Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. In twenty twenty three and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, author E. Gene Carroll faced Donald Trump in
Speaker 1: court and one both times. My guest today is the
Speaker 1: attorney who took on Trump in both cases and secured
Speaker 1: two unanimous jury verdicts against him. ROBERTA. Or Robbie Caplan
Speaker 1: as a renowned civil litigator and trial lawyer with decades
Speaker 1: of experience in commercial, higher education, government regulation, and civil
Speaker 1: rights litigation. She has been consistently ranked as one of
Speaker 1: the top litigators in the country. Caplin famously woned the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court on behalf of LGBTQ rights activist Edith Windsor
Speaker 1: in a landmark case that required the federal government to
Speaker 1: recognize same sex marriages. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Caplin attended
Speaker 1: Harvard University and Columbia Law School, But before settling in
Speaker 1: New York City, Kaplain studied Russian history and briefly lived
Speaker 1: in Moscow. I was curious what it was like living
Speaker 1: in Russia.
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways, I think it shaped my
Speaker 2: view of the world more than anything else in my life.
Speaker 2: It was nineteen seven, I'm very old, and Glossnows had
Speaker 2: been announced. Gorbachev was the head of right of the government.
Speaker 2: Glassos had been announced, but it was still the old system.
Speaker 2: And so I got, you know, a semester of seeing
Speaker 2: what it was like to live in a totalitarian, authoritarian regime.
Speaker 2: And it was insane. We would go into our classrooms
Speaker 2: and there would be these bugs at the ceiling and
Speaker 2: sometimes the bugs would break and you'd hear like all
Speaker 2: the static coming out, and everyone would just act like
Speaker 2: it was normal. The teachers all had to be Communist
Speaker 2: Party members, and so they had a class on the
Speaker 2: Russian words strata vietnya. I guess it would be like
Speaker 2: customs of the country, and they would say things like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, we have the consa male and then one
Speaker 2: of the American kids will raise their hands and say, oh,
Speaker 2: we have the same thing. It's the girl Scouts and
Speaker 2: boy Scouts, and I'd be like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Like it was just terrifying to see how if you
Speaker 2: put people, even Americans. I guess we're seeing that today,
Speaker 2: but if you put Americans in that environment, they kind
Speaker 2: of succumb to it. It gave me I'm sorry to say,
Speaker 2: a very negative view of human nature, which probably isn't
Speaker 2: such a good thing, although it's good for a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I often tell myself that, you know, all these societies
Speaker 1: ours included, you can't judge them by their political leadership.
Speaker 1: I mean, the people might be completely different. Are the
Speaker 1: Russian people very different from their political Well?
Speaker 2: I know, the people I knew and hung out with
Speaker 2: were like, I was crazy. They're hung out with all
Speaker 2: these dissidents and refused next Jews who had asked to
Speaker 2: leave and been refused. And you couldn't tell one group
Speaker 2: of friends about the other group of friends because that
Speaker 2: would make them paranoid. And it was very kind of
Speaker 2: cloak and daggery kgb E. But the people I were
Speaker 2: friends with was great, and you would this is actually
Speaker 2: and you would hang out all night and drink vodka
Speaker 2: and talk about Russian literature. And then when I came
Speaker 2: back here, I was like, what's wrong with Americans? Like
Speaker 2: were also shallow. I had a little bit of a breakdown.
Speaker 2: I was like, what's our society is just so surface
Speaker 2: as opposed to the Russians.
Speaker 1: Did you come from like a super legal minded family?
Speaker 2: What do I had a roof coding. Business really didn't
Speaker 2: really wear in Cleveland, which was my mom's dad's business.
Speaker 2: So I don't going to sound very clean. In Cleveland,
Speaker 2: it's proounced roof coding, I under said, New York, it's
Speaker 2: roof coding. But he had a factory, and in the
Speaker 2: summers I worked there, I would load five gallon pails.
Speaker 1: With Now, do you have any siblings.
Speaker 2: I have a younger brother, and he was in the business. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he had to do the fun stuff because he could
Speaker 2: like drive the forklift.
Speaker 1: Now, when you decide to go to law school, what what?
Speaker 1: What inspired that decision?
Speaker 2: So originally I thought I was so into Russian history
Speaker 2: from college. I thought I wanted to be a Russian historian.
Speaker 2: But I soon realized that if you're going to be
Speaker 2: a professor, you don't really have any control about where
Speaker 2: you live. And I knew from the time I was
Speaker 2: a very young kid that I wanted to move to
Speaker 2: New York. My mom had a subscription New York Magazine
Speaker 2: and I would read it, and I would read all
Speaker 2: the new journalism and Gale Green's restaurant reviews and Tom Wolfe,
Speaker 2: and I was like, ALLEGI, yeah, exact this is for me.
Speaker 2: So once I realized that I could end up like
Speaker 2: it Wisconsin or wherever an academic, I was like, I
Speaker 2: want to do the law. And I went to law school,
Speaker 2: still not one hundred percent sure, but then I kind
Speaker 2: of fell in love with the not so much the
Speaker 2: school part of law school, but the courtroom part, because
Speaker 2: I would go and watch trials and stuff.
Speaker 1: And when you are there, what year do you enter
Speaker 1: Columbia Law School?
Speaker 2: So I entered Columbia Law School eighty a graduate college,
Speaker 2: in eighty eight. They used to call me straight through.
Speaker 2: I should have taken time off. I didn't take your
Speaker 2: time off.
Speaker 1: So you go. You start Columbia Law School in eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Up by Columbia Crime was incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason I asked that is because what was
Speaker 1: law school like for a woman back then? Did you
Speaker 1: find it was different than it is now?
Speaker 2: And now I teach the I just taught my class yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it was. There were much many fewer women
Speaker 2: in the firms, for sure. In New York there were
Speaker 2: a lot. You know, when I went to Paul Weiss,
Speaker 2: there was one woman litigation partner who's now a judge.
Speaker 2: And they made me partner a year early with another
Speaker 2: woman because they didn't have anyone, partly because they didn't
Speaker 2: they need to get someone partners quick, and there weren't
Speaker 2: a lot of role models out there, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I read, well, you had your classes with people in
Speaker 1: the firms you worked in. Was it a situation where
Speaker 1: it's like, with men do it, it's fine, but if
Speaker 1: women do it, they're apparently it.
Speaker 2: Was that for sure. He's passed away. So I can
Speaker 2: say this. I had the former head of my firm
Speaker 2: tell me one day that I was a bulldog, and
Speaker 2: first of all, I felt like saying, well, maybe you
Speaker 2: meant bull dyke, Like I'm not sure what you mentioned
Speaker 2: with bulldog wethink that I said? But second of all, like,
Speaker 2: I'm a litigator, Like what are you saying? That's what
Speaker 2: we do? So there that was definitely an issue throughout
Speaker 2: the profession. It's it's gotten better, for sure.
Speaker 1: When you decided to go to law school. When you
Speaker 1: were done, was it worth it? Did it turn out
Speaker 1: to be satisfy this thing you wanted about dwelling in courtrooms?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think the idea, I mean, the
Speaker 2: great gift of being a lawyer and having the kind
Speaker 2: of career of had and being able to work at
Speaker 2: firms with all their problems. But who taught me so
Speaker 2: many things is the ability to actually change things in
Speaker 2: our society in a way that very few people can.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can really make a difference not only
Speaker 2: to your clients but to causes in the United States
Speaker 2: if you bring the right case at the right time
Speaker 2: and rage equality. Yeah, when there's the perfect example. So
Speaker 2: you know, in Paul Weiss where I started, really that
Speaker 2: culture was so strong in the litigation department. Arthur Lyman
Speaker 2: and Marty London were great heads of the departments, and
Speaker 2: that's how they practice, and that's how they taught me
Speaker 2: how to practice.
Speaker 1: When you take a case, what just makes you decide
Speaker 1: you're going to take the case? What do you look for?
Speaker 2: So if it's a case where I think it's very
Speaker 2: likely to go all the way to trial, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's probably not that different than what you look at
Speaker 2: very much thinking about how is this witness going to appear,
Speaker 2: how is she going to this person going to appears
Speaker 2: a witness? How credible is their story? What do they
Speaker 2: have that corroborates their story, What are the weaknesses of
Speaker 2: the story, and I kind of put it all together
Speaker 2: in some weird Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean Egene did this show, and she would
Speaker 1: be as I've heard referred to in like movies of
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties, she would be a flibberty gibbet.
Speaker 1: She's a very kinetic woman.
Speaker 2: You can say that again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like a bird out of the cage and
Speaker 1: she's all over the place. What were your concerns about
Speaker 1: that in terms of her as a witness.
Speaker 2: So she came into There were two things that immediately
Speaker 2: I thought that they were. On the plus, I won
Speaker 2: I don't have to tell you. I mean, she's this
Speaker 2: beautiful woman, so when you're having a woman who's alleging
Speaker 2: that someone assaulted her, I mean it was totally credible
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump would find her attractive. So that was good.
Speaker 2: And she was very articulate, and I thought she'd be
Speaker 2: able to be charming in the courtroom, which she ultimately was.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's me was that the story was
Speaker 2: so kooky, like the details of it that she went
Speaker 2: in to Berndurf Goodman and he said, let's go shopping,
Speaker 2: and they went up to the lingerie department in the evening.
Speaker 2: No one was the stories. If you wanted to make
Speaker 2: up a story about Donald Trump sexually assaulting you, that
Speaker 2: would not be the story you would make up. And then,
Speaker 2: of course she told her two close friends within the
Speaker 2: next forty eight hours. The donald sides, of course, were A.
Speaker 2: It was Donald Trump. B. It's generally very very hard
Speaker 2: for women to prove sexual assaults, especially one that took
Speaker 2: place pretty sure it was the spring of nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: those many years ago. She she is a very kinetic
Speaker 2: human being, and we had to work I mean, I
Speaker 2: thought she was great in the courtroom, but we had
Speaker 2: to talk and work with her about kind of how
Speaker 2: to testify as opposed to how to kind of talk
Speaker 2: as a journalist. She has a tendency to become a
Speaker 2: journalist all the time and to ask people questions, and
Speaker 2: we had to keep saying, oh, no, no, you have to
Speaker 2: answer questions. Now you can't ask the questions. I think
Speaker 2: she doesn't want talk about herself, so she'd rather be
Speaker 2: a drunk. I have to say, my colleagues at the time,
Speaker 2: no one thought it was a good case. Other than me,
Speaker 2: they were very well, what was their logic so long
Speaker 2: ago there wasn't any physical evidence. I mean, she'd have
Speaker 2: this dress, but the likelihood that there was anything.
Speaker 1: That was going to do it wasn't the black dress, like
Speaker 1: Monica Lewinsky.
Speaker 2: Well, she actually said, well it wasn't. It wasn't. She
Speaker 2: saved her dress, but not to prove anything. She saved
Speaker 2: it because it was a Donna Karen Black, very expensive dress,
Speaker 2: and she was like, this is too good of a dress.
Speaker 2: I'm not getting rid of it. So she put it
Speaker 2: in the back of her closet. She never wore again.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, I'm of the school having done this
Speaker 1: whole Trump stick on SNL for quite a while, for
Speaker 1: four years, that first four years. For me, everything that
Speaker 1: could be possibly said about Trump has already been said.
Speaker 1: And anybody talking about Trump anymore other than in actual
Speaker 1: facts and journalism is a waste of time. When you're
Speaker 1: in there. He was in the courtroom and you got
Speaker 1: to examine him.
Speaker 2: None in the courtroom examined him.
Speaker 1: At Marlago, you did, You did deposition with him, yeah,
Speaker 1: which it was depicitioning. So he never testified in a trial.
Speaker 2: He had the option to. The judge gave him until
Speaker 2: to just change his mind, until five o'clock first, the
Speaker 2: judge said ten o'clock on Sunday.
Speaker 1: But you can't make them testify. I thought in civil
Speaker 1: cases you could. I'm gonna talk to him, right.
Speaker 2: I was able to use the deposition video though, because
Speaker 2: he didn't testify, we were able to play some of
Speaker 2: the most telling I would say, excerpts of the deposition
Speaker 2: for the jury. Who saw them and.
Speaker 1: When you had and you questioned him for how long
Speaker 1: in mar a Lago?
Speaker 2: Probably seven hours.
Speaker 1: In one session or a couple sessions one session once.
Speaker 2: I did it twice one it was another case I
Speaker 2: had against him, a fraud case that ultimately didn't survive.
Speaker 1: And then in the case with her, how did you
Speaker 1: find him in terms of because he's obviously very cagy,
Speaker 1: He's a guy that has sidestepped a lot of serious
Speaker 1: problems with his wits and his guts and his madness perhaps,
Speaker 1: but how did you find him?
Speaker 2: So? I had a strategy I learned actually as a
Speaker 2: young lawyer, kind of being in a minority and having
Speaker 2: people think about you differently as a woman, which I
Speaker 2: call the spider strategy. What I mean by that is
Speaker 2: I kind of act like I don't know what I'm
Speaker 2: doing and then for a long time and then I'll
Speaker 2: finet the end, I'll kind of pounce. And so with him,
Speaker 2: I was very polite. I spent the first two hours
Speaker 2: asking him questions that he could brag about. So, for example,
Speaker 2: we know it was a Thursday night. It happened for
Speaker 2: two reasons. One that's when Berdruf Gribbin stayed late one
Speaker 2: night a week back then. And two that's when the
Speaker 2: writer's table met at Elaine's. And the truth of it
Speaker 2: is Egene was going to go to dinner there afterwards,
Speaker 2: and I know the whole thing began. She's admitted this
Speaker 2: because she thought it would be a great story. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'll tell my friends this joke, a story about how
Speaker 2: I helped Trump shop for a gift. And so I
Speaker 2: got him to say, I said, oh, you used to
Speaker 2: like going to Elaine's. Yes, you went there and with
Speaker 2: Havana very often. Yes, And you must have sat at
Speaker 2: the Writer's table, didn't you. And He's like, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: sat there many times. Like you could get him to
Speaker 2: say same thing that he'd been at a Saturay Night Live.
Speaker 2: She you know, Egene wrote for season you were Night
Speaker 2: Live a lot. Yes, you could kind of get him
Speaker 2: to admit, I don't think you understod I was doing,
Speaker 2: but that he was. He had every reason to know
Speaker 2: who Egene was. Like you, they overlapped in certain ways
Speaker 2: in New York society and ways that he definitely knew
Speaker 2: who she was. And I kind of just loaned him
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: And she was a woman in terms of her physical
Speaker 1: composition that certainly he's she would he would make it
Speaker 1: his business to meet someone like that.
Speaker 2: And as he said it, the thing he identified her
Speaker 2: as Marvel Maples, they did look a lot alike. The
Speaker 2: truth is, back then.
Speaker 1: When you have a contingency case. In my cases, my
Speaker 1: civil cases we've had, there are support expenses, photo copying,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Paralegals, I mean, they're they're the people
Speaker 1: say again it's a fortune. Well, the person who was
Speaker 1: my attorney, we had a contingency arrangement, but not for
Speaker 1: those expenses. So they're handing you, even though you're not
Speaker 1: paying the major bill, you're getting handed hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars of this this stuff. Now with you, did
Speaker 1: you do that? Did you have to pass on to her? No?
Speaker 2: We had very long all. No, don to Eddy, there
Speaker 2: has become very controversial. Trump is obsessed with this. Reied
Speaker 2: Hoffman stepped in and agreed to pay the outside expenses.
Speaker 2: And he was he's the guy started linked in a
Speaker 2: technic and he did why. He thought it was a
Speaker 2: good case and he thought it would be you know,
Speaker 2: important for people to see what happened, and so he agreed.
Speaker 2: He had a foundation that was doing kind of Trump
Speaker 2: stuff and they funded almost all that's the cost the
Speaker 2: most expensive which were security of course, right, because when
Speaker 2: every time we went to court, we needed bodyguard and
Speaker 2: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: For her for her Wow. So it's to be assumed
Speaker 1: because you've got five million in one judgment in eighty
Speaker 1: three whatever, and the other one.
Speaker 2: She's about I think she's I'm going to knock on wood.
Speaker 2: I think we're going to get the first five right,
Speaker 2: and we've waived our contingency on that, so she will
Speaker 2: get the whole entire five million.
Speaker 1: Right, and then it's down the road where they're going
Speaker 1: to get the eighty front.
Speaker 2: That's a little bit of a bigger bet.
Speaker 1: You do a contingency, Is it assumed that there are
Speaker 1: times you don't win, Yeah, and you have to eat
Speaker 1: that call those months and months of trial.
Speaker 2: And a lot of these firms that take on these
Speaker 2: huge continuencies that last years and years, they have to
Speaker 2: fund it all that, and sometimes they have this thing
Speaker 2: called litigation finance.
Speaker 1: Where right people invest in the case and they buy
Speaker 1: a piece.
Speaker 2: I've never done that, but.
Speaker 1: You never have. What do you what's your opinion of that?
Speaker 2: I think it can be very helpful. I just I
Speaker 2: would rather get the whole thing at the end. So
Speaker 2: I'm willing to bet on my own risk.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm going to pivot to me two times up.
Speaker 1: You know, if Trump weren't president, if you weren't someone
Speaker 1: who was empowered politically by so many people, he'd probably
Speaker 1: be in jail right now, don't you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not one hundred. I mean, first,
Speaker 2: certainly the special prosecutor would have put him in jail
Speaker 2: for sure had that happened, because I mean, he's been
Speaker 2: testifying today and it's incredibly powerful. Jack Smith, Look, I
Speaker 2: think eaching it would be surprised to me. Let me
Speaker 2: put this way, that Egene were that Egene was the
Speaker 2: only one. I mean, other women have said that he
Speaker 2: assaulted them. I assume it's true. I assume there are
Speaker 2: women out there who are just too afraid for good
Speaker 2: reason to come forward. I was actually down at the
Speaker 2: Manhattan DA last night until ten o'clock with a client
Speaker 2: terrible story domestic violence, and I was talking to the
Speaker 2: young prosecutors and I said to them, you know, Egene
Speaker 2: was right not to go to you guys in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, like they won't have done it. And he
Speaker 2: was like, no, you're right, they won't have done anything
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six, But sooner or later I would
Speaker 2: have caught up to him.
Speaker 1: Apropos of Me two times Up, there are tremendous successes,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, and overdue justice on behalf of people
Speaker 1: in terms of the ME two times which you know
Speaker 1: Harvey is the ault obviously, but how do you wait?
Speaker 1: What what the time ME two times up campaign has
Speaker 1: a complied?
Speaker 2: So I've spent a lot of time thinking about this
Speaker 2: and how it crashed and burned at the end, and
Speaker 2: why it crashed and burned at the end, and really
Speaker 2: and then kind of the bad publicity that I got
Speaker 2: and others involved got. Look, on the one hand, there
Speaker 2: were people like Harveing others who deserved everything they got.
Speaker 2: But I do believe, and it actually goes all the
Speaker 2: way back to Russia that we reached a kind of
Speaker 2: Robespierre period and it actually helped reelect Trump where it
Speaker 2: was just after collecting heads rather than exercising judgment, seeing
Speaker 2: like the differences understanding nuance, etc. There definitely was a
Speaker 2: kind of guillotine aspect to it at its height, and
Speaker 2: that was a mistake. There's no question that people were hurt.
Speaker 2: There's no question that people who were guilty again, as
Speaker 2: I said, got their just desserts. I've thought a lot
Speaker 2: about what we could have done to change that. Part
Speaker 2: of me thinks that's human nature when these things happen.
Speaker 2: But it's terrible, and it's terrible because people who were
Speaker 2: hurt bright. It's terrible because again I think it had
Speaker 2: a huge impact on reelect in Trump the second time.
Speaker 2: The other thing I think about a lot is that
Speaker 2: at times up we were dependent on celebrities for our power.
Speaker 2: And that was great. It gave us great power. But
Speaker 2: we failed to realize is that, and this is understandable,
Speaker 2: celebrities don't have a lot of tolerance for controversy, right,
Speaker 2: So the minute things started to get a little iffy,
Speaker 2: you know, people started fleeing the ship very very quickly,
Speaker 2: and it was hard to hold it together.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing people individual people meeting with them, meeting
Speaker 1: them with in studios, very much like this Keeler Charlie Rose.
Speaker 1: Not everybody was pressing a button to lock the door
Speaker 1: of their office at NBC to prevent you from getting out.
Speaker 1: There were gradations of this, and I felt that a
Speaker 1: lot of people got washed up in the sweep there unfairly.
Speaker 1: Look there people who didn't deserve to be canceled. I
Speaker 1: they need some counseling.
Speaker 2: The Times tried to cancel me. So two summers ago,
Speaker 2: there was a reporter at the Times who spent ten months,
Speaker 2: literally ten months, calling everyone who's ever worked with me,
Speaker 2: everyone I know, saying what's the dirt on Robbie Kaplan,
Speaker 2: which is pretty insane because I'm kind of boring. There's
Speaker 2: like not a lot of dirt on me. And she
Speaker 2: wrote this very nasty piece and it really gave me.
Speaker 2: I have to say, it was a very painful period,
Speaker 2: but it really gave me an understanding of the damage
Speaker 2: that could be done. I mean it was at the
Speaker 2: second Trump trial. I'm standing there closing to the jury.
Speaker 2: I have Trump seven feet to my left, and I
Speaker 2: have this New York Times reporter seven feet to my right,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I don't even just wait wait
Speaker 2: to look. I was like, this is insane. So it
Speaker 2: gave me a lot more sympathy and empathy for how
Speaker 2: damaging that can be. Again, I think we've moved away
Speaker 2: from it. But the problem with social media is it
Speaker 2: just it encourages it.
Speaker 1: Lawyer Robbie Kaplan. If you enjoy conversations with lawyers representing
Speaker 1: controversial clients, check out my episode with Dean Strang the
Speaker 1: defense Attorney Fee to the documentary Making a Murderer.
Speaker 3: This happens a client comes in, potential client comes in,
Speaker 3: You meet with him, he lays it all out, and
Speaker 3: you know, my reaction is, look, you're cooked. They've got you,
Speaker 3: and they're gonna want you to cooperate against others, and
Speaker 3: you probably should. That's probably your best option right at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 1: And I don't do that. I'm not the right lawyer
Speaker 1: for that. To hear more of my conversation with attorney
Speaker 1: Dean Strang, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After
Speaker 1: the break, Robbie Kaplan tells the story of taking her
Speaker 1: seven year old son to the White House and his
Speaker 1: interaction with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I'm Alec Baldwin, and
Speaker 1: this is here's the thing. Robbie Kaplan received her graduate
Speaker 1: degree from Columbia Law School and went on to join
Speaker 1: the law firm Paul Weiss. While at the firm, Kaplan
Speaker 1: would eventually take on her alma mater as a client. Today,
Speaker 1: Caplin teaches a yearly seminar at Columbia University's Law School
Speaker 1: as an adjunct professor. I was curious how her experience
Speaker 1: with Columbia has changed over the years and how she
Speaker 1: would describe law students today.
Speaker 2: Well, it just certain my new class yesterday.
Speaker 1: What do you teach?
Speaker 2: It's a very sexy topic, advanced civil procedure. I'll have
Speaker 2: a question for someone actually signs up for that. I
Speaker 2: think they're more serious than we were, for sure.
Speaker 1: Really why because the world saw.
Speaker 2: Grim Really that's a sense.
Speaker 1: Do they express that to you in some ways.
Speaker 2: A little bit? I mean, it was just the first
Speaker 2: class yesterday, But last year I taught it too, and
Speaker 2: they seem, I mean, we had some interesting discussions about it,
Speaker 2: but they seem there's not a lot of hope for them.
Speaker 2: About it's sad they can achieve. Even talking about courts
Speaker 2: and cases and kind of how the system has changed
Speaker 2: over time is a little bit depressant. You want to
Speaker 2: hear my best White House story?
Speaker 1: Go right ahead.
Speaker 2: So after Windsor, we get invited to the White House
Speaker 2: for it was the Honka party, I think, and I
Speaker 2: said to my our son was about seven or eight,
Speaker 2: And I said to my wife, like, should we bring him?
Speaker 2: He was pretty hyperactive as a kid. I said, well,
Speaker 2: bring him. I said, we'll probably never get invited to
Speaker 2: the White House again, so let's bring him. And so
Speaker 2: I said to him, my name is Jacob, said Jacob, listen,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go. You're gonna have to go through all
Speaker 2: the security. If it gets to be too much for you,
Speaker 2: I promise you we can leave. So he was like fine.
Speaker 2: We went and he did fine. He had a little
Speaker 2: tie on. He was adorable. He did fine for about
Speaker 2: the first hour, and then it did start to get
Speaker 2: super crowded, and he said, okay, you told me we
Speaker 2: could go, and I said fine. So as we're walking out,
Speaker 2: Justice Ginsburg is walking in and I said to Jacob,
Speaker 2: I said, okay, let's go over and say hello to
Speaker 2: Justice Ginsburg, and I am not exaggerating. Jacob had a
Speaker 2: temper tantrum on the buckles of her Faeragama shoes. He's
Speaker 2: literally on the floor on her feet having a snappertentrum.
Speaker 2: I have a look on my face like I'd rather
Speaker 2: this happened to anyone else on the planet other than you,
Speaker 2: Justice s Kinsburth, And she looked at me. It was
Speaker 2: the kindest thing on the one She said. Listen, She said,
Speaker 2: I have a son. He's exactly your age his childhood
Speaker 2: was Was he acted like that when he was a kid,
Speaker 2: she said, But he's now professor at Chicago and he's
Speaker 2: married with kids, and don't worry at all. Be fun.
Speaker 1: My kids are in a face now where we went
Speaker 1: shopping for ski coats and buying them, and I say, well,
Speaker 1: I think this one looks good on Newarthi and my kids.
Speaker 1: One of my sons turned to me, he goes, what
Speaker 1: do you know you're from Long Islands?
Speaker 2: Oh, my god, they're all born.
Speaker 1: And raised in the city. He goes, what do you
Speaker 1: know you're.
Speaker 2: From my sonset My son's version of that as you're
Speaker 2: from the last century. Oh that happened in the last century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now civil procedure in terms of the
Speaker 1: type of civil law you would attend to, don't you
Speaker 1: think there's some need for some reform to streamline that process.
Speaker 1: And I'll allow judges to sit there and go, hey, mister,
Speaker 1: you're full of shit, get out of here. Why can't
Speaker 1: we streamline that process.
Speaker 2: Exactly what we talked about yesterday actually in the first
Speaker 2: class of my seminar. And I do think that, you know,
Speaker 2: what happens is we keep making procedural rules to kind
Speaker 2: of screen out the bad cases and then their unintended
Speaker 2: consequences to those rules, and they don't end up achieving
Speaker 2: what we want them to achieve. Good judges, and there
Speaker 2: are many good judges, especially in New York, especially federal
Speaker 2: judges in New York, kind of do it on their own,
Speaker 2: you know. They, especially if they've been on the bench
Speaker 2: a long time, they have a very good sense of
Speaker 2: what's a good case and what's not a good case,
Speaker 2: and what are the weaknesses in a case, and they
Speaker 2: will kind of maneuver the case, I think appropriately if
Speaker 2: it's a bad case to get it dismissed, and if
Speaker 2: it's a good case, to push it along. People have
Speaker 2: debated different ways to do this. Should we have different
Speaker 2: courts for different kind of cases? Different judges only do
Speaker 2: one kind of case? Should we have different courts based
Speaker 2: on how much money is at stake? In federal courts?
Speaker 2: All you need is seventy five thousand dollars hasn't changed
Speaker 2: for decades and probably is way too low.
Speaker 1: Seventy five thousand dollars for what to bring.
Speaker 2: A diversity case in federal court. There's people from different states.
Speaker 2: You have to be from different states, and you have
Speaker 2: to seek more than seventy five thousand dollars. When that
Speaker 2: was first past, seventy five thousand dollars was a lot
Speaker 2: of money. Today it's not. And there's been no kind
Speaker 2: of way to update that, or Congress hasn't. But sure,
Speaker 2: I mean it's something that needs to be thought of.
Speaker 2: We have a lot of other legal problems to deal
Speaker 2: with and that Congress has to look at, but that
Speaker 2: would be one on my agenda as well. And the
Speaker 2: courts are overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Do you find you have a talent for reading juries?
Speaker 2: I think I've gotten good at it. Yeah, it's hard,
Speaker 2: and the minutes before a jury, like a you know
Speaker 2: when they say they've come in with a verdict when
Speaker 2: you're waiting. Every time it happens, I think I'm going
Speaker 2: to have a heart attack right there.
Speaker 1: I can't stand it.
Speaker 2: We had I did this big case against the guys
Speaker 2: who were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville the rally
Speaker 2: in August twenty seventeen. It was during COVID and it
Speaker 2: was very hard to read the jury in that case
Speaker 2: because they everyone had to wear masks. The juries were
Speaker 2: sitting kind of where the audience would sit, like two
Speaker 2: jurors to a bench. But there was one guy in
Speaker 2: the back. There were very strict rules about wearing a mask,
Speaker 2: and he constantly his masks would constantly go down, and
Speaker 2: I would say the judge found him there, like, the
Speaker 2: guy's not following the rules, And then the guy must
Speaker 2: have figured it out because he would kind of give
Speaker 2: me nasty looks. And the best thing that ever happened
Speaker 2: is the morning we were driving over the court to
Speaker 2: find out for them to start deliberating, the judge said,
Speaker 2: it turns out a kid at this guy's school got COVID.
Speaker 2: The guy wasn't vaccinated, and the judge said, I'm letting
Speaker 2: you go. And I was like, oh, thank god. So
Speaker 2: things like that really matter. Actually, whether people are vaccinated
Speaker 2: is a great indicator of whether the Yeah, well, in
Speaker 2: New York you are well. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: are now, but you were for the last several years, and.
Speaker 1: And proof that they were vaccinating indicates what to.
Speaker 2: You, rationality.
Speaker 1: I'm going to remember that, honestly, I'm going to remember
Speaker 1: that when I got to New Mexico in a couple
Speaker 1: of years.
Speaker 2: You don't want to vaccinated jurors, trust.
Speaker 1: Me, I don't want to. Okay, Often these cases settle,
Speaker 1: and preferably this vast majority cases, the vast majority. I'm
Speaker 1: to show how many of the settlements are spurred by
Speaker 1: the judges of themselves or by your opposing counsel or both.
Speaker 1: Did the judge ever say to you, hey, let's cut
Speaker 1: the shit. You settle this now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of judges do that, and I think
Speaker 2: that's a good thing. I think judges should be.
Speaker 1: Doing that now when you are in settlements, what's the strategy? Meaning,
Speaker 1: how did you get to eighty three million with the
Speaker 1: Trump Well it was a jury verdict.
Speaker 2: That was a jury verdict. But that's all his fault.
Speaker 2: I mean, he sat in that course. So the first
Speaker 2: trial he didn't show up at all. He was in
Speaker 2: Scotland at his golf course. So the second trial he
Speaker 2: did show up because that one was about money. But
Speaker 2: he acted like a fourteen year old delinquent the whole trial,
Speaker 2: and the jury saw it. And then every day he
Speaker 2: would leave the courtroom go to I think we was
Speaker 2: going to some office downtown at some trumplone building. It
Speaker 2: he would give a press conference and he would defeye
Speaker 2: Egen again. So I would walk in next morning, I'd say,
Speaker 2: he did it again, Judge.
Speaker 1: Here's the video, and it's just who was that judge?
Speaker 2: His name is Kaplin, no relation, but he really every
Speaker 2: penny of the Lewis Kaplan is his name.
Speaker 1: Not the one that adjudicated the Steve Donziger case with.
Speaker 2: The same judge. Same judge.
Speaker 1: Donz is a friend of mine who's on this show.
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, okay, no comment there. He was.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of Judge Kaplin.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say the same, but the I
Speaker 1: find people. I was at a dinner party and at
Speaker 1: the table with us was this guy that was a
Speaker 1: judge of federal judge and I tried and I did.
Speaker 1: I've arrested myself from asking him a lot of questions
Speaker 1: like don't you feel just a suffocating burden to judge
Speaker 1: people and to make decisions they're going to change their lives?
Speaker 1: What's the psychological training? What's the emotional or behavioral training
Speaker 1: they give you in school to master that where you're
Speaker 1: gonna go in and say you're gonna go none zero.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if some people must drive them.
Speaker 2: So one of our young associates just put in. We
Speaker 2: asked for their comments and they said, look, I think
Speaker 2: there should be some training on this, and I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, she has a good idea. So we're actually
Speaker 2: bringing in a psychologist, I think in the next couple
Speaker 2: of months to talk to our people about dealing with
Speaker 2: these cases where the people have experienced great trauma and
Speaker 2: that itself is hard to do.
Speaker 1: I have a job I created for myself, and I'm
Speaker 1: only half kidding, but I'll watch TV and they'll show
Speaker 1: a segment of a trial and I'll go, you got
Speaker 1: to be kidding me. You went to law school and
Speaker 1: you study the law, and that's how you present your
Speaker 1: case in court. I want to be the acting coach
Speaker 1: for your period of the litigators. I'm not kidding. I
Speaker 1: want to say to them, I want to take their speeches.
Speaker 1: I want to take their summations and say, okay, you
Speaker 1: want to motor through this, to only take the earned pause,
Speaker 1: you go, you go. The audience is way ahead of it.
Speaker 1: But boom, boom boom is like a horse stop. And
Speaker 1: then you lay this line out real slow, you squeeze it.
Speaker 1: Because I see people who speak in court and they're horrible.
Speaker 1: Their acting skills are dreadful, and it is a bit
Speaker 1: of acting, so.
Speaker 2: As I get to be great. So in the Carol case,
Speaker 2: she told these two people right away, one her friend,
Speaker 2: Lisa Burnbock, and a couple days later another friend, remember
Speaker 2: Carol Martin the old newscast took her friend. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: Carol had some texts that she had to produce where
Speaker 2: Egene was getting on her nerves and she's talking to
Speaker 2: her daughter about how Egene's getting her nurs and they
Speaker 2: thought these were great the other side, and so during
Speaker 2: my closing I raised the issue of the text and
Speaker 2: I said, I looked at the women jerors, I said,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes it's just the way we talk about
Speaker 2: our friends, and they got it. Like they got it immediately.
Speaker 2: That's just how people act sometimes.
Speaker 1: Lawyer Robbie Kaplan, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow. Here's the thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Robbie Caplan tells us how being
Speaker 1: too honest on a form prevented her from becoming a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Robbie
Speaker 1: Kaplan was a partner at the law firm Paul Weiss Rifkin,
Speaker 1: Wharton and Garrison for eighteen years. At the firm, she
Speaker 1: represented clients ranging from JP Morgan Chase to Edith Windsor
Speaker 1: in the landmark Defensive Marriage Act Supreme Court case. I
Speaker 1: was curious why, after eighteen years and much success, Kaplin
Speaker 1: decided to leave Paul Weiss and start her own firm,
Speaker 1: and if this was always her plan.
Speaker 2: So I had an early date with my wife. We
Speaker 2: just met each other and we're having dinner at some
Speaker 2: QB strow in the village, and I start telling her that, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, when they were people get it to be
Speaker 2: a certain agent. Paul Weiss. They moved their offices to
Speaker 2: like smaller offices, but I think that would be okay.
Speaker 2: I'm thirty telling her this, and my wife looks at me, like,
Speaker 2: have you lost your mind? Like you're thirty years old,
Speaker 2: you're thinking about what office you're going to be in
Speaker 2: when you retire. Paul Weiss, I thought I'd spent my
Speaker 2: life there. What changed the business of law firms like
Speaker 2: Paul Weis and such as Paul White. All the big
Speaker 2: firms got bigger and bigger. The corporate departments got bigger
Speaker 2: and bigger. Paul weize, that's been quite dramatic. And what
Speaker 2: that meant for the legation department is the kinds of
Speaker 2: cases they were able to do got narrow and narrower.
Speaker 2: So it got to the point where the only cases
Speaker 2: that Paul Weiss was really wanted to or able to do,
Speaker 2: are these huge cases with five partners and thirty associates.
Speaker 2: And I could do those cases. I did plenty of them,
Speaker 2: but I wanted to be able to do more, have
Speaker 2: more diversity, both in the size of case and in
Speaker 2: the kind of case. I told this guy, my mentor,
Speaker 2: Marty London, who was an old partner, that my goal
Speaker 2: is to have his practice, and I think I've finally
Speaker 2: gotten It's taken me a long time.
Speaker 1: But you had your own firm for how long?
Speaker 2: Well, I've had two versions of my own firms, so
Speaker 2: since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Well, the first one you started when you left Paul White, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which you then left that as well. Correct, why got
Speaker 1: too big? So again you had created a firm. So
Speaker 1: was that an inevitability in the business.
Speaker 2: No, I was just like, focus on my work and
Speaker 2: really honestly not paying attention to the firm itself that much.
Speaker 2: And it also became too big and too white collar,
Speaker 2: and I don't do white collar work, so it didn't
Speaker 2: make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So you then then then the third iteration was you
Speaker 1: started another.
Speaker 2: Firm with a bunch of people from the second firms.
Speaker 1: Second firm, how's that going?
Speaker 2: It's fun because everyone I know known a very long time,
Speaker 2: all the partners. We have these incredible group of young
Speaker 2: lawyers working for us. They're amazing, our cases are amazing.
Speaker 2: We're having a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: When you're in court. This is relates to the question
Speaker 1: about the jury. Can you read a judge too? Oh?
Speaker 2: Definitely, Well, you.
Speaker 1: Probably have had a history with them, you know them from.
Speaker 2: The important thing in any case is that who the judges.
Speaker 2: I hate to say if this is true, and you know,
Speaker 2: if there it's a judge, you know, you know how
Speaker 2: they are approach to things, how they practice, what their
Speaker 2: attitude is going to be. It's incredibly important. It's not
Speaker 2: even that important what it is. It's just important knowing
Speaker 2: what it is, right, because then you could advise the
Speaker 2: client as to how things are likely to progress.
Speaker 1: And without naming names. Obviously, are there judges where you're
Speaker 1: like slightly terrified they have to go into that courtroom
Speaker 1: or concerned, let's.
Speaker 2: Say in New York, not that many. We have really
Speaker 2: good judges in New York. I was, this is crazy.
Speaker 2: So during this second trial, Alina Habba, who was the
Speaker 2: lead lawyer who was the USA Traine for New Jersey
Speaker 2: for like seven minutes, stood up in court I think
Speaker 2: it was the second day, and held her arms like
Speaker 2: this and said, Judge Kaplan, I just want you to
Speaker 2: know I really don't appreciate the way you're speaking to me.
Speaker 2: And I literally almost how a heart attack the idea
Speaker 2: that you would say that to it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: if I had said he would put He would say,
Speaker 2: you're getting put out.
Speaker 1: Why do you think there's all that decorum with the judge?
Speaker 1: Why do you stand and call him your honor? We're
Speaker 1: not in eighteenth century England here.
Speaker 2: I think it's a good thing because on the surface
Speaker 2: you're showing respect to that judge, but fundamentally you're showing
Speaker 2: respect for the rule of law. And I wish we
Speaker 2: had a little bit more back for the rural law right.
Speaker 1: Now, dwindle in your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's terrible right now. I mean the
Speaker 2: DOJ used to be this great costation, right that always
Speaker 2: told the truth and always took the right position, and
Speaker 2: always cared about consistency, And none of that's true anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, when Trump got into office, I know made note
Speaker 1: of the fact that to a degree or in some metric,
Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for how many other bad people would
Speaker 1: come with him. I didn't realize this time the well,
Speaker 1: the second term, forget it. But in the first term
Speaker 1: even I remember saying to myself, I didn't know there
Speaker 1: were that many bad people out there who were on
Speaker 1: some political operatives rolodex. And now when the second term,
Speaker 1: it's like, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, how many prosecutors have quit and dj because they've
Speaker 2: been asked to do things that they know are wrong.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's terrible. I wanted to be a prosecutor.
Speaker 2: Want he still a funny story. So I got an
Speaker 2: internship when I was in law school to be prosecutor
Speaker 2: Southern District of New York. And this was Bush one
Speaker 2: and you had to fill out a form for security
Speaker 2: and the forum had a pot question. So I go
Speaker 2: to see the professor Columbian and I said, so give
Speaker 2: me advice. What should I do? And he said, you're
Speaker 2: supposed to say experimentally. So the first question was have
Speaker 2: you smoked pot? I wrote yes, semi cola and experimentally.
Speaker 2: The next question was how many times? And I wrote
Speaker 2: twelve plus and the government said, sorry, we're withdrawing your offer.
Speaker 2: And I went to the professor to tell the story.
Speaker 2: He's like, what in the world were you thinking? Right,
Speaker 2: experiment I said, I want to lie, I said.
Speaker 1: My continuing experimentation. I was very You didn't want to lie,
Speaker 1: but you realized that if the question is silly, like
Speaker 1: you say yes, experiment how many times twice, you should
Speaker 1: have lied. You should have lied in that appl because
Speaker 1: you're too bunch of a girl scout to do.
Speaker 2: I want to get my hands on that form somehow,
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to foid it.
Speaker 1: Well, cut, yeah you should. What kind of work does
Speaker 1: your wife do?
Speaker 2: So she's been in Democratic politics part she was is
Speaker 2: the Democratic State Committee person for Downtown Manhattan for twenty
Speaker 2: some years and has worked down a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: anti fracking, a whole bunch of policy stuff. Starting to
Speaker 2: think that maybe it's time for a change, but that's
Speaker 2: what she's devoted for. She was an activist when I
Speaker 2: met her, and then she kind of did a lot
Speaker 2: of policy throughout our marriage.
Speaker 1: A lot of facting going on in New York.
Speaker 2: No, she stopped it right. Oh well, with Governor Cuoma.
Speaker 1: I was in Trump was elected. I went to do
Speaker 1: that crazy and silly Trump stick those four years in
Speaker 1: SNL from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: You may say it's crazy and silly, but it gave
Speaker 2: a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Well, people would say that to me, not.
Speaker 2: Just pleasure from watching, but a lot of comfort.
Speaker 1: Right. They wanted to have some laughs about what do
Speaker 1: you think, let's say we win the mid terms, and
Speaker 1: to me that gives me hope, yes, that we can
Speaker 1: come back to some degree. It's never going to be
Speaker 1: the same. Like they were saying. You saw the guy
Speaker 1: from Canada said that they the Americans as the leader
Speaker 1: of the free world is over. It's that damage, it's fractured,
Speaker 1: it's over. And I thought, wow, what a disturbing I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily need the United States to be the
Speaker 1: leader of the free world, but I thought I'd like
Speaker 1: the United States to have the option to be the
Speaker 1: leader of the free world if it was necessary, and
Speaker 1: then if we could keep things together. And do you
Speaker 1: think we're ever going to be able to put it
Speaker 1: back together to We just don't know.
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about that a lot since Davos. Obviously. Look,
Speaker 2: I think first of all, we have to put things
Speaker 2: back together domestically, so we have to kind of redo
Speaker 2: all the Watergate reforms, but in a way that works.
Speaker 2: All the rules about independence and stopping corruption and disclosures
Speaker 2: like we had them, but they're they were too easy
Speaker 2: to get around. So I think all of that has
Speaker 2: to change. And I have great respect for President Biden.
Speaker 2: I think you did a good thing, but I don't
Speaker 2: think he was tough enough on that stuff, and then
Speaker 2: I think, once we fix our own house, which is
Speaker 2: going to take time, we also obviously have to repair
Speaker 2: our relationships with our allies. I mean, one thing I
Speaker 2: know from the time I was in Russia is that
Speaker 2: you know, the Russian government then and now is not
Speaker 2: It's not a good thing. And what they're doing in
Speaker 2: Ukraine is tragic and we need to have kind that
Speaker 2: can work together to fight against that. We can't have
Speaker 2: them go take Ukraine and then beyellow Russia and then Poland.
Speaker 2: That would be horrific. We're not going to relive, as
Speaker 2: my son would say, the last century.
Speaker 1: Without getting into details. What's the case you're working on now?
Speaker 2: Oh, so this is interesting. I can tell you this
Speaker 2: is public, So this is not it's all about everything
Speaker 2: we talked about roll up into one. So we have
Speaker 2: a client. I have a client for many years. His
Speaker 2: name is Imron Achmed. He runs it a not for
Speaker 2: profit called the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and he's
Speaker 2: a big critic of tech and he's written a lot
Speaker 2: about problems on big tech and failure to moderate content, etc.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk does not like him very much. He sued
Speaker 2: him four years ago. I represented Elon in that case.
Speaker 2: We got it dismissed. It's still on appeal and AX
Speaker 2: recently got sanctioned by the EU for not for failing
Speaker 2: to comply with their digital privacy law. And Elon got
Speaker 2: very angry and got the State Department we believe to
Speaker 2: say that my client screen card should be revoked. They
Speaker 2: announced this on December twenty third. In the afternoon. We
Speaker 2: go I see to my client, get your toush to
Speaker 2: New York. We file papers on five o'clock on Christmas Eve,
Speaker 2: saying you can't do this. This is about his speech. The
Speaker 2: guy hasn't done it. You're not allowed to just kick
Speaker 2: people out of the country because you don't like what
Speaker 2: they say. And he's not criticised the American company. Since
Speaker 2: when is that a problem? Like people criticize America companies
Speaker 2: all the time. And we got an injunction twelve thirty
Speaker 2: am on Christmas Day, So my team didn't have the
Speaker 2: easiest holiday. But it's a great case. It's ongoing right now.
Speaker 2: They can't do anything to him, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: see you to litigated.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that judge that smuggle the
Speaker 1: presumed terrorists out of the courtroom and just got conviction.
Speaker 2: She got convicted.
Speaker 1: She got convicted. Boy boy, that seems like a tough
Speaker 1: thing to do for judge to sit in judgement of
Speaker 1: another judge who they believe has made a poor decision.
Speaker 1: It was a poor.
Speaker 2: Decision probably, if that's those are the facts it was.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why our client is so different. There
Speaker 2: are We do have rights to revoke visus for people
Speaker 2: who support terrorists things like that, But criticizing X like
Speaker 2: that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: I've been saying the same thing. I'm likely that people
Speaker 1: who are the faithful in this issue of campaign finance reform,
Speaker 1: the ones I've worked with over the years, for many years.
Speaker 1: This is my issue, other than plastics pollution and wanting
Speaker 1: to ban single use plastics around the country, Campaign finance
Speaker 1: reform is the lynchpin of all of our problems in
Speaker 1: this country. What passes for leadership now that is able
Speaker 1: to get bought and sold by the local business community.
Speaker 1: If cash is speech, then he with the most cast
Speaker 1: speaks the loudest. Was the line of us.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: If we don't change this, citizens united and get that overturn,
Speaker 1: I doubt we'll ever be able to get off the path.
Speaker 1: We're wrong with that, and.
Speaker 2: Which leads to the Supreme Court, which is a whole
Speaker 2: other head.
Speaker 1: We want to know what then let's ask let's go
Speaker 1: out on that question. Look, I mean sixty.
Speaker 2: Three, as someone who really believed in the system and
Speaker 2: the role of law, the idea of Supreme Court reform
Speaker 2: was hard for me to kind of get my arms around.
Speaker 2: But I'm now at the point. I mean, we'll see
Speaker 2: what they do on tariffs, We'll see what they do
Speaker 2: on the FED. I think I think he's going to
Speaker 2: lose both of those. But this idea that they just,
Speaker 2: you know, so easily overturned precedence not Roe v. Wade
Speaker 2: and others that have existed for decades, is not good.
Speaker 2: It doesn't give it's there's no faith in the system.
Speaker 1: It's law. What do they say, what do they say
Speaker 1: when they change it? What is it?
Speaker 2: Basically said, it was wrong a lyough, it was wrong
Speaker 2: when it was decided, and reliance doesn't matter, essentially, is
Speaker 2: what he said. But it can't be that people have
Speaker 2: so little faith in the Supreme Court. I know, I'm
Speaker 2: assuming the Chief Justice is worried about this. I think
Speaker 2: he needs to be more worried about it. I think
Speaker 2: we have to restore that faith as well.
Speaker 1: My thanks to lawyer Robbie Kaplan. This episode was recorded
Speaker 1: at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Soo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Isaac Kaplan Woolner. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio