Ep 256 — Natalie, Hide the Ketchup!

Law and Chaos

This episode of Law and Chaos dives into several high-profile legal controversies, including Jeanine Pirro's flawed prosecutions, the overre

Key takeaways

• Jeanine Pirro is attempting to dismiss a wrongful case against Olympic athlete Davy Hearn without prejudice, allowing her to refile charges despite evidence of fabricated claims.
• Pirro blames the Department of the Interior for misleading her about damage to the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, using this as justification for her false indictment.

Main topics

• Jeanine Pirro's flawed prosecutions
• Overreach in federal criminal cases

Notable quotes

Pirro argues that she shouldn't be held accountable because another arm of the Trump administration lied to her.

Conclusion

This episode exposes how legal systems are compromised by political agendas,

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Texas does not want its criminals hiding out in Minnesota. And relevant to this story, Minnesota does not want its criminals hiding out in Texas. Speaker 5 (0:08) Specifically, one particular criminal who worked for ICE. Welcome to Law and Chaos, where the FCC wants to box with Mickey Mouse, Texas wants to help a wanted man escape to Mexico, and Jeanine Pirro is having a bad week. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get after it. Speaker 5 (0:42) Happy Thursday, Chaos Monkeys. I'm Liz Dyan. With me, as always, is Andrew Torres. Andrew, how are you? Speaker 3 (0:48) I'm great. Liz, how are you? Speaker 5 (0:50) I'm great. We're taking a little break this weekend. I'm going to go visit some family. And so we're recording this a little bit early. Speaker 3 (0:59) Yeah, I think the honest answer to my question is airborne, right? Well, yeah, Speaker 5 (1:04) probably about the time that this drops. Okay. We have a special show for Tuesday, and we will be back with our regular lineup next week. But today we have a squazillion stories, including a deep dive into the government's weird efforts to keep alive this 86-47 case against James Covey. We're also going to talk about Disney suing the FCC and the state of Minnesota suing Texas. But first, Speaker 4 (1:29) Ducket Speaker 5 (1:30) Alerts. Let us begin in D.C. where Janine Pirro is having a rough time with this whole... prosecutor thing. Speaker 3 (1:36) I am starting to think that maybe this isn't the right job for her. I Speaker 5 (1:41) mean, in her last gig, she wound up costing the company $787 million in a defamation settlement. So, I mean... I Speaker 3 (1:49) mean, she has told so many lies in court about people she is trying to convict, so that tracks. Speaker 1 (1:56) For Speaker 3 (1:56) instance, Davy Hearn. The Olympic canoe guy that Jeanine Pirro tried to frame for destroying the Lincoln reflecting pool. She is currently trying to unframe him by dismissing the case. And Speaker 5 (2:10) she can't even do that part right? Speaker 3 (2:11) No. She wants to dismiss the charges against Hearn without prejudice, meaning that she could refile them at... Any later time. You can refile them tomorrow. And obviously, Hearn would like not that. He would like them to be dismissed with prejudice. They go away forever as they should. And so today, Pirro filed her response to Hearn's objection, which I got Speaker 2 (2:33) to say. Speaker 3 (2:34) Not sure this helped. I mean, Piro's main theory is that it's not her fault that the Department of the Interior and the Park Service lied their faces off to her about the pool being ruined by vandals. I mean, what was she supposed to do? Check? She's just a federal prosecutor. You can't blame her if stuff she says in a court filing is totally untrue. Speaker 5 (2:57) Yeah. So she writes. I'm not kidding. Speaker 3 (3:00) I Speaker 5 (3:00) mean, that is what that's her point, right? She says, of particular note, and unbeknown to the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. at the time, was the June 11th, 2026 email from the National Park Service engineer documenting peeling of the lining within days after the completion of the installation. The engineer wrote, only the top layer of the lining has peeled. This is very thin and will not impact the strength of the liner. The email then. detailed that the contractor stated that the peeled area was overspray from spraying the perimeter joint with polyurea. The engineer stated his concern that this overspray along the perimeter of the pool could lead to a one to two inch strip that is vulnerable to peeling. The engineer also stated the polyurea liner that has peeled does not float in water, so should not be highly visible to visitors and can be vacuumed out along with sediment and algae during the normal cleaning process. These statements cast significant doubt that the defendant caused the damage to the lining. This information that the piece of liner peeled by the defendant was overspray of little or no value was first furnished to the prosecutors weeks after the grand jury indicted the defendant. We Speaker 3 (3:59) have been through Pirro's timeline and it does not add up. Hearn was not indicted until July 2nd and they charged him with pulling up the overspray and causing $1,000 of damage or more, right? Like that's the statutory minimum necessary to make it a felony. Let us make subtext into text here. Pirro is saying, I, an arm of the Trump administration, filed a totally false indictment because another arm of the Trump administration lied to me. I should suffer no sanction for this professionally or procedurally in this case or otherwise. And in fact, the court should bend over backwards to leave the door open for me to do this again. That is literally her argument. Speaker 5 (4:44) Yeah, it's a. Bold strategy, Cotton. I'm not sure if it's going to pay off. But in related news, Pirro is doing her darndest to keep a lady locked up for the high crime of doing graffiti. I Speaker 3 (4:56) mean, at least this time, the lady in question appears to have actually done the thing that she's charged with, allegedly. I mean, innocent until proven guilty, of course. But this person was. photographed spray painting the World War II memorial on August 13th. She live streamed herself on the National Mall saying a bunch of unhinged stuff about getting attention for her whistleblower complaint. But as usual, the government wants to make this however you characterize the crime into this huge trophy prosecution. And so, as is typical for Pirro's office, they have massively overreached. Speaker 5 (5:35) I mean, yeah, I feel a little weird spending more than 30 seconds talking about a graffiti case by a person who appears to be a couple tacos short. Speaker 4 (5:44) But Speaker 5 (5:44) Pirro is acting like something out of Alice's Restaurant. It's like Arlo Guthrie getting arrested for littering and showing up in court to find Officer Obie, you know, with a 27 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. They have charged this woman, Melissa Farris, with two felonies. It's currently just a criminal complaint. They have not even sought an indictment yet. And they're asking the magistrate, Matthew Sharbaugh, to hold her in jail because she's a flight risk. And the magistrate is like, you want me to hold this lady in jail for graffiti? This lady who just voluntarily turned herself in at the courthouse this morning before you'd even gotten a criminal complaint typed up because she's clearly doing this to draw attention to her weird protest. Now you're telling me- Speaker 3 (6:26) That is Speaker 5 (6:26) civil Speaker 3 (6:26) disobedience. Right. That's Speaker 5 (6:28) the Speaker 3 (6:28) definition. Right. Speaker 5 (6:29) You're telling me this woman's a flight risk and they're like, oh yeah, absolutely. And he's like- Speaker 4 (6:32) no, shut up, get out of here. And Speaker 5 (6:34) then an hour later, they filed a 30-page motion for reconsideration explaining how they absolutely positively got to keep this hardened criminal in jail for spray painting, at which point Judge Sharma... I assume heaves a heavy sigh and then produces a 13 page memo saying, no, shut up. Get out of here for real this time. What is even happening? But that's not it. That's not even the end of it. Because the government sees this lady's phone to get the evidence off of. Because she Speaker 3 (7:02) live streamed it on the Internet. Right. And the 27 day patent. Speaker 5 (7:04) Right. And the magistrate says on the 17th, the government shall file a notice by 6 p.m. advising whether it is presently prepared to return Ms. Farris's phone or if not, a prompt deadline by which it intends. to do so. That seems Speaker 3 (7:17) perfectly reasonable. Uh Speaker 5 (7:19) -huh. So at 5.55, Pirro's office files a notice saying, no, we don't intend to return the phone. It's evidence of a crime. At which point the federal public defender immediately, like within two hours, files a motion to show cause why the government shouldn't be held in contempt. Speaker 3 (7:34) Aggressive, but I'm not mad about it. I mean, the federal PD is no joke. No, Speaker 5 (7:38) definitely not. So finally, on the 18th, the government says. The next day. Speaker 3 (7:41) Yeah. Speaker 5 (7:42) Yeah. The government says, oh, fine, we'll give you your phone back by four o'clock. We're just having a really hard time extracting the data because it's like so hard and all. Phones are complicated, you know. Speaker 3 (7:53) Bullshit. Right. They do not need to extract every deleted text from the beginning of time or unencrypted files. Right. She's a nutter who live streamed her stupid crime and posted it online. Like that. We we have seen the government seize and image phones in 15 minutes at the border at the airport. Right. Like that. They do not need multiple days to do this. Right. Speaker 5 (8:18) So like. In the time we've been sitting here talking about it, they should have been able to get this done. It was probably a good reason for us to move on to the next story, which is not about graffiti. It's about ghost guns. A ghost gun is a firearm usually built from a kit or a 3D printer that doesn't have a serial number and is functionally untraceable by law enforcement because it was never sold as a finished weapon. You buy the parts, you put it together, maybe you print a component or two, and congratulations, you now own a gun that does not. officially exist. No paper trail, no dealer record, no background check. Speaker 3 (8:49) Right. And in 2022, under a previous administration, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tried to close that ghost gun loophole with a rule saying that those unfinished frames and receivers, and the receiver, I think, is like the functional shooty part of the gun. I'm not really a gun guy, okay? We're going to get some emails about that. That those count as... firearms under the Gun Control Act, right? And so a bunch of ghost gun vendors and other associated sociopaths raced into the courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas to demand relief from Judge Reed O'Connor, which they got and which they are continuing to get despite the fact that the Supreme Court, this Supreme Court, has said. twice now that they cannot have it. So in 2022, Reid O'Connor issues this nationwide injunction blocking the rule, saying that ATF exceeded its statutory authority. Speaker 5 (9:49) Now, that was before, to be clear, the Supreme Court blew up nationwide injunctions in the birthright citizenship case. Speaker 3 (9:55) Yeah, back there, very good. So that case goes up to the Supreme Court as Bondi v. Vanderstock. And in 2023, the Supreme Court stays. Judge Reed O'Connor's injunction on a five to four vote. Thomas Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh would have kept it in place, but they got outvoted. And so the ATF ban on ghost guns was allowed to continue. Then two of the plaintiffs, Defense Distributed and Blackhawk Manufacturing. And like, isn't that the name you'd put into a video game of the like evil company? Anyway, so Defense Distributed, Blackhawk Manufacturing go back to Judge Reed O'Connor and say, hey. How about you give us a special dispensation and let us keep doing this thing while the appeal proceeds? And Judge O'Connor says, you got it. Go ahead and sell those ghost guns, fellas. Which is just not how this works. Oh, and so the Biden administration goes back to the Supreme Court. And this time there are zero dissents. All nine justices are like, Jesus, Reed, cut it out. And then. The cases eventually decided on the merits in 2025, 7-2, in a typically fractured reason. We don't need to get into it, but basically it was a narrow facial challenge framework win for the... ATF that did not resolve the as-applied challenges, right? That is the claim that the statute was void for vagueness or the Second Amendment claims because the Supreme Court is going to rule on the narrowest possible ground to grant relief, or at least that's the way they should proceed. Speaker 5 (11:25) Right. So that's why we're now back again for round three, because on Monday, Judge O'Connor struck down the law. Again, he said that the rule was indeed void for vagueness under the Fifth Amendment, which is basically like it is too unclearly drafted for people to know when they're breaking the law and when they're not. It's like badly worded. And he used the Supreme Court's favored ploy of pretending to be a historian so he could like go back and cherry pick some random facts and stick them together and say, look, here's proof that every modern day gun law must be struck down here. He says that assembling your own gun is. deeply rooted in American traditions, and thus the ban on these ghost guns violates the Second Amendment. Right, Speaker 3 (12:06) because if there was one thing that the founding framers were interested in, it was, you know, 3D printing of illegal firearms. Or Speaker 5 (12:13) making your own, like, no, but okay. Right, Speaker 3 (12:16) but at least silver lining, Judge O'Connor did not purport to issue a nationwide ruling this time. His ruling is narrow in favor of only the named plaintiffs with respect to specific products. Speaker 5 (12:28) So much personal growth. Speaker 3 (12:29) Like a tumor. Speaker 5 (12:31) Okay, we have one more docket alert left for you, and we still have to talk about Brendan Carr picking a fight with Mickey Mouse, but we're Speaker 4 (12:37) going Speaker 5 (12:37) to hold off until the end of this brief ad break, unless you're a subscriber at patreon.com slash lawandchaospod or lawandchaospod.com, in which case we're going to do that right now. Speaker 5 (13:03) Okay, let's talk ballroom. Almost two weeks ago, the D.C. Circuit upheld trial Judge Richard Leon's ruling that the president cannot just knock down the East Wing and build a 90,000 square foot ballroom without input from Congress. That order has been stayed actually for months now by the D.C. Circuit. First, it stayed Judge Leon's ruling while it considered the government's appeal. And then when it issued this opinion two weeks ago, it gave the government two additional weeks to seek relief from the Supreme Court. That two weeks expires this Friday, the 21st. Speaker 3 (13:36) And during this time, the White House has been working frantically to make the ballroom a fait accompli. Solicitor General John Sauer said in the government's motion for stay that the ballroom is already 60 percent complete, thanks to a 250 person crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. bragged that the concrete is the same grade used in nuclear power plants and would be, quote, virtually impossible to deconstruct. Speaker 5 (14:04) So... Obviously, the plaintiffs took that free hit. The National Trust for Historic Preservation immediately said, oh, look, you know, here's our irreparable harm. You're doing this thing that's impossible to undo if the government is allowed to continue this project as the case works its way through the system. Speaker 3 (14:19)