not the most important angle, but i got the ny trial right while so many legal experts flubbed it bc, when the charges dropped, i (1) recognized it was outside my area of expertise and so (2) went and talked to people who knew the law and practiced in the jurisdiction.
the fact that this was NOT the dominant approach taken by talking heads, law profs who want to be pundits, and former fed prosecutors with no background in ny law, is a pretty damning indictment of our political media generally and the lawyers who thrive in it.
eg ian milhiser blocked me on twitter when i pointed out that he was having a panic attack over the existence of a memo saying this was a dud case, but he had no idea who wrote the memo or what it said substantively. jed shugerman spoke to a fed prosecutor who'd practiced in MA (??) for background
Jed Shugerman embarrassed himself on Trump Trials Podcast on NPR a few weeks ago when he was on saying the case was unprecedented and not good. Anyway he was wrong and is a bad lawyer I guess. Don't hire him!
Because he has been opining on stuff before, and journos first instinct is "Who's that law professor who always gives nice quotes when we ask him about legal stuff, again?"
"This is unprecedented" is said constantly about Trump's legal woes by his cultists, and it's a stupid argument. It's unprecedented merely because Trump's criminality is unprecedented. Nixon would have been prosecuted if not for Ford, but Trump's corruption makes Nixon look like a saint.
I kept telling Shugerman that he was just flat-out wrong on aspects of NY procedure and pointing him to caselaw and he kept telling me that the caselaw was irrelevant because it didn't involve Federal election law violations as a predicate crime, which has nothing to do with the procedure at issue.
Him, guy who's never been inside a state courthouse in his life: this indictment is threadbare, it's going to be dismissed.
Me: Have you heard of a Bill of Particulars?
Him: There's never been a prosecution in this charge without a financial victim.
Me: Here's a Court of Appeals case with one.
At my prior firm, we used to say “smart people recognize what they don’t know, and hire smart lawyers to advise them. Lawyers are people too.” (We did legal malpractice work, and dabbling lawyers were good for business).
Yeah. I'm not a lawyer but I was on the lookout for law-talkin people who disagreed with my assumptions about the case, & when the only one was a guy who doesn't seem to have ever practiced law in that state, I got reeeally skeptical, like when computer scientists tell me climate change isn't real.
Obviously not all prosecutors created equal but to the extent the question here was “does the Manhattan DAs office know more about NY criminal law than me, a lawyer who has never practiced in NY” the answer was “almost certainly”
Towards your point, if an experienced NY PD or white collar defense attorney had written a cogent “here’s why these are bullshit” piece that moves the needle, but I never saw one of those
stern wrote a piece a year ago saying it was a dud case but then did a mea culpa a few weeks ago. i caught some of his podcast where he interviewed one of their reporters - stahl- who was always bullish on the case and asked what he saw in the case.
"i found people to talk to who knew this law"
but honestly good on stern for changing his mind before the trial, and not simply forgetting what he said and shifting off to a different subject like a bunch of them after the trial
yeah, lawyer friends of mine were kind of eh on the case but mostly thought they’d get him on at least some of it. granted wasn’t their area of expertise either
that's why you are historys greatest legal podcaster. it's baffling how lazy ppl can be or become influencers and talk beyond their expertise. its okay to not know things, but like you did, dig into it
So you know that thing in sports where they get former players and coaches to be announcers and they’re often funny but there are better professionals who could be doing the job?
Take that and make it important stuff instead of sports. That’s a lot of our journalism landscape.
