WEBVTT - Amazon Sidesteps Antitrust Case; Trump Goes to SCOTUS 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:07.960 This is Bloombird Law with June Brussel from Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:13.360 Amazon and the five largest US publishing houses are free 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:18.720 for now of antitrust litigation overclaims they manipulated online book 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:21.680 and e book markets. But the case may not be 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:26.439 over just yet. My guest is antitrust law expert Harry First, 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.840 a professor at n y U Law School. Harry tell 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:34.239 us about these lawsuits. So so let's just, um, will 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.479 you just explain what this what this class action, what 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.800 they was about. Okay, this is a fun case, as 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.800 all anti trust cases are. They are so um. First 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.600 of all, it's a class action which, as you know, 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.080 is brought on behalf of a lot of people, and 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:57.680 this is brought on behalf of buyers of e books 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:02.080 against Amazon and five Age your book publishers. So that's 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:05.280 presumably a lot of the books a lot of money 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.960 writing on this. Damages in these cases are not just 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.080 what the consumers might have paid over what they should 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.040 have paid the overcharge, which is what they're alleging, but 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:20.160 it's that trebled, so damages are three times that. So 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.840 a lot of buyers the book publishers published almost of 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:28.839 the books published in the United States, and of course 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:33.160 we've heard of Amazon, an interesting little factoy. They sell 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:37.600 more books than any other single retail outlet in history, 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.319 in history, you know, I'm not sure how far back 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:46.920 that goes, but they have tremendous power in this industry. 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.840 Is it a monopoly, Well, that's a great question, and 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.440 it's a question the Federal Trade Commission has been investigating. 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.280 They've been assigned the task, I guess you could say, 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:02.640 of investigating Amazon for men balizing conduct. It's not a 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:05.200 violation of US law just to be a monopoly. They 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:08.600 have to do byad things to keep their monopoly or 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.359 to have gotten it. And so they are under investigation. 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:13.480 They've always been under a lot of fire. They're under 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.240 fire here, they're under fire in Europe, in Asia, I 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.440 mean everywhere. And you know, instinctively we know they've got 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:25.160 tremendous power over the book publishers. They do some publishing 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.160 of books, but they haven't really made a go of it, 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:33.040 and their powers mainly as the distributor, the retailer that 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:38.480 has great power in the change of distribution, so very powerful, 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:42.760 and you know, the book publishers aren't not powerful. Without them, 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.680 we don't have books. So these are parties on both 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:51.240 sides with a lot of market power. So the problem 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.959 in this case, the reason why the buyers are bringing 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:58.040 is they allege that the five publishers and Amazon have 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:03.040 conspired to fix the prices of e books roughly I 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:09.680 guess from twenty onward and raise the price above what 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:13.640 it would be in a competitive market without this agreement. 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.239 So how did they do it? And this is where, 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.079 of course it gets complicated, because you know, the planiffs 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.360 have to prove that they actually agreed. So each of 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:27.560 the publishers has an agreement with Amazon. They have these 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.960 agreements individually with Amazon for how their books are sold. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.760 The arrangement is something that they call the agency model. 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.680 So you know, if you if you sell your house, 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.640 then you have a real estate agent. The real estate 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.160 agent doesn't own your house and then sell its m 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.600 for more money or less money, whatever they can get. 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.000 They just act on your behalf and you tell them 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.440 how much you want, what price do you want. That's 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.520 an agency model, and that's the model they took with 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:00.240 e books. Of course, e books aren't physical, they're US 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.960 zeroes and ones. They're just computer code. But the fiction 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.760 is well, Amazon's their agents. They don't really own the books, 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:10.160 not that there are books, they don't own the files. 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.480 I guess you could say they're just the agent. And 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:17.400 each publisher tells Amazon what to sell the book at 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.359 and then Amazon takes a cut. The cut is I 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.760 think thirty of the sale price. Is that high? It 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:29.000 sounds high. I think it's This has been the standards, 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:32.200 thanks frankly to Steve Jobs. But we'll get to that 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:35.440 in a minute, because that's behind all of this. So 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:40.240 each agreed to this agency model, and when they did, individually, 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:44.040 they issued press releases or letters to their authors, you know, 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:48.000 explaining what that they were doing this, but each individually. 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.479 And there's another wrinkle to this, which is often referred 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:56.720 to as a price parody, cause not paro d as amusing, 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:03.040 but equal so um in these agreements required each publisher 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:08.120 to tell Amazon if their books were available through a 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.920 different retailer at a lower price, So to inform them 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.440 if let's say that they were allowing Barnes and Noble 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.719 to sell the book at a lower retail price, and 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:24.880 then Amazon could react and could say we want the 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.599 same price, which is, you know, what they would do 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:32.120 and what they did and This included not just the 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.360 same price, but promotional deals, whatever sorts of things they 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.120 worked out. They gave other retailers a little better deal 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.680 they had to tell Amazon about and Amazon would tell 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.719 them where we want that deal. Now, if the publisher's ball, 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.040 then Amazon could retaliate for threatened to retaliate, and they 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.279 had lots of ways to do that, some of which 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.640 had become public. I mean, they sell a lot of 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.640 physical books, so they can retaliate against the physical book division, 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:58.279 and they threatened to st with that at one point, 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.680 you know, to force these publishers who in the end, 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.960 I mean, they need Amazon to distribute their books. So 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:11.839 the allegation is that the price parity clause, for the 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:17.719 price informational parity clause that combined with the agreement, you know, 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.919 the agency model, was an agreement that effectively fixed the 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.960 price and prevented discounting. And the plaintiffs back this up with. 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:31.039 You know that they all had these press releases sort 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.320 of telling everyone in the world, including their competitors, what 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.279 they did. And the week after these agency agreements were signed, 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:43.320 everyone increased their e book prices, some by quite a bit, Penguin, 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:48.640 for example, by so that they argue the PLANETFS argue 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.839 shows it was an agreement to fix prices. Now for 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:56.800 the background in a prior case involving Steve Jobs. Now 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.919 I said, there's background in this, and the background is 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.919 what makes it more interesting is that it's not the 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.320 first time we've seen a problem with price fixing of 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:11.720 e books. And the first time actually involved litigation with 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:17.240 the Justice Department and the States and the European Union actually, 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:21.480 and it involved Apple. And this dated back to two 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.960 thousand seven, believe it or not, when the Kindle came 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.640 out and Amazon releases the Kindle with a low e 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:34.960 book price of At that time, publishers distributed e books 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:39.360 like they distributed hardcover books wholesale, so they would sell 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.080 them to the retailer and then the retailer can sell 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.440 whatever price they wanted. So they were selling books e 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:51.080 books to Amazon for roughly nine dollars or something close 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:55.040 to and Amazon wasn't taking very much of a profit. 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.600 They were giving the consumer a great deal in part 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.600 to get the Kindle to be adopted, and the publishers 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:09.320 were just they hated this. So they actually started meeting together. 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:14.400 And that's a key difference so far between the case. 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.800 We're talking about the current class action and the old case. 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:21.520 So the publishers met quite a bit, including a well 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:25.120 known meeting at a very fancy restaurant where they had 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:30.120 a private room to themselves, restaurant called p Sholeen on 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.360 the Upper East Side, and you know, they met and 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:38.360 they decided to approach Steve Jobs, who was coming out 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.719 with his own you know, the Eye Books, the Eye 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:46.640 Book Store on the iPad. So they agreed, and Jobs 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.120 didn't want a still, he wanted to get a lot 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.280 more money, so they agreed with him on this agency 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.160 model that's they came up with and said, Okay, we'll 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.440 give you the thirty cut, you can have a higher price, 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:00.480 and we'll work out of the all. We can go 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.920 into the mechanics if you want to how we're basically 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.079 going to force Amazon and all of us to move 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.960 from the sole sale model to the agency model where 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.080 we can dictate the price and we're gonna push it 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:19.480 up past point. So they constructed this agreement, which eventually 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:23.400 resulted in their being sued. All the publishers settled that 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:29.760 case with consent agreements, except for Apple, which litigated to 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:33.760 the Court of Appeals and lost. So this case that 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.559 we're talking about comes about once the remedies that were 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.880 imposed in the earlier case expired. So under the earlier case, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:48.800 the publishers were not permitted to stop retail discounting. Once 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:54.560 that expired, they entered into new agreements with Amazon that effectively, 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:59.920 they say, ended the discounting. So this is round two, 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.960 and this is the case that actually the district court 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.800 just throw out. Yeah, so it sounds like what they're 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:14.679 doing is an agreement and it's driving prices up. So 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.560 why did the court throw it out? You asked the 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:22.000 perfect question. This is the kicker, and this is one 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:26.360 of the really hard legal issues for anti trust's law. 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.520 So in the first case, remember I mentioned something about 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.880 meeting in a private restaurant, and there was a lot 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.800 of communication there were there were a lot of emails, 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.880 phone calls back and forth among the publishers. None of 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:46.559 that apparently exists in this case. So in the first case, 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:51.920 when competitors get together on the same level of production distribution, 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:56.640 their agreement is called a horizontal agreement, and the horizontal 0:10:56.679 --> 0:11:00.679 agreement on prices is considered the absolute worst thing in 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:05.000 any trust illegal per se in and of itself. No defense. 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.640 People often go to jail for it. So if it's horizontal, 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:13.160 it's a big problem. But there's no clear proof in 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:19.000 this case that they agreed, and the plaintiffs try to argue, 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:24.040 you can infer they agreed by some of their behavior, 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:28.280 there must be an agreement. He announced. On the same day. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.679 Three of the five CEOs were around for the prior case. 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:35.520 They know how this goes, you know. Now they're better 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.800 counsel and they're listening to their lawyers. Apparently they did 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:42.360 not the last time, and they're much more cautious. But 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.040 there aren't that many players, and they know what's happening, 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:48.840 and they all come up with the same deal. So 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:54.760 the argument goes, a jury could infer that they agreed, 0:11:55.360 --> 0:12:00.560 but the court said, no, you haven't pleaded enough. We 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:03.920 won't allow a jury. It's what we have is consistent 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:09.120 with individual action, as it is with conspiracy. And there's 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.640 the Supreme Court decision that says that's not good enough 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:17.240 for you know, in any trust conspiracy. And so that's 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.240 why the basically why the district court rejected the complaint. 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:24.079 Oor at a very early stage. This is just really 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.880 the initial stage of this litigation. They filed their complaint. 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:31.079 That's all that's been done. They haven't you know, had 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.960 a chance to you know, go through the emails to 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:38.160 do discovery, um, all sorts of things. So it's very 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:42.400 early stage. But this is a problem. Competitors often announced 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.640 things and others say, hey, okay, we'll do that. To 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.640 think airlines for raising prices, and the other airlines do it. 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:55.960 So do you think the next step is to refile 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.960 the complaint? The court gave them permission. Sometimes courts don't 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.720 give permission to replead the case, but this district court 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:09.760 judge did. But unless they have some new allegations of 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.840 some kind of behavior, it's hard to know. It seems 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.480 to me that it's more on a legal point at 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.040 this point, unless they come up with other factual allegations, 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.679 you know, unless they do, they don't have the opportunity 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:27.720 to look further and do discovery of documents, particularly emails, 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:32.360 things like that that ended up thinking the parties in 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:34.840 the first case. So I'm not certain how they're going 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.600 to do this. They may just decide to appeal directly 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.200 to the Court of Appeals, but it's going to be 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:46.240 difficult because courts have become more and more cautious about 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:52.120 allowing plaintiffs to go forward and discoveries expensive. And you know, 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:57.120 Supreme Court's taken a somewhat negative view of just allowing 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.760 plaintiffs to, as they view it, I think, go on 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:04.600 some sort of fishing expedition through gigabytes of data. So 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.000 I guess we'll see. I'm I'm sure that they will 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:10.760 try to move the case ahead, but it does I 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.760 think rest on this key point about whether they have 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.559 enough evidence from which a jury or the judge could 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:23.000 infer that the party soul agreed. So we'll be watching 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:27.880 this to see whether the plaintiffs refile they're complaint or 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.840 perhaps taken appeal. Thanks so much as always, Harry. That's 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.840 Professor Harry First of n y U Law School. Former 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.640 President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to intervene 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:45.120 in the seemingly never ending legal fight over government papers 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.040 seized at his Moral Logo home. He now wants the 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.800 justices to appoint a court ordered special master to review 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:56.280 one documents with classified markings. I'm joined by Bloomberg News 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:00.640 Supreme Court reporter Greg Store. Former President hump is back 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.760 at the Supreme Court asking the Court to intervene in 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:07.440 the fight over government documents seized at mar Lago. What 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:11.240 exactly is he asking them? Well, in some ways, June, 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:15.200 it's a very narrow request. All that he's asking is 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.600 that the court appointed special master who's going through all 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:22.320 these documents that were retrieved from our lago, that that 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:27.080 special master be allowed to review these or so documents 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:30.960 that have classified markings on them. Right now, the judge 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:35.440 is not not allowed to review those documents. Are Trump's 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:39.280 lawyers making a jurisdictional argument about whether the Eleventh Circuit 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:44.200 had jurisdiction? Yeah, that's exactly it. Essentially, they say that 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.920 the Eleventh Circuit the appointment of a special Master is 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.080 the kind of thing and the special master's duties is 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.880 the kind of thing that can't be immediately appealed. And 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.360 so they say that the Eleventh Circuit never should have 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:01.680 even entertained the request to restrict what sorts of things 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.840 the special Master could do in the lower court. Trump's 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:09.320 lawyers make these arguments about Trump's role or a president's 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.080 role in classifying documents and broad arguments. We've heard Trump 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.520 even say that, you know, he can just say it, 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:19.280 he can even think it, and declassify arguments. Are they 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:24.040 still making that argument here? They're not, And in fact, 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.080 they completely stay away from that subject. That's what they 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.520 didn't the lawyers did in the lower courts too. They 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.520 stay away from declaring that the president actually did something, 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:39.120 actually declassified these documents, even as they argue that he 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:42.760 would have had sweeping authority to do that. So, just 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.120 to set the stage, this is an appeal from an 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:50.600 eleven Circuit panel that had to Trump appointees on it. 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:54.320 It is, and it was an opinion that came out 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.400 very quickly and was very definitive about essentially letting this 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:02.680 investigation go forward. Uh. One other thing the Elevens did 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.760 was to say that the Justice Department and National Security 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:12.000 personnel could go ahead and start looking at these documents, 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.280 start using them. And that is not something that Trump 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:19.000 is asking the Supreme Court to intervene on. It's only 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.760 asking the court to do that rather narrow thing of 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.360 letting the Special Master look at them to see if 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.960 some sort of privilege claim with these classified documents. Not 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.680 clear what that what that might be, but there's some 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.000 sort of privilege claim there. This is an emergency appeal, 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:38.679 But where's the emergency Yeah, it's a good question. The 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.840 former president waited more than two weeks to go up 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:46.280 to the Supreme Court with this, and Justice Thomas, who's 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.840 the justice who handles emergency matters out of the eleven Circuit, 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.040 also didn't suggest there was any massive rush. He gave 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:56.920 the government a week to respond to it, so I 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:59.439 wouldn't expect anything coming out of the Supreme Court for 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:03.200 at least the week. Yeah. So does that signal that 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:07.359 Justice Thomas doesn't think this is much of an emergency either, 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:10.160 that he's giving the Justice Department so long to respond 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:13.280 in an emergency matter? Yeah, I think that much is. 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:15.480 I wouldn't want to go any further than that and 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.240 suggest it says anning about Justice Thomas's views on the matter. 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.760 But in terms of the timing of it, and that 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:23.800 makes sense, there's not you know, sometimes you see an 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.959 emergency request and and and a party says, you know, 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:30.240 we need something by you know, ex date or something 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:33.080 some particular bad things going to happen. There was nothing 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.639 like that in the Trump filing, and in fact, it 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.720 was rather unclear as to exactly what the particular urgency 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:45.040 was for for the former president. The eleven Circuit yesterday 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.520 approved an expedited appeal of the appointment of the Special 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.359 Master to review the documents. Will that play in it 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.560 all here? That now, that's on an expedited track, that 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:58.600 is certainly possible. You know, the Supreme Court when it 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.240 gets the government's response, the government may probably will mention 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.240 that and and sort of suggests, Hey, there's there's even 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:07.520 less reason for the Supreme Court to get involved here 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.560 because the Eleventh Circuit is moving quickly to get all 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:14.840 this stuff resolved. Hard to say exactly how all those 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.240 things will intersect, and no doubt will have various other 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.119 developments happening between now and the time the Supreme Court rules. 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.200 Trump's record at the Supreme Court is not that great, 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.800 despite his three appointees. Remind us of some of his 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.840 past endeavors. Yeah, well, he's of course had those big 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:37.040 fights about subpoenas for his financial records that the Supreme 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.879 Court ruled on and didn't give him nearly everything he 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:45.280 was seeking. And then, perhaps more relevant to the current controversy, 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:50.119 there was the issue of whether papers we're going to 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.440 be turned over to the committee investigating the January six 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.880 attack on the Capitol and the Supreme Court rejected Trump's 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.440 effort to try to block records from being turned over 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.800 from the Archives to the Committee, and only just as 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.800 Clarence Thomas dissented there. How long do you think this 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:10.320 is going to take? A matter of days? Weeks? The 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:12.960 Court will wait until they get that response. Normally, the 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.880 court then waits to give the applying party a chance 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:17.840 to follow a reply brief. That will probably take a 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:19.919 couple of days. Then it could be any time after that. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:22.800 Thanks so much for being on the show. That's Bloomberg 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.920 News Supreme Court Reporter Greg Store and that's it for 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.600 this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:31.840 always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcast. 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.160 You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:40.359 www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast, Slash Law, and 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:42.879 remember to tune in to The Bloomberg Law Show every 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:46.800 week night at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso, 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:48.560 and you're listening to Bloomberg