43.940 But what do you think?

01:04:44.960 Like, when you think about him, do you believe you said you have a sixth sense?

01:04:48.900 Do you have a sixth sense that he was capable of it?

01:04:51.560 No, I really didn't.

01:04:52.740 I mean, he just, there was a childlike naivete on his part.

01:04:57.000 And by the time I got to him, he had been, you know, you're talking in the 2000s.

01:05:02.460 This was not the same Michael Jackson that was in the 90s, at least as reported to me.

01:05:08.620 And I represented him for a couple of years.

01:05:10.900 And every encounter I had with him, he was just, I thought, he'd just been pilloried.

01:05:18.200 He'd been beat up, basically.

01:05:20.840 And it was, I thought, awful.

01:05:22.620 I mean, it really, it really kind of made you sad.

01:05:25.360 I mean, I was a huge fan in the 80s.

01:05:27.540 And I just, I just didn't think he had, he had kind of become trapped, so to speak.

01:05:34.560 And it was an awful thing to watch.

01:05:37.540 Putting, tabling for now, the allegations against him, since we don't, we're not going to resolve those here.

01:05:43.020 Do you think that there is, his situation and what happened to him personally was analogous to what happened to Elvis?

01:05:49.900 You know, like that level of fame, attention, grifters.

01:05:54.420 I think it's, I think that's exactly it.

01:05:56.540 I see this play out.

01:05:57.960 You know, one of the, I represented Chris Brown for about 10 years.

01:06:04.100 And Chris, I was always worried that would happen to him, and it did not.

01:06:09.000 I mean, he kind of pulled himself out of all of that that he had been involved in.

01:06:14.260 And you worry when somebody reaches fame so early and on such a magnitude that what it does to you.

01:06:23.820 And so, you know, they, I think that, I think that's a, an apt comparison by you.

01:06:29.740 And I think that it's interesting that he had that relationship with Elvis's daughter as well.

01:06:35.660 Yeah, that's right.

01:06:37.300 There's just certain people who've reached this bizarre level of fame that is in no way healthy.

01:06:43.100 I would put Tom Cruise in that same category, too.

01:06:46.300 I don't think his, his weird Scientology rants are totally unconnected to his incredible fame and success and just what it does to a person.

01:06:55.440 I would not wish that on, on my, for my children, for anybody I care about.

01:07:00.660 I've walked down the street with various clients.

01:07:04.380 I'll give you a couple of examples.

01:07:05.620 I've walked down the street.

01:07:06.500 I represented Mike Tyson for a period of time.

01:07:09.180 And I've walked from my office with Mike down to another building to do a mediation.

01:07:15.240 And I've seen what people do.

01:07:17.920 And I've walked down the street with Michael.

01:07:20.280 I've walked down the street with Colin Kaepernick.

01:07:23.180 I mean, the, the level of fame and what happens and, and the fact that you really can't go out,

01:07:30.540 you're outside without stopping traffic literally and people kind of besieging you.

01:07:36.840 I mean, it's, it's on a level that it's really hard to capture and make people understand for certain people when they get to a certain level of fame and, and, and, and kind of notoriety.

01:07:50.160 Would you, would you say that probably the most famous person you've represented and seen that with is Adam Carolla?

01:07:56.700 I feel like that's.

01:08:00.220 You know, I will tell you something about Adam.

01:08:03.520 I, I often say Adam always says that he thinks about me when he sees anything legal.

01:08:09.540 I've in the last six or seven years that we've done the podcast together, I've learned more about human nature.

01:08:17.700 He's a great sociologist and, and really kind of social or cultural anthropologist.

01:08:23.420 His observations are so spot on.

01:08:26.380 He's got such a, he's got such a way of viewing the world that is just, you know, that you've, you rarely come across somebody like that.

01:08:34.980 It's true.

01:08:35.400 He's one of those people you just want to shut up and listen to.

01:08:37.340 It's just like, go on, just keep going because he has a way of, of capturing what's happening in the nation.

01:08:42.740 That's very unique.

01:08:44.540 But jumping back, because I know you didn't represent him.

01:08:47.440 He's just your friend and co-host, but I do.

01:08:50.500 Can I just ask about Michael Jackson?

01:08:51.960 Actually, I did represent him, but we won't talk about him.

01:08:54.060 What'd he do?

01:08:56.480 That's a whole different sentence.

01:08:58.160 A whole different thing.

01:08:59.040 I have, I have represented Adam.

01:09:01.620 So I'm going to get him.

01:09:03.240 I'm going to do a.

01:09:04.620 You get him in here and cross-examine him.

01:09:06.920 I'll see you.

01:09:07.760 We'll test your chops and see what you got.

01:09:10.360 I still got it.

01:09:11.380 I do.

01:09:12.400 I know you do.

01:09:13.540 You're raising boys.

01:09:14.820 You got to, right?

01:09:15.660 That's right.

01:09:16.300 Oh, my God.

01:09:16.740 A hundred percent.

01:09:17.200 Although my daughter is just a formidable.

01:09:18.740 I mean, I always say like they could, they could just send her down to Guantanamo.

01:09:22.260 She could get anything out of anybody down there.

01:09:23.960 Um, she, so when you were with Michael Jackson, since you spent so much time with him, like

01:09:29.280 what was he like?

01:09:30.240 Would you mind just describing?

01:09:31.260 So he's, he was childlike, but like, can you expand on it?

01:09:34.160 Cause I'm genuinely curious what that would be like.

01:09:36.300 By the time I got to him, um, in the, uh, like I say, in the two thousands, um, we spent,

01:09:44.220 I spent, uh, multiple times or multiple days at Neverland.

01:09:49.400 So I watched him there.

01:09:50.400 I watched him, um, in, uh, when he was camped out in Vegas as well.

01:09:55.780 Um, the, he was struggling.

01:09:58.100 I mean, I think that's the best way to put it.

01:10:00.080 He was struggling with all the things that were happening with the accusations.

01:10:03.620 He was frustrated by it.

01:10:05.900 Um, and I, I kind of, there was a lot of empathy I had for him.

01:10:10.000 I, I, one of the things that's hardest about doing the kind of work that we do is when you've

01:10:16.400 got people who are in the eye of a storm, it's, it's very hard to try to get them centered

01:10:22.120 because they're, they, they, it's kind of an existential threat, right?

01:10:27.200 The criminal prosecution is there's, I often tell clients at least with a death, a sudden

01:10:34.260 death of a loved one, you have the ability to mourn, to have a funeral or some kind of

01:10:39.420 a ceremony or wake, and then you get to move on.

01:10:42.300 You get some kind of closure.

01:10:43.500 You never really get that in a criminal case.

01:10:45.360 And so that's, that's what I witnessed and it, and it was awful to watch.

01:10:50.260 It's just a, it's a strain, it's a drain, and it's just a, um, uh, it's a real, real

01:10:57.980 painful thing to watch somebody who is so creative, who is so brilliant, who's such a genius in

01:11:04.100 one area to have to deal with something that is so foreign to them.

01:11:07.820 Right.

01:11:08.000 And so ugly.

01:11:09.420 I mean, just terrible, terrible accusations.

01:11:12.500 Um, so much more to go over with Mark there.

01:11:14.400 I could do this all day.

01:11:16.240 I could keep you here for 10 hours and I'd still have more to talk about.

01:11:19.000 We're going to pick it up after the break.

01:11:19.980 I want to ask Mark about CNN, where he worked for a while.

01:11:22.460 What does he think about how they're, how they are today?

01:11:25.180 Hey.

01:11:30.700 Okay.

01:11:31.180 So Mark, I used to watch you for years on CNN, back when CNN was watchable and you'd give

01:11:36.640 your legal analysis on everything.

01:11:37.960 And then you were gone one day and I was like, uh, somehow you were linked to Michael Avenatti

01:11:43.020 and I was like, okay, he must've been temporarily insane because Mark Garagos is way too smart 0.91

01:11:48.060 to associate his brand with that lunatic.

01:11:50.360 Um, so what happened, why you don't work there anymore?

01:11:54.500 What happened?

01:11:55.160 Why would you ever have associated with that nut case?

01:11:57.440 Well, I represented Michael.

01:11:59.720 So, uh, as a client, I mean, he had a, um, DV case and I represented him and I've known

01:12:05.220 him for a number of months.

01:12:07.320 Um, and then the, uh, cases you mentioned, um, happened in New York, um, CNN in their infinite

01:12:16.840 wisdom decided to cut and run. 0.87

01:12:19.500 In fact, I think I famously called him the cut and run net, but they, they were already

01:12:24.620 kind of descending into this polemic that they've, um, decided the path they've decided

01:12:30.620 to go down.

01:12:31.240 I think there was some kind of irony that you would see Anderson sitting with Toobin next

01:12:38.940 to him as they're announcing that, um, Cuomo would be suspended.

01:12:43.180 Uh, and now I'm seeing where Mr. Zucker is being pilloried for his handling of the situation.

01:12:51.060 And, uh, there, I think the writings on the wall, there's going to be a, a shakeup and

01:12:56.660 the largest stockholder in their merger there has already said they need to get back to what

01:13:01.740 they used to do, which is Malona, the discovery channel.

01:13:05.420 So I think within the next six weeks, you'll see a reboot there.

01:13:08.520 They, they, given what's happened over there and the ratings and everything else, they're

01:13:13.520 not long for this world in their present kind of composition.

01:13:17.040 Are you shocked?

01:13:17.760 I mean, I, I've said publicly, I used to watch CNN when I was getting ready for the Kelly

01:13:21.380 file.

01:13:21.800 I used to have in my office, I had CNN on not Fox because it was like O'Reilly before

01:13:27.800 me and who I, I think is enormously talented, but he's not, you know, if you want to get facts,

01:13:32.560 at least back then you would put on CNN, you would put on Anderson Cooper and that's gone.

01:13:38.060 Even Anderson gone.

01:13:39.300 They went hard partisan during Trump and it was way more opinion from the anchors than

01:13:43.580 I ever wanted.

01:13:44.420 And it was all uniformly anti-Trump, anti-Republican.

01:13:47.280 And it remains thus to this day.

01:13:48.540 I wonder having come from the belly of the beast, what, what you think when you watch it?

01:13:52.000 Well, I, I often used to say, I, I thought there was some kind of, I hate to psychoanalyze

01:13:57.240 him, but you know, Zucker, as people tend to forget was at NBC when, uh, Donald Trump

01:14:04.520 was, uh, kind of anointed with the apprentice series.

01:14:08.540 And I think that there was something going on where he just decided to go all in on the

01:14:16.060 anti-Trump network and turn it into that. 0.99

01:14:19.160 And, you know, at this point, like you, I have to go search for BBC, sometimes Al Jazeera

01:14:26.180 to try to get any kind of a, um, uh, a factual or what's going on in the world.

01:14:32.380 And you just can't find what it used to be 20 years ago.

01:14:36.180 I mean, it used to be that you had, uh, Larry King on there for many years.

01:14:41.640 And I always thought that was a fascinating show, which is why I did it.

01:14:45.820 Cause it was long form.

01:14:47.440 People would talk kind of like what you're doing now.

01:14:49.860 And you would get to at least hear things that weren't just like a, a Twitter bite of

01:14:54.800 140 characters.

01:14:56.020 You get people to talk, you'd have a given take, they could have different, uh, viewpoints

01:15:00.840 and you would hear that.

01:15:03.120 That to me is more interesting than somebody just going on a polemic with two other people

01:15:07.500 who are kind of their cheerleaders.

01:15:09.360 Yeah.

01:15:09.820 You might learn something.

01:15:10.880 It might be intellectually stimulated instead of just outraged all the time.

01:15:14.520 How about that?

01:15:16.180 What, what did you make of, I mean, right.

01:15:18.600 So CNN cut and run cause you were sort of with Avenatti when he got caught up in that

01:15:23.260 thing to extort.

01:15:23.800 I was there and, and, and had, um, was trying to mind you, I had a relationship with Nike.

01:15:30.900 I knew Michael and tried to, uh, kind of mediate a situation that I thought, um, would turn

01:15:37.400 out bad.

01:15:37.920 I've been, I've got a, we could do a whole, uh, hour on what, what happened there.

01:15:43.740 But, um, like I say, Michael was also a client.

01:15:47.400 I don't want to denigrate him in any way, shape or form.

01:15:50.080 That's okay.

01:15:50.400 I'll do it.

01:15:51.460 Yeah.

01:15:51.980 I mean, you, yeah, you will do it and I'll sit and just listen to you.

01:15:56.840 Well, so he got, he wound up getting charged criminally.

01:15:59.720 I mean, he had, he had many legal problems.

01:16:01.520 This is just one of them, but it's funny because he said CNN cut and run.

01:16:05.440 He just got a mistrial.

01:16:06.120 He went pro per or pro say federal court in Orange County, got a mistrial based upon prosecutorial

01:16:13.280 misconduct.

01:16:13.780 And it's actually up in front of the ninth circuit now as to whether that's once in jeopardy,

01:16:18.780 because normally if you get a mistrial and you requested as a defendant, you don't get

01:16:24.340 a once in jeopardy, meaning that you can't be tried again.

01:16:27.640 But there is a kind of a sliver of the law that says if you're goaded in the asking for

01:16:33.900 a mistrial by the prosecution, that can be the one instance where the prosecution can't

01:16:39.620 try you again.

01:16:41.360 Well, whatever it is, he's a bad man.

01:16:43.280 Um, but you're not, and CNN did cut and bit because just because you were in a meeting

01:16:47.780 with him, that's the end of your relationship after what a decade, they'd been making money

01:16:53.200 closer to 20 years.

01:16:55.800 I mean, I, I will tell you it was really, and I had always resisted being a contributor

01:17:01.220 because I always felt that being a contributor meant that I would have an issue with kind of

01:17:08.280 advocating for clients because some clients, uh, do not belong on CNN in years past.

01:17:14.200 I would want them either on a morning show or I would want them somewhere else in terms

01:17:18.700 of where I thought they were best.

01:17:20.400 But finally they were kind of relentless.

01:17:22.860 And I did, um, I did take a contributorship with the caveat that I was able to do other

01:17:29.880 things.

01:17:30.320 And if it was client related, they had no input whatsoever and they just cut and run like,

01:17:36.000 um, nobody's business.

01:17:37.600 I think because they felt, uh, that they, you know, there was a lot of people who were second

01:17:43.060 guessing themselves about Michael when that happened.

01:17:46.620 I, and, um, uh, well, that was smart of them to do because they expressed no skepticism about 0.87

01:17:53.040 him and his ridiculous claims about Trump and so on.

01:17:55.720 I mean, I was at NBC at the time and I had him on and he was expecting, um, to get the 0.94

01:18:00.460 same treatment from me that he got from the mainstream media.

01:18:03.720 And I really felt like a simple Google search would have served him very well in misunderstanding

01:18:08.700 me, you know, and getting over his misunderstanding of me.

01:18:11.180 And I gave it to him pretty tough and, and it's fine.

01:18:14.300 I gave it to the other guy who was on the opposite side of him.

01:18:16.680 Tough too.

01:18:17.160 This is the Stormy Daniels case.

01:18:18.880 Um, but it was very clear that he was, this is not an honest lawyer and what he did to

01:18:22.760 Kavanaugh was unforgivable.

01:18:24.000 But, but I, I think the fact that CNN promoted him and so on, they felt so guilty.

01:18:30.080 They didn't need to take it on you just because it was your client.

01:18:32.520 You were in this one meeting with him.

01:18:34.080 And to me, they, now it's like they won't cut, cut, you know, ties with 0.94

01:18:40.080 masturbator on the air, Jeffrey Toobin. 0.64

01:18:44.100 How much did Chris Cuomo have to do? 0.98

01:18:46.640 Don Lemon, credibly accused by a guy of Don allegedly fondling his own genitals and then 0.99

01:18:52.640 rubbing his hands all over this poor guy's face in a bar. 0.99

01:18:54.940 I had him on the show.

01:18:55.560 There's an eyewitness.

01:18:57.020 And I feel like what's, what is the moral handbook that they are following over there?

01:19:01.680 Like I say, I think that I, everything that I've been hearing, I still have friends there

01:19:08.080 that, uh, that I've known, like I say, for decades and everything that I'm hearing is,

01:19:13.160 is that Zucker's not long for, uh, the, uh, the job and that people are not happy with what's

01:19:20.100 happened to it.

01:19:20.720 And, you know, it's not exactly unpredictable.

01:19:24.080 I mean, they kind of went all in on the Trump mania and obviously once Trump was gone, what

01:19:32.040 are you going to do?

01:19:32.780 So the ratings have cratered.

01:19:34.900 Uh, it's really, uh, you know, I'm old enough to remember when they would get a 10 share and

01:19:41.040 now you're talking to below a one share.

01:19:43.700 So, I mean, that's astonishing.

01:19:46.280 I read the other day where Chris's nine o'clock show, sometimes he was getting 900,000 people.

01:19:52.560 I mean, there was a time when CNN, you could just have the color bars on there and you

01:19:56.740 get 900,000 people.

01:19:58.120 Oh yeah.

01:19:58.580 I mean, I, when I launched America's newsroom with Hemmer in 2007, we created that show from

01:20:03.620 9am to 11am, we'd get around 1.3 million and we were thrilled.

01:20:08.360 And the company was thrilled with that at nine in the morning when everybody's at work, it

01:20:11.880 was like, great.

01:20:13.000 And now, I mean, all this time later for the 9pm on CNN to not even be cracking a million,

01:20:19.160 it's embarrassing.

01:20:20.020 I mean, they're, they're always like in the wake of his downfall, they're like the highest

01:20:23.580 rated anchor on CNN.

01:20:24.880 I'm like, you should not be bragging about that.

01:20:26.640 You should not be, don't call attention to the fact that he's your.

01:20:29.100 And when you have to resort to talking about the demo, then you really know you're, you're

01:20:33.300 desperate.

01:20:34.000 So.

01:20:34.320 Well, the demo actually is relevant because that's what they basically advertisers on.

01:20:37.180 That's what like, that's how you get paid.

01:20:38.560 But the demo, the demo numbers are embarrassing when you take a look at the absolute terms.

01:20:43.700 I mean, Fox's demo numbers, meaning under 25 to 54 year olds, are higher than CNN's overall

01:20:52.000 number, the number of overall households in the nation that are watching on many hours.

01:20:56.620 So yeah, they're going in the wrong direction.

01:20:58.300 And I hope it's true that they're going to get back to news because we need a channel that's

01:21:02.280 a little bit more centrist.

01:21:04.020 I agree.

01:21:05.060 I think people are crying out for that.

01:21:07.140 People want that.

01:21:08.020 People want that kind of that.

01:21:10.780 Just give me the news.

01:21:12.020 Let me go in, you know, where 20 minutes I can watch and understand what's happening

01:21:16.960 in the world.

01:21:17.420 And by the way, not everything is America centric.

01:21:20.180 I'd like something in the context of the world.

01:21:23.140 Well, forget it.

01:21:23.940 You're not going to get that on cable news.

01:21:25.520 No, the foreign news doesn't rate, which is why you rarely see it.

01:21:29.900 OK, I want to ask you about another avenue of cases that you've been filing when it comes

01:21:33.520 to these COVID restrictions.

01:21:35.460 You're in the People's Republic of California, where the restrictions have been.

01:21:40.920 I mean, I don't know how you're dealing.

01:21:43.920 And so in addition to being a lawyer, you're a restaurateur.

01:21:47.240 And tell us about what you've been trying to do and how it's been going in the courts.

01:21:50.940 Well, it's frustrating because we won a victory at the trial court level in Los Angeles.

01:21:57.560 We got a judge back when back, I want to say, in November when we have an unelected county

01:22:04.360 health officer named Barbara Flar without any evidence whatsoever, without any data whatsoever.

01:22:10.700 We're talking a year ago.

01:22:12.120 She shut down outdoor dining.

01:22:14.160 Now, mind you, I can sustain it as a restaurant, but most restaurateurs can't.

01:22:19.460 I mean, there's 30,000 some odd restaurants in L.A.

01:22:22.540 County, and they a number of them went out of business due to the COVID shutdowns.

01:22:28.660 Well, then we went to and we moved to the outdoor dining and that was working and it was

01:22:33.040 working well.

01:22:33.660 People were able to survive, not the least of which because of some of the funding that

01:22:39.540 took place.

01:22:40.120 But then she just decreed there was going to be no more outdoor dining.

01:22:44.340 And we sued.

01:22:45.760 And sure enough, we got a judge in the writ court who ruled after basically issuing three

01:22:52.280 orders to show cause and the county could not respond.

01:22:55.440 They couldn't point to a single piece of data, a single study that showed that COVID was being

01:23:00.960 transmitted outdoors by dining.

01:23:03.120 So he enjoined them.

01:23:05.160 Well, we ended up going, they got to stay at the court of appeal.

01:23:08.660 That was reversed.

01:23:10.580 I've been up at the U.S. Supreme Court and just within the last five days, they denied

01:23:15.040 the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition.

01:23:18.420 But one of the things that's happened is Justice Gorsuch has basically called out this case,

01:23:25.800 this 100-year-old, 120-year-old case named Jacobson, and said that it's been given a towering

01:23:31.320 presence and I couldn't agree more.

01:23:32.920 And that's the fight that we've been fighting, that basically unelected bureaucrats from health 0.72

01:23:40.860 departments are decreeing what people can do or not do, and that all of that is predicated

01:23:49.520 on this state of emergency that our governor has announced, I think, going on 20 months ago.

01:23:55.880 We're still in a state of emergency in California, which is the only basis upon which the county

01:24:01.420 health directors can do what they do.

01:24:03.680 It's so crazy because you're out there in California.

01:24:07.780 Up until recently, I've been living in New York for 20 years almost.

01:24:11.880 And the mayor of New York just on his own decided that five to 11-year-olds must have

01:24:16.560 mandatory vaccinations in order to eat inside any restaurant there.

01:24:20.420 You have to double jab your five-year-old to eat in a restaurant, to go see the Rockettes,

01:24:24.600 to go to a movie theater, to go to the gym, whatever, go see the Knicks. 0.98

01:24:29.540 It's ridiculous. 0.95

01:24:30.800 They've been going.

01:24:31.860 They've been going to all of these events, and the rates didn't spike.

01:24:35.060 The spike's coming to the Northeast now because it's winter, right?

01:24:38.280 That's the way it goes.

01:24:40.940 But the children are not to blame.

01:24:42.480 The children aren't a major factor in any of this.

01:24:44.440 So we have these local legislators who are drunk on their own power.

01:24:49.980 Like, no dining outside?

01:24:52.560 That's – think about that.

01:24:53.840 You just kind of – it's like, no, that's insane.

01:24:56.180 That's insane.

01:24:56.840 COVID's not spread outside in any meaningful way.

01:24:58.960 And by the way, the only thing – I mean, if you saw the stacks of paper that we file

01:25:05.240 back and forth in the briefing, the only thing that was ever cited by the county in defense

01:25:11.180 of this outdoor dining ban was a – what I would characterize as an anecdotal example

01:25:17.900 of a person in Wuhan who had said he got it and he thought he got it outside.

01:25:23.620 That is what we're basing.

01:25:25.300 That is different.

01:25:25.700 He was eating a bat.

01:25:26.960 That's not the same.

01:25:31.640 I just feel like it's gotten so out of control.

01:25:34.620 I love to see the lawsuits because they're drunk on their own power. 0.92

01:25:37.820 de Blasio is out of here at the end of this month.

01:25:40.880 His reign, thank God, is ending.

01:25:42.680 And what they say is he – I mean, talk about delusions.

01:25:47.220 He thinks he's going to run for governor.

01:25:51.360 Hello, earth to bill.

01:25:53.860 And that he wanted to shore up his support with his far-left liberals by imposing all

01:25:58.460 sort of draconian orders on the people right before he left.

01:26:01.260 And he's doing it.

01:26:02.200 And now all these people – think about the people come from Europe with their kids.

01:26:05.360 You know, they come to see New York the way we go to London, the way we go to Florence.

01:26:08.480 And now what are they going to do?

01:26:09.960 They can't take their kids anywhere.

01:26:10.880 They can't do anything.

01:26:11.660 Their trips are off for nothing, for an Omicron, which, yes, it's more contagious apparently,

01:26:15.540 but it's not killing anybody.

01:26:17.440 There have been zero deaths from Omicron.

01:26:19.840 Well, and the problem is, is when you ask for any kind of data, when you ask for any kind of

01:26:25.600 anything, just show me something, they can't answer you.

01:26:29.540 And that's a very frustrating situation to be in, both as a lawyer and as a restaurateur,

01:26:36.180 as you call it, it's – you know, restaurants are on a very thin margin to begin with.

01:26:42.980 And you can't just continue to destroy restaurants and destroy the small businesses.

01:26:50.040 And that's unfortunately what we've got.

01:26:52.680 And it's only a matter of time before this catches up to us.

01:26:55.620 I've said before, it's not going to – this is not going to end well.

01:27:01.560 All right.

01:27:02.080 Last line of inquiry before I let you go.

01:27:03.980 You've been so generous with your time.

01:27:05.260 I think when we saw – what we saw in the Rittenhouse case was what happens – I said

01:27:11.100 this on the air – when social justice meets courtroom justice, you know, that to me, the

01:27:15.860 courts are still the one place that haven't been totally co-opted by the far-left social

01:27:20.200 justice warriors who just want identity to matter and not facts, not evidence.

01:27:25.440 And it's a comfort to me, you know, as somebody who did practice law for a long time, it's a

01:27:29.520 comfort to me.

01:27:30.160 But when I see what they're teaching in law schools, there was just some case – oh,

01:27:35.020 my gosh, what was it?

01:27:36.060 One of the universities – one of the law schools now is requiring people to have an

01:27:39.380 affirmative statement of how they're going to be anti-racist and, you know, pursuing

01:27:43.080 it.

01:27:43.300 And it's like, what?

01:27:44.260 Wait.

01:27:45.120 It's none of your business what their political persuasions are, where they stand on these

01:27:49.320 social issues.

01:27:49.920 Just teach them the law.

01:27:51.680 I worry about the up-and-coming generation of lawyers and whether we're going to be able

01:27:55.300 to keep that divide between social justice and courtroom justice.

01:27:59.100 What do you make of it?

01:28:00.160 I've – look, I'll go back.

01:28:02.420 We'll come full circle to McDougal again in the 90s.

01:28:05.320 I was complaining then that that was kind of, at least by the Office of Independent

01:28:09.420 Council, a political show trial.

01:28:11.340 And guess what happened?

01:28:12.260 Then the script flipped.

01:28:14.440 And sure enough, the same thing happened 20 years later, except now it was aimed at Republicans

01:28:20.520 as opposed to Democrats.

01:28:21.780 And so there's plenty of blame to go around.

01:28:24.700 But the lesson to take away from this is the worst place in the world to try to test out

01:28:32.320 your social or cultural issues is in a criminal courtroom.

01:28:37.440 That's where – that should be the one sacrosanct place where we – first of all, we have prosecutors

01:28:45.260 who are making decisions that are based on justice as opposed to some other kind of calculation.

01:28:52.580 And it should not be a political calculation.

01:28:55.300 It should be a criminal justice calculation.

01:28:59.400 So I'm with you.

01:29:00.580 I share that.

01:29:01.360 We've got young lawyers.

01:29:02.580 I've got some great young lawyers.

01:29:04.060 And I've experienced other young lawyers who I think, you know, could use a dose of – you

01:29:09.800 know, my father, who was my partner for many years, used to say that one of the things he

01:29:13.820 thought that the criminal justice system could use is a dose of the military justice system.

01:29:19.080 And I'd say, what do you mean?

01:29:20.180 And he'd say, well, in the military justice system, you can be a prosecutor one day and

01:29:24.480 a defense lawyer the next day.

01:29:26.180 And that's a great way to kind of weed out the ideological agendas if you have to understand

01:29:31.940 what it is to prosecute somebody and you have to understand what it is to actually defend

01:29:36.280 a human being.

01:29:37.480 I like that.

01:29:38.320 And conversely, any plaintiff's lawyer or prosecutor should be sued at least once in

01:29:43.440 their life, right?

01:29:44.200 Be on the other side of it.

01:29:45.860 Feel the stress of what that can do.

01:29:48.260 Exactly right.

01:29:49.060 It should be a prerequisite.

01:29:51.060 All right.

01:29:51.260 So now I'll let you go.

01:29:52.100 But are you going to at least – are you going to give me a prediction on how Jussie Smollett's

01:29:55.940 going to come out?

01:29:56.500 Hung jury, conviction, acquittal?

01:29:58.340 No, but I'll call you – I'll call you – I'll call into your – what is it?

01:30:01.700 1-800-MEGAN-LINE?

01:30:03.320 Yeah, 833-44-MEGAN.

01:30:05.980 MEG-Y-N. 1.00

01:30:06.720 I'll call you after.

01:30:07.900 All right, good.

01:30:08.420 I'm going to hold you to that.

01:30:09.300 Thank you, Megan.

01:30:09.920 I enjoyed this.

01:30:11.220 Same.

01:30:11.700 Such a pleasure.

01:30:12.340 Come back, please.

01:30:13.380 Okay.

01:30:14.020 Thank you.

01:30:14.760 Thank you all so much for listening.

01:30:16.820 Tomorrow on the show, we're going to have the Hodge twins.

01:30:18.900 This is going to be fun.

01:30:19.860 You're going to love these guys.

01:30:21.260 Meantime, download the show as a podcast and go ahead and subscribe if you would at youtube.com

01:30:26.800 slash Megan Kelly.

01:30:27.620 See you tomorrow.

01:30:29.220 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:30:31.200 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 09, 2021

Mark Geragos on Scott Peterson, Kim Potter, Alec Baldwin, and the State of CNN ｜ Ep. 218

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